D&D 5E Advice for a newish 5E gamemaster

[tuxedoraptor]

I was able to collect a small group of people during my stay at the hospital to play D&D and I wanted advice on what I could of done better, even though I now have been discharged.

1.being too nice to players
This is more of who I am as a person, I freely allowed my two to three players rerolls of natural ones during character creation and general play, out of fear that they would get bored with the game as all of us have extremely short attention spans (Mine only appears if im not GMing), was I incorrect to do this to brand new players? I wouldn't have done this for anyone who knew a lot of the game, but since they had never played ANY D&D variant before I was doing this.

2.taking lots of shortcuts
I rarely, if ever actually set DCs for things simply due to the fact that if they had rolled high enough, they would of gotten it anyways, I also had limited time to play and my mental math is not great, coupled with the lack of calculators I would often have to have my players check my haphazard math on monster HP.

3.Houserules and favoritism
I naturally tinkered with the rules while reading the books over my multiple readings of them, resulting in the warlock being INT based, humans getting +2 to two stats or +2 to one stat and proficiency in one set of tools, along with half elves getting just a +2 to charisma and a +1 to one other stat, none of the floating bonuses can stack. I also chose to veto feats from the game and use the pathfinder beginners box for a battlemap and minis. What I mean by favoritism is that I tend to use my sense of a person before allowing options, for example; if player A walked up to me and asked to play an oathbreaker paladin but had a habit of killing everything that moves, I would shoot the idea down before he finished oathbreaker, but if player B asked to play an oathbreaker paladin and was known for being a respectful, well thought out player who has shown him/herself capable of being mature at the table, I would allow it, knowing that the disruptions would be minimal at worst.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not exactly sure what advice you are asking for. Just opinions on your 3 points? That's the direction I'm going with.

1. On being too nice. This is entirely a play style thing and not really a problem so long as it lines up with the player's expectations. The only issue I might see is down the road, the players might come to rely on this and expect you to keep them alive regardless of what they do and I find that this can hurt the game (makes the game boring) in the long run. It's a very fine line to walk.

2. Taking shortcuts - there's nothing wrong with this, so long as you're consistent. Then again, if the player's are noticing that your math is wonky and are bothered by it, it might be an idea to brush up on the mechanics a bit, take a few more notes before the game starts and maybe have a DM's Cheatsheet on hand to do calculations.

3. On Houserules - I'm of two minds about this. Since these are very new players, it might be an idea to stick closer to the rules for the first time out just so the players aren't confused. It can be a bit of an uphill battle to try to remember both this honking big book of rules plus whatever changes you have decided to add to those rules. Since the players have no basis to judge your changes, it makes feedback on changes problematic. No feats is no problem and using the Pathfinder beginner box for goodies is a fantastic idea. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

3b. On Favoritism. This one is a really sticky issue. I totally understand where you're coming from with this. You're playing with new gamers, and a new group, and you haven't really sussed each other out very well. IMO, this is one area where it's best to be 100% brutally honest about things. Don't try to keep this a secret as it will lead to resentment at the table. And, there's the danger that while you might feel (and you might be 100% right) that Player A can't play that character and Player B can, your judgement might not be 100% accurate. My advice here is to let Player A play that character but be very up front about what you expect to see. Try to find some sort of compromise between the two of you that both of you can live with. I try to err on the side of trusting the players and giving them as much rope as I can. I find that if I do that, and then set a bar for behaviour, players will often meet and exceed that bar, seeing it as a challenge to be met while playing the character. I mean, in this specific example, Oathbreaker paladins ARE anti-paladins. Aren't they supposed to be killing everything that moves? Try not to enforce your specific views of what a class is on other players.

 

[tuxedoraptor]

Hussar, they are now FORMER players, as I was discharged from the mental hospital today, but the one last change I forgot is the starting gear, everyone, but the rogue, starts with the worst possible armor in that category. Clerics get the choice of any simple weapon OR any martial weapon as well, if they are profiecient. Antipaladins/oathbreakers are supposed to be evil, but if they are murdering everything in town and preventing the story from developing/intentionally derailing the game, then I have an issue. I also had to help them build characters as I said, brand new players and no idea what to do means I pretty much built them. I think that if I had proper supplies and enough time to prepare, I would have done much better in the preparation department, as I was not allowed a calculator at all and I had to wait for the staff to give me pencils/expo markers and I couldn't actually do any pregame planning.

 

[Ath-kethin]

If you are really looking for advice, here is the best I have to offer: relax, and follow your instincts. Nobody outside your group can make a better call for them than you.

The greatest skill you can develop as a DM is to make everything seem like you intended for it to happen. So being good at making stuff up on the fly is vital.

And don't ever let anybody tell you you're playing the game wrong.

 

[Shiroiken]

I was able to collect a small group of people during my stay at the hospital to play D&D and I wanted advice on what I could of done better, even though I now have been discharged.

1st: Welcome.
2nd: Glad you're feeling better.

1.being too nice to players
This is more of who I am as a person, I freely allowed my two to three players rerolls of natural ones during character creation and general play, out of fear that they would get bored with the game as all of us have extremely short attention spans (Mine only appears if im not GMing), was I incorrect to do this to brand new players? I wouldn't have done this for anyone who knew a lot of the game, but since they had never played ANY D&D variant before I was doing this.

With brand new players, I would suggest using standard array, or (assuming you like rolling), allow the player to default back to the array if don't like their rolls. The downside of just giving things to new players is that it taints their view of the game, so they expect freebies.

2.taking lots of shortcuts
I rarely, if ever actually set DCs for things simply due to the fact that if they had rolled high enough, they would of gotten it anyways, I also had limited time to play and my mental math is not great, coupled with the lack of calculators I would often have to have my players check my haphazard math on monster HP.

Not really that big a deal. As you get used to DMing, you'll get better at the mental math. Fudging a bit early on isn't a bad thing.

3.Houserules and favoritism
I naturally tinkered with the rules while reading the books over my multiple readings of them, resulting in the warlock being INT based, humans getting +2 to two stats or +2 to one stat and proficiency in one set of tools, along with half elves getting just a +2 to charisma and a +1 to one other stat, none of the floating bonuses can stack. I also chose to veto feats from the game and use the pathfinder beginners box for a battlemap and minis. What I mean by favoritism is that I tend to use my sense of a person before allowing options, for example; if player A walked up to me and asked to play an oathbreaker paladin but had a habit of killing everything that moves, I would shoot the idea down before he finished oathbreaker, but if player B asked to play an oathbreaker paladin and was known for being a respectful, well thought out player who has shown him/herself capable of being mature at the table, I would allow it, knowing that the disruptions would be minimal at worst.

I strongly advise against using variants (including feats, multi-classing, etc.) and houserules until you are more comfortable with the game. There are usually good reasons for the way the standard rules are set, and sometimes it's not obvious. Even well meaning houserules can jeopardize new player's view of the game.

As for favoritism, you should do what you feel is best for your game. Some players are not meant to be given evil toys, because all they do is use them to ruin the fun of everyone else. Other players are less inclined to do so, and can thus be tempted by evil without risk of ruining the game. If you have a mature group, they should be able to handle this, but if you play with new friends, you might want to hold to blanket policies to avoid conflict.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

1. Being too nice: It's all about balance my friend and there aren't any hard and fast rules. If a player rolls a 1, and it's their third 1 in a row, maybe throw them a bone and let them re-roll. And Hussar is right. Do it too much and the players will rely on you to hold their hands through the adventure, which takes the risk out of adventuring, which in turn takes a lot of the fun out of adventuring. And eventually you're going to have to ask yourself if you will or will not be a DM who "fudges" their rolls. I fudge. I fudge all the time. Sometimes in favour of the players, sometimes in favour of the monsters. It's never random or arbitrary, and I feel it can sometimes shake things up a little.

2. Shortcuts: Shortcuts are great if you want to keep the pace of the adventure moving along. But using them too much will suck a little of the challenge out of the game for your players (Just like being too nice). Something to consider as well is the type of adventure you are running. Is it a slow-paced murder mystery or a high-octane action adventure? If it's the murder mystery, you're going to want to use DC's and skill/ability checks more often to allow the players to uncover clues and find evidence. If all your players care about is slaying and melting faces off, you can probably get away with them not rolling for a locked door (they'll probably just smash the damn thing in) as much. In fact, why bother with the locked door if it will slow things down? A rule of thumb I also use, is if the players can spend more than ten minutes doing an action (lockpicking, searching for something, etc), without being bothered by monsters, they automatically succeed. This saves you from having to watch your players constantly roll the same skill check until they beat the DC. On the flip side, I'll let my players take as long as they need to succeed at something (usually 10X1D12 minutes), but if they're standing in the middle of a monster infested dungeon doing the task, I'll roll to see if they have a random encounter. And the longer something takes the greater the chances of them running into a monster. The exception to all of this is if the DC is so high that it is simply out of the characters ability to succeed.

Houserules: There's nothing wrong with adding or deleting things from the game to make it fit in with your vision of the world you've created. I'm wary of changing base character stats and abilities, because it might be discouraging to some players. For example, lets say I have a super-cool idea for a half-elf character and the ability bonuses are going to help me achieve the vision I have for that character, but then you go and change it. Now I'm stuck trying to find a new way to make the character or ditching it and having to go with another idea that isn't what I wanted to play in the first place. Other than that, change and modify to fit your needs and the preferences of the players.

Favouritism: Let the players play what they want, but be clear about things like player vs. player fighting, and that randomly killing things might not jive with the rest of the players and their characters. Having said that, I generally won't let players make chaotic evil characters because things tend to derail quickly. Ask yourself what can the people at your table tolerate? Maybe everyone is cool with the idea that they can stab one another in the back at anytime. Maybe (and most likely) they are not. That's something you're going to have to decide as a group before playing.

It'll take a while before you find your stride as a DM, but it's worth going through the growing pains. There's lots of good DM's with weekly blogs that I've found really handy (particularly the angry GM).

Good luck!

 

[Hussar]

this thread is full of win.

 

[tuxedoraptor]

well, im actually very good at making stuff up on the fly, to the point that I really don't set a plot until the players tell me how the characters know eachother and then build from there. I have no real social life or friends due to my actual location, so my free time was spent pouring through the books until I memorized a chunk of it and built off of it from there. I actually use the pathfinder gods and goddesses since they are way easier to understand and way less convoluted. I also modified short rests and long rests to require a healers kit and a medicine check to regain HP from short rests.

 

[thorgrit]

1. Being too nice - I'm rather guilty of this myself. I need to restrain myself from being a Monty Haul DM. But doing to try to keep people interested may backfire - if they always win, if there's no penalty or real consequence, they may see *that* as no point to playing the game. If there's a situation where there really is no consequence for failure, then don't even ask for a roll (classic example, climbing a short wall with nothing going on around, just narrate the athletic PC gets over it fine, but the weakling PC either takes a few tries or needs some help). If there's a roll they make that you feel is vital, don't negate the failure, but find some way to fail forward (searching one of the big boss's hideouts for secret plans, best they can roll is a 7, they still find the plans - in the hands of a powerful lieutenant and minions who ambush them).

2. Taking shortcuts - Shortcuts are fine. Just learning a game, it's hard to keep everything in your head all the time. The key part is learning what to shortcut and what not to. Starting out, it'll be a really jarring (and boring!) experience if you have to stop and spend a few minutes looking up every single action the players take. Bring your players in on some of it, saying that it'll take some experience and practice, and you're just going to go with what you think makes sense at the time. If you or a player gets concerned about how something was handled, then make a quick note and look up that section at the end of the session or between sessions. As part of this, don't take on learning that should be offloaded to players. As part of the races and classes and spells that exist, you shouldn't be expected to know all the ones that your players have. Make it clear up front that if someone's playing a dwarf fighter, that they write down all the things they have and what they do; you shouldn't have to remember and explain poison resistance or superiority dice. Especially spellcasters, they should be ready to quote the exact text (or *accurate* summary) of spells they cast, instead of asking you what Scorching Ray does.

3a. Houserules - totally natural to want to tinker with a system, and adapt it to suit your and your player's needs and wants. I'd highly advise not doing it until you've had some experience with what you're changing, and what the consequences of it would be. And when you do have that experience and make some changes to "your" vision of the game, you may want to set those changes aside and go back to by-the-book when you're teaching new players, to avoid confusion between how they see the game run vs what the book tells them or they see in other games. Always have player buy-in from house rules, and have a written-down list of them for players to reference up front when you're talking about starting a game / character creation. DMs that suddenly spring major house rules on me during the third or fourth session is my biggest pet peeve.

3b. Can't give you much advice there, as I do it myself. One player in my group is a character optimizer, strategist, and is good at noticing and putting together player character option combos to extremes that may stray from what the system may intend. He's aware, and tries really hard not to let it mess up the game, sometimes to the point of making deliberately gimped characters, or focusing optimization on weird or inconsequential areas. If he had a character concept that involved playing an Aarakocra (birdlike player race that gets flight at level 1), I'd say I'd be concerned it may lead to trouble, and ask him to reconsider. (I don't accuse him of "cheating" or "ruining the game", just I know at times he'll press every advantage and that'll either lead to some fights being too easy or me having to constantly contrive ways to negate the advantage.) Another player may be inspired by the race and want it for story reasons, and I know they're not a tactical genius that will see things I don't 90% of the time, I'd be much more inclined to let them. Don't know if all that helps you though.

 

[tuxedoraptor]

This is less in game advice and more I am a broke seventeen year old who got paid fourty dollars advice. What should I grab for my game next? I am eying the sword coast adventurers guide, but the amount of fluff to crunch ratio is a turn off, since I use a custom universe inspired by golarion. Is there anything I should aim for, like battlemaps or screens? I don't use a screen as is, since I don't actually have one, perhaps minis? I should get a few of them, only issue is my guinea pig bella likes to bite minis.