The Toughest Part of Dungeon Mastering........well to me at least.

[The_Gunslinger658]

The Toughest Part of Dungeon Mastering is getting the initial adventure up and going IE how do we all go about having the Players come together? Do we go the lazy way by just having everybody know each other and kick off the adventure at your local inn? Or being a good DM, do you try and add depth to you initial game by coming up with various reasons for your players being where they are at and than go even further to initiate a pre adventure to get them together?

Do you guys agree that this is the toughest part of being a DM? What ideas do you people have in regards to getting the initial adventure up off the ground?

Scott

 

[Sunseeker]

No, I don't think so. I think a lot of players accept that the beginning of a game is always a little contrived in order to get the party together. I may give them some ulterior motive for being in town (or ask them to give me one) and I usually don't set them up as already knowing each other (unless the party wants that), but typically I think the players accept that "the story has to start somewhere" and "the party has to get together somehow". Sometimes I add in extra NPCs like with OotA who I get to use as redshirts in dangerous situations.

Normally the players are at worst in the same town and are brought together by a shared event (the town is attacked, a famous person is about to be executed, a bounty is posted on an infamous pirate and they all want the prize, etc...). Typically though I just start right from that moment when the party has already gathered within arms reach and give them a little push to meet up. "You see an odd-looking fellow in the crowd who doesn't seem to be cheering/booing/as interested as the other people." "You see a woman, clearly of non-local dress and bristling with weapons..."

I absolutely will not start out players in their home town, or on their own and attempt to lead them into town. I've played with too many strong personality types who, when away from the party are more likely to say "shove this!" and wander off on their own.

Of course, any two or more players are allowed to say that they know each other beforehand and are already together. They both have to agree on this and trade at least 1 item of "secret information" (I make each player give me 5 at game start).

So, still, no, I don't find things very difficult to start off because both my party and I all accept some level of suspension of disbelief as to why we're all here.

 

[Calithorne]

I used to experiment with writing fantasy and science fiction stories, and for me, writing the first few chapters was never a problem. It's what happens after that that I got stumped on, and in all cases, my story would just peter out because I didn't know where to take it.

And so I have found it also to be true with role playing campaigns. I have never had a problem building the campaign and running that all important first session, during which usually something really exciting happens to set things up, and get the ball rolling. But the problem I have is keeping the campaign going after the initial few sessions. I keep session logs, and today I was going over them, and I didn't realize how many campaigns simply die on the vine after one or two sessions. One of the problems is our group has lots of people who want to DM, and lots of campaigns going on, so only the most compelling campaign can compete with all the others and make people want to keep playing in it. Right now, I have four campaigns in progress, but I know that at least two of them have fallen by the wayside, and we may never get back to them.

 

[S'mon]

I normally have a starting campaign premise, eg

PCs are adventurers who are inhabitants of the town of Loudwater and interested in defending it.
PCs are family and retainers of the Markelhay family of Fallcrest, again defending the realm.
PCs are members of the Pathfinder Society at the Magnimar lodge, under the direction of Venture Captain Sheila Heidmarch
PCs are adventurers in Karameikos interested in gaining wealth, power & status

Membership of an organisation like the Pathfinders is a good starting premise, as is a common bond of allegiance like my Markelhay example. PCs may also be brought together by a patron for a specific task, but then the players need to justify sticking together after that mission.

An alternative approach is group PC creation and setting up a relationship map between the PCs pre-game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wES5ufXETdE&t=0s - I think this works best for games with a high focus on interpersonal drama.

 

[Davelozzi]

I agree that a satisfying backstory/meet-up is the hardest thing. What exasperates me is the amount of trouble that I have getting the players to give me even basic details about their character in time for me to plan anything that may unite them. I just started a new campaign on Friday, and had to abort the initial gathering of PCs and just drop them into the quest with a hand wave because I still didn't have anything useful to work with from two of the players up to the day of the session, even though I announced the campaign two months out and asked to have PCs to me 3-4 weeks out.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World

 

[Lanefan]

My current campaign started with two characters who already knew each other: a Cavalier and his Bard sidekick (together known as the Bardalier). They rode upcountry through a series of small towns and villages, and in each one the Bard made great noise about how many things they were gonna kill in the mountains and how rich they were gonna get; then asked if anyone was interested in joining in. By the time they got to the mountains they'd scooped up a whole party this way, and straight into Keep on the Borderlands they went.

My previous campaign started out with a famous adventuring company, not heard from in some time, suddenly resurfacing and putting out a very public call for recruits. A mass recruitment meeting takes place (with all the new PCs finding their own reasons to be there), the recruits are divided up into proto-parties (naturally, all the PCs are put in the same one), each party is given what sounds like a practice mission (the PCs were sent to an old dungeon site, supposedly cleared out, with instructions to return with a complete map of it in order to prove their competence), and sent out into the field. In reality the whole thing's a hoax and the proto-parties have essentially been sent on suicide missions (the PC party actually did quite well, all things considered) and the storyline then develops into learning about the fates of some of the other groups and eventually cottoning on to the hoax etc. etc. I got about 4 years of gaming out of that storyline alone; and the campaign overall went for 12.

The one before that? Yeah, they met in a tavern...

Lan-"the Bard of the Bardalier, who in fact secretly wanted to kill the Cavalier, was the only original party member to survive the Caves of Chaos"-efan

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I often make the players themselves determine how they know each other and what are the natures of their relationships.

Sometimes these relationships form the basis of a campaign that is different than what I originally had in mind.

In one such instance, the players all decided that they would be siblings. I do not remember what the original premise of the campaign was, but if almost an entire family were to become adventurers, there had to be something seriously wrong with that family, so the campaign came to revolve around the family curse and the siblings' efforts to break it (they did not).

Another campaign involved a pair of 'special agents', a linguistics professor, and a crime boss. This campaign came to be about an ancient force from *outside* replacing the upper echelon of the kingdom with duplicant thralls to some unknown end.

 

[CydKnight]

I think the toughest part for many is keeping track of everything especially in combat. It's easy to forget or overlook an effect here or a creature's legendary attack there.

For me the toughest part is improvising when the party runs off on a tangent I didn't expect. For this reason I may spend more time than some preparing contingencies based on my predictions of what kind of tangents my party might take.

 

[CydKnight]

Sorry Double Post

 

[Celebrim]

So, I find that it's a good idea to assume some initial connections between the adventurers. They don't all have to know each other, but at least some of them should have some sort connection to the others. It's not a bad idea to establish before the game that everyone, even if they don't know all the other party members, has some sort of mutual connection to at least one other player and preferably two. You can let the individual players work out what those ties are - two characters extended school together, two are related, two are former/existing lovers, two knew each other as children, or whatever.

It's also pretty important that everyone have some preexisting motive to face danger and risk. You can't have a party risk adverse anti-social types whose response to danger is to borrow into a lair and not go anywhere. Everyone needs a motive to be a hero. In D&D, it's probably a pretty good idea if there is a central alignment to the party and everyone is within about 1 step of that unless you have very experienced and mature players that can handle a mixed motive party AND you aren't doing a sandbox. Sandboxes require everyone's motives be aligned pretty closely. And all your players should be told about these expectations before they show up with characters.

Thirdly, they do all need to start somewhere. It's easiest if the starting point is a public place where it is easy to explain everyone's presence, and it can be a tavern (but need not be). Examples of public places can be a university (they are all students), a temple (they are all polytheists worshiping some deity), a festival (they've all come to enjoy or participate the festival in some fashion), a place of business (they are all bidding at an auction, or at least accompanying someone who is), or a harbor (they are all expecting something delivered from a particular ship). However, you can do a private location as a starting place as well - they've all been invited to a dinner party by a mutual acquaintance, they are all servants of a local lord and he summons them about a problem, they've all responded to be broad sheet from a veteran mercenary who is forming a mercenary company for some venture (like guarding a caravan), or they are all aboard the same ship sailing to some destination.

Third, if you are going to supply the motive to the story, rather than run a sandbox, start with a bang. If the players aren't already all on the same page, something so big and important needs to happen that responding to it becomes every PC's #1 priority regardless of their motive. And I do mean a big bang. Even if you plan to slow down in chapter 2 or 3 and start building back up with slow rising action, chapter 1 should be huge shattering event of historical importance. Disaster should happen right in front of their eyes. Kings should die, cities should fall, volcanoes should explode, meteors should fall out of the sky and blast half the landscape out of existence, old gods should rise, or whatever. Whatever should happen should be so big and so important that everyone's motive should be survival and dealing with this thing. After that, you can start introducing your plot threads in that context of 'the big thing'.