New DM help?

Hi, So I'm a first time player and DM, and I need to write an adventure. I have all the books (3.5e). I have never played before, and I need to know how I would write one with all the monsters, traps, etc. Any tips?

Your best bet is to learn by example.

There are a bunch of free adventures available -- some on this site and in the WotC archives at Original Adventures (they host it, but sure don't make it easy to find).

Nagol said:

Your best bet is to learn by example.

Click to expand...

I second that. Read through several adventures that have already been published to get a feel for what goes into one and a flow. See if you can find an old issue of Dungeon magazine as well - good quality adventures in those as well. Try to find adventures that are level appropriate so you can get an idea of just how difficult encounters and traps should be for the level you are running for.

Once you have done that it is time to sit down and come up with your own idea. Start writing down some basic ideas and then go back through and populate with the monsters, NPCs and such you need to make the story happen. Before you know it you'll have written your first adventure.

Good luck!

Also, make sure you tailor your adventure to your players.
Something a DM needs to know to be successful, is what his players like, what they dislike. If your guys are big roleplayers, make sure you add in alot of rp oppertunities. If they're charge attackers, make it fast paced and combat oriented, etc..
I say successful, but I guess that really just translates into having fun.

Something to to help you get started too, is get your players to go ahead and make characters. That way you can look at their chars and see if that gives you any plot hooks right off the bat.
Oh! Three of my players have a level in rogue, let me put together a thieves guild where they met.

Character roles, plots, missions specific to/ embedded in the setting can situate the PCs and the players, plus go down the route of letting players set goals beyond 'slay and shop' 'win mentality'.

The modules link above is very handy but most of the adventures are a bit railroady. (Please check out the infamous Tomb of Horrors for the best and worst of that). Having a framework with some on-hand encounters, characters, items that can be dropped into the place, (as well as set pieces), can help GM and platers to improvise.

HTH

Step 1: Know your players. What they like doing, what they dislike doing, what they'll find fun, and what they'll find annoying. Try to make the game as fun for them and for yourself as you can.

Step 2: Know your characters. Fighters, Clerics, Monks, and Barbarians can take a lot of damage, and deal quite a bit. Wizards, and sorcerers are glass cannons, they start weak but get powerful quickly. Bards, Druids, and Rangers are kind of in-between classes. They each have specialties that they excel at. Rogues are skill monkeys with sneaky damage, lower hitpoints, but versatile. Keeping all of this in mind when writing your adventure is a good idea.

Step 3: Be flexible. Let your players experiment a little bit, but also let them know that "hey, I wrote this adventure for *this type of scenario*, and I'm not prepared or experienced enough to come up with too much on the fly." If you find your players are taking far too much damage, getting hit way too often, or the opposite where your players are hitting all the time and dealing buckets of damage, don't be afraid to adjust ACs, hit bonuses, hit points, saves, or anything else by a point or 2 (or 10 for hit points. A good rule of thumb is +1 to hit, saves, and AC, and +10 hp should add +1 to the CR of the monster, likewise subtracting the same amount if you want things easier.

Step 4: Know your monsters. Have a couple monsters ready for play ahead of time. Read their entries in the monster manual, look up feats they have so you know what they do, understand their attacks and attitudes.

Step 5: Know your dungeon. Dungeons come in many different forms, Forests, City streets, Caverns, Castles, Farm houses... whatever. Make sure you know where you want to run your adventures and try to flavor them accordingly. Street merchants and noble parades are less likely to happen in a cavern, but if you mention them in your town, your players will feel a little more immersed.

Step 6: Have fun! If things are getting heated, emotions are wearing thin, or frustration is running rampant in your game, remember its just a game, Go back to step 3, or take a short break. Try to have as much fun as you can, but be sure that everyone is having a good time too.

Being a first time Player & DM, I'm going to assume you don't know your players playstyle. And I'm going to assume you are not going to understand what previous posters mean by "railroading" and whatever other terms they are throwing at you. So I'm also going to assume they are confusing the crap out of you.

Your best bet would be to buy a copy of a published adventure called Sunless Citadel, read through it, and pay attention to how it tells the DM what to do every step of the way. Also pay attention to how it organizes the adventure information by separating each area with a description of the room that you can read to your players, a paragraph that describes information only for you (the DM), and then information about traps or monsters.

I suggest running a published adventure like this first, then writing your own adventure. It will help you understand how things work.

Also, I suggest Sunless Citadel because it is a fun adventure and it was written in a way to help a new DM learn how to run an adventure. I also have never run any other low level adventures that do this, so this is what comes to mind. Also, be aware that Sunless Citadel is a 3.0 adventure, so a few things in it might not make sense (like skill checks for skills that don't exist in 3.5). But if you can't figure out what to do about that, you can always ask for advice on Enworld. Maybe other people could suggest other similar adventures that would help guide you as a DM like Sunless Citadel does.

Then after you have run your first adventure, come back to this thread, and re-read what the other posters told you. It's good advice, but I have a feeling you need a little experience before that advice will be helpful to you.

Oryan is absolutely right. Listen to him, for he speaks wisdom. Let me add one thing to his point, though:

Create opportunities where you have no idea how they'll be resolved. They don't need to be big - in fact, they shouldn't be big. If you run a prepublished adventure, just include a few random pieces of "dungeon dressing" (furniture, dead bodies, etc) or an obstacle or something.

An example would be a single goblin, with a crossbow, hiding behind cover. The PCs could charge him, but they're going to get pegged if they do so. He yells at them to go away, or he'll "kill them all! Don't make me do it!".

If the PCs attack, cool, but they could also negotiate, try to sneak up to him, etc.

Another would be a dead body, lying in the middle of the hallway. His backpack is filled with small pieces of gear, and the some strange candy. Trust me - a simple thing like this will really get your PCs interacting ("How did he die? What does the candy taste like? Can I wear those shiny boots!?").

I guess what I'm saying is, try to make sure there are situations where there are multiple paths to success. If you can't think of at least three different ways to achieve success in an encounter (your players will think of a different three, I guarantee), then fiddle with it a bit.

The reasoning here is, you're trying to hook players into the game. If they want a fast combat killing game, there are computers. If you want to hook them (and get into it yourself), do something computers can't do - provide a game that adapts to the playstyle and choices of the players.

I'd like to chime in with the 5 room dungeon model:

Roleplaying Tips for game masters for all role-playing systems

This link should point you at the right article.

Johnn Four has a brilliant e-magazine all about being a better DM and player, and it's all free and archived.

Assuming that your players also didn't play (much) and aren't very familiar with the rules, it all might seem a bit intimidating. It's much more important to create a fun first game then to create dungeon masterpiece.

3.5e has more rules and possibilities then Greece's national dept, and it's pretty much impossible to cover everything. You got to be picky in choosing what kind of challenges you wan't to throw at your players. Just some things that helped me DMing:

1) Know your players. Probably some of them already made a character, or you already played another game with them. Maybe you already know that one player loves to roleplay, while the other one enjoys throwing high numbers. Since its just the first time, be sure to give them a cookie for doing things they think is fun! First engage, then challenge.

2) Keep it simple. You can't control what your players will do, but you can ease out the monsters/mechanics you're going to use. Don't try to much complicated things, like grapple, turn undead etc. just yet. Those require to much ruling, and nobody likes to spend a session in the books. Pick one or two mechanics to test out. Keep the basic rules close to you (attacking, melee and ranged, flanking, the chosen feats, Some spells, Attacks of Opportunity, 5 ft. step) and try to motivate the players to try some of those. When they get the hang of it, challenge them with more difficult moves.

3) A puzzle! Since the rules of combat will get your players tired as long as they don't master it, put some braincake in there too! You can come up with any kind of puzzle, from a mathematical equation to a riddle, and all you have to do is give it some fluff, some fantasy coating. Combine it with some skill checks, and you also introduce that . I had a big success with new players with just making a magical lock with a numberlock (or whatever you call it). On the door also was a string of symbols, which represented the numbers that should be inserted in the number lock. To find out which symbol was which number, they had to solve a series of mathematical equations, found on a paper. Something like "Snake + Eye = 10, Eye - Snake = 4" but then a little more complicated. While mathematical equations have the tendency to be really, really, really boring, the fantasy coating and the skill checks/happenings that happened during the solving of this puzzle, gave the players time and interest into solving it. When they solve it, they will also feel smart, and capable to play the game. Don't overdo it though! A 10 to 20 minutes puzzle is more then enough to keep them happy. And be sure to involve every player, by using different skills!

4) Make it cool, but believable. You want to create a world which is consistent. Don't make them fight the coolest stuff in the books yet (ruling is also complicated here), but its fantasy, so make the boss memorable. try to find a monster in the monster manual with an appropriate CR, which doesn't have a difficult ruling and still looks awesome. Thats what players want; be awesome and beat the out of other awesome.

5) Punish, but don't be too harsh. This is more for DMing then for writing a story. My first game was a mess. I gave my players so much freedom that they just went to do crazy stuff and didn't get on with the game. Getting drunk ingame or threating people is a classic in this aspect. You wan't the game to move on, and not let the crazy experiments of one player bother the others. Allow a player to get drunk, for example, but don't detail it (you're drunk, and you act like a drunken idiot. Nothing interesting for a group of adventurers). Make them get some penalties for their irresponsible behavior(You made the smith angry when you were drunk/intimidated him, so he only buys at 10% of the price, and asks another extra 50% on top of the normal price when he sells you something). Don't kill/petrify etc. them just yet. Let them play, but advance the play and let them get the feeling that it's a real world with consequences.

Now for writing the adventure, I think it's smart to keep your first game as a list of challenges, like:
1) Negotiate with the town guard about the goblins
2) Fight some goblins, then interrogate them
3) Track the goblins to their hideout
4) Fight the guards
5) Disable the traps, solve the puzzle
6) Fight some other guards, then fight the boss.
This keeps you in control of progression, and also gives a good opportunity to gradually insert rules. the goblins at 2 may forfeit attacks of opportunity, but the guards at 4 could be a good point to introduce it. Don't forget that as a DM, you must deliver the entertainment. Make them have fun, challenge them slightly to apply the rules and make them feel smart or creative. They won't be able to wait till your next game! Then you can challenge them more, and create more open and complex adventures.

EDIT: I See you have two experienced players in your game, which makes it a little more difficult. To keep it easy for you and fun for them, Wik already mentioned giving them different opportunities. A puzzle is also an extra boost for those players, since they already master the skills and combat. And don't let them outshine the other players to much. It's logical that they will do more and more complicated actions then the new players, but don't let them dominate the game. That would make the other players feel intimidated by the rules, and also a bit stupid.