D&D 5E Best GMing Advice Article?

[Mistwell]

I am giving the D&D 5e Starter Boxed Set to a 10 year old girl that is a friend of our family. I think she is ready for D&D and it is something that would interest her.

In addition to the boxed set I am including 4 dice bags, and 3 additional sets of dice (so four in all including the dice in the box).

I am also including a print-out of the Basic Rules for Players, and the Basic Rules for DMs, 4 additional blank character sheets, and a note explaining where she can find all this stuff online, what each of these things is and why it would be useful, and where to go from there if she finds she wants to expand into the PHB/MM/DMG.

But I'd like to include an article on how to be a game master, from a beginner's perspective. I've heard there isn't much advice on this in the starter set, and I think a general article might be handy.

The only one I've read so far is this one. It's not bad and if I cannot find a better one I will just go with that.

But I wanted to ask here first - anyone know of a good article/blog entry/section of an existing game that is really good on basic beginner GMing advice that I could print out and include with this gift?

 

[KarinsDad]

I suspect that the article you linked might be a little advanced (at least vocabulary-wise) for a 10 year old girl. You might want to edit anything you give her before printing it out. There are quite a few articles out there, but most of them appear to have an adult audience in mind.

 

[Thank Dog]

The best GM'ing advice you can give has two parts to it.

1) Don't read GM'ing advice articles.

2) If everyone is having fun, then you're doing it right.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Ii don't think an article is going to help, frankly. I say this as someone who does not think of himself as a good DM, though I try. I have however had a lot of success running games for kids ages 9-14.

This girl is going to learn how to play by good modelling. One session with you as the DM, perhaps with her mom or dad and maybe a friend, will give her the experience and demonstrate the basics of what's going on.

Without that session? I do not think anyone, no matter how smart, can really understand what goes on at a game table.

I played a lot of games with my son, including D&D; in the end the first game he ran for his friends (Kobolds Ate My Baby) was hilarious in part because he didn't follow my example in all things, but made it something that was his own. When he runs Dungeon World, it's different again.

But a how-to-DM article is not, I would suggest, the way that a ten-year-old learns these things.

That's not what you asked, though. Your question was what was the best advice, and for me it's the relevant chapters in Spirit of the Century and the FATE Core book, both of which give really useful generic advice for new refs, and both of them have helped me keep on track as i play.

I hope this helps -- it's a great gift, you're giving, and I hope the child appreciates it.

 

[Mistwell]

I suspect that the article you linked might be a little advanced (at least vocabulary-wise) for a 10 year old girl. You might want to edit anything you give her before printing it out. There are quite a few articles out there, but most of them appear to have an adult audience in mind.

She's off-the-charts intelligent. Way more intelligent than I was at that age. I think the language is fine for her level, but I am certainly open to alternatives.

 

[Manbearcat]

For a new GM (of any age really), I would just give her a few concrete guiding principles and techniques to focus on. Let the rest evolve and mature naturally. Stuff like:

1) Will failure lead to an outcome that changes play in some interesting or exciting way? If so, make the players roll the dice to find out what happens. If it won't, then don't be afraid to "say yes" to player propositions.

2) Always push play towards conflict (specifically conflict that the players care about). Keep things moving and exciting! If Suzy wants Indiana Jones stuff, keep the heat on her with snake-filled pits, wild chases in careening mine cars, and trapped tombs!

3) Be a fan of the characters and fill their lives with adventure. But don't stack the deck in their favor or against them.

4) Play to find out what happens. Be prepared (maybe a map and some ideas of bad guys and conflicts), but don't plan too much. Your players will surprise you. Let them. And let what they do matter and move the game forward.

If a young GM can just know the system and focus on a few guiding principles and techniques, they should be good to go. That sort of approach works with almost anything. No guidance and the whole thing becomes overwhelming or bewildering. Too much and its paralysis by analysis or too much thought and too little instinct.

 

[Hand of Evil]

See http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-dming-advice-links-fixed-july-20-2008-a.html it MAY have some stuff in it to use.

Others:
http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/gmtips.html

 

[KarinsDad]

She's off-the-charts intelligent. Way more intelligent than I was at that age. I think the language is fine for her level, but I am certainly open to alternatives.

I assumed that she was above average intelligence based on the gift that you are giving her. The article you quoted has words like momentous, indescribable, incentivize, and mausoleum it in which might actually be difficult words for a 10 year old (some of these words are found in 8th to 10th grade lists). I wouldn't doubt that the starter set also has quite a few words in it above most children's levels. My suggestion was merely to read through and edit the material and assist her where possible, possibly even DMing several sessions instead of throwing her into the deep end as DM on her own.

On a side note, I gave my nephews the 3E PHB, MM, and DMG as a gift when they were ages 13, 11, and 8. They played once to my knowledge. They quickly became more interested in computer RPGs. Although this might not happen with your friend, do not be surprised if it does if you just give her a large gift of 12 and older material. D&D is a social game and throwing a 10 year old into the DM chair may or may not encourage her to actually take up the game. You are throwing a lot of material at her (hundreds of pages) to read and comprehend. I am merely mentioning a word of caution having done something similar myself.

 

[The_Gneech]

Honestly, start smaller rather than bigger. The Starter Set is sufficient, really. More than that before they've decided they're interested, and even the brightest kid will just see a mountain of work and be put off, in my experience. (And this is speaking as somebody who inherited a blue box at 9 years old, loved it, and didn't get to do anything with it but read it over and over for four years.)

-TG

 

[weldon]

I think it might be a good idea to provide a link to some of the WotC sessions on YouTube for the Lost Mines run through. I would guess it would be a far bigger help (early on) to see what DMing looks like instead of reading about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgNRe76o4_8&list=PLfS8QgUdeGYoBJoZ-I0IxLZrV4VgYXNCl