Ah, the Quantum DMG of 2024: at once made for new DMs, and also unfit for them...
D&D (2024) 2024 DMG: Thoughts on the Sample Adventures
- Thread starter R_J_K75
- Start date
I just read this article about a Kickstarter ttrpg doing the same thing, and then you cite the original, so I'm gonna share the article I saw cuz yeah I think it's a great way to teach the game.
Seems fairly normal to me that not everything is going to be geared towards people who are brand new. When making something like a DMG you will naturally want stuff in it that is useful for every DM experience level.
R_J_K75
Legend
I would totally be open to WotC selling a printed product on a tiered basis depending on the level of game experience of the consumer
Very cool. I'm not especially interested in that game, but it is great to see that they are trying to make learning to play and run it fun and easy.
I ran The Fouled Stream as my first ever session as a DM yesterday. I played in 2 2014-rules one-shots years ago, played in some other ttRPG one-shots more recently, have been recently playing in a starter campaign with another new DM who is running Lost Mine of Phandelver but using 2024 rules (we're currently a level 3 party in that campaign), and played in 2 battler DnD one-shots (once 2014 and once 2024 rules) since starting in the Phandelver campaign.
Our campaign DM wasn't able to make it for our session yesterday, and I had wanted to try DM'ing, so I took the opportunity to run a one-shot. Since they didn't publish a starter kit for the 2024 edition (yet), and also I wanted to run a oneshot, not a campaign, the low level adventure examples seemed like they should be a fairly decent start.
I had about a week to finish reading the DMG up to that point and prepare the adventure. I did feel there was little guidance for me from the examples, and also didn't really know how to use them to create something that wasn't too railroady; at most maybe
could be skipped depending on which way the party went
.
I ended up with 2 players from my regular group and 2 others (our usual DM and 1 other player couldn't make it). One of the players from my normal group had played a little Pathfinder in the past before joining the Phandelver campaign, the other was still completely new to ttRPG before the Phandelver campaign and still seems to struggle a bit at times; the other two had some 5e 2014 experience, one of them with a campaign, and the other with a few one-shots. So a fairly inexperienced party.
We had a Warlock, Sorcerer, Cleric, and Fighter in the party.
I'd told them not to optimize their characters too much as I didn't expect such an adventure example to be geared to overly optimized characters (in hindsight, I shouldn't have told them that).
I had planned a start in town, I'd send the players an adventure hook in advance, with the idea that they'd volunteered at the town hall meeting the night before, so they could already make their character with an idea of why they'd volunteered. They were starting in front of the town hall meeting with the mayor to provide a bit of an opportunity at introductions and then set them off.
After starting half an hour late due to one player arriving late (at some point we wanted to just start with the mayor introductions encounter without him, and of course at that point he walked in), we finally got going.
They spend quite some time trying talking with the mayor and trying to learn more; something I hadn't anticipated.
When I finally managed to set them off on their adventure, next up was
, I didn't expect them to spend much time here either because
, but instead they took a lot of time wanting to do perception, nature, and survival checks to just investigate the surroundings.
Once we finally moved on, it was time to
, this one went more or less as expected, although still a bit more elaborate and taking longer than I'd anticipated.
Up next was
which went fairly well, but
The next encounter
I had planned a little something extra for roleplay for the Warlock to fit with their patron backstory, which was fun. The encounter itself ended up being
They ended up going
Finally, it was time for the grand finale,
And then just the denouement, let them recover and heal up their allies, meet back up with earlier allied NPCs to get thanks and rewards, and round things up.
It was a wild ride, encounters definitely felt more challenging for the players than I'd imagined they'd be. I probably shouldn't have told my players to not over-optimize too much, and I probably shouldn't have added extra enemies to the encounter that didn't even meet the DMG's description of an easy encounter, but honestly, I don't see how I should have known that when the DMG doesn't follow its own advice in its examples, and I still don't really know if their idea of "easy" is quite challenging already, or that somehow I'm supposed to know that in some situations I should ignore the XP budget and undershoot it, thus ignoring the advice of the DMG. Another encounter in the adventure (without me changing anything) also met the "easy" xp budget and ended up being even worse though, so I'm inclined to say the budgets in this new DMG seem to be very much geared to battle-optimized players, and without that, it could be quite tough.
I definitely felt like the examples didn't set me up for success as a new DM, leaving me with a lot to figure out on my own, and combat encounters that seemed far to harsh. But it was still a fun time, and it did provide learning opportunities. I'll definitely take more time to prepare in the future, I'll also design my battle maps to be less cramped (I think this may have also added to the difficulty to be honest, as it was at times hard to spread damage over different PCs, and it was difficult for PCs to effectively use AoEs without also hitting their allies). It also ended up taking a lot longer, based on the 1-hour rule, I'd expected it to take about 2-3 hours based on the number of encounters; it ended up lasting about 4-5 hours. So I'll probably turn that 1-hour rule into a 2-hour rule for now.
I do think I'll try to run the other adventure examples in the future as well, but definitely plan some more variability to allow me to adjust based on how things are going so far.
Would I recommend running this adventure to new DMs? It depends, if you have a lot of time to prep, have properly read the DMG, feel comfortable fleshing out the basic framework given, and are open to this being very much a learning opportunity, I do think it can be nice. But if you don't have a lot of prep time, are still figuring out how running the game would work, prefer some more guidance and a fuller story, and want something you can just run almost out of the box where the learning is mostly constrained to learning the game and how to run a session rather than learning how to make your own adventures, then perhaps this isn't the best place to start. I'd say these adventures might be best suited as a next step after running some starter box, once you've learned the rules and how to run a session, you can use this as your next step up towards fully making your own adventures.
Our campaign DM wasn't able to make it for our session yesterday, and I had wanted to try DM'ing, so I took the opportunity to run a one-shot. Since they didn't publish a starter kit for the 2024 edition (yet), and also I wanted to run a oneshot, not a campaign, the low level adventure examples seemed like they should be a fairly decent start.
I had about a week to finish reading the DMG up to that point and prepare the adventure. I did feel there was little guidance for me from the examples, and also didn't really know how to use them to create something that wasn't too railroady; at most maybe
the bear encounter
inside the cave
I ended up with 2 players from my regular group and 2 others (our usual DM and 1 other player couldn't make it). One of the players from my normal group had played a little Pathfinder in the past before joining the Phandelver campaign, the other was still completely new to ttRPG before the Phandelver campaign and still seems to struggle a bit at times; the other two had some 5e 2014 experience, one of them with a campaign, and the other with a few one-shots. So a fairly inexperienced party.
We had a Warlock, Sorcerer, Cleric, and Fighter in the party.
I'd told them not to optimize their characters too much as I didn't expect such an adventure example to be geared to overly optimized characters (in hindsight, I shouldn't have told them that).
I had planned a start in town, I'd send the players an adventure hook in advance, with the idea that they'd volunteered at the town hall meeting the night before, so they could already make their character with an idea of why they'd volunteered. They were starting in front of the town hall meeting with the mayor to provide a bit of an opportunity at introductions and then set them off.
After starting half an hour late due to one player arriving late (at some point we wanted to just start with the mayor introductions encounter without him, and of course at that point he walked in), we finally got going.
They spend quite some time trying talking with the mayor and trying to learn more; something I hadn't anticipated.
When I finally managed to set them off on their adventure, next up was
the fork in the river
I'd make it abundantly clear that the contamination was coming from the little side stream, and expected them to just go ahead and follow the Fouled stream
Once we finally moved on, it was time to
meet Borogrove
Up next was
the cave entrance with the twig blights
the players did take more damage than I'd anticipated and used a short rest, most expending their 1 hit dice, after that. I did end up using 8 twig blights rather than 6 because the DMG had told me that an easy encounter was 50 xp per player, and to try to use as much as possible without going over, so I didn't understand why they had only 6 25xp twig blights for a party of 4. In hindsight, maybe things wouldn't have gone as bad if I'd just kept it at 6.
The next encounter
with the shrieker fungus and bullywug warriors
more damaging than I'd anticipated, and I ended up having one of the Bullywugs run away when he was the last one standing on his side, because two of my party were already down and couldn't take much more. They also ended up feeding the acorn to the cleric who was down, so that the cleric could then heal the fighter who was down too. I ended up having Borogrove come up to the cave entrance to offer them another acorn, because I wanted them to have one for the bear encounter.
They ended up going
towards the bear, which they were initially hesitant to feed the acorn, wanting to keep it in case they needed it for themselves. I'd decided that the bear would become aggressive if they didn't feed it, so when they were about to walk away I had them roll initiative, at which point their ended up feeding the acorn to the bear after all before the bear had its turn. They even managed to do such a great animal handling check that I allowed the bear to accompany them and be their ally; not planned, but with how things had been going so far, they could use it.
Finally, it was time for the grand finale,
the encounter with the Psychic Gray Ooze and Stirges. Because the Bullywug had escaped earlier, and this was the direction it had run to, it also ended up being part of the encounter. Damn, those Stirges might not have much hp, but they deal a lot of damage for a level 1 party. I had the Bullywug mostly hang back and take a defensive position to defend the Ooze, whilst the Stirges did most attacking. The Ooze did a Psychic Crush attack on the bear, which of course hit because bears don't have high intelligence for such a saving throw, and ended up doing a lot of damage to the bear. Luckily the next psychisch crush against a player was saved against, and by the time it had a other turn, the players had defeated most of the Stirges and had advanced to attacking the Ooze. At one point I'd also let the bear lick a dying pc, to allow remnants of the acorn in its saliva to just barely get back up again with 1 HP. The Ooze did one Pseudopod attack against the fighter, but missed. And luckily, with not a lot of HP to spare themselves, and the bear at 0HP, they ended up killing the Ooze. The Bullywug was still standing, but I played it off as if it'd been under mind control by the Ooze so that we could end the fight.
And then just the denouement, let them recover and heal up their allies, meet back up with earlier allied NPCs to get thanks and rewards, and round things up.
It was a wild ride, encounters definitely felt more challenging for the players than I'd imagined they'd be. I probably shouldn't have told my players to not over-optimize too much, and I probably shouldn't have added extra enemies to the encounter that didn't even meet the DMG's description of an easy encounter, but honestly, I don't see how I should have known that when the DMG doesn't follow its own advice in its examples, and I still don't really know if their idea of "easy" is quite challenging already, or that somehow I'm supposed to know that in some situations I should ignore the XP budget and undershoot it, thus ignoring the advice of the DMG. Another encounter in the adventure (without me changing anything) also met the "easy" xp budget and ended up being even worse though, so I'm inclined to say the budgets in this new DMG seem to be very much geared to battle-optimized players, and without that, it could be quite tough.
I definitely felt like the examples didn't set me up for success as a new DM, leaving me with a lot to figure out on my own, and combat encounters that seemed far to harsh. But it was still a fun time, and it did provide learning opportunities. I'll definitely take more time to prepare in the future, I'll also design my battle maps to be less cramped (I think this may have also added to the difficulty to be honest, as it was at times hard to spread damage over different PCs, and it was difficult for PCs to effectively use AoEs without also hitting their allies). It also ended up taking a lot longer, based on the 1-hour rule, I'd expected it to take about 2-3 hours based on the number of encounters; it ended up lasting about 4-5 hours. So I'll probably turn that 1-hour rule into a 2-hour rule for now.
I do think I'll try to run the other adventure examples in the future as well, but definitely plan some more variability to allow me to adjust based on how things are going so far.
Would I recommend running this adventure to new DMs? It depends, if you have a lot of time to prep, have properly read the DMG, feel comfortable fleshing out the basic framework given, and are open to this being very much a learning opportunity, I do think it can be nice. But if you don't have a lot of prep time, are still figuring out how running the game would work, prefer some more guidance and a fuller story, and want something you can just run almost out of the box where the learning is mostly constrained to learning the game and how to run a session rather than learning how to make your own adventures, then perhaps this isn't the best place to start. I'd say these adventures might be best suited as a next step after running some starter box, once you've learned the rules and how to run a session, you can use this as your next step up towards fully making your own adventures.
Aww thank you ^_^
Yes, 2024 seems simpler (XP budget without anything about multipliers etc.) but if it gives unbalanced encounters, where even the DMG itself gives examples that go against it's own rules, then what's the point? ^_^'
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