Back in the DMing saddle

[JoeyD473]

Me and my friends havn't actually played in over 2 yrs. Our schedules have just sucked. So for this summer I have set up a weekly game which includes some of the people who used to play as well as some new players. It will have anywhere from 7-9 players for my game (not everyone has responded, but some of them I expect to show up without telling me they are coming). We are using 3.5 so this way if any of the new players want to get there own copy of a PH they can do so easily. For now I plan on just staying in the core universe but I may decide to use some Forgotten Realm or Ravenloft adventures.

I am DMing, as I did back over 2 yrs ago, but it has been a while. Any good advise since it has been a while for me as a DM?

I decided to start with SUnless Citradel since we have some new players but I was wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of some other L1-L4 adventures. I'm not too fussy where they are from, but free is always good since I make $7 an hour and a month that isn't enough to pay my bills.

Thanks in advance

 

[Stalker0]

my first suggestion is NOT to do 9 players, I think even 7 might be pushing it. I find the more people their are, the more pressure on the dm to get everyone involved, set up big combats to challenge everyone, and just to make sure everyone get some attention.

So I would recommend dropping it down to 5-6.

 

[Erky]

Yes more than 5-6 players is quite pushing it. It might work if you have absolutely no shouty attention-hungry endless-patience players and have a lot of patience and multi-tasking capability yourself.
However I find 5-6 is about ideal. Furthermore The Sunless Citadel is a pretty nice adventure to start with I'd say. If you want to start off with a little more of an easy adventure just to get you guys going I'd recommend going to:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20040430a
There's free adventures, wrecked ashore is a pretty fun (albeit standard and mayheps predictable) adventure that can be used as an introduction. Allowing them to give a reason why they would be on that ship. After the adventure they can join a caravan that leads them through the start of Sunless Citadel.

Other than that I would recommend using miniatures from the start especially if you intend to use many players. If you have that many players the 8'th person will be clueless to the current situation unless he has a boatload of imaginative power and paid extreme attention the entire dice rolling part. So I'd highly recommend printing out a grid, sheeting it with the plastic and buying yourself some erasable markers. That way you can quickly draw out the walls, attributes and so on on the grid and then slam the miniatures on. That way the combat will be obvious to all.

Also naturally the new players just ask them "what would you want to do" and you can change that into the rules thereby slowly introducing them. I mean shoot back duck for cover means as much as standard action ranged attack against bandit, move action go crouching behind a tree stump. But that's common theory

Other than that just play, fumble and find out as long as everyone has fun the game's a success anyhow no matter how the actual game went. And the longer you do it the easier it gets.

Erky