First-Time DM, tips, ideas?

[Interested2]

Well hello all. I'm just about to start my first campaign (using the 3.5 ruleset), and I figured I'd come in and ask for advice. Its based around the following plot:

A malfunctioning portal in the deep underdark has opened a link to the plane of shadow. Through this link, a horrible spider-race known as the Dysderians are invading the Material Plane.

The party is starting out at level 8, and has the following members (those pending class confirmation are marked with a *):

Gestalt Barbarian/Wizard
Psychic Warrior
Sorcerer
Rogue

Now, I'm going fairly heavy on treasure, (not at the Monty Haul level, but gold won't be a huge problem for them). I'm planning on having the first dungeon be a broodlair of the Dysderians, and have them work through the campaign to eventually end up at the malfunctioning portal in order to shut it down. I'm hoping the campaign will run for about a year.

The statistics for the Dysderian's are shown here: http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1633763

Any tips? Advice? Ideas?

Thanks all.

 

[Interested2]

.

*bump*?

 

[Easy_Tiger]

If it was me i would have started with something simple say Level 1 or 2 chars and allowing only classes from the phb 3.5 . Say just run that campaign for a few months until you think you have a feel of your players and your own abilities. I dont know of your gaming level of experience but dm is quite different from playing but really when in doubt just K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid)

 

[Sir Whiskers]

Don't fall into the trap of GM vs. players. A good game is a cooperative effort. Ask for feedback from the players after each session - one thing they liked, one thing they didn't like or would prefer to be different. If you see a pattern, act on it immediately.

Know your players. If one wants mainly to blow off steam, include opportunities. If one likes to solve puzzles, include those. It's a balancing act, but important.

Keep adventures focused and simple (not necessarily easy). Don't design 100-room dungeons (unless that's what your group likes), which quickly become tedious. Liven up encounters with interesting locales, weather, etc. Try to include at least one "cool" element in each session, whether a location, item, spell, story, npc, whatever. Use handouts ("weathered" maps, letters, scrolls, etc).

Differentiate your npc's (not all npc's should try to double-cross the party, for instance). Give every npc a visual quirk and a roleplaying quirk - something the players will remember. Don't include an npc in the party who becomes the "GM's PC" - you're a GM, not a player.

Keep good notes. Stay organized. Even if you're the type who likes to wing it, you need to be consistent.

If you begin to run out of steam, don't hesitate to take a week off and do something else. Get one of the other players to run a one-shot adventure, or play a card game. Players will pick up on your lack of excitement - do what you need to recharge.

Go to http://www.roleplayingtips.com and sign up for Johnn Four's newsletter. One the best sources of good tips for GM's (and sometimes players).

 

[Saeviomagy]

The biggest tip I can give you is to NOT start with unusual optional rules, NOT start at 8th level, and finally, NOT start out with the beginning of your epic, homebrewed campaign.

Start with first level characters.

Start with base rules only (that means no gestalts).

Start with low level adventures from dungeon magazine, moving onto your campaign when the characters reach an appropriate level.

Why?

Because there's a lot of complexity to the game at 8th level. Even if you've been playing a lot previously, it's very different on the other side of the screen.

So - if you start with low level characters, you can learn and adjust as you go. If you start with the base rules, you won't have to deal with unexpected disturbances in the game caused by those rules (gestalts for instance can be a lot more or a lot less powerful than the UA variant rules suggest - and starting out with only a single gestalt in a party is the worst possible scenario). Starting with dungeon magazine adventures is a nice little crutch so you can spend your time writing your epic adventure instead of worrying about the small stuff.

 

[LazerPointer]

I started DMing for the first time a couple of months ago. There's a lot to learn, and a lot to keep track of....things I'd never think about as a player like the best way to keep track of enemies HP; nothing like asking a player if the ghoul they just hit had taken any damage before....

The spider race sounds pretty cool, but I'd find starting at 8th level daunting as hell.

One gestalt character? that's a problem waiting to happen.


An interesting challenge is finding ways to challenge the players without using BBEGs with a ton of loot. Right now I'm thinking about combat uses of deeper darkness. Good luck with it!

 

[LeapingShark]

If you're excited about your plans, and your players are excited about their characters, then I think you'll do fine. It's all about having fun.

If your game turns out to be too hard and complex to DM, you can always try restarting with something simpler next session.

My tip is to be ready to be surprised. At that level, your players are going to do things that you don't expect, they will come up with interesting plans that might spoil what you had planned. So just be ready to roll with it and make adjustments during the game.

The other tip is to make sure to include some story elements or other things besides Dysderian combat in the broodlair. Put in some traps, puzzles, captive NPCs, etc. Perhaps there's a splinter group of Dysderians that offer to help the PCs, but maybe it's a trick and they send the PCs into a trap, and the PCs get captured and imprisoned.

Good luck!

 

[Uller]

Start with first level characters.

Start with base rules only (that means no gestalts).

Start with low level adventures from dungeon magazine, moving onto your campaign when the characters reach an appropriate level.

I've been DMing for 20+ years now and I've got to agree with this. Even now I tend to follow these simple guidelines (or something like them).

When I start a campaign, I start it in an interesting local with a few interesting plot hooks (that aren't necessarily fleshed out). The game world, even the region and nation the PCs are in are not detailed yet.

Start at a low level (somewhere between 1st and 3rd)...this gives your players a chance to grow they're characters as your world grows and you a chance to build the world around them.

Don't start out with your main plot line. Start small. Save the village from the ogre. Save the farmstead from the centaur slavers. Save the neighborhood from the gang of goblins in the sewer lead by a wererat goblin. Save the monestary from the coven of witches that has infiltrated it. Whatever. This allows your players to develop thier PCs' connections to the world. You can introduce recurring NPCs that will serve as friends or enemies or useful neutral parties or whatever.

At the same time, you can be developing your main plot line in the background. You'll also find that what starts out as a simple one-shot adventure might turn into an epic campaign spontaneously.

For instance, my players are currently locked in a struggle with a Barghest, an evil Druid, a tribe of savage humans and several goblin tribes. What started out as a simple monster hunt for 5 3rd level characters has now gone on for 4 game sessions and has resulted in the destruction of a village, the murder of a 17 year-old girl at the hands of a cursed lover, the capture, rescue and capture again of a friend of the PCs, the flight of the PCs from the adventure area (pursued by goblins and worgs), lots of intrigue about who this evil druid might be and what are his goals and plans, etc. etc. None of this was really planned by me. It just came up as the players explored and interacted with the NPCs. Now the PCs are gearing up and preparing to make a second attempt at driving the evil out from the area. Hopefully things will go better for them this time.

My point is, you don't have to lay out your whole campaign in advance. As a player, I find that undesirable. If the DM has too many big plans, I end up feeling railroaded.

Here is what I do: plan an initial (very short) adventure that can be played in one 4 hour session (so like 4 encounters). Include a hook to get the PCs together and then 2-3 hooks to further adventures. At the end of that adventure, ask the players what they are going to do. Phrase it as a multiple choice question:

What do you do next? a) Follow the centaur slavers. b) Help the merchant discover who stole his goods. c) take a message to the next town to warn them of the slavers. d) something else entirely.

I find it is important to outline their options so that they remember what they are and no that they do have options. They may pick "something else entirely". That's okay. But once they pick, you can then go off and plan the next adventure for the next session or two. The campaign will lay itself out and you're players will feel like it is their story, not yours.

 

[Interested2]

Thanks Guys!

Thanks for all the advice guys! My playing experience has NOT been kosher, if you know what I mean. The last two campaign's I've played in started at 7th and 8th level respectively (and both have let us develop our characters a LOT). In fact, the previous two campaigns I've played a Thri-Kreen fighter and a Kyton (which was later transformed into a Mind Flayer, which was later transformed into a Elvan Wizard, keeping the same personality throughout [Also note that the transformations were the result of the DM, not me].) Thank you for the advice about the Gestalt character - I had some misgivings about it earlier, but you guy's have really fleshed them out.

I love that idea of the centuar slavers! It will be used as you suggested. Unfortunatly, the character sheets have already been drawn up for 8th level, so it seems to work. Because most of my playing experience has been around 8th level, I figured it'd be a good place to start, as I've seen a *lot* of what players (at least this particular group of players, I've gamed with them before) do around there.

"Perhaps there's a splinter group of Dysderians that offer to help the PCs, but maybe it's a trick and they send the PCs into a trap, and the PCs get captured and imprisoned"​

Wonderful idea! Might be a bit difficult to work in with the dominating Hive Mind concept though....

"Don't include an npc in the party who becomes the "GM's PC" - you're a GM, not a player."​

Are you guys sure about this? From what I've seen, generally its not a bad idea to have one 'GM's NPC' adventuring with the party to pull them out of trouble if you throw something WAAY to difficult at them...

I've gamed with all these players multiple times before, so I know them very well.

Thanks again guys, this forum is very helpful, and I think I'll be here for quite some time to come.



Edit - As a side note, the driving force behind the main quest is a worshipper of Saridor, who cannot directly attack the Dysderian's thanks to a curse placed on him by a Dysderian Queen. He is in fact a (neutral) Malagruym, but appears as an elf. He's Psion 4/Devotee of Saridor 3/Psionic Dragon Companion 8. (meaning he's effectively a 14th level psion for manifesting purposes). His companion is a Mature Adult Amythest Dragon. The character I was considering placing with the PC's to save them if I throw something WAY too hard at them is a Psion 5/Contructor 10 (which would adventure with them as an 8th level psion until needed [its a 13th level psion for purposes of manifesting powers and power points, as detailed in the Constructor prestige class description]).

 

[LeapingShark]

I'm an old school DM. PCs are the stars, and NPCs are props. You shouldn't have a "GM's NPC there to save them". If things get bad, then PCs end up DEAD. If you screwed up the encounter and really want to "help" them, then you should think of some other more "subtle" way to adjust things behind the DM screen (whack a bunch of hit points off the creatures max, or have it "miss" it's next attack, or cause "minimum damage" on a hit, or just have the opponent mysteriously turn and run away to another area, etc). But don't have some super-NPC hanging around to steal the spotlight from the players every time going gets tough.