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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jaywolfenstien" data-source="post: 4756073" data-attributes="member: 82973">My advice: 1.)  Keep things simple.  Keep things moving.  Do not use complex monsters/NPCs.  Maybe run only a Core-only game for your first one so you have fewer books to rule-hunt through.  Start small, simple, and learn the craft of DMing before tackling epic battles in the middle of a hurricane forest fire with a dragon flying over head and 35 different magical effects each with their own timer plus seven hidden traps on the battlefield and an army of monsters lying in wait ... A Vanilla Core-only "save the village from Goblins" adventure is just fine for a first crack at DMing.  It might not be the most "creative" encounter in the world, but creativity doesn't count for crap if you don't make the session fun.  2.)  Don't build your own world with your first campaign.  Use a campaign setting, use a published adventure, or something and keep in mind just because it's written one way doesn't mean you have to present it that way.  The published adventure might describe the inn keeper as a nondescript guy, but you can tell your players, "he's a morbidly obese dwarf who is wider than he is tall".  When you run a game, you are running your interpretation of that game.  Change up the aesthetics however you want, it's much faster and less time consuming than building everything from scratch. At the end of the session, absolutely nothing in your notes or your DM-created world matters ... the only thing that matters is how you presented it all to your players.  Many new DMs have great notes on a wonderful world, but they blow it at the table because they put absolutely NO thought into "How am I going to do this at the table?"  Again, focus on learning the craft of DMing, focus on your performance at the table. Once you've gotten a few sessions under your belt, and you've handled role playing, skill challenges, battles and so on, then you can start building your own world if you want to.  Then you can start making the battles more interesting with hazardous terrain, and very tactical enemies, and complex monsters. If you pick up a musical instrument, you have to learn to play the notes before you can play a song.</blockquote>

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