D&D 5E How To D&D (DMing)

[Zardnaar]

It seems 5E has a few new players so I thought I would share my tips and tricks when it comes to DMing. Over the eyars I have read a decent amount of fantasy novels, played various RPGs from the 8 and 16 bit JRPGs/Zelda's through to Fallout 4, Last Guardian, and Horizon Zero Dawn. 5E does have an excellent DMG in regards to world building and mapping etc so you can read that but theres a few things you can learn from experience.

Note there is not really any right way to play D&D in terms of campaign style and player preferences. There are some wrong ways to play D&D mostly around things like group dynamics. Generally you need a firm but fair DM, if you go to far one way or another you have the inmates running the asylum or the stereotypical asshat DM with authoritarian tendencies. Either way the games tend to be short as the group falls apart and/or players leave. In general with disruptive players just boot them as you can't fix them and often they have issues and/or enjoy being an asshat. Anyway the following points I think are generally the way to run a D&D game IMHO, YMMV of course.

1. Run a pre published adventure. Some adventures are good, soe are bad but either way its not a bad way to learn the basic of a D&D game. Lost Mines of Phandelver is good for this and if you have played previous editions other adventures such as X1 The Isle of Dread, B1 Into the Unknown, B4 The Lost City, or T1 The Village of Hommlet are good for low level play.

2. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). Sometimes you read a novel perhaps a Game of Thrones or play a game with an epic story line such as Knights of the Old Republic. Some DMs try and replicate this in a D&D game but it is harder than you think. These games and books are often a lifes work for an author (GoT came out in 1996 IIRC), or a game has a team of writers and developers working on it (often ex TSR/D&D employees). Rather than try and cover everything just loot the broad ideas such as an interesting plot twist (I am your father/you are Revan),

3. Keep it small scale initially. Part of the KISS thing. You can go out and buy a campaign setting or invent your own world but it is often a lot of work and sometimes it doesn't matter as PCs may not be interested in your masterpiece or the campaign is a lot more local (Princes of the Apocalypse for example). Players won't really care about Thay if they don't leave the Sword Coast or even travel far from the initial starting area. The Temple of Elemental Evil is a good example of this type of adventure as you are near Hommlet and the Temple probably until at least level 8-10. Other adventures the PCs do travel a lot (eg The Savage Tide) but in order to get them to care about places and NPCs you want to keep it local especially early in your D&D experience. Its hard to care about Hommlet if you are travelling a lot or there are 10 other towns the PCs are bouncing between.

4. Gods. Generally D&D worlds and campaign have gods, archfiends, elemental lords etc as they are a staple of the genre. Some worlds do not and 2E covered this a bit as clerics can still get spells without gods. Most D&D worlds have fairly extensive pantheons but in general PCs don't really care. Early FR for example focused on around 20 of them and ended up with around 100 and only the most hard core players can identify most of them by name or holy symbol. KISS, my recommendation is to have 3 primary gods (generally Sun, Moon, Evil) with an upper limit of 6-12 at least early on. If a player wants to worship something specific or has an idea for a god just add it in even as a regional demipower, as long as its not disruptive to the game (I want to worship Pelor on Darksun) go with it. KISS farm out the extra work if you can and let the players contribute.

5. NPCs. Similar to the gods, have perhaps 3 NPCs that can give out adventures and have a small list of dramatis personae for the local area. A name and a paragraph is enough early on you don't need or want to stat them out or you can use the NPC blocks in the MM (commoner, noble, knight etc). Players won't remember that many anyway early on and even in something like a murder mystery keep the list of potential suspects to around 6, 12 is to many. Whether PCs love, hate or are indifferent to NPCs at least have them remember who they are even if they can't remember their name (the blacksmith the master thief, the friendly Knight etc). Have NPCs refer to other NPCs by name and the players will eventually catch on. More important NPCs can have a goal, likes and dislikes. the goal can be very simple (bake bread for customers, look after my family).

6. Factions. The DMG and published adventures provide 5 factions and I think 3-5 of them are almost perfect. A faction can be a church, state/nation, guild, empire, organisation etc.

7. Put all of this information on 1 page (typed), this is more or less a rough outline of your campaign and you can do it in half an hour to an hour. Even bullet points can work, 3 gods, 4 organisations, 12 NPCs can be spammed out quickly enough. If you want to put in a bit of work a half page to a page players guide can also work and I would recommend one of you change any rules or use optional rules from the DMG. Once again you do not want to bury the players in paper work I print out a double sided cheat sheet (contains most of the combat rules) from the DMGuild and let players pick it up if they want it, and a single page I read out to the players at the start of the game which usually explains the local area or campaign focus.

Putting It All Together.

If I am in a hurry over the years I have memorized a few locations I can recycle off the top of my head. back in the day I may have over did it but those players are long gone.

1. KISS
2. Location. The campaign is set in Wycliff a small village of woodcutters. Nearby is the city of L'trel.

3. Gods. Wycliff is a simple village and they worship the Sun God Pelor as a primary deity with moon goddess Luna (groan) also worshipped. The Old Faith is a circleof Druids in the nearby forest. Zeon has a couple of cultists in the village who want to corrupt the village to his worship. This provides the PCs with 4 faiths to interact with.

4. The village of Wycliff has a local Druid, 2 priests/priestesses, perhaps 2 acolytes helping them and you need a ruler and perhaps a retired knight. These are all NPCs in the back of the MM. Zeons church perhaps has a couple of cultists.

5. Factions. We have potentially 3 or 4 you can flesh out. Zeons cult, the ruler of Wycliff/local secular authority, Pelors and Lunas faith (perhaps that can be 1 they are allied or husband and wife gods), The old Faith (Druids). The retired Knight in town is a member of the knights of Vanya and L'Trel can have L'Trel Free Traders Guild which is a thieves guild. Each faction can have a couple of NPCs (name them).

6. Draw a map (optional) or use the map out of a prepublished adventure (the WotC ones are very good for this).

And that is more or less it. This gives you a very basic campaign skeleton (CR 1/8th) you can plug an adventure into in less than an hours work. Google is your friend for a name generator, hex paper. Free/cheap adventures can be found on the DMGuild.

If money IRL is an issue the Basic rules some free/cheap adventures and a cheat sheet can be had for a grand total of $10 or less.

Hex Paper
https://www.printablepaper.net/category/hexagon_graph

$1 PHB combat summary.

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/183633/DD-5e-QuickRules-and-Player-CheatSheet

 

[Wiseblood]

I thought it was Keep It Stupid Simple.

I would add.

A: Your players can't read your mind so you can change things to steal their ideas mid-game.

and

B: Your players can't read your mind so they will miss things that you think are obvious. You may need to cut them a break.

 

[aco175]

Excellent post. It seems to tie up several old threads into a concise summary on planning and running games. The best part is that once you have some basic ideas you can add more as plan each week. You only need to plan in the path the PCs take.

Another good idea from the old Dungeoncraft articles in Dragon mag was to plan 2 secrets into each major piece of development. Create a place or NPC, or even the bad guy- create 2 secrets that the PCs can uncover and use going forward.

 

[AmerginLiath]

The one thing I would add to Zardnaar’s points is to pay attention to what fantasy (or historical) sources you think should inform a game and how they actually intersect with how D&D is designed as a game. There are a lot of sources mentioned above, different tabletop and video games — all modern — as well as modern fantasy literature. Be mindful that, much as D&D has changed over the years, the assumptions of the ruleset are 40+ years old at heart. The game started as a reskinning of Napoleonic wargames with elements of midcentury pulp sword & sorcery and classic science fiction (hence why magic acts like artillery but refreshes like mentalism). The addition of high fantasy and more true to life medievalisms occurred over the years mainly through Dragon Magazine articles, but added onto to an extant skeleton.

What that actually means for playing or designing a game is not to design a game to look like Game of Thrones or the feudal era and expect the rules to support it properly. Instead, imagine that the game is a Western with the veneer of medieval fantasy — swords instead of sixguns, knights instead of sheriffs, orcs instead of bandits, fireballs instead of union cannon, adventurers in the wilderness hunting for dungeons instead of wagon trains going to California looking for gold — and it all fits together far closer than any assumptions one sees in history or modern high fantasy. Look at Zardnaar’s very good low-level campaign plan: that’s both a D&D starting adventure AND the beginning of a Western as the hero comes to the besieged town.

So, my advice to setting up a D&D campaign is two things that your players likely haven’t done. First, check out some of the “Appendix N” pulp writers that Gary Gygax and company read to see where many assumptions of the game came from so you aren’t trying to copy a book or movie instead against the grain of the rule. Secondly, perhaps more aptly, to design an adventure that fits the conceits of D&D, watch some Westerns and see how the threats and environments are constructed (watching some classic pulps to see dungeons in actions couldn’t hurt either). Once you add some armor and a sword, no one will realize the old knight is Gary Cooper!

 

[TheSword]

Yes I like the points made. When I started out DMing I thought it was all about me consuming huge quantities of lore and being a walking encyclopedia of setting knowledge. As I played more I realized that I risked shoehorning PCs into what I liked rather than what was fun... particularly as many of those players didn’t have the background knowledge so didn’t get things the way I did with their hampered perspective.

Therefore I would add two key pieces of advice that have stood me in good stead.

1. Roll with it. Don’t be afraid to go where your players lead you, even if it takes you to unusual places, and as painful as it is for your PCs to miss stuff. Ironically it’s one of the reasons I love 5e so much because bounded accuracy means I can often fit the stuff they missed in a few levels down the line.

2. Play the game. Even if it’s every fourth or fifth campaign. Unless you’ve been a player and felt what it’s like to be on the recieving end of DM decisions, you can never be a really good DM in my opinion. Walk a mile in your player’s moccasins as it were. This also helps with my first piece of advice.

 

[Zardnaar]

The one thing I would add to Zardnaar’s points is to pay attention to what fantasy (or historical) sources you think should inform a game and how they actually intersect with how D&D is designed as a game. There are a lot of sources mentioned above, different tabletop and video games — all modern — as well as modern fantasy literature. Be mindful that, much as D&D has changed over the years, the assumptions of the ruleset are 40+ years old at heart. The game started as a reskinning of Napoleonic wargames with elements of midcentury pulp sword & sorcery and classic science fiction (hence why magic acts like artillery but refreshes like mentalism). The addition of high fantasy and more true to life medievalisms occurred over the years mainly through Dragon Magazine articles, but added onto to an extant skeleton.

What that actually means for playing or designing a game is not to design a game to look like Game of Thrones or the feudal era and expect the rules to support it properly. Instead, imagine that the game is a Western with the veneer of medieval fantasy — swords instead of sixguns, knights instead of sheriffs, orcs instead of bandits, fireballs instead of union cannon, adventurers in the wilderness hunting for dungeons instead of wagon trains going to California looking for gold — and it all fits together far closer than any assumptions one sees in history or modern high fantasy. Look at Zardnaar’s very good low-level campaign plan: that’s both a D&D starting adventure AND the beginning of a Western as the hero comes to the besieged town.

So, my advice to setting up a D&D campaign is two things that your players likely haven’t done. First, check out some of the “Appendix N” pulp writers that Gary Gygax and company read to see where many assumptions of the game came from so you aren’t trying to copy a book or movie instead against the grain of the rule. Secondly, perhaps more aptly, to design an adventure that fits the conceits of D&D, watch some Westerns and see how the threats and environments are constructed (watching some classic pulps to see dungeons in actions couldn’t hurt either). Once you add some armor and a sword, no one will realize the old knight is Gary Cooper!

I have read very little room appendix N over the years mostly because its semi impossible to find it over here. Even Vance only had a few books in the local library when I was younger(small town though, still twice the size of Lake Geneva).