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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 1423019" data-attributes="member: 8835">There's a lot of good tips for a new GM.  Here's some of my own:Determine what style of game you want (good PCs, hackfest, etc.).  Make sure your players agree.Don't make more than you need.  If you have no clerics, paladins, rangers, Druids, skip going beyond naming the local deities. Make a  simple map of the area.  Know where each of the races/nations typically comes from.Make a detailed map of the place you want the game to start (the home village).Don't make up any NPC stats until you need them.Be concious of difficulty levels.  The CR system works pretty well.  A good balancing rule is to get the party's effective CR = total party level divided by 4.  An encounter of equal CR will likely do 20% damage to the party's resources.  Knowing all this, will tell you how many encounters to have and at one level.The early adventures should be pretty simple plots (rescue princess, clean out dungeons).Twist-the-fork (TM) often.  As stuff happens, try to link it all together when writing subsequent adventures.NEVER capture the party (if you can help it).  The players will try to escape.  That means, if their capture was ad-hoc (you hadn't planned it, but it was better than killing them) you'll have to plan their containment details.  The party WILL try to escape.  Using party capture as a plot-hook is often the most resented rail-roading technique in the book, so avoid it.  Capturing may be used as a mercy to killing the character, but I'd pause the game and figure out the details.NEVER railroad.  It's OK to write an adventure that says, if the PCs go here, this happens.  It is not OK to write an adventure to says Wizard X has his goons capture the party and places them in his Dungeon of Z, where they must escape.Try to write plot hooks that the party (or at least one PC) is going to want to pursue.  Paladins like to save princesses and should almost always volunteer for dangerous duty (barring a conflict with another mission).Rangers and Druids like stopping deforestation and nasty monsters in the woods hurting grass.Having hooks that the party should follow (for first adventures especially) makes it easier on both DM and players.  You can't make a party follow a plot hook (remember no rail-roading).  You can make a plot hook that is likely to be followed.In my last campaign, I started the game with the party (seperated at the time) in the market square.  A man called out after a young boy who had just stolen something from him.  The party (being good) intervened.  Turns out the boy had passed the pouch of "Something Important" to another person, but the boy knew where the hideout was.  The man (a local friendly wizard) hired the party to retrieve the "Something Important" and the party went on their first quest, a dungeon delve into a 1 level base in a hill.Pretty simple, but it opened up 2 new NPCs (the boy and the wizard) and gave the party something to do right away.In my current campaign, all the PCs are in the navy, so I started the first game with them sleeping on deck.  The ship was anchored just offshore (having not pulled in to port yet) and was snuck up upon by goblin bandits who crept on deck in the mist.  The party wakes up as a fight ensues.   The goblins kidnapped the ship's mage and so when the fight is over, the players have their first mission.Those are just samples, feel free to re-use or try variants.  Good luck and welcome to gaming!Janx</blockquote>

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