If you had to GM your first game again

[rhythmsoundmotion]

How would you do it differently?
I am just curious what advice people have.

 

[payn]

I think I made some pretty good decisions my first time. Id definitely stick to a short adventure like those of beginners boxes or as I did an organized play adventure designed for one shot of 4 hours of play. Keep the scope low, but include enough that you get a variety of play, but not so much you cant roll with the punches.

 

[aco175]

Well, I'd be like 10 years old again, so there is that, but I would likely still give out too much treasure and magic items. If you are asking what I would do now as a 51 year-old with 40+ years of playing, then I guess it would be to listen to the players more and not force my designed dungeon and set of encounters on them (as much).

 

[KYRON45]

I’d get someone else to do it.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I think the very first adventure I DMed was out of TSR's In Search of Adventure and it was either
Elwyn's Sanctuary or The Silver Princess (abridged version of Palace of the Silver Princess), I cannot be certain.

I was young with no insight into how the game could be played. In terms of what I would do differently...much along the lines of what @payn mentioned.
But specifically, prep

• A village/town with a handful of interesting sites;
• A good couple of interesting NPCs for the PCs to interact with;
• A puzzle or riddle to be inserted somewhere that would make sense for the fiction;
• A map of a house or dungeon; and then

free-flow the story based on the PCs personal goals and actions.
I could only do that now due to my experience both in the craft and I'm comfortable with my table.

 

[Reynard]

I was like 12. I have no memory of the first game I ran,but I bet I could have done it better by not putting in all the rust monsters.

 

[Velderan]

I was 13 or 14 running AD&D 2e and I remember putting a handful of save or die traps so leaving stuff like that out is probably a good start. The dungeon I drew probably made no sense either. Also owning the Monster Manual to have statblocks instead of just making things up probably would have helped.

Basically I am amazed we stuck with the game.

 

[sevenbastard]

As a 8 year old made to DM by his older brother I would probably ask to watch him rolls for stats.

Also understanding that it was his DMG and monster manual, better explain to him that if he is asking me to run the game maybe just maybe he could let me borrow those books? Instead of him consulting them in play and telling me the info I needed.

 

[Ath'kethin]

It was 30+ years ago; was 16 years old, in love with Dragonlance, and determined to run my own game because I thought I could run a game I'd like better than anyone else. My players were some of my best friends (I'm married to one of them today).

With decades of experience under my belt now, what would I have done differently? Not much, frankly. It all worked out pretty well.

 

[Voadam]

I don't think I would do anything different. I had fun and my friends had fun so I am happy with how it went. Maybe if I was doing it now I would run 5e instead of the then current edition 1e.

This was 40 or so years ago. I was a kid but had been playing for four years already and had a good handle on the rules and flow of games and had read through Moldvay Basic and a lot of the 1e PH, DMG, MM, and UA. I used B1 In Search of the Unknown which was designed as a starting adventure and did not require any conversion work on my part to use with AD&D instead of Basic.