D&D General I'm a new dungeon master!! Helpppppp

[Professor Murder]

Hey all!

I am excited to say that in a few weeks, I am hosting my first one off adventure! I have played before, but never DMed. I am hoping some vets on here can give me some tips and tricks about a few things. Thanks in advance!

So this is the main concern I have... I want to see if anyone has any advice for the social interactions between the players and the world. Specifically, has anyone found a format that allows the group to communicate with NPCs, explore, and do basically anything besides combat while still including the whole group. I have found that often times when the group is just 'let loose' on the world, there is often one person who takes the lead and the other players don't chime in as much as they'd like. I feel like if there was more of a structured approach to the social aspect of dnd, then the group would enjoy themselves more. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Try not to expect that any given social encounter will engage all your players. Instead create scenes that will have connections for specific PCs to shine and mix it up. A visit to the temple lets the Cleric shine. Speaking the the reclusive spirit of the woods means the Ranger or Druid gets to flex. That Crimelord? He's the gnome's "Uncle."

Also, if you find that a given player just naturally jumps in all the time, to the detriment of the others, take them aside between games and talk with them about it.

Reward RP with inspiration generously.

 

[BookTenTiger]

The good part of this is that it's always a good idea to try to coax players out of their shells and encourage them to RP in character. That's definitely worth doing.

But I think your example is going to require players that consent to this play style both in the short and long term. In the short term, if you have experienced players they may rebel against railroading techniques like you are using where you are giving them 'choose your own adventure' type prompts. Very often you are going to get evasive behavior from players where they are going to refuse 'yes/no' type solutions. Players are frequently going to be suspicious of anything that takes away their agency even the tiniest bit.

In the long run, even if the players initially have buy in to this technique, I can see that they may start rebelling against it if one of these interactions goes badly wrong because of dice rolls. You've done the happy path on this where everyone has rolled well, but if you have enough of these sessions where things go badly as a result of leaning into your prompts then you will have incentivized the players to try to evade this behavior. Afterall, there is nothing really preventing Gormok from deferring to the Bard right from the start, and I'd be surprised if a group didn't object in principle to Gormok's player deciding either to intimidate an NPC (something that can go spectacularly bad) or spend party gold without consensus. If Gormok is trusted enough to hold the party gold, it's probably because he's trusted enough not to spend it without a party vote. If I'm Gormok, I spend my own gold to buy a drink, and I evade your suggestions:

"Me: Gormok pulls one of his own coins out of his pocket and says, "Gormok just thirsty. Ale for my coin, and keep it coming. Playing with words make Gormok more thirsty." I point a meaty thumb at the Bard and says, "Pretty boy likes words. Not me."

I'm involved, but as a player I'm not going to accept that I have role in this challenge. The party has a face; he does the talking on the party's behalf. It's possible the party even has a leader or defacto leader. I'm not going to try to intimidate anyone until the face or leader in the group suggests that as a strategy.

I will just say, in my experience of DMing a mixed group of new and experienced players, my technique worked really really well. It kept conversations flowing and everyone involved. Then again, we also have a system so a player can signal they have something they want to say. In person, they move a Huge Miniature (a giant or dragon or some such) forward on the table. On Roll20, they type in an emoji specific to their character. If I see that, or a player just starts talking, I always shift to them.

 

[Imaculata]

I approach these sorts of situation, the way a dialog may play out in a movie. Even when a character isn't talking, they may be involved in the conversation in some other way. They may have knowledge, or a realization, that the others have not. They may notice something during the conversation. Or maybe an npc flat out asks for their opinion. It's all a matter of spotlight management, and drawing everyone into the scene.

 

[Celebrim]

I will just say, in my experience of DMing a mixed group of new and experienced players, my technique worked really really well.

One thing about being a GM is that "Works well at my table..." is in fact the whole art of being a good GM. Every group of players is different, and figuring out what works well for the group in front of you is being a good GM. There is no magic formula to that.

But to the extent that there is, the zeroth maxim of good GMing is "Be the GM that you would want to have as a player."

My comment is very much geared to, "Too much of what you are doing probably wouldn't work for me, and this is why." But there is core thing you are doing that I'm not surprised is working well, because encouraging RP and sharing spotlight between players are advanced skills that show quality in a GM.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Welcome to DMing! You can pick up your bottle of Tums on the left, along with the tax forms, pencils, and notepads.

I've got a couple techniques for looping in the whole group outside of combat.

1 - Maintain a semi-initiative outside of combat. It can be as simple as just going around the table (or Discord/Roll 20 screen) clockwise. If the party is interacting with an NPC or exploring. Even if when asked a player says "no, I don't have anything to say," they've at least been given the opportunity to contribute. It also keeps one or two players from monopolizing the talking air.

2 - If I notice a player is fading to the background, I will address them specifically, whether by having the NPC talk to them or them noticing a detail specific to their character (i.e., if they're a ranger in the wild, maybe they're the ones that notice those strange tracks).

3 - Give them prompts. If there's a shady NPC they're talking to and the PC is a rogue, the NPC might appeal to them directly with something like "But you know how it is at the Thieves Guild - remember that time with Glort the Greedy taking that high tithe from everyone? Do you know what happened to him?"

 

[Celebrim]

So I'm going to move the direction of the conversation a little sideways. Hitherto we've just been addressing the part of the OP's question that has to do with interaction between PCs and NPCs. But the OP correctly broadens the question to note that this problem with social encounters tends to extend to almost all interactions between the PC's and the world. For example, if the PC's are in a raft floating down the river, it tends to be that one character that is good with boats that makes all the rolls with the raft goes through rapids. Or for that matter, it tends to be that one PC that was good with crafts that made the raft from available natural materials. In general, for non-combat challenges the one player that is the best does all the important work and at best the rest of the team is making rolls that assist that player (helping their chance of success) but which don't involve making any real choices. The PC ranger is the one that makes the wilderness lore roll to see if the swamp hazards can be avoided, and so forth. All of these amount to one person does something while the other players watch, and hopefully those other players don't have phones to distract them.

The solution to this problem is good encounter design. Good encounter design forces everyone in the party to pitch in on the problem in more complex ways than just rolling to assist. And while good encounter design is too broad of a topic to cover in one post, I'm going to try to get the big stone ball rolling on one particular encounter type and that is the trap.

The vast majority of traps in published modules are badly designed, and there is very little published that I know of that really gives a new DM good advice on how to make good trap encounters. Traps as they exist in most modules are taxes on party resources with payoffs in play that aren't worth it. Nothing particularly fun tends to happen if the players get caught in the trap, and nothing particularly fun happens if they don't. Not getting caught in a trap is at least satisfying on the level that you can feel satisfaction at skilled play, but ideally getting caught in the trap ought to be fun as well.

So first let's talk about why most traps fail to be fun. The attributes of most traps in most published works are:

a) They are placed in arbitrary and sometimes nonsensical places in the dungeon. This forces players to search for traps reflexively everywhere because they could be anywhere.
b) Searching for traps generally involves one character that is skilled at finding traps repeatedly doing the same thing.
c) If the trap is found it's easily avoided or if not easily avoided involves the one player that can disarm traps repeatedly doing the same thing.
d) If the trap is not found it does a large amount of damage in an instant and then the trap has done it's thing and any further interaction with the trap is anticlimactic. Often dealing with a trap in this case involves the cleric casting one cure spell and the game continues with the trap having achieved it's goal of consuming resources.

This almost guarantees an unfun experience by all. While one player does get a lot of spot light, everyone else can only watch. And while there is satisfaction in winning against the traps, there isn't a lot of satisfaction when the dice tell you that you've been caught in the trap.

Good traps on the other hand:

a) Are placed in places where it makes sense for a trap to be and make sense for the purpose of the trap. The players should sort of know from environmental clues that this is a likely place for a trap. People don't generally build death traps in well travelled corridors. They might build an alarm in an entrance to alert intruders, and an alarm (as we will see) is an example of a good trap.
b) Good traps create predicaments that the whole party must work together to solve. In effect a good trap is one that puts the party in combat with the trap. Good traps can isolate the party that is in the predicament, but never so much so that they rest of the party can't observe the predicament and interact with it. A trap that drops or worse teleports the other party member out of sight leaves those left behind with insufficient information to engage with the predicament. It's important that the party not be split up to the degree that a part of the party is out of the encounter.
c) To do this, good traps don't do a lot of damage up front. Instead, good traps do a smaller amount of damage over time, with the maximum damage reached only if the players fail to win the combat with the trap and mitigate it's effect. That is to say if the party extricates itself from the predicament efficiently, then they take less damage, but if they fail to extricate themself then they take a lot of damage.
d) Good traps tend to snowball with the trap getting worse and worse over time, increasing the tension on the party, and therefore ramping up the tension and excitement.

I don't want to give away too many of my tricks, but as a very simple example a trap that sprays an area with acid that does 1d8 damage to all effected for 4 rounds is a much better trap than one that does 4d8 damage to the party instantly because the first trap creates an ongoing predicament that the party can work together to solve. More dice will get thrown and more decisions will be made by more players in the first case. Players for example can try to pour water over each other to wash off the acid. A spell caster may need to make a concentration check to cast a spell to create water.

Or consider examples like the following:

a) A harpoon trap reels a player up to the ceiling.
b) A cloud of stinking gas that forces a con save every round to avoid choking and retching engulfs the area while doors open that release battle-axe wielding zombies into the room.
c) The door slams shut and the room begins to fill with scalding hot water.
d) A metal grill covers a pit trap, and the portion of the party that escaped the fall can see that a monster has been let loose on the portion of the party caught in the trap.

Think about all the things that the players then might do to work together to defeat the trap. Every archetype in a typical adventuring party has something that they might do. It's not just about the thief anymore and how much patching up the cleric has to do.

Now, I'm not saying that these are hard and fast rules. Once you know what you are doing you can break these principles. Nor am I saying that every encounter needs to be heavily designed. Verisimilitude will create situations of encounters that are more mundane. But I am saying that if you work on having encounters that are good show pieces and focus the game time on those you'll avoid the problem you've noticed.

 

[thom_likes_gaming]

As the DM you can steer things and spread the spotlight.
-- ask a players that looks like they're being left out "and what are you doing in the meantime"?
-- have some NPCs specifically interact with quieter characters.

Those two are easy enough and quickly learned. Keep in mind, some players actually prefer to be in the back row. Don't push stuff onto them. Though I would still throw the occasional hook out to them, just to see if they bite. Maybe they just need to work up the courage to step up to the plate.

Most importantly: don't sweat it or over think it. Give it a go. And afterwards talk to your players and get feedback. You get better by making 'mistakes' and learning from player input.