D&D 5E Let's Have A Thread of Veteran GM Advice

[MNblockhead]

All the drawbacks of a VTT, without the benefit of everyone being able to play from the comfort of their own homes....

If you like to play in person, but don't like the expense and time of physical terrain, wan't something nicer looking than wet erase on a chessex map, and want to have hundreds to thousands of maps available instantly, plus have a way to manage fog of war easily for an in person game, and still want to use minis, it is great. It was the best quality-of-life improvement I ever made for running in-person games.

It is cost effective compared to buying physical terrain and instead of buying or subscribing to a VTT, you can get table tools for free.

 

[MNblockhead]

So one of the questions I always like to ask of vets is what things you do to make the initial meeting of the party feel smooth and natural? Everyone knows "you all meet in the inn" but I'm always looking for a good kick off for the party that automatically gets all the players to gel and feel like they know each other or drives them together in a way that will form long-lasting bonds?

There is also the party is joining a caravan, party finds themselves locked away in a dungeon, etc. I don't have a lot of great ideas here. But one campaign start I love is to use a funnel.

For example, say the game is D&D 5e. Have each player role up four characters. They only get a background and appropriate equipment for that background. No classes yet. Have them all be from the same village or town. Or perhaps they are all part of the same military unit. Or they all have roles in castle or keep. Or they are all travelling in a large caravan for mercantile, religious pilgrimage, they are refugees, or other reasons. Have each player give a bit of light background for each of their four characters and how they related to each other and perhaps other other players' PCs as well. Good to have spouses, siblings, lovers, childhood friends, mentors, parent-child and other relationships represented.

Whatever set piece, their town/caravan/stronghold/etc. is attacked. Their should be huge losses of NPC lives and it is expected that each player would have one or more of their PCs dies.

From the surviving PCs, have each player select one and finish creating a level 1 PC of that character. Perhaps with some role-play or off-the-screen backstory.

Now you have a group of PCs emotionally invested in getting revenge, seeking justice, etc., against your campaign's first antagonists as well as a shared background and origin story to explain how and why the party came together.

 

[cbwjm]

I'm not very good at mapping, so what I do is draw a very rough map. I don't even try to get the exact dimensions, but rather just the rough positions of hallways and locations; just enough that the party can navigate without getting lost. My maps (more or less) look like a point crawl, rather than a proper dungeon map.

I often do this, not because I can't map but because I think that it often doesn't matter what the exact dimensions of a room are. Name each room node after a feature so that if another route takes you back there you know to connect a couple nodes. Ideally, I feel that the DM should explain that you've been in the room before since there's no reason to think that an in-game character will suddenly forget what it looks like.

 

[cbwjm]

I may have even asked this here on ENW before - how do you onboard a new rules set into your brain so that the experience for the players is pretty ok?
(not perfect, but pretty ok)

When I started playing 5e, it took a while to get older rules out of my head and pick up the new rules. I was open to any corrections and also let my players know that there might be some rules corrections that would have no bearing on what has already come to pass. Things we corrected were spell attacks, spell AoE (so many people think thunderwave extends from caster in the centre of the effect, myself included), plenty of others. I sent an email later on for any rules corrections.

Even with these corrections the games were pretty okay, not perfect, and still lots of fun.

 

[Reynard]

. Ideally, I feel that the DM should explain that you've been in the room before since there's no reason to think that an in-game character will suddenly forget what it looks like.

Have you ever been lost in a hotel, hospital or office building because all the hallways and rooms look the same? Now imagine it is dark and full of monsters.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Now imagine it is dark

I have darkvision!

 

[Reynard]

I have darkvision!

Fine. Roll with Disadvantage.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Fine. Roll with Disadvantage.

Is that for following the coloured lines painted on the hospital floor, since darkvision is in black and white?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Have you ever been lost in a hotel, hospital or office building because all the hallways and rooms look the same? Now imagine it is dark and full of monsters.

It's always funny to me what DMs permit and don't permit.

The above might technically be true.

So is the idea that if a party is fleeing monsters and trying to get out of the dungeon, they probably wouldn't have time to carefully consult their map to figure out where they are in an extremely nondescript dungeon of identical looking corridors and rooms.

And yet DMs who like mapping tend to enforce the former while ignoring the latter. It's funny.

 

[Reynard]

It's always funny to me what DMs permit and don't permit.

The above might technically be true.

So is the idea that if a party is fleeing monsters and trying to get out of the dungeon, they probably wouldn't have time to carefully consult their map to figure out where they are in an extremely nondescript dungeon of identical looking corridors and rooms.

And yet DMs who like mapping tend to enforce the former while ignoring the latter. It's funny.

Most versions of the gamevthat care about mapping and other dungeoneering ephemera have rules for when the PCs break and run. That's when the PCs get lost and stuff gets interesting.