New DM basic dungeon preparation question

[Frost]

This is a bit off topic, but I thought you might find this useful as a new DM.

For generating dungeons on your own, I highly recommend "Engineering Dungeons," by Troll Lord Games. It's a Castles & Crusades product, but it really is a universal product, in my opinion.

http://www.trolllord.com/cnc/8501.html

Obviously, you don't need a book like this to make your own dungeons, but it is pretty neat and provides a very organic process for making a cohesive dungeon. Note, it's not meant to assist with making a dungeon on the fly.

It's pretty inexpensive (it's not a huge book) and is on sale now too...

http://www.trolllord.com/store/10sale.html

 

[jcayer]

Winging it is very hard when you are trying to learn the rules.

One thing I did with my group when we started, none of us had played 4e before, was I setup a couple of "test" encounters for them. Just included some basic monsters, kobolds I think, and some interesting terrain.

Then we got out the rule books and went through them as we fought the battles. Everyone learned a lot that first session.

 

[Zaukrie]

Good points on winging it. I'm pretty loose with the rules, though, so that's more what I meant. If you mess up a rule, don't let it ruin the experience. Find a way to make your mess up work. Don't go back and do things over (unless you acknowledge ahead of time this is a sort of playtest thing).

 

[Shadowslayer]

-Get the 1 inch graph paper.

-get some normal graph paper.

-Draw each suspected encounter room on the large. Be as pretty/ugly with it as you need. Cut the room out.

-During play, map the dungeon out on the small graph paper. When they come to a room with monsters, describe the room and its inhabitants. Once they decide to fight...plunk down the room made of big graph paper. Have your fight. Remove room, and go back to the small graph paper.

Save your rooms for future dungeons.

This can be a bit of a pain for published modules. (WOTC dungeons have a lot of rooms.) My own dungeons are more bite sized. I usually shoot for between 4-6 fight zones per dungeon, so its more manageable doing it this way.

Hope this helps.



Bonus Tip (if you don't care about miniatures) Go to the toy store and buy 2 cheap chess sets. Keep one black and white, and spray paint the other set 2 different colors. Use a sharpie to draw little numbers on the tops of the pawns (for mooks) You'll have every combo you can imagine and never need buy a single mini ever.

 

[jmucchiello]

Bonus Tip (if you don't care about miniatures) Go to the toy store and buy 2 cheap chess sets. Keep one black and white, and spray paint the other set 2 different colors. Use a sharpie to draw little numbers on the tops of the pawns (for mooks) You'll have every combo you can imagine and never need buy a single mini ever.

Nah, use dice. d12s are nearly useless and are good boss minis. d6s in various styles make good mooks and dice are already numbered for you. Plus dice fit into 1" squares nicely. "The red and yellow dice are goblins. The blue ones are hobgobs." "I hit goblin #4." And if you have any of those 2" d20s: instant large creature.

 

[S'mon]

I tend to default to drawing the whole dungeon on the battlemat as the PCs explore, rather than only go to it when combat occurs. (BTW I can also be guilty of the digging-for-minis thing).

The advantage of drawing everything out is that the players always have a visual reference for what is occurring. It can be limiting though; and is inadvisable if you have eg a large tedious maze (My solution: "You work your way through the maze. Eventually...").

Drawing everything out really brings home the difference between a well designed dungeon map (eg most of the old TSR B-series) and poorly slapped together ones (most of the Goodman Dungeon Crawl Classics).

 

[Feeroper]

So far I have accrued a fair amount of minis. Now I dont have all the specific ones I would need for various encounters, but I figure Im just gonna use whatever Mini I can(within reason) for the monsters.

I did purchase the H1 through H3 WotC modules, but i was going to start with something more simple for the group (and myself), maybe using the adventure in the starter set, or the first dungeon delve, then move into Keep on the Shadowfel, or one of the Dungeon published adventures, then move into creating my own story from there when I am more comfortable with it.

My main goal at the moment is to keep the momentum going in the game, and to keep it fun for all involved so their first experiences/impressions with D&D are good, and they want to come back for more.

 

[jcayer]

My best advice to keep people interested is to give everyone a chance to be the hero. It sounds easy when you say it fast.

Add to that, once you get settled in a bit, look for a thread here about preventing Grindspace. Keeping encounters unique and interesting makes the game much more fun than just grinding through another slugfest, encounter after encounter.

 

[Zaukrie]

I've read that the first level delve is actually pretty tough for the PCs to survive, but I don't know if that is true or not.

If you want something simple, run them through the adventure in the DMG - it doesn't get much simpler than that.