D&D 5E New DM Having Tough Time Relaxing with Published Adventures!

[Helldritch]

I consider that most written adventures are simply suggestions. You can change and modify as you please and see fit for your group.

If your players miss out on a clue. Find a way to give it back to them. Prophetic dream, in which the patron/deity sends the clue with a stern warning about not killing everyone is a good thing or not being very thorough in rooting out evil so that the characters should pay more attention or whatever. Is that railroading? Yep it is. But players are players and sometimes a little nudge is all it takes.

 

[Warrior Poet]

My game group is currently going through Rise of the Runelords, too, though we play in Pathfinder.

In addition to many of the good suggestions herein, something else that might help: Get the players input in helping you re-acquire some measure of comfort in how you approach the game.

So, for example: the way Rise of the Runelords is written it's pretty much a sprint, start to finish. Just as one thing ends, almost the next day a PC like Sheriff Hemlock shows up and says, "Hey, thanks for all the help with that climactic series of troubling events but just this morning more troubling events have shown up. No, there's no time to bathe, you're needed right away at this location because the cosmos is on serious deadline. Chop, chop!"

So our game group rebelled (a little). I had a long email conversation with our GM (I'm one of the players) about the transition time between Part 3 and Part 4 (the shift from the events in Magnimar to the frontier east and the Hook Mountain portion). I argued that, as written, Rise of the Runelords puts PCs on pace to make 20th level (or 16th, say) within one in-game year, and that bothered me. Great journeys of immense destiny are the kinds of things that take years, and it bothered me that in one in-game year the party would have gone from young Paul son of the Lady Jessica to the Kwisatz Haderach in the blink of an eye. Nell in The Diamond Age starts a young girl and ends a young woman leading her own army, a journey of fifteen years or so. And the GM agreed.

So we had winter, and passes became impassable, and so forth, and we wintered over in Magnimar, and crafted some magic items, and spent some time getting to know the city, and when spring came we set out for the frontier and the GM had reworked things so that worked out. Loss of contact with the Black Arrows didn't happen until after snow-melt.

I recommend talking with your players about how it's going. They may feel some of what you're feeling, and then you can go about a cooperative solution to setting things back on track to how you all like to play the game. You're supposed to be having fun, too

I like Rise of the Runelords, for the most part, but I have some issues with how it was written to be breakneck from the first goblins at the festival to where ever the darn thing ends (we're still in the Runeforge).

Best of luck with the game, hope you find your rhythm, and hope it makes for great memories all around!

Still learning,

Robert

 

[Doug McCrae]

You already know what works best for you and it's not published adventure paths. I would advise you to be selfish in this instance. Stop running Rise of the Runelords right away and go back to improvising everything.

they've heard great things

That doesn't matter. The experience of an rpg is very subjective and personal. If everyone else in the world thought that Rise of the Runelords was the best published rpg product ever, then you still shouldn't run it because it's a style of play that doesn't work for you.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think the key is to keep in mind that the point of the game is to have fun. If you ask yourself if your group is having fun, and the answer is yes, then mission accomplished.

Don't worry if what's happened at the table has matched what's in the book. You're not bound to the book at all, if you don't want to be. Think of the book as an outline. It's a guide, not a script.

If your players missed a hook of some sort...they didn't hear about the lost temple from the old priest in town...then toss another hook out there. Keep a couple of alternate hooks in mind that you can use if needed. A merchant they pass on the road winds up warning them about the lost temple and the evil spirits that dwell there. Or they come across a corpse in the woods and among the poor soul's belongings is a map to the temple.

I am running Curse of Strahd right now, and I introduced an NPC, and I forgot that he was supposed to be in disguise and just introduced him to my group without any kind of disguise or cover story. As the party talked to him, I was reading through the book a bit and realized I had made the mistake. Just a momentary lapse, but I couldn't put the genie back in the bottle, so I just had to forge ahead. And it actually worked out just fine. Maybe even better actually.

Just remind yourself that the players are only seeing whatever happens at the table. They don't (or shouldnt, at least) have the adventure to compare the game to. You as the DM do, so it's really easy to look at the game as it plays out and the adventure as described in the book and compare them constantly. Just remind yourself that your players aren't doing that. They don't know about "mistakes" you make or changes you make.

Are your players having fun? Are you? If yes, then don't stress it.

 

[TerraDave]

I could easily see reading the advice in this thread and just getting more stressed.

You already know what works best for you and it's not published adventure paths. I would advise you to be selfish in this instance. Stop running Rise of the Runelords right away and go back to improvising everything.

...The experience of an rpg is very subjective and personal. If everyone else in the world thought that Rise of the Runelords was the best published rpg product ever, then you still shouldn't run it because it's a style of play that doesn't work for you.

DMing is very personal and can be very hard. Its key to have a style that works for you. If you DM from a place that you are comfortable, you will have players. If you don't then you risk DM burnout and there goes the whole game.

 

[Rune]

Strange title, I know, but it's true. I'm currently running Pathfinder's Rise of the Runelords adapted for 5e. My problem is that, despite hours and hours of prep time, I find it difficult to run the adventure fast and loose and allow the party to go off the rails if they like. Or I'm constantly concerned that if they miss a certain landmark or NPC or piece of storyline, they're going to be in deep trouble much later and I'll have a hell of a time getting them back on track.

I'd venture to guess that those hours of prep time are actually getting in the way of running the game fast and loose. It's harder to justify not using something you've put so much energy into prepping.

Unfortunately for you, APs sort of demand a different style of play. I recommend a different approach: familiarize yourself with the adventure's synopsis. Take note of the major NPCs' motivations and methods. Use those to run a Streamlined Sandbox with other elements from the AP incorporated piecemeal and as needed. This can be done with very little prep. The end result will probably not follow the AP's expected plot-path, but will maintain its themes.

If you're interested in reading some more low-prep DMing tips, check out the link in my sig. Seems like they would fit your preferred play-style fairly well.

 

[pontinyc]

This is all phenomenally helpful information, many thanks to you all for your input! I've reread the entire thread a couple of times now and will be returning to it often. If others would like to contribute, please feel free. Just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone so far.

 

[transtemporal]

For published adventures, I usually make myself a little diagram of the major linked events, minor linked events, whether they're optional or mandatory and any triggers, hooks or clues that lead to that event starting. That helps me figure out which bits of the adventure I want to keep, which bits to modify and which bits to throw away. Also, its a handy guide so I can remember which hooks/clues I can use.

 

[Rhenny]

I don't know if there is anything new I can add to this thread, but here goes...

I've grown to realize that the one thing I'm not so good at is seeing an overarching arch for a larger more intricate campaign so I use a pre-written campaign/adventure path just for that purpose. I use them to give me the big picture, but when I run them, I add when I can, I modify and I re-introduce elements when the game starts to meander into uncharted territory for too long. In order for it to be fun for me to DM (and to have some level of fluidity) I need to make a hybrid rather than stick strictly to a script.

I've found that in many of the APs, the adventure hooks (and transitional hooks used to set up parts of the adventure) that are provided just don't work that well so that's one area that I concentrate on most when I want my players to get involved in a specific part of an adventure or go to a specific site within an adventure path or larger campaign. Sometimes, I can have PCs recall lore or past events/history and sometimes their own backgrounds or back stories help me figure out a way to get them embroiled in an adventure. I throw out enough lore, history, seeds of thought, NPC connections, dreams, memories, etc. so that the players don't feel as if the one time I do it, it means they have to follow that path. If you can get in the habit of exploring some of each PCs past or their dreams and memories, the players seem to act more naturally to the hooks and bait, and once in a while, they will go off track and you can "run" with it, but you can always re-introduce a way to get them to an area you want them to investigate.