D&D 5E New to D&D and made DM. Help?!?!

[Nemio]

I can also recommend the following community for new DM advice
https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/

 

[Imaculata]

Some good advice here, my extra $0.05 is:

1) Don't try and chew off too much at one time, especially with 6+ players (that's a lot!)

Indeed. I often limit my group of players to around 4, because anything more and it becomes difficult to manage the spotlight. That said, 6 can work just fine, but you might want to switch the spotlight to different players frequently to keep everyone involved and entertained.

a simple, shortish adventure, with no expectations for a huge campaign, is actually a really good thing - you can learn a lot, make mistakes, then throw it away and do better next time.

This also is great advice. A lot of DM's start off too big. They overprepare, before even being settled in as a DM, or being comfortable with their own group of players. If you start out small, you can always start over if it doesn't work out. Something my old group used to do quite often, is switch DM's every few weeks, where each DM ran a small campaign of only a few sessions, that took place in the same shared world.

2)don't take TOO much out of Critical Role - Matt Mercer is a great DM, but he over-does some stuff IMO, and the players definitely over-do the 'in character' drama. Don't feel you need to run a game like that, remember they are all Actors

Definitely this. What Critical Role does well, is show people who have never played D&D, how much fun it can be. But it is by no means a guidebook regarding what is expected of a DM nor of the players. The players should not be expected to play like professional voice actors. And as a DM you should find a way of running the game that you feel comfortable with.

Matt is a fair DM, is very well prepared, and also good at ad-lib (which comes from experience as well as preparation), take that as your inspiration.

Matt narrates a lot in an entertaining way, including player actions. That is nice for a YouTube audience, but in a game with your friends, they might want to narrate those bits themselves. Critical Role is in the end a show that people watch, and not entirely how people typically play the game. Its not wrong, but its different. Find your own style.

 

[robus]

So my friends and some of their friends are going to be starting a D&D campaign. There are going to be 6 of us with the possibility of a 7th (although, I really hope not.) Everyone is pretty much new to D&D have only played one or two tiny campaigns, if at all. I thought being a DM sounded like a fun thing to organize so I volunteered (because no one else wanted to do it.) I have never played D&D before and honestly I think it might have been a bit silly of me to agree but I'm willing to put in the the work for it to be good.

Good for you - but yeah, you've given yourself a job! DMing *is* fun but it's also challenging. If you're willing to work at it you'll quickly become a decent DM and eventually a great DM.

I have already started to read the dungeon masters guide, and after I'm finished with that I'll read the players handbook and the monster manual. I have also been watching some of Critical Role on YouTube and have been watching Geek and Sundry's GM Tips. Please let me know if there are any other helpful Youtube Videos or Articles that will help me.

There's a lot of stuff in the DMs guide that you don't need. Focus on "Running the game" which surprisingly enough is not the first part of the book. As for the PHB pretty much all of that is relevant, but don't bog the start of your game with character generation - use pre-gens. If you're not starting off with LMoP (which includes pre-gen characters) then download some from WotC: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets

Generating a character is quite an involved process and the PHB does not hold your hand well (it's written with the assumption that you know the game IMHO) - don't do it before you've played the game for a while.

I am going to start us out doing one of the D&D adventure books. None of us want to do the starter set and we want a longer campaign. The Curse of Strahd looks really interesting and cool. Most of us would like to do this campaign but from what I understand this is not a very good for a beginner groupand a beginner DM. If anyone has any tips for us to be able to play this as our first campaign that would be great but I will probably do this as our second.

I think you'll find the Starter Set adventure to be plenty long enough to make lots of mistakes and learn the ropes Really look at the Starter Adventure as a set of training wheels for your group. Run it with pre-gen'd characters to get the feel of the system and then when you're ready you can abandon it without a second glance and start your real campaign. Or if you're enjoying the adventure (and there's a lot of fun to be had) it dovetails pretty cleanly into most of the published adventures so you can turn it into the starting point for an epic campaign. For example my group started with LMoP - transitioned into Hoard of the Dragon Queen (skipping the sketchy early chapters), moved on to Rise of Tiamat while blending in Storm King's Thunder, with the potential for running Out of the Abyss as a high level adventure I'm calling "Into the Abyss" We'll get about 3 years of play all told (and two of the players still have their Starter Set pre-gens as their characters!)

The forum has tackled the "New DM" question before, so check out the Basic Skills section here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?545699-Best-of-the-5e-Forum (you'll also find discussion on all the published adventures too)

But this has to be read by any new DM IMHO: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?453707-How-to-Adjudicate-Actions-in-D-amp-D-5e it really demystifies a key aspect of DMing (how to handle resolving player actions during the game) and is fun to read (it should be a chapter in the DMG)

And this advice from a grumpy curmudgeon (tongue mostly in cheek) is also very helpful: http://theangrygm.com/jumping-the-screen-how-to-run-your-first-rpg-session/

Good luck and don't read too much before your first session because most advice will become useful once you have some actual play experiences to refer to.

And welcome to the forum it's been a goldmine of useful information. Stick around and tell us how it goes.

 

[Istbor]

I understand that the Lost mines is too short, but after having run it with several groups of players, all of varying levels of experience, it is a really good adventure. My personal experience with it was to run that adventure and use it as a stepping stone into another. I had the most success with Out of the Abyss.

Mostly, it is about having fun though, so do something that catches the most interest from your group of players.

I find preparation fun! I like world building and level designing. It is what I do. So, for me, the only chore is transcribing what I have worked on, into the minds of my players, accurately. I want to be able to convey the mood, tension, and wonder of different locations and situations. Also, you have to make sure to keep wandering minds on track every now and then.

A lot of this will simply come over time if you keep working on it. You'll get better and better, and hopefully the fun will increase as well.

 

[jasper]

Ok I think my cheat sheet is somewhere here. Here are the rules.
Rule 0. Occasionally the monsters win.
Rule 1. Make a ruling and drive on for the rest of the night. After the game is over tell the players if you made a minor mistake. OPPS Bob should taken less damage, or I mess up magic missile. DON'T correct these. If you made a Major mistake. OH MY GOD THE OP KILLED KENNY! Admit you mistake and tell your Players KENNY NOT DEAD.
Rule 2. Decide on open rolls or behind the screen. Stick with one.
Rule 3 you will mistakes and tick each other off. Decide how to handle this.
Suggestion Forget the hardbacks or a campaign. Think episode tv adventures. Buy a season (not season 4) of the adventure league adventures. DO NOT RUN THEM IN ORDER. Run all the low level ones first then advance thru the tiers. This will cause your players to have multiple characters. Just ask them to vary the characters.

 

[cmad1977]

With 6 people make it clear up front that they should all(you included) think about what they're doing wen it isn't their turn. Anyone who takes too long can default to dodge.
Otherwise you might be in a fight with 4 goblins forever.


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[Jester David]

I'm a big fan of Curse of Strahd and Out of the Abyss, but Princes of the Apocalypse might be a better first time module.
There's enough content there for level 1 onward. And there is the online supplement (http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/princes-apocalypse) that, when paired with the book and Basic Rules, has all the content needed to run. So you can buy the Player's Handbook & PotA play without needing any other books.

But, if you and your players do want the horror aspects of Curse of Strahd, the adventure's author ran the adventure during the first section of Dice, Camera, Action:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfS8QgUdeGYo8F3RPUQ2Wsi2mZLPcaU6X
The first 30 episodes are all about CoS. That might give you some hints and reminders.

 

[ninjayeti]

Welcome! My advice would be not to worry too much and just dive in. DMing is like sex - you are probably going to be pretty bad at it at it your first few tries, but everyone will still have fun.

In terms of campaigns, Princes of the Apocalypse is a good one that is also fairly beginner friendly. However I would suggest you run Lost Mines from the beginner's box first - as others have said, it really is the best adventure for novice groups. When you complete Lost Mines you can move the existing group over to Princes pretty easily. (While Princes recommends starting the main story line with 3rd level characters, I think works better starting at 4th or even 5th level, which is about where characters who have finished Lost Mines should be.)

Good luck, and let us know how it goes!

 

[Trudy]

Actually, I'll even offer to do an Intro to DMing 90-120 minute session over Skype / Google Hangouts if a couple folks are interested. I've been seeing a lot of new DMs on ENWorld and I think something like that could be helpful.

I would be extremely interested in this if you decide to do this! Please let me know if you decide to give this a go and I'll make time to be there.

--

To everyone else: I'm not the OP, but I appreciate the recommendations here; I was looking for a new DM thread. I'm not a newbie player (and my players wouldn't be, either), but I would be a new DM and I've been considering Strahd. No one's recommended that so far (that I've saw); is there a reason for that? Just want to make sure I'm not potentially getting in over my head.

 

[tglassy]

Strahd's awesome. It's very sandboxy, so you'd pretty much have to know the whole thing to do it well. You never know where the players are going to go. There are a lot of nuances, and some randomness as well due to a card reading in the beginning.

It's a great campaign, but I don't know if it's good for new dms. It's not very straightforward, and there is a lot to keep in mind as you go. If you read through it a few times, get a lay of how it works, make whatever changes you want, and remember it all or make notes. The group I play it with (my parents and grown younger brothers) only play a few hours a session, so it's easier for me to keep it all together.


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