beldar1215 said:
I need lot of pratice at wing-in it and adlibing, so I think this may be just the thing for me. I know you really can't 'mess-up' per say, but how are people with dealing with someone like me. Are they going to be gentle if I'm nervous? Just wondering.
Beldar
This is what generally happens: When the die is rolled to determine who starts the game (the hardest part) sometimes people will just say "I'm not comfortable doing that", and since it's a game, and not a jury trial, we either just roll again, or look for volunteers. Sometimes people get excited about wanting to start, and if just one person wants to start, we'll let them start.
As for being next in the rotation, there are a lot of ways you can handle that.
After about a single rotation around the table, most people figure out pretty quickly that the best (most self-gratifying) way to allocate their 15 minutes is through story advancement. That's harder, but more rewarding. Both from a story standpoint, and from a DM'ing standpoint. It's the most fun, since 15 minutes of combat can pass fairly quickly, and then someone is calling "time" on you at 30 minutes, and all you've contributed to the story was a battle with a bunch of orcs. Ok, but not the best way to spend your 30 minutes.
People new to the experience (and there's nothing wrong with this) often just toss in another random encounter. Just about anyone with even a modicum of DM'ing experience could randomly pick an appropriate monster in the MM and toss it at the party without much difficulty. "Let's see, the party is 5th level, they're in the forest... um Ettin!", and then you can spend 15 minutes in Ettin combat, and then pass after that.
I, OTOH, have been known to completely dismiss combat outright, even when handed to me prior to passing. At an NC game day years ago, Belen had several "blood golems" rise up out of pools of blood threatening the party who was trying to proceed - and then promptly passed to me to "deal" with his blood golems. But I showed him - I gave them all 1 hit point, and had them die (explode in a violent spray of blood) with even the slightest hit. Two minutes later (and a party completely drenched in blood), I was able to proceed with the plot.
