I feel like new players, such as myself, who got into DnD in 5e are very fortunate to have RUclips channels like you guys give us advice on how to play DnD as effectively while at the same time having fun. I talked to my uncle about it, who has been playing since 2e and said that he would’ve loved to have this kind of thing when he first played as he had no idea on what to do
For sure. Im DMing without ever having played cause we are all new. And i think i watched like 80hrs of youtube content the week before we started. And so far ive been able to avoid a lot of the mistakes they talked about. But its 100% cause of the info available.
Hahah yes please. I started with 3E in high school in the 2000s. The closest i had to these videos was the CD -Rom character builder that came with the 3E players handbook lol
My first problem was back tracking it was bad because I had several pages of lore however it contradicted each other my mad however the campaign is now running smoothly
I still have all of my 1st and 2nd edition material and still DM a 1st-2nd-homebrew weekly game. In the early nineties when I started we had only one set of dice that the entire table shared. So if 10d6 needed to be rolled, that one d6 got rolled 10 times. The one d20 got passed around the table for everyone's turn in initiative. There was no internet. I kept up with the latest by reading Dragon Magazine. We had no idea what other groups were doing or if we were even playing the game right. But everyone at the table loved it and when we played during lunch hour in the high school library, there was a crowd of people around the table three deep watching and listening. Now with the popularity of D&D on RUclips and such, it is very easy to research and to learn. I feel like before the internet we had to be individually more creative and some of that has been lost. But I also like the modern ease of access to lore and information and help with new ideas. I'm an old DM, and I still learn new tricks from different content creators like the Dungeon Dudes. Now everyone at the table has multiple sets of dice and any information you want is as close as your computer.
My son recommended your channel. I can see that he has watched this video because he is deliberately doing the things that you suggest in this game. He has already got one successful campaign under his belt and he is really learning. Thank you for these videos, this is really good advice.
That is so cool that you play D&D with your son. My dad was the one who introduced me to the game and I am going to be DMing for the first time for some of my friends in a few months.
‘The best campaigns are always in the future.’ Me: Got it. At the table: Okay, players, this session begins with a time portal sucking you into the year 3000.
Little known fact, that DnD player was Justin Roiland and the 21 page backstory original title was: Alien Invasion Tomato-Monster Mexican Armada, Brothers, Who Are Just Regular Brothers, Running In A Van, From An Asteroid And All Sorts Of Things: The Movie - The Backstory
About 5 years ago, my group of friends really wants to play but at the last moment our DM bailed out....so....instead of NOT playing at all, i studied the DM Manual of Pathfinder and prepared all the things needed for the campaign....a lot of mistakes were made by both me and my players...but one thing i stll clearly remeber... the Sorcerer in Path is similar (Not the same) as a Warlock of 5e...so by bloodline he gets perks and spells....so....at some point in the Bloodline description says something like 'The Sorcerer can choose the following Feats as Bonus Feats'....i gave ALL those Feats to a Level 1 Sorcerer....he basically was a killing machine (cringing and facepalming until now)
I ran a Pathfinder campaign years ago as my first game. Didn't fully understand spells known/spells prepared/spell slots and all that, so I gave our Druid free reign to cast any spell, with the only limitation being the slots themselves. Had the capability of being broken but she didn't really know what to do either :P
I mean, that happened to me too, I ran a one shot to try out DMing with a group full of DMs and they had to instruct me how to railroad them when they saw me panicking over my notes thinking "i didn't know that would happen!"
My players want me to actively drive them to plot. I just want them to sorta explore the town I made and uncover tidbits and breadcrumbs I’ve left that lead to plot. But I mean as long as they have fun.
Thats really cute~ 😂 I wish my players (sisters), would care more about where I’m taking them. Edit: they’re my sisters they aren’t just a group of sisters.
The biggest mistake I made when running my first campaign was painstakingly detailing EVERY. SINGLE. THING. about every city and every area in the world. While worldbuilding on such a precise scale can be fun on your own time, it will absolutely kill your motivation if you're doing it with 4 or 5 players waiting for you to finally be done with the world to start session 1. You don't need to have every settlement and shop inventories of every city planned out. Just have a very broad idea of the world, and its points of interest (capitals, regions, areas where you KNOW you want a certain enemy type to be, etc), and spend your time detailing what your party is facing right now. As for everything else, just wait until your players get near it, and if the party is getting dangerously close to a key area you haven't planned out yet, nothing is stopping you from just pulling a time killer out of your ass and having your players spend the rest of the session there to give you time to plan the next location in between sessions.
"No, but" is just as important, if not moreso, than "Yes, and." - I've had a hard time saying no to my players, but sometimes you just gotta, especially if you got a munchkin.
yeah and in kinda the same vein is not just saying yes to predictions your players make just because they are exited about them. I got into a lot of trouble with plot holes because I was laying out hints and clues already for a reveal, and a player made a guess that they were really exited about, so I just went with it, but then I realized that their idea really didn't make sense with what they knew, so I was stuck filling things in to try and make it work.
@@oofguild7788 munchkins are like a slightly less frustrating version of power gamers or min-maxxers :P People who optimize the crap out of their characters and action economy.
One of my biggest mistakes when starting DMing was that I misunderstood massive damage and it resulted in a PC's death. Our bard took a critical hit, so much that it put him below zero with half his total hp in the negative. The player was certain that his character had died, I wasn't sure since I thought you had to go your full HP below 0 to die from massive damage. I tried to look it up, but I was stressed and almost panicked so I couldn't find it. Plus the player seemed so sure of the rules, and one of the DM tips I had heard was "if you don't know a particular rule, make a ruling and look it up afterwards". So I ruled that, yeah, the bard died on the spot due to massive damage. I felt like a total idiot when looking it up afterwards and realizing my hunch had been right... the PC hadn't taken massive damage so he would at least get to roll death saves. My lesson from that was: when you're stressed and it is important you get a rule right or your players do something unexpected and you don't know how to react, ask for a break. Tell your players "let's take 5 minutes, I need to think about this/look this up." Sometime's it's easier to make the right decision when you're not put on the spot. A new DM who's on the verge of panicking and feel like they have to make a decision right away in front of a group of 5 players don't always make the right call, weirdly enough.
I've been the only character to die in two campaigns that my friends that are new DMs are running. I think that overestimating damage or certain abilities that monsters have is very common. In one, the monsters were simply two powerful/too many. DM had the leader tell all of them to rush into the area I was in at the same time, and they basically run me over. In the other, there were three ghosts type monsters with the ability to possess us. We each had to make a charisma roll and roll a certain number to succeed. No problem, right? Wrong. Everyones charisma was absolutely terrible, and we we rolling 10s and under the whole day. Long story short: I got possessed and the ghost attacked the party members with my spells that could do 40-50 damage each, so they had to kill me. Ugh and double ugh.
@@MysticalApple The first one, yes. I was a Ranger that fought with a two handed bow and a quarterstaff. The second, no. I took the character because noone else wanted to heal. Lol.
Something I do is make a ruling on the fly and have the players look it up while I move forward with the game. If it's not too disruptive, I retcon what happened. Otherwise, I let the ruling stand and we play by the RAW going forward. In your situation, whether the character is dead or unconscious, he's little more than a fleshy paperweight for a while. Ruling initially that he's probably dead, but then having one of the players look it up and realize he's actually just unconscious isn't going to change the overall narrative all that dramatically. The only thing that might happen is that the cleric might not heal him this round, but rather next round.
I ran phandelver as my first adventure as a DM after years of not being able to run my own campaign. This module as well as your videos and others have given me a decade of dungeon mastering experience in two short years.
I'm running it right now. We've got a sympathetic bugbear named Klarg (an NPC) who's realized there's more to himself than outwardly boorish behavior. He "arrived" while the adventurers were exploring the Cragmaw Hideout and has become an important element to the campaign. This module has a terrific frame to bounce ideas off of, with room for sandboxing there in Phandalin.
My two lessons I learned from making mistakes as a DM are: 1. Don't mess with your player character stats. They made the character and unless they specifically come to you for help tweaking their PC, never mess with their character, even if you think they aren't optimal. 2. Plot-wise, avoid making the player characters "chosen ones" or "destined" to do such and such. It's far better to let their characters be heroes in their own rights and evolve into the story instead of be some kind of plot-selected special beings that happen to exist. They are special because of their choices and abilities, not because of forces far beyond their control.
Give examples, you can't mention points but then not tell us a reason. And I thought that expecting your characters to follow a set path not being a good idea was a no brainer tbh.
Like it, to up! Have a nice day~ Timecodes: 1. 1:53 Planning epic campaings right away 2. 7:48 Large party 3. 12:26 No zero session 4. 15:39 Ignoring Players backstory & goal 5. 21:25 Expecting Perfection
"My campaign was a disaster. My players had a wonderful time." That seems like a contradiction. Yes, you made mistakes that meant it wasn't a sustainable campaign, but if the players were having fun, it wasn't a "disaster."
I'd take it as a "my" versus "our". "The campaign I made was broken, but the campaign they played was enjoyable." That's part of the lesson I think, not trying to be the sole author of what's supposed to be a group story.
Things can also go bad, but everyone still have tons of fun. I have been in a game where the DM was completely caught off guard and it was probably a nightmare for him personally, but he handled it well enough and people had fun. That is one of the reasons my group switches up DM duties, sometimes the DM is carrying the world on his shoulders literally and needs a break.
Arguably you could say the PLAYERS had a wonderful time but in a way, the GM is still a player themselves. If THEY aren't also having fun then I could see why you would still consider the campaign a disaster.
Thank you for 4. I have never got to play in a campaign where my character's backstory ever got to matter. I might as well have played a talking table lamp. Basically, I've had two types of DM; the type who ignore backstories altogether and the type who use them for the sole purpose of screwing players over. Now, I'm a forever DM, so...
Did this! My first campaign was a jumbled wandering murder hobo katamari. It was broken, glorious, nonsensical, but a lot of fun. I was just lucky my first mistake was enjoyable =]
I actually have the opposite experience. I think when you create a world you know it well so it's easier to manage. However, the pre-made modules are sometimes overly complicated with random NPCs and faction conflict, thus making the DM memorize all this content that they might not find exciting. This makes DMing a chore. It really comes down to: try things out and see what you do best. You won't know till you try it.
It depends how you look at it. I've always cherry picked what i like out of modules. I view it as someone else has done all the background work for me but I pick and adapt what actually makes it to the table out of the options/information supplied.
@@1caoboi1 I agree, I think selecting parts you like from a module is a great way to run a game of D&D. People can also have a homebrewed framework and just fill it with pre-made stuff.
It’s a little late for me, but this is informative. Admittedly, I started with a homebrew, but I did limit it to a single continent, and myself and all 5 of my players in their mid-late 20s, so we didn’t have quite the same issue with dynamics/respect.
“2 Brothers!....taking in the boss’s world....with....friends they meet along the way....then...having a hard time...and getting one over on all the goblin ferrymen...it’s just...Two Brothers!!”
I finally got into D&D in my mid-twenties and absolutely fell in love. A few months into my first long-term campaign (DM’ed by my brother), I had this crazy idea to DM a campaign set in the world of a story I had been writing since middle school. Though I’ve never gotten close to publishing it, the story is so dear to me and holds a special place in my heart; if I was going to run a campaign in this world, I wanted to do it right. I picked up Tales from the Yawning Portal and just started reading through the modules, and then ran them with different groups. I subscribed to almost every TTRPG RUclips channel for advice (admittedly, you guys were the first 😊). I perused through every source book I had. I didn’t know when I’d be able to actually DM a campaign in my homebrew world, but I wanted it to go perfectly... This comment is already longer than I meant it to be, it’s just basically a response to the first point lol I’m glad I ran pre-written modules before diving into my homebrew world. I’m now happily running the first campaign in my homebrew world ☺️ also happy to report that my bro, my first DM, is playing in it and said it’s his favorite campaign ever 😭
In my experience, it's crazy how different it feels to DM for four players versus five players. With four players you feel like a god in control over the entire universe but with five players it feels like everything is chaos and the entire campaign could break down at any moment (which can be fun in its own right). I cant even imagine DMing for 8 or more people.
It can be lots of fun, and also a chore. I'm a high school teacher, and before COVID I ran my school's D&D club for all new players. The goal was to DM for a bit, then have them break up into smaller groups on their own with their own DMs. But to start, I had to divide the club into 2 groups of 8, me DMing both on different days, for teens aged 15-18. One group is 7 girls, 1 guy and is very creative, follows the story, and are team players with great attitude. The other group is 5 girls, 3 guys, and are shoot first, ask questions never, chaotic and funny.
Why? How is 4 worse than 5? It's clearly the people you had and not the amount that is the issue, if not, explain how 5 is worse than four considerably?
When I first started playing, it was me and two friends, playing 4th Edition with nothing but a PHB and a pirated copy of the character builder. I ended up being the DM and we had sessions that were DAYS long. I played my own character to balance out the party, and had to make up content on the fly. It was a campaign held together with duct tape and dreams. It was very fun but ultimately I was running the game wrong. BUT, ever since those primeval months of 4E, I've DM'd for over 9 years now, and the best advice I can say for new DMs is just... do it. Is your first session or three going to have awkward moments? Yes. Will you forget the rules or make mistakes? Yes. But if your players are having fun, THAT is the most important thing. A level 1 DM isn't going to be Matt Mercer immediately.
I just want to say I really appreciate this video. I'm getting ready to try DMing for the first time and it's a bit nerve-wracking. So many videos out there are "It's so easy to homebrew games... just do XYZ" I love that you are saying its ok to just learn and practice with the Essentials or Starter Kits. Its what I planned on doing, but a lot of those well meaning videos kinda made me feel a bit "less than" because I didn't want to create my own world. So thank you for reinforcing my feeling that it was ok to use the Essentials as training wheels! Maybe someday I'll DM enough that I can take them off 😁😁😁
In a 4 hour session, with 9 people, assuming everyone plays for the same amount of time, each player is speaking for a total of only 25.6 minutes. Yikes.
My first DM session was a DnD club in middle school where only 3-4 people actually were Dming and since it was extracurricular it would be only 1 hour so I had 8 players running Mine of Phandelver for 1 hour every friday. We managed to complete the module by the end of the year but herding 8 player is something I will absolutely not do again.
@@thezerowulf507 I chose speaking time because, in an ideal scenario, two people will never be speaking over one another. My point is to illustrate that, as a group gets larger, the time each player spends as an active participant in the game- as opposed to a passive observer- gets longer. It's easier for someone to lose focus as an observer as a participant, so with a large group, the large amounts of time spent listening rather than speaking can make it very difficult for a person to stay tuned-in.
Yea, I was thinking the DM will get 1/3 to 1/2 the face time, so the other eight players would get between 15 - 20 minutes in a 4 hour session. And when you delete the combat time, it goes down from there.
Rule 4 was something I learnt the hard way: I almost worked myself to a brun-out in my first campaign because I wanted it to be perfect. I was constantly feeling like I wasn't good enough. But then... after the campaign I asked my players how it was. And they said "we had a great time". I opened up to them about how I felt and they told me "yeah, but mistakes are okay". So in my next campaign I went in with the expectation "yeah, I will make mistakes but as long as me and my friends enjoy the game, it's okay".
I have been a DM for the last 40 years. Started with 1st edition in 1980. We didn't have a real session 0 as you understand it now but we used to discuss some of the rules for the first half hour waiting for everybody to settle down. I had a very small group of 3 regular players plus some casual new comers. We did play all the classics including Caves of Chaos, The Giands and the Descent and managed to get the group through the vault of the Drows and Lolth realm (with a few modifications to make it to the end. We also had a campaign in Middle Earth using a different rules system. Until we eventually moved to different states. I then Built and DMed some modules online with Neverwinter Night. (One of them is still running with another DM). I am now trying to get back into the pen and paper scene and getting a new group of local players.
I have yet to touch a game of dnd (work schedule pretty much prevents any attempts), but thanks to channels like this and watching so many rpg horror story videos, I feel like I could step into a game as a brand new player and have a much easier time getting into the rules than someone with didn't consume all these videos. Thanks, you guys! Also helps that I'm a sucker for character races and subclasses, and therefore have collected all of the physical source/rule books.
This does work. I've gone from the videos to my first game right into dming for my son's and friends. Still learning and very not comfortable but the boys are loving it and it's literally thanks to @dungeon dudes and others. Thank you guys.
Just recently DMed my first campaign. Would like to thank you and every other dm I've learned so much from. I was properly prepared with a more stoic mindset from people who've been doing it for years to share their knowledge. I had a lot with your second problem (to many players). I had 10 players total. I had done a 2 month of recruiting, allowing everyone to read the players book, had set watch player d&d tutorials online. Really getting people amped up to get into it. But also trying to not rush everyone to understand what exactly their getting themselves into. Then we all met up for our session 0. 8 hours, of ages between 26-32, a couple of nectars, we all got on the same page together. 11 in total, thats including me. 7 guys and 4 ladies. I told them. We would cut into 2 groups and I'd run the modified starter set campaign for practice to feel everyone out and they can feel the game out before we even go full force into it. Afterwards no one quit and they all fell inlove with d&d... I honestly think I just got lucky with how everyone has been friends for years. Or they were all married and loved eachother. As such a large group. They all respected their time and the amount of time I put into it. I went from only knowing 1 guy to knowing a whole damn clan of people. Soooo. After the 2 group short 7 and 8 session campaign each. We all met up and decided to all pick a campaign everyone could get behind. You wouldn't believe it.... everyone picked curse of strahd..... every flipping player around was convinced curse of strahd was the way to go... hahaha... sooooo we did a party of 6 and a party of 4. The party of four came from the west side of barovia and the party of six came from the east. Out of around 50 sessions each, I had them meet up for around 30 of them in order for larger combat scenarios, roleplaying, and even switching out party members to achieve balanced party to tackle quests with more ease. Seeing the growth of their innovation was astonishing. Hahaha it was honestly something I couldn't quite explain. But it all worked out. Never seemed bogged down, everyone enjoyed themselves, no one ever missed a session. Habaha just unbelievable. Sorry just wanted to share my story. Thanks for your knowledge again. Best of wishes to everyone out there
Thanks for sharing these great tips. I started playing DND in 1981 at the age of 15. A couple of good lessons I’ve learned: (1) The pressure to avoid railroading a home brew campaign can cause you to get overwhelmed by creating a sandbox adventure. You can build some structure that feels like a sandbox but really isn’t. For example, I created one campaign where early on the quest was to collect 5 body parts from 5 different creatures that represented 1 of the 5 senses (the eye from a cyclops (sight), the head of a catoblepas (smell), etc. I built each of the 5 mini adventures and let the players decide the order in which they tackled collecting the items. This gave the adventure a sandbox feel. These items were needed in order to cast a mysterious spell from a book they found. Casting the spell opened a portal to meet with the god of one of the players (I integrated their back story) to set the stage for the second story arc (2) I have that just as important as a Session 0 is a 5-15 minute debrief after each session to find out what things resonated with the group and what didn’t about the session. Use that feedback to either confirm what you are doing is working or get feedback to help shape future sessions. You’ll find in either case the feedback will inspire your creativity
My friends and I wrapped up our "Two Brothers" adventure last year. The new campaign I'm now running for the group has some great moments...but the show stealer is really "Pool of Acid."
When I first became a dungeon master, I had one notable strength. I could spin a story on the fly and improvise nearly any response to a character choice. I dove in head first, learning the rules as written as we played. When we came to a situation we hadn’t encountered, we’d check the books. I personally believe that trial by fire is an amazing way to start DMing.
I feel so related... When I first decided to became a DM I also wanted to make a pirate themed campaign, with a lot of things happening in my head. After a few months thinking about the world and even having my players made their characters, I decided that it wouldn't take place, at least for now. I decided to run Tomb of Annihilation instead, and oh my, that was the best decision I've ever had. We played the campaign for a few months untill work and studies made us stop, but that was some of the best moments I had playing D&D. They were for like 3 sessions (7-8h) in Port Nyanzaru, talking with NPCs, learning everything they could about the city, going to places that didn't exist in the city and that I had to came up with fast... What I learnt about running this campaign was that having a nice plot to guide me so I could think about every other aspect of the game felt great. So yeah, listen to this guys XD
Thanks for another great video, When starting a new campaign, I prepare enough of the the 'environment' to run maybe 5 sessions and some general story bullet-points. Then I invite my players to go crazy on their characters and will start integrating their stories with the environment. Only then do I write the main story and quest lines. I find this makes it very natural to make players the center to this story, and often can replace important NPCs with people from my players background and make their background quests central to the main quest-line. It keeps players invested but also, as a DM, it provides a very nice point to wrap up campaigns when characters have resolved their arch. Hope this might help 1 person reading this. Even as a long time DM playing 1 or 2 year campaigns at the time, I revel in these videos when preparing a new campaign and reflecting on the last. Thank you so much for this content.
3-5 players is the ideal number of D&D players. I have run and been a part of several 6-player groups, and that seems to be the tipping point where things can get out of hand in terms of giving enough attention to each player and keeping everyone focused on the game.
My mistake was trying to dm the game without any idea how dnd was played. I had a Player's Handbook and that was it. If only RUclips was around back then, so I could see a game being played.
Over giving is one of my biggest issues. I really just like rewarding players with loot whenever a situation calls for it, but I usually give magic items as that's what they want. Players should definitely not have as many magic items at level 4 as my parties usually end up with. I basically create more work for myself by having to make more challenging situations to account for all the niceties I give them.
I have made that mistake too and then realized I can create game situations where the players might lose items too- maybe throw a creature at them they couldn’t beat and have it negotiate a trade of an item or two in exchange for sparing their lives. It teaches them a few good lessons
@@keithfricke6096 I have tried creating situations like that (taking the toys away or so to speak), but it almost always just makes people upset with the exception of my wife and like 1 long time player. I play with a typical group of 6 people...or used to prior to Covid. I will prolly break them into 2 groups (i have a few others that occasionally play) so I should be able to do 2 groups of 4 or so players. That will at least help with the time each player gets in the spotlight.
As a player and, hopefully, an aspiring DM, I think one of the biggest mistakes that a DM makes is not being as invested and interested in your PC's as you want them to be in your Campaign. The easiest way to get a player to be emotionally invested in your campaign is to let them know what you, as the DM, are excited to see shape out in their characters. That doesn't mean railroading their character development by imposing your own vision of their future. What that means is pointing out that a character has an interesting personality or character flaw that you look forward to seeing playout in the later levels and adventures. That's something that takes comparably less effort than even the easiest facet of developing a campaign... or even using a pre-existing one. That's just my two copper on it, at least. :P
Eberron is my favourite setting. I wanted to introduce my players to the entire world, so instead of having a focused game, I tried to make it a globe-hopping thing where they were in a different country every other session. Instead of showcasing a rich world, it was basically "check out this quirky place, now check out this quirky place". I tried to show them everything and never really showed them anything.
Thank you. I just started playing D&D about a year ago and have been involved with two campaigns for most of 2020. (Yay, online tools) I have been enjoying your videos for character development - usually after I have already made my character and I have been playing it. But given me insights for new character ideas. Now I have told one of my groups that I would be willing to DM our small group when our current DM takes a little time off (she's having a baby). I found a couple fun published mini- campaign (good for levels 1-5) and told the 4 players to start thinking of characters. All of a sudden, I was being asked about the available Gods, what country, where on the map..... Slightly panicked. But we have time and talking with the group about different aspects of their characters and trying to tie in things into the campaign has be a fun challenge. I am even trying to find an additional campaign in case the players want more of this mini shot. My biggest thank you from this video is allowing to embrace the tropes as we start our DM experience. They are tropes for a reason. And this brand new DM have several options for that tavern meeting for my players to get to know each other better and move on to the dungeon.
One of the biggest traps I fell into as a beginning GM was wanting to make up my own magical items..... I currently have a monk player whose can punch with the range of a long bow.
I've been DMing for just a couple months (we're currently headed for session #5). Most of what I know about DnD I learned by watching Critical Role and other streamed games. I never bought a single piece of official material, when I was learning rules, I only relied on the internet, most of all D&D Beyond and The Alpine DM. I gathered 5 of my pals and basically begged them to try building this amazing adventure with me. None of _them_ ever played the game, and I feel like I really solidified my knowledge of the rules by explaining them to my players. I constructed my own world from scratch, with its own lore and everything. But the key thing, and a valuable tip I also learned from other DMs on the internet, is that I only constructed a very rough frame of the world, and I didn't immediately plan out everything. The way I lead our campaign, I try to make it really open world, which means everything's fairly flexible and I don't want to come up with great epic plots when I don't even know what's going to happen next time. We're all still learning how to play the game, and I don't want to end up overwhelming my players neither myself. The starting plot of our story is basically: heroes trapped in a village surrounded by flood, a bunch of bullywugs kidnap some local kids, heroes go to track them down, turns out a bunch of lycanthropes with whom our paladin already has a beef charge the bullywugs to bring them human children so that they can turn them into werewolves and further expand their numbers. Other than a few player-specific subplots, that's pretty much everything I've planned so far. I think of it as a turorial plot before we can move on to something bigger.
My first campaign as a DM went really well. I ran a made up game while on a camping trip with 4 friends that was in "3rd" edition. We didn't have rulebooks or dice. We had notebook paper sheets and used a deck of cards red A-10 low and black A-10 high for the d20. Picked the game up for real when we got home. Great success. Now my second campaign.... I think I made the middle 3 that you mentioned. No session 0, no backstories, 12 players in a college dorm.
I have been playing since the early mid 80's and DMing since the early 2000's. I still get lost in creating my story and homebrew area. To this day I take oneshots or modules and use about 40-50% and the rest is homebrew. That gives that structure that you mentioned. One key as a DM is being able to rein the players back to your story outline and DM on the fly. This is why I keep the number of players from 4 to 5. Great content! Greetings from Nashville, TN.
Age 14. I wanted to write stories. The npc's were the main characters. The PC's watched my heroes hog the story. They were still happy to have a DM, but god it was rough. Nearly 30 years later I am joyous of both the memories and the adventure.
In the name of the Emperor the Inquisition has issued an Exterminatus order for your campaign Just joking, glad you stuck with the hobby and learned as you went!
A few months ago I had a session that ended in one PC's death, and another PC fleeing the fight and the player retiring the character. The one remaining PC spent the last few minutes of the session burying his fallen comrade, putting a personal item of his in the grave so he could find it again with locate object, and doing knowledge rolls to find out if he knew where to find a cleric that could revive the player. The next session he got back to town and told everyone he decided not to revive his ally. Never forget, YOUR PLAYERS PLANS CAN AND WILL CHANGE, ESPECIALLY BETWEEN SESSIONS.
1) Follow the rules in the PHB and DMG to the letter, thinking that TSR must have known what they were doing. 2) Running published adventures literally and with the heavy railroading that requires. 3) Including and combining everything published that we could get our hands on. We mostly learned that both TSR and WotC often don't seem to have a clue what they are doing.
There is one book on the shelf to the right of Kelly's head that is upside down... Now that I've spotted it I'm having a really hard time listening to what they're saying...
In my first campaign, which was lost mine of Phandelver, I made 2 major mistakes. The first was we didn't increase the players HP maximum so when the dragon used it's breath weapon they all died, immediately. The second was I let my cleric have 7 hands. He was holding 2 staffs, a wand, a shield, an axe, a glowing rock, their holy symbol, and casting spells all at the same time.
I played my first game in 1979 and DMed my first game last week for my kids and their spouses (4 total). They had a great time. I do a lot of 3d printing and made/painted items for 7 months getting ready for this... I only used about a 10th of what I made. The session 0 was Godly. I was able to incorporate their characters back stories into the game and that was the hook. Thank you for your channel that helped me greatly!
[03:52] "..head felt like it exploding..." I can relate to that. If it was not for my players, I'd thrashed out the campaign long ago, for I could barely pul the plot threads together. But my players had fun, and that is most important. I did not create my own world, however. I used the forgotten realms. Many authors contributed to that world. And know I had the read it all and make sense of loosely tied plothooks. On top I did not use modules, but single-location mini-adventures that where strewn around several source books. I was not the most fun for me and at times more a burdon then a hobby. But I learned soo much. My advise for new GMs: If you want to build that enormous world with that epic Lvl1-30 campaign, go for it. But a single adventure from Lvl1 to 5 in a local area can be about as exciting.
TLDR; (basically a list without timestamps that should've been in the description) 1. Start with small adventures 2. Start with small groups of players 3. Have a "Session Zero" where you set up expectations etc 4. Don't ignore what palyers put in their characters backstories and what they want to achieve. 5. You will mess up rules and you will have to adapt things on the fly. Learn to live with it.
Largest group I ever played with had 27 members. Within a month, the GM divided us into 2 groups of 13 and 14 players, playing alternate weekends. It was a ton of fun, as everyone took their turns and eagerly planned their next move between turns. The GM handled it well, keeping each player to no more than 5 minutes per turn... And we all quietly waited for our next move.
@@PedroKing19 Entire clans of orcs, private armies of lesser nobles, that sort of thing. This was during 3rd edition. At least once we fought a minor demon horde.
I am actually about to run my first session on Friday. I have a small module I am going to lead the characters to after they get through after they finish their trial quest for the adventures guild they want to join. I do have an end game idea, which for what my idea is, there's a frame work I can build on. There will be side quests which are picked up at the adventures guild, and the major quest lines being more centered around the characters. I am intentionally being vague as my players watch these videos and I don't want to spoil my idea before I can lay the plot hooks. I promise, my campaign isn't nearly so vague!
The bit about backstories me and my friends learned: We first give a GM a very brief summary of our backstory idea, like, class, race and a bullet list of general tropes/traits you hit, then GM responds with some input, and we get some hooks, details etc. set with the info GM trickles down at that point. Then we send a more complete and elaborate version, with the GM's feedback included. Last step is a back and forth, that is setting all the details to fit everything nicely. It is a fair bit more involved from the GM side for sure, but with internet, whole character creation can be done over a discord/skype, without the need to be on at the same time. You can get a rich backstory, while still fitting in to GM's idea for the campaign, you do not have to try to schedule a session zero, and GM can devote more attention to less experienced players needing more attention. Works pretty well for busy schedules :P
My very first game as a DM taught me something; if they go off path, don't be afraid to have them discover something new. My group left the little port town and went deep into the forest where they found an empty monastery and it turned into a crime thriller when they discovered the body of a mono nailed to the ceiling. None of them could read infernal, so they ended up copying the words written in blood that circled the poor victim and left the place to find a library back in town. They tracked down a translation book two weeks later in the nation's capitol where they learned that the ruler of the nation had banned all books on demonology.
Great advice dudes, I started in the early 90s and yes we made all these mistakes. I did find a neat way to get 8 players with no backstory started. “You wake up sore, dreary. The sound of dripping water and breathing nearby.” You are currently chained to a wall in a room with 7 other strangers also chained, oh and naked. Begin!
Great video! Agree 100%. When we (my "Three Brothers" and I) first started playing we went through the basic box set, (1st addition) a few times then every pre-made adventure (called "modules" at the time) we could get our hands on..Then my brother Mark our DM decided to create his own stories and campaign. It was awesome! Some mistakes I've made as a player - arguing with the DM too much. It can quickly ruin the game. Some mistakes as a DM - arguing with the players too much AND not allowing them to "try something" that they want to try. Instantly ruling that "that won't work" is a buzzkill for sure. Instead, I've learned to create a DC on the fly and let them roll. If I think what they are trying is just too unrealistic I make the DC pretty dang high. At least they get a chance and that has helped in so many situations. And if they are able to make a successful roll it's really incredible. Once again great video! Love your channel. Keep it up!
I started with no session zero, & I only kind of knew the rules, but I wouldn’t regret a thing! Granted it was LMoPhandelver, & it was only 3 players (later 4) so that was a huge benefit. I focused on getting story content done b/c most rpgs I’d played in never got anywhere & I found that terribly frustrating. So, I knew that of all mistakes I could make, I’d try not to make that one. We got through ch1 in 2 1/2 hours, & I was elated & relieved! I did ask my characters what their flaws, goals & bonds were, & noted them down, because I felt that if they’d taken the time to pick / write those, I’d take the time to hear them. And we ended up making the campaign about them as much as we reasonably could, which was better. Funny enough, I just finished running it for the 2nd time, & I didn’t enjoy it as much. Is it just me, or is LMoPhandelver hard to get your players to care about the story?
This is the only actual play my kids can listen to, thank you for keeping it clean guys! (EDIT: Some context to my statement) My girls are both under 14 but I like to use D&D as a catalyst for their imagination. So many factors out there especially for girls are harmful for kids. I truly believe that imagination is the most important part of our being as humans. Without imagination we are not sentient but animals following basic programming and pre-programmed animalistic behavior. When imagination is squelched humanity dies bot figuratively and literally. If you question this simple truth, I pose one question to you: Use your imagination.
When they talked about how DnD can be a way to experience things in life that aren't exactly fun, I thought of a session I ran a few weeks back. My Wildfire Druid had an experience where an NPC that the party was trying to help/rescue tried stealing from her. The NPC got caught and blew it off as no big deal. Then they tried again and got caught again. The druid wanted to teach a lesson and cast produce flame at the NPC. She rolled more than double his hit points as damage. I explained that his hands were disintegrated and he died. Another player cast revivify and my druid felt so bad. It was interesting for my players to realize just how strong they had become, at level 9, compared to commoner stats. Power and responsibility and all that. I broke character for a moment to make sure this player understood that she had brought something unique and worth exploring to the table. Yes it was sad, but it also had potential to teach us all something new.
Great advice guys! I’m on the cusp of running my own campaign, and I think I’m going to start small with a pre written campaign now having watched this video. Keep up the great work!
In my 30s and first game a year ago was the Rick and Morty version as more or less a joke. We messed everything up but had a blast. Now my friends and I switch up stories and who DMs and I even have been hosting a regular game for my son and his 5 friends. All these mistakes totally hit home and we make them constantly. Best advice is just to keep having fun with it, abuse the rule of cool when you can, and just keep things moving. I like to host sandbox style games and my friends more narrow mini campaigns but it's always fun to get together and role some dice.
I started a campaign for my siblings. A storm lord campaign, but I started to get annoyed with it. Plus my siblings started going in weird ways. They are terrible at combat and so I had to hold back the monsters and help them learn about the ways their characters fight. So when we got to the house that was supposed to be where the dead leader was and lead to some fight that I never even read I decided to change the campaign. My sister ended up falling off a broken bridge that should have been easy to cross but a nat 1 is a nat 1. So I had to create a second entrance at the bottom of the building's hill so that they could get in. Ended up just throwing the entire module out the window having it be that a necromancer was the leader of the village and they had started the attack to create more dead people for their undead army. Now I am just focusing on the house and letting them explore and kill undead that I steadily make stronger as they go. The endgame goal is clearly seen and they have the choice to go there at any time but if they go too soon they will die.
My record, in one of my earliest attempts at DM'ing, was 17 players. No need to say the event was completely chaotic, but in the end they had fun (more from the social gathering aspect than from the game itself, but that's still better than having no fun), and I learned LOTS of lessons. Nowadays I run a campaign with two separate groups, the actions of each having a slight impact on what the other may encounter in the next chapter of the campaign, and having small but cumulative effects on the same game world.
I’m DMing my second ever campaign and so far I’d say a mistake has been over preparing and feeling overwhelmed. Even with LMoP being my first ever campaign, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the stuff to come. But now, being halfway through PotA, it’s been easier to glance through upcoming material and just focusing on what next session will bring with bigger picture in mind. I have no clue what lurks ahead for my players, we may even deviate from the book wildly, but I’m not stressing out about what’s to come - only what’s at hand.
I love this video. I've made all of these mistakes at some point. I still have trouble with some backstories for characters. In one of my current games most players didn't write a backstory and I sort of ignored that fact. Still working to correct that as we go.
"You did not fail, you just gained some experience." Started Dming for my family just after Christmas. We are running the lost mines of phandelver. So far been going ok, never played before so was messing up the monster attack rolls. Also missed random encounters but got that added in later. Going to spend more time reading up for our next session and watching more videos.
Hey! Im a first time DM starting to run a Homebrew soon but have played for 4 years, With the homebrew I have a DM of 6 years helping me out!! I am also starting out with a small grouo of 4!
Oh man I was railroader. I had an idea of how things wanted to go to form the story in my mind. Terrible games I shudder thinking back at them. Thanks for the video
I can especially attest to number four! In my current campaign, making a specific effort to work player's backstories into the world has done wonders for the story and the plot. It doesn't even matter that I call it the "Amnesiac Chronicles" because half the characters don't remember their childhood--we have tons of fun and I've been able to create a super cool storyline about a set of animated armor who used to be a drow assassin/second-in-command/bff for a wizard-turned-lich whose soul is stuck in a dagger at the bottom of the Blood Rift and is constantly trying telling the armor (telepathically) to go recover it so he can respawn ...
1:50 1. Planning epic campaigns right away. Build confidence before campaigns. 7:47 2. Large table groups. 12:17 3. Not having a Session Zero. 15:32 4. Ignoring player backstories & goals. Use them as fuel. 21:22 5. Expecting perfection. Nothing will be.
Well done dudes! Original basic rules creative DM back again to take my daughter and girl scout troop on a magical adventure through "The Old Forest"- frankensteining free 5th editions stuff layed out as an open end forrest world with mini encounters with written & homebrew adventures. looking forward to the zero with them and keeping my design open and loose- thanks for the all the advice for a veteran of the psychic wars-
The first one really struck a chord with me, because I wanted to do the same thing; build my own setting, run my own homemade campaign, etc. Thanks for the warning about this; I needed it.
I made the classic mistake of having an NPC being the main focus of my first D&D campaign (AD&D to be specific-it was a long time ago), which I ran with one of my friends as a player back when I was in high school. Since he had created the NPC, I figured it would be okay, but it wasn’t. Not surprisingly it turns out that a player would rather have his or her characters that he or she is currently playing decide what to do rather than having one of his or her characters that the DM is playing run the show.
I'm still on my 1st run of dming a campaign. Luckily I followed a lot of tips from this video, and similar videos, however what im struggling with is how to tie in the characters backstories to top of their motivation to be in the story. 1 player wants to learn magic, and collect powerful magical items, another is seeking revenge for the death of their family and the last player wanted their character to be the comedic relief of drinking and fishing. Along with the back stories, 2 wanted to be evil and 2 good. The precon I am running it just feels like the evil players just break the game. They don't want to save anyone or investigate anything. So I'm constantly having to write in incentives to move the story along for those players.
It's thanks to you guys, matt mercers gm tips and others like taking20 really helped prepare me for running a game, I had played in a campaign first and decided to DM a module for the group when my DM needed to take a break and now I'm running the original group through descent into avernus and also running tyranny of dragons for a group of completely new players and now I nearly prefer that more than playing 😂😂 the first group is a group of 8 players so the tips really helped with my first group being so big 😂
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I feel like new players, such as myself, who got into DnD in 5e are very fortunate to have RUclips channels like you guys give us advice on how to play DnD as effectively while at the same time having fun. I talked to my uncle about it, who has been playing since 2e and said that he would’ve loved to have this kind of thing when he first played as he had no idea on what to do
For sure. Im DMing without ever having played cause we are all new. And i think i watched like 80hrs of youtube content the week before we started. And so far ive been able to avoid a lot of the mistakes they talked about. But its 100% cause of the info available.
You have NO IDEA how much I would've like that when I started
Hahah yes please. I started with 3E in high school in the 2000s. The closest i had to these videos was the CD -Rom character builder that came with the 3E players handbook lol
My first problem was back tracking it was bad because I had several pages of lore however it contradicted each other my mad however the campaign is now running smoothly
I still have all of my 1st and 2nd edition material and still DM a 1st-2nd-homebrew weekly game. In the early nineties when I started we had only one set of dice that the entire table shared. So if 10d6 needed to be rolled, that one d6 got rolled 10 times. The one d20 got passed around the table for everyone's turn in initiative. There was no internet. I kept up with the latest by reading Dragon Magazine. We had no idea what other groups were doing or if we were even playing the game right. But everyone at the table loved it and when we played during lunch hour in the high school library, there was a crowd of people around the table three deep watching and listening. Now with the popularity of D&D on RUclips and such, it is very easy to research and to learn. I feel like before the internet we had to be individually more creative and some of that has been lost. But I also like the modern ease of access to lore and information and help with new ideas. I'm an old DM, and I still learn new tricks from different content creators like the Dungeon Dudes. Now everyone at the table has multiple sets of dice and any information you want is as close as your computer.
My son recommended your channel. I can see that he has watched this video because he is deliberately doing the things that you suggest in this game. He has already got one successful campaign under his belt and he is really learning. Thank you for these videos, this is really good advice.
That is so cool that you play D&D with your son. My dad was the one who introduced me to the game and I am going to be DMing for the first time for some of my friends in a few months.
@@theunknownanomaly1950 how is that DMing going?
‘The best campaigns are always in the future.’
Me: Got it.
At the table: Okay, players, this session begins with a time portal sucking you into the year 3000.
He’s a bit confused but he’s got the spirit
Sign me up
Nothings changed, but you do all live underwater
So, Chrono Trigger? I'd play it.
A FOOLISH SAMURAI WARRIOR WIELDING A MAGIC SWORD
"It's just called 'Two Brothers'".
This was worth going through 2020.
I had to pause the video so I could stop laughing
You could see it occur to Kelly a few moments before that, and that look of realization was fantastic
Little known fact, that DnD player was Justin Roiland and the 21 page backstory original title was:
Alien Invasion Tomato-Monster Mexican Armada, Brothers, Who Are Just Regular Brothers, Running In A Van, From An Asteroid And All Sorts Of Things: The Movie - The Backstory
I felt like Kelly was fighting to not say it but couldnt wait to just say it. I had a feeling that it was coming hahahaha
You can see a cut in the video after because we were both laughing for 3 mins straight after.
About 5 years ago, my group of friends really wants to play but at the last moment our DM bailed out....so....instead of NOT playing at all, i studied the DM Manual of Pathfinder and prepared all the things needed for the campaign....a lot of mistakes were made by both me and my players...but one thing i stll clearly remeber... the Sorcerer in Path is similar (Not the same) as a Warlock of 5e...so by bloodline he gets perks and spells....so....at some point in the Bloodline description says something like 'The Sorcerer can choose the following Feats as Bonus Feats'....i gave ALL those Feats to a Level 1 Sorcerer....he basically was a killing machine (cringing and facepalming until now)
I ran a Pathfinder campaign years ago as my first game. Didn't fully understand spells known/spells prepared/spell slots and all that, so I gave our Druid free reign to cast any spell, with the only limitation being the slots themselves. Had the capability of being broken but she didn't really know what to do either :P
@@maj.peppers3332 I can totally relate to that ahaha
I would have loved to watch that monster sorcerer go around wrecking everything lol
I haven't even started and I already feel offended for being personally called out
I mean, to be fair the whole video is us calling ourselves out lol.
please continue. This seems like a useful topic to discuss :D
LMFAO 😂
My players during my first campaign: “you’re not railroading us hard enough, Erica!”
I mean, that happened to me too, I ran a one shot to try out DMing with a group full of DMs and they had to instruct me how to railroad them when they saw me panicking over my notes thinking "i didn't know that would happen!"
My players want me to actively drive them to plot. I just want them to sorta explore the town I made and uncover tidbits and breadcrumbs I’ve left that lead to plot. But I mean as long as they have fun.
Thats really cute~ 😂 I wish my players (sisters), would care more about where I’m taking them.
Edit: they’re my sisters they aren’t just a group of sisters.
Yeah my players main issue with curse of strahd was that it was too open and free for them to do anything so they felt like they got nowhere.
That's interesting because I currently DM for a group of beginner and fear I railroad them too much.
The biggest mistake I made when running my first campaign was painstakingly detailing EVERY. SINGLE. THING. about every city and every area in the world. While worldbuilding on such a precise scale can be fun on your own time, it will absolutely kill your motivation if you're doing it with 4 or 5 players waiting for you to finally be done with the world to start session 1.
You don't need to have every settlement and shop inventories of every city planned out. Just have a very broad idea of the world, and its points of interest (capitals, regions, areas where you KNOW you want a certain enemy type to be, etc), and spend your time detailing what your party is facing right now. As for everything else, just wait until your players get near it, and if the party is getting dangerously close to a key area you haven't planned out yet, nothing is stopping you from just pulling a time killer out of your ass and having your players spend the rest of the session there to give you time to plan the next location in between sessions.
"No, but" is just as important, if not moreso, than "Yes, and." - I've had a hard time saying no to my players, but sometimes you just gotta, especially if you got a munchkin.
yeah and in kinda the same vein is not just saying yes to predictions your players make just because they are exited about them. I got into a lot of trouble with plot holes because I was laying out hints and clues already for a reveal, and a player made a guess that they were really exited about, so I just went with it, but then I realized that their idea really didn't make sense with what they knew, so I was stuck filling things in to try and make it work.
And sometimes it needs to be just a straight, simple, "no".
What does “if you got a munchkin” mean?
@@oofguild7788 munchkins are like a slightly less frustrating version of power gamers or min-maxxers :P People who optimize the crap out of their characters and action economy.
One of my biggest mistakes when starting DMing was that I misunderstood massive damage and it resulted in a PC's death. Our bard took a critical hit, so much that it put him below zero with half his total hp in the negative. The player was certain that his character had died, I wasn't sure since I thought you had to go your full HP below 0 to die from massive damage.
I tried to look it up, but I was stressed and almost panicked so I couldn't find it. Plus the player seemed so sure of the rules, and one of the DM tips I had heard was "if you don't know a particular rule, make a ruling and look it up afterwards". So I ruled that, yeah, the bard died on the spot due to massive damage.
I felt like a total idiot when looking it up afterwards and realizing my hunch had been right... the PC hadn't taken massive damage so he would at least get to roll death saves.
My lesson from that was: when you're stressed and it is important you get a rule right or your players do something unexpected and you don't know how to react, ask for a break. Tell your players "let's take 5 minutes, I need to think about this/look this up." Sometime's it's easier to make the right decision when you're not put on the spot. A new DM who's on the verge of panicking and feel like they have to make a decision right away in front of a group of 5 players don't always make the right call, weirdly enough.
I've been the only character to die in two campaigns that my friends that are new DMs are running. I think that overestimating damage or certain abilities that monsters have is very common. In one, the monsters were simply two powerful/too many. DM had the leader tell all of them to rush into the area I was in at the same time, and they basically run me over. In the other, there were three ghosts type monsters with the ability to possess us. We each had to make a charisma roll and roll a certain number to succeed. No problem, right? Wrong. Everyones charisma was absolutely terrible, and we we rolling 10s and under the whole day. Long story short: I got possessed and the ghost attacked the party members with my spells that could do 40-50 damage each, so they had to kill me. Ugh and double ugh.
Sounds like your player had a new character they were excited to play
@@MysticalApple The first one, yes. I was a Ranger that fought with a two handed bow and a quarterstaff. The second, no. I took the character because noone else wanted to heal. Lol.
Something I do is make a ruling on the fly and have the players look it up while I move forward with the game. If it's not too disruptive, I retcon what happened. Otherwise, I let the ruling stand and we play by the RAW going forward.
In your situation, whether the character is dead or unconscious, he's little more than a fleshy paperweight for a while. Ruling initially that he's probably dead, but then having one of the players look it up and realize he's actually just unconscious isn't going to change the overall narrative all that dramatically. The only thing that might happen is that the cleric might not heal him this round, but rather next round.
When I get lost like that, I say:
"Please wait, your DM is loading..."
"....and other substances." That's hilarious
Yes Other Substances ........
Bags of sulfur and guano.
Fusaka? You spice?
I've seen the 'water pipes'...
Skooma
I ran phandelver as my first adventure as a DM after years of not being able to run my own campaign. This module as well as your videos and others have given me a decade of dungeon mastering experience in two short years.
Same boat! So glad I didn't skip a pre-written adventure to make my own as a first time DM and SO glad I watched these videos.
Lost Mine of Phandelver has great DM tips for new DMs! They are in each section too - very useful.
I'm running it right now. We've got a sympathetic bugbear named Klarg (an NPC) who's realized there's more to himself than outwardly boorish behavior. He "arrived" while the adventurers were exploring the Cragmaw Hideout and has become an important element to the campaign. This module has a terrific frame to bounce ideas off of, with room for sandboxing there in Phandalin.
All of this advise is obvious... to anyone who has made these mistakes :) important content here gentlemen. Have the best day.
My two lessons I learned from making mistakes as a DM are: 1. Don't mess with your player character stats. They made the character and unless they specifically come to you for help tweaking their PC, never mess with their character, even if you think they aren't optimal. 2. Plot-wise, avoid making the player characters "chosen ones" or "destined" to do such and such. It's far better to let their characters be heroes in their own rights and evolve into the story instead of be some kind of plot-selected special beings that happen to exist. They are special because of their choices and abilities, not because of forces far beyond their control.
My group had great fun hearing that they are chosen ones and after that absolutely not living up to expectations. It kinda created the whole setting.
Give examples, you can't mention points but then not tell us a reason.
And I thought that expecting your characters to follow a set path not being a good idea was a no brainer tbh.
Like it, to up! Have a nice day~
Timecodes:
1. 1:53 Planning epic campaings right away
2. 7:48 Large party
3. 12:26 No zero session
4. 15:39 Ignoring Players backstory & goal
5. 21:25 Expecting Perfection
You spelt campaign wrong?
@@dreamleaf6784 or did they??? Dun dun duuuun
"My campaign was a disaster. My players had a wonderful time." That seems like a contradiction. Yes, you made mistakes that meant it wasn't a sustainable campaign, but if the players were having fun, it wasn't a "disaster."
Depends on your player group. The group I played with loved it when things went to hell. The crazier things get, the more we loved it.
I'd take it as a "my" versus "our". "The campaign I made was broken, but the campaign they played was enjoyable."
That's part of the lesson I think, not trying to be the sole author of what's supposed to be a group story.
Things can also go bad, but everyone still have tons of fun. I have been in a game where the DM was completely caught off guard and it was probably a nightmare for him personally, but he handled it well enough and people had fun. That is one of the reasons my group switches up DM duties, sometimes the DM is carrying the world on his shoulders literally and needs a break.
Arguably you could say the PLAYERS had a wonderful time but in a way, the GM is still a player themselves. If THEY aren't also having fun then I could see why you would still consider the campaign a disaster.
eh I decided screw it dived in head first and everyone is having fun so I count it as a win
Thank you for 4. I have never got to play in a campaign where my character's backstory ever got to matter. I might as well have played a talking table lamp. Basically, I've had two types of DM; the type who ignore backstories altogether and the type who use them for the sole purpose of screwing players over. Now, I'm a forever DM, so...
I like how they think I'll have too many friends and the group will be too big. That's nice.
I laughed out loud. Lmao
i am literally so starved for friends my last friend and only person that i know that ever played dnd just fucking died
fun times
@@lukelblitz3627 That's awful man. I'm sorry.
Did this! My first campaign was a jumbled wandering murder hobo katamari. It was broken, glorious, nonsensical, but a lot of fun. I was just lucky my first mistake was enjoyable =]
Since I didn't know about "katamari," I mentally translated that as "calamari" ... fun images lol
I actually have the opposite experience. I think when you create a world you know it well so it's easier to manage. However, the pre-made modules are sometimes overly complicated with random NPCs and faction conflict, thus making the DM memorize all this content that they might not find exciting. This makes DMing a chore. It really comes down to: try things out and see what you do best. You won't know till you try it.
It depends how you look at it. I've always cherry picked what i like out of modules. I view it as someone else has done all the background work for me but I pick and adapt what actually makes it to the table out of the options/information supplied.
@@1caoboi1 I agree, I think selecting parts you like from a module is a great way to run a game of D&D. People can also have a homebrewed framework and just fill it with pre-made stuff.
@@br41nc3ll I agree. Different methods, similar end result.
It’s a little late for me, but this is informative. Admittedly, I started with a homebrew, but I did limit it to a single continent, and myself and all 5 of my players in their mid-late 20s, so we didn’t have quite the same issue with dynamics/respect.
“2 Brothers!....taking in the boss’s world....with....friends they meet along the way....then...having a hard time...and getting one over on all the goblin ferrymen...it’s just...Two Brothers!!”
I feel like I'm missing something :)
@@hawkthetraveler6344
Interdimensional Cable.
It’s what’s up
@@jriggan thanks, that was a much more google-able reference :)
@@jriggan and here I thought it was a loose reference to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
I finally got into D&D in my mid-twenties and absolutely fell in love. A few months into my first long-term campaign (DM’ed by my brother), I had this crazy idea to DM a campaign set in the world of a story I had been writing since middle school. Though I’ve never gotten close to publishing it, the story is so dear to me and holds a special place in my heart; if I was going to run a campaign in this world, I wanted to do it right.
I picked up Tales from the Yawning Portal and just started reading through the modules, and then ran them with different groups. I subscribed to almost every TTRPG RUclips channel for advice (admittedly, you guys were the first 😊). I perused through every source book I had. I didn’t know when I’d be able to actually DM a campaign in my homebrew world, but I wanted it to go perfectly...
This comment is already longer than I meant it to be, it’s just basically a response to the first point lol I’m glad I ran pre-written modules before diving into my homebrew world. I’m now happily running the first campaign in my homebrew world ☺️ also happy to report that my bro, my first DM, is playing in it and said it’s his favorite campaign ever 😭
I know exactly how you feel! Using sentimental old story ideas as world building for D&D just felt like a natural evolution of my creativity.
@@rwbyab7423 Same here, and it's inspired me to write little stories in my world.
@@glassberg5018 the gift that keeps on giving!
¹1
In my experience, it's crazy how different it feels to DM for four players versus five players. With four players you feel like a god in control over the entire universe but with five players it feels like everything is chaos and the entire campaign could break down at any moment (which can be fun in its own right). I cant even imagine DMing for 8 or more people.
It can be lots of fun, and also a chore. I'm a high school teacher, and before COVID I ran my school's D&D club for all new players. The goal was to DM for a bit, then have them break up into smaller groups on their own with their own DMs.
But to start, I had to divide the club into 2 groups of 8, me DMing both on different days, for teens aged 15-18. One group is 7 girls, 1 guy and is very creative, follows the story, and are team players with great attitude. The other group is 5 girls, 3 guys, and are shoot first, ask questions never, chaotic and funny.
Why? How is 4 worse than 5? It's clearly the people you had and not the amount that is the issue, if not, explain how 5 is worse than four considerably?
When I first started playing, it was me and two friends, playing 4th Edition with nothing but a PHB and a pirated copy of the character builder. I ended up being the DM and we had sessions that were DAYS long. I played my own character to balance out the party, and had to make up content on the fly. It was a campaign held together with duct tape and dreams. It was very fun but ultimately I was running the game wrong. BUT, ever since those primeval months of 4E, I've DM'd for over 9 years now, and the best advice I can say for new DMs is just... do it. Is your first session or three going to have awkward moments? Yes. Will you forget the rules or make mistakes? Yes. But if your players are having fun, THAT is the most important thing. A level 1 DM isn't going to be Matt Mercer immediately.
I just want to say I really appreciate this video. I'm getting ready to try DMing for the first time and it's a bit nerve-wracking. So many videos out there are "It's so easy to homebrew games... just do XYZ" I love that you are saying its ok to just learn and practice with the Essentials or Starter Kits. Its what I planned on doing, but a lot of those well meaning videos kinda made me feel a bit "less than" because I didn't want to create my own world. So thank you for reinforcing my feeling that it was ok to use the Essentials as training wheels! Maybe someday I'll DM enough that I can take them off 😁😁😁
Good luck! Never be deterred by training wheels, they are there for a reason. Happy rolling!
In a 4 hour session, with 9 people, assuming everyone plays for the same amount of time, each player is speaking for a total of only 25.6 minutes. Yikes.
And that's not even accounting for the DM, or did you lude the DM as a player?
I understand your point. But much of the time people aren't playing alone.
My first DM session was a DnD club in middle school where only 3-4 people actually were Dming and since it was extracurricular it would be only 1 hour so I had 8 players running Mine of Phandelver for 1 hour every friday. We managed to complete the module by the end of the year but herding 8 player is something I will absolutely not do again.
@@thezerowulf507 I chose speaking time because, in an ideal scenario, two people will never be speaking over one another. My point is to illustrate that, as a group gets larger, the time each player spends as an active participant in the game- as opposed to a passive observer- gets longer. It's easier for someone to lose focus as an observer as a participant, so with a large group, the large amounts of time spent listening rather than speaking can make it very difficult for a person to stay tuned-in.
Yea, I was thinking the DM will get 1/3 to 1/2 the face time, so the other eight players would get between 15 - 20 minutes in a 4 hour session. And when you delete the combat time, it goes down from there.
Monty: I made a lot of mistakes!
Kelly: Yeah.
Rule 4 was something I learnt the hard way: I almost worked myself to a brun-out in my first campaign because I wanted it to be perfect. I was constantly feeling like I wasn't good enough. But then... after the campaign I asked my players how it was. And they said "we had a great time". I opened up to them about how I felt and they told me "yeah, but mistakes are okay". So in my next campaign I went in with the expectation "yeah, I will make mistakes but as long as me and my friends enjoy the game, it's okay".
I have been a DM for the last 40 years. Started with 1st edition in 1980. We didn't have a real session 0 as you understand it now but we used to discuss some of the rules for the first half hour waiting for everybody to settle down. I had a very small group of 3 regular players plus some casual new comers. We did play all the classics including Caves of Chaos, The Giands and the Descent and managed to get the group through the vault of the Drows and Lolth realm (with a few modifications to make it to the end. We also had a campaign in Middle Earth using a different rules system. Until we eventually moved to different states. I then Built and DMed some modules online with Neverwinter Night. (One of them is still running with another DM). I am now trying to get back into the pen and paper scene and getting a new group of local players.
I have yet to touch a game of dnd (work schedule pretty much prevents any attempts), but thanks to channels like this and watching so many rpg horror story videos, I feel like I could step into a game as a brand new player and have a much easier time getting into the rules than someone with didn't consume all these videos. Thanks, you guys!
Also helps that I'm a sucker for character races and subclasses, and therefore have collected all of the physical source/rule books.
This does work. I've gone from the videos to my first game right into dming for my son's and friends. Still learning and very not comfortable but the boys are loving it and it's literally thanks to @dungeon dudes and others. Thank you guys.
Just recently DMed my first campaign. Would like to thank you and every other dm I've learned so much from.
I was properly prepared with a more stoic mindset from people who've been doing it for years to share their knowledge.
I had a lot with your second problem (to many players). I had 10 players total. I had done a 2 month of recruiting, allowing everyone to read the players book, had set watch player d&d tutorials online. Really getting people amped up to get into it. But also trying to not rush everyone to understand what exactly their getting themselves into.
Then we all met up for our session 0. 8 hours, of ages between 26-32, a couple of nectars, we all got on the same page together. 11 in total, thats including me. 7 guys and 4 ladies. I told them. We would cut into 2 groups and I'd run the modified starter set campaign for practice to feel everyone out and they can feel the game out before we even go full force into it.
Afterwards no one quit and they all fell inlove with d&d...
I honestly think I just got lucky with how everyone has been friends for years. Or they were all married and loved eachother. As such a large group. They all respected their time and the amount of time I put into it. I went from only knowing 1 guy to knowing a whole damn clan of people.
Soooo. After the 2 group short 7 and 8 session campaign each. We all met up and decided to all pick a campaign everyone could get behind.
You wouldn't believe it.... everyone picked curse of strahd..... every flipping player around was convinced curse of strahd was the way to go... hahaha... sooooo we did a party of 6 and a party of 4. The party of four came from the west side of barovia and the party of six came from the east.
Out of around 50 sessions each, I had them meet up for around 30 of them in order for larger combat scenarios, roleplaying, and even switching out party members to achieve balanced party to tackle quests with more ease. Seeing the growth of their innovation was astonishing. Hahaha it was honestly something I couldn't quite explain.
But it all worked out. Never seemed bogged down, everyone enjoyed themselves, no one ever missed a session. Habaha just unbelievable.
Sorry just wanted to share my story. Thanks for your knowledge again. Best of wishes to everyone out there
"Someone's gonna come from Wizards of the Coast and take my books away and beat me up." this line aged poorly
Thanks for sharing these great tips. I started playing DND in 1981 at the age of 15. A couple of good lessons I’ve learned: (1) The pressure to avoid railroading a home brew campaign can cause you to get overwhelmed by creating a sandbox adventure. You can build some structure that feels like a sandbox but really isn’t. For example, I created one campaign where early on the quest was to collect 5 body parts from 5 different creatures that represented 1 of the 5 senses (the eye from a cyclops (sight), the head of a catoblepas (smell), etc. I built each of the 5 mini adventures and let the players decide the order in which they tackled collecting the items. This gave the adventure a sandbox feel. These items were needed in order to cast a mysterious spell from a book they found. Casting the spell opened a portal to meet with the god of one of the players (I integrated their back story) to set the stage for the second story arc (2) I have that just as important as a Session 0 is a 5-15 minute debrief after each session to find out what things resonated with the group and what didn’t about the session. Use that feedback to either confirm what you are doing is working or get feedback to help shape future sessions. You’ll find in either case the feedback will inspire your creativity
My friends and I wrapped up our "Two Brothers" adventure last year. The new campaign I'm now running for the group has some great moments...but the show stealer is really "Pool of Acid."
When I first became a dungeon master, I had one notable strength. I could spin a story on the fly and improvise nearly any response to a character choice. I dove in head first, learning the rules as written as we played. When we came to a situation we hadn’t encountered, we’d check the books. I personally believe that trial by fire is an amazing way to start DMing.
Thank you Dungeon Dudes, Love all your content and always looking forward to more! Stay safe and have a happy New Year!
I feel so related... When I first decided to became a DM I also wanted to make a pirate themed campaign, with a lot of things happening in my head. After a few months thinking about the world and even having my players made their characters, I decided that it wouldn't take place, at least for now. I decided to run Tomb of Annihilation instead, and oh my, that was the best decision I've ever had. We played the campaign for a few months untill work and studies made us stop, but that was some of the best moments I had playing D&D. They were for like 3 sessions (7-8h) in Port Nyanzaru, talking with NPCs, learning everything they could about the city, going to places that didn't exist in the city and that I had to came up with fast...
What I learnt about running this campaign was that having a nice plot to guide me so I could think about every other aspect of the game felt great. So yeah, listen to this guys XD
Wondering how many of these I'll have already done.
Thanks for another great video, When starting a new campaign, I prepare enough of the the 'environment' to run maybe 5 sessions and some general story bullet-points. Then I invite my players to go crazy on their characters and will start integrating their stories with the environment. Only then do I write the main story and quest lines. I find this makes it very natural to make players the center to this story, and often can replace important NPCs with people from my players background and make their background quests central to the main quest-line. It keeps players invested but also, as a DM, it provides a very nice point to wrap up campaigns when characters have resolved their arch. Hope this might help 1 person reading this. Even as a long time DM playing 1 or 2 year campaigns at the time, I revel in these videos when preparing a new campaign and reflecting on the last. Thank you so much for this content.
3-5 players is the ideal number of D&D players. I have run and been a part of several 6-player groups, and that seems to be the tipping point where things can get out of hand in terms of giving enough attention to each player and keeping everyone focused on the game.
My mistake was trying to dm the game without any idea how dnd was played. I had a Player's Handbook and that was it. If only RUclips was around back then, so I could see a game being played.
Over giving is one of my biggest issues. I really just like rewarding players with loot whenever a situation calls for it, but I usually give magic items as that's what they want. Players should definitely not have as many magic items at level 4 as my parties usually end up with. I basically create more work for myself by having to make more challenging situations to account for all the niceties I give them.
I have made that mistake too and then realized I can create game situations where the players might lose items too- maybe throw a creature at them they couldn’t beat and have it negotiate a trade of an item or two in exchange for sparing their lives. It teaches them a few good lessons
@@keithfricke6096 I have tried creating situations like that (taking the toys away or so to speak), but it almost always just makes people upset with the exception of my wife and like 1 long time player. I play with a typical group of 6 people...or used to prior to Covid. I will prolly break them into 2 groups (i have a few others that occasionally play) so I should be able to do 2 groups of 4 or so players. That will at least help with the time each player gets in the spotlight.
As a player and, hopefully, an aspiring DM, I think one of the biggest mistakes that a DM makes is not being as invested and interested in your PC's as you want them to be in your Campaign. The easiest way to get a player to be emotionally invested in your campaign is to let them know what you, as the DM, are excited to see shape out in their characters. That doesn't mean railroading their character development by imposing your own vision of their future. What that means is pointing out that a character has an interesting personality or character flaw that you look forward to seeing playout in the later levels and adventures. That's something that takes comparably less effort than even the easiest facet of developing a campaign... or even using a pre-existing one. That's just my two copper on it, at least. :P
Eberron is my favourite setting. I wanted to introduce my players to the entire world, so instead of having a focused game, I tried to make it a globe-hopping thing where they were in a different country every other session. Instead of showcasing a rich world, it was basically "check out this quirky place, now check out this quirky place". I tried to show them everything and never really showed them anything.
Thank you. I just started playing D&D about a year ago and have been involved with two campaigns for most of 2020. (Yay, online tools) I have been enjoying your videos for character development - usually after I have already made my character and I have been playing it. But given me insights for new character ideas.
Now I have told one of my groups that I would be willing to DM our small group when our current DM takes a little time off (she's having a baby).
I found a couple fun published mini- campaign (good for levels 1-5) and told the 4 players to start thinking of characters. All of a sudden, I was being asked about the available Gods, what country, where on the map.....
Slightly panicked. But we have time and talking with the group about different aspects of their characters and trying to tie in things into the campaign has be a fun challenge. I am even trying to find an additional campaign in case the players want more of this mini shot.
My biggest thank you from this video is allowing to embrace the tropes as we start our DM experience. They are tropes for a reason. And this brand new DM have several options for that tavern meeting for my players to get to know each other better and move on to the dungeon.
I am a Dm again for the first time since college so I feel like a newbie lol 15 years later, 35 and married now.
One of the biggest traps I fell into as a beginning GM was wanting to make up my own magical items..... I currently have a monk player whose can punch with the range of a long bow.
Time to play a another fun game of "how much of this am I guilty of."
I've been DMing for just a couple months (we're currently headed for session #5). Most of what I know about DnD I learned by watching Critical Role and other streamed games. I never bought a single piece of official material, when I was learning rules, I only relied on the internet, most of all D&D Beyond and The Alpine DM. I gathered 5 of my pals and basically begged them to try building this amazing adventure with me. None of _them_ ever played the game, and I feel like I really solidified my knowledge of the rules by explaining them to my players.
I constructed my own world from scratch, with its own lore and everything. But the key thing, and a valuable tip I also learned from other DMs on the internet, is that I only constructed a very rough frame of the world, and I didn't immediately plan out everything. The way I lead our campaign, I try to make it really open world, which means everything's fairly flexible and I don't want to come up with great epic plots when I don't even know what's going to happen next time. We're all still learning how to play the game, and I don't want to end up overwhelming my players neither myself.
The starting plot of our story is basically: heroes trapped in a village surrounded by flood, a bunch of bullywugs kidnap some local kids, heroes go to track them down, turns out a bunch of lycanthropes with whom our paladin already has a beef charge the bullywugs to bring them human children so that they can turn them into werewolves and further expand their numbers. Other than a few player-specific subplots, that's pretty much everything I've planned so far. I think of it as a turorial plot before we can move on to something bigger.
I hand out lots of magic ítems (that is a no no). I allow the use of a homebrew class (that is a no no). Balance is important now i know better...
My first campaign as a DM went really well. I ran a made up game while on a camping trip with 4 friends that was in "3rd" edition. We didn't have rulebooks or dice. We had notebook paper sheets and used a deck of cards red A-10 low and black A-10 high for the d20. Picked the game up for real when we got home. Great success.
Now my second campaign.... I think I made the middle 3 that you mentioned. No session 0, no backstories, 12 players in a college dorm.
Perfect timing! I'm going to start dming pretty soon, so this video is very helpful.
I have been playing since the early mid 80's and DMing since the early 2000's. I still get lost in creating my story and homebrew area. To this day I take oneshots or modules and use about 40-50% and the rest is homebrew. That gives that structure that you mentioned. One key as a DM is being able to rein the players back to your story outline and DM on the fly. This is why I keep the number of players from 4 to 5. Great content! Greetings from Nashville, TN.
Age 14. I wanted to write stories. The npc's were the main characters. The PC's watched my heroes hog the story. They were still happy to have a DM, but god it was rough. Nearly 30 years later I am joyous of both the memories and the adventure.
In the name of the Emperor the Inquisition has issued an Exterminatus order for your campaign
Just joking, glad you stuck with the hobby and learned as you went!
I hope you guys have a video going in-depth on session 0 and different ways to approach it!
Everyday i am further wowed by the power of Kelly's mustache
A few months ago I had a session that ended in one PC's death, and another PC fleeing the fight and the player retiring the character. The one remaining PC spent the last few minutes of the session burying his fallen comrade, putting a personal item of his in the grave so he could find it again with locate object, and doing knowledge rolls to find out if he knew where to find a cleric that could revive the player.
The next session he got back to town and told everyone he decided not to revive his ally.
Never forget, YOUR PLAYERS PLANS CAN AND WILL CHANGE, ESPECIALLY BETWEEN SESSIONS.
I wanted to know about the great mistake regarding the Froghemoth. I am sad and happy because the Froghemoth is never a mistake.
1) Follow the rules in the PHB and DMG to the letter, thinking that TSR must have known what they were doing.
2) Running published adventures literally and with the heavy railroading that requires.
3) Including and combining everything published that we could get our hands on.
We mostly learned that both TSR and WotC often don't seem to have a clue what they are doing.
There is one book on the shelf to the right of Kelly's head that is upside down... Now that I've spotted it I'm having a really hard time listening to what they're saying...
In my first campaign, which was lost mine of Phandelver, I made 2 major mistakes. The first was we didn't increase the players HP maximum so when the dragon used it's breath weapon they all died, immediately. The second was I let my cleric have 7 hands. He was holding 2 staffs, a wand, a shield, an axe, a glowing rock, their holy symbol, and casting spells all at the same time.
I played my first game in 1979 and DMed my first game last week for my kids and their spouses (4 total). They had a great time. I do a lot of 3d printing and made/painted items for 7 months getting ready for this... I only used about a 10th of what I made. The session 0 was Godly. I was able to incorporate their characters back stories into the game and that was the hook. Thank you for your channel that helped me greatly!
[03:52] "..head felt like it exploding..." I can relate to that. If it was not for my players, I'd thrashed out the campaign long ago, for I could barely pul the plot threads together. But my players had fun, and that is most important. I did not create my own world, however. I used the forgotten realms. Many authors contributed to that world. And know I had the read it all and make sense of loosely tied plothooks. On top I did not use modules, but single-location mini-adventures that where strewn around several source books. I was not the most fun for me and at times more a burdon then a hobby. But I learned soo much.
My advise for new GMs: If you want to build that enormous world with that epic Lvl1-30 campaign, go for it. But a single adventure from Lvl1 to 5 in a local area can be about as exciting.
Keep it up guys! A new dm myself and this is great. Shout out to my lizard friend Odrasa :)
TLDR; (basically a list without timestamps that should've been in the description)
1. Start with small adventures
2. Start with small groups of players
3. Have a "Session Zero" where you set up expectations etc
4. Don't ignore what palyers put in their characters backstories and what they want to achieve.
5. You will mess up rules and you will have to adapt things on the fly. Learn to live with it.
Largest group I ever played with had 27 members. Within a month, the GM divided us into 2 groups of 13 and 14 players, playing alternate weekends. It was a ton of fun, as everyone took their turns and eagerly planned their next move between turns. The GM handled it well, keeping each player to no more than 5 minutes per turn... And we all quietly waited for our next move.
How tf did combat go? I mean if all 13/14 players were in the same combat encounter, how many enemies did your GM have to throw at you?
@@PedroKing19 Entire clans of orcs, private armies of lesser nobles, that sort of thing. This was during 3rd edition. At least once we fought a minor demon horde.
I am actually about to run my first session on Friday. I have a small module I am going to lead the characters to after they get through after they finish their trial quest for the adventures guild they want to join. I do have an end game idea, which for what my idea is, there's a frame work I can build on. There will be side quests which are picked up at the adventures guild, and the major quest lines being more centered around the characters.
I am intentionally being vague as my players watch these videos and I don't want to spoil my idea before I can lay the plot hooks. I promise, my campaign isn't nearly so vague!
The bit about backstories me and my friends learned: We first give a GM a very brief summary of our backstory idea, like, class, race and a bullet list of general tropes/traits you hit, then GM responds with some input, and we get some hooks, details etc. set with the info GM trickles down at that point. Then we send a more complete and elaborate version, with the GM's feedback included. Last step is a back and forth, that is setting all the details to fit everything nicely.
It is a fair bit more involved from the GM side for sure, but with internet, whole character creation can be done over a discord/skype, without the need to be on at the same time.
You can get a rich backstory, while still fitting in to GM's idea for the campaign, you do not have to try to schedule a session zero, and GM can devote more attention to less experienced players needing more attention. Works pretty well for busy schedules :P
My very first game as a DM taught me something; if they go off path, don't be afraid to have them discover something new.
My group left the little port town and went deep into the forest where they found an empty monastery and it turned into a crime thriller when they discovered the body of a mono nailed to the ceiling. None of them could read infernal, so they ended up copying the words written in blood that circled the poor victim and left the place to find a library back in town. They tracked down a translation book two weeks later in the nation's capitol where they learned that the ruler of the nation had banned all books on demonology.
Great advice dudes, I started in the early 90s and yes we made all these mistakes.
I did find a neat way to get 8 players with no backstory started.
“You wake up sore, dreary. The sound of dripping water and breathing nearby.” You are currently chained to a wall in a room with 7 other strangers also chained, oh and naked.
Begin!
Great video! Agree 100%. When we (my "Three Brothers" and I) first started playing we went through the basic box set, (1st addition) a few times then every pre-made adventure (called "modules" at the time) we could get our hands on..Then my brother Mark our DM decided to create his own stories and campaign. It was awesome!
Some mistakes I've made as a player - arguing with the DM too much. It can quickly ruin the game.
Some mistakes as a DM - arguing with the players too much AND not allowing them to "try something" that they want to try. Instantly ruling that "that won't work" is a buzzkill for sure.
Instead, I've learned to create a DC on the fly and let them roll. If I think what they are trying is just too unrealistic I make the DC pretty dang high. At least they get a chance and that has helped in so many situations. And if they are able to make a successful roll it's really incredible.
Once again great video! Love your channel. Keep it up!
I’ve made the first mistake. When I got into a different table top rpg I set aside my ego and picked up a module
I started with no session zero, & I only kind of knew the rules, but I wouldn’t regret a thing! Granted it was LMoPhandelver, & it was only 3 players (later 4) so that was a huge benefit. I focused on getting story content done b/c most rpgs I’d played in never got anywhere & I found that terribly frustrating. So, I knew that of all mistakes I could make, I’d try not to make that one. We got through ch1 in 2 1/2 hours, & I was elated & relieved!
I did ask my characters what their flaws, goals & bonds were, & noted them down, because I felt that if they’d taken the time to pick / write those, I’d take the time to hear them. And we ended up making the campaign about them as much as we reasonably could, which was better.
Funny enough, I just finished running it for the 2nd time, & I didn’t enjoy it as much. Is it just me, or is LMoPhandelver hard to get your players to care about the story?
This is the only actual play my kids can listen to, thank you for keeping it clean guys! (EDIT: Some context to my statement) My girls are both under 14 but I like to use D&D as a catalyst for their imagination. So many factors out there especially for girls are harmful for kids. I truly believe that imagination is the most important part of our being as humans. Without imagination we are not sentient but animals following basic programming and pre-programmed animalistic behavior. When imagination is squelched humanity dies bot figuratively and literally. If you question this simple truth, I pose one question to you:
Use your imagination.
Absolutely the truth
I don't have any.
When they talked about how DnD can be a way to experience things in life that aren't exactly fun, I thought of a session I ran a few weeks back. My Wildfire Druid had an experience where an NPC that the party was trying to help/rescue tried stealing from her. The NPC got caught and blew it off as no big deal. Then they tried again and got caught again. The druid wanted to teach a lesson and cast produce flame at the NPC. She rolled more than double his hit points as damage. I explained that his hands were disintegrated and he died. Another player cast revivify and my druid felt so bad. It was interesting for my players to realize just how strong they had become, at level 9, compared to commoner stats. Power and responsibility and all that. I broke character for a moment to make sure this player understood that she had brought something unique and worth exploring to the table. Yes it was sad, but it also had potential to teach us all something new.
Great advice guys! I’m on the cusp of running my own campaign, and I think I’m going to start small with a pre written campaign now having watched this video. Keep up the great work!
In my 30s and first game a year ago was the Rick and Morty version as more or less a joke. We messed everything up but had a blast. Now my friends and I switch up stories and who DMs and I even have been hosting a regular game for my son and his 5 friends. All these mistakes totally hit home and we make them constantly. Best advice is just to keep having fun with it, abuse the rule of cool when you can, and just keep things moving. I like to host sandbox style games and my friends more narrow mini campaigns but it's always fun to get together and role some dice.
Happy New Year) Thanks for all your work!!!
I started a campaign for my siblings. A storm lord campaign, but I started to get annoyed with it. Plus my siblings started going in weird ways. They are terrible at combat and so I had to hold back the monsters and help them learn about the ways their characters fight. So when we got to the house that was supposed to be where the dead leader was and lead to some fight that I never even read I decided to change the campaign. My sister ended up falling off a broken bridge that should have been easy to cross but a nat 1 is a nat 1. So I had to create a second entrance at the bottom of the building's hill so that they could get in. Ended up just throwing the entire module out the window having it be that a necromancer was the leader of the village and they had started the attack to create more dead people for their undead army. Now I am just focusing on the house and letting them explore and kill undead that I steadily make stronger as they go. The endgame goal is clearly seen and they have the choice to go there at any time but if they go too soon they will die.
First? Love you guys
My record, in one of my earliest attempts at DM'ing, was 17 players. No need to say the event was completely chaotic, but in the end they had fun (more from the social gathering aspect than from the game itself, but that's still better than having no fun), and I learned LOTS of lessons. Nowadays I run a campaign with two separate groups, the actions of each having a slight impact on what the other may encounter in the next chapter of the campaign, and having small but cumulative effects on the same game world.
Love the video, are you guys planning on doing a sorcerer subclass tier ranking video?
Yes we are!
I’m DMing my second ever campaign and so far I’d say a mistake has been over preparing and feeling overwhelmed. Even with LMoP being my first ever campaign, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the stuff to come. But now, being halfway through PotA, it’s been easier to glance through upcoming material and just focusing on what next session will bring with bigger picture in mind. I have no clue what lurks ahead for my players, we may even deviate from the book wildly, but I’m not stressing out about what’s to come - only what’s at hand.
It feels almost taboo to hear this
I love this video. I've made all of these mistakes at some point. I still have trouble with some backstories for characters. In one of my current games most players didn't write a backstory and I sort of ignored that fact. Still working to correct that as we go.
Happy New Year dungeneers!!!
"You did not fail, you just gained some experience." Started Dming for my family just after Christmas. We are running the lost mines of phandelver. So far been going ok, never played before so was messing up the monster attack rolls. Also missed random encounters but got that added in later. Going to spend more time reading up for our next session and watching more videos.
The stash is back baby ! The one shots are coming soon ! Happy New years everyone !
Hey! Im a first time DM starting to run a Homebrew soon but have played for 4 years, With the homebrew I have a DM of 6 years helping me out!! I am also starting out with a small grouo of 4!
Oh man I was railroader. I had an idea of how things wanted to go to form the story in my mind. Terrible games I shudder thinking back at them.
Thanks for the video
I can especially attest to number four! In my current campaign, making a specific effort to work player's backstories into the world has done wonders for the story and the plot. It doesn't even matter that I call it the "Amnesiac Chronicles" because half the characters don't remember their childhood--we have tons of fun and I've been able to create a super cool storyline about a set of animated armor who used to be a drow assassin/second-in-command/bff for a wizard-turned-lich whose soul is stuck in a dagger at the bottom of the Blood Rift and is constantly trying telling the armor (telepathically) to go recover it so he can respawn ...
Oh I don't think I've ever been so early that there's only 1 comment! Crazy, Keep up the cool content though!
1:50 1. Planning epic campaigns right away. Build confidence before campaigns.
7:47 2. Large table groups.
12:17 3. Not having a Session Zero.
15:32 4. Ignoring player backstories & goals. Use them as fuel.
21:22 5. Expecting perfection. Nothing will be.
Well done dudes! Original basic rules creative DM back again to take my daughter and girl scout troop on a magical adventure through "The Old Forest"- frankensteining free 5th editions stuff layed out as an open end forrest world with mini encounters with written & homebrew adventures. looking forward to the zero with them and keeping my design open and loose- thanks for the all the advice for a veteran of the psychic wars-
The first one really struck a chord with me, because I wanted to do the same thing; build my own setting, run my own homemade campaign, etc. Thanks for the warning about this; I needed it.
I made the classic mistake of having an NPC being the main focus of my first D&D campaign (AD&D to be specific-it was a long time ago), which I ran with one of my friends as a player back when I was in high school. Since he had created the NPC, I figured it would be okay, but it wasn’t. Not surprisingly it turns out that a player would rather have his or her characters that he or she is currently playing decide what to do rather than having one of his or her characters that the DM is playing run the show.
"No one from WotC is going to come to your house and beat you up.". Oh my, this made me laugh too much.
I'm still on my 1st run of dming a campaign. Luckily I followed a lot of tips from this video, and similar videos, however what im struggling with is how to tie in the characters backstories to top of their motivation to be in the story. 1 player wants to learn magic, and collect powerful magical items, another is seeking revenge for the death of their family and the last player wanted their character to be the comedic relief of drinking and fishing. Along with the back stories, 2 wanted to be evil and 2 good. The precon I am running it just feels like the evil players just break the game. They don't want to save anyone or investigate anything. So I'm constantly having to write in incentives to move the story along for those players.
It's thanks to you guys, matt mercers gm tips and others like taking20 really helped prepare me for running a game, I had played in a campaign first and decided to DM a module for the group when my DM needed to take a break and now I'm running the original group through descent into avernus and also running tyranny of dragons for a group of completely new players and now I nearly prefer that more than playing 😂😂 the first group is a group of 8 players so the tips really helped with my first group being so big 😂