Post/Author/DateTime	Post
FerretOfTheUnderdark 03-07-08, 01:31 AM	So i've been playing DnD for around Nine months now and have been Dming since day one, I have never been able to find another person who owned the materials books and stuff for me to play as a character, all my friends want to play but aren't so enthusiastic on reading mountains of material like I have been doing for some time. Most games i've played have been "winged" games. We would roll up some characters one day and sit down and just start playing the next. I've finally taken the time to get the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, spell compendium, rules compendium (all 3.5) i've gotten the champions of ruin supplement and the three core books of course. Our games would usually consist of me making up everything on the spot which was usually choppy, at times it was interesting but it was very difficult to keep track of everything happening. I wanted to start my campaign for my party in Battledale at it's capital (i forget the name) however one squabble I have with making a campaign besides a number of other problems which we can cover later if any are willing to assist me is mapping. I feel like there should be maps and visual representations for every inch of faerun (probably because i was raised on videogames like legend of zelda and my imagination has thus been foiled to some degree) I struggle to map out every town within the dales only to find myself unsatisfied with most of my work. I try to map out all things along a road even insignificants. How do i get around this problem of needing maps for every town and every area and keeping the player's organized in a way that they and myself can know where they are at all times? Should I just rely on more description or what? Or is mapping just part of the work of being a DM. Also I would like a better explanation on Event Based campaigns compared to Site-based campaigns. Your help is greatly appreciated! :D
claypigeons 03-07-08, 02:18 AM	So i've been playing DnD for around Nine months now and have been Dming since day one, I have never been able to find another person who owned the materials books and stuff for me to play as a character, all my friends want to play but aren't so enthusiastic on reading mountains of material like I have been doing for some time. Most games i've played have been "winged" games. We would roll up some characters one day and sit down and just start playing the next. I've finally taken the time to get the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, spell compendium, rules compendium (all 3.5) i've gotten the champions of ruin supplement and the three core books of course. Our games would usually consist of me making up everything on the spot which was usually choppy, at times it was interesting but it was very difficult to keep track of everything happening. I wanted to start my campaign for my party in Battledale at it's capital (i forget the name) however one squabble I have with making a campaign besides a number of other problems which we can cover later if any are willing to assist me is mapping. I feel like there should be maps and visual representations for every inch of faerun (probably because i was raised on videogames like legend of zelda and my imagination has thus been foiled to some degree) I struggle to map out every town within the dales only to find myself unsatisfied with most of my work. I try to map out all things along a road even insignificants. How do i get around this problem of needing maps for every town and every area and keeping the player's organized in a way that they and myself can know where they are at all times? Should I just rely on more description or what? Or is mapping just part of the work of being a DM. Also I would like a better explanation on Event Based campaigns compared to Site-based campaigns. Your help is greatly appreciated! :D You only need to map out the important things. Start small, in the immediate area and then work out. Keep a small notepad nearby so that if you mention locations of things, you can jot them down for later use. There is no use in mapping out an entire world if your players will only see one small continent. While this may be fun for you, it is a lot of work that you may never get to use. Don't map cities unless you absolutely have to. If the city is very large and/or confusing, have the players roll a very low DC Gather Information or Knowledge Local check (like... 8, or less. If it's such a big city, they will be able to find someone to ask...). Most players don't care exactly how many blocks from the Tavern the blacksmith might be. Most players (most, not all. There are always exceptions) just say "I look for the blacksmith!"...
Eldritch_Id 03-07-08, 02:37 AM	...all my friends want to play but aren't so enthusiastic on reading mountains of material like I have been doing for some time...You have to give them some incentive - make them want to read the material. The only way I found was to play a few games - they either read the material or they don't. Most of my players won't touch it either. It has something to do with why they want to play, I imagine. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Most games i've played have been "winged" games. We would roll up some characters one day and sit down and just start playing the next...Our games would usually consist of me making up everything on the spot which was usually choppy, at times it was interesting but it was very difficult to keep track of everything happening.Generally, you're either blessed with the improv-DM ability or you're not. I, myself, am not. Like you, I like to have a good outline and descriptions (including a map) ready prior to playing. The struggle I had was letting go of my perfectionism. I had to come to grip with the fact that the visual material I produce will not be as good as published material. The thing I found was that spending time to make everything look really good didn't matter at all once the game began. The players got just as much with a quick description and possibly a printed picture or quick doodle as if I spent three hours on each encounter. Summary: Don't burn yourself out trying too hard when a little goes a long way. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Also I would like a better explanation on Event Based campaigns compared to Site-based campaigns. Your help is greatly appreciated! :DHave you ever drawn a timeline or bubble chart (often used for brainstorming activities)? I use those for a event-based adventure. Some event happens once the PC's perform the trigger action, which could be as simple as entering town or after a certain amount of time has elapsed to as complex as completing a seperate adventure(s). Hope I helped!
Dash Branaghan 03-07-08, 03:05 AM	Mapping isn't an issue. Aside from tonnes of mapping programs available for use commercially, there are literally hundreds of maps floating around on the net that can be used for whatever purpose you need. I don't have the links on me right now, but do a Google search for Gaming Maps and you'll be amazed what you can find. Irony Games has a random map generator...very basic, but hey, if you need something visual, it will provide it for you. I know the old Useful DM Links sticky had various map and map utility links...perhaps the current one does (or rather has a link to the old Useful DM Links)...
Etarnon 03-07-08, 04:14 AM	Campaign Cartographer 2 and 3 are really good programs. As others posted, there are tons of maps online. Start small scale...don't map the whole continent. And all you really need is a sketch map, with some towns on it, showing about 10 towns in the local area. Maybe about 10 - 30 miles or so apart, it varies based on a lot of factors too complex to go into here. Then design a sketch of each town. When the book or supplement i am using doesn't already have a town map, I do it like this: Take the number of inhabitants, Divide that by 25, then that gives you a rough number of buildings, for the main area of the town. Each building will have around 6-7 people in it, plus or minus. Prefer placement near water, such as streams (especially at shallow or crossing points), rivers, or ocean. The rest of the people live outside of town, in the outlying farms and such, near the fields that surround the town. So for a town of 200 people: 8 Buildings, that house 50 people. Church / Temple Blacksmith Common Building Grain Storage A few local businesses, such as a Horse Stable, Dyer, or Carpenter / Stonecutter Perhaps an Inn The other 150 live in the farms surrounding. Don't worry about statting out all the people, assume commoners, of very low levels, and perhaps an important or notable NPC. This was all much easier to do in earlier editions, when there weren't stat blocks and such. Good luck with it.
White_Wizard 03-07-08, 08:01 AM	First of all: welcome, fellow DM! :) Don't worry: it is normal, during the first games as a DM, to feel like you have to map every square inch of the world; my first campaign ever was set in a custom-made world: I had drawn a map of the entire world (two large continents, several large islands), plus invented a planar cosmology with deities and their home planes, emnities and alliances (I had the old 3.0 Manual of the Planes nearly as soon as I got the first three core books). Then I made a full map of the starting town (called Waterdeep: I was taking from two old games I had played on my old Amiga500: Eye of the Beholder [I didn't know it was Forgotten Realms then] and Moonstone [which had a city called Waterdeep as well]). After that I made a map of trade routes between the cities (over both land and sea). After that I became aware that players may want/need to go into the city sewers, so I made a whole map of them. Then I started figuring out every single tavern, temple, shop and barrack in the city. In the meanwhile the campaign died away. What does that mean? You don't have to feel compelled to draw a map for every location the player may step into. Just make sure you have a map for the encounter locations (places where battles and other action scenes take place), and simply have three or four "general ambient" maps to cover palces the players may step in by chance (or choices different from those you imagined they'd have taken). On a camapaign it is usually very useful to have: a) 1 map of the general area the campaign is set (in your case the map of the Dalelands in the Forgotten Realms Capaign Setting - hence FRCS) [make a copy: it will be very useful when you'll have to add notes - trust me: you'll have to], b) 1 map of the main city (or cities) you plan to introduce in the campaign (in your case the capital of Battledale [if you want, for example, to have the players travel to Shadowdale, you'd better have a copy of that town's map as well]); such maps you should find in old handbooks (maybe some friend will lend you some old AD&D handbook or maybe you'll find some downloadable material -on this site there is plenty of stuff) and, if you don't have any printed copy, just make up: the hints given on FRCS are usually more than adequate to make up any place you like; c) draw the maps of the places in which encounter will take place (these will probably require handwork, because they'll often have to meet your ideas for the battle, strategies and hazards) d) have a number from three to X of random maps (again, this site is full of them, downloadable for free) to cover unforeseen places (have one of each terrain: a forest, a mansion, a tower, an underground caves or series of tunnels, a dungeon, a tomb....). The rest you can conver with little effort: most of the time you won't have to map the road the PCs are walking on: just describe it. If the PCs' actions lead to an encounter you didn't plan, don't worry: you can see if one of the "emergency maps" fits the place or you can draw it quickly on a squared paper (never start playing without a pile of it!) 1 square = 5 ft.
LeeAlucard 03-07-08, 08:34 AM	Remember, the percentage of people that players interact with over a month while in a city is inversely proportional to its population and directly proportional to the amount of time they spend there. Don't stat out everybody in town; just a few people you think will be important to your players.
Loftower 03-07-08, 11:36 AM	Your own material can be better than any published material. It doesn’t need to be more detailed, however. The published material has to work for almost any DM; your material only has to work for you. So spend most of your prep time on the things that you do not want to “wing” while actually playing. If you don’t like your improvised descriptions, write more descriptive material. If it takes too long to put together an on-the-fly encounter, detail your encounters in advance. [My standard DM Without An Agenda post:] Don’t create a plot line or BBEG per se. Instead work on power blocks with agendas. A power block can be a single creature (the ogre eats travelers in the mountain pass), cliché adventure targets (evil wizard wants to take over the world), or be very large (like a kingdom or religion). Build some throw-away stuff. The two that you will need the most of are NPCs of all types and naturally occurring creatures. (“Natural” depends heavily on what you want your game world to be like. Don’t limit it to creatures that occur in real life unless you’re going for a realistic feel.) Have at least as many neutral or somewhat friendly NPCs as unfriendly NPCs. You need to populate a world and most of it will not be hostile (unless you’re trying to do a hellish campaign). Be ready with rumors, or even eye-witness accounts of various things above. Someone may have heard that an ogre eats travelers in the pass, for instance. The players (and PCs) don’t have to care. It’s just there. Make certain that most of the rumors and at least some of the eye-witness accounts are wrong in some meaningful way. (If they are all entirely wrong then your players will learn to ignore them.) For example, my group heard rumors of a giant chicken that was killing people in the hills outside of town. What was really there was a group of bipedal lizards who left footprints that looked like giant chickens. The players will start to latch onto something that they want to pursue. Use your pre-fabricated material to get that started, then fill in the details a few sessions ahead of where they are. Don’t forget to replace your stock material as well, so that you will have more stuff to work from when they turn in an unexpected direction. The PCs will define the BBEG by opposing that power block, whatever it is. Play your power blocks. Have them do the things that they ought to do based on who they are and what they know. Do not have them do things based on how much it will challenge the PCs or based on what you know, but they wouldn’t know. Remember that their information is probably no better than the rumors that the PCs are getting. One example of this is that an evil leader picked a crucial character in the adventuring group to single out for destruction (in this case he thought it was the party’s only spell-caster). He built a statue of this PC to show his minions who to key on. Obviously, this became a very tough adventure for that PC, but when he got to the statue and understood what it meant, the player was very flattered. If you can do it, keep time. Don’t have things start when the PCs arrive. They begin when they begin. They follow their course unless the PCs do something to change it. If they PCs do something to change it, make certain that it changes. As much as possible, make this clear to the players. They need to understand that they are influencing the world, not just bouncing around in it. This will make them feel empowered and engaged. If, in my world, the trolls are about to attack the town and the PCs fail to figure it out, the town still gets attacked and very likely destroyed. It is also possible for the PCs to find out about the attack _before_ my intended hook and maybe prevent the attack with very little effort. My players all know this so they take more of an interest in plot hooks. To me, this is the acceptable alternative to railroading – they don’t have to play the adventures that I made, but if they don’t they have to live with the consequences. This also gets them to jump on rumors that may be just rumors. I like to make some adventures that fit into the Grand Scheme, and some that have little bearing on it. By mixing them up the players can never really tell how much they need to be paying attention. Most of my adventures fit into the puzzle in some way, however and none of them exist in a vacuum. If there is a dangerous encounter on a roadway, people on both ends of the road will know about it (at least fear to travel) and commerce will be affected. If there is a tribe of marauding goblins in the woods the game animals will be scarce. If the PCs clear the road, commerce will resume (and prices will likely drop). If the PCs decimate the goblins, they will start to see forest animals come back. If they do both, then hunters and/or poachers may harvest the animals in the forest to sell their pelts/meat/whatever at the other end of the road. This type of campaign can feel very natural, almost never smacks of railroading, and generates a lot of interest in players. The downside is that it takes more work. If you’re like me, and love writing the background, that’s not really a downside. Probably the most difficult part to learn when you run an adventure like this, though, is to discipline yourself. You are going to work on things that the players will never see. Get over it. I bet you’ll learn to love it.
FerretOfTheUnderdark 03-07-08, 07:24 PM	All of you guys have provided me with tons of awesome ideas! Thank you all a bunch and if anyone else comes along wanting to leave their ideas I would like to hear those as well. *Runs off to the drawing board* Thanks again. :D
Etarnon 03-07-08, 10:13 PM	Let us know how it goes. Welcome to the life.
pmurray@bigpond.com 03-08-08, 07:22 AM	Don't map cities unless you absolutely have to. If the city is very large and/or confusing, have the players roll a very low DC Gather Information or Knowledge Local check (like... 8, or less. Agreed. The worst part of a CRPG, the bit that sucks, is walk walk walk walk around the map to get to the interesting bit. You don't want to subject your players or yourself to that. I ran a short adventure with no map at all. Encounter 1 was "players trying to cross the swamp - 2 giant crocs" and I just drew up some little islands on our battlemat and said "those are the bits you can walk on". Sorted.
FerretOfTheUnderdark 03-12-08, 01:37 AM	So I dunno wether to start a new thread or continue with this one, i don't wanna flood the boards so i'll stick with this one but if any of you think i should make a new thread please say so. How is a DM supposed to account for the oodles and oodles of rules present in DnD. I spend hours pouring over rules compendium, the core books, FRCS and various other works and find myself forgetting pieces of what i've read only to go back and read it again then to go on to read some new rule or way to adjudicate. It seems i'm constantly studying rules and I don't wanna spend time at the table looking through books because i've had games like that before and it's no fun for the players or for myself. Any solutions fellow DMs?
Elsord0 03-12-08, 02:17 AM	just keep playing. The more you experience the more you will remember. Just try your best to adjudicate with what you know. If it seems important look it up. Sometimes you will read through something and then realize you have been doing it wrong. Oh well. Now you know and you've just gained a little more knowledge.
MrWildman 03-12-08, 03:07 AM	Hello and welcome, FerretOfTheUnderdark (cool name). I too began my D&D experience behind the DM's screen. I still remember my first time as a player, I put so much pressure on myself to be a pleasant player. Sigh, memories. :D Anyway, I also share your, dare I say, compulsion for completeness. It used to drive me nuts! I'd spend hours flipping through rulebooks (Wilderness Survival Guide!) and handwritten notes, only to realize I've made an NPC of Field Marshal-level competence to man the local tollbridge. Plus, you must have noticed by now that the players will always choose some perverse direction that utterly derails your plans. This is a natural law, like thermodynamics (more like entropy, really, if you think about it). They will ignore the grand cathedral with the detailed back-history of every engraved saint to run into the old abandoned grain silo you just put there to cast shadows. Or they will brush off the meeting with the mysterious woman who strongly resembles The Eternally Dying Princess to hang out with Dusty the Goat-Boy. So here's what I do. You mentioned the Zelda Games (Gorons Rule!). Consider how the games are assembled. Widely-separated clumps of intensely-detailed action, with vaguely-defined periods of travel between them. Nodes and Paths. So you create small, self-contained areas. A village and a bit of surrounding forest. A small town. Castle and outlying bastions. A temple. These are your "adventure nodes" where your detailed stuff is. Connect them with overland movement or travel time of some kind, your "paths". That way you can react to your players' unexpected decisions by creating a new path, one leading to the new destination. After they've done whatever they felt was so very important there you can put them on another new path, either back to where you originally intended or a new direction altogether. This way you can have your intricately-sculpted encounter locations and have the freedom to interject new material. It helps a lot. Gotta go rest my fingers. Peace.