Last thursday we started playing D&D. That 'we' consist of two experienced players, 2 newbie-players, and me, the newbie-DM-without-any-D&D-experience. Don't ask me why they trust me to be a proper DM, I do write plot for larp and that's why they say. But D&D is not just the plot, it is 3 books filled with rules and stuff and it is math-with-dice and calculations and more rules.
Because I have no experience in D&D we agreed that starting with the starter-set would probably be wise. So, we all had fun, we had the encounter and the dungeon and halfway the dungeon I remembered there were supposed to be goblins in there... but fortunately they came home about 3 seconds after I thought of that and the fun was enhanced. The players managed to get themselves flushed out of the cave. Twice.
The players told me afterwards that it was fun, they look forward to the next evening when they can continue they cave-adventuring and they did not know I strugled with the rules as much as I actually did.
Now while we have not finished the first chapter of the starter set and will be busy for some time with this adventure I am thinking about 'what's next'. Because, what is next?
I don't think I want to invent a whole world from scratch, I think I will just take what is offered, probably translate the names of cities and vollages to something Dutch-sounding. But I do want to create my own adventures and campaigns.
It is just that I have never done that for tabletop roleplay .
How do you start? Where do you begin?
Writing is a personal thing, but I am curious on how you guys work it out.
Since this is a new edition i think a lot of people are struggling with the rules. I still do and I have been playing and DMing since second Edition.
You can jump them into the world of Faerun (the setting where the starter set is set in and the Horde of the dragon queen and rise.)
You can look into older editions of faerun to get maps and other things if you wish. You wont have to start a new world.
I would suggest Reading the DMG and PHB front to back. Get a general idea of things. Focus mostly on the combat and adventuring chapters of the PHB.
What is great about DND especially this edition is the GM can make up what ever they want. Nothing is set in stone and up for inturpritation.
Look in to the Horde of the dragon queen adventure moduel. Ask your players if they would be willing to start over and make new characters to start a new advanture after everyone has got use to the new rules.
Or you could possibly adjust the levels and power of the monsters (though being a new DM it would be quite hard)
Also in the DMG it gives ideas for adventures helps you with dungeon building and the like.
Thank you for your answer and advise 
We use the prefab-characters for now, so that the new players could get an idea of what you do with a chararter, learn what the skills are and experience playing a personality. And when the mine-tales are done my players will make their own characters and we will make a fresh start where all can be whoe they want. I will not follow with the Hoarde of the Dragon Queen as one of my players is doing that with another group. She also did the mine with that group but for starters-sake agreed to undergo it again
and Respect for her, because she is actually capable of not meta-gaming, all actions fit with the character and the in-game available knowledge...
I think I will take some of the available maps and stuff, and I am reading the DMG. I personally think that rules for roleplay are also guidelines, roleplay may change a situation completely and the reffing that goes with it. I think that will be just the same for tabletop and live-action roleplay.
When I write for larp (in a team) we start with one idea, usually a question, something like 'what if a necromancer accidently brings a great and powerfull long-dead loony-psycho warlord back to life instead of creating another undead skeleton' and then we will think about implications, consequences, the necromancer will most likely be dead, killed by his 'creation' who will have collected minions by now, blah blah and so on
We usually write per event, because the whole turn of events might change in 1 weekend and we have half a year between weekends. Larp-players are notoriously great at doing exactly what we did not think of, and ignoring plot that is screeming for attention. But that is because they experience it 'in the flesh', having a letter lying on the table in a room full people and props is less conspicuous than when a DM says that amongst other things there is a letter on the table.
What I am wondering about is how do you write for D&D campaign/adventure? not just imagination/rules-wise but also the practical stuff.
Do you write the adventure start to finish, preparing for a lot of evenings/afternoons in a row or just an overview-story and preparing per evening how it continues? I can imagine something like you write for the plot to go left and the players decide to take a right turn, do you prepare a storyline for left and right turns? so to speak
I know it is different for everyone, and I will have to find my own way, but as I said, I am just curious
Ninja_Ferret wrote:
What I would do is start with what world you want it to be in. Get some ideas even make up your own (there are world map making programs if you want or find one that is already made like faerun or dragonlance) and go from there.
You can write a handful of plot points at once like small littel hooks to figure out what the players want to go to (have like a nights with of gaming or battles to get them started) and go from there.
A necromancer building up a large army might be a good start. Reasons why he is building this army? Revenge on a town that outed him? is he trying to become a Lich?
Do the players have to hunt down a magical item deep in the mountain of the dwarfs in the lost caverns they the dwarves dont want ot venture into due to the monsters there?
You can start with one big plot point. then build a handfull of smaller ones that lead the characters that way. So you dont have to build everything at once and just a sesson or two at a time. Its not much different from writing a larp plot point.
Lots of players in DnD and Larp are notorious about trying to ignore plot points and adventures.
Had my group last night try to abandon the convoy they were on following the cult or wanted to just kill them all. Had to make mention that it would be bad thing and they need to keep following them to know where it is all going.
Ah, players be players then, yay! the need to improvise often makes the best plot on the spot
and in DnD there is an unlimited amount of NPC's available
From what I experienced during our first evening I think my players like the roleplay-part a lot, and a healthy mix of combat and puzzles.
Starting with finding a part of a world where I'd like to begin is a good start, getting myself acquainted with landscape, towns and imagining what the people and/or other creatures living there would be like. And let it grow from there, the big plot will arrive in my head soon enough, probably somewhere halfway the DMG because that is stuffed with inspiration
I for one, am hoping against hope that WOTC will come out with a module very soon which picks right up where LMoP left off, or which is at least targeted at 5th-level characters. Another option is to take the 5th-level characters and jump right into the middle of the Horde of the Dragon Queen adventure. There have been quite a few threads on these forums with advice on how best to effect this transition. If you do a Google search, you can probably find them.
We will not continue with Horde of the Dragon Queen because one of my players is doing that with another group
and I like writing adventures a lot so another prefab-story is not what I had in mind
good to know I can stick with what I know, I do not want to create a world just right now, I am just getting to know this! But in time, perhaps though I would start with some basics, a small area and some general rules for metafysics and magic an such, who knows?
But I will probably be perfectly happy with the DnD world as it is presented bij wizards, it has al the fun stuff and great monsters and all I have to do is weave it into a good tale to tell the grandchildren
and I have to get myself a DM-screen, because it seems like my dice favor the monsters....
Leugren wrote:
Leugren wrote:
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