Hi Everyone,
I used to play and DM D&D in the 1980's using First edition rules. I hadn't even looked at the game since about 1992 until recently. I have a group of friends who have gotten into the game over the last few months who have been pushing me to start a campaign. Reluctantly, I decided to give it a shot.
Back in the 80's, I played modules B1 through B4 a lot. I thought the dungeon layouts and concepts were fun, but the stories were a little dry at times. Especially B1 which was designed as a generic dungeon. My goal is to take these four adventures, string them together with an over-arcing story and modernize the campaign. I'm sure their are some great adventures written over the last 25 years, but I want to stick with my version of these classics.
I chose Mystara as my campaign setting and read all relevant Gazetteers from the pre Wrath of the Immortals setting. I came up with a story that I'm proud of and should be interesting to my players who like Game of Thrones type intrigue. and finally I bought the Fifth Edition books and learned the modern game (which seem infinitely more streamlined and enjoyable than the rules I used to play under).
What I need is help with presentation. When I played, we had someone map the dungeon with graph paper. We never used any type of miniatures either. Combat went something like: "Okay, there are two orcs left crouching behind a stone wall", and the PC's just visualized it. The players I'm dealing with are a few years younger than me and I want to keep their interest and attention.
I have my setting, my story, and I know how to play the game. But how should I actually run the game visually?
As a test, I scanned the B1 map and used a paint program to cover the entire dungeon with a layer of black. Any time a player would go into a room, I just erased that section of black on the top layer revealing the room they had discovered. It seems a bit inelegant though, and unless I erase precisely, I reveal secret doors.
I see that there are programs like donjon, Roll20 and maptools. I'm pretty good with technology, but honestly I don't want to put weeks into learning a program if it's not worth it. I have a laptop that I can connect to my tv if I want to broadcast a map or combat situation to the players, but I'm not sure if this is what DMs do.
I guess what i'm saying is, even though I know the rules of the game, I would be interested in hearing ideas on how to make my campaign visually interesting to a bunch of people who would never dream of mapping themselves. Or how I should visually run combat situations.
If it seems like I'm a little clueless on this subject, it's because I am!
Thanks for reading
A grid and minis are good for running combat, but definitely aren't nesscicary. I like using a white board. I can make a general sketch of the combat area, but don't have to worry so much on scale and getting everything perfect. It's just to give the players a general idea of positioning in the space. Of course you can do away with it completely. Just make sure you're re-setting the scene before each player takes their turn. That way you're really the only one that absolutely needs to know what's going on 100% of the time.
I would suggest to have a player map the same way, just generally, not to super scale and detail. It makes things go much faster.
If you don't mind puting in a little work you can make your own maps etc from cardboard and hot glue. I am not a crafty person and using youtubers DMScotty and DMGinfo's ideas it was easy. Then you can just lay out the rooms as the pc's explore. I would also recommend Reaper Bones minis. Very inexpensive and I always liked the visualzation of mini's. 
ok, here's what i noticed
first of all, the super low level encounters have way, way more hit points, like triple or quadruple, but the dice damage steps (d8-10-12-2d8-3d6-etc.) are much lower, and virtually all monsters have damage bonuses.I'm talking things like orcs, kobolds, goblins, trolls, ogres, etc., all the level 1-5 encounters you probably remember.
Well, what this really means is large numbers of these creatures are going to massacre the players. Armor Classes are really bad in 5th edition for almost all classes, and to make matters worse, even a gimpy level 1 encounter has the same THAC0 as a 5th or 6th level Fighter. To make matters worse, what used to be an armor class quest toward -5 or -10, is now more like an armor class quest toward AC 0 or AC -4. Put another way, 7 out of 8 player characters are going to get hit on almost every single attack unless they deliberately dump a lot of resources into Armor Class in ways we used to call rules raping.
My starting adventure for players found them to nearly get annihilated by a number of orcs of the lowest level, and they struggled against half as many of what we used to call 0 level NPCs.
Because the enemies take like 2-3 times longer to die, the players will lose track on how many are alive, wounded, and dead, even if you tell them. 5th edition therefore creates a struggle for people without maps, if there are more than 5 enemies. They will also lose track of what is going on if there are more than about 5 NPCs interacting, largely because the initiative is very active for one person at a time. People's turns don't tend to get skipped and the addition and tactical nature of movement means one person's actions takes 2-3 times longer than usual.
Actions tend to be less effective too. While low level creatures in AD&D had to roll 15-17 or higher on a d20, saving throws are based on the caster, so the Difficulties begin at between 11 and 13 for most people, and rise to about 14-15 at level 4-5. This means even the weakest things in the game have a 50-50 chance of blowing off your spell caster effects, vs. a 15-25% chance (which is certain failure for most).
Swarms are used instead of individual creatures sometimes, like swarms of rats, snakes, bugs, etc. I ran a swarm of scorpions and it was just brutal. For some reason, swarms don't take AOE damage any worse than single target spell effects, and are immune or resistant to almost everything.
So here's an example of what I'm talking about:
Specialized fighter, 18/00 strength, +4 to hit, +8 to damage, 3/2 attacks, d10 against an orc, is instant death on every hit.
Same fighter concept in 5e. +5 to hit, +3 to damage, d10 to damage, 1 attack, takes 3-4 hits to kill one orc... but the orc hits back
d12 +3, and kills the fighter in round 1 or 2. Capice?
I am running LMoP right now and, even though we play at the table, we use a combination of Fantasy Grounds and a flip mat with wet erase markers and miniatures. The players like to sketch out what they see on the screen and to use miniatures.
If you are making your own maps or scanning them in, you could use something like Realm Works or FG to display maps on a screen using fog of war. You can drop tokens on the map for the PCs and NPCs. If you are just using the basics of the tool, then it wouldn't take much to get up to speed.
I own both FG and Realm Works. I bought FG because I was lazy and it had the LMoP adventure already available. However, before (5e and LMoP for) FG were available, I began inputting it into Realm Works. Realm Works is a very nice tool. I haven't run a client instance of Realm Works yet to use with fog of war, but I would imagine that it works similar to FG.
Since you are creating your own adventure, something like Realm Works would probably work better. It is much nicer for entering your own content and it can auto-link content together, which makes navigating the content really nice. It doesn't have the 5e rules, but if you are just using it for displaying maps and tokens on maps, then that shouldn't matter. For our "at the table" campaign, that is most of what I am using FG for.
shintashi wrote:
Danny - i think what i was saying is in AD&D, because things died so fast, and so often in the first casting, or hit, players didn't struggle to keep track of the enemies in their imaginations. So back then, a group of 11 goblins was really just a burning hands spell plus 2 or 3 rounds from the fighter and ranger. Multi round opponents were given more Gravitas, although there used to be this 'go kill dozens of giants' adventure.
Also, 5th edition makes heavy use of tactical movement, to step out of melee range, avoid a fire breath, or get into full cover, and some people are really good at it. Makes maps way more important. OP can still run 5e without maps, but he will have to cut down the number of monsters per encounter. AD&D rounds used to be 1 minute long, meaning if you ran away... well, you would be like several blocks away. It played out very differently.
My group and I have tried a wide variety of map styles. We've done marker boards, we've done graph paper, we've done the projector screen. But the one thing we keep coming back to due largely to it's simplicity and utility (if not necessarily it's aesthetic) is legos. Yeah, I know it sounds really weird. But we get one of those big baseplates, a lot of different sizes for walls (we always use yellow, but that's just us, you could use anything) and then a whole slew of different colored single pegs for PCs and enemies. Each single peg represents a five-foot square and there are so many different colors and such that we can have a large number of both PCs and different types of monsters all at the same time. Each one visually distict enough to remember (yeah all the dark blues are orcs with shields and spears while the light blues are faster, club-wielding orcs, etc) and yet reusable in multiple encounters. And we don't have to deal with the problem of storage space for a thousand different miniatures. Legos are all very compact. We ordered a bunch right off the website (you can order them individually or use their program to "make" what you want and they'll send you those pieces) just a lot of different colors and such. We haven't used anything else since.
Tiarn wrote:
Mika-Oba wrote:
As for presentation, the old-school "theater of the mind" still works just fine. Even as a fan of gridded combat, I prefer it for simple combat, exploration, and roleplay encounters. If you have the tv/laptop set up and are using it already, then getting some photos or artwork to match the setting they're in, great. If your doing so would distract you or the players from the game, though, don't.
One step up from pure theater of the mind is some random collection of doodads to show number and relative positioning of enemies. These pennies are goblins, this quarter is the hobgoblin war leader, the PCs are various colored bottlecaps, this cheese puff is an upturned table the archers are crouching behind, this 3 of clubs is a raised platform, this red d4 is a campfire, etc. Doesn't have to be exact, in fact spending additional time trying to make it exact would be detracting from the game. As enemies die, remove the piece that represents them, so the players all can see how many are left. For areas where movement would be limited, try to hand-wave it, and be flexible on what could and couldn't happen.
For memorable or complicated fights, however, such as the square-off against the Big Bad Evil Guy, I recommend preparing a battle-mat ahead of time, and having some minis. Sheets of graph paper with black marker, taped together, can work; gridded presentation paper and Gaming Paper also do well if you want to invest some. Permanent on paper like this can also be good if you intend on running the adventure multiple times in the future; fold it up and tuck it away in a folder next to the module. Sketched out areas on a reusable surface, such as a dry-erase board or wet-erase vinyl mat can work too, though always keep in mind what type of marker to use on what surface, and don't let it sit too long. Minis can be lego minifigs, painted metal figures, prepainted plastic minis, or just some printed paper cut out and folded over (google 'printable d&d minis' for tons).
If you're going to use detailed gridded combat, the most important thing in my opinion is have it ready to go ahead of time. Tension should be high as the heroes burst through the door, spells and sword at the ready, nearby captives scream for freedom, and Throg the Usurper gloatingly yells, "You have fallen for my trap, now I have you right where I want you! Now I shall stare at you menacingly for the next 30 minutes while someone draws out a detailed map!"
As for other advice, agree that low level combat can be swingy, especially 1st, when resources are at a minimum. First level is a great time for setting up roleplay encounters, exploration, and puzzles. Small groups of weak enemies that show off some combat options, like ranged attacks behind cover, aid another and defensive fighting, or just mock combat with the village militia. Especially for players with little hands-on experience with the system, a potentially deadly combat where they won't be killed (such as highwaymen who just knock out their victims and take their coins, but are reluctant to cross the line into murder). The way the xp curve goes, it's not uncommon for level 1 to only last 1 session before they hit 2, and 2 to only last one session until they hit 3.
Many fights in DnD (even in 2nd edition, 3rd edition, and probably also 5th edition), can be done just fine without illustrating the battle. But it kind of depends how much focus you want to put on strategic positioning and the environment.
If the players encounter a couple of dire rats, you can describe that fight just fine, without the need for miniatures. For larger battles, it may be useful to draw the room, and illustrate the positions of the players. Whether you want to use actual miniatures for this, or use simple pawns, thats entirely up to you.
As for revealing a map, what I usually do is print out the map on paper, and then cover pieces of it with bits of plywood. I make sure that there's some white space in between a room and a secret door, so I don't reveal it by accident. And thats all there is to it. My dungeon maps are usually on A4, which is too small to place miniatures. But if a fight occurs, I simply grab some dungeon tiles, and recreate the room to scale.
Mika-Oba wrote:
Thanks for all of the suggestions! I think I'll let the players map themselves since that's still acceptable. With me being new to a lot of the rules, my hands will be too full to try and project things from my laptop. Maybe in the future. I like all of the miniatures I'm seeing, but I have zero experience in painting them and don't want to spend most of my time preparing polished minis of kobolds, orcs, etc. I think I'll stick with paper minis on battle mats that I will prepare ahead of time for now and see how that feels.
I'm glad you guys mentioned the degree of difficulty difference in fighting monsters between 1e and 5e. I probably would've overrun my party on the fiirst encounter. I'll also scale down any magic items found in the 1e modules. Any other major differences I should be aware of?
Thanks again for all of you responses. If I feel confident in my DM skills, I will probably move to the computer mapping in the future.
You definitely want to read up on all the actions that players can take during combat. Especially things such as flanking, cover and grappling are important to know as a DM. Combat has become a lot more detailed since 1st edition I presume. I've only played 2nd and 3rd edition. But even in 2nd edition I was surprised to find many of the combat actions from 3rd edition completely missing. So the difference with 1st edition could only be bigger. Don't feel daunted by these rules though. While they add complexity, they also make combat so much more interesting and fun.
I've never bothered with painting miniatures myself. But fortunately there are a lot of prepainted miniatures. The latest batch by WizKids doesn't have a very good paintjob in my opinion, they look a bit sloppy. But there are plenty of older miniatures that look just fine. Pathfinder also sells dozens of these packages with random minis. Of course it's a bit of a scam, because you'll only end up with dozens of doubles that you don't need. But at many conventions you can often buy prepainted miniatures seperately, for a very low price. Miniatures look nice, but for tactical purposes, your cartboard cutouts will do just fine.