-What if the players stray so ridiculously far from the "planned" path that the story becomes impossible to complete?
-How do I intricately outline something I might never finish, let alone play?
-How the heck does one make Level 1 encounters interesting...and not repeated skirmishes with kobolds and goblins?
-How do you write adventures? Do you create the encounters first? The dungeon layout? And how the heck do you keep it from getting boring?
-And, lastly: how do you make the world-building parts not mind-numbingly dull?
Once again: complete noob DM here. Any help is appreciated.
I'm a complete newbie when it comes to DMing (done it once or twice, but that's all). I keep wanting to write an entire campaign, but the problem is...how? Problems keep coming up.
Well, that's a lot of questions. Let's take it one step at a time.
-What if the players stray so ridiculously far from the "planned" path that the story becomes impossible to complete?
If your story is compelling, the hope is that your players will want to follow it. If they go off in another direction, you can try to lead them back, but if they continue on their own way, then you need to just accept that your adventure won't happen as you'd initially planned.
To this end, I offer two pieces of advice:
1. Don't plan so heavily that your campaign becomes a burden to you.
If you over-plan your campaign, you give your players too narrow a focus to follow. It's best to start off with multiple gneeral ideas and see which way the players want to go. As they express interest in one of the ideas you've dangled at them, you can develop that one more fully and leave the rest to another time.
2. Be ready to recycle.
If you have developed a dungeon, and your players show absolutely NO interest in exploring it, don't despair. File that dungeon away and go with what the players are interested in, but don't forget what you created. Do they head to a tower instead of a dungeon? See if you can't recycle some of the dungeon rooms into your tower. Or just save the whole adventure and run it for them whole cloth later on, perhaps with some upgrades to the monsters.
-How do I intricately outline something I might never finish, let alone play?
As I said above, don't do that in the first place. ;) Keep things general until your players show that they want to know more. If you dangle three adventure hooks at them, like a goblin-infested ruin, a field of barrows with undead, and a chance to escort a trade mission through bandit territory, jot down some outlines, but don't flesh out anything fully. Perhaps write one good encounter for each locale so that you have something to throw at them, but save the real planning til they commit to one of them.
The same goes for your game world. Only develop what you need immediately in detail. The rest can be vague outlines until you need it. You might develop an idea of what lies over the horizon, if only to give the PCs a place to come from before they got to point A, but there's no need to write a huge treatise on the burial rites of the dwarves if there isn't a large dwarven community near your campaign starting point.
-How the heck does one make Level 1 encounters interesting...and not repeated skirmishes with kobolds and goblins?
Just because the PCs are low level doesn't mean that you can't throw some cool battles at them. With the new encounter building advice from 4E, even skirmishes with kobolds and goblins can be exciting. Use terrain. Mix in a few traps.
If you don't want to go with all goblins or kobolds, add some oddball monsters like fell taints into the mix, or have the goblins have pet wolves, or what have you. Use the scaling rules to make less powerful versions of monsters you find more interesting.
-How do you write adventures? Do you create the encounters first? The dungeon layout? And how the heck do you keep it from getting boring?
I personally come up with a concept first. Why is the adventure there? What do I want to accomplish with it, other than entertain my players? Then I look through the Monster Manual for creatures that fit the theme and flavor of the adventure. Once I have that, I sketch out a few ideas for interesting terrain and situations. Then I draw a dungeon map to link them and fill in any blanks. Once that's done, I'll look it over to make sure it still fits my theme and what I wanted to accomplish. If not, I'll go back and tweak.
As for not making it boring...well...I don't find it boring, so I'm not sure how to answer that. Iguess I'd say don't try to do too much in one sitting. If you draw the map, leave it for a bit, then come back and write a few encounters. Make it fun for yourself. You may be the DM, but you're supposed to have a good time, too.
-And, lastly: how do you make the world-building parts not mind-numbingly dull?
Again, I have no way to answer this. I love building my worlds, finding the stories that make the world live for me, and that I hope will make it live for my players. If you find you don't enjoy this at all, then why do it? Use the Nentir Vale from the DMG as your setting, or use the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or another published setting. These settings are popular for a reason...they're good settings that you can take in your own direction to tell the story you want to tell.
Once again: complete noob DM here. Any help is appreciated.
No worries. We were all new once.
- Andy
I'm currently running a campaign and already thinking ahead and penning down ideas for my next one, so hopefully I can help a bit, although I'm sure that other, more experienced DMs will also give you some great advice.-What if the players stray so ridiculously far from the "planned" path that the story becomes impossible to complete?
I think this depends on the nature of your story. Does the quest involve something inevitable/that other groups are working for? In that case, you can push the players back towards the path by revealing hidden connections between random sidequest a and the main quest. For instance, I once played a game where the PCs were chasing down some bandits and had not thought about the main quest (a hungry mist was creeping across the countryside, swallowing up whole towns) for a while. So I had the bandit's hideout be in some old ruins, and right by where the boss bandit's body lay, I put a carving of a similar mist, sparking interest in the main quest again. Or, just do something like Majora's Mask. You can run around however much you want, that Moon is still going to hit after 3 days, and you can see the signs, so... for the sake of self preservation, you should do something about it... so back to the main quest you go!
I guess in the end... don't let them get hopelessly far from the main quest and you should be okay :D And if they do get derailed, think of a creative way to relate the side quest back to the main one. The biggest lesson I had to learn was to just let the story happen, and plan the world in detail, but the specific adventures as they went.
-How do I intricately outline something I might never finish, let alone play?
Honestly, I dont. I come up with a list of interesting locales and possible adventures, pick a few for the first few sessions, flesh those out, and then see where the PCs go from there. In my mind, when making the campaign, its more important to create a general 'feel' for the place, then, as you figure out what your PCs are interested in, flesh out those points more. Obviously, if you have some evil cult which is going to play a major role in the main quest, flesh that out, and flesh out some locations: A crypt could just as easily hide some zombies, some bandits, or be a gathering place for the evil cult... each of them is going to possibly use that crypt, so I can detail the crypt with ease, and add the people later.
An example: In my upcoming campaign, the world has run out of iron ore, and so iron is obtained from anchient battlefields by melting down and recasting the swords and armor of old. Depending on when and if the PCs become interested in it, I have a few possible adventures:
Early Heroic: Defend camp from nomadic raiders (kobolds and the like)
Late Heroic: The PCs are sent to/stumble upon a mine being attacked by the ghosts of the soldiers who are upset that their weapons are being taken. Adventure ensues.
Early Paragon: The PCs are sent by a rival mining company to take the battlefield for the company.
So... three possible adventures, all in one location that I can picture very clearly in my head. In general, pick the places you're interested in fleshing out early, but dont create a full adventure until you/your PCs are ready.
-How the heck does one make Level 1 encounters interesting...and not repeated skirmishes with kobolds and goblins?
Well, level 1 does boil down to a lot of fairly boring enemies, but you can mix things up with interesting terrain. Have a lot of kobolds advance over a geyser field and let the PCs do checks to shove them into the geysers to kill them instead of attacking them... have the goblin archers up on a ledge so that the melee PCs have to run around to a ladder to get to them, but the ranged PCs can just return fire.
-How do you write adventures? Do you create the encounters first? The dungeon layout? And how the heck do you keep it from getting boring?
It really depends on the adventure. In general, I start with an interesting idea (say... Gladatorial Combat), think about how the current plotline (The characters are trying to get past the devils that control the upper levels of the city) and start coming up with ideas (The leader of the devils loves to watch gladiators, and will emerge from his fortress if the PCs offer to fight one of his champions in the arena. One PC will fight, while the rest can use the distraction to assassinate the leader and throw the devils into disarray, allowing passage through the city). I then come up with a few alternative paths (they could try and fight through the city, they could try to assassinate the leader in his fortress, they could try to negotiate with the leader for passage by killing his enemies in the lower city...) Then I find some monsters that fit the parts I need (the leader, the champion, the enemy, the grunts walking around the city), put together some basic encounter groups, figure out the skill challenges (bargaining with the devil lord, influencing the mob to help the Gladiator PC), and wait and see what the PCs do.
-And, lastly: how do you make the world-building parts not mind-numbingly dull?
Err... Start well in advance, dont burn youself out, and dont try to build every last little part of the world... come up with some great ideas, think up a great main plot, plan out a few major locales where your PCs are going to spend a bunch of their time, come up with a list of names and backup NPCs/towns/encounters in case the PCs go off into left field, and then hold on and guide your PCs through your world
I'm a complete newbie when it comes to DMing (done it once or twice, but that's all). I keep wanting to write an entire campaign, but the problem is...how? Problems keep coming up.
First off, congrats on taking on the role of DM, you won't regret it. It is, in my humble opinion, the most fun you can have at a RPG table.
My first piece of advice is to encourage you to read the 4e DMG cover to cover. In my opinion it is the first DMG that is fun to read this way. It has lots of really great advice, and for the most part it doesn't get bogged down in little things. There is a lot of great advice in there. If you can't read the whole thing (certainly understandable) I'd draw your attention to the Adventure, Campaign, and DM Toolbox chapters. Now for your questions:
-What if the players stray so ridiculously far from the "planned" path that the story becomes impossible to complete?
You can always help get them back on the "planned" path if that is important to you, but remember that sometimes players will resent this (it is commonly referred to as "railroading"). You do this by putting encounters or events in their way that tend to lead them back towards your planned path. You should be very careful doing this though, you don't want your players to feel like they have no control. Rather than being heavy handed, try and present situations and encounters that encourage them to CHOOSE your path, rather than be FORCED down it.
In my opinion a better method is to explore the options they choose, and modify your plans to fit what the players choose, rather than forcing them back to your path. If you planned for the evil cult to be based in the cave outside town, and your players are more interested in the dockside warehouses, just move the cult into one of the abandoned warehouses on the dockside. Modify your maps a bit to look like a building, or heck you can even stick a subterranean cave path hidden in the warehouse that leads to the cave. Now their choice still leads them into conflict with the cultists, thus keeping them engaged with your story, but they feel as though their choices are meaningful. Alternately, you can leave the cultists in the cave, but have clues in the warehouse that point to the cave.
-How do I intricately outline something I might never finish, let alone play?
I'm not sure what you mean by "might never finish", but if you mean that the players may never go the way you plan, you are correct. That is why it is really important to start small. You don't need to map the whole world, with labels for where every race is, where every major city is, with lists of all the notable NPCs, ect. Just sketch out their starting town, the notable NPCs there, and your first adventure ideas. If you want to have a campaign arc (an overarching story that will be the focus of the campaign) then be general, not specific. Leave lots of room for where things will change as the PCs effect the plot. Basically, outline how events will occur if the PCs never get involved. Then, as the campaign unfolds and the story progresses, modify it. What will the lead cultist do when he finds out that one of his lairs has been raided. Will he go underground? Will he speed up his timetable, making hasty and foolish decisions? Will he hire thugs to try and kill those responsible? Then note how things are different now that the PCs have disrupted the timeline.
-How the heck does one make Level 1 encounters interesting...and not repeated skirmishes with kobolds and goblins?
There is some really great advice in a post above here. I'd highly recommend the DM Toolbox section of the DMG that suggests how to alter monsters. I'd stress that keeping things interesting can be more than just using different monsters. Find interesting and imaginative scenes for fights, especially if they can offer interesting tactical situations.
-How do you write adventures? Do you create the encounters first? The dungeon layout? And how the heck do you keep it from getting boring?
I hate to keep saying this, but I'd again point you to the Adventure chapter of the DMG. I'm sure other DMs probably have some really great advice here as well. As for keeping it from being boring, that'll take some practice. Allow yourself room to learn and make mistakes. I've designed adventures that I thought were super awesome, only to have the players yawn. Knowing your players goes a long way here. Do they like lots of hack-and-slash monster killing? Then cater to that with lots of interesting combat scenes. Do they like lots of intrigue and diplomacy? This calls for intricate plot webs with skill challenges to navigate. Do they like to explore new and exciting places? Be sure and design your adventures around new and interesting settings. I created a yahoo group for my game, and I ask the players for feedback on there. Try to establish the same communication with your players. If you are already a group of friends they should be very understanding.
-And, lastly: how do you make the world-building parts not mind-numbingly dull?
As I stated above, focus only on what matters. You don't need to know the name of the second cousin of every tavern keeper of a city that the players have never been to before. Focus on the immediate surrounding of the PCs at the start of the campaign. Build outwards as the PCs explore and move around the world.
Once again: complete noob DM here. Any help is appreciated.
Hope some of this helped, and good luck! You are taking a great step by coming to these forums and asking for help. This is a great tool you should take advantage of.
There are actually a goodly number of monsters you can throw at a 1st level party. MM has 15 1st level creatures. All of them will work (OK, riding horse isn't too exciting...). Monsters up to 3rd level should also work fine, just use the encounter building rules so you don't throw too many at the party at once.
Some groups are very tactically skilled and can handle 5 3rd level monsters with no problem, others will need the weaker monsters. You'll have to experiment a bit to find the perfect difficulty for your group. Start out easy and build up if the players seem to want/need more of a combat challenge.
My first 4e group killed a Carrion Crawler at 1st level (level 7 monster) and had plenty of fun with it, so once you have a feel for what they can do monster levels are useful but not the last word in what you can use.
As for mapping out a setting and basic story lines, I will come up with a few paragraphs to describe the world in basic terms. Beyond that maybe a map of the area around their starting point with just general names of things. You can either write a paragraph for each one as you get time or just ad-lib it. Always feel free to change things as long as the characters haven't learned about them yet.
Like earlier posters have said, story arcs are best laid out in general terms. I also pretty much let the players take the driver's seat in terms of what they do. Get the players to come up with some background for their PCs, a short paragraph at least. That is a source of a lot of useful material. It can suggest the location, name, etc of other places (like say where dwarves live). It also usually gives some ideas of the character's basic concerns and motivations.
For example in my current campaign one character's background says she ran away from home to find her boyfriend. I had run a campaign using the same setting a few years ago and there was a character that was in that game who fit the bill. That game ended with him stuck in a dungeon. Now I have a PC who is wanting to find that dungeon pretty badly! For a couple levels she just tried to find out info about where her love had gone. Now she knows, and sure enough they'll be in that dungeon in no time. I can stock that baby up with no fears.
-What if the players stray so ridiculously far from the "planned" path that the story becomes impossible to complete?
I'm partial to sandbox-style campaigns where the party does as they please and I throw monsters and NPCs at them as necessary, but that's more a prestige class of DMing. Have a general concept of what you want the PCs to do, where you want them to go, and who you want htem to fight, and if it's done well they should follow.
Or so the handbooks say.
The inevitability is, more often than not something isn't going to go as planned. If that happens, try to preserve as much of the plot as possible without railroading. Always think of some alternatives should the PCs not enter the dungeon/kill a necessary NPC/etc. It requires some improv, but I've found that when the players come up with the plot as much as the DM does, it turns into a fascinating game for both sides of the table. Of course, your mileage may vary.
-How do I intricately outline something I might never finish, let alone play?
You don't. Outlining things to the letter is a common mistake amongst new DMs, and it generally makes them freeze up when the PCs go awry as mentioned above. The key to good plots is to have a very general outline, but a lot of good details to throw in with whatever happens. The best thing to do for campaigns is to take the major parts involving or having to do with your BBEG or ways to defeat him. Write short, one sentence summaries down in a flowchart style (I go even further and make chapter titles). Add brackets for expected levels during these chapters. Voila. Adventures is the same thing, only draw maps and plan encounters for them. Keep things clear enough to give the players a sense of direction, but keep it open enough that the players don't feel choked.
-How the heck does one make Level 1 encounters interesting...and not repeated skirmishes with kobolds and goblins?
Three words: Strategy and reflavoring. Build your encounters to be different, and add terrain to your rooms. Perhaps add a hallway littered with
Second is reflavoring. We're still talking about the KH campaign, right? Well, Kobolds are small, shifty, and relatively easy to kill. Just like shadows. Make their ranged attacks be a shadowy bolt of necrotic damage or something of the like, and there you go. You could supposedly do the same for goblins. If there's one thing the PCs love, it's interesting (and non OP) monsters. If they've played Kingdom Hearts before, then they'll instantly recognize the shadows and have a good 'awesome' or 'Lol' moment. If they encounter shadows that throw things at you or can coalesce in to a larger heartless? That's awesome.
-How do you write adventures? Do you create the encounters first? The dungeon layout? And how the heck do you keep it from getting boring?
I kind of touched base on this earlier, but you should start with a concept. Who's the BBEG for the session? What are his minions? What sort of conflicts will you have? Where will he dwell? Answer these and create a short outline. I tend to make maps first and encounters later, just because it's easier for me to go back to graph paper and add some length here, add a trapp there, etc.
To keep it from getting boring, throw in some diveristy, preferably something that messes with the PCs heads or is otherwise really devious. One of my favorite traps that occurs at least once in each campaign of mine is the 'Stratego' trap. There's an empty room with a pedestal at the opposite wall. The pedestal holds something especially shiny (usually a sword or weapon, but a realy valuable gem could work too). Surrounding this pedestal is either pit or spike traps. Just like almost everyone surrounds their flag with bombs in Stratego (bonus points if you surround the pedestal with actual bombs). It's a lot of fun for the PCs because they get really cautious in blank rooms, and it's a lot of fun for you as they fumble about trying to make sure they're totally safe.
-And, lastly: how do you make the world-building parts not mind-numbingly dull?
Focus on the general, improvise the specific. Know the name of the Tavern Keeper, the mayor, and maybe a few other folks. Keep a list of names should the PCs decide to randomly stumble into someone. If you've got a computer, keep several windows open with name generators. I reccomend the Red Dragon Inn's. Know what the towns look like and their financial status, but don't outline every home. Likewise, only describe the countryside that you need, not the stuff you don't.
If you're looking at the campaign books for reference, remember: Three-to-six people write those, and each of them have their specialties and have been doing this for a while. You're one person who's just starting out. You don't have to add the entire paragraphs the books give you on the subjects, particularly when you're not looking for a world that you hope to reuse over and over again with multiple people (like my sandbox settings usually are).
Hope this helped, it's a good thing you're doing here.
Give the players reasons why they would want to carry out the plot. Tie it into their character backgrounds. For example in my current game one PC is a dwarf who is searching for his missing father. I established near the beginning of the game that his father may have been captured by the evil bad guy's forces. That character will almost always respond to any plot line that has a chance of furthering his quest. Another character is motivated to find her lover, and again will always respond to any chance to find him. It is pretty easy to put these two characters motivations in line with each other too. A third character's player loves to investigate mysterious things (and has some other background stuff that is useful too). He'll go for any adventure where there is the prospect of learning more about the workings of the setting. Another player gave her character an elaborate family background involving intrigue and spying to help advance her family fortunes. The fifth character's motivations are more along the lines of gaining personal glory and serving her god. Any given plot can hook at least 1 and usually 2 or 3 of them. Once you have a character with a strong motivation to follow the plot the rest will usually play along at least for a while.
The motivations can also be simple self interest. If you want the PCs to investigate some ruins, give out rumours that hint at the great wealth to be had there, or some nice item that might be lost there which would help them with their character's personal motivations.
Another tactic would be "making it personal". The BBEG can mock and insult the party. Maybe the BBEG is a former ally or patron that backstabbed them at some point. A desire for revenge can go a long way!
The BBEG could also just be portrayed as such a great threat that the party really has little choice in the matter. This works good at higher levels where the enemy can be so dangerous that ignoring them would result in the whole world being overrun by evil or something like that.
If the players are willing to go along with it you can also set up a lot of different variations on "you have a mission". It could be as simple as the characters work for or are part of an organization that sends them on specific missions. These could be cloak and dagger ala Mission Impossible, or straightforward episodic exploration/combat ala Stargate SG1.
In terms of avoiding making these kinds of things into railroading, it is mostly a matter of presentation really. As long as the players WANT to do the thing you have plotted out, there is no issue of railroading. If they decide they really don't want to do what you have planned for them, then players may get frustrated by it.
Certain types of situations and settings are likely to lead to players wandering off the prepared path. If they don't percieve progress in attaining their goals for instance they may abandon those goals in search of something more entertaining. Thus it is not a good idea to create a scenario where all the payoff is at the end. The plot should discernably advance at regular intervals (and giving out quest XP never hurts either).
Players who are kept too much in the dark about what is going on will often have problems staying on track. This may be because they simply don't know where you want them to go next, or just because they don't know why they should do X instead of Y. Mystery can be fun, but the most robust plots are usually pretty straightforward in general structure. There is a clear enemy and there is a fairly obvious way to get at that enemy. The enemy can do unexpected things or even later turn out not to be the real enemy. The real situation could even be quite different than the players think, but as long as at each step along the way they are fairly sure how to proceed it will still work.
Players are also a lot more likely to follow along if they are given the impression that their actions are really important and make a difference in the game setting and that they are uniquely positioned to be the ones to do things. At low levels it is enough that they are the only people in the village tough enough to beat up the goblins and they know the village probably won't survive if they don't. Throw in a bit of personal background motivation or one of the other ideas I threw out there above and this plot is probably pretty safe, at least for a short while. Maybe once they save the village then the local baron notices them and they can get sucked into a little bit bigger plot. At this point they're a couple levels up and it starts to be credible that they might be able to help save the whole county from the hobgoblin warchief that sent the goblins in the first place, etc.
Finally there are always sorts of plots that can just seek out the characters no matter where they go. A character that is mentioned in a prophesy for instance may be hounded by those who don't want the prophesy coming true. A dragon could simply hunt the party down across the wilderness to test itself against them or because it heard they have a lot of treasure. In these cases an encounter can come TO the party instead of the other way around. They still have a lot of choices, but it amounts to finding a place to make a stand or figuring out which allies to trust. This is kind of standing railroading on its head.
Of course none of these things will work all of the time or for all players. Maybe you have a group that really just likes challenging combat encounters. Make sure the ones that are built into the plot look more interesting than anything else they've heard about and they'll just go for it. The DMG section on types of players and what motivates them can really help there. If the plot lets them exercise their preferred play style it is pretty typical that they will follow it.
And like I said: Thanks for your help.