I’m wondering if I should try DMing and it feels like a huge responsibility to make it from scratch (though I assume it largely falls into place if I can figure out material conditions that allow for quick improvisation)
I have run other things before, recently started running DnD, last couple months. In my experience the only real difficulty is balancing combat encounters and players will not be mad if they dunk on you while you’re learning, it’s a power fantasy for them in that case. If you’re confident you can improvise then all you need is a strong grasp on who is involved in your story and the things they want, so you can have them react rationally to the party, as you already noticed. Assuming you know the rules at least well enough to make rulings as you go.
All this to say no need to buy a module if you’re confident. I’ve never run anything from a book in any system so I’m biased maybe.
I’m gonna go against the grain and recommend you try a hexcrawl or a gazetteer. Those are prewritten lists of Things That Can Happen At This Location and you assemble your own campaign out of the shit that happens to the party.
They need to go see the local Lord, but the short path has the annual tree migration going on, and the longer way cuts through the Dismal Dread Swamp and that shit’s full of will-o-the-wisps that’ll try and lure you deeper into the mud. What do the players choose to do? How do you, the GM, operate the world and the possible events in response?
I’ll even go so far as to drop my personal favorite The Runewild. Great setting.
i recommend not DMing dnd tbh, i think either going with a much more rules light system or a much more balanced crunchy system like pathfinder 2e will make dming for you easier, although i would not dm pathfinder 2e if you dont want to put in the time to read through the rulebook closely. need to consider what your players would like too of course, if they’re the kinds of people who complain about simple arithmetic i wouldnt play any crunchy system unless you are playing online on something like foundryvtt
The main thing imo is how much experience you have with playing the system or a remotely similar system. If you’re totally new to actively engaging in the hobby, the first thing you should do is probably run a one-shot, and whether it’s original or pre-written should just be based on your comfort with working with someone else’s writing versus your own (though you should definitely at least read a one-shot someone else wrote to see an example of using the mechanics, though you absolutely don’t need to copy their style).
Any further judgements can be made after you run the one-shot. There’s a good chance, especially since you like improv, that you’ll find it much more gratifying to write your own stuff, but maybe not and either way is fine.
It very strongly depends on your own abilities and style. Like I found that trying to work from a script someone else wrote was way harder than just making my own and improvising based on what players do, but at the same that was something that took experience and iterative experimentation to get right too. Also for D&D in particular the published prewritten adventures kind of suck across the board. They’re not well made, they’re not well edited, and they’re not easy to run.
My personal advice would just be to think of a local setting and basic pitch for what’s going on and why, roll up some names with a random name generator like the ones on https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ then use those to make a few notable NPCs with a position and a single sentence description and to keep a varied list of names on hand for other characters you need to name offhand, write a few bullet points for tensions and conflicts between factions or for hijinx that some bloc is getting up to, and then make a few bullet points for looming threats or ways to stir things up. Then just kind of riff on that and see what your players are like and want to do. If they want to go in a particular direction with it, build out more for that. If they don’t have much initiative of their own, that’s your cue to just start wrecking shit up and forcing them to act.
Sometimes you want a simulationist dungeoncrawl, sometimes you want big interesting action setpieces, sometimes you want episodic team rocket style nonsense from recurring antagonists causing drama in town, you can and should mix it up to keep things varied.
Using a name generator not just for people you need to name spontaneously but for writing you prepared feels like a wasted opportunity, since even in real life a person’s name often tells you things about them (about their heritage, sometimes the attitudes of their parents, etc.), and in fiction you can make it say a lot more beyond that if you’re fine with it being a bit campy.
I agree, names tell a lot about a person especially in fictional settings. I personally like researching myths and archetypes and using variants on those mythical ur-names to give hints of what type of person they are. Tolkien, GRRM and other famous worldbuilders do a lot of this
It depends. If I don’t have an existing idea for someone I’ll sit and click through generated lists over and over until something sticks out at me as something usable or that gives me some root syllables to work with, and I’ve got a list of fifty or so random names to fill out extras that can be promoted to characters depending on what happens. I’ve also used that sort of thing as a way of shortcircuiting a weird anxiety I had about actually naming things myself in the past, although I’ve gotten over that since.
But at the same time, yeah: one of games I’m running has characters named after Gilbert and Sullivan (my players still haven’t caught this one), a character with a gag name that includes two references to a bit from an old BBC show, expies of pop culture characters, no less than two gag characters named after Joe Biden, and some almost-onomatopoeic gibberish names, and the other one has multiple names built by distorting Latin roots in a descriptive way and multiple uncaught references to semi-obscure Roman mythology, alongside a bunch of off-the-cuff puns, shitposts, and randomly generated but still curated filler because I had a lot of things to name and even more that I just numbered instead.
If I don’t have an existing idea for someone I’ll sit and click through generated lists over and over until something sticks out at me as something usable or that gives me some root syllables to work with
Very fair
I’ve also used that sort of thing as a way of shortcircuiting a weird anxiety I had about actually naming things myself in the past, although I’ve gotten over that since.
Also fair. Not writing at all is a bigger wasted opportunity and getting hung up on anxiety about that one specific part instead of glossing over it (including with a generator if that’s what the anxious person finds suitable) so they can do the writing they feel more confident about to get their footing makes a lot of sense.
Personally, I’d feel way more anxious about presenting a dozen characters with names I got from a generator and saying “this is my writing that merits paying attention to” but we’re just talking about different genres of irrational impulse, not any sort of value judgement that I’m trying to assert.
Also fair. Not writing at all is a bigger wasted opportunity and getting hung up on anxiety about that one specific part instead of glossing over it (including with a generator if that’s what the anxious person finds suitable) so they can do the writing they feel more confident about to get their footing makes a lot of sense.
It was a way of obviating responsibility, I think. Like sure I was ultimately choosing the name of a character or a place, but it wasn’t “mine” so I wasn’t taking responsibility for it and putting something of my own out there, I guess? I never really understood just how that shortcircuited the anxiety that makes me pull back from putting things I create on the line, just that it did let me work around that when GMing, and that things like just copying an entire generated list of names to throw down as a list of notable employees at place the players were going to heist and letting them pick one for me to turn into an actual character they’d try to lean on or steal security credentials from or whatever was extremely useful.
And now I just do whatever because I’ve had enough experience just riffing on stuff that I’m less anxious about that. Proper characters get referential names or descriptive names, and extras get random bullshit whether from a generator or from me just stringing syllables together in my head till it sounds right. Places get both.
I’m a big fan of structured adventures. If you don’t like them you can change them, and put in exactly as much work as you’re willing to put in.
When I DM, if it’s a short campaign I run a module, if it’s meant to be longer I usually go full improv (for this I have a system where I preroll the next few combats and then fudge the monster stat blocks tto match whatever the context for the fight is).
If you haven’t done it use a premade campaign. Its much more manageable and fun when you dont have to begin knowing every detail and possibility. You’ll learn as you go and after 3 or 4 you’ll be off on your own easy.
Edit: I also can’t stress this enough, learn to improvise and learn it well.
Edit 2: did not see the improvisation part of the body. That just comes with time, experience, and reading a lot of stories.
I already am good at improvisation (I can’t feasibly prove it but I don’t need to) so I feel, ironically, MOST confident on that front
For me thats the best part and probably why my sessions run like an episode of adventure time. I always write shells for the session and just fill in the blanks as we get there.
If you’ve never DM’d before,I strongly suggest running a published module. Plenty of classic modules have been updated to run on the modern system, and classic modules were written to be slotted into largely homebrew campaigns.
The other thing I’d suggest for a new DM is to pick an existing setting that the players have at least a passing familiarity with. That way you and your players can search up information that might become relevant over the course of the adventure.
Disclaimer: I have never used a pre written campaign. That being said, I find that creating a campaign is both easier than you might think and extremely fun and rewarding. As others have mentioned, the most important part is being able to improvise and yes and with your players. Just come up with the outline of a setting, (where are we, a few pertinent places/people), and an initial tension/excuse for why we need to start an adventure (maybe some potential antagonists and twists). You can develop more than that if you want to, but that’s honestly all you need to get started. The world and its society doesn’t need to be fully fleshed out because as your players explore it, it will become more fleshed out and hopefully come to life. You won’t get it perfect the first time, but like any other skill you will develop it with practice and hopefully you’ll have a great time with your friends doing it
You don’t need to make a custom map, but here is a way to approach that if you want to. I like to start with a random real map, whether of a city, region or park etc. Ideally one your players won’t be exceptionally familiar with. Very roughly and inaccurately sketch some key details onto a piece of paper (rivers, roads, coastlines). Maybe sketch a mirror image if your unconscious mind recreates the map too faithfully. Now turn that into an appropriate map for the campaign in question. Municipal Police head quarters? That’s the evil castle of the main antagonist. Creek? More like mighty river. Golf course? Dragons lair. Or whatever feels appropriate to you. Pretty soon no one will be any the wiser.
I’m currently running my first published campaign. (pathfinder 2e) and unlike when I tried to do everything myself I’m able to keep it up when life gets busy. Losing momentum had been my biggest campaign killer. Besides the story having fun & challenging encounters ready is a huge time safer. Making my own shit is still fun but much more enjoyable when not in a vacuum, using the pre-write as a frame to build on as it were. Also campaigns can be reused repurposed and recycled.
If you do run a pre write make sure your players don’t come in expecting a sandbox.
There are ttrpg systems that work great for improv heavy style of play. Blades in the dark as example is focused around a city. The book gives you a ton of active factions in the setting, their goals, methods/means/style, friends and foes, level of influence, locations and some members of note.
I am GMing a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game right now, and I am doing a mix. WFRP has a very good “Getting Started” adventure that functions as tutorial island, and as the sessions go by more and more of the original script has been replaced by my own campaign. Eventually we will full transition into my own campaign, but the original adventure provides an excellent framework to build off of.
That being said, creating a new campaign wholecloth can be A TON of work, and if you choose to go that route I suggest keeping in mind: noone wants to play your novel, your players want to tell a story together.
You should make sure your players know what kind of campaign you are creating. What the themes and tones are, what sort of adventure they can expect. On the flipside, talk to your players and see what they are looking for in the campaign and what sorts of things should be avoided in the campaign (in the vein of CW type stuff.) Try not to get too caught up on players not doing exactly what you imagine them doing or drawing their own conclusions. GMing and RP is very much like improv, try to stay on-theme while yes-and-ing where your players are heading.
Saving this for later. I’ll reply tomorrow!
