General Discussion

Heya! I've been thinking about GMing my first "official game", an oneshot of course, to train, but I thought that maybe some tips would be nice? I feel like I'll need more help with combat, cuz I don't really like to play it. So yeah, any help would be appreciated :D [s]also, if there are any threads for tabletop RPG let me know! I would love to take a look [emoji=special eyes size=1][/s]

@SpearTheDemon

Is this dnd/pathfinder, or something else? Can you explain what you don't like about combat to make it easier for us to help? We may be able to give advice to specific problems you already know of.

Here's my quick tips:

1. Pick a few things enemies can do. If you have four thugs who can swing a sword and also use a crossbow, decide that two will use crossbows and two will use swords. Maybe for your first game, they all use swords. If you have a caster, pick a few of their spells ahead of the fight to use and write them down (or remember them), so you don't have to search through the whole list every one of their turns to see what they'll do. This is slow, and it's much more natural for a mage to master a few spells than to fumble about with many.
2. Use an attack's average damage for npcs. If this is dnd (don't know personally about pathfinder but wouldn't be surprised if it's the same), your npcs will have average damage listed for their attack. It'll look something like this: 10 (2d6 + 3) slashing damage. To speed up enemy turns, instead of rolling the 2d6 and adding 3, just take that average amount of 10 every time. So they only have to roll their hit chance. Less time, less math. (If you're using an online tool to play that automatically calculates damage, then don't worry about this.)

Are you writing your own one-shot or did you buy/find one to run? I generally don't recommend making your own stuff to start out, just because you need to learn how to balance combat, and having examples that you can throw at your party helps.

Echoing the post above, what game system is this for? The advice we can give will vary greatly depending on what you plan on running.

Honestly, the best advice I can give is to just have fun. If you're running a pre-written adventure, run one you're excited about. If you're writing your own, write something that sounds fun. Invite friends willing to laugh with you and joke around. Running for the first time is scary, but it's a big step to take! From there it only gets easier.

General system-generic tips for GMing:

• Be able to laugh at yourself and along with your players. Mistakes are going to happen, so might as well make it part of the game.
• There's no rule that says you have to do EVERYTHING. If tracking initiative is a pain, have a player do it. EXP from encounters? Designate a player to notate it. You're there to tell the story and control NPC elements. The bookkeeping can be offloaded.
• Play with people you like. I know I've said this, like, five times, but seriously. Nothing kills enthusiasm to GM like gaming with bummer people.

there's an old adage about writing: "the thing about your first novel is that you have to get it out the way so you can write your second novel." i think GMing is kind of the same thing, haha.

that's not saying that your first session or first campaign or whatever won't be enjoyable! D&D is like pizza - it really takes some doing to have bad pizza, and likewise a session of D&D or whatever other RPG will generally be pretty good fun as long as you're playing with people you like. but there's also a ton of stuff that goes into running a really good session. some of it will come naturally to you, some of it will take a long time, and there's no way of knowing which parts are which until you're actually in there running the thing.

so just go for it! don't sweat it. have fun! once you're a few sessions in and have kind of an idea of how it all works, then is the time to go read articles and look at advice and make notecards and all of the other stuff people recommend, imo. until then, just try and enjoy yourself.

(and don't worry if it ends up being kind of a trainwreck hahaha. my first campaign absolutely crashed and burned halfway through, but it was still a blast - and it turns out players are very hard to scare off :P )

@breathe2 @snowcat @HopperUK @corvidus thank you all so much for the tips! I'll write some so I don't forget lol ^^'
@/breathe2 @/snowcat I'll be using d&d :D

(sorry if someone didn't wanted to be pinged! :P)

You're more than welcome to PM me if you want more specific feedback. I've been GMing for a very long time and I'm always happy to help out newcomers. D&D 5e is pretty straightforward to pick up compared to some other systems, but it never hurts to have a sounding board if you're unsure of anything.

My biggest advice is never to expect the party to do what you think they will - they almost certainly won't. Flexibility is one of the most valuable assets of DMing, both when planning and when playing things out. If things stray off-path, go with it! Let them meet a new NPC, or stage an unplanned bandit encounter down there! Go with the flow, and the party will eventually find their way back to the plot. Probably.

Another important thing is getting to know your player's playstyles. This applies more to longer campaigns than oneshots, but when planning, gauging the type of action that player may take can help creating an engaging world-setting for them, and also help you plan around the possible appealing paths, to give you a tad more control over the overall direction.

Hope that helps!

Oh no this got long sorry! It didn't look so long when I previewed it x.x



From some failures I've had in the past, I'll tell you that prep work is important! Being the gm is inherently a lot more work, and how much you and your players will get out of it is usually related to how well prepared you are.

This one's probably obvious but :p I'm not sure if you've played as a player before or if this will be your first time playing overall, but either way you'll want to know at least the basic rules well enough that you don't have your face stuck in the Players Handbook the entire time. You should not memorize the rules, but there's a lot of stuff the DM has to worry about that players don't, and players will look to you for guidance about the rules. You don't need to have combat rules 100% memorized, but you should know what things can happen during combat so you can look them up, that sort of thing. Handbooker Helper on YouTube gives a good fast run-through, and D&D Beyond is a good site to have pulled up on your laptop for quick reference. Make sure you have all the stuff you need (not just dice but resources; print out monster stat blocks you'll be using most often for quick reference, etc; buy or make a good DM screen with info that will help you.) You'll never be 100% prepared but you'll thank yourself if you organize your stuff and make it convenient to find things ahead of time. Sticky notes are your best friend.

For the session itself: read through the oneshot you'll be DMing (assuming it's a module, which I highly recommend doing if you haven't DMed before) at least once, twice if you have time time/patience. If you really want, you can also probably find and watch oneshots other DMs have done on YouTube to get a feel for how they run it. I've taken to writing quick outlines of modules for myself with the important details and leaving out anything that won't directly help you run the game; it helps you memorize the plot so you aren't flipping through the module for half the session and makes it much easier to find the important stuff where you need it.

Writing an outline of the important parts also helps because it makes the adventure feel less rigid. You'll have room to write helpful notes to yourself, it'll give you a little more room for improvising. Improvising is your second best friend just below sticky notes. Your players will want to do weird things, and you can't be prepared for all of it. NPC dialogue is a big one here, if your players say something weird to an NPC, don't overthink it or go flipping through the module for what their official dialogue is, just make something up that makes at least a bit of sense and let the game go on. You're role-playing too, not just reading a script! Have fun with it.

In general I've found doing about three-four hours of prep work a week, rereading the part of the module we'll be doing and what happened last time, taking notes, getting the stat blocks and maps I need ready, getting the table set up, etc works for me. I've seen people say prep time should be anywhere from half an hour to twice as long as the session will be, but 3 hours before a session has been the sweet spot for me. You might be different. Don't overprepare, but do enough that you can go into the session with a decent overall idea of what you're doing.

There's tons of great YouTube videos and articles out there with tips for new DMs; watch/read some of those. Accept that it won't be perfect, and just have fun playing with your friends. Don't try to make it some super deep super detailed thing, especially for a oneshot; people play those for fun, not for deep characters. It's probably not gonna be great, things probably won't go according to plan, you'll probably not do as well as you wish you had, but that's a universal experience and it doesn't mean it won't be fun for you and the players!

And this one's a little less happy but if you find you don't enjoy DMing because it's too demanding, or you don't like having to be the one who knows all the rules, or you don't have time, or it takes more out of you than you take away, don't DM. A game with a DM who isn't having fun is doomed.

Also: make sure there are abundant snacks. That is the third pillar of a good DND game. Sticky notes, improvisation, and snacks.