Five Awful Mistakes We Made as New Dungeon Masters for Dungeons and Dragons

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by the deck of many and their amazing big bad booklet series this booklet is a monthly release that includes all the information lore imagery and stat blocks that you need to run an epic boss monster in 5th edition available as both a digital print and play and in hard copy this month's release features the god of kings a terrible entity in prison in a stone prison for their attempt to try to take over the divine pantheon every monthly release has a print and play pdf and all the reference cards that you need to role play and run an incredible epic boss battle at your game table so check it out in the description below or head to bigbadbooklet.com to sign up now and now on to this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode now kelly and i have been dming for many years but i often think back in horror to my first campaign where i made a lot of mistakes yeah as we're winding down for the year it's a good time for introspection and looking back at the past and when we look back at the past we can see all of the glaring issues that happened during our initial stint in being dms so today we're going to discuss five awful mistakes that kelly and i made in our very first d d campaigns uh and talk about what we learned from them and how you as a new first time dungeon master might avoid making those mistakes there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so my dungeons and dragons story begins back in the early 2000s when third edition dungeons the dragons was first launched i went into my favorite fantasy and science fiction bookstore and the owner of that shop told me that i should check out this box set that just came in and pick it up i just got my first summer job so i picked up my three core rule books in that first box set and introduced a bunch of my high school friends i was creatively ambitious as a young kid and i wanted to run my own campaign world i immediately set out to design my own world that involved my favorite elements from rome ancient rome feudal japan all sorts of different worlds that were all smashed together and a horrible plot line involving a pet npc wizard that bossed the entire party around my campaign was a disaster my players had a wonderful time but the game ultimately imploded because i didn't know where things were going and i had to stop the campaign because i really didn't know how to string the entire plot together i was caught up with all the world building and campaign planning and all these sorts of things and that was when the good book store owner said to me hey why don't you pick up this copy of dungeon magazine and run one of the adventures in it and all of a sudden everything clicked for myself i got into d d thanks to monty and he ran a wonderful campaign for me and several friends from this experience i realized that i too wanted to be a dm because i enjoyed telling stories and i started thinking while playing about the wonderful worlds that i could create and so when i set out i did something very similar and i decided none of these pre-written modules are exactly what i have in mind so i tried to make a vast pirate campaign spanning an entire world with ship combat before there was much rules for ship combat i tried to have these 12 keys that they had to find to unlock an ancient treasure i had an 80 page document and it got to a point where a few months in my head felt like it was exploding i had too much content and didn't know how to handle it all and that's when i decided that maybe it was a good idea i was getting way ahead of myself it was too much of a burden and i picked up tyranny of dragons and decided what if i just ran the module that was available for 5th edition dnd and felt what it was like to run something that somebody else had written begrudgingly i jumped into it but by the end of it there was a lot of value in that lesson running a published adventure showed me the ropes and let me focus on what was really important which was running the adventure at the table it saved me tons of time on campaign planning i still did a lot of it because i still homebrewed and customized those adventures but i had an existing structure and it was very easy to see oh this is where the campaign is going this is where it's building up to and i think reflecting for both you and i think the biggest gap that we ran into is that as a new dungeon master you get really excited excited about how to start and i'm almost certain as a new dm you have this epic conclusion in your mind of like the great villain in the final showdown but where the whole thing falls apart is right in the middle now what we're trying to say here is not don't homebrew if you're just getting started all of us have an imagination and we are excited to play d d for the reason of exploring our own imagination but what was great is even if you're jumping in and you have a great homebrew campaign i still recommend running one of the shorter modules something like lost minor fendelver from the starter set or the dragon of ice fire peak from the essentials kit either of these are a great starting point where you can just run a few levels see how a campaign is structured add your own flourishes and embellishes to the story that's being told and in that you start to learn not only how to home brew properly but also how to structure and build a campaign what is necessary and what is not necessary we often learn through imitation that's a great way how human beings teach each other and how we learn we give each other structures and frameworks you have your scales that you practice on the piano as an artist you'll practice sketching a friend or a family member that's what a published adventure is for a new dungeon master it's that beginning steps that shows you okay here's how everything feels so you can get the practice in and then once you've run that short adventure and i think lost mine's a fan over is perfect because the the really big thing i think that is the pitfall that both you and i ran into is we were thinking of running a level 1 to 20 campaign and that's really hard for a new dungeon master particularly it's also really hard when you're introducing new players and creating a new social dynamic as well and so it's often not just the dungeon master that loses it in the middle it's the players running a short campaign running a short published adventure like lost minds that goes from level one to five is what i should have done it was like wow this game makes sense to me now i feel confident as a dungeon master it gave me the confidence that i knew what i was doing so if you're a brand new dm setting out to run your first game of dungeons and dragons we recommend looking at the published modules a short one or a long one that you can learn to explore and learn from about the structure and the fundamental elements that make up a campaign of dungeons and dragons now once you have picked your published module and start telling your friends that you're interested in running a game of dungeons and dragons you might have a similar experience to what i had i told my friend jesse that i was going to run dnd who told another friend who told another friend who told another friend and when game night finally came around i had a table of eight players sitting around my table and that was really intimidating not only were these eight teenagers with all their various teenage proclivities and social drama and baggage brought along with that everyone was really excited and super jazzed up and people bought brought snacks and sugary drinks and other substances and before i knew it the game was utter chaos there were eight people who were talking over each other i had to yell at people to get them to shut up so that i could speak it was never clear whose turn it was everyone was jumping in over top of each other people were excited legitimately and it was fun but it kind of felt like a party one thing that's hard with dungeons and dragons is that yes you are inviting your friends over for a night of getting together and having fun but there is also a certain level of respect that comes with a game of d where you are playing a game it is a storytelling medium and you are there to have fun within a narrative being presented by the dungeon master and there's a fine line there between just having fun with your friends and having fun playing d and d with your friends i also had a hard time running eight players at my table again the people far at the back of the table were busy having their own conversation somebody was on their phone people were taking a long time for turns which then made it seem fair that the person who waited 40 minutes to get to their turn was on their phone and not paying attention because they had to wait so long these are common pitfalls of large groups at the table i've heard a lot of great success stories about people running large groups but when i got started i feel like i would have grasped the game faster and been able to dive into the nuances of what dungeons and dragons is by having a smaller party once you move into those upper numbers of 8 9 or 10 players you now need to account for the fact that this is going to be a hangout session with a lot of people that are there and excited to see each other excited to engage with each other outside of the dungeons and dragons game this happens with three to four players as well but it takes less time for you to be able to crack the whip and say let's get to the game there's a lot of strategies and great ways to make running a game with a larger group more efficient but at the end of the day you still have eight nine people sitting around a table over four hours when you divide that time evenly amongst nine people that means that each individual person plays less time than if you divided it evenly amongst four or five people it's just simple math of how the hours break down a smaller group is generally almost always going to be more engaged with the game of dungeons and dragons because the amount of time passing from one player's turn to the next will always be smaller and each player gets to spend more time in the spotlight individually you can't get around that fact with a larger group each player gets less time that they're the star of the show with a bigger group and so that focus that you get with a smaller group is really really helpful and it saves you as a dungeon master the chore of the social dynamic because so often the dungeon master is looked to to be the organizer and the leader of the entire social dynamic of the game typically this involves scheduling as well and scheduling with a group of nine people can be an absolute nightmare and you're gonna run into that situation where so and so can't make it now they need to get caught up and you end up in all these problems it's all mitigated by having a smaller group so well it might be tempting to want to include every single one of your friends in this awesome game and it's really hard to leave people out i do recommend that you choose carefully who you invite and if you can't invite everybody maybe split the group up into smaller chunks rather than have everybody all together on one night the next thing that monty and i both did when we were setting up to run our first dnd games is we gathered our friends together we asked them to make characters they showed up we sat them down and we started rolling dice there was never a conversation about what we were expecting from the game what each person was hoping to achieve a little bit of background on their characters maybe how they would interact with each other these are all aspects that are part of what we call a session zero and neither monty or i had a session zero for our first games we still had character creation sessions where we went over the basic rules and basic ideas but session zero is different from making characters session zero is where you set the right expectations and make sure that everyone is interested in playing the game the same game once i played dungeons and dragons for a couple years and moved to a larger city i joined a new dnd group with players that i'd never played with before and i was shocked to realize just how different everyone's play styles were and how everyone wanted something really different for the game it's true that setting expectations alleviates a lot of conflict if everybody around the table has the right expectations and you're all on the same page it makes a much smoother game and this is the purpose of a session zero so if you are jumping into a game of d talk to the players have a conversation about what everybody wants from it what is everybody most excited about i remember this great thing that you did when we were setting out to start a brand new campaign it was our first one together and you kind of just asked everybody at the table what's something you want to do in dungeons and dragons it was really simple answers like somebody said i want to get crazy powerful magic items and another person said i want to fight a dragon someone said i want to be a god i want to fight a god and that really informs what the interests of of your group are if you're setting out with your campaign to run a high political intrigue campaign with lots of role playing and lots of mendacity and spying and subtlety and you've got a bunch of players that just want to kick down the door and kick some ass and throw around some super powerful spells and totally live that power fantasy you've got something to sort out in your group it can be really challenging when the dungeon master has an idea on the type of campaign that they want to play and they end up with a table of players who have very different ideas of how they want to play d d d is a beautiful game that leaves a lot of room for variation and interpretation everybody's home game is different every time that somebody runs a module it's different than somebody else running the same module there are infinite possibilities within the worlds of dungeons and dragons so to get a group of people on the same page is of utmost importance because if you don't the variations are endless dungeons and dragons is about having a fun and enjoyable time with your friends but people have fun in different ways and not everybody finds the same things fun and entertaining you need to know this to play the indie together what are the other things that your players are probably going to do during session 0 or as they're making their characters is they're going to make a backstory about their characters it's going to tell them their hopes and dreams and where their characters came from i had a player that wrote a 21-page backstory for his uh character once and i didn't read it and i had other players that didn't even bother making a backstory for their characters at all and i didn't bother it really didn't matter what their backstory was it didn't play into the campaign at all and i basically just ignored their character backstories and ran the campaign that i wanted to run and that was a mistake there were some really cool ideas in those characters and as the campaign was falling apart i started to realize just how cool the characters my players had made were and just how interesting their stories could have become what's really important here is that dungeons and dragons is a shared storytelling medium the dungeon master is laying out the story of what is currently happening but every person who comes to play d has an idea on the character they created and the story that they wish to tell with that character all of us imagine our character is the main character in the story which means technically you have a table full of main characters so balancing what each character wants and talking to your players about their imagined stories for their for the characters that they've created can actually fuel the campaign that you are about to run you could be running a homebrew setting or you could be running a pre-written module that either way has a story that it's going to tell but by talking to your players collaborating with them understanding their backstories and maybe not get them to write a 21-page backstory but if they write a few paragraphs of where they came from and what their goals and aspirations are you can weave that in to the tale that you're going to tell and something that we've actually taken a while to learn i would say is how important this is the more you integrate your players the better the game feels for everybody the revelation for me came with my affirmation player who wrote the 21 page backstory when i finally got around to reading it you know he had the standard story my family was murdered and i want revenge and he didn't really know what had happened to his entire family and we actually had a new player that joined the campaign and i had that player sat down with him and he didn't know what to play so he ended up playing the brother of the previous character who had turned out to have survived and then the campaign became about two brothers whose family was murdered horrifically who got a bunch of friends together to get revenge and i had this whole other plot line that i planned and i was just like no the campaign about these two brothers is way cooler than anything i could have possibly come up with and the players were way more engaged for that very reason it's it's just called two brothers i can also tell you from a player's perspective having created a character writing out a backstory that had gaps in it and this is actually something that i'm very purposefully doing as a player is writing a backstory where i don't know what happened to this family member or i'm not sure where this could come up later and by having those loose hooks for monty to pick up on what ends up happening is when modi does deliver on them as the dungeon master i feel so satisfied as a player that my character suddenly feels the most important thing in the setting my story is coming to life i get to live that out already doing the work to make sure that the players were integrated and that there was a collaborative effort to make it important and the collaboration is key engaging with your players through session zero and putting everything on the table saying this is what i'm interested in this is what i imagine you don't have to reveal your cards as a dungeon master you gotta have lots of secrets in store and lots of surprises for your players but by collaborating with your players and sometimes asking them to make revisions to their backstory so that you can create a more interesting storytelling opportunity will create a much more engaging and magical experience the world of your campaign might not revolve around the player characters but your players are the stars of your campaign the campaign is about them and so that's why collaborating with them listening to them delivering on these experiences is really really important and when you collaborate with your players the most important thing is knowing about their expectations d can be more than just having fun dnd can be about role playing and experiencing what it's like to be another person and to experience actually things in life that aren't fun to experience loss losing family members getting revenge these things can happen but you have to collaborate with each other you have to listen to each other and you gotta trust each other and then the campaign is more about just having fun and making fart jokes you can have a real cool experience i think what's important to state here is that these lessons may not apply to everybody but in some way shape or form there are valuable items within these lessons that we have picked up because we made all of these mistakes and we continue to make mistakes and learn from them and that is another important point and this is one of the fundamental rules of dnd that you need to know as a brand new dungeon master setting out to encapsulate this wonderful game with your friends into something that you're going to enjoy at the table and that is that you're going to make mistakes too your players are going to make mistakes you're going to get rules wrong you're going to push things in the wrong direction and have to reiterate or change things on the fly and that's fine when i started dungeon mastering i thought everything had to be perfect i thought that my story had to be something that was worthy of a pulitzer prize or an oscar i thought i had this immaculate experience for my players and anytime i made a mistake i was like they hate me now they hate me they don't trust me they never want to play dungeons and dragons with me again someone is going to come from wizard of the coast and take my books away and beat me up nobody's going to take your books away nobody's going to beat you up yeah sometimes you might disappoint your friends sometimes they might get upset with you you have to be accountable when you make a mistake and apologize you have to be big enough as a dungeon master to be able to admit when you've made a mistake and take feedback with grace knowing that you will make mistakes knowing that it won't be perfect but it will still be good is a really important lesson to internalize and it's not just about your campaign planning it's about running the session but you know what it doesn't matter because we have a great time and we tell an interesting story that has great emotional stakes and yeah you can come back and smooth out some of those mistakes later that's part of the organic magic of running d d you're not going to be completely original don't worry about leaning on tropes or cliches the fact is that that's going to make up majority of your d d games and the great idea is you get to see what happens if you play those out so rely on those and lean into those and don't be afraid if your story goes off the rails because it's probably going to don't be afraid if you got the rules wrong my best advice is if you messed up the rules and you made a ruling at the table that afterwards you look in the book and say i didn't run that right at the next game just inform your players hey i ran that incorrectly last time here's the way that the rules actually work so we're going to use it this way going forward we do this all the time even in dragonheim if we mess up a rule we just announce hey i messed it up and we continue moving forward your players are going to mess up their characters rules you're going to mess up your dm rules and you just need to be okay with that we're all going to make mistakes and there's a lot of rules to talk about in dungeons and dragons and my best advice is just go with the flow and do what feels the most correct in the moment and then adjust it afterwards to make sure that you're broadcasting hey we messed up but we're gonna be okay moving forward here are the rules good preparation research reading the rules will help you avoid some mistakes but not all of them and ultimately there are some mistakes that you have to experience them for yourself in order to learn the lessons and that really comes full circle i think to our full advice is that running a published campaign having a session zero and having a small group of players is going to give you that environment where you can make mistakes and learn from them better than anything else i think and if i was going to give that playbook of like get together for friends run lost minds off and over and reflect on your experiences through those sessions don't be afraid to make those mistakes you're that is probably the best way to learn how to be a gm and looking back i'm glad i made all the mistakes that i did but that kind of experience probably would have set me better up for success and i would have been running better campaigns sooner right it was like a good six seven years of playing d d before i finished a campaign every experience that i've had running a pre-written module with my group of four or five friends has taught me more and more about the game and i've found that in the experiences when i was first jumping in and trying to overload my dnd game with my own ideas and with eight players and without running a session zero and just diving into this crazy pirate world i made it didn't work and it ended up crashing and burning and yes there were lessons along the way but i think this idea of learning from our mistakes and setting yourself up for an easy almost trial run at dnd where you get to the tutorial level this is the tutorial level and it's valuable if you have experience in role-playing games and this isn't your first forte then maybe you don't need this advice but if you're just picking up your starter set or your essentials kit then you might want to take this advice and just grab a few friends learn the ins and outs of the game and get ready to jump into the bigger world that is dungeons and dragons your game doesn't need to be the best game ever it just needs to be better than the game that you ran last week improve over time and always remember the best campaigns are always the ones in the future learn from your mistakes give yourself the time and opportunity to make those mistakes because you're going to be playing dungeons and dragons hopefully with great friends for years and years to come and every adventure will always be more exciting and rewarding than the last one so this has been a look at five awful mistakes that we made when we started running dungeons and dragons if you've made some awful mistakes yourself and you think they're valuable lessons to learn tell us about them in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity and support of our patrons if you enjoy the work that we create here on youtube twitch and elsewhere please consider becoming one of our patrons by following the links in the descriptions below if you are a fan of our work you might be interested to hear that we are creating a book for 2021 we've partnered with ghostfire games to kickstart our live play campaign into an adventure module for fifth edition if you haven't heard of our live play it's dungeons of drackenheim and we're now in season 2 shadows of draconide you can check out our live play at twitch.tv dungeon underscore dudes it airs tuesday nights at 6pm eastern on twitch or you can find all the previous episodes of that campaign right up over here and if you want to hear about all the other rules mistakes that you can make in dungeons and dragons and how to avoid or fix them we've got plenty more videos with dm advice right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 200,776

Rating: 4.9467573 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: hJoZQUA4igc

Length: 28min 22sec (1702 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020