The DM's Guide to DMing

I found this cool 2D map designer tool called Dungeon Draft that I believe to be a more robust system than Dungeon Scrawl (for those who have dabbled in that program). Check out a video of their current capabilities:

This system does cost $20 though, unlike Dungeon Scrawl which is free.

fenomas wrote:

Hi, has anyone hereabouts DMed Tomb of Annihilation?

If so, any thoughts/advice/etc? I'm running the first session of it this weekend.

Many people recommend using "Cellar of Death" on DM's Guild as your introductory adventure.

I ran it for a group starting at level five, so we skipped a lot of the intro "filler" quests.

Like most (all?) Wizards of the Coast campaigns, it contains a whole lot of material that is meant as a "setting book" to inspire your own adventures, but which can be kind of overwhelming; only around level five does the "real" campaign start. As usual, I think you've got to be really thoughtful at low levels about picking which hooks you want to offer for the overwhelming number of (admittedly mostly filler) sidequests then, at the appropriate level, put up big blinking signs pointing them towards the "real" campaign. (You need to play down the "ticking time bomb" aspect, or always make the players feel like they're making some progress towards finding the source of the death curse, or the players will get very frustrated.)

Personally, I made a little flowchart of a couple of logical paths leading to "THIS IS WHERE YOU NEED TO GO TO START THE REAL CAMPAIGN." This might drive open world style DMs/players nuts, but, most players prefer having a couple of obvious hooks to follow. It wasn't a total railroad; they basically had a couple clear paths, all of which eventually lead to telling them where to go for chapter 3.

I don't know if you've ever done a hex crawl; but, some people love them, and some find them incredibly tedious. I quickly found me and my group were in the latter camp. You might want to consider handwaving travel away, just putting in a couple of preset "random" encounters between destinations, if your group isn't into it. The "Tomb of Annihilation Companion" by Sean McGovern of Power Score RPG was very inspirational to me; I used little of it directly, but it made me think of alternatives to just doing a bunch of dice rolling over and over.

Running Chapter 3 (and 4, which it blends with a bit), where the "real" campaign begins, might have been my favorite running of D&D ever. It's very cleverly written, and I have a million pieces of advice on it, but I won't get ahead of myself. I ran the antagonists a little unconventionally, trying to make some of them sympathetic, which I feel lead to some very interesting roleplay navigating shifting alliances.

Chapter 5 is really something. You will probably find it overwhelming on initial read. Once you understand how it is structured into "areas," it's easier to follow, though. It feels more deadly than it is, and can be very stressful for players, so finding those places you can add comic relief is important.

If you think you might want to run the campaign into higher levels after finishing the book, look at DDAL07-09 through DDAL-14 on DM's Guild around the time you're getting into chapter 4. They offer a nice story arc you can start foreshadowing.

Great info, Beep.

If I ever run it, I will take all of that to heart and what you say jives with what I remember seeing in the videos I've watched on running the game.

If you're playing live (Ie., not online), and you have a 3D printer, I'm pretty sure Miguel Zavala (mz4250) has modeled most/all of the creatures/npcs that you can download and print.

-BEP

Thanks for the detailed answers Beep! In my case the players are a little sick of L1-2 characters so I'm planning to start directly in the base adventure at L3, and zip relatively quickly up to L5 as we ease in.

Will definitely pop back in here to ask if you have thoughts about this or that section of the adventure. I'm starting it out by-the-book, but in my last campaign (Strahd) I wound up wishing I'd gone off the map more, so will probably meander more as we settle in.

Incidentally I'm running it in roll20, and this will be the first time I work from an official purchased campaign module.

Eldon_of_Azure wrote:

I found this cool 2D map designer tool called Dungeon Draft that I believe to be a more robust system than Dungeon Scrawl (for those who have dabbled in that program). Check out a video of their current capabilities:

This system does cost $20 though, unlike Dungeon Scrawl which is free.

I’ve been using Dungeondraft for a few months, and it’s really growing on me. My maps might not be the most sophisticated things out there, but I can make something quickly that looks pretty good. Additionally, I can import the maps into my VTT (Foundry, but there is support for roll20 and others), and it sets up all the walls for dynamic lighting. Even if they require a few tweaks, it’s still a lot faster than doing it manually (like I was with maps I exported from CC3+).

fenomas wrote:

Thanks for the detailed answers Beep! In my case the players are a little sick of L1-2 characters so I'm planning to start directly in the base adventure at L3, and zip relatively quickly up to L5 as we ease in.

Will definitely pop back in here to ask if you have thoughts about this or that section of the adventure. I'm starting it out by-the-book, but in my last campaign (Strahd) I wound up wishing I'd gone off the map more, so will probably meander more as we settle in.

Hmm. For pacing reasons, once you enter chapter 3 (at about level 5 or 6), I think it's tough to return to the "open world" of chapters 1 & 2 (mostly balanced for around level 3-5). And the "open world" as written is meant to make travel fairly difficult. I think that'll become obvious as you read it, but it's something you'll want to think about.

In case it hasn't been mentioned, I was scrolling through the Shard Tabletop Kickstarter stretch goals and immediately recognized some art of one of our "local" artists at the $35k level.

-BEP

I don't know who you could possibly mean.

Technically though I'm making the tokens on Sven's commission. The fact that it's for the shard Kickstarter is entirely a coincidence

I will be doing searches on the google web machine thing, but would also like any input you guys have based on your experiences. I have a buddy who is not in the best health and loves RPGs. He's almost to the point where he can't leave his house, and isn't these days, anyway. He's a top-notch role-player and not real excited about combat. He'd be fine with an 8-hour D&D session where not a weapon was drawn.

What I would like to do for him is run a game with just him as a player and me as the DM. Since combat isn't his thing, a mystery-type game would be the best. To be clear, he's not against combat, he just prefers the RP side of things.

I thought an old module I had back in 1st Edition, "The Needle", was like this, but looking back, I was wrong. I know there was one that was a mystery for 1 player that I ran way back in the day, but I can't think of it.

The module doesn't _have_ to be just for one character, but 3 would probably be the max. I could run an NPC and I can always modify the social/combat encounters to work with fewer characters if I have to.

Oh, and "The Assassin's Knot" isn't available. When I started up this D&D group back in 2008(?), I inserted TAK into it so it's better to not use that again. It was one of my favorites back in '83/'84.

Me making up a 1-shot (or more) is also out of the question, because I suck at that.

If you have any suggestions on a module that fits the bill, please let me know. I don't care what system, as long as it's fantasy. Probably not WH 40k Fantasy, though, unless it's convertible to D&D on the fly.

-BEP

Hey, bepnewt, maybe check out Ironsworn?

It's not a premade adventure, but a game system. You can check out the PDF for free, which is a nice.

It's kind of a fantasy-norse sort of setting but most importantly it's designed to support solo or co-operative play as well as a traditional GM/player setup. I suspect it would really sing one-on-one, and support someone who is more into getting into character and inventing details about the world. There's a ton of tables to give you ideas for how things play out too. So it won't provide you with a story to run, but you also won't need that (there's tables for things like "what is the problem in this town we just arrived at?" that will provide your story).

By default there's combat and monsters in there, but as it's so much player-driven, you could just avoid that side of the world and focus more on mystery/character interaction.

The Essentials kit pack for d&d introduced some basic rules for solo characters with a sidekick Npc , and the adventure, dragon of icespire peak is written with the idea that you might want to run it that way. With the dndbeyond extension modules that makes up a whole 1-10 campaign.

There are also a bunch of modules on the DMs guild that offer one DM/one player adventures. I'll look some out when I'm up and awake!

Ah here's the one I was thinking of. First Blush is the first part of a three part campaign for one DM and one player. Might be worth a look.
And also Table For Two which is an anthology of 9 one-shot adventures for one on one games.

Has anyone played Waterdeep Heist? I've only read the intro summary, but it sounded like a RP-heavy story with lots of factions, each working at cross-purposes, and the player/s need to figure it all out. But I haven't actually played it or read the real materials.

I have played the first installment of Icespire Peak, and it was... okay? It ran like a very gentle introduction for first-timers - quest board in the town square, explicitly laid out "you will get 50gp if you escort dude A to place B" style quests, etc.

Yep that basically sums up Icespire Peak, it's very much organised like that throughout. Great for an introductory adventure to people new to the game but when I run it I feel the urge to spice things up a bit. It's simple enough that you can expand on it easily though, i've found.

I've not run Dragon Heist but by all accounts it's a bit of a mess (and not really involving a heist). It is very much an RP / faction heavy thing though. I feel like it needs a lot of work to fix a lot of its problems. The Alexandria has a great write up on merging the various 'seasons' into one much more interesting adventure, but it's a fair bit of work.

In remixing Dragon Heist, I have three primary goals.

First, I want to make it a HEIST. Or, more accurately, multiple heists.

Second, I want to eliminate the original “pick a villain” gimmick and instead restructure the campaign to feature ALL OF THE VILLAINS. The goal is to get all of the factions interested in the Vault competing with each other, and then thrust the PCs into the middle of that situation, bouncing around and causing all kinds of chaos.

Third, we’ll be doing a general FIX-UP JOB. This will include an attempt to clean up the broken continuity in the published campaign and also an effort to make the campaign’s scenario structure more robust (by applying the Three Clue Rule, for example).

I meant to mention I am already running Icespire about once a month, and he is part of that group. I agree it would be a good module for it, although it really is sorta combat heavy. I watched Bob's videos on the early encounters when I first bought the Essentials Kit, and listened to the playthrough he did (partially) with his wife as a solo player where they used a sidekick. It worked well for them. I have my thoughts on Icespire as a whole, but I don't want wander too far off subject here.

I'll peep at the Ironsworn. It sounds interesting even if there isn't anything premade for me to run.

After I posted, I started searching and that led me to the First Blush you mentioned above, Pix. I bought it and read through it. It seemed like a good into to D&D in a 1-on-1 setting, but lacked the meat of a RP-ready adventure. I acknowledge that the RP part of a game is on me, the DM, but I really need a decent foundation to start with or I'm doomed to fail.

I'll check out the Table for Two at lunch or after work.

And now comes the part where I feel stupid, in a double-shot way.

Firstly: I bought Dragon Heist quite a while ago and have never cracked it. I will read that write-up linked above on modifying it. A political intrigue game is EXACTLY the kind of stuff he likes, especially if there's some sneaking around involved.

Secondly: How could I not think of this: GWJ Collaborative Fantasy Town? There's enough fleshed out to have a lot of RP backstory right at my fingertips; I would just need to get some sort of "main quest" story going in there. Or even find a on-on-one premade and base it in our town. The First Blush would work starting in there and the way Duane plays, the module part of it may never even happen as he tangents off in some random direction.

Thanks a bunch folks, I really appreciate all of your ideas. I can get started on something, now!

-BEP

bepnewt wrote:

...
Secondly: How could I not think of this: GWJ Collaborative Fantasy Town? There's enough fleshed out to have a lot of RP backstory right at my fingertips; I would just need to get some sort of "main quest" story going in there. Or even find a on-on-one premade and base it in our town. The First Blush would work starting in there and the way Duane plays, the module part of it may never even happen as he tangents off in some random direction.
...

One of the collabators put some history in there about issues with a neighboring town. That could be the overarching story I use. The problem is he (who will play a rogue) will want to infiltrate that town. I'd have to have another fleshed out town by the time he does that. Or find a module that is a town-based game and just use that town.

-BEP

I ran Waterdeep Heist and I and my players loved it, but it's better to think of it as more of a sandbox than a distinct series of events in an adventure. It is RP-heavy, but I found the adventure really sung when I just used it as a framework, and improvised things to let my players have more agency. A lot of the faction stuff was pretty boring, so we just dropped almost all of it, and threw in more hijinks with some of the major NPCs in the game instead. Wouldn't have enjoyed it vaguely as much without the customization, but I think it's the kind of framework of adventure an experienced DM can do a lot with.

I chatted with my buddy who is currently running 6 games a week (as a paid DM) on Shard Tabletop. He just finished one group in Heist and is currently running another through. He has built some of the adventure in Shard and offered to share his book (module) with me.

I took a "smoke break" ( I don't smoke) and looked back on some of the Collaborative Town we are working on. The town is barely populated (compared to the number of buildings) and there's already a lot to use there. What a great group we have on this forum.

I'm leaning towards Heist at the moment but do need to read/skim it to be sure.

-BEP

I recently discovered Tiled for making hex maps. I’d heard of it before for creating tilemaps for game dev, but I hadn’t thought to try it for tabletop maps. I like it more than Hex Kit or Hexographer/Worldographer. The only downside is you need to provide your own tiles.

Hi so , quick question to anyone that's run/played/read my Song of the Mountain adventure - I'm pondering writing a follow up to it under my own steam but i'm not sure which threads to follow.

(I have one idea which is to build a small three part campaign based on one small plot thread, which would be focused on Cosmic Horror, but that's more of a parallel thing rather than an actual sequel using the same characters).

As for a direct follow up - i'm curious to know what people would prefer, is there one of the follow up plot threads provided of more interest than another? Or is there some direction your players specifically would like to have followed up on?

I read through a bit of Heist and also read some of the mods written about on The Alexandrian (thanks, Pix) and concluded I would not be able to run Heist for my buddy. It's just too big and there is too much going on for me to remember, even with the changes suggested on the Alexandrian site.

Buuuuut, I like the _idea_ of Heist, especially if there is a way for the "party" (my buddy) to end up as the one with the loot at the end. So...

... I am going to try to do the same kind of thing that is in Heist but in our collaborative Freeport town instead. It won't need to be a real deep plot so hopefully I can make something work with my pet rock level imagination. Right now, I'm thinking about making it revolve around The Starlight Tavern that I penned. The plot will revolve around folklore that Indigo Chamberlain left some of his money buried somewhere in town before he left and some kid recently found a clue to it. The kid wasn't aware of the rumor so didn't keep it to themself and now the whole town knows about the clue.

Now, I need to come up with a couple things:
- Does the money exist? If so, where?
- Who else is seriously looking for it?
- What is the clue? What are the subsequent clues?
- Does anyone in town know more than the rest of the people in regards to the clues/money?

I have a start! Thanks for getting this guy's melon throwing sparks, folks.

-BEP

bepnewt wrote:

Buuuuut, I like the _idea_ of Heist, especially if there is a way for the "party" (my buddy) to end up as the one with the loot at the end. So...

I split my party of GWJers into two groups of 3 with a guest player for a short run. One of the groups was set up as a heist. I would up using the mechanics in Here's To Crime: A Guide to Capers and Heists. You can play with it quite a bit, but it was a great foundation to give some framework to casing, info gathering, etc.

bhchrist wrote:

I split my party of GWJers into two groups of 3 with a guest player for a short run. One of the groups was set up as a heist. I would up using the mechanics in Here's To Crime: A Guide to Capers and Heists. You can play with it quite a bit, but it was a great foundation to give some framework to casing, info gathering, etc.

Nice, thanks. I just bought it and will check it out later.

The night I posted that last message, I went to bed and didn't start my normal podcast. I was just staring at the ceiling. Kit asked me what was up so I told her about the game and what I questions I needed answered. 15 minutes later, I had some good stuff jotted down after getting some really good input from her!

I have the different groups/factions that will also be McGuffin searching and their motivations. I have a little bit of background figgered out, but not a lot. I have some more people I need to add to the shared town we built. My biggest issue will be coming up with clues. I want it to work much like a scavenger hunt. As I work more on it, I'll keep Kit updated and get her input. She is much more imaginative than I am. You have to be when you work with 5 to 10 year olds all day.

-BEP

A couple IMOs: First, don't be afraid to wing it if the players latch onto something that they think is an important piece of info. If you can work that into your bigger picture or story, they have done that bit of work for you! The other is the Three Clue Rule. The Alexandrian has a great article on The Three Clue Rule for investigations and mysteries in RP games. Basically, there needs to be multiple avenues to the solution, no matter HOW obvious you thing the path is. From the article:

Whenever you’re designing a mystery scenario, you should invariably follow the Three Clue Rule:

For any conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

Why three? Because the PCs will probably miss the first; ignore the second; and misinterpret the third before making some incredible leap of logic that gets them where you wanted them to go all along.

I’m kidding, of course. But if you think of each clue as a plan (the PCs will find A, conclude B, and go to C), then when you have three clues you’ve not only got a plan — you’ve also got two backup plans. And when you realize that your plans never survive contact with the players, the need for those backup plans becomes clear.

In a best case scenario, of course, the players will find all three clues. There’s nothing wrong with that. They can use those clues to confirm their suspicions and reinforce their conclusions (just like Sherlock Holmes).

In a worst case scenario, they should be able to use at least one of these clues to reach the right conclusion and keep the adventure moving.

And here’s an important tip: There are no exceptions to the Three Clue Rule.

“But Justin!” I hear you say. “This clue is really obvious. There is no way the players won’t figure it out.”

In my experience, you’re probably wrong. For one thing, you’re the one designing the scenario. You already know what the solution to the mystery is. This makes it very difficult for you to objectively judge whether something is obvious or not.

And even if you’re right, so what? Having extra clues isn’t going to cause any problems. Why not be safe rather than sorry?

I would also recommend getting a small journal or spiral-bound notebook that you can carry everywhere with you and jot down ideas in as well as ideas you can steal from other media you are watching.

bhchrist wrote:

The Three Clue Rule for investigations and mysteries in RP games.

I have a pet theory that there are two Modes Of DMing, and this rule is really important in one of them, and unnecessary in the other.

In the "DM as administrator" mode, the game world is a fixed thing (in your notes or in a published source), and you're just describing it - e.g. the incriminating note is in the desk drawer, so if the players don't look there they don't find it. As such it's super important to have multiple clues like bh said.

Whereas in the "DM as storyteller" mode, I think it's fine to have certain fixed story beats in mind, and shape the world around them. When it's time for the players to find the incriminating note, then if they're poking around it's in the third place they look, or if they search for secret doors they find it behind a painting, etc.

Personally I'm usually in administrator mode, but for a "heist" style adventure I think I'd use story mode liberally to make sure the pace of story developments is satisfying. (Although my style is to have the players think I'm always administrating, so when I commandeer the story it's done behind a veneer of fictional dice rolls, "reading" text out of the source book, etc.)

Sounds like the difference between Blades in the Dark and running a heist in e.g., Shadowrun. The focus and way play is structured is quite different.

We started doing Scum and Villainy recently. It’s only been a few sessions, but I’m leaning towards not being a fan of that style of play. However, I can see the appeal.

Thanks to all above for the good ideas. I've been doing more mullin' than documentin' on my game lately and have concluded that I don't want it to be a scavenger hunt where you have to find clue A to find clue B which points you do clue C, etc. Instead, have it more like a "you gotta find the 3 (or 4?) whatsits to unlock the thingamabob that will get you to the McGuffin." Typical RPG trope action here.

I've been tossing ideas in Google Keep on my phone as I think of them and then transferring them into the Wiki on my NAS when I get to the 'ol puterator. It's only happened a few times because ideas aren't my strong point.

This is going to be mainly a "Storyteller" mode game if I do it right. The locations of the whatsits will be set and some of the facts around them will be set, but I'll try to wing it some when it comes to what NPCs are interacted with for each one, etc. Like a lot of DMs, I've learned that you can get some of the best ideas from your players as they talk amongst themselves or muse out loud.

I do have some conflict ideas brewing, but no specifics as to what pieces of the puzzle they will relate to. I'm definitely going to have one (or 2) of the whatsits already be found by another group. I don't want to do a whole timeline thing where stuff happens at specific point (time) in the world and track the hours and days. That may be the best way, but it's not for me.

If any of you have a little extra time and want to contribute to the fleshing out of the "Freeport" town, even if it's just adding 1 NPC or a bland family, jump on over to The GWJ Collaborative Fantasy Town thread and add some content. You just add a record to the Google Sheet and add a post in the thread that explains the NPC(s). I can help with getting you access to the Sheet, just holler at me.

-BEP

I had a Session 1 with Duane on Saturday, expecting to play maybe 2 or 3 hours at most since I didn't have the plot pieces all fleshed out. We played for over 6.5 hours. The joke about Duane is that he can turn an in-game shopping trip into a 6 hour session

Using our collaborative Freeport was such a boon for me. Before the game, I made tokens for all of the NPCs in the town that have been identified and then added a bunch more generic townsfolk tokens that were ready for when I needed a random person.

-BEP

My D&D group is a big West Marches-style group (loads of players, multiple DMs,run one-shots in a common world rather than one long individual story), and we transitioned online a year ago, obviously, but I noticed something on Sunday when entering a new game into our game log on the site we use; it had been a year since I'd backed out of the last face-to-face game because COVID was starting to pop, and I wasn't comfortable at that point sitting in a basement. I exported the game log to a .csv file and start playing around a bit, and my group played 94 games in the last calendar year, and that's a bit low because we did a virtual gaming con and those games didn't get in. So, almost undoubtedly, 100+ games in a year. Granted, it's a solid 15-20 avid players with half a dozen regular DMs plus a number of more occasional players, but that is a lot of D&D.