Don’t let a player boss you around in your game. If they’re not going to have fun because they don’t get what they want, boot’em. Get a feel for the groups expectations for the game, and then reset it to how YOU want the game to go. If you are not having fun, no one is going to have fun, and no D&D is better than bad D&D
Prep for the macro and give players full control over the micro. Have a session zero where everyone talks about what they are and aren’t comfortable with.
Read the adventure so you’re familiar with all the important bits
Don’t be afraid to go off script and improvise. It’s ok for the players to do something not in the book: just wing it and see where the session takes you!
Bookmark some random tables (I love the Random Settlements in the DMG) and level-appropriate enemies to help you improvise better.
If you followed the above advice and now your players are off doing some little self-selected side quest in some random town you rolled up on the spot, use the Three Clue Rule at the beginning of the next session to get them back on track.
DMing is a skill. It takes practice. You’re probably going to suck for the first few sessions, if not the first campaign. So relax, don’t be too hard on yourself, and have fun. Eventually, you’ll figure out your own unique style. If you end a session near tears because you’ve concluded you’re the worst DM of all time and are considering quitting forever, only to be interrupted with, “When can we play again?” it means you did a good job.
Hey! It sounds like you've prepped a lot with the books and DM screen, which is a good sign!
As a DM, I jumped into running a full year long campaign after just running a couple one shots. It really IS easier than you think!
All you have to do is help your friends interact with the world in the books. That's your only job.
The only tips I have are these:
Make sure both your players AND yourself are having fun! It can be easy to stress and bend to your players every whim so they have as good a time as possible - don't do that. Make sure YOU'RE having fun, too! It'll improve your ability to run the game and everyone will be able to tell.
Don't worry about the tabletop aspect too much. I ran a game for over a year with nothing but my laptop and a map I drew with my friend that had the names of cities on it. I hid my dice behind my hand because there was no room for a DM screen - it really just comes down to you and your players having fun. The objects aren't necessary. Don't worry about not having them.
If r/rpghorrorstories taught me anything there’s three things you need to know. #1 no pvp at all or theft. #2 no rp boning without prior consent from all involved parties. #3 showing favoritism to your gf to the detriment of the remaining players can ruin the campaign.
You’ve definitely got more than enough to get started. Only thing I would recommend here is read through the adventure if you haven’t already. Also don’t be scared to improvise if the situation calls for you. You decide the rules you want at the table, not the books. As long as you stay consistent feel free to make any ruling you like if it works for your table.
And the rules, as Barbossa would tell you, are more like guidelines. Throw out the ones that hamper fun but take the time to understand which ones those are and why they do.
But no one here can tell you which those will be. They can be different at every table
Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is in my opinion basically what the DMG should be. It’s an excellent guide to, basically, not just the rules but how to run an excellent game. This topic is not covered in the DMG with any effectiveness, which is kind of weird when you think about it.
The DM Lair is also pretty good in my opinion, in-depth videos with a lot of experience and insight behind them. It’s particularly good if you’re dealing with one specific type of problem or situation you’re trying to approach better in your game. There’s probably a video about it.
Also, bin the DMG treasure rules. They make no sense. If you’re playing a module, then you’re okay, but if you’re doing homebrew I would recommend just abandoning 5e’s economy and using the Pathfinder 2e economy instead or something. I tried 5e’s tables and they were bad, I tried rolling my own guidelines and the result was also bad, IDK, if you figure out a good system, let me know.
Nothing big, but I like to make colored cards with NPCs, treasure, mobs/minibosses, and small quests. Sometimes you just need a random mob, so shuffle the mob deck and draw one, if it doesn’t match the situation, draw another.
Regarding tabletop, we started with P&P and used erasing rubbers and such as figures and a square notepad as battle map.
Nowadays we have proper painted figures and nice battle maps, but sometimes we don’t even bring all that up for small battles, as we just do them verbally instead of visually.
I’ve been Dming since 1st Edition and my #1 rule is to not over prepare. This requires an ability to improve a bit, and be comfortable with the fact that mistakes will happen, and be sure your players understand that. Also, for your first outing, don’t do anything homebrew, it’s fun and one of my favorite parts of the game, but it can also easily break the game if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. The main thing is to have fun.
I definitely agree not to over prepare, but I find it helpful for me to think a little on the different paths they might take and have some stuff constructed so that when they inevitably do something you don’t expect, you have something close enough that you can repurpose or guide them back to a prepared path. It depends on what you’re good at. If I had to completely improv a session, I’m positive it would be rough. Others could improv entire campaigns without their players noticing.
The martial/caster disparity is the (IMO, proven and obvious) idea that martial characters lack gameplay options compared to their caster counterparts, and that this problem only ever gets worse with level.
Also, “martial” in this case specifically refers to Fighters, Barbarians, and Rogues.
IMO, it does exist, but it’s not as “end of the world”-bad as some people make it out to be. Basically, rogues are fine because they get a crap-ton of skills that can be put to good use as long as the rogue player makes their character with even a little long-term thought. Rogues that have problems tend to focus in things like stealth, and other physical skills that casters can use spells to imitate or replace. Rogues that pick up and spend expertise in one or two soft skills (some kind of knowledge skill, insight, investigation, etc…) will never find themselves with nothing to do and will always have a niche where they can make the full casters go “holy shit!” from time to time.
Fighters and Barbarians actually have problems because they seem to have been made more with dungeoncrawling in mind, to the detrement of anything non-dungeon related. They generally lack useful soft skills, and don’t stack stats that will make using them useful because they generally don’t have ways to make a high int or wisdom terribly useful.
Fighters and Barbarians compound the skill problem by not gaining useful/impactful abilities in T3 or T4. When full casters are busy choosing and enjoying the most powerful spells in the game, fighters get another use of indomitable (which never, ever fucking works, IME), a second action surge per short rest WAY too late for it to really matter, and a 4th attack they will probably never, ever actually get because it’s at 20th level for some stupid, fucking reason (as opposed to level 17 where ALL casters, even the half-casters, get their 4th cantrip damage die).
Barbarians get even less than fighters due to most of their class budget being tied up in a massive passive ability: Brutal Critical. So all they ever get to do is crit-fish, which they’ve all been doing since level 1 anyway.
The disparity is choice and impact. Because of their lack of choices, it can seem difficult to have an impact on the game, mechanically. A good DM can make up for this in a variety of ways, but when you’re just looking at the rules or white-rooming a character, the problem does tend to become a bit obvious…if overblown.
Generally, the fix is simply to give fighters and barbarians more class abilities that involve getting to make interesting choices during play.
Also, “martial” in this case specifically refers to Fighters, Barbarians, and Rogues.
Don’t discount Monks! They’re generally regarded as the worst class in the game, as they’re essentially fighters that deal less damage in exchange for a resource that lets them use cool abilities…for a short time. Yeah, I know they’re technically? magical, but they function and present as a martial class, poorly at that.
The disparity is choice and impact. Because of their lack of choices, it can seem difficult to have an impact on the game, mechanically. A good DM can make up for this in a variety of ways, but when you’re just looking at the rules or white-rooming a character, the problem does tend to become a bit obvious…if overblown.
Also don’t discount, being able to play out-of-combat scenarios. Casters get utility like Pass Without Trace, Spider Climb, Prestidigitation, Friends, and then the fact that most of them are charisma-based for some strange reason, which is THE out-of-combat stat. I know my suggestion in particular doesn’t really address that, and is more focused on the more-abilities and/or allowing interesting choices part that you mention after that, but I do absolutely want things like 3.5e’s Moment of Perfect Mind, and whatnot.
That’s how bad monks are. I forgot they even existed :D
But seriously, they’ve been getting some good changes in the UAs, and with WotC being a bit more generous with things like expertise it makes being useful a lot easier when you’ve got a lot of random weird shit you can do, like a monk can.
Honestly, Monks are so close to being a top tier class. All they really need is for WotC to pull their heads out of their collective asses and make short rests not a fucking tooth-pulling exercise in frustration for your average group.
If it were me I’d bring back the concept of 10-minute “exploration turns”. You use one exploration turn to do something like pick a lock, break down a door, climb your speed x 5 in relatively safe conditions without a check, attempt to disarm a trap, attempt to climb a slippery or dangerous surface, examine a magic item (arcana check to figure out something basic), make a general knowledge check about a subject (would have to define a distinct difference between using knowledge checks in combat and using them outside of combat), etc…
…but, most importantly, you would use an exploration turn to try and take a short rest. Take one short rest action and you can spend one hit dice per three levels (rounding up). Take a second in a row and you can spend one hit dice per three levels. Take three of them back-to-back and you can spend another one hit dice per three levels, and any short rest recharges trigger. Your short rest is now done. You can gain the recharge benefit of the third rest action twice per long rest.
…and while that was going on the rest of the party was able to fuck around and do stuff. Which means the monk who gassed themselves in the last combat can take three rest actions to get back their ki while the rogue searches a room, disarms a trap guarding a hidden chest, and then picks the lock on the chest.
I fundamentally don’t understand why classes having a different amount of options is a problem. But then again, maybe I just have brain rot from decades of playing B/X and BECMI.
When power levels of the degree of modern TTRPGs are expected of characters, D&D sort of becomes a game all about your options and which you choose when. If certain characters have inherently MORE options to pick from in such a setting, that means they are essentially objectively better by default.
In the older editions, like the ones you’re talking about, casters had serious downsides. Between being very fragile, spells being interrupteable, and sometimes having different XP amounts, casters were kinda ‘glass cannons’, and needed a martial frontline.
In 3.5 and 5e, casters have had these harsh downsides decreased or removed, while not otherwise losing power. They are more or less strictly better than martials, in the sense they can do 90%+ of what martials can do better than they can do it, while also doing several other things. And the few things martials do do better, it’s by slight degrees.
It’s not just that casters are powerful, it’s that they’re powerful and flexible, able to be top tier in several different roles at the same time, and can change what roles they cover by resting and swapping spells.
Whereas martials can sometimes build to be top tier in one role, but they’re largely locked into that one role, or can build to be okay in several roles (and be outclassed by casters in all of them).
You put that WAY better than I did.
And yeah, At this point Casters really can just do everything martials can, better, and more. There’s just no denying that.
Yeah. It was worse in 3.5 ironically; despite casters having more downsides than 5e, spells were overall stronger. It did leave this narrow window at levels 1 and 2 where martials were basically strictly better, but caster quickly skyrocketted in power, especially if you were playing with prestige classes.
Spell power was reigned in for 5e, and pretty sharply at that (most notably from adding Concentration). But, they also washed away caster downsides, by making cantrips at will, casters not quite so fragile, and by softening Vancian casting. 5e is still absolutely more balanced than 3.5, but that’s not saying a lot; 3.5’s power level was all over the place.
Still, I feel like 5e’s levels 1-5 are pretty balanced, and the martial/caster imbalance doesn’t really become painful until like, level 12.
Same reason Netflix started making its own shows. Same reason Xbox bought Bethesda and is making Elder Scrolls VI an XBox exclusive.
Once they have enough market share, they will start making all D&D releases “exclusive” to their horrible walled garden. And that means if you want to play modern D&D, your only option is to put up with their abusive business practices.
Once they have enough market share, they will start making all D&D releases “exclusive” to their horrible walled garden. And that means if you want to play modern D&D, your only option is to put up with their abusive business practices.
Due to the nature of DND and the way VTTs work, that’s just but going to be possible. D&d is always going to be maps and encounters and these are always going to be replicable with little to no effort. The sooner WotC accepts the fact that the best source of profits they have are the intellectual properties they actually own. Specifically Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Greyhawk, Spelljammer and the like, the better off they’ll be.
Instead of trying to gate keep the rules of the game which neither logistically nor legally can actually be restricted in the way they want, they ought to be focusing on creating a better source of DND material. One needs look no further than YouTube to find the model that WotC needs to follow to encourage growth and sustainable profits. YouTube doesn’t own the process of making videos nor can it prevent content creators from releasing their videos on other platforms. All they’ve done is create an environment where it’s easier and more profitable for creators to publish in.
Wizards doesn’t even need to own the VTT to control the marketplace. There really isn’t any good reason for them to create a VTT and they aren’t going to make one anytime soon that’s going to compare with the products that are already available. They’d serve themselves and their customers far better if they just fostered a marketplace where user content can easily be shared and published to any VTT available.
Honestly, I’m excited for D&D to step into the ring and spur competition. Roll20 has always been clunky, but their latest updates are really nice. Competition is good for everyone. Either the VTT you use improves, or you get an option that suits your needs better.
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