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Ooo, have fun in the underdark! I think the Underdark is more like a "flowchart wilderness", ie. a wilderness adventure that follows along a flowchart rather than being totally open. But I love me some caving adventures.

Megadungeons are fun with the right group, but can quickly become overwhelming if not everyone likes dungeon crawling. I like having them in my setting as a sort of "default action" - players don't know what to do? go delve in the dungeon for a session and see what you turn up!

It baffles me that Wizards have not released something like Dungeon Delve from 4e which was basically a whole bunch of locations with bad guys in them from level 1 to 30. That would get a lot of use, I think.

I don't think it is that fair to the DM to be willfully obtuse though. In our session yesterday we were on our way to a city to warn it about an undead army approaching, and before the session the DM's girlfriend was joking about all the preparation he had done for this session.

Now we conceivably could have turned around, not gone to that city and wasted all his work, but in the story we were telling and the characters that we were playing it would not have made much sense.

Oh hell yeah, I totally agree. That is the contract. My players had decided to investigate a demon infested ruined city, and I had done a huge amount of work to prepare it including fully keying the city, adapting a map, painting about 50 or so minis for the encounters, the whole shebang. We had a small hiatus, and when we came back the players just decided they did not want to do it any more. I was gutted, and called a brief halt to the campaign while I worked out what was next. I did not get too annoyed, since open world sandbox is the premise of my game, but I did feel a bit betrayed. The way I look at it is, the prep is done, I can re-use it in future.

I completely avoid miniatures and grid maps to the point that some players wanted to buy minis for their guys and i told them "do it if you want but we will not be using them in the game".

I try to keep the theater of the mind going as much as possible and i do not want to invest time and money into stuff that may be used for 10 minutes one game every couple years.

 Lance845 wrote:
I completely avoid miniatures and grid maps to the point that some players wanted to buy minis for their guys and i told them "do it if you want but we will not be using them in the game".

I try to keep the theater of the mind going as much as possible and i do not want to invest time and money into stuff that may be used for 10 minutes one game every couple years.

Similar experience here. In my games at university we were playing in rooms with whiteboards so we could draw up an easy map on that but other than that the usage of maps has been pretty minimal.

 Da Boss wrote:
Oh hell yeah, I totally agree. That is the contract. My players had decided to investigate a demon infested ruined city, and I had done a huge amount of work to prepare it including fully keying the city, adapting a map, painting about 50 or so minis for the encounters, the whole shebang. We had a small hiatus, and when we came back the players just decided they did not want to do it any more. I was gutted, and called a brief halt to the campaign while I worked out what was next. I did not get too annoyed, since open world sandbox is the premise of my game, but I did feel a bit betrayed. The way I look at it is, the prep is done, I can re-use it in future.

Yikes that sucks! Fair play for taking it all in your stride! Like you said no prep is ever really lost.

The session itself sounds amazing though. I would love to play something like that, maybe I'll suggest to my group we go explore some ruined cities

You can have my notes if you like, they are on my plog along with the map. Someone may as well get some use out of it!

As to minis, it is a new thing for me. When we started it was all theatre of the mind, and stayed that way for what...13 years? I also started in university rooms, with chalk blackboards, and we would sketch quick maps on there for complicated fights, that was all.
I love minis and wargaming (hence me being on Dakka so long) but I had no opponents, only people interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons, so I started painting up minis and using them when running for kids because the visual aids helped with play, and then gradually kept increasing the number of minis I had available, sorted out an organised storage method and generally got more into it. I have loads of minis done now and it has been great for my painting motivation, but it is a pain in the arse when you paint stuff and then the players skip it. But hey, a painted mini, and I plan on playing Dungeons and Dragons til I am old as feth, so I will get use out of them, I am sure!

Would totally recommend to new players to go theatre of the mind though.

I think there's a healthy balance between the two. I started out purely with TotM combat, but these days use a lot more maps and minis (or at least tokens, much cheaper). Both have their advantages.

I do find people are far more creative without the constraints of a grid, I tend to get far more 'can I do this cool thing ?' questions with TotM, whereas on a grid 9/10 times people are going to do 'normal' actions based on what's depicted. Rarely do I get questions about swinging on a rope or parkouring over terrain or otherwise interacting with the environment when it's all broken down into gridded maps.

On the other hand, the grid definitely has a value. Bigger combats can get real messy without one, especially as we tend to play online and communication isn't always 100% clear. Likewise, when you have more powerful features (on both sides of the DM screen), and especially AoE effects, it's handy to avoid those edge cases of who gets hit (not normally a problem, if your players will accept your rulings, but every so often you get the ones that quibble everything).

There's also just the cool factor of having minis. I recently bought and painted a set for my group's party (without telling them ahead of time) and they were really excited when I unveiled and used them for the first time. Likewise, throwing down a LotR Troll mini gave them quite the fright that I'm not sure a token or simple description would have done.

These days, I tend to go for maps for anything with multiple creatures on each side, or something that's going to last more than a few rounds. On the other hand, if a couple of PCs are going to run into a room full of CR1/4 guards and cut them down with a single attack, that's not worth getting it out for. Likewise, a 1v1 duel (whether between players and NPCs or PvP sparring), I leave that to the imagination and in general play a little more fast and loose with the combat mechanics.

I do find that when I'm playing with hardcore tacticians/powergamers (people I don't tend to enjoy running for anyway) I avoid maps. It's a temptation to go into wargaming mode for them, and start fussing over positioning, lines of sight and ranges rather than just going with 'close enough' rulings. But for others, that's just part of the fun.

I agree, I think there are lots of situations where breaking out the minis just slows down play, say if players are fighting a wight or something in a small, tightly enclosed crypt, that can be resolved usually very quickly.

I enjoy the tactical side of things though, and I would not get any use from my miniatures any other way at the moment.

Yea that is how we do it as well. We have cool models for the spectacle and drawn maps for the spacial awareness but don't go too overboard.

Would you believe I was so inspired I composed some poetry following the siege of that city! I'm getting so nerdy that I'm going to have to start flushing my own head down the loo soon
What do you chaps get your players to contribute between sessions? Do you ask for after action reports and character background stories?

I give an inspiration point per "write up" of the session from their characters perspectrive. I used to award bonus XP but we don't currently use XP, we use milestone experience.

Some of my players have written songs or had pieces of art commissioned, and one of them got us all mugs themed around our characters. I have a lovely group, which is why it is easier to forgive them mugging me off on the ruined city plot!

I dont award exp for slain monsters.

So every session ends with experience awards.

You showed up. 1 exp.

Heroic roleplay (did something in character even if it would hurt the character) 1-3 exp.

Ingenuity. 1-3.

Personal character progression 1-3.

Story progression 1-3.


It gets the players thinking about what happened that night as a kind of after action report but also encourages being on time and good roleplay.

I don't consider myself particularly good at the story telling side, or knowing the rules very well (hopefully both are because I'm pretty new), but my players are crazy about my miniatures and dungeon set-ups so I go pretty over-board with them. Unless they're in town, in transit, or shopping, I probable have stuff set up on the table.

As for cool stuff my players have done (They're kids btw), they've asked me advice on how to start a miniature collection, advice on DMing and writing their own adventures. One of the youngest has been regularly painting D&D monsters, and wrote a few hand written pages of an adventure story staring the characters in the party

As for contributions, I just ask them to recap at the beginning of each session, we're just starting to see if they can take care of their own character sheets and bring them back each game, they still haven't managed to remember to bring their own set of dice yet, even tho every one of them has a set

As they're new also, I do the inspiration rewards for good roleplaying suggested in one of the books.

I don't trust my adult players to take care of their character sheets lol. I have a hard backed buisness portfolio thing that we put everyones character sheets/notes into at the end of every game and I keep with my books/DM screen.

Ive been watching TT's cast of players and would love to do a campaign so much. Gte minins, grid the whole shabang! Because I like minis.

I dont have many firnds that are into minatures/tabletops but D&D has been thrown around once or twice as an idea. I realise its a huge commitement perosnaly and im am happy with that but not sure how to go about finding likeminded people.

Out of curiosity just how much of the story and character developement is pre-agreed in advance?

Does everyone do a background write up on their dude and the DM then sets the story accordingly? Do you guys discuss the plot(at leats broadly) in advance ?

Any tips on getting started? And how I could look for groups ?
Im in hampshire area of the UK and dont mind driving.

 Argive wrote:
Ive been watching TT's cast of players and would love to do a campaign so much. Gte minins, grid the whole shabang! Because I like minis.

I dont have many firnds that are into minatures/tabletops but D&D has been thrown around once or twice as an idea. I realise its a huge commitement perosnaly and im am happy with that but not sure how to go about finding likeminded people.

Out of curiosity just how much of the story and character developement is pre-agreed in advance?

This depends largely on the DM. The general single guideline that I have had my past DMs tell me is "Any non evil characters are okay.", but I have also heard of people who give a basic set up "You will all be part of a mercenary company that is currently involved in a turf war between these nations." or whatever. It's usually left up to the players to determine if they know each other ahead of time or not. I did find some neat random tables to roll on that are inter character relationships. So I had my most recent players roll on it for the person to their left and right to pre establish how they each knew at least some of the people there. It helps get past the akward first sessions character introductions.

Does everyone do a background write up on their dude and the DM then sets the story accordingly?

Not everyone goes super in depth on their characters backgrounds. What I have found often is that I end up learning a lot about the character as I play and the DM puts them into situations. So I don't try to plan out too much about them.

Do you guys discuss the plot(at leats broadly) in advance ?

I have never once been given any information on the plot from my DMs and as a DM I would never ruin any facet of the plot by telling my players.

Any tips on getting started? And how I could look for groups ?
Im in hampshire area of the UK and dont mind driving.

College campuses are great for finding groups as are local game stores.

I wonder if Dakka should set up a bi-weekly online game using tabletop or some other program?

I do think is worthwhile discussing what type of campaign you want to run with your players beforehand so everyone is on the same page.
We had a great 'one shot' run by one of our players who said up front it would be a low magic and human only so you could avoid it if you didn't like that!

As for knowing mechanics, I've deliberately not learnt the mechanics other than what my character does. Knowing what happens backstage isn't going to increase my fun and, just like in Rugby, DM is God so what he says goes anyway!

I think Lance pretty much covered it with the nature of pre-campaign interaction/'planning', but to add my 2p...

The first step for me as a DM is to give the players a 2-3 page handout on the setting, a map (mainly for fun, or to spark imagination), and let them know where in the world we're starting just so they can figure out why/how their character has ended up there. I do encourage a dialogue at this stage, being a homebrew setting that I've been working on for 2 years, I'm able to answer any questions people have about race, locations, cultures ect. My aim is to make sure that every character fits the world as best they can, rather than just being a generic adventurer that could show up anywhere.

I do ask that everyone shows up with a 'backstory', partly so I have some story hooks to throw in down the line (though rarely in the form the players expect), but mainly for their own benefit. Your character is a product of their experience up to that point, so knowing your character's history and how it's shaped them immediately gives you an insight into their personality. Of course, this'll change as you move through the game, in response to what happens therein, but an understanding of your character's background equips you to know them better and stay in character.

I won't give away any elements of the plot ahead of time (apart from oneshots, where I'll give the players a basic premise to get started quickly), but I do usually give them an introductory paragraph or two that explains why they are where they are, just so they have at least some idea what's going on (especially when you're bringing in new players to an existing game). Elaborating a little on the type of campaign is certainly essential, even if it's just in broad tonal terms. Helps avoid the situation where you're running an urban intrigue game, and someone turns up wanting to slay monsters, or vice versa.

Rarely is anything agreed ahead of time. As a DM, I'll often immediately have ideas of twists, reveals or arcs I want to employ with each PC, but I'll very rarely share that. Other times, I'll play for months before hitting on an idea for them. I do try and give everyone something personal to them as part of the central narrative.


This'll vary greatly from game to game, of course. Mine is big on narrative, so turning up with a character you know well and are comfortable roleplaying is essential. Other DMs will just ask that you turn up with a PC to kill their way through a dungeon, or will hand out specific roles they ask you to fill amongst yourselves. For a first game though, try and strike a balance. You'll quickly find what you like and don't like, so starting off with a nice, well-rounded game gives you the ability to pivot into whatever genre or style you like.

If you're looking to start out as DM though, the best advice I can give is just to go for it. Everyone's first few sessions will be messy, ugly, broken and in a year's time you'll look back on your notes in horror, but if everyone has a good time, that's really all you need!

Yeah I would like to be a dm on day and do all the prep etc. As it obviously brings joy to people and help them have a good time. But I would like to play a couple campaigns first I think for experiance.

The reason for my asking is that narrative and setting is extremely important for me. (I dont know how many days i spent playing the neverwinternights games back in the day).

Im concerned about plot contradictions etc. I would imagine the best way around this would be to pre-agree some things in case somenes backround clashes directly with someone elses.
A good DM is i think the most important part of the experiance.

The important thing is that you, the dm, are not telling a story. Your whole group is telling the story. The players contributions are just as, if not more important than the DMs.

The player will say something like "i want to come from like a viking barbarian tribe where i did blah blah blah" and then you can go, oh, well the skolish tribes inhabit this area. They tend to worship these things and they are in near constant war with these people. Why do you think your character has left the tribe lands to adventure off on their own?"

It works best as a conversation. Figure it out together.

Also the world is a big place and it takes all kinds. Expect the players to be odd balls in your world. They will be anyway.

 Argive wrote:

Im concerned about plot contradictions etc. I would imagine the best way around this would be to pre-agree some things in case somenes backround clashes directly with someone elses.
A good DM is i think the most important part of the experiance.

Yeah, that's really something you kind of have to trust the DM on. Pre-agreeing anything that'll actually happen during the game really shouldn't be necessary, but talking to them during character creation progress can help work out any kinks. That dialogue should help get rid of any contradictions between, for example, how/where your Dragonborn PC is in the world and how the Dragonborn as a culture exist in their setting. There's almost always a compromise to be found that allows you to play the character you want while respecting what the DM has created.

In terms of various PC backstories having some accidental overlap or crossover, that can kind of be a gift to the DM if they're willing to run with it. If player A had a brother who left to become a bandit, and player B had a family home raided by bandits at around the same time, both bandits can conceivably be the same person and boom, instant drama when it comes up.

When it comes to writing backstory, my advice is always to keep it strictly to what your character is aware of. That way, you leave some blank space for the DM to work in, avoid any accidental metagaming by not having knowledge your character doesn't, and leave plenty of surprises for yourself down the line rather than just playing through a story you've already written.

Hmm Yes. I see. I need to have a lookie to see how much a D&D rule-set is these days. I want to avoid meta gaming as much as possible.

In terms of character leveling up etc. Do you guys tend to read through whats available to characters in the long run or pick a starting class and go from there?(rather than plan a skill tree progression in advance). I like surprises but I wouldn't want to be useless and die all the time lol.

To be honest all I really need is to find a good DM. And then some dudes really and go from there.

The Player's Handbook should probably run you about £25-30, depending on where you get it. However, the Basic Rules are available online for free, and cover all the basic mechanics as well as giving you a few class and race options to have a play with. Everything you need to learn to play is in there, pretty much.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

You can also find all this stuff at DNDBeyond, which also features an online character creator that gives you access to all the core races and classes (though not subclasses) and takes you through the somewhat daunting process of creating a character in a very intuitive way. I'd strongly recommend starting out here, as trying to create a character using the rulebooks when you're new can be a very lengthy, confusing process compared to doing it via this site.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/


Regarding picking classes, at this point I have a good enough working knowledge of the game that I can in general know what a character is going to be capable of when I create them. However, I tend to start with a concept I want to play and pick a class that fits, rather than planning ahead too much. Much of the progression in 5e is fairly linear anyway, the big choices being your Subclass pick at level 2 or 3 (the archetype that'll define a lot of your future progression) and whether or not to multiclass down the line.

If you're learning the game, I'd not look ahead too far as a lot of the high-end stuff won't come up for ages, but do have a read of the first few levels' worth of features for the classes you're interested in, as it can be frustrating to want to do a certain thing only to find the class doesn't give you quite the right options to do so. For instance, if you want to play a tanky character in heavy armour, Barbarian might seem ideal, but a lot of their features don't work with Heavy Armour so you'd want to go for a Fighter variation instead. Likewise, if you want to play a holy warrior, knowing whether you want Paladin (Charisma-based, fewer spells, awesome in melee combat) or Cleric (Wisdom-based, less good in close combat, more spells, healing and variety) is important.

If you intend to dm at some point you need the basic trillogy.

Players hand book.
Dungeon masters guide.
Monster manual.

These 3 books are essential for running the game. The dmg is probably worth reading cover to cover at some point.

I would argue that you can get into the game quite easily with the Basic Rules, and particularly the Starter Set which also comes with dice and an adventure for a reasonable price. The starter rules are free, but they do not offer a lot of advice for a new DM. But you can find advice online easily, Matt Colville's youtube series Running the Game, especially the first 4 or so episodes, is full of excellent advice to get you started.

If you find you really like it, definitely worth getting the big three, and as a new DM the Dungeon Masters Guide actually has tonnes of good advice for you. They are very nicely produced books, and the Monster Manual in particular is packed with lovely art and interesting stuff to read.

With regard to how to run a campaign, there are lots of different ways to do it and it is a good idea to try stuff out and see what you like. Some people like plot heavy stuff where the DM is telling a story, others like a more open and sandboxy type thing where the story is what happens in game and the DM mostly sets up the world and acts as the logical response generator. (That is my preferred set up, with a little sprinkling of character specific hooks). Others like to just kick down dungeon doors, kill orcs and solve puzzles. All are totally valid and awesome ways to play.

If you are thinking about it, I would say depending on budget pick up the Basic Rules or the Starter Set and get cracking after making a small town and a basic dungeon.

To be honest all I really need is to find a good DM. And then some dudes really and go from there.

I think this is very true, that's all you need to play!

The advice above is very much in the "I am the DM, this is my world, you will play in it nicely" mold.
My first DM was different in that you created the world collaboratively as you went along which was really cool!

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I completely avoid miniatures and grid maps to the point that some players wanted to buy minis for their guys and i told them "do it if you want but we will not be using them in the game".

I try to keep the theater of the mind going as much as possible and i do not want to invest time and money into stuff that may be used for 10 minutes one game every couple years.

Similar experience here. In my games at university we were playing in rooms with whiteboards so we could draw up an easy map on that but other than that the usage of maps has been pretty minimal.

I've not RPGed for a while, but when we were playing (a variety of games; Dark Heresy 2, MERP, FFG's Star Wars, a homebrew weird WW2 game), we never used miniatures because we had nowhere to put them. We were playing in living rooms, so we were all in chairs and sofas around the edges of the room, not gathered round a dining table.

I ran the Star Wars RPG. What brought that to an end was me running out of ideas. I would have liked a campaign book not so much to follow slavishly, but so I at least had an idea of what the players would start off doing each session. It worked for Raymond Chandler, but there's only so many times you can start off with another Stormtrooper attack.

As for knowing the rules, I can see both arguments. Our method is that whoever's GMing has the rules, and the rest of us pick it up as we go along (usually, it's along the lines of "OK, I want to run up behind that tree, aim at that orc and shoot it in the head with my crossbow" and the GM will work out what actions and die rolls that involves, then I roll the dice). On the other hand, I quite like knowing the basic rules. not all the skills, spells, feats, etc, but knowing the basic numbers so I can judge how likely it is for me to jump a gap, punch someone in the face, etc.

Lance845 wrote:
I don't trust my adult players to take care of their character sheets lol. I have a hard backed buisness portfolio thing that we put everyones character sheets/notes into at the end of every game and I keep with my books/DM screen.

Turns out you're right to do it that way. All but one of the kids that are players in my group lost their character sheet since last week. The two brothers' father spent a long time searching the house and delivering it in time for D&D because of how important it was to the kids. The other missed D&D this session, because their parents felt it was a waste of time for him to stay without his character sheet.

For advice for starting as a DM, I have to fully repeat what Da Boss said. Start small unless you already know you're into D&D. I started with just the starter set, and that's mostly all I have DMed so far (twice). It's a good story for beginners, especially if you plan to stay in The Forgotten Realms. I expect once you get started it will be hard to resist buying the big three core books, but you don't need to feel obligated to have them when first starting. Like Da Boss said, there's enough free stuff available to get started and try it out.
I also encourage watching Matt Colville's Running the Game videos. Also if you have time, some D&D streams, and how to play videos can get you used to game play and the flow of the game.

If you're looking to get into a game without being a DM, I don't have much advice as I haven't had much luck with it. I'd personally suggest seeing if the friends you already have are interested in trying it out together with you.

On an unrelated topic, I'm happy to say, my D&D group just finished the first dungeon in the starter campaign earlier today, and hit level 2. They're psyched.

 Syro_ wrote:

Lance845 wrote:
I don't trust my adult players to take care of their character sheets lol. I have a hard backed buisness portfolio thing that we put everyones character sheets/notes into at the end of every game and I keep with my books/DM screen.

Turns out you're right to do it that way. All but one of the kids that are players in my group lost their character sheet since last week. The two brothers' father spent a long time searching the house and delivering it in time for D&D because of how important it was to the kids. The other missed D&D this session, because their parents felt it was a waste of time for him to stay without his character sheet.

Yikes poor little lad, I feel like I could roughly recreate my character sheet on the fly if necessary!

I'l add my 2 copper pieces to the starting D&D discussion - I'm about 15 or so 5-hour sessions into a campaign, and I only have the free-access rules, D&D Beyond, and the DM's guide. And to be honest, the DM guide is not something I've got much use out of. You really can do a lot with the freely available rules.

I will second (third? fourth?) the advice to check out Matt Colville, his advice helped me a lot. Watching a stream can be useful to learn the broad strokes of the rules (I watch critical role, but there are others available).

I'd say the biggest thing about D&D, and especially for a DM, is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good - It's ok not to be putting out expert-level content straight away! If you're starting with a group completely new to D&D, it's a shared learning experience, and it can be a lot of fun working it out as a group.

But definitely, the best way to learn it, is by doing it!