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So my group of friends are dabbling in D&D and I'm going to be DMing.

Basically, I have nearly no experience DMing up until now (or much playing RPGs at all) so I was wondering if any experienced D&D gaming groups have some kind of podcast or VoDs they put up, that would be great. So far I've skimmed and/or read through most of the DMing books.

I'm fine with how to write a story, but I'm more interested in how to present this story correctly and how to design balanced, but not bland encounters. Also I want to know how to leave my story open for the characters to explore on their own rather than pushing them along a one-way linear progression.

I also heard something about lowering the HP of most enemies by ~30% because they tend to have too many to begin with? Is this true?

Some people do mess with enemy HP in 4e. It depends on the desired style of gaming, really. other groups find the opposite is true, and the enemies are too weak.

D&D4e, in my experience, works best with 'interesting' encounters. A stand-up fight with a half-dozen orcs isn't interesting, it's just a minor tactical challenge. A fight with orcs, while the party is trying to get through or around a locked vault door, and the Orcs have occasional leader-types that may summon more orcs, that's interesting.

Bonus points if it's all done over lava.

A good suggestion would be to start with some of the pre-made adventures. I don't know the best ones.

Also, 4e really does work best starting no more than 3rd level, less for new players. Higher level characters tend to have a lot of things to remember (powers, feats with conditional bonuses, if/then abilities that trigger on certain events) and gamers can get 'analysis paralysis.' Start at 1st level, and most characters will have a couple at-wills to use as needed and a couple encounter/daily powers, and not much else to cause problems.

You cans till do a lot of storytelling inside the framework of a pre-generated module. Besides winging it if things go off the rails (they will) there's providing hooks to get the player characters into the dungeon and making characters memorable.

When to bend the rules is a big part of Gming, and not something that is agreed on. In general, let the dice fall where they fall, unless you screwed up ("Really, I thought they could take on all those dragons...") but feel free to bend the rules a bit. if the players enjoy fighting a module's boss, make sure his death follows the cinematic rule of not leaving a body... You can bring him back later, then. Maybe plus a level or two.

Don't sweat the details on your side, either. The players each have 1 character to worry about. You have countless NPCs. If an NPC isn't 100% legal byt he rules, it's no big deal. Especially if you follow my last piece of advice:

Let the players be awesome.

They may not be the most powerful beings around, but they are the most interesting. The story revolves around them. If it doesn't involve them, it's probably boring. A bad example of this is I've seen GMs actually run combats between NPCs. The players had no way to get involved, so it was just watching two NPCs punching each other. GM rolled hit/damage for each liek it was a 'real' combat... but we didn't care. If it doesn't involve the PCs, feel free to just make it up and get back to the PCs doing something.

The basic premades that came out when 4E launched aren't too bad.

That's how I launched our 4E game back in the day.

(WOW, apparently it is posted for free on Wizards site)
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/h1.pdf

Keep on the Shadowfell


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, let me just say, that everything Balance said is dead on. Got a little dakka-crush right now.

 Balance wrote:
Bonus points if it's all done over lava.

I believe this applies to all RPG's.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Balance wrote:
Bonus points if it's all done over lava.

I believe this applies to all RPG's.

Very true!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 pretre wrote:

Also, let me just say, that everything Balance said is dead on. Got a little dakka-crush right now.

I think we may have had a massive disagreement about something else a year or two back, so it all evens out...

I would also recommend the starting adventures that Wizard provides. They give you, the DM, lots of set-up ahead of time, which is great to see as a rookie. Having locations, npcs, and encounters all ready to go for you will let you be a bit more able to relax and enjoy running the actual campaign and interacting with your players, without worrying about whether you remembered to generate all your npcs or plot points.

I would also suggest being wary of too much vagueness. For example telling your players that they have followed the Evil Overlord to the town of Genericville and then saying "You enter the town. Now what?" That is not giving your players freedom - that is giving them zero guidance and hoping they have some ideas. But it's a town they've never been to, full of people they know nothing about, in a country that only exists in your mind. It would be much better to tell them that as they enter town, they can see smoke rising from the local church, and can hear the tromp of armored boots coming from the east side, across the river, while just inside the gates is a swirl of people with a low background hum of gathering panic. The first description turns your players loose without direction, while the second description (in addition to being a horrible run-on sentence) gives them some hints and locations of interest, without forcing them down a single path.

It's also worth mentioning that every group and every DM is different. Some groups i've played with were always deadly serious, while another group tried stuffing their halfling in every rain barrel they came across. Running a few pre-packaged adventures will help you figure out how your group dynamic works and what sort of thing gets everyone to have the most fun together, after which you can get down to some world and quest building on your own.

 Balance wrote:

 pretre wrote:

Also, let me just say, that everything Balance said is dead on. Got a little dakka-crush right now.

I think we may have had a massive disagreement about something else a year or two back, so it all evens out...

I retract everything nice that I said due to our past history!!!! HERETIC!

I would recommend:
- Finding a player you trust to help with some of running combat (keeping track of intitiative and loot for example)
- Either using a pre made setting or adventure to start with. Coming up with names and NPC archetypes can be time consuming but with more experience it becomes easy to do on the fly. If you don't use a pre written, get a list of NPC names.
- Make goals obvious to players at first. Allow them freedom in how they approach the goals, and encourage creative problem solving.
- If and when you break a rule or make a house rule, always do it from the perspective of "Do I think the guys will have more fun if I do this?"
-Any NPC can die, any villain can be defeated, but similarly, the players shouldn't expect a Deus Ex Machina save every time they do something really dumb.

 Da Boss wrote:
I would recommend:
- Finding a player you trust to help with some of running combat (keeping track of intitiative and loot for example)
- Either using a pre made setting or adventure to start with. Coming up with names and NPC archetypes can be time consuming but with more experience it becomes easy to do on the fly. If you don't use a pre written, get a list of NPC names.
- Make goals obvious to players at first. Allow them freedom in how they approach the goals, and encourage creative problem solving.
- If and when you break a rule or make a house rule, always do it from the perspective of "Do I think the guys will have more fun if I do this?"
-Any NPC can die, any villain can be defeated, but similarly, the players shouldn't expect a Deus Ex Machina save every time they do something really dumb.

These are good tips.

For my gaming group I made an intiative tracking board. Found a small metal message board thingy at the craft store and got some 'magnetic paper.' (Thin sheets of magnet with a write-on surface on one side.) Made small slips for each character and one for the GM. (OK, actually, I gave our more artistically inclined guy int he group some pens and he did that part) to make an effective and easy initiative tracker.

For 4e, as a player, I'm considering trying to make some 'status cards' for the usual status effects so we have 6+ copies of a card with the details of 'Prone', 'Dazed', 'Slowed', 'Stunned', etc. on them. 4e is very effects-based, so everything helps.

Yeah, white boards are great for tracking stuff.

My group found little status tracking chits that go next to monsters and players on the board that work pretty well.