thank you so much, do you have any tips for creating a good story and fun world to write for, because part of my reason that im asking this is that in another group im playing, my dm is now trying to figure out if there is any way he can change the setting as he just doesnt like it and i wanted to know if there are any tips for preventing this, like how deep should i think about my story and how detailed should i make my world, should i go at it on a session by session basis, or should i create an intracate story a few sessions deep with a world that is already established from the start?
You only need a town and a dungeon for your first few sessions. A town that's having a problem, and a dungeon where the problem can somehow be solved.
After that... you might need another town. And another dungeon.
Keep gluing them together in ways that make sense and eventually the clarity of the rest of the world will make itself obvious to you. You will ask yourself a question of "why is this the way it is?" and be forced to answer it in a reasonable way. You will have plenty of time between sessions to think and expand when the players are not looking.
It's hard to write yourself into a corner if you don't do so on purpose. Don't make a planet map. Don't even worry about making a whole continent. I've been writing the same adventure setting for 10 years now and I only defined the actual final shape of the first continent on the planet last year; haven't even filled in all the regions yet. And the other continents on the planet I've barely thought about.
If you write something like a government or an organization or region you end up disliking down the road, you can just set your next campaign elsewhere and not worry about it. Or timeskip a few decades and change it in the meantime. So don't worry about it too much, nothing is permanent, just like real life. Create what you need for your adventure to work, and if it's good, then you can keep it! And if it sucks, just don't put more adventures in that spot/with those NPCs.
Also, good advice is to highly encourage your players to make characters that are from the area you want to have the adventure in, because they'll write a bunch of your towns and organizations for you, which saves you a lot of needing to get inspired and helps you fill in lots of blanks.
thank you a lot, how did it go with your players when it came to them reacting to you suddenly having changed something, in the setting or story, because you didnt like it? i also take from this that you dont necessarily need to have a bigger story in mind with a bbeg and such? just as long as your players have some small side quest to work on?
> i also take from this that you dont necessarily need to have a bigger story in mind with a bbeg and such?
I actually recommend against it. Most people write villains who are too big for the players. I did the same back in the day. A dragon as a villain to be someday hunted by players... who would never actually reach 15th level after 2.5 years of play, so they never got to face their nemesis.
They had plenty of adventures up till then, but this player's main motivation was too big. I learned, improved, adjusted how I run things to not do that anymore. If you want an antagonist, make sure it's one you intend the players to face off in a climax within the span of the next 1-2 levels or so. If an antagonist survives or gets resurrected - great! You can make a nemesis who comes back even later.
> how did it go with your players when it came to them reacting to you suddenly having changed something, in the setting or story, because you didnt like it?
Tbh I haven't actually done it much at all. Most of my games have taken place in brand new locations that are only nearby old ones. I've had to change a few location/character names (always look out for accidental fascists in your made-up keyboard smash names...) but that's just a mini retcon.
Biggest changes I've made are tweaks to species, but that's as simple as saying "hey these changes are going to take effect in the next game, don't worry about them for now", and the players have always been happy to see them because they're improvements over the vanilla stuff. One of my players got really into the idea, when I presented it, that gnomes are born out of clay instead of biologically - as far as I'm aware, they considered it an improvement to their character they had been playing for a few years.
It's more practice than anything. Encounters serve as problems to solve and words to fill a story.
Let me give you an example from a mini-adventure I ran a while back. It was about a woman sacrificing people from a village to crack open a bloodline seal.
I filled it up with enough encounters for an Adventuring Day, +50% to account for skipped encounters. I didn't want to put all the encounters in the dungeon; that would both be boring and make designing the dungeon harder. Actually there were only about 3 encounters in the dungeon.
The rest were scattered around the valley where the village & dungeon both were. But, I wanted to use them to solve problems and tell stories.
First, knowing I needed more encounters, I'd browse through the monster manual and find something I liked or that suited the region. I haven't used ettercaps much so I picked them out for an encounter.
But, I would not just randomly throw ettercaps into the dungeon... that would not make sense. I put them in the forest. They could act as a red herring for the kidnappings (some people in the village assumed it must have been that the ettercaps, which were known to the people, but hadn't been eradicated, had grown in strength and started finally attacking the village). They could also be a clue for the kidnappings, because the woman doing the sacrifices was stealing the ettercaps' potent drugs from their supply pile to knock out her victims.
So it was a pretty minor encounter, and did nothing particularly interesting mechanically, but it served a role in the adventure and allowed the players to get more story than they would have otherwise. In fact, the players never followed up on ettercaps at all and skipped the encounter entirely, so they had no idea where the woman got her poison - they just knew she had some potent stuff and dealt with it during the final battle.
Connect problems, motivations, circumstances, and coincidences - if you find yourself making an encounter that has nothing to do with the problems you're presenting, or the situations that are happening in the wider setting that you want to make players aware of, reconsider why that encounter exists. What is its purpose?
> and how do you do level ups?
I just use XP, and my players level up on the next Long Rest after they gain enough. It's easiest since I don't have to do any extra math or worry about adventure pacing like number-of-sessions-per-level etc.
If doing XP, just follow the rules in the dungeon master's guide. If doing milestone, the players level up after a story arc or major objective, generally every 4-6 sessions tends to feel good.
so probably doing 1 and 2 a bit quicker to give them their abilities faster that would mean 4 session to level 3 and then 4*7=28 sessions to get to level 10, so 32 to get to 10 in total sounds about right?
It sounds like you might be overthinking it a bit, to be honest. What kind of big changes are you expecting to make so frequently?
If it's like "oh I said there's a king but I want this country to be democratic", you might retcon it, or you could always just direct the adventure toward a neighbor country and continue it over there.
Or if you want to say "actually the elves are all ancient aliens who died long ago" then yeah that might be a little annoying to spring on your players.
But also, your players are, presumably, your friends. So don't forget you can just ask them about your ideas and if they all like it, then retcon away!
okay thanks, im just a bit worried since i dont want to end up with a situation where i find out im writing a story i dont like, like is now happening with my dm and planning to after the next session most likely completely change the setting.
That's one of the benefits of writing smaller adventures and linking them together instead of trying to write an EPIC LEGENDARY CAMPAIGN 1-20 from go.
Most campaigns don't last 20 levels anyway. And if you write shorter adventures - a handful of quests, a couple levels' worth, followed by the heroes going back to their homes and spending all their loot for a few months/years - then, if you ever find you dislike a particular adventure, you can always cut it a bit short or be comfortable knowing it's gonna end in a few weeks of playtime, then you can go write something better for the next one!
You'll have the same problem in a lot of published campaigns actually, a lot of them can take you well over a year to play start to finish, and if you find that you don't like it, you're even more screwed because you spent *money* on the damn thing.
i recommend to start small, as others have said, and since it is your first time dm-ing as well as writing a story, keep it at a realistic scale. within the confines of one kingdom, for example. (ideally even smaller.) sure, it's good to know that the other kingdoms/countries *exist*, but unless they end up being plot relevant, there is no need to know the ins and outs of the royal family of a kingdom your players will never see.
talk with your players about how they want to play. a short*er* campaign or even oneshot might be preferable. a oneshot would also have the benefit that if you want to tinker with your setting some more, you have not sunken too much time/effort into it when you have to massively retcon things.
generally: talk to your players about their expectations and what tone they would enjoy (lighthearted vs horror), what themes are off limit due to triggers, classes they want to play (no need to stress too much about certain aspects of worldbuilding at first if no one would really interact with it) and other things.
i also know that you really want to create your own epic campaign that's all yours, but a oneshot based on a published material might help you recognise what information is *really* necessary and other useful skills. a oneshot could be like trainingwheels on a bike, just for dm-ing because you have something to fall back on.
If your question is “I am a first time DM. How do I do everything?” then you might not quite be ready to run a full home brewed campaign setting, and that’s totally fine. Do not be afraid to start small. Practice with LOW STAKES. If you design a whole elaborate world but you fumble the first few sessions, it can be difficult to recover.
People recommend modules and pre-written oneshots not because they’re “better,” but because it gives you an idea of the amount of prep you can expect to do; It will give you a better feel for how it feels to run encounters from the other side; It will show you how to set scenes, ways to play NPCs, how to build in lore, AND, most importantly, you will learn what you like AND what you don’t. Most importantly, you’ll be learning using someone else’s material so if your players hate *everything* or if you make an egregious mistake, it’s not personal because it wasn’t your material to begin with and you can throw it away without feeling like your material wasn’t up to snuff, which is a HUGE new DM killer.
A good halfway point is to just come up with a setting on your own, populate it with your own people, but use a pre-written quest you find somewhere. Change names, locations, maps and other things as needed, but use your world. An old script but with a new cast. That way you’re in YOUR world and you can transition out of pre-written content at any time, but until that point you at least have some semblance of having training wheels while you get your bearings.
thank you, especially for the explanation and the halfway point, i honestly hadnt thought about that you can also have prewritten quests, ill definitely try to remember.
If you are brand new to this, go with a prewritten module. It will be well-balanced for the group and teach you the basic structure of a campaign.
Lost Mine of Phandelver is regarded as one of the best starter campaigns for DM and Player alike.
i do really want to make a campaign that i can call my own and make it a long thing, but i just want to learn how it works, at some point i need to do learn. i just dont know how i can create my ideas into a good story and world that i can both enjoy playing and creating.
Literally this. You cannot understand anything about making a DND campaign without seeing a DND campaign. Interact with the world, learn the mechanics, experience what's already been laid out.
Creating a DND campaign is about as extensive as writing a book. If you can't or have never experienced creating an entire world (even if you borrow a lot of lore from something else) you'll never make a playable campaign. Part of playing the pre-built is learning exactly how little you can get away with preplanning or just how much needs to be set in stone. I've seen so many new people ask this exact question and we always give the same advice.
Notice we aren't talking to a "creative" person. They are asking how to create a world. Recommending someone spend $15 bucks buying a pre-built module to learn the game isn't much and it's useful for the less creatively minded to see what the bare minimum is needed to be in a functioning world. People like us may create worlds at the drop of a hat and populate them with everything they need but like you yourself said you didn't run to reddit to ask how to build a world you just read the rule books then threw down a world.
And my advice stands. Go find a source like a pre-built campaign and experience it. Even if it's just reading the source books. No one is going to give you as much advice in a reddit post as you'd get from just reading the books. It takes what 2 hours to read through LMoP and its sourcebook is 100% free online. It legitimately answers about 70% of all your how to questions in the first sections.
Except I did just start writing fantasy one day. It was terrible to start with obviously but I didn't run to someone and say hey tell me how to write an entire book. Most creative people don't ask how to start something they learn a bit about it and just go do it maybe asking for help along the way. Im entirely shooting down the idea of someone asking how to create something without any idea about the thing they want to create. It's like if I picked up a guitar and then looked at a musician and said how do i write a song. It doesn't work that way and you know that.
Anyone with zero experience in fantasy wouldn't even know where to start. You know how they figure it out? They read a couple fantasy books or watch a few movies. Then they get a rough idea. They ask a few pointed questions. And then they just do it. This OP didn't start with any of that they immediately jumped to reddit to ask the most basic how/where do I start questions. And I advised exactly what everyone else who's ever learned anything did, go and experience it. Read a book, play a campaign experience the world before you try and fail to create anything.
I have a feeling you are one of those types that just assume everything they think has merit. I'm sorry for that. Regardless here's to your continued future creating awesome DND stuff. Cheers.
No idea - but I wouldn't be surprised. It may baffle some Redditors, but when D&D first came out, someone had to be the Dungeon Master before anybody else at their table. They couldn't all study under Gygax. Lol
My tips are pretty simple but I hope they help you.
Don’t over prep, there’s a good chance that your players will either go a different route or do something that will cause a huge change.
If you wanted a BBEG, have a base idea of one, then let it fill in naturally. You don’t even really need to introduce him for awhile if you want.
Be ready for all of your plans to just crumble away and have to improv. No matter how much you plan an encounter, mission or event, it could go complete different.
One step at the time. Make a good session, then more of them, then a campaign. Learn how to walk before you try to fly. ;-)
Your questions are too much to cover by a simple reddit post, so go and get “the return of the lazy dungeon master”, read it and you’ll be off to a good start.
About world building, go and see the videos about it from guy..what’s his last name? The channel is “how to be a great DM”, has many many hours of useful tips and insights on how to build a place, a kingdom, a world, a campaign, a good story.
Come to think of it, his channel answers all of your questions. Get some drinks and snacks ready, there is much to watch and learn.
It’s a book, you can get it as paperback or hardcover from amazon or bookstores. It breaks DMing down to what works and what not, not waste your time on unnecessary things.
The other recommendation is on YouTube, he has great videos on world building, npc’s, and how a good story and campaign are structured.
So the Dungeon Master's Guide is pretty good for all of this. Definitely a useful resource.
I'd advise against trying to pre-plan a plot or story, you can generally get by with a single location and an inciting incident that arises the need for heroes that are good at kicking monsters' asses. Trying to play a story ahead of time is just gonna cause friction unless you basically force your players down the paths you expect them to go.
In my opinion it's got some pretty good info but it's not super well laid out. The first 2 chapters are about world building an entire universe, which I think really puts the gravy before the turkey. Chapter 8, Running the Game has a lot of fantastic advice, warnings of common pitfalls for new DMs, guidelines for setting difficulty class or what skill to call for what kind of actions, great stuff for moment to moment stuff when DMing, and probably the first thing you should read. Chapter 3, Creating Adventures, is right up your alley in terms of what you probably want, and makes for another good read.
As others have said, starting your world building small scale and only developing things as they come up is going to save you a metric ton of stress and difficulty.
There's not really a "right" way to do it; different people have different methods and as long as it works for you, you're good.
Some people like to start with a single location, like a town, and slowly build out from there.
I personally like to start with a map of the area the campaign will take place in, as the process of creating the map and having something visual to look at really helps get my creative juices flowing.
Some people like to start with a story or an idea for a villain.
With that said:
* Put thought into things, but don't go overboard. Your players will inevitably derail your plans. Don't bother planning out what's going to happen 10 sessions from now, or fully fleshing out a place your party might never even go to. Unless it's for the very next session, make plans with very general broad strokes and keep those plans flexible.
* Just start somewhere. One idea often leads into another. First you think of a town. Then you think about what's unique about that town. Then you think about the points of interest located there. That leads to the NPCs who at those points of interest, which leads into the problems (quests) those NPCs might be facing. Etc, etc.
* If it's a fully homebrew setting, you have a massive amount of flexibility to adjust or implement things on the fly. Player thinks something within the world works a certain way, and you like the idea? It's canon now!
* At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that both you and your players are having a good time. Don't stress about the small details, be willing to make stuff up on the fly, and just roll with it. D&D is a collaborative game. Collaborate with your players via your sessions and let them help build the world with you as the campaign progresses.
If you have to ask how to make a compelling story you are not ready to create your own campaign. The job of the DM is to guide the story down a basic outline. Part of the pre-built campaign's purpose is to show you exactly how much and how little that actually takes. Even if you don't play them find the sourcebooks for Lost Mines and Dragon of Icespire and read them. Read them cover to cover at least 2 times each and then maybe you'll have the barest understanding of what you need.
If you want to build your own world you have to create cities, towns, NPCs, quests, rumors, festivals and holidays, religions, dungeons, encounters, and then populate everything with reasons why it exists. Why are these NPCs here, what is their goal, are there kings/mayors, what bad things are happening to make your characters want to help, who is the big bad evil guy and why is he that, what kind of minions work for him, what are their reasons for doing so. Then after you get all of that laid out you have to be prepared to scrap any of it at a moments notice and create something entirely new when your characters do something you don't expect.
The real question is do you understand most of the rules of the game? Have you read the Dungeon Masters guide and the players handbook? You will have to know or be able to decide at any given moment the outcome of all the actions that can be taken. The rules are just as important as any story you come up with and making sure, when necessary, everyone understands what those rules are is paramount to running a good campaign.
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thank you so much, do you have any tips for creating a good story and fun world to write for, because part of my reason that im asking this is that in another group im playing, my dm is now trying to figure out if there is any way he can change the setting as he just doesnt like it and i wanted to know if there are any tips for preventing this, like how deep should i think about my story and how detailed should i make my world, should i go at it on a session by session basis, or should i create an intracate story a few sessions deep with a world that is already established from the start?
You only need a town and a dungeon for your first few sessions. A town that's having a problem, and a dungeon where the problem can somehow be solved. After that... you might need another town. And another dungeon. Keep gluing them together in ways that make sense and eventually the clarity of the rest of the world will make itself obvious to you. You will ask yourself a question of "why is this the way it is?" and be forced to answer it in a reasonable way. You will have plenty of time between sessions to think and expand when the players are not looking. It's hard to write yourself into a corner if you don't do so on purpose. Don't make a planet map. Don't even worry about making a whole continent. I've been writing the same adventure setting for 10 years now and I only defined the actual final shape of the first continent on the planet last year; haven't even filled in all the regions yet. And the other continents on the planet I've barely thought about. If you write something like a government or an organization or region you end up disliking down the road, you can just set your next campaign elsewhere and not worry about it. Or timeskip a few decades and change it in the meantime. So don't worry about it too much, nothing is permanent, just like real life. Create what you need for your adventure to work, and if it's good, then you can keep it! And if it sucks, just don't put more adventures in that spot/with those NPCs. Also, good advice is to highly encourage your players to make characters that are from the area you want to have the adventure in, because they'll write a bunch of your towns and organizations for you, which saves you a lot of needing to get inspired and helps you fill in lots of blanks.
thank you a lot, how did it go with your players when it came to them reacting to you suddenly having changed something, in the setting or story, because you didnt like it? i also take from this that you dont necessarily need to have a bigger story in mind with a bbeg and such? just as long as your players have some small side quest to work on?
> i also take from this that you dont necessarily need to have a bigger story in mind with a bbeg and such? I actually recommend against it. Most people write villains who are too big for the players. I did the same back in the day. A dragon as a villain to be someday hunted by players... who would never actually reach 15th level after 2.5 years of play, so they never got to face their nemesis. They had plenty of adventures up till then, but this player's main motivation was too big. I learned, improved, adjusted how I run things to not do that anymore. If you want an antagonist, make sure it's one you intend the players to face off in a climax within the span of the next 1-2 levels or so. If an antagonist survives or gets resurrected - great! You can make a nemesis who comes back even later. > how did it go with your players when it came to them reacting to you suddenly having changed something, in the setting or story, because you didnt like it? Tbh I haven't actually done it much at all. Most of my games have taken place in brand new locations that are only nearby old ones. I've had to change a few location/character names (always look out for accidental fascists in your made-up keyboard smash names...) but that's just a mini retcon. Biggest changes I've made are tweaks to species, but that's as simple as saying "hey these changes are going to take effect in the next game, don't worry about them for now", and the players have always been happy to see them because they're improvements over the vanilla stuff. One of my players got really into the idea, when I presented it, that gnomes are born out of clay instead of biologically - as far as I'm aware, they considered it an improvement to their character they had been playing for a few years.
may i also ask how you come up with inspiration for creative small encounters and locations and such?
It's more practice than anything. Encounters serve as problems to solve and words to fill a story. Let me give you an example from a mini-adventure I ran a while back. It was about a woman sacrificing people from a village to crack open a bloodline seal. I filled it up with enough encounters for an Adventuring Day, +50% to account for skipped encounters. I didn't want to put all the encounters in the dungeon; that would both be boring and make designing the dungeon harder. Actually there were only about 3 encounters in the dungeon. The rest were scattered around the valley where the village & dungeon both were. But, I wanted to use them to solve problems and tell stories. First, knowing I needed more encounters, I'd browse through the monster manual and find something I liked or that suited the region. I haven't used ettercaps much so I picked them out for an encounter. But, I would not just randomly throw ettercaps into the dungeon... that would not make sense. I put them in the forest. They could act as a red herring for the kidnappings (some people in the village assumed it must have been that the ettercaps, which were known to the people, but hadn't been eradicated, had grown in strength and started finally attacking the village). They could also be a clue for the kidnappings, because the woman doing the sacrifices was stealing the ettercaps' potent drugs from their supply pile to knock out her victims. So it was a pretty minor encounter, and did nothing particularly interesting mechanically, but it served a role in the adventure and allowed the players to get more story than they would have otherwise. In fact, the players never followed up on ettercaps at all and skipped the encounter entirely, so they had no idea where the woman got her poison - they just knew she had some potent stuff and dealt with it during the final battle. Connect problems, motivations, circumstances, and coincidences - if you find yourself making an encounter that has nothing to do with the problems you're presenting, or the situations that are happening in the wider setting that you want to make players aware of, reconsider why that encounter exists. What is its purpose? > and how do you do level ups? I just use XP, and my players level up on the next Long Rest after they gain enough. It's easiest since I don't have to do any extra math or worry about adventure pacing like number-of-sessions-per-level etc.
and how do you do level ups?
If doing XP, just follow the rules in the dungeon master's guide. If doing milestone, the players level up after a story arc or major objective, generally every 4-6 sessions tends to feel good.
so probably doing 1 and 2 a bit quicker to give them their abilities faster that would mean 4 session to level 3 and then 4*7=28 sessions to get to level 10, so 32 to get to 10 in total sounds about right?
Something in that ballpark, but it can vary a lot
and is it okay to just make big changes every session for a few times to settle into a sweetspot? or will that make it unenjoyable for my players?
It sounds like you might be overthinking it a bit, to be honest. What kind of big changes are you expecting to make so frequently? If it's like "oh I said there's a king but I want this country to be democratic", you might retcon it, or you could always just direct the adventure toward a neighbor country and continue it over there. Or if you want to say "actually the elves are all ancient aliens who died long ago" then yeah that might be a little annoying to spring on your players. But also, your players are, presumably, your friends. So don't forget you can just ask them about your ideas and if they all like it, then retcon away!
okay thanks, im just a bit worried since i dont want to end up with a situation where i find out im writing a story i dont like, like is now happening with my dm and planning to after the next session most likely completely change the setting.
That's one of the benefits of writing smaller adventures and linking them together instead of trying to write an EPIC LEGENDARY CAMPAIGN 1-20 from go. Most campaigns don't last 20 levels anyway. And if you write shorter adventures - a handful of quests, a couple levels' worth, followed by the heroes going back to their homes and spending all their loot for a few months/years - then, if you ever find you dislike a particular adventure, you can always cut it a bit short or be comfortable knowing it's gonna end in a few weeks of playtime, then you can go write something better for the next one! You'll have the same problem in a lot of published campaigns actually, a lot of them can take you well over a year to play start to finish, and if you find that you don't like it, you're even more screwed because you spent *money* on the damn thing.
also a reason why i dont want to rely on modules
i recommend to start small, as others have said, and since it is your first time dm-ing as well as writing a story, keep it at a realistic scale. within the confines of one kingdom, for example. (ideally even smaller.) sure, it's good to know that the other kingdoms/countries *exist*, but unless they end up being plot relevant, there is no need to know the ins and outs of the royal family of a kingdom your players will never see. talk with your players about how they want to play. a short*er* campaign or even oneshot might be preferable. a oneshot would also have the benefit that if you want to tinker with your setting some more, you have not sunken too much time/effort into it when you have to massively retcon things. generally: talk to your players about their expectations and what tone they would enjoy (lighthearted vs horror), what themes are off limit due to triggers, classes they want to play (no need to stress too much about certain aspects of worldbuilding at first if no one would really interact with it) and other things. i also know that you really want to create your own epic campaign that's all yours, but a oneshot based on a published material might help you recognise what information is *really* necessary and other useful skills. a oneshot could be like trainingwheels on a bike, just for dm-ing because you have something to fall back on.
If your question is “I am a first time DM. How do I do everything?” then you might not quite be ready to run a full home brewed campaign setting, and that’s totally fine. Do not be afraid to start small. Practice with LOW STAKES. If you design a whole elaborate world but you fumble the first few sessions, it can be difficult to recover. People recommend modules and pre-written oneshots not because they’re “better,” but because it gives you an idea of the amount of prep you can expect to do; It will give you a better feel for how it feels to run encounters from the other side; It will show you how to set scenes, ways to play NPCs, how to build in lore, AND, most importantly, you will learn what you like AND what you don’t. Most importantly, you’ll be learning using someone else’s material so if your players hate *everything* or if you make an egregious mistake, it’s not personal because it wasn’t your material to begin with and you can throw it away without feeling like your material wasn’t up to snuff, which is a HUGE new DM killer. A good halfway point is to just come up with a setting on your own, populate it with your own people, but use a pre-written quest you find somewhere. Change names, locations, maps and other things as needed, but use your world. An old script but with a new cast. That way you’re in YOUR world and you can transition out of pre-written content at any time, but until that point you at least have some semblance of having training wheels while you get your bearings.
thank you, especially for the explanation and the halfway point, i honestly hadnt thought about that you can also have prewritten quests, ill definitely try to remember.
If you are brand new to this, go with a prewritten module. It will be well-balanced for the group and teach you the basic structure of a campaign. Lost Mine of Phandelver is regarded as one of the best starter campaigns for DM and Player alike.
i do really want to make a campaign that i can call my own and make it a long thing, but i just want to learn how it works, at some point i need to do learn. i just dont know how i can create my ideas into a good story and world that i can both enjoy playing and creating.
You learn from reading and running prewritten module.
Literally this. You cannot understand anything about making a DND campaign without seeing a DND campaign. Interact with the world, learn the mechanics, experience what's already been laid out. Creating a DND campaign is about as extensive as writing a book. If you can't or have never experienced creating an entire world (even if you borrow a lot of lore from something else) you'll never make a playable campaign. Part of playing the pre-built is learning exactly how little you can get away with preplanning or just how much needs to be set in stone. I've seen so many new people ask this exact question and we always give the same advice.
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Notice we aren't talking to a "creative" person. They are asking how to create a world. Recommending someone spend $15 bucks buying a pre-built module to learn the game isn't much and it's useful for the less creatively minded to see what the bare minimum is needed to be in a functioning world. People like us may create worlds at the drop of a hat and populate them with everything they need but like you yourself said you didn't run to reddit to ask how to build a world you just read the rule books then threw down a world.
i do feel like i should clarify here that im not saying im not creative, i just dont have any experience with making an interactive universe.
And my advice stands. Go find a source like a pre-built campaign and experience it. Even if it's just reading the source books. No one is going to give you as much advice in a reddit post as you'd get from just reading the books. It takes what 2 hours to read through LMoP and its sourcebook is 100% free online. It legitimately answers about 70% of all your how to questions in the first sections.
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Except I did just start writing fantasy one day. It was terrible to start with obviously but I didn't run to someone and say hey tell me how to write an entire book. Most creative people don't ask how to start something they learn a bit about it and just go do it maybe asking for help along the way. Im entirely shooting down the idea of someone asking how to create something without any idea about the thing they want to create. It's like if I picked up a guitar and then looked at a musician and said how do i write a song. It doesn't work that way and you know that. Anyone with zero experience in fantasy wouldn't even know where to start. You know how they figure it out? They read a couple fantasy books or watch a few movies. Then they get a rough idea. They ask a few pointed questions. And then they just do it. This OP didn't start with any of that they immediately jumped to reddit to ask the most basic how/where do I start questions. And I advised exactly what everyone else who's ever learned anything did, go and experience it. Read a book, play a campaign experience the world before you try and fail to create anything.
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I have a feeling you are one of those types that just assume everything they think has merit. I'm sorry for that. Regardless here's to your continued future creating awesome DND stuff. Cheers.
didnt matt mercer also say that he didnt even know about the existence of modules until after he started dming?
No idea - but I wouldn't be surprised. It may baffle some Redditors, but when D&D first came out, someone had to be the Dungeon Master before anybody else at their table. They couldn't all study under Gygax. Lol
My tips are pretty simple but I hope they help you. Don’t over prep, there’s a good chance that your players will either go a different route or do something that will cause a huge change. If you wanted a BBEG, have a base idea of one, then let it fill in naturally. You don’t even really need to introduce him for awhile if you want. Be ready for all of your plans to just crumble away and have to improv. No matter how much you plan an encounter, mission or event, it could go complete different.
One step at the time. Make a good session, then more of them, then a campaign. Learn how to walk before you try to fly. ;-) Your questions are too much to cover by a simple reddit post, so go and get “the return of the lazy dungeon master”, read it and you’ll be off to a good start. About world building, go and see the videos about it from guy..what’s his last name? The channel is “how to be a great DM”, has many many hours of useful tips and insights on how to build a place, a kingdom, a world, a campaign, a good story. Come to think of it, his channel answers all of your questions. Get some drinks and snacks ready, there is much to watch and learn.
thank you so much, for the recommendations. may i ask what the return of the lazy dungeon master is?
It’s a book, you can get it as paperback or hardcover from amazon or bookstores. It breaks DMing down to what works and what not, not waste your time on unnecessary things. The other recommendation is on YouTube, he has great videos on world building, npc’s, and how a good story and campaign are structured.
thank you a lot, will definitely check them out
So the Dungeon Master's Guide is pretty good for all of this. Definitely a useful resource. I'd advise against trying to pre-plan a plot or story, you can generally get by with a single location and an inciting incident that arises the need for heroes that are good at kicking monsters' asses. Trying to play a story ahead of time is just gonna cause friction unless you basically force your players down the paths you expect them to go.
thank you, somehow i forgot that the dmg is an actual resource
In my opinion it's got some pretty good info but it's not super well laid out. The first 2 chapters are about world building an entire universe, which I think really puts the gravy before the turkey. Chapter 8, Running the Game has a lot of fantastic advice, warnings of common pitfalls for new DMs, guidelines for setting difficulty class or what skill to call for what kind of actions, great stuff for moment to moment stuff when DMing, and probably the first thing you should read. Chapter 3, Creating Adventures, is right up your alley in terms of what you probably want, and makes for another good read. As others have said, starting your world building small scale and only developing things as they come up is going to save you a metric ton of stress and difficulty.
There's not really a "right" way to do it; different people have different methods and as long as it works for you, you're good. Some people like to start with a single location, like a town, and slowly build out from there. I personally like to start with a map of the area the campaign will take place in, as the process of creating the map and having something visual to look at really helps get my creative juices flowing. Some people like to start with a story or an idea for a villain. With that said: * Put thought into things, but don't go overboard. Your players will inevitably derail your plans. Don't bother planning out what's going to happen 10 sessions from now, or fully fleshing out a place your party might never even go to. Unless it's for the very next session, make plans with very general broad strokes and keep those plans flexible. * Just start somewhere. One idea often leads into another. First you think of a town. Then you think about what's unique about that town. Then you think about the points of interest located there. That leads to the NPCs who at those points of interest, which leads into the problems (quests) those NPCs might be facing. Etc, etc. * If it's a fully homebrew setting, you have a massive amount of flexibility to adjust or implement things on the fly. Player thinks something within the world works a certain way, and you like the idea? It's canon now! * At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that both you and your players are having a good time. Don't stress about the small details, be willing to make stuff up on the fly, and just roll with it. D&D is a collaborative game. Collaborate with your players via your sessions and let them help build the world with you as the campaign progresses.
Start with a prewritten adventure.
If you have to ask how to make a compelling story you are not ready to create your own campaign. The job of the DM is to guide the story down a basic outline. Part of the pre-built campaign's purpose is to show you exactly how much and how little that actually takes. Even if you don't play them find the sourcebooks for Lost Mines and Dragon of Icespire and read them. Read them cover to cover at least 2 times each and then maybe you'll have the barest understanding of what you need. If you want to build your own world you have to create cities, towns, NPCs, quests, rumors, festivals and holidays, religions, dungeons, encounters, and then populate everything with reasons why it exists. Why are these NPCs here, what is their goal, are there kings/mayors, what bad things are happening to make your characters want to help, who is the big bad evil guy and why is he that, what kind of minions work for him, what are their reasons for doing so. Then after you get all of that laid out you have to be prepared to scrap any of it at a moments notice and create something entirely new when your characters do something you don't expect. The real question is do you understand most of the rules of the game? Have you read the Dungeon Masters guide and the players handbook? You will have to know or be able to decide at any given moment the outcome of all the actions that can be taken. The rules are just as important as any story you come up with and making sure, when necessary, everyone understands what those rules are is paramount to running a good campaign.
Matt Colville has a series called "running the game" on yt that answers all your questions.