I’m currently bumembling a D&D game with some mates, and thought I’d see what sort of stuff people are into. I’d really like to be able to create a game that my players can really get into, instead of just a one or two-session game that then ends due to time constraints or sheer boredom. So far, the only kind of thing I can think of is the stereotypical ‘kill some rats and find the town in flames’ thing, or the ‘trek into the woods and rescue the missing lord’ type scenarios. I’d like to be able to start off in a smaller town rather than a larger one, though, because making all those NPCs and creating the city’s infrastructure can take quite some time. I’m new to it and am developing my skills as well, so if you have any tips or suggestions for quickly making NPCs, that’d be appreciated as well. Thanx!

The MC is right, and if you don’t study your players, **** goes downhill like greased lightning. Make it about you, too. If it becomes a chore then you’re ****ed. Feel free to TM me or whatever and ask any tabletop RP question that comes to your Cheeto and Mountain Dew soaked head. I’ve been in my fair share of basements, and I’ve seen the worst. Quite preventable imo.

Styzzyx Posted:

Lul, thanks for the advice, guys. I’m trying to think of a custom thing, but I guess it really just takes more planning than I thought. All I gotta do is sit down, and DO it. Log in to see images!

Or buy a pre-fab campaign, read through it, highlight the areas your players would enjoy and figure how to enhance those, and go go go!

Styzzyx Posted:

I’m really thinking about finding a published adventure to run, just because it would help me get on my feet, and I could work from there. In addition, I could take note of hooks the setting uses, locations, how they set up encounters, etc.

This is a good idea. I’d do this a few times, possibly including a short campaign, before you do anything original.

Also, just try to tap into your natural style as a writer. For example, I tend to go pretty off-the-wall…like having a party walk into a vampiric cult, beating children into a bloody pulp.

Styzzyx Posted:

the people I play with, but they’re the ‘power-gamer’ types that would try to ransack the whole town

Switch from D&D to Hackmaster then imo

i’ll quickly paraphrase one i used to go through with my group:

small group of adventurers are travelling through a small village. town is half destroyed, lots of sick people etc. basically the village has gone to ****.

bla bla bla after rp stuff your group find out there’s a wizard over yonder in his tower ransacking the town and the general country side.

your group decides to go vanquish said dude, be it to help the villagers, take the wizards plunder, both, or then kill villagers as well.

go up to tower, have some nice random encounters with some of the wizards goons.

get to the tower, as you see the wizard on top blasting spells, huge dragon appears from behind the hill. (ideally you want the tower on a hill, few forests around) nice surprise for you adventurers and a dragon fight is always fun.

before the dragon dies the wizard jumps down from his tower bringing said adventurers into another dimensional plane. bla bla bla epic fight do what you want here, i have dimensional rifts exploding and stuff but it’s your choice.

they defeat the wizard, escape the imploding dimensional plane and then do what they want with the wizards stuff and the village.

MC Banhammer Posted:

If first-level characters are going to beat a dragon then you have serious game balance issues in your game.

ahaha oh gawd sorry about that

yeah i forgot to mention that this is just a once off scenario thing (though could be added to other long campaigns, or continued etc)

your adventurers are already experienced and well travelled as a group

MC Banhammer Posted:

If first-level characters are going to beat a dragon then you have serious game balance issues in your game.

I must agree here. It’s not a problem coming up with the epic adventure ideas, but making a rad adventure for just 1st-level characters is more difficult. At least for me, I know that throwing skeletons and orcs at the characters for first level isn’t anything they haven’t seen before. *shrug*

Ideally in a campaign your rad ideas for the low levels should be encountering really really low-level minions of your main villain. Take your super epic high-level main baddie, and figure out what his little side projects are. Work the layers down and down until you get to the street-level grunts doing the really minor dirty work which SOMEone needs to do, but the higher-ups don’t want to bother with — like, I dunno, laundering their secret society robes. Have your players fight those guys and tailor the results of the encounter to grip them with whatever hook’s going to work to make them want to get deeper into the story.

your the dm, just make the equipment cursed.

the role of the dm is to control your pathetic friends to their demise. just make sure you give them a sense of false hope as they die.