So, it's fast coming to that time again, the clocks have gone back, the nights are longer and colder, and people tend to be feeling a bit more... "meh." So, what better a way to occupy your nights than to have a few friends over, find some clear space, and roll some dice? It's easy to shut yourself away over the long winter evenings, but it's always good to socialise, whether you're wargaming, roleplaying, or even just sitting and chatting.
For me, that's what winter is all about. Recently, my roleplaying group has decided to get back together after a half-year break and we'll be commencing with a Call of Cthulhu adventure - a group favourite - in order to get back into the swing of things. I'm also currently running a D&D 3.5e adventure for a few friends at my local wargaming club, which thus far has gone very well, much to my relief, as I haven't DM'ed for quite some time!
I'll be giving out the backstory of our CoC group in a later post, and then probably posting updates when interesting things happen in our current adventure, which officially starts tomorrow night. My next post will likely be addressing my current Dungeons and Dragons adventure, what the party has encountered so far, and thereafter probably session-by-session updates, most likely out late Wednesday evening once the game is over for the night and it's all still fresh in my head!
And that leads me quite nicely into the second part of this post - A few basic tips and ideas for would-be DM's who want to run an adventure but perhaps aren't totally sure how.
Firstly, tackle working out who your Player Characters are. In my opinion, this should be done BEFORE your get to your first allotted play session - rolling up characters can often take up far more time than you'd expect, and it's best to work in backstories when you're creating characters with your players so that you know who they are just as well as they do. Backstories aren't always necessary, and some players will simply omit them, but that's alright. All they do is give you more things to work into the narrative of your story, and therefore help your present better encounters to your players.
Secondly, introducing the PC's to one another can often be a pain, and can easily lead to boring, crowbarred-in meetings or awkward sessions where the Player Characters feel they don't know anyone. Normally, I find that it's best to force the players together for one reason or another, and then let them do the legwork in deciding how they know one another - or whether they know each other at all! For example, in the D&D adventure I'm currently running, all of the PC's were new characters, and therefore didn't have any adventures done with each other. I decided to introduce them by having them all invited (read: told to go by the guards) into the main hall of their village, and then plonked on a table together and allowed them to decide how they knew each other whilst I prepared the actual start of the adventure. As it was, the village blacksmith worked out that he probably knew everyone, whereas the druid ended up just passing through town and accidentally ending up in the main hall, and hence didn't know any of the others but decided to adventure with them after they all introduced themselves.
Finally, work out what the actual adventure is, and what the PC's incentive is to attempt it. Incentive can often be as simple as moral obligation or material reward, but you can be as creative as your want here - your players are unlikely to completely decline the adventure since they've taken the time to create characters and come to the first session, and will probably just attempt to haggle a better outcome/prize/whatever out of the quest giver before embarking upon their enterprise. The adventure is essentially what you have planned out for the party to do. The overall adventure needn't be incredibly complicated - for new players it's often best to have a "Go here and clear out the goblin raiders attacking our village" type quest so that both they and the DM can get to grips with the system as well as the other party members - just make sure they don't get killed! However, if your quest does indeed have a great plot twist or something of the sort - be sure to keep it a secret, and don't make it apparent until it's happening! That way your players will hopefully be swept up in your cunningly crafted adventure, and a good time will be had by all!
I hope this will be of some assistance to any budding DM's out there, and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to leave a comment below, and I'll either reply, or tackle it in a later post on the subject! Happy gaming!
-Mike
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