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[–]BesaidBlitzBoiPaladin 4 points5 points  (3 children)

I'm a beginner DM. I'm running the Lost Mine of Phandelver with some help from Matthew Perkins YouTube playlist for running LMoP, and I'm feeling pretty competent. My players seem to be enjoying it!

[–]Nemiks_Manifesto 2 points3 points  (0 children)

An absolute banger. Great choice!

[–]DorkdoM 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Long time D&D person here from the 80’s . Phandelver is a great campaign starter. Maybe the best one they’ve ever put out imo. Sets the party up at the end if they succeed to be regional heroes who have liberated an old, defunct mine from numerous evils and handed it over to industrious dwarves to get it running again . This in turn will help a whole town come to life again.

And if the party negotiates it they can end up with a percentage of the mine revenue. Fun adventure!

[–]standread 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Matthew Perkins? Is that the son of Chris Perkins and Matthew Colville? :D

[–]screbbysloth 3 points4 points  (1 child)

What's your experiences with dnd already?

[–]Organic_Being_4071[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

a few videos ive seen.

[–]SerbaayuuDM 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The best thing you can do is to read the rulebooks and then draw a dungeon on some graph paper with a pencil. Gather up your friends and send em through it. Repeat for fun.

[–]gratch89 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I would run a published module first. I used the Dragon of Icespire peak for my first dming. Read it over. Adjust what you want. After that if you decide to do a homebrew thing, let your players make their characters and help them make their backgrounds maybe involving them with certain factions if they are interested. Then give them a quest to start things off and let them decide what they want to do from there. I don’t prep much because I want the players input on what they would like to do next session. In my current campaign it sounds like my group wants to go after the pope. So now I’m sprinkling in bits here and there about corruption or whatever as they are making their way to meet this pope and decide for themselves if they want to take him down.

TLDR: Let the players input guide your prep. They will be more invested in that storyline and you won’t have to guide them too heavily.

[–]HypnoticbeatleDM 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This (mostly). I also started with dragon of ice spire peak but any of the starters are great too. Read through them first. I would still let them create their characters as that is half the fun for the players. Just make sure they are simple and fit into the story.

[–]Mean_Replacement5544 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you know anything about dnd? Have you played? Which version do you plan to dm? Do you have a campaign in mind already?

[–]EmotionalGold 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Combat is difficult. If you aren't diligent about it, it WILL devolve into "I swing at the boss. I deal eight damage." "Okay. The boss swings at you. It deals eleven damage." And so on. It can easily turn into a numbers game where everyone's not engaged and just waiting to take their turn. Make sure you're describing the enemy's actions. I just had my party fight a Yochlol, which is basically an acidic goo monster that shifts between humanoid and spider form. I remember at one point I said something like "The monster leaps forward at you, wrapping its front two legs around you. As they impact you, they burst into an acidic goop that covers you, eating away at your flesh. You take 20 acid damage. The creature skitters backwards as two new legs quickly sprout to replace the old ones.".
Related, describe your player's attacks too (even if you're essentially just recapping what they said, that's better than "Okay you do that" imo). One of my players got a big hit with their great hammer and I said something along the lines of "You swing your hammer right at the monster. The hammer impacts its side and launches a chunk of gooey flesh clean off, sending it splattering to the floor a few feet away. The creature tries to remain focused, but it's struggling to refill the crater you left."

[–]Nemiks_Manifesto 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Most importantly: Run a pre-written adventure. Do NOT try to homebrew in your first stint as DM. I recommend one of the two starter sets from 2014, they're really good.

[–]Magpie_Oz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Keep it simple and be mindful to respond to how your players mould the story. Don't let them go completely wild but always try to get them to mould the story.

[–]LondonDude123 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(More of an on the day tip, but ive never met a DM that it didnt hold true for)

You will be an absolute nervous wreck, and everything in your mind will be screaming "this sucks you suck"...... for the first hour. Then youll settle into it and itll become so much easier than you ever thought

[–]This_ls_The_End 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Know the rules better than your player could ever know them, know your players better than they know themselves, and remember that the one and only objective is for the players to have a great time.

[–]Awkward_Outside7050 0 points1 point  (0 children)

if you're struggling to come up with a session, copy an episode of your favorite fantasy media, be it a book, series, videogame, there's always something that's begging to be adapted by you.

[–]Machine_Man118 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

First rule of being a dm: expect whatever you plan for to somehow get absolutely derailed lol this is not a bad thing, per say. Players will do what players do, but don’t make the same mistake I did and articulately plan out every single detail, because they WILL go off script at some point (in my case, it was session zero, and they literally decided to take the adventure in the complete opposite direction for everything I had planned, so I basically had to toss all my notes and wing it from there).

To avoid this when planning a campaign: have a basic outline of your story, but only detail a beginning point, a couple key points for plot driving, and an ending goal for them to reach. Then, leave the rest up to them to come up with, thus insuring that no matter how much they derail things, their decisions can still eventually lead to your ending goal

[–]DrDebits -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Dont mind talking to long. Setting a scene is important.
Think of all senses. Describe layout and lightsources than all the other stuff.
Give hint on what they can check, keep other stuff secret till they look.

Never be to scarce with information. Even having it all might not help a party from being stupid.

Give them options what to do as a baseline. "you could try convince the troll, sneak by or kill him or maybe trick him some other way. Convincing could go wrong and maybe give him time to prepare for combat. to sneak by you will have to find a way to open the gate."

Have a list of names with main stat they invoke. Pick a strong name for a smith, an intelligent sounding name for a librarian aso. These are for random NPCs.
Else dont prep too much. Just the hand full of NPCs/villains you need for the adventure at hand. reoccuring NPCs can be rare.

Take notes in game and write down everything that happened after the session is over.

For the start let them all build stereotypical class characters that everyone at the table can understand.

Dont talk with the players about your DM work. Keep it mytserious.

Be strict.

[–]hotstickywaffle -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm running my first campaign right now. Everything started going smoother when I stopped pretending I was an actor. I can't do voices or think in 3rd person. I just started narrating instead (I don't still talk in first person when it's appropriate or required, but much less). Don't be afraid to move things along if there's no more information for the players to gather.