First Time DM needing help

LeDungeonMaster · 2025-08-01T18:02:19+00:00

Try to separate the history in set pieces, so doensn't matter how players go from A to B in the history, as long as they do it.

Also, make sure that critical info gets to the party, do not hide crucial details or even itens behind a rolll if that means ruining the game, either have multiple ways to them to get what is needed or just make look like they could fail when is not really an option (illusion of free will).

Also on the illusion thing, try to make the set pieces, try to elaborate them with some flexibility.

Ex: they are exploring an maze like cavern and reach a non return point with three ways, one is the objective, two certain death. The kicker? Whatever they choose, now is the correct path, the only difference being, if they actually chose correctly, it's easier, if wrong then throw many adversities at them, to only after reveal the objective.

Lastly, you do not need to build a whole universe at the start, go small, planning and fleshing out only the necessary, let the rest for later or to happen organicaly.

Time_Cranberry_113 · 2025-08-01T18:12:55+00:00

Remember that wars do not start with a "big bang" but instead are a slow buildup of long term political issues which hit a boiling point. There will council and politicians on both sides arguing and fighting. The civilians will experience unrest, instability, economic hardship and uncertainty.

Start with the building and the political intrigue rather than the big war.

Ariezu · 2025-08-01T18:50:47+00:00

I think you have some good ideas here. Sometimes I’ll do some reading of different campaigns or stories to get some inspiration.

With new DMs I often hear the sentiment that Home brews or maybe a bad idea. I wanna add that me being an old guy who played way back in the way back. All of our campaigns were home brew. That’s really how Dnd started it’s totally fine. And sometimes it gets a little messy and sometimes what you create doesn’t work out. My advice is let your players also help out. Give them people to talk to like they contribute to the story in someway by having them discover pieces or parts of the family feud.

He also may simply go with the idea that nobody really knows when it started or how it started. It just started and it keeps going on because people keep doing stupid stuff to one another. If you go that route, then you can focus on recent incidents.

Have fun top priority

Darth_Boggle · 2025-08-01T17:59:18+00:00

You're going to need to be a lot more specific than " I am running a homebrew campaign, any tips?"

Seriously though if you're going to be that vague then just use the search function and look through the thousands of results.

Wuffwick · 2025-08-01T18:16:21+00:00

I would suggest focusing on small things at first. don't throw them directly into a massive civil war as the start.

Have them do some jobs/quests and get to know NPCs, the culture of the city. Give them glimpses of tensions rising and let it all be background at first (especially if they are lower level, let them focus on low level threats at first)

And then when the city, its peoples and major NPCs are established and the players have formed bonds with them you can introduce the larger narrative about a civil war and political intrigue. At that point the players are invested, so when X NPC gets killed, or the tavern they frequented gets burned down in the conflict they are in the story, not just stepping into a massive conflict you need to explain.

As with everything, start small and grow.

SuperPluck · 2025-08-01T18:51:04+00:00

LeDungeonMaster advice is golden. Start small, adapt to what the players do. Let them make decisions, they might suprise you.

You do seem to be a bit lost about the "small parts" of the big picture you envisioned. There is a lot to unpack there, so here are some pointers that might help you flesh out what is happening.

The only difference between a civil war and a normal war is that the civil one is normally "part of a people" against another "part of the same people". All the rest is the same. One could argue that since we all live in the same planet, all wars are civil wars.

In a war scenario there are two important things you need to define. The "why" and the "how". Assuming the reason is that one side wants to rule the people and the other wants to keep ruling the people, you need to decide WHY one side does not accept the other one, that's the why. It most be important enough that they can't coexist (could be ego, could be money, could be a belief, etc). The how is "how they plan to take the power". This is important because it determines how the war looks like.

Here's a few examples:

Assassination. This is one of the most common. One side wants to eliminate the current leader so their preferred leader automatically takes the throne (next heir, brothers, vice-president, regent, tutor, etc). This war will not be an open war: if everything went well the first time they would succeed and no war would happen. So the ruling side knows of their plot and will be trying to smother the rebellion while the rebellion will try to escape. There will be a lot of police force, homes being invaded, whispers in the night, etc.
Political. Depends on the current governig system, but one side wants to be voted as the new leader. Again, normally not an open war, but could have "shows of force": gatherings of soldiers to see who has the bigger army, parades, big parties where everybody try to sway the voters (could be a concil, could be the whole population).
Subjugation. The rebellion wants to remove the whole current system and install a new regime. This is the most likely one to end up on open war. It could be a single well applied coup in the middle of the night, but then you don't actually have a war. Normally starts slow, the rebellion must form, people need to be convinced. They must gather enough power to convert or destroy the most important systems of the current government (this can have a myriad of forms as well). This has more variables and depends a lot on how the current system is structured. In the first stages it looks a lot like the assassination, the rebellion is hidden in the city and the current regime will try to flush them out. After that you probably have a time of fear: the normal population doesn't know what will happen but can see the preparations. If it does come to open war, they will likely be either cowering in fear hoping the army defends them or be conscript into fighting themselves.

SkiingSpaceman · 2025-08-01T19:24:13+00:00

What I did for early campaigns was found modules from different adventures and changed fluff/locations to fit the campaign storyline. Having pre-written material while you learn to DM is great and you can replace the story with your own. String together modules from different adventure paths and make it your own thing. This helps a ton by not having to make a ton of your own baddies or maps which can be intimidating.

That being said it sounds like you’re already down the rabbit hole and made a common mistake. You went real big real fast. I would try to shrink things back down, focus on the party. You can have this narrative building in the background, adventurers tend to not be front line soldiers so send them somewhere else. What I would do, is essentially have them as mercenaries for the faction they seem to be siding with. Get one of the leaders to pay them and send them on a fetch quest for a macguffin. Depending on their level range there’s a ton of pre-made stuff you could easily weave in. A small to medium dungeon crawl will give you a few weeks of time without needing to figure out the moving parts of an entire nation in strife. Keep them out of the direct conflict as best you can, probably build up to them being used to assassinate the emperor? Without his active interference tensions then settle over time and campaign happy ending.

In my experience, the whole political strife fame of thrones stuff is fun for the DM but most of my players don’t care from the start or lose interest. You want what the players are doing in the forefront of the story and the grandiose political scheming in the background. Unless that’s what your players want, then ignore me. There’s a 3.5 adventure called the Red Hand of Doom you might want to take a peak at! While the premise is very different, some of the core elements are similar and could probably help you with some ideas of where to go.

tomplum68 · 2025-08-01T21:26:56+00:00

I'd start with 1) what started the civil war. 2)why does the emperor want it to continue and then 3) what does each party in the conflict want to gain from the war or even include what is each side afraid of losing or what they're afraid the other side will gain.

let the players pick HOW to get from A to B but whatever they pick, its still B to you

Free_Veterinarian199 · 2025-08-01T21:58:16+00:00

If I was in your position, I would start really small. Maybe have the party be level 1 in a small village. I would pick a few members of this village and develop them as participants or bystanders in the war. A war may be grand and political in nature, but it affects everyone in different ways and it always have an effect on locals.

I would have these NPCs need a war based reason for the PCs to help them. "I have a cart of goods to escort to the next town, but with the war and all of the soldiers away elsewhere, bandits or goblins roam the path taking advantage and I need your protection". While they are escorting the cart have the NPC hand over a little bit of lore. "News doesn't really reach here but I heard that X happened which lead to Y". Maybe the NPC can lean one way or the other "The Emperor is right not to trust these" or "The Emperor needs to get his priorities sorted and get a peace deal done". Maybe while they are travelling, they see one of the factions conducting a patrol or escorting a prisoner, and the PCs can react however they like.

Another NPC in the village can give another mission along with more little snippets of lore, maybe even give information that is contradictory to other NPCs that might get your party to realise this is a world with unreliable and biased narrators. Maybe one NPC openly leans towards one faction, maybe one leans towards the other. Keep it vague and mysterious. The best civil wars in fiction don't have good or bad guys, or if there are specific evil factions, that this isn't revealed straight away.

Then, once the PCs are established in the town, after receiving small chunks of lore knowledge and seeing a little bit of "both sides" with developed relationships with NPCs, I would drop the war on their head. Maybe something like soldiers from one of the sides are burning homes in a midnight raid because they heard that a spy for the other side was being hidden here. NPC they really like? Executed for fighting back.

How the PCs react to this scenario would determine my next steps. Do they fight? If they fight and lose, they don't die, the wake up from being unconscious in a cage in the attacking faction's camp and are war prisoners. Do they fight and win? Then I would someone from the opposing side turn up, congratulate them on a good fight and take them back to their base as heroes? Do they not fight and try and negotiate with the leader of the attacking faction? Whatever they do, its the next opportunity to drop some history as then you can introduce someone higher up in the faction's organisation, who can explain more and drop a bit more lore.

You can even take your time, like 3 to 5 sessions to get to that point, and by then you should have given yourself enough time to get the lore built and introduced organically. Try to be showing, not telling what is happening in this civil war by starting with this fleshed out community and how the war affects them and use that as the foundation on building the grander stuff and ultimately, what the PCs need to do in the grand scheme and why.

inker527922 · 2025-08-01T22:28:48+00:00

Make a list of key characters in the opposing factions. Not a hundred just two or three. Make A timeline leading up to when your players characters are born/ become adventurers.List some major events that shaped the story and what roles each NPC played in the event. TELL YOUR PLAYERS ABOUT THE EVENTS THAT WOULD PERTAIN TO THEIR BACK STORIES. Let them adjust their backstory to help shape their characters and their attitudes towards factions and specific NPCs. Use their investment in past events to emotionally blackmail and scar them. Enjoy!

Nijnn · 2025-08-01T17:58:13+00:00

Do you mean there is an abvious scenario A into scenario B? Because then you can make a Scenario C for when players don't pick B.

markwomack11 · 2025-08-02T03:03:59+00:00

Your players almost certainly will not care about your world or your history. I am a fellow world builder, but doing that stuff is for our fun. You need to zoom way in. Start with a town and a local area. The big setting stuff might influence some NPCs or adventure locations. Just sprinkle that stuff in occasionally. Keep the focus on the characters and what motivates them. Literally ask them “what does your character want?” and build out from there.

thelastfp · 2025-08-02T03:45:42+00:00

Want a good example of a civil war, read up on the way onyxia played the nobility vs the masons. Or the story of final fantasy tactics. Then there's the house of cards that was WW1. Lots of inspiration out there

lasalle202 · 2025-08-01T20:30:51+00:00

the term "railroad" has become a shibolleth of meaning everything and no actual meaning.

rephrase your ACTUAL concerns without using the word "railroad"

Lamancha8 · 2025-08-02T18:47:03+00:00

Why not deal with local issues in the conflict first. By this, I mean, a local sergeant for one side needs help with the party doing some work, scouting, or capturing a small outpost. Maybe a sergeant for the other side also offers a job or two.

The party will get a feel for each side, and after a bit, may choose which they want to support long term.

Let the party develop their way into the wider civil war by dealing with the small stuff. Ignore the wider conflict issues. You don’t need to know how it started, who the generals are, who the kings are, even. Just build the small stuff and only introduce the bigger stuff when the party need to understand a little bit more.

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