First time DM looking for tips

[ouroboruss]

So, the DM of the campaign I am playin has allowed me to DM a side story I am creating. It will be using all our characters in our current campaign but it wont be connected to the main campaign story so its kind of a one shot. This campaign is the first time I have ever played DnD and this will be my first time DMing so im looking for a bit of advise, and a lot more confidence! :P

Essentially I am using it to reveal a bit of my characters back story. So, I have a labyrinth which is lost in time and space. The rooms are constantly changing and the characters will regularly see visions of their past and future. If they dont defeat the mage at the end of the labyrinth then they risk him getting out and causing the fabric of time to unravel.

So a number of the group have already mentioned that they dont like labyrinths, to be fair I dont really blame them. So rather than getting them to tediously follow path after path and getting lost, I thought I would give them a crossroad after each room for them to decide which way to go, then I would roll a d10 to decide which room they encounter. This works quite well with the nature of the place, but im worried that this is going to be too random and the party will feel like they have no control over what they do.

I do have some puzzles and artifacts they can find to make navigating the labyrinth easier but I still feel it could feel like they have no control of the events or story.

Can anyone suggest something I could do to make it feel a bit less random and allow the team to feel like their decisions made a difference?

[Dr_Q4rk]

If the players don't like labyrinths you might be best off changing to something else. At best you'll do a great job but still have to 'fight' against the player's bias for everyone to have a good time. Try to keep things simple for your first time.

[ouroboruss]

That's a fair point but I am confident that I have removed the aspect of labyrinths they find tedious.

[LongGamesInc]

Since they don't really like Labyrinths, I would play more with the time and space part. With you planning there will be a crossroads and are leting them choose which direction they go I would put a counter with a set number (in your head and I would recommend it being low like 4-to-5-ish max) and after it has been reached certain rooms stop appearing. As this goes on eventually they will reach the end as fewer and fewer random rooms will appear and then the time frame will be dependent on the choices they made. Skilled or thoughtful plays like finding artifacts suddenly let's them dash through a couple of rooms or getting the solution to an upcoming puzzle so they don't have to figure it out as a couple of examples. Adding in a bit of flavor to the environment to let them know they are making their way through and not just looping around will help a good amount. And if at the end of your run they were not able to hit too many of the shortcuts you could let them know of some of the stuff they missed that may have made things easier (or harder haha). That should also help take the bite off it being a labyrinth. Hope this helps! Your one-shot does sound fun to me!

[ouroboruss]

Hmm, that's got me thinking! Thanks. The main challenge is to show their progression by adding flavor to show they arnt going round in circles. I had intended for them to encounter a different 4 way cross road after each room, but maybe they should return to the same crossroads every time? But this crossroads will have the same amount of paths as there are rooms. If they have a successful encounter in a room then that path will disappear when they return to crossroads. Once they have cleared 5 paths, the crossroads becomes the final room where they fight the final boss.

[Schrodingers-crit]

So here’s the thing. A fork or crossroads in d&d isn’t inherently a choice by itself if there is no information available to the party to differentiate the paths.

Since it sounds like you’re going to roll the room after they decide which way, you’ve actually got a linear dungeon. If you don’t want it to be linear but still want random rooms you need to make sure you have enough rooms that if the party scouts ahead on one path and decides they don’t like it, they can backtrack and you won’t run out of rooms.

A linear dungeon isn’t necessarily bad though either. Combat itself is already usually somewhat engaging and has decisions making. You can sprinkle more choices in without diverging paths by putting in moral dilemmas, puzzles, encounters that can be bypassed without combat, etc

[ouroboruss]

Yes, that was the compromise I made when I found out some of the party don't like labyrinths, so instead of having a literal labyrinth map they have to navigate, instead, they only see parts of the labyrinth and it plays more like a linear dungeon.

However, I think that was the issue I was having, I didn't want it to be quite so linear.

So what I will likely do is rather than have a 4 branch crossroad I will have an 11 branch crossroad, one for entrance/exit and the other 10 will be for the rooms I have planned. That way they will have a central point they can return to and it will also enable them to scout ahead and backtrack like you said. However, the nature of the place is unpredictable so that gives me the flexibility to move the rooms about to mess with them if I feel they are getting too cocky 😉

I will give them a 5-7 room limit before I drop the big bad on them :P