(08-25-2017, 05:28 PM)Maia Wrote: The main advice I have to give? Keep the event or story about the players!

What I mean by this is, when developing an event, be careful not to just run a giant cutscene. Make it interactive! Create situations where the players will have moments to shine, and be flexible if they introduce new ideas that may take your story in a different direction than planned.

Take into consideration the skills and backstories of your players, and throw in a few situations that would possibly appeal to them in particular. Especially if not everyone is a combat character - it can be nice to let them have some fanfare by flexing what they ARE good at.

For example, maybe someone is good with machines. While the combat characters have a foe to fight, you may introduce another facet to the encounter where one or more players have to diffuse a bomb.

I'd advise against making the FC plot revolve around your own character, as that tends to turn some people off to participating. It's perfectly fine to run some side stuff that's your-character-centric, but themes that are more broad seem to be more approachable by others, from what I've seen.

If you're DMing for a large group, you may want to recruit a co-DM and figure out a way to split them up into smaller groups. This lets everyone get a little more spotlight, and will also be much less stressful to manage.

When it comes to combat, I tend to use /random if their foe would not be easily defeated. I designate a turn order and keep posting that order OoCly to keep everyone on track. On their turn, a player will describe what they intend to do, then they'll roll, and the number they get will determine my "DM response" as to how successful they impact the foe. A particularly low roll would result in them getting injured, a middling roll will have a slight impact, and a high roll would have a very effective impact.

Again, I typically only use /random when the foe (or general conflict) is a match versus the player/s. Even a master swordsman who has trained all of his/her life could potentially slip up when faced with a fantastical beast that's two stories tall and breathes raw lightning.

If it's five people versus one villain NPC, though? I'm okay with letting them freeform type what they do, as they would likely succeed with those odds.

Hope some of these tips help out! Feel free to take or discard whatever advice you wish. ^^

• Work on time management. This is something you learn through experience but most people DMing for the first time will create this elaborate events with multiple parts but they find that they are only able to get through maybe half of what they planned and they either have to run the event for a LONG time or they have to cut if off. You don't want to have to do either of those. I'd say plan your event for 3 hours max as that's where people may start to burn out. A simple idea can usually last you a long time. I remember when I first started dming, I had an elaborate idea and it took 3 hours to get out of the starting point and get through the first battle because people were talking so much. So try to have a simple idea first. 
  
• Try to focus on keeping things simple and maximize RP interactions. What I mean is that a lot of the time I see people do is they plan out very elaborate story sequences with a lot of text and a lot of npcs but what ends up happening is people get lost in the all the dialogue, lose track of the npcs, or just lose interest because it's not fun being in a cutscene and doing nothing while the DM just posts walls of texts. Your events should ideally allow your players to make the choices and lead where it goes and it should be about them. People will lose interest if they are kind of just spectators to your story rather than participants.
  
• Focus more on the RP rather than the combat/rolls system. This is a mistake I see a LOT of people make. They will create this elaborate system with rolls and stats and such but everyone is here to just RP and interact with the world you make and other characters. If I wanted to play D&D I would do just that. Say you have a boss with x amount of hp. Your rpers might get terrible rolls and the boss might end up taking an eternity. It might get to the point where it feels like a drag where they are just rolling turn after turn to take him down. Don't do this. Just have the boss die when you feel it is appropriate rather than just looking at his hp bar. Also allow people to be creative with their attacks and characters. It's not fun to create a restrictive system where people can't be flexible.
  
• For the story, I would suggest you start with something simple as well. This is because not all your members can be there all the time so you don't want them to be completely lost when they miss an event. Also, it lets your players be able to influence the story and be the main drivers in it.
  

(09-26-2017, 01:03 PM)Thorbought Wrote:

• Work on time management. This is something you learn through experience but most people DMing for the first time will create this elaborate events with multiple parts but they find that they are only able to get through maybe half of what they planned and they either have to run the event for a LONG time or they have to cut if off. You don't want to have to do either of those. I'd say plan your event for 3 hours max as that's where people may start to burn out. A simple idea can usually last you a long time. I remember when I first started dming, I had an elaborate idea and it took 3 hours to get out of the starting point and get through the first battle because people were talking so much. So try to have a simple idea first. 
  
  
• For the story, I would suggest you start with something simple as well. This is because not all your members can be there all the time so you don't want them to be completely lost when they miss an event. Also, it lets your players be able to influence the story and be the main drivers in it.
  

(09-26-2017, 01:40 PM)undefined Wrote: In one of my events, I wanted to do a three-prong assault on three different facilities, so I had "mini-DMs" in the groups that did their own scenes while I helped from a more managerial position.