Tools of the Trade and New DM advice

One of the things I really wanted to write about is the tools that I will be using and the reasoning for some of my decisions for the game.

New DM and New Players

So if you are like me then nobody in your group has ever played before. You may all be familiar with RPG video games, but tabletop games are a new thing for everyone in the group. My advice? First grab the FREE BASIC RULES for 5e that wizards of the coast offers online along with pregenerated or blank character sheets.. Everyone can read this with no investment whatsoever and get a feel for the game. The format is simple and is far less intimidating than the player handbook (or the multiple PHBs that previous editions had). At this point a creative DM brimming with ideas could start coming up with ideas and making a campaign. I was not that guy.

That's where the Starter Set comes in. It offers a small level 1-5 campaign with pregen characters, includes a hard copy of the basic rules, a DM screen, dice set, and the campaign is very well made for people new to the game. Whats so great about it? 2 things. It has lots of detail as well as tips for a new DM. The other is that the progression is made to teach players about the game. Try to run a few sessions through it and experiment with theater of the mind, maps, or virtual tabletops like Fantasy grounds or Roll20 - both of which have the campaign available for sale.

Also keep in mind on how your players might play and approach things. Many players are going to start off with the simple motto of killing and looting. Expecting them to pick up on more complex scenarios will take some help and conditioning. In the same way - NPC interactions could be difficult as this is very reliant on the DM and how they play NPC's and certain things may throw up flags for the player but may actually mean nothing. Its something I haven't quite come up with a solution yet for.

Fantasy Grounds

So as you may have learned by now, I use FG to run or augment my games. Its a Virtual Tabletop software that simulates dice rolling, automates the rulesets, and uses visual games.

Let me explain the cost real quick though. There are 3 versions: Free/Demo, Paid($40 or $3/mo), Ultimate($150 or $10/mo) . Free cant be a DM and can only connect to Ultimate license users games, they can connect to Paid but it goes into demo mode, doesn't save, and only 1 Free client can connect. Paid clients can host games minus the free user limitation, and the Ultimate license allows free users to play in your game.

Basically if you want to try a playing a game you get free, paid users always can play and can host games, while ultimate users are serious DMs and can have new free users in their games.

But wait, the $40 cost doesn't get you everything. What it does get you is the ruleset automation and (for 5e) the System Reference Document (SRD) which is a document that contains a sampling of the the full PHB and is meant to the basics of 5e characters/spells and the like, so its more for a basis of creating your own content rather than full 5e material. Now a DM will often share with you a library that you can use to create your characters which contain all the information on the classes/races an the like, but if you want to make characters on your own you would need to buy the D&D Complete Core Class Pack ($50). So at least the DM would need to make a $90 to $200 investment to play with the basics on Fantasy grounds or everyone pays a subscription fee to play and the DM gets the extra $50 pack.

Sounding a little expensive? It is, which is why many play totally free at roll20.net. (granted over there all the cool feature like dynamic lighting are paid). So what do you do? Wait for steam sales. I got a 4 pack of paid licenses for about $80 ($20 per person), the core pack at $25, and later picked up an ultimate license for $87. Also they offer the complete 5e bundle at 25% off FOREVER. The longer you wait, the more the price goes up though as the continue to add content. Once you got the bundle, any new 5e releases are already discounted 25% + whatever the sales is and you don't even have to buy the new stuff to get the discount. Overall though its an investment but the automation is amazing if you are terrible at math or you get bogged down by combat nuances and want to keep a game flowing. Give the free version a try and maybe even join the forums to find a game. Most DM's will have an ultimate license so new people like you can try.

Teamspeak 3

This is my VOIP solution of choice. There is an official channel that you could use, and probably will if you join a group from the forums. I did buy my own on a 2 year subscription and I have a music bot i plan on using.

teamspeak.com/downloads - Client download (server downloads also available)

light-speed.com - TS3 Hoster

ts3index.com - Music Bot

I also use a add-on called Clownfish voice changer. It allows you to adjust the pitch of your output from below Darth Vader lows to above helium-induced highs, and some customs in-between.

Evolve

I run my games from internet tethered to my phone. So i can't really do the necessary port forwarding that is required to run a game on FG. Evolve is a game-centric VPN client that i prefer over Hamachi. It works by everyone joining a party and shows your VPN IP's that you would use to connect to a host in FG. I has some voice capabilities, but i haven't tried them. Warning - It does drop connection every once in a while or the network slows and actions freeze in FG, but it comes back pretty quick. Premium does not seem to help quality.

Tunngle

Evolve died a while back then returned. By that time though I had switched to Tunngle where I can always have private password protected room open and ready for my players.

SL

Hello world

Hello absolutely no one.

I call myself Shadow Links and this is my blog where I plan on documenting my experiences attempting to DM D&D. For the most part this will be for myself and a record of the adventures, but hey, maybe someone would like to read it.

So just a little about myself, I had never played D&D until recently. It was kind of an odd think that one day one of my friends was like "Hey, I'd like to try it sometime, it should be fun!". Nothing happened of coarse for quite sometime. The topic was breached again when we found out that someone we knew (older than us) and one of my old coaches played and co-DM'd. This sparked a renewed interest and I started researching, learning about the different editions and the like. Hearing that 5e was really good for new players and the fact that it DIDN'T have a bazillion rulebooks like 3.5, nor did it have the bad stigma associated with 4e, help me settle on choosing 5e and working on convincing my friends of the same.

So I went and bought the starter set and the PHB. Let me tell you, I think the starter set was the best decision I could have made, but more on that later. With material in hand, we needed to decide who would DM. Being the one who bought it and I didn't mind, I was selected. So i started poring through the DM and Mine's of Phandelver guide that came with the starter set, while enjoying the feel of rolling the accompanying dice set. We began this game and only ended up doing 2 sessions. One done theater of the mind the other on a digitally masked map. Both went rather well but given the "gamer nature" of me and the players, combined with my lack of confidence in describing the area and keeping track of it, most of out later adventures were carried out digitally with the help of Fantasy Grounds.

Fortunately I had some friends in the group that also got interested in taking up the DM mantle, which I was more that happy have so I could be a player. The first one was someone we didn't particularly like, but we worked with him and had similar interests. The session was awful, part of it being the level 1 section of Princes of the Apocalypse being rather pointless combined with the DM's specific roleplaying choices which involve forcing characters to puke at a smell randomly, NPC's gagged when hearing that a PC spent a night with a apparently ugly female, selling us hard on a 1 room cavern that had nothing in it but monsters, and stubbornly keeping a deadlock with no options when a PC levitated a bear in the middle of a fight in a bandit camp. It was just unfun. 1 session and done.

Another friend learned from this experience and started the Curse of Strahd campaign. Unlike the previous games he allowed homebrew characters, a modified ranger class, and unique weapons, like a dragon jawbone greatsword that the party barbarian eventually started to attune to as he realized it had some dragon magic left in it and could release acid, as well as a warlock pact weapon scythe that had reach and 3d4 damage. He accelerated at describing fights and always had a unique effect on 1's and 20's. He later started doing voices for NPCs and it was a lot of fun. In fact we are still working through the campaign and are at level 4 and we try to meet about once a month.

And so it begins...

Which brings me to the campaign I am currently working on putting together - Hoard of the Dragon Queen and later - The Rise of Tiamat.

Thanks for reading this first post!
-SL