[Zealot]

I just started D&D fall 2005 and well i am power hungery... no i just tryed it and well it worked

1 I have 6 players that are happy(so they say) how do i keep them that way?

2 How do i keep a plot line and not railroad anyone?

3 How much is too much? (and on that note) How much is too little?

and help is good help

[Dthclaw]

You're asking a lot of things that cannot be solved with one-sentence answers. Try looking through previous threads to get a handle on some previous responses. Be that as it is, I will give my perspective on a few of your questions/problems.

1- You need to react to them appropriately. If they are hack-n-slash types, throw mindless combat at them. If they are RP types, give them RP opportunities. There is no magic bullet to keep your players happy, and you will need to roll with your group.

2- You keep a plotline by building one and following it. Avoid concrete details and have contingency events - if the bad villain is defeated, have a plot branch that is contingent on their defeat. If you want to avoid railroading, know your campaign, and don't put in so much detail that you find yourself ever saying "Hmm, they weren't supposed to do that, I'll just have to ignore it."

3- Not a question that anyone but yourself can answer.

As a last thought: please post in fully-formed (or reasonably close) sentences. It doesn't need to be a formal paper, but complete thoughts make it easier for others to help and understand you.

Lastly: welcome to the forum.

[Zealot]

Thank you for all of the info.

I will try to do better from now on, with my english.
Sorry if it is hard to read.

(one of the reasons i posted was after reading around a bit i did not find what i whanted)

Thanx.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

3 How much is too much? (and on that note) How much is too little?

and help is good help

[/quote]

Number 1:
There are two things you need to keep your players happy. Communication and communication. While that may technically only be one thing, I thought it important enough to mention twice. Keep the lines of communication open. One way, if your players don't mind the extra time, is to create a DM survey that they can fill out at the end of each session. It should include a range of questions that rate different aspects of you as a DM. For this to work, there can be NO retaliation for low marks. Another option is rather simple. Talk to them. Talk with them about their characters, what they are looking to achieve eventually, what sort of things they like to do, etc. This will help you feel out how much they want to mindlessly kill things as opposed to how much they want to roleplay. Once you understand what style they like, check out the DMG II. The beginning of the book has some excellent advice on adapting campaigns to different player styles.

Number 2:
When it comes to creating plots, I start with the general environment - the setting itself. There are a lot of forces at play in a world at any one time, ranging from political to religious to economic, etc. I home in on the major movements at the timeframe the players are playing in, and try to squeeze a couple plots out of that. I may figure out that the far off country is planning an invasion of the adventurers' homeland in a couple of years, a bizarre religious movement is gaining momentum in the north, and taxes were just raised by the local lord. That gives three potential plot lines. Now figure out how they manifest themselves in the daily or not so daily events in the world. These will not change unless someone acts on them, but because they are begin done by people now instead of just amorphous concepts like "a lich moves in next door", you can start to develop the NPCs running things as you figure out how they will adapt to what is happening. You also have plots that are flexible enough to easily change if the PCs do anything unexpected. Remember the DM credo - "PCs do the weirdest things." As far as railroading is concerned, sometimes the NPCs will outsmart the PCs. This railroading is unavoidable; tell them tough luck and game on. Sometimes, the PCs will do things you did not intend, like bypass entire adventures; that's fine. They skipped it, so don't force them into the adventure unless circumstances are such that it would be unavoidable.

Number 3:
I try to take a minimalist approach. I also take an approach drawn largely from the horror genre. There are two ways to build tention: put the PCs' lives in danger and make the PCs think their lives are in danger. Now, you can take the very trite method and focus on big monsters, or you can take the indirect method and focus on everything but the big monster. The latter is what good horror does. It focuses on the atmosphere and the characters' reactions to their surroundings to build tention. The indirect method tends to produce more engrossing sessions where the players really start to feel like they are in their PCs' shoes (in my groups, at least). The more direct method is ideal for a more shallow game with people who prefer hack and slash gaming.

The reason I spend so much time talking about tention is because a good story is like music in many ways. Everything is about building tention and then resolving it. An adventure should have lots of bits of tention that are resolved by the PCs. These are the various encounters. By concentrating on the atmosphere, you are able to adjust the tention in the game very easily. Take the two descriptions below:

You are walking down the narrow corridor and you see a door 30 feet in front of you. It is wooden and has a handle. You hear a clicking noise from beyond it. What do you do?

As you creep down the dank castle corridor, you watch as your shadows dance about in the flickering torchlight. The low ceiling and narrow moldy walls have forced you into single file, and you cannot help but feel a little claustrophobic. After a few steps you see an old, algae-covered door,--its heavy timbers slightly bowed with age, its bronze doorhandle covered in tarnish. Suddenly you hear a horrible noise from beyond that door thirty feet from you. "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

Which one would have your characters more worried? Use this to control the atmosphere, and do not be afraid to vary things occasionally. You could very easily make that noise be a squeeking clockwork instead of a horrid ball of ooze covered in a hundred eyes moving to engulf the party. For more advice on this matter, look up an article by H.P. Lovecraft called "How to Write Weird Fiction." The amount of stuff you can learn from that is enormous.

[ladyofdragons]

Raven Bloodmoon, on Jan 3 2006, 06:25 AM, said:

For more advice on this matter, look up an article by H.P. Lovecraft called "How to Write Weird Fiction."  The amount of stuff you can learn from that is enormous.

Oooo... Do you have a link on this article? I tried looking it up on A9 via "lovecraft" "how to write" but no luck. HP's one of my favorite short story horror writers. I've owned one of his books that has my two favorite stories of his (the Picture in the House and The Fiddle of Erich Zan) three times. Every time I buy it it ends up disappearing into thin air...

[dragonhand777]

Also, I would recomend a subscription to Dungeon Magazine.

Not only are the adventures cool, but Monte Cook has a column called Dungeoncraft, which is a great help to DMs. His last few articles have had to do with improvising. Which would help you out with #2.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

I have to say "The Fiddle of Erich Zann" was one of my favorites, as well as "The Doom That Came to Sarnath." H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe are by far my favorite horror authors. Here's the link to Notes on Writing Weird Fiction.

[Ssri-Tel-Quessir Hitokiri]

We do have other threads that you might find useful on the forum that could answer some of your questions.

Also, anyone else notice that this person's location gave us an address?

[Rintaran]

Ok, there are a bunch of topics like this. The reason why you didn't find them, is because they're a bit older. Here's the old table of contents. It's in alphabetical order. I'm sure you'll find some topics of great use there.

http://www.dndresour...p?showtopic=779

[Axel]

I tend to differ from Raven on my approach to mood. As my avatar likely suggests I like a very differet style of story, and so my approach is radically different. I prefer to give only what is seen, without placing any ouside bias on it. Mood should come from the players' responses to what they're characters see, without you artifically creating it. Don't devolve into vague description, by any means, try to give as detailed yet concise a description as you can. But, again, that's because I like detective stories and so try to stay as objective and detailed as possible.
Perhaps you don't want a creepy feel or a scientific one, maybe you want the heroes to feel like heroes! Add that heroic flourish to the description. Why don't we see that example again?

Flat:
You are walking down the narrow corridor and you see a door 30 feet in front of you. It is wooden and has a handle. You hear a clicking noise from beyond it. What do you do?

Creepy:
As you creep down the dank castle corridor, you watch as your shadows dance about in the flickering torchlight. The low ceiling and narrow moldy walls have forced you into single file, and you cannot help but feel a little claustrophobic. After a few steps you see an old, algae-covered door,--its heavy timbers slightly bowed with age, its bronze doorhandle covered in tarnish. Suddenly you hear a horrible noise from beyond that door thirty feet from you. "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

Detailed:
The corridor narrows until you are forced to walk single file between the dank castle walls. The torch brackets are unevenly spaced and leave alternative patches of light and darkness, obscuring your view. At the end of the hall you can barely make out a door. As you approach you see it to be a very old, somewhat moldy, wooden door with a tarnished handle. Even at a distance of thirty feet you can hear a loud clicking noise from something behind the door.

Heroic:
You march single file down the narrow castle corridor. Your shadows, cast by the torches, dance on the old walls around you. At the end of the hall, some thirty feet ahead, you can see a wooden door and from somewhere beyond that hear a clicking noise.

Well, ok not very heroic, but you get the idea. Only the first one sounds like Zork, anyway, that's the point.

[jack(tim)]

Hey Zealot, I am a newbie DM as well, I have been playing for about 2 or 3 years and DMing for the last 12 months (more or less).

As far as keeping them happy, I would heavily suggest communication, trial-and-error works but it is a very ineffective method for RPGs. Just try to stay consistent no matter what. I understand that it is hard to keep things regulated when your mood changes but a true DM learns to be neutral to all things. Six players can be a bit overwhealming at times so remember if they gang up on you in some way, take them one-by-one, not all at once. I have been on both ends of Player-DM party ganging.

A note on storylines however, try and keep the character's stable. Sometimes you may need to go for an NPC overhaul. Develope the more prominent NPCs (the ones who are around more often) so that they actually have more depth in them. I would also suggest actually reading some fantasy literature while you study up for your campaigning, (I suggest Tolkein and Salvatore). If you can study how the writers develope a character it can also help you develope them.

As far as how much you should play, well trial-and-error is the best method for this. Try and find a suitable arrangement that meets both your restrictions for time and their wants and needs as players. Right now in my group the time table seems to be 8hrs from late saturday to early sunday morning. Once a week for eight hours fits my college schedule and their needs for DND. Like I said trial-and-error. And if any of your players, or you, get tired, I would suggest at least a rest break. Once people start nodding off the game starts to go downhill.

That should do some good. I wish you good luck and congradulations, I hope it works out for you.