Running Your First Game

By Kaila Evans

You spent weeks dragging your brain across a cheese-grater to manifest a fantasy tale that will enchant people who have no idea what the words, “don” and, “doff” even mean. The rules are carved on your face. You poured your entire being into designing worlds, maps, monsters, bars, and NPCs. Waking up covered in books and flaming hot cheetos, you decide it’s time to text four friends and invite them to play Dungeons and Dragons on Saturday. 

They enthusiastically agree. Each individual’s three to five word backstory landed in your email the night before you play. All four halfling rogues (they haven’t bothered to name) contain typo-riddled tales of being orphaned at a young age. You hyperventilate on the ground.

Time to run your first game! 

I too have a new campaign this Saturday. I’m here to help both of us have the stress-free, fun-as-hell session we deserve. Incoming advice on DM initiation below:

Show players a sample from popular media.

Ever heard of HarmonQuest? Critical Roll? Acquisitions Incorporated? Comedy of Terrors? Send them a clip from one of these live play games to give them a demonstration of D&D in action. They will be entertained and informed as to what the game is all about.

Build their characters.

Start at level one. Seasoned veterans will make their own and text you at 2am wondering if you’re using encumbrance, and what pantheon they have to choose from. New players, on the other hand, become paralyzed by all the options. Without your help they will show up with a hack job backstory, the wrong gear, and don’t get me started on how poorly they chose their stats. 

Guide your friends by asking who their favorite characters are from movies, then create them a hero based on what you think would make an interesting adaptation. Choose their class, background, spells, and send it along for their review. They will have a hand in it without having to slog through the challenging stuff, making things easier and more enjoyable for all.

Go back and write a simple first session.

The intricacies of your carefully crafted worlds and stories will be lost on new people. It will be an information overload, and they don’t need a world history lesson including every law in the city whose name they will forget the minute you tell them. 

Keep your campaign the same, but make sure the first session includes the following:

Adventure Hook

“One of you discovered a map to an abandoned dwarven dungeon under the mountain range. It is rumored to have treasure that is jealously guarded by an unknown evil.”

Role Play

Start them somewhere a player would find themselves familiar with, it’s usually a bar called the Rusty Mug or something. Give them an opportunity to interact with an NPC. A bartender who knows a rumor about the dungeon. Or a dragon disguised as a human who wants to play a drinking game. The idea is that they realize they get to be their character and have a little fun with it.

Travel

Run them through a few days of travel to give them a taste for survival and exploration. Have them meet another NPC. Be descriptive and add one flavorful thing they can interact with on each day.

Dungeon Crawl

Make an incredibly simple dungeon. Five to eight rooms. Throw in one non-deadly trap and other classic obstacles like puzzles, locks, dungeon hazards, etc.

Combat

Put a big baddie in the room with the treasure.  Everyone loves a corpse to dance upon before opening a chest full of riches.

Resolution

The players return to the Rusty Mug to count their money and blow it all on booze!

New Hook

Tie the characters in to your main story at the session’s ending. They meet a new NPC with an important quest that only their party can help with…

Listen and teach while slowly introducing checks and abilities

Don’t bother getting new players to read the rules. They probably won’t, and even if they do it never sticks. They have to plunge into a new world while understanding what their abilities are. Learning a class is enough.

I make a list of each skill category, and check them off as I go along to make sure they get a few examples of what things are like. Explain what each ability check is for, give them an idea of how difficult is, have them roll, show them the math as they puzzle over all those numbers, and describe the result. More importantly, invite them to ask questions before moving on.

While on the subject of rules, stop caring about them (for now)

Do your best to be incredibly patient and forgiving. New players don’t know what they can and can’t do. In a sense it can make things more fun for you, as long as you don’t use the rules to stifle their creativity and exploration of the game. If it isn’t life or death, don’t give their intentions a smackdown by telling them (cue mouth breathing) that they can’t because it’s “against the rules.”

Encourage them to swing from chandeliers and jump out of buildings without taking all six of their hit points away because they didn’t understand what falling damage is. Don’t tell them the monster rends their squishy little wizard in half just because she didn’t know that backing from a fight without using the disengage action would give the enemy an attack of opportunity.

Why so serious? Relax!

The whole point of the game is to have fun.

As the DM, you have the added pressure of being a major factor in said fun. However, there are four other people at the table, and they are the other contributors to the merriment. The best way you can facilitate this fun is to make sure you stay relaxed, positive and keep the story going when you find yourselves in a lull. You’re the leader and they’re looking to you for inspiration.

Things never go perfectly. Players are stray cats that you’re trying to herd through a narrative you all write together, but everyone loves a good cat (except psychopaths) and you get four of them all to yourself. 

If you feel comfortable, you should try making different voices for NPCs the players interact with. You don’t have to be Matt Mercer. Players always… and I mean always… enjoy watching a dungeon master who makes any effort at character voices.

Tips

Story Hook

Make it simple and obvious at first. I’ve got players who are so dense I’ve considered holding a yellow sign on a stick that says, “QUEST” above my head every time they wander away from the NPC who can’t find his grandson, and clearly needs their help. 

“Your relative died, and as part of your inheritance you found an old rolled up parchment that turned out to be a map to his buried treasure. No, Orcy the Orc Bard, you can’t roll to charm the map. Stop flirting with the map and follow it. ”

Combat Tips

For the love of the entire pantheon in every setting ever invented, please use exactly one monster encounter during the first session. Combat can take up to an hour when people are new. Even when they aren’t new, it can feel like forever if it isn’t done well. 

– Use a single monster to simplify combat so the party can focus on the target and more easily work together.

– Scale this first encounter to the party’s level

– Never make the encounter random. Make it meaningful to the story.

– Don’t forget to include an environment for players to use during the encounter. Give them a chandelier, a cannon, a place to take cover, something to interact with other than the bad guy.

– Be descriptive of each action the monster and the players take. “You hit the knight,” is not as good as, “Your sword-tip finds a chink in the man’s armor, making him cry out in agony.”

– Who wants to come up with a character and get comfortable with him only to die stubbing his toe on the first game? Nobody. Character deaths on day one are a great way to guarantee those poor people will never want to see you again.  

– If someone goes down and starts making death saves, have an NPC that was conveniently following them from the shadows hop in and stabilize them. 

– If the monster beats them, keep the story going by having them wake up in its lair.

Bonus Tip: Use your rules lawyers to your advantage. Give them something to do during combat like track initiative and write down all character conditions.

First Puzzle

Where better to have a puzzle than a dungeon? Puzzles are a fantastic addition to D&D, but there are some game-halting pitfalls that must be avoided. 

– Don’t make the puzzle too hard. Test the riddle on someone else to see how long it takes them to solve it. 

– Make sure the riddle doesn’t interfere with the main plot. Meaning: don’t put the riddle over the door to the room with the treasure and the monster so everyone gets trapped outside trying to figure out what, “Speak friend and enter” means.

– Use riddles as a bonus. If the players solve a riddle that opens a secret door to extra loot or a cool sword, it’s fun and it doesn’t have any potential for screwing up the rest of the game.

First Dungeon

Well, the game is called Dungeons and Dragons after all. A good dungeon makes the whole game memorable. Make your dungeon memorable!

– Make it small (five to eight rooms). 

– Doodle a map on a sheet of grid paper, label each room using numbers, and make a brief description of the room’s features on a separate page. Describe every room using all five senses whenever possible. 

– Resist the urge to fill it with monsters and instead shoot for an interesting trap, hidden keys to other doors, average locks to pick, and maybe an NPC who got stuck in a pit for flavor. 

– Have rooms that offer a sense of realism. In an abandoned dwarven temple you will see dwarven armor, dwarven skeletons, and statues to dwarven gods. There would be a place for worship, a storeroom, the priest’s quarters, etc.

Congrats!

The fact that you’re reading this means you deserve to be congratulated. Other first-time DMs rarely look for outside advice, so be proud that you’re already ahead of the curve. Oh, and make sure they bring you snacks.

Back to Realm of the DM.