Advice Request

[KingFitz]

I have been running Fantasy Grounds for about a year and a half with my family. I am going to be starting a game pretty soon with some college buddies. I am fairly inexperienced with D&D in general, but I am looking forward to DM'ing a game for my friends. One of my friends asked me: "Are you strict by the adventure or make it up as you go?" I told him that when I ran LMOP with my family I had the adventure on rails. I really didn't leave much room for improv so to speak. We all had a great time since we were all brand new to D&D.

Back on topic. How do you more experienced DM's incorporate spontaneity into your Fantasy Grounds games? I have this fear that they'll want to go off track and I won't have a map that I can place their characters on. Due to my inexperience I am nervous about not having a map for them. What would you do?

Thanks for any input,

KingFitz

[celestian]

Back on topic. How do you more experienced DM's incorporate spontaneity into your Fantasy Grounds games? I have this fear that they'll want to go off track and I won't have a map that I can place their characters on. Due to my inexperience I am nervous about not having a map for them. What would you do?

Thanks for any input,

KingFitz

That is almost like asking "How do you make a car?". While the high level explanation sounds simple it's a very complex issue. I am by no means an expert on spontaneously changing a story but... it has a lot to do with the players, you and the adventure itself.

I think if you want to do it, start small. Listen to your players as they are discussing things in the game. If one says " I think that damned cloth merchant is the guy that kidnapped the princess!" (more than likely cause he overcharged the player)... go with it. Let that actually be the person that did mastermind it.

Are your players getting bored of slogging through a lot of combat? Ignore a combat encounter where one is indicated. Everything in the room is dead, shredded and piled up in stacks or burned to a crisp. Or the opposite, players seem bored and want something to stab... pick a nearby room and that creature is out for a bio-break and they catch it mid-squat!

You don't only have to change it for them. Did the players take a wrong turn and avoided your entire dungeon? Well then that turn was actually the direction of the dungeon instead.

Start small, pickup things your players use/say/do and go with it. Don't do it to much though ;)

[damned]

And if you are not yet comfortable with them going bush - let them know in advance - "Im still getting the hang of a lot of this stuff - so lets stick to the storyline as much as possible."

[Trenloe]

Definitely discuss this with the players beforehand. One person's idea of deviating from the story can be very different from another. I've had players go completely off-base - not just a slight digression, essentially ignoring the whole campaign and doing something that they felt was cool. Some people like these kind of games. Personally, as a GM who has spent loads of time preparing a specific campaign, I don't. I'm OK with the players doing small digressions - like concentrating for a while on a NPC or storyline that isn't really detailed in the adventure, or coming up with something off-the-cuff that still keeps within the general aim and flow of the campaign.

Especially as you're new to GMing with this group and don't have a nice set of random maps to pull upon (slowly work on that, by-the-way, there are lots of maps available on these forums and elsewhere) let them know ahead of time that you want to run it pretty much as written. If they're OK with that and start to digress during the game, just let them know "OK, you're going a bit off-base here. Let's get back to the main story..."

But, always remember, you don't *need* a map for every place the PCs visit! Describe things to the players, use the theatre of the mind image for combats: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?43227-quot-Theatrical-Maps-quot-for-Theater-of-the-Mind-combats Get a simple background image (not even a map, just an image for flavour) and put the tokens on there to aid in position visualisation and targeting.

As you play and get more experienced, and get more idea of how your players play the game and what they enjoy; you'll adapt your style and have some basic props available to be more ad-hoc in your gaming style - if that is what you want.

[LordEntrails]

If you haven't already, take a look at this thread. It's a collection I helped put together of some of the best GMing advice there is; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36014-GM-Advice

There is lots there, and more than anyone probably has time to read just to get going, but find some that resonate with you and explore other links on those sites. (For instance, I really connect with the Alexadrian articles, but not with the Angry GM, each to their own.)

A couple of things I'll put at the top of my advice list;
- Don't worry if you get something wrong, the players don't know what's right! (This even holds with monster stats and abilities, your kobold doesn't have to be identical to the one in the book.)
- Have a list of names; people, taverns, cities, etc handy (You can also have one of the various smart phone apps on your phone for generating NPCs on demand, so you can get a name and descriptions etc.)
- When the party throws you for a loop, respond with "Ok, great. Let's take a 10 minute bio break while I set that up. Someone go get me a drink."
- Their are gobs of maps on the forums here and elsewhere. It's easy to have a 100 or so sitting in a folder you can add to FG on demand. And don't worry about the map being perfect, again, the players won't know better and close enough is good enough. (Just remember to keep the map resolutions reasonable, like 2048x2048 pixels and a 1MB or so in file size.)
- Try not to say 'no' or 'you can't do that'. Instead,
- - make them roll some related ability or skill and if they roll a natural 20 then it works! Maybe in some bizarre or strange way, but it works.
- - Use the 10 minute break idea to collect your thoughts, and figure out what might happen now.
- - Let them go down a path you hadn't thought about ("sure, you can follow the wagon out of town...") But then just make it a dead end ("the wagon goes about half a mile out of town before turning into an old farm stead. The driver gets out and starts to tend to the horse. ... No, nobody else is around... Sorry, their is nothing of interest here...)

[KingFitz]

Wow, thank you everyone for the invaluable advice! It definitely puts my mind at ease. All of my players except for one are brand new to D&D, but the one guy who has lots of experience knows I'm new to the game and being a GM. Good news is, he hasn't played 5E yet. I have been building up my stockpile of maps, I even picked up campaign cartographer to make my own maps (which will help down the road when we're all said and done with the pre-made adventures). I am really grateful for all of the advice in here. To be honest, I hadn't even thought of "steering" the players back to what I want them to do like celestian and LordEntrails suggested.

Thanks again everyone, I truly appreciate it!