So, Rose, what did you learn?
Jesus, calm down weird online stranger person, I was getting to it.
My experience as GM started because I actually wanted to play, but due to me being a loser with friends that wanted to drink intead of play games, I created my TTRPG club. I thought that maybe there are people that want to play in my area and that are willing to spend 3 hours every Monday to be weird. And you know what? There were! My club now has about 6 people and me. Here's what I learnt so far:
Players
Okay, for Dungeons and Dragons, at least how I play it, 6 players is a lot. There is no way to include everyone, it's just not. There always will be that one person left out or your party will split up and now half of the players are actually playing and the other half is on a smoke break or just getting bored. So, try to keep the amount to like 5. 5 is optimal, Counter Strike always had 5 players in the classic game model so 5 works.Players are different. Rose, tell me something that I don't already know. ygh, shut up for a second. Look, players are very different and it's difficult to figure them out. One time the quiet player that mostly was just awkward every time you tried to include them will just start extremaly good roleplay and the usually open to roleplay player will tell you that they actually enjoy combat more. It's hard. In my party there are some very very tactical gamers and generally the whole party is not very roleplay'y. Once you'll kinda get the hold of who your players are, then you can actually rewrite your story to fit their style more. You wanted a war style gameplay with a lot of strategic managment and minor and major battles? Well, your players are one step away from being LARP'ers, make sure THEY will also enjoy your plot. I always liked the RP part of TTRPGs, but my party is more toned, more calm, they rather just write their story without really acting it out. Although my friend came to the session once and I though that she'll just try it out and all, kinda just check it out from a bit of sidelines because I didn't know if she knows anything. Oh how silly of me. Once she actually started to act, she was the best actor and roleplayer I have ever seen. Everyone around the table was stunned, that's how good she was. Hell, I was so impressed that even I was stunned! Sure, your players after something like that will finally get rid of the shame that's keeping them from roleplaying, but maybe not. Maybe nothing will change. Adapt, that's what's important.
Story writing
Surprise surprise, for your plot to work you gotta have a story! Here's how I create my story:Step 1: Figure out the general setting of your story. Is it going to be a noir dark powers of the endritch gods story, or is it going to be epic high fantasy tale? Think of it as a movie. If you want to watch something that's good but not deep, you go for a comedy- you write a low fantasy dungeon crawler. If you want to watch something that's very good, deep and will leave you with emotional doubt about your own existance, you go for some kind of existential drama or arthouse film- you write roleplayed focused story with deep and full background.
Step 2: What happens at the end? What's the goal of the whole thing? Do you want your players to kill the dragon and save the princess from a different castle? Do you want them to find the ture meaning of life that after all is just a blank stare of the nothingness and the fact that the universe has nothing to offer beyond your own meaningless existance? Or do you want them to get rich and learn how to run a brothel? I always start at the end, it helps me organise everything and whenever I have doubts about what should my players even do at this point, I remind myself what the goal and endgame should be in my head and now I have guidance.
Step 3: Write your intro. Look, if you don't have some sort of intro to your campaign then you're doing something wrong. It doesn't have to be a long ten page mini novel, you just need to explain: setting, vibe, why the characters are where they are, what generally happened or will happen and why would they even meet. That's all. Step 4: Figure out your world. It's important. If you don't know the general map of the world you're playing in then you'll get lost, trust me. Your players will want to explore where they are and you got to give them the space for that. You don't have to know everything about it, just the general idea of: here's a forest, here's a mountain, here's a weird old house that nobody lives in yet still exactly at 10pm the light light up for 36 minutes every night. If your players will want to go somewhere, let them and later figure out what even is there for them to do.
Step 5: First quest. The general idea of what first will they have to do is a great thing to have. What NPCs will they stumble into, what challanges will they need to do. It's just good to have because I'm telling you, they will struggle with it the whole two first sessions, so you're good for some time.
Step 6: Go with the flow. Yup, improv. Hey Rose, are you just lazy and don't want to spend time writing quests, characters and places to visit? ygh, you're very judgy today my dear weird online stranger person, and you're kinda right, I am lazy and burned out, but improv was the best method even during my first ever campaign. You have to treat your players like psychos with no moral code. They will not do as you think they will. They will always find a way to go off the path you thought has all the safety barriers. So, improv. It's insanely good. Your players went to a bar/restaurant/hotel/brothel place called The Flying Boot, but you only have the owner written becasue she'll be useful later and they only came here to eat? Um, okay! Here's a Tabaxi twink waiter in maid dress named Sebastion that will be serving them! See? It's that easy. And yes, I do have a Tabaxi twink waiter in maid dress named Sebastian in my campaign. That's actually exactly what happend on the 3rd session of my campaign.
And there you have it. That's how I write a story to my campaigns!
Homebrew
Look, if you don't want to learn the system you're playing then this point is kinda not for you. Learn your systems. Anyway, homebrew is amazing. I use it reaaaaally a lot, from homebrew worlds, and items to races, feats, creatures. I love it. It makes the whole thing feel more workable for me. That's kinda why I started to develop my own system. But if you know your system then you know what's overpowered, underpowered and everything in between. It's important to know what you're working in.That would be all for today. I'll try to keep the TTRPG Talk alive because talking about it makes me actually less burned out so it helps me a lot.