[D&D 5e] Advice for a Level 1 Dungeon Master

Awesome! I'm a "make it a fun story" kind of GM, so I'm happy to hear about fudged dice... I think taking the characters within an inch of losing and letting them come back is important. Unless for narrative or agreed-on reasons (or a TPK), I don't usually let characters outright die. Though that's a whole different discussion!

Yeah, killing (well, not KILLING but taking them down to 0HP, but they'd be still sitting around waiting) one of them straight off would be a bummer especially since they'd guessed there was an ambush and planned a clever distraction. The rogue did get taken down a couple of times, firstly because he mystifyingly decided to follow the gnome warlock in when he knew the gnome was going to use Arms of Hadar (hits *everything* within 10ft), and second when he sneak attacked Ripper (Klarg's pet wolf) and then (amusingly) immediately got mauled down to 0HP. I was lenient with Medicine checks and Short Rests though to allow him to recover back to 1 or 2 HP.

Heh, sounds like it was a blast. Yah, I tend to reward players being good players (RP, planning if appropriate, etc) with divine "luck".

Oh, speaking of rewards, I think I misunderstood the XP rewards for the first couple of sections of the starter set and gave them both XP for kills AND the "end of this section" XP reward. I also realised I was unclear on how "XP for kills" works - do you give the XP just to the PC who got the kill or the party as a whole?

I'm not sure about 5e, but in past editions of DnD, XP was given to everyone in the encounter, with the XP split among the participating members. I'd guess 5e is the same, though I'm not sure how the MM shows monster XP (already split, or the total like in the past). Some GMs give more XP for the kill or something silly like that, but I never liked that idea... short of someone running away from the fight, I think everyone involved gets an equal share.

As for the XP per kill + end of section rewards, does the end of section part mention explicitly if it includes monster XP? Specially if there are a bunch of optional/bypass-able monsters, they may not be in that section. Also, it can sometimes just be easier to just give XP at the end, unless someone is on the verge of leveling.

Yeah I mistakenly gave kill XP to the killer, which in retrospect is silly because it means they don't level equally. I'll probably even everyone's XP out for next time. The Warlock is like a level ahead of everyone currently thanks to Arms of Hadar...

The third part of the adventure starts with "in this section you'll give XP for individual monster kills" implying you weren't supposed to in part 1 & 2. Not too bothered about that anyway as I wanted the party to get to level 3 asap so they get their interesting class features (rogue gets Arcane Trickster spells for example).

Oh, and I did give half XP for executing captured enemies.

In 5e, experience for a kill is split among everyone in the party. The MM shows the total XP for the monster, not the XP per character.

Ah cool, thanks.

Yah, I'd go ahead and retcon the XP at the start of next game (or let the players know ahead of time so they can have chars ready for the next game, given you have plenty of time between?).

I ran LMOP and my group is now been playing table top roleplaying games for over a year now. I ran the adventure pretty much how published. Some advise though - I would just wash away exp and do milestone and level characters up at the end of story sessions or arcs (within reason to book advertised exp). Reason being: build player behaviour that doesn't see killing as 'exp' and instead progression as such...

Also, something incredibly helpful for going off the rails: "The Rule of Three" - when you are brainstorming or pulling together something off the cuff, grab a notecard and start jotting down the three locations the players may deal with or face, the moods/mindsets of the three NPCs they need to deal with, then maybe three major story clues and include whichever encounters they may have to deal with at each location.

That always afforded me good amounts of flexibility and I too... like others found that once you begin to present more options than 3, they tend to get forgotten and go out the window. At that point, if you have any story or plotline you want the players to experience they may forget about those options. It's almost easier to roll them into 3 different scenes and later on connect the unexplored to the explored with the clues that you generated. Eventually you can give them complete free form and still get the message across.

Best of luck! Picking up 5e starter has been one of the most fun experiences in my life, hope the same for you and yours! Cheers!

Yeah I definitely think I prefer the idea of XP for "resolving an encounter" where resolving is not necessarily "killing everything".

We had our second session last weekend. Only a short one due to time and a couple of people missing, but our two intrepid PCs went looking for mounts and got scammed by a farmer. A little more detail here.

Resurrecting this thread because I have another newbie-DM question:
What do you do when the players get stuck solving a puzzle?

In a recent one-shot adventure with mostly-newbie players, I had a small dungeon with:
Room 1: a few goblins, and a wall inscribed with an oath.
Room 2: the "boss fight" with some more enemies, and a puzzle: A statue with an inscription asking the reader to "give your word" (not the full inscription but they immediately/correctly picked up they had to say something to solve the puzzle).
The solution to "giving your word" was to recite the oath from Room 1 (which started like "I swear to blah blah"). One of the players figured out - via a Religion check I think - that they had to "recite an oath"; but the players had all forgotten about the oath from the previous room.

- I assume the issue was the rooms being punctuated by a fight, so the fact there was something written in Room 1 had been forgotten.
- A successful room-search (Investigation) check would have found the secret door (and thus allowed lockpick attempts) but only one player (the Rogue) tried this and failed.

I'm trying to refine this dungeon to run it again for some new players (newbies again). So my questions are:
- Should I rearrange the layout so there's less time/stuff happening between "seeing the oath" and "seeing the puzzle"? Maybe reverse the statue and oath locations so they find the oath after they've seen the "puzzle" part which is more likely to stick in their mind.
- Should I hint that other people can search the room if someone tries and fails? ("You don't find anything, anyone else want to try?")
- If someone has a successful (and plausible) skill check, should I more strongly hint at the solution?
- Are there any Plan C ways the door could be opened (after A: solving the puzzle, and B: finding door/picking lock)?

In the end, the players made up their own oath that was close enough in spirit to the "correct" answer that I decided it was close enough and let them progress. So maybe that was OK and I'm over-analysing it? But I feel like they spent a little too long being "stuck" and I'd like things to flow along a little better. I should note though that they were all pretty complimentary afterwards and didn't seem overly annoyed by the puzzle.

Doesn't Colville touch on this dilemma in his Running the Game video where he goes over creation of this dungeon? It's been a while since I've seen it, so maybe I'm wrong. I would approach it very directly were it my table. I would say something along the lines of "Perhaps there is more information in other parts of the dungeon that you missed."

Ha, that's a good point, I haven't rewatched that video since the game.

If the characters saw the oath in the first room but the players forgot, then I'd simply remind them of it directly. Maybe ask for an Intelligence check to see who remembers that it was there. Otherwise, you can hint that there may be clues that they missed earlier and have them try again to find the stuff.

I tend to go with the idea of reminding players what happened before, through suggestion, and in case no one wrote it down, have them roll something to remember (sometimes it's a bull roll just meant to keep things alive): "You guys sound that slip of paper with a bunch of numbers? Oh, no one wrote it down? Roll int to see if you remember. You got a 2? Good enough!"

Also, remember that you control the narrative, and that mechanics shouldn't get in the way of the fun. Players can't figure out a puzzle? Hold a montage scene where the players work their way through it (maybe do some rolls or make it interactive), and if you think it was significant enough, just reduce XP earned. Game moves forward, and maybe they don't find the secret panel with 100gp.