T w e n t y S i d e d

In response to a question posed in the comments here:

My first step was to soak up the rulebooks. They aren’t designed to be read cover-to-cover, but I read quite a bit of the core rulebooks this way, particularly the combat sections and the stuff that covers running a game session. I only had about three weeks to prepare, and the last thing I wanted was for every battle to be a series of research projects where we dug through the books and trying to figure out what should happen next.

The other thing I did during those three weeks was design the setting. I just made up the game world from whole cloth. (I stuck my players on a single island with about eight towns, which limited the scope of the gameworld nicely.) This was a lot to accomplish in three weeks: To learn the D&D 3.5 game system from the beginning and design a game world, but I didn’t see the point in using a pre-designed setting, since that would just be one more thing I’d have to learn. For me, it’s easier to contrive new settings myself than it is to memorize the settings crafted by someone else. This is my favorite aspect of running a game, and I’m eager to do it again. Making up stories is fun.

Then before I started the game I held a sort of test run. We got together and held a short battle, sans plot, just to see if there was anything I was missing and to make sure we were all on the same page when it came to how the game was to be run. The test run went smoothly, and the next time we got together we started playing the campaign.

Note that I don’t suggest you try this if you plan to play with experienced players. I was a newbie DM, but my players only had a few sessions under their belts, so when I diverted from the rules they didn’t notice or get bent out of shape. It was a very relaxed campaign between friends, and so I didn’t have the pressure of trying to please a bunch of veteran strangers. The other thing I had going for me was that my players were a great bunch of guys who were all on the same page about what sort of game we were playing. All of them were happy with a deep story, low magic, moderate combat type game where the focus was on roleplaying and not stat-building. I’ve since learned that getting that large of a group to agree on this sort of thing is a rare and wonderful thing.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

During my Fear the Boot interview last week I mentioned that my experiences with D&D were pretty smooth and low-key. In 9th grade, I watched a game every morning in the school library. Even though I didn’t join in, I developed a fascination for the game while watching those guys play. There was a certain degree of rules-lawyering and the DM stuck relentlessly close to the prepared module, but looking back I’m really impressed at how well those fourteen year old kids got along and made the game fun together.

Almost twenty years later, my younger bother and some of his friends came to me in the hopes of starting up a game. I ended up running it, and we had a pretty good time. I’ve never run into some of the awful, munchkin type players that I occasionally read about. No grief players. No drama queens. No vindictive DMs. I guess I’ve been lucky. I’ve never even met people like that.

Until last Saturday.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Munchkinland”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.