>>44100735
Use adventure modules. GMing is not difficult to do well. Read an adventure until you remember the gist of most situations. Keep the print-out on the table to refer back to. Make some quick-hit notes for stat blocks, difficulty modifiers, and whatever. Then run players through them.

Frankly, D&D is an easier place to learn GMing than virtually any other system, because it's where GMing comes from and what has the most adventures published. Virtually every RPG out there is based on being similar to or different from D&D, or it is based on a derivative of something based on being similar to or different from D&D. That's just a fact of how things that come after the first kind of a thing work. 3.5 is a pain in the ass to try to do because it's sorta a shit-show and has way too much horribly-written crunch and varying power levels. But any other edition at all has plenty of published adventures and is easy to pick up if you have 3.5 down-ish.

>>44100735
1. watch videos or learn from other dm
2. use premade sets and read along
3. dont force story but dont let your players bully you
4. make sure your players have agency, otherwise you're just reading them your fanfic

>>44100735
When you need to come up with something on the fly, try asking your players to come up with it instead.

>You're on a quest for a legendary artifact. What artifact are you seeking?

>What does the bartender look like? Well, you decide. What do you think they could look like?

It gives players an opening to be invested in your game, and takes some of the worldbuilding burden off you. It doesn't work with every group, of course, but it can be great fun when it does.

>>44100893
>You're on a quest for a legendary artifact. What artifact are you seeking?

Fuck this game. I'm going home.

>>44100811
And if they go off the rails near the very beginning? I know my friends. One of them's a forever GM looking for a break (hence why I'm volunteering), the rest are GUARANTEED to try and break off the rails the second I get done with the opening line of the campaign. Maybe even before.

>>44101023

Yeah, don't run a module. It's training wheels for GMing, and it sounds like you players will just take a hammer to those wheels the minute they see 'em. So skip that and get to improv.
If you want to learn how to do an improv-heavy old-school style GM session, I'd recommend giving Dungeon World a look. The GM rules are excellent.

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/srd/dungeonworld

>>44101023
Tell them you're running a module to learn how to GM and that they should not act like a buncha cunts. And if they wanna act like a buncha cunts? "Fine--you guys run something. I'm not putting up with your shit."

>>44101128

That could also work, but if they don't like trips via railroad, starting off by being hostile about it may not be conducive to everyone having a good time.

>>44101205
Running adventures isn't railroading. And if you wanna redefine railroading to include it, it's a meaningless term. It's a game--not an improv, theater workshop. If they aren't interested in playing the game, then say "Ok, then let's not play the game."

They aren't just players. They are also functional human beings capable of being spoken to. Speak to them more, and attempt to outwit them before speaking to them less. "Here are my concerns: let's address them" will almost-always work better than "Here are my concerns, now let me work hard to carefully cover all possible objections and anticipate everyone's possible reactions so that nothing can possibly go wrong ever." Because it's just easier.

>>44101262

Running most modern "adventure" modules feels a lot like railroading to me. It has some stops where you can take a different track, but there's still a small, finite number of tracks.
I've never been a big fan of modules in general, as a player or a GM. The best ones IMO are just some loosely built locations and NPCs to throw your players in and let 'em go.

>>44101337
There are always a finite number of tracts. All rules and settings are functionally a list of introduced constraints. So are adventures.

>>44101413

Not if I'm improvising. New "tracks" appear as fast as the players require them. I built a whole region for the players to explore after an single unexpected roll led them in a new direction.


By contrast, a standard module generally goes in one direction, sometimes via two or three possible paths, but starts and ends in the same spot. Whatever the players do, they're going thataway.

>>44101534
Well, as much as I love meaninglessly-broad metaphors: that's nonsense. Your players are going to be in a setting doing something, 'cuz that's how RPGs are played. You want the whole thing to be something you come up with on the fly and that's a perfectly fine, albeit lol-randumb, way to approach the game. But it's no more-or-less railroady if that setting and those things are something you all agree to choose together to go in the direction of, so that the GM has time to prepare it. Player agency isn't removed just because you all agree to play an adventure any more than it is removed by anything else you all agree to.

>>44101079
I actually have the Dungeon World book; I was told it was good for GM advice even if you don't actually run the system. I'll take a look through it this weekend when I have time.

>>44100849
4's a point I actually want to ask about. How much agency is too much? I know I've got a problem about railroading that's gonna hurt my ability to run anything, but how far off the reins do I need to go?

>>44101628

You have a REALLY weird definition for "railroady" and "lol-randumb."

>>44102357
Generally, just try to never negate their actions. Use "Yes, and" wherever possible.

>>44101023
Honestly open by "Guys, I'm new, I have no idea how to make a plot, so I'm running a module. You should make characters that are invested in the plot, and do not metagame the shit out of it."
If they refuse, you don't run.

Or you get a random dungeon generator and open up with them trapped in the middle.

>>44101337
Yes the plot outline is a rail.
But it is enforced by not unreasonable restrictions.
Most of which, "this is a game which we agreed to play".

If you agreed to play a game about knights saving a princess, then you are on the rails that lead to the princess, by your own goddamn volition. "Forget the princess, lets go on high seas pirating!" is a dick move from the player, he should've pushed for pirate game before everybody started on knights game.

Most of the time restrictions are only of these kinds:
1)You SHOULD be playing characters that react to events in certain ways. For example a superhero game is very on rails because you are NOT going to ignore villainy being afoot.
2)And the rest is just "this is how things in the world are". The vizier is treacherous, and the players know this plot, but walking up to him right beside the king and cutting his head off will result in party being skullfucked by the army because king trusted him more than you. Yeah sure that ends the plot anyway. And ends the game! You do not have a game any more, good fucking job!

Sometimes, quite often times, of course, the modules fuck it up. Wherein no matter how good your characters perform, and do things that make sense; but the plot has to ignore it all in order to progress (for example, the vizier shows up to taunt the heroes in a middle of an evil cult temple and the heroes pull out their bows and turn him into a pincushion? Railroading it out of THAT is unreasonable.)

>>44102357
"Fuck this whole plot, we're doing 360 and moonwalking out" is too much agency. Again, the characters should be invested in the plot, so you take away agency of making characters that do not even belong there.
But once the characters are made, they can act whichever ways they want to act in order to accomplish the goals of the plot that they have started.

>>44104161

Cart before the horse. Have them make their characters first, THEN devise some plot hooks that you think might interest them, start the game, and dangle those hooks in front of the players.
Then when they've jumped on a hook they actually like, figure out the rest of it as you go.
Don't waste time building a bunch of shit your players aren't going to care about.

>>44104242
There are several ways and possibilities brought up in the topic
1)Newbie GM trying to run a module to get his feet wet. If the players don't want to cooperate with that, they're frankly assholes.
2)Collective discussion of theme. Knights and princess, or pirates. You get it all together. If a guy suddenly flips and makes a character that doesn't fit pre-agreed theme, he's a dick. If they whole party decides that, soon after the game has started, they are not actually interested in the topic they wanted, then the game is over, back to drawing board for everybody - the GM needs to redo the plot and the players need to redo the characters (because its out of character to flip like that)
3)Players make random guys in a vacuum and GM haphazardly stitches the plot around them - sure, may work, but you can end with diametrically opposing characters, the lolrandum shit, and all the shit. Requires a lot of experience to run, don't try to spring that shit in a newbie advice thread.

>>44104305
>Players make random guys in a vacuum

>shit nobody said: the post

Obviously you're all supposed to talk to each other during this, don't be a dick.

>>44104371
That's #2.
People still do #3 a lot of the time, we get stories about it all the time.

>>44104385

Oh, you're right, I accidentally #2 there. (It's midnight here, and I ought to be in bed, I suppose.) Nevermind then. Sorry for the unwarranted accusations of dickery and all.

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Pic related, just DO IT. Some of the advice in this thread is good, but it's no substitute for experience. Yes, you're probably going to suck. The thing is, we all sucked when we started. Every "good" GM used to be a shitty GM. JUST DO IT.

>>44100811
>Frankly, D&D is an easier place to learn GMing than virtually any other system, because it's where GMing comes from
This is kind of like arguing that the first programming language is the easiest to learn and use. D&D has a lot of assumptions built into the structure of the system about leveling, magic items, length of adventuring day and so forth. And trying to do something different with one of those aspects can throw everything off-kilter. On top of this, D&D is very focused towards a particular type of role-gaming and isn't particularly flexible. It is definitely on the tricky end of things to get a handle on as a GM, and I say this as a guy who started playing and GMing with Basic D&D.

These days, D&D more carefully instructs you on how to GM than a lot of systems, but it really *needs* more instruction. And honestly, most valuable GM advice isn't system specific, so you can get it from anywhere. So I'd say you're much better off doing something light like Barbarians of Lemuria than delving into D&D with its particular war game-descended, dungeon crawl-based approach to role-gaming.

>>44104580
...even though D&D does, admittedly, have a huge player base and lots of modules.

>>44102357
you dont need agency, meerely the impression of it

for instance no body can really prove humans have free will, but if you believe they do, thats good enough