'Sup /tg/, long time lurker, first time poster. So my friends and I are going to try out D&D for the first time this Saturday. I have a few questions I was wondering if you elegan/tg/entlemen could answer for me.
>Where to get dice?
>Best ways to avoid railroading
>What do do if the players lose interest
Emphasis on the dice bit, I don't know if they'll be here in time but I've never bought any in person.
Any tips or advice would be appreciated.
Any game store and most bookstores should have dice. Dice are usually either sold in sets (a common set for D&D contains a d4, a d6, a d8, two d10s, a d12, and a d20) and sells for ~$3-6 USD. Many stores also sell dice in big buckets in which case you can pick out whichever once you want and buy them by the each in which case expect to pay no more than $1 USD a die.
>>47527924
>Where to get dice?
Where do you live? You should have, unless you live in the middle of nowhere like myself, a gamestore somewhat within reach. Otherwise you should be able to buy them from amazon for instance.
>Best ways to avoid railroading
By offering the party "choices" would be the simple answer. It depends though on what type of game you are planning to GM (that is, is it a dungeoncrawl, a "storyfag" type of game, etc).
>What do do if the players lose interest
Let them. Some probably will. D&D is not for everyone.
>>47527924
>Where to get dice?
Game Science produces the best dice but they went bankrupt several years back, were bought up, and now charge anywhere from 40% to 350% more than they did. They're the only gaming dice currently machined so that their surfaces are precise to within 1/10,000 of an inch.
>Best ways to avoid railroading
I have come to the conclusion that people don't actually understand what this consists of, judging by how often this question gets asked. Railroading happens when your players don't want to engage in any of the plot arcs you're offering and you try to force them to do them anyway. To avoid railroading you must be capable of improvisation. To be capable of improvisation you must have a reasonable grasp of the game's mechanics so that you won't make the challenges too easy or hard, you have to have considerable knowledge about the region of the campaign setting you're using so you can utilize the resources the writers already came up with for you, and you need a very strong understanding of what your players find enjoyable.
>What to do if the players lose interest
Something different from what you were doing before. Without knowing anything about your game or your players any general advice I can't give advice on that. You should only actually care about that if you have good players, though. Players are a dime a dozen, since nobody wants to DM, and you may be sifting through droves of failures before you find decent gamers.
I bought a game for 29 bucks called dice mania at Books a Million, had about 40 due in it. D4s to d100s
Parties will get bored if you don't railroad them enough, especially new players. Give the impression that they are doing what they want to do.
>>47527924
Honestly probably the best advice is figure out what you want to do. Don't immediately think you need to make a super-huge, ultra-epic campaign spanning five irl years with political intrigue and vast dungeons. You can still try that, of course, but the biggest thing is not to overwhelm yourself.
When people make characters, they should probably all have their own actual reasons to stay with the party. Taking a cluster of random people and sticking them together can be a hassle, especially if you have to make all the reasons for them not to just split up. Especially if by circumstance the party gets pulled apart, there might not be any drive in the characters to find the others again. Of course the /players/ may look, but it creates a sort of strain when the players have to force the characters.
I could go on for hours, but I've got my own campaign to keep working on. Honestly the biggest things for you to keep in mind is make sure you're prepared and have a lot of notes and details down, be able to think on your feet, and most importantly don't sacrifice your own fun in order to make the game fun for your players. If the story-teller isn't having a good time, that's just going to trickle down to the players.
>>47527924
Amazon is best place to get dice. Twenty-five bucks for a dice bag with sixteen sets of dice? Plenty for everyone to have a fave and provide all you need.
Don't avoid railroading. It's one of those problems people enjoy talking about solutions for, but doesn't really exist. You presenting situations? You letting your players react to them, and modifying the situations accordingly? Done--not a problem. It's not railroading to direct a game and put players into situations. In fact, it's exactly what a DM is supposed to do. You write the adventure (or run the one you bought). You choose how, where and why the game begins. You drop the hook in their laps. They bite because playing a game is the whole reason you're all there.
RPing can get off-putting. Start with an adventure that throws them into the action. Preferably one that starts with a fight very close to the beginning of the adventure. Fighting according to rules and by rolling dice and declaring actions from a list of options? Everyone can comprehend and relate to what's going on. They'll naturally get involved in their characters once they start acquiring treasure to spend, magic items to experiment with, puzzles to solve or just NPCs to react to.
>>47529614
Pretty much this. I would add: get to know your players beforehand, and try to get a feel for what kind of campaign THEY want. Try to come to some kind of consensus about the tone and genre of the campaign, but don't be afraid to railroad a little if things get stale.
One thing I like to do with either player I'm unfamiliar with or with players new to tabletop RPGs is I run a short solo session with just them: I try to have them feel comfortable with their character and with the tone and genre we're working with. I also try to "feel out" what style of play they like (heavy RPer, murderhobo, rules-lawyer, etc.) and I try to incorporate moments in the campaign to fit them.
>>47527924
A piece of advice: talk to your players about the upcoming game before you actually start playing. Make sure everybody's on the same page with their expectations for the game. You don't one guy taking things seriously and another doing whatever zany thing pops into his head. How realistically severe will the repercussions be if the PCs start attacking random people or setting fire to bars?
How much joking around and table talk is okay? Do you want to try to stay focused on the game with only the occasional excursion, or is it okay if everybody's just hanging out and shooting the shit half the time? Is it okay for PCs to try to kill each other? (Hint: no. That's a good way to bring your game to a screeching halt. The good of the game is more important than any one PC's integrity.) What about leaving the group and adventuring on their own? (Hint: no. It's a team sport and having to divide your time because somebody can't play ball is bullshit.)
Etc.
>>47527924
One of these days I'll have to screencap these...
Essentially, being a PC means having choice. No one wants to play a Final Fantasy cutscene at the table--that's how players lose interest in record time.
To avoid this, it helps to prepare. Don't "plan" extensively, PREPARE extensively. A "library" of characters/encounters/names/places/etc. goes a long way. Don't go balls deep--if you make a world history or backstory, restrain it to the stuff relevant to the players. They can fill in the blanks for you. You don't need to know all the answers right away.
On that note, ASK QUESTIONS. Both to yourself and your players. Questions will help you troubleshoot your story and setting, and help keep players involved. Being a player requires some discipline of its own, though (check out ProJared's "How to be A Good Player"). Ultimately, players should be allowed to make their own choices, and questions are a way of drawing out their decisions.
To avoid railroading, consider "Floating Islands" (i.e. Schrodinger's Plot Hook):
>You prepare Dungeon A near Town B
>Players choose to go to Town C
>Use Dungeon A anyway because they never saw it to begin with
This type of preparation saves you loads of headaches. They get to make their choices, you get to strut your stuff, everybody wins.
Pic related, it's DMing.
>>47527924
Ask them what they want to be doing in the game.
Railroad them into doing that thing.
If they say they're bored with that thing and want to do something else, change rails and get them doing this new thing.
For example:
>GM: So what do you guys want to play
>Players: We want a classic damsel rescue!
>GM: Aright sure, daughter of a local noble was abducted by an ogre (No, there aren't any donkeys involved). The ogre is demanding ransom and threatens to eat her if any big army approaches his lair in the swamp, but a smaller group may manage to trick him into thinking they're coming with the ransom and her father is promising good cash for that.
>Players: Great, we're going to scout his lair out!
>[couple sessions of swamp adventure happening, they find the lair and sneak out knowing its location]
>Players: Maaaan fuck the swamp, we wanna go high seas adventure.
>Bad GM: NO! THE DAMSEL MUST BE SAVED!
>Good GM: ok fine, you can sell the information about the ogre's lair to another group of adventurers. Still, you don't have enough cash for your own ship, but the magistrate is planning on raiding a local smuggler's hidden base and is seeking tough men to bolster his forces. Maybe you can snatch something extra during the raid, eh?
