/tg/ I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Me and some buds got together to plan our 5E campaign and get our characters ready. We finished preparing our characters much earlier than expected so our DM wanted to run a practice session for the 2 people who were new to D&D. One of our players, who's familiar with 5E and tabletop in general, had a huge shit-flinging contest with the DM while we were having the practice session, and somehow it ended up the DM voting that I run it while he revises and further prepares his campaign.
I had no problem with it since I figured it was just practice, and I've never actually DM'd before. Somehow I've managed to keep them captivated for the majority of the session with a story that I was pulling out of my ass. After the session, it came to an agreement among the players, original DM included, that I should be the current DM and keep this going as intended campaign.
Should I cut this short because I have absolutely nothing prepared and the orginal DM is pretty much dumping his responsibilities onto me, or should I keep this going because everyone is having fun?
>>47809481
If they're having fun, you're doing something right. Keep going, I say. Even if you're just improvising, if your players are having a good time, then there's no reason to stop.
If the load on you is too much then definitely reconsider, but pulling things out of your ass constantly is not at all a bad GM style, at least depending on the kinda game you want.
>>47809481
Just grab a published adventure and run it. The Starter Set adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, is quite good, as is the newer Curse of Strahd.
>>47809664
I wouldn't mind veering this campaign towards Barovia. Is it possible to work of a module after the first session?
>>47809664
On those note, you can usually find PDFs of the published adventures in the 5e megathreads, so that you can see which might be best suited for your group before you... obtain a copy in whichever method you prefer.
I would recommend, though, that you tell your group you plan on running the campaign you're doing as long as you feel comfortable, but that you might switch to a published adventure if you feel like you'd rather do that. Then, once the whole group understands the situation, give it your honest best shot to try to run the campaign you've got going already. Worst case you say "yeah I don't think this is working well, I'm gonna try running _____________ adventure", but I think that if you give it the old college try you'll find that a lot of the DMing stuff comes more easily than you'd think. Read advice threads, search up some DMing blogs and maybe listen to some podcasts, just take in some advice and see what sticks. If you just try to give your party what you think they'll enjoy the most and ask for feedback, you'd be surprised how well it works out.
>>47809603
I'm still trying to figure out what I want out of the game. 3 out of the 5 players lean a bit more towards the murderhobo style of gaming, one of them is generally fine with whatever goes on, be it murderhoboing or serious RP, and the last one is a no nonsense all narrative RP kind of player. I'm trying to establish a balance so everyone can have fun because I have noticed that while 3 of them were engaging in their shenanigans, the other 2 were heading straight towards the objective that would progress the story.
I don't want to give too much attention to one side while making it seem like I'm ignoring the other. I'm fine with either a serious game or murderhobo's, but I feel like if I flop back and forth, someone will end up unhappy.
>>47809791
>Podcasts
Oooh, slide me some of those, anon.
>>47809904
You can try to either talk to each of them one on one or sit them together as a group to figure out what they all want out of it.
>>47809904
Do what >>47810738 suggests and sit down with them. Those 3 don't sound like they're total murderhobos, so maybe you can get them at least somewhat interested in a narrative.
Of course give them all their times to shine. Let the murderhobos do the killing, and let the serious players do the heavy-lifting when it comes to RP and story progression. It's a party for a reason, not everyone has to do everything.
If they had fun playing while you were winging it you might have a knack for DM'ing. How did you start them off?
>>47809779
It's very easy. All of the included hooks in CoS have the party whisked there by the Mists from whatever world they were in before, with varying levels of willingness from the party. Seems like a pretty fun and solid module to me, I've read the whole thing but only had a chance to run Death House so far. It actually leaves me itching to run games for once.
If you don't want to shell out cash, /5eg/ has it in the mega.
