D&D 5E Let's Have A Thread of Veteran GM Advice

[Jahydin]

In my 43 years of DMing experience, I have learned this about megadungeons - there is no way to make them fun. They are repetitive, dull, mapping and resource management are chores that players have no interest in.

This is what I have learned: keep it varied, mix it up, have a little bit of of dungeon, have a little bit of wilderness, have a little bit of social, have a little bit of everything else you can think of.

Understand where you're coming from.

In my games, the mega-dungeon would not be the adventure. It's just a very enticing place to explore when the player's feel like it. That said, it better be worth it! Extra deadly, but rewards great enough everyone around town whispers about them.

I said "would" because I've never ran anything on the scale of Barrowkeep. Truthfully, when I wrote my post I had the standard 3-level old school dungeons in mind since most "dungeons' now are pretty tiny, like 5 rooms.

 

[SteveC]

The most important advice I can give is to talk with your players about what your campaign is going to be before you get started and make sure they buy in on what you want to do. For different DMs this can involve varying amounts of player creativity like building some of the kingdoms or helping to create the setting, or it can not. The key is to get your players to be okay with what the game is going to be. That way you shouldn't have a problem with them not wanting to engage with the game, which is the death knell of a game.

Two examples: it's been a while now but when I ran Curse of Strahd, I told the group (who were familiar with it) that the group would be sucked into Bavovia and have to get out somehow. Likely, that would involve defeating Strahd. There would also be a big setpiece dinner up at the castle at some point which would involve the famous "Strahd plays on the organ" as they arrived. I let them know that there would be a bunch of different locations that they could travel to, and each location would have problems and mysteries they could solve. I also told them this was going to be a terrible environment where bad things would happen. The game went great, and one of the players talks about how delicious the Dream Pasteries were years later.

Right now I'm running Abomination Vaults. It's a megadungeon adventure, but I let the group know that there would be plots connecting different characters they'd meet from the nearby town and mysteries they would have to solve. But in the end, most of the adventure would be in the Vaults. They'd have to make characters who wanted to solve the problems and defeat the big bad. So far, the group has gotten along well and are trying to solve problems for the different characters they've met. They're looking for a missing brewer, for instance, and have just found out what happened to the last of the rogues who foolishly snuck into the dungeon. The group has ideas for what they want to do next and it isn't "not go back to the dungeon." I like to think that's because I'm a good GM, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that I told them upfront what the game was about.

That's my single biggest piece of advice I can give. If your players don't want to engage with your game, it's likely because you didn't get their buy-in when you started.

 

[gorice]

How do you get players to stop expecting you to constantly feed them the plot? This is something the Alexandrian talked about. So many players have been lead around by the nose for so long they don’t seem to get there’s any other way to play. What do you do to break the players of this habit? And no, simply leading them around by the nose isn’t an option.

Thanks for the advice everyone. But I think I didn't communicate the problem that well.

I run open-world sandbox games. So dropping rumors/hooks/jobs into the PCs' laps and letting them pick isn't the problem. Getting them to pick one also isn't really the problem. It's what comes next.

The players take up the rumor/hook/job and ask a few initial questions, I provide the answers, point them clearly to some next possible steps, then they largely seem to just falter and stop dead. The fact that they have options seems to confuse them. That there isn't one blinking neon sign pointing to an obvious right choice puts them into analysis paralysis. They're looking for the rails when there aren't any, and the fact that they can't find them causes them to freeze.

I had one group talk themselves into a dead end they'd decided was the only possible option and when I communicated to them that nothing was happening in the location, instead of rethinking or adjusting at all, they literally just sat down and waited for the plot to come to them. At a later point the same group decided they wanted to talk to an NPC. When I told them the NPC was out of town and wouldn't be back for a day or two, they decided to just hold up in the inn where he was staying and waited. Legit refused to do anything else both times. There were other hooks, other rumors, other NPCs or locations they could visit or investigate, other angles they could check out for the same rumor/hook/job...but they noped out.

Now, while I recognize the "hurry up and wait" group is uniquely bad, a lot of other groups I've run for still get caught up in the analysis paralysis I talk about in the third paragraph. I'm a fan of the Alexandrian blog, so I pepper redundant clues throughout, with multiple clues pointing to the same conclusion. I've also run CoC for decades, so the mystery element isn't a problem. I know better than to lock things behind one roll or check. I know better than to use red herrings. I don't devise overly complicated stuff. I love Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, so I'm fine with moving clues to wherever the PCs are. I'm also far more of an improv referee so I have no problem just following the PCs wherever they go.

The trouble is, after a few choices...they just freeze. They're looking for the tracks and the fact that they can't find them stops them dead. I've been running and playing RPGs almost 40 years now and, in my experience, this is a uniquely 5E player thing. I've never had this issue with any other game or any other edition of D&D. It literally never happened until running 5E.

Oof, that sounds bad. I'd probably start with the cliched advice of 'talk to them about it out of game.' If the players all earnestly want to be told what to do, and you're not up for DM Story Hour, then it's just not going to work.

Having said that, I've found that this passivity is often learned, and a lot of people can unlearn it. It might be helpful to clarify what is actually acceptable or expected here. Are the players supposed to be pursuing a particular goal, or their own goals? Is there a particular method to employ, or are they supposed to get creative? What are the likely stakes of failure, or success?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If the players all earnestly want to be told what to do, and you're not up for DM Story Hour, then it's just not going to work.

The obvious solution to this to run an adventure someone else has written.

A lot of the pleasure of being a DM comes from watching the players enjoying the game. So the old axiom "give the punters what they want" tends to apply.

That thing you really wanted to do? It might be better to save it for a different group who might appreciate it more.

 

[Andvari]

The player in my current group who knew how to map unfortunately moved far away. The other players seem unable to map, and I'm not sure how to teach them, having tried multiple approaches, each of them giving up in turn.

For example, I'll describe one room something like this: "To make it easier on yourself, each square should be 10 by 10 feet. You enter the room through a door in the west. From the entrance, the wall goes 10 feet north and 20 feet east. Here's a door in the east wall, after which the wall goes 10 feet further south, then 20 feet west, connecting by the entrance."

They then proceed east into the next room, which I describe something like this: "From the entrance, the wall goes 20 feet north, 20 feet east, 30 feet south. At the south wall is a door, after which the all goes 10 feet west, connecting to the entrance."

The old mapper would correctly draw it like this:

But the new mappers draw it like this:

Suddenly there are hallways where none existed, the rooms are placed wrong in relation to each other, a third room has appeared out of nowhere, on top of another room, and the doors seem placed randomly.

I'm kind of suspecting they are drawing it wrong on purpose to push the mapping duties to the remaining players, because how is this even possible?

What would you do? I'm thinking of drawing each room myself on the whiteboard behind me so they can just copy it, as I have no idea how to unpack that thing, which now appears in my nightmares on a regular basis.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The player in my current group who knew how to map unfortunately moved far away. The other players seem unable to map, and I'm not sure how to teach them, having tried multiple approaches, each of them giving up in turn.

For example, I'll describe one room something like this: "To make it easier on yourself, each square should be 10 by 10 feet. You enter the room through a door in the west. From the entrance, the wall goes 10 feet north and 20 feet east. Here's a door in the east wall, after which the wall goes 10 feet further south, then 20 feet west, connecting by the entrance."

They then proceed east into the next room, which I describe something like this: "From the entrance, the wall goes 20 feet north, 20 feet east, 30 feet south. At the south wall is a door, after which the all goes 10 feet west, connecting to the entrance."

The old mapper would correctly draw it like this:

But the new mappers draw it like this:

Suddenly there are hallways where none existed, the rooms are placed wrong in relation to each other, a third room has appeared out of nowhere, on top of another room, and the doors seem placed randomly.

I'm kind of suspecting they are drawing it wrong on purpose to push the mapping duties to the remaining players, because how is this even possible?

What would you do? I'm thinking of drawing each room myself on the whiteboard behind me so they can just copy it, as I have no idea how to unpack that thing, which now appears in my nightmares on a regular basis.

This I figured out long ago: players do not need to map the dungeon. This is actually a hint in the original version of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. It's not realistic that the characters could produce an accurate map anyway, unless they are dragging surveyors tools around with them, have the appropriate proficiency, and lots of time. And talking of proficiency, not everyone can learn to draw on a grid. I mentioned the other day that the age when D&D players where all maths geeks has passed. And then there is the realism issue. Isn't it weird that your dungeon is exactly aligned to a 5 foot grid? How thick is the wall between the two rooms you have drawn?

The only thing that needs to be drawn are the battlemaps, and then only if you are not using theatre of the mind. And really, it needs to be the DM who preps them, ideally in advance, so the can mark on all the exploding barrels and other interesting terrain features.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm kind of suspecting they are drawing it wrong on purpose to push the mapping duties to the remaining players, because how is this even possible?

Drawing maps is a skill and not everyone has a visual imagination. Aphantasia is a real thing. Your description could be perfect and they'd still struggle to accurately represent it on the paper. The player could also simply be bad a drawing maps.

What would you do? I'm thinking of drawing each room myself on the whiteboard behind me so they can just copy it, as I have no idea how to unpack that mess.

What purpose does forcing the players to draw the map serve? Does it ever actually matter in the game? Unless it does come up and does matter, there's no reason to keep this tradition.

I would stop having the players draw the maps. I see no upside to doing it this way and a whole lot of downsides. If nothing else, draw the map yourself and reveal it as the PCs move through it. And/or give them a copy of the map after they've cleared the level, if they need the map for some reason.

 

[Andvari]

This I figured out long ago: players do not need to map the dungeon. This is actually a hint in the original version of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. It's not realistic that the characters could produce an accurate map anyway, unless they are dragging surveyors tools around with them, have the appropriate proficiency, and lots of time. And talking of proficiency, not everyone can learn to draw on a grid. I mentioned the other day that the age when D&D players where all maths geeks has passed. And then there is the realism issue. Isn't it weird that your dungeon is exactly aligned to a 5 foot grid? How thick is the wall between the two rooms you have drawn?

The only thing that needs to be drawn are the battlemaps, and then only if you are not using theatre of the mind. And really, it needs to be the DM who preps them, ideally in advance, so the can mark on all the exploding barrels and other interesting terrain features.

Maps are graphical representations of an area - not the area itself. I don't think I've met a player yet who has complained its unrealistic that the map isn't a perfect representation. After all, that is a general feature of maps, whether real or fantasy.

Not having a map works fine for very small or simple dungeons, but I often run more complex dungeons (or play in games with them) where mapping is essential. Without a map, players quickly lose any sense of where they are and where they can go, and it's just a matter of time before they request one anyway.

What purpose does forcing the players to draw the map serve? Does it ever actually matter in the game? Unless it does come up and does matter, there's no reason to keep this tradition.

It sounds so hostile when you say "forcing players to draw maps." Do you "force players" to update their HP when they take damage or "force players" to write items they pick up on their character sheet? It's for saving time. It's disruptive and slows down the game a lot when I have to cross the room and back to manually update their map whenever they round another corner or open a door. Similar to if I had to walk over and manually update their HP when they take damage or are healed, though in that case at least I don't have to awkwardly hold the real map while hiding it from view at the same time.

For the group that can't map, I think I'll just draw the map on the whiteboard behind me so the mapper can copy it while I describe the location narratively. That seems the fastest method.

 

[Shardstone]

I have my players map dungeons, but I'm ok if the maps are wrong. I let them compare maps and try to make sense of stuff and it adds to the aesthetic of the game; however, it's rare their maps are as wildly wrong as proposed. It seems there's an issue between the communication and the understanding at your table.

 

[Reynard]

My attitude with mapping is that if it is the style of game where it is important -- megadungeon exploration, for example -- then it is on the players. Mapping is part of play, like resource management and combat tactics. I would not remind them to buy rations or advise them how to fight the otyug. Why would I map for them?