New DM Handbook: An Introduction

December 17, 2016

Welcome to my new series, ‘New DM Handbook.’

I know it’s a weird name, but it’s way better than “My Journey as a New DM, the Lessons I Learn Along the Way, and a Guide to New DMs and Players from Someone Just Like You.” Plus, it’s a lot shorter. If “New DM Handbook” is still too long, NDH will work just fine.

Straight to the point with D&D

My goal with this series is to chronicle my exploits as not just a new Dungeon Master, but as one who is almost completely new to the hobby. Veterans to Dungeons & Dragons who provide insights for us inexperienced players are invaluable, but decades of experience can become overwhelming for those just trying to figure things out. There’s so much D&D history which experienced players draw on. So many kinds of mechanics, and so much lore. There’s multi-classing and optimized building. There are endless experiences to draw from.

So, when an experienced player, whether they’re on a YouTube video or in person, is explaining things, it becomes too much, and it becomes easier to just shut it all out. Then the true fly in the ointment springs to life: You can do anything. As liberating as that is for a few, it can be confusing for others. Worse, it can even be frightening for many. Something new is scary when there are clearly written directions to do things in very specific ways. Something new where the options are endless and the rules are 316 pages long can be too much. Hearing all of that from someone with decades of experience, with jargon and notes, will scare anyone away.

That’s why I’m doing this. I’m new to the hobby. Like brand new. Like, I played one session over 20 years ago, and it was a bad enough experience to make me not want to bother until recently. I get how scary this is. The only reason why I’m at this level of knowledge (which is still probably very limited) is because I discovered the storytelling potential of it, which motivated me. I’ve been watching live games (I’ve settled on Critical Role, but I watched plenty of others), reading the books (I’ve scoured the PHB, DMG, MM, SCAG, and VGM), and watching advice channels (Nerdarchy gives the best advice in the land).

However, reading about it and doing it are two different subjects.

As I venture forth with the transition to actually doing it (phrasing), I hope my ideas of what I think will be, coupled with the reflections of what it really is, will provide some much needed insight for new players and new DMs, and it’ll make it a lot less scary.

My Goals as DM

First and foremost, in this series of articles I intend to essentially journal my experiences. I haven’t even gotten to Session 1, and I’ve already had so, so, so many experiences, as well as many more lessons learned. To me, this is the bread and butter of the series. If my goal is to provide readers a vicarious experience for which to tread into the overwhelming world of Dungeons & Dragons, then this needs to be my primary focus.

Still exceptionally important, I’m going to be including my philosophies and reflections. Right now, with no real experience, I have a number of philosophies about how I want to run my game. There are interpretations I have, guides I want to follow, and a few things I want to change. As time goes on, I also need to look back on those, and others, to see if my assumptions and philosophies were sound or faulty.

Finally, I intend on discussing my world building and lore process. This way it can be a breakdown of how I do it without the baggage of Dungeons & Dragons tropes to fall back on. I have decades of experience being a part of some element as a storyteller, whether it’s as an actor, director, (script and prose) writer, poet, or through literary analysis. That being said, I have as much experience with the lore of D&D as the next guy, which is to say pretty much none. Up until a few months ago, the words Tiefling, Aasimar, or Eladrin were completely foreign to me, but telling a story is the same in any language. So, while I’m not beholden to any notion of D&D history, my goal with world building and lore development is to help new DMs consider how to construct a story and a world outside of what you’re told is how you’re supposed to do things the D&D way.

In the future, and as a part of a very different series, I may share the rich and deep lore of the world I’m building that I’m going to be using as the template for all of my games, but that’s going to come as what I’m doing has solidified, and as I have more time to write at least two articles a week.