As a DM, patience and scope of campaign and session preparation are my biggest weaknesses. I have so many ideas for higher level characters, but I want to have players work their way up to get there.
I have always had trouble with scaling encounters, dungeons and sessions to low level parties.
As DM there are so many things you can do and experience in play.
I agree that there can and should be things that low level characters should stay away from, but if players ignore the famous DM question, “Are you [really] sure you want to do that?” It’s not the DM’s fault if the players make bad choices. That is easy.
The hard part is having low level characters have fun and excitement without everything being instant death.
I designed an area with some simple tombs and the weakest of all creatures for them to go up against, centipedes, the weakest spiders, and such. I even had a couple skeletons. The tombs go back 40 to 100 feet or so with alcoves on both sides every ten or twenty feet. Some have a room at the end, bigger ones have a room in the middle and the end. Those were appropriate encounters.
The temptation to avoid is throwing higher level NPCs at a situation, just to get into it. This is what I did playing with my sons. It was fun and they enjoyed the way I handled it. The problem is, I got into that rut and ended up with another scenario. The boys are having fun, etc. The hard part is for me to have the patience for them to work up to that level.
One solution to this is to get some other players. My oldest is on his own and not available most weekends, and my youngest is back living with his mom. So I can only dream of playing. I have been on Pen and Paper Games for a few years now. I live just far enough away from areas with a large concentration of gamers that I haven’t had much traction. I am hoping to get into an online game for at least a few sessions as a player to learn how it can be done as a substitute for in-person play. I definitely don’t have the patience for a play by post game in chat or email. Video or audio chat of some sort is the way to go.
The other solution to my problem is the concept of challenge ratings from Swords & Wizardry. I am not sure, but I think that came along with D&D 4.0. I missed the whole 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 rules, so I only know the good and bad I have read from others online. What I like about the challenge rating as it exists in S&W Complete, is that it gives you an idea of how to configure sessions, encounters, dungeons, adventures, whatever to fit the level of the party. There can still be a larger challenge rating monster or two so there is a challenge and an incentive to use their brains.
Scope is my other problem. I like the idea of a sandbox, and the campaign world I have been fiddling with for years is like a Western Europe sized sandbox. It is not detailed down to the low level, but I have a lot of the grand concepts and ideas to tie it all together. I want to have more of it “complete” and have worked hard to make myself work on the smaller area where I have players starting for a more reasonable scope for the sandbox. I will still jot down notes of ideas for campaign scale items so I don’t forget them. When I get to reading other RPG blogs, I get wrapped up in them and make notes and copy tables and maps.
It is like I am at an all you can eat buffet and am trying to pile some of everything onto my first plate rather than making multiple, more manageable trips.
I have ideas on my own plus a flood of new ideas from what I read online and elsewhere. It all looks so good, so where to start….
The lack of success in finding players has also made it easy to excuse myself from focusing and making area specific wilderness encounter tables and more low level possibilities. I do have quite a few, some just ideas, but for now, I need to focus on organizing what I have so I can find it when I need it and finding an online game I can join as a player to learn the technical ropes. Running an in person game is easy, it is throwing all the technology into the mix. I work with computers, so I can figure it out, but I would like to participate in how others do it, so I can decide how I want to do it. Then I can make an effort to find players.
