I need somehelp,

im new to D&D an iwanted to know if there were any tips peeps could give me for being a DM,

and how to get through the mamoth of a guidebook that is the Players handbook and DM guide!

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thankseo,

Christof!

Well its been awhile for me but ill see if i can help,

There is no shortcut unfortunatly for getting through the books, u have to read them and re read them. They are daunting but a lot of stuff will stick.

Before you dive into a full adventure have a "practice" run. Stage a mini adventure, you wont need a module for this. Just devise an encounter and a few other scenarios that require saving throws etc so you can work through it with your players so that you can get comfortable with it before hosting a module.

When you pick a module, read through them first before you buy, some can be quite confusing while some are easily understandable.

Lastly enjoy yourself, and remember the DM's word is final.

In the best interest of the group, a good idea is to make sure everyone gets in the spotlight at least once during a campaign.

Watch for problem players (Rule-Lawyers, Santa-Clauses, Villian-hearted, Power-Gamer, Cheeser, etc) This will cause you and everyone else to lose fun in the game because they take away from the atmosphere. Ususally take them off to the side and warn them, if it doesn't help. Kill their character or eject them from game, whichever floats your boat. I do both if they really piss me off.

You are the authority, what you say goes, make sure they know that. Also make sure that you understand the rules from the book. If you don't like what it says, tell them why you don't like it and say this is how you are going to change it. The Golden Rule of all Book and Dice games is "The Game Master can make up or change any rules as he/she sees fit." The rules are more or less just guidelines.

Keep the story interesting, have not just hack and slashing but also have something that will get their brains working like investigation or horror-style scenarios.

Sometimes, leave on a cliffhanger when you are transitioning to a different part of the story. That way next time you guys get together, they will want to jump right in and get to playing rather than bullshitting around

Its good to laugh and make jokes, but when it gets out of hand it needs to stop and get back into the flow of the game. Each time you stop, remember you are losing time to play.

Hope that helps

"Rehab is for quitters."

I would say if you really want ot learn fastpick up teh starter kit. That way you can get a feel for how to set up an adventure or campaign. You could even use it was the starting point in your campaign if that is what you want to do. Also keep in mind what your players want: do tehy want pure role playing? or do they want "KICK IN THE DOOR"(combat and dungeon crawling) style. A

Also remember that YOU are the supreme being in the adventure. What you say goes, teh rule books have been interpretted as a guideline to use. Just be sure that you and your players knwo how hard you are going to stick to the exact rules. I am a DM for my party and I use a loose interpretation of the rules alot of times, except where spells are concerned. ALso let your party do what they want. If they feel like killing the shopkeeper then let them, don't try to talk them out of it just because he's important to you. This will make them feel like you are controlling them like puppets and that they aren't playing just acting. After having said this I would say that you should also make sure you can cover as many bases as possible. More later i gotta jet

D&D is one of those games that "takes a minute to learn, but a lifetime to master." 

Even though I've been playing for roughly 150 years (I'm from the future), I still haven't come close to mastering it.  That being said, I do have quite a collection of DM XPs. 

The most important thing that I've learned is to only worry about what you have to and save the other stuff for later.  Read the important parts of the PHB (which is most of it) and only the parts of the DMG you need to actually be able to play.  Only read up on the monsters that you expect will be in the session.  Group of wraiths?  Read the entire PHB, then the wraith entry in the MM, then look up the incorprability rules in the DMG. 

This also applies if you're creating a campaign (as opposed to using a premade one, like Eberron).  Start out by making a hometown or city.  A hard lesson I learned was spending hours upon hours creating continents and metropolises while neglecting the work I should've been doing to the next encounter.  Most of this extraneous data ends up especially tragic when you realize that your characters will never end up going to half of them. 

Speaking of planing, realize that being a DM is time consuming.  It's pretty safe to assume that for every hour of actual game time, the DM should've spent two hours.  When you consider that an average session lasts about 4-6 hours that's a lot of commitment. 

That's probably why DDO is so appealing to a lot of people. 

But keep up the PnP tradidtions!  Good luck to you!

1) Keep things interesting and not scripted.  If you've ever read any pick your adventure books, follow something like this format.  Have several branches to your adventure, because there may be multiple ways to think your "tips" may lead.  For example: if you want x party to read a note found on a body they encounter and then head to Wizard tower several miles to the NW, they may mis intrepret it and head a different way, or stop at towns along the way.  Have multiple possibilities in your adventure or at least in your head that you can set in motion to a) get them back on track or b) run another way on your adventure.  Nothing is worse than if you happen to not do what the GM is expecting and they have nothing planned for your motions.

2) Don't put the treasure of any real value on the mobs.  Most of the time when fighting dragons, or even smaller beings like Gnolls, they may have a few copper, crappy weapons/armor and perhaps a gem or two, but in their Loot Cache, back in their home cave for example, will be possibly some better items and more gold/gems.  Thus the party has to investigate and backtrack the monsters steps to find their loot.  This can be a mini-adventure in itself.

3) Award for ingenuity and original thought and RP'ing.  One of the best positives is rewarding players "under the table" for their original ideas and proper RP'ing of their character.  Pass them a note under the table that says like "You gain 50xp for that great idea"  This is better than uber loot and will get your players to get immersed in their characters better.

4) Don't plan an end to your campaigns at the start.  A campaign is just that, kind of like an epic quest in a lot of mmo's, it should be very difficult and last often for the playing life of a character.  If you envision an end, at the beginning, you will limit the amount of fun and time that a group can put into their characters.  One of my best campaigns lasted 3 years and was played off and on between small expeditions and mini-adventures.  The end was planned after 2.5 years of play and the mini-adventures kept things interesting and added variety along the way.

5) Plan good monsters vs player level:  HUGE mistake a lot of new GM's make is trying to use too many different kinds of creatures before they really learn what they are all about.  Each type of monster in the compendium has backgrounds, special abilities, special loot types and possible storylines behind them.  Start small and don't throw impossible mobs at your party unless you plan in possible evasion plans etc.  Nothing is worse than getting your character started, making a couple levels then having a couple beholders dropped on you at level 3. 8(  You're all dead, roll up new characters.  Keep HD in line with the party!!

6) Encourage offline play.  This is another big mistake some GM's make.  They want to run their campaign their way and get no inputs from the players offline.  One of the most fun campaigns I ran was to work with a group that had fought up from lvl 1 to lvl 15 all together and they were a team.  They "took over" a small village and developed it into a working town.  Each was given land and title and in the offline time, each developed his or her own Keep/Fort/Wiz Tower and got to stock it and establish peasantry around them.  Was a load of fun and a lot of new ideas for small campaigns came out of it.  That group stayed intact through lvl 29 when people started moving and had to break up. 

7) Keep experience decent but not too fast.  Good rule to follow is to start off and let the characters get experience very quickly for the first 3 levels.  Especially award RP as they develop the background/history of their characters, then after they can actually fight some decent monster groups, slow the xp down some so they don't level too fast.  Award extra for extraordinary effort and less if they are being poop-heads...

8) Encourage live character generation.  Nothing is worse than getting a group together and they have pre-generated (read cheated) characters and one guy made a "real" rolled character.  You end up with SUPERMEN and whimps.  Doesn't balance.  I usually allow one additional stat roll generation and have them discard the lowest one.  Also, have one roll at the start on a 20 sided die and highest roll gets to go first.  This incourages orderly creation and you will get less BS dice rolls and people will be less likely to create another character of the same type, thus creating a much stronger and diverse party.

9) Encourage subvertive notes from characters to DM.  This sounds wierd, but encourage your players to talk to you via notes.  This keeps a level of tension and excitement concerning loots and goings on.  Also, for players who cannot ignore what has been said, it makes it easier not to be biased.  For example, half-elf rogue says aloud, "I want to look over the wizard and see what he has for items", wizard immediately says, "I roll perception check", Gm says "You don't see this happening", Wizard says "That's not Fair!", Thus argument started.....

10) Watch out for UBER loot!  Nothing can rip a group apart quicker than having a great item usable by anyone drop in a dragon horde for example.  Great loot should come as awards from NPC's for deeds or be specific to classes.  Plan your loots so that if good stuff drops no one feels left out.  For example: King Zerks asks party to clear a goblin horde that's plaguing the city with it's raids, group goes forth and smites them gaining some regular loot and returns to tell the king the threat is vanquished.  King Zerks say "Well done, I have hand picked a reward for each of you befitting your service to my kingdom.  The king walks to a chest beside his throne and pulls forth a wand shining brightly, hands it to the wizard "This may well help you escape in a time of desperation" (is a wand of lightning), he returns to the chest and pulls out an engraved, rune encrusted broadsword and stands before the fighter, "This will give you the ability to smite your foes with improved fervor" (is a +2 broadsword), etc.

11) Don't get disappointed when things don't go as planned.  A party can tell they've screwed up immediately when the gm gets pouty or says "Dammit, I wasn't expecting that"  Keep on a game face and come up with something on the fly which will redirect them, but whatever you do DON'T let them know they have "screwed" you up.

12) Finally have fun and make sure your party is having fun also.  If things start looking awkward or breaking up, be prepared with a back-up plan, alternate adventure or get things moving with some secret scrabblings etc.  Also, in notes discourage stealing from members of the party and have good punishments figured out for that type of behavior, including alignment problems, god or demonic admonitions etc.

Hope it helps, but being prepared has for the unexpected is probably the most important thing of all. 

***edit***

Dohh, forgot one last crucial detail.  When making campaigns roll up a variety of extra NPC's for mini-quests and surprise attacks and such.  Make them varying levels so they can be thrown in at any time.

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well... id say that dont always put good magical items in the game.. like our dm gave us a bunch of cursed and good items.. cursed items were for our classes and we sold the good items.. so we went adveturing.. we were 3 lvl 9 and 2 lvl 8 and a lvl 15 cleric(he hasnt died and made a new char... )

8 bugbears almost killed us only the cleric survived

I like D&D

Make sure your not the only dm. Take turns with your buds and mix it up a bit. It'll keep you fresh and the game won't go stale on ya.

DnD forever!