DMs, GMs, Storytellers, Narrators, Maim Masters, and others!
What was your very first campaign/chronicle/story/whatever like? The very first time you sat down behind a screen and tried to run something. Did you plot it out, or did you play fast and loose? Was it in an established setting or your own? Did you have ANY idea what you were doing? Did the campaign end or just sort of peter out? And do you think you did a good job?
>>96154447 (OP)I had no idea about my world. I was an old school player on GiantITP, back when it wasn't all memey and mlp related. My dm quit our PbP game early on and I decided to take over. It only lasted a couple weeks, but I think it was a good introduction. Overall, I had NO idea what I was doing.
The very first game I DM'd was a 3rd edition (not 3.5) Oriental Adventures campaign. Me and my friends were a bunch of weeaboos, see. I was the only one who'd ever played D&D before, but it was a few years previously and for 2e to boot. But I put together a d20 Club for my school.
The setting was not!Rokugan; I added some additional major clans and lore (Dolphin and Wolf; the Wolves were exiled for having once tried to overthrow the Emperor). Also in addition to nezumi and humans, I allowed hengeyokai, korobokuru, spirit folk, and custom-made kitsune and soratami races. Most of the OA class options (barbarian, fighter, monk, ranger, rogue, samurai, shugenja, sohei, sorcerer, wu jen) were allowed as well, just not shaman.
I told my players that if they wanted to play samurai or shugenja or otherwise be a member of a Great Clan, they had to be Phoenix. Two of my players did (a shugenja and a samurai). I had them roll a d20; the one who got higher, the shugenja, I pointed to and said "congratulations! You're getting married." The overall plot of the campaign was the PCs escorting the shugenja PC across not!Rokugan to Scorpion lands so that he could be married off to seal an alliance between the Phoenix and the Scorpion, ordered by the Emperor, while meanwhile various factions tried to impede them to stop the marriage from happening. The background plot was basically the runup to the Meiji Restoration: the Emperor was trying to flex her power and become more than just a ceremonial figurehead. It ended up fracturing not!Rokugan, with the Crane, Mantis, and Lion (staunch traditionalism ran up against loyalty to the Emperor) clans uniting and beginning a civil war.
The war wasn't resolved by campaign's end, that wasn't the point; but the players did manage to make it to Scorpion lands and have a big ol' wedding. That was interrupted by a blood sorcerer and a monster attack, but everyone lived.
It was exactly as stupid as it sounded, but we do look back on it fondly.
It was just last month, after 4 or so years of playing TTRPGs (alright, D&D).
We were doing a chain of one shots. One player would DM an one shot, then the next would continue from one of the hooks left by the last DM.
In my case, the party was lvl 11 when I got the DM seat, and I was so nervous that I over prepared so much that there was enough material for 3 or 4 sessions.
I ended up using my own writings as a guideline and improvising most of the game.
The story was pretty basic. In the previous session we defeated this witch that was the subordinate of some Collector guy that was the head of the local blackmarket.
We found out that it was a mindflayer and that's where I had to pick up from.
I made the black market in question a fleshy demi-plane with all manners of patrons. From the usual drow elf to talking giant spiders, to an Aboleth that dealt in the buying and selling of memories. Everything was crafted to either be a future plot hook or something that would be relevant when they tried to fuck with the black market or when they finally came face to face with the Collector.
It ended with them going into a portal that led them to what was essentially a trap, with things like a mind controlled young green dragon that wanted to eat the gobling warlock, two zombie beholders with all but one eye stalk removed (one with paralysis the other with disintegrate), a death kiss, and the Collector himself at the end of the long hallway like area laughing his eccentric ass off while using his macguffin to control de dragon, make the room sprout tentacles to hold the party in place, send psychic blasts, etc.
They managed to get through that through both brain and brawl, and even stopped the Collector from teleporting away by using an artifact that they stole from the black market auction earlier.
It was actually pretty fun.
>>96154447 (OP)>Did you have ANY idea what you were doing?none at all lmao I just dived head first after being a player for a while
>What was your very first campaign/chronicle/story/whatever like? The very first time you sat down behind a screen and tried to run something. Did you plot it out, or did you play fast and loose?since my group had close to no rpg experience I've chosen Lost Mines of Phandelver as a starter with a slight addition of bending FR lore like it was my bitch. tl;dr is that around half a millenium before the campaign all dragons were cursed and enslaved with the use of an ancient artifact and the party lives in times where these dragons are slowly finding ways to break free. I do know that at least two of my players browse here from time to time so I'm not gonna talk about plot to come.
>And do you think you did a good job?well we've been playing somewhat consistently for almost 1,5 year and at some point we've done sessions for 3/4 days straight so I think they're liking it
>>96154447 (OP)Tenra Bansho Zero. I borrowed an idea I saw from a sup/tg/ thread about a GARO campaign, setting the characters to basically purify a shrine of the evil spirits haunting it and the cultists trying to desecrate it, with each character developing a motive for sticking around such as loyalty to the other party members, being given a mission to assassinate a disguised priest who was really a ghost-worshipping cultist, or befriending the priests there.
>Did you plot it out, or did you play fast and loose? First time, super fast and loose.
>Was it in an established setting or your own? Barebones mystical japanese setting.
>Did you have ANY idea what you were doing? Ahahahahahahaha fuck no
>Did the campaign end or just sort of peter out? Thankfully it did end on a proper note. All the characters got involved in a giant climactic finish to banish the spirit, and departed with a strong sense of accomplishment.
>And do you think you did a good job?God, I hope so. I don't think I was a good DM since it was the absolute first time I ran the system, but the players had fun and I tried to work in whatever character motives they wanted, so I feel satisfied in that regard.
>>96154579I admittedly wish I could be in an L5R campaign like that, even as silly as it is
>>96154764Knowing nothing about L5R before reading Oriental Adventures, my main takeaway from it was that it's more about politicking and intrigue than dungeon-delving. OA itself points out that traditional dungeon-delving can be hard to justify; not impossible, but challenging.
So I tried to figure out something that would allow for politics and adventuring, and I figured a cross-country journey and an arranged marriage was the best bet.
>>96154869Frankly, you weren't that far off in your assessment.
My first roleplaying game was some homebrew jank hexcrawl using the floor tiles as the spaces and using lego guys & megablocks guys pieces as equipment. My friend had a ton of lego guy pieces, I had the megablocks Fire & Ice stuff so combined we had a bunch of dudes, equipment, dragons, and setpieces.
As far as I remember I was always a fair GM so we would even lose sometimes even though I was running it all.
This was all before I was even aware of the concept of Dungeons & Dragons, and would not even see a D&D rulebook untl 5e released like a decade and a half later btw. I kind of regret it though, playing 2e or 3e would have been great with my other friend group I was doing homebrew games with.
>tfw you invent D&D backwards from rpg videogames
Fuck man. I WANT TO GO BACK. Growing up is such shit garbage.
>>96154447 (OP)I just picked up the Edge of the Empire beginners box, back when it came out. I've read through it a few times before playing and noticed how fun it was to add my own NPCs and side quests to that little "sandbox". Had a complete follow up campaign based on those.
We still play Genesys to this day, but exclussively in our home brew settings and adventures.
I was a teen who though he could make a system as engaging and entertaining as anything in those manuals I was too lazy to read.
It wasn't the worst, but no player ever played a ttrpg again.
>>96154447 (OP)My first campaign was Cyberpunk 2020, which I improvised completely, no preparation at all.
But it lasted only two sessions because one of the players did too many drugs and everything fell off from there.
>>96154447 (OP)>What was your very first campaign/chronicle/story/whatever likeI was playing pretty much exclusively one-shots between '98 and '17 and had fun. The stakes could be always matching the tone, because this was it, the here-and-now game.
Then I got memed into a "proper campaign" by a friend, who keep pelting me about it for half a year and I finally gave in.
What a boring fucking slog of contrived bullshit and hiding vital information to keep the railroad going. Not helped that the GM was a smug asshat and the goup was almost entirely made out of college kids. It all could be summed up as "GM saw Breaking Bad and wanted to be edgy with a pulp adventure plot that was actually about being drag mules". Dragged for 5 meetings, made progressively less sense each meet-up and I never was given any answer to questions I've been asking.
It was so bad, I quit playing for nearly 2 years and just when I was about to make a come-back, covid started. I didn't return to TTRPGs until 2023 and I stick to one-shots ever since
