preparing to run an adventure

[Ithai]

As I prepare to run my first adventure in c&c and really be a game master for the first time ever I have a few questions. The first is with potential monsters do you extract the stats from the monsters book or do you look them up as they are encountered? When a monster has a weapon do you predetermine it or choose it on the fly? Do you create maps for out door areas or just use a grid map. My thoughts on this are to use outdoor dungeon command tiles. For dungeons such as in knight rising do you slowly draw it out for them, show them the whole map at once, or not worry with maps on the table as an encounter and just keep track of them on your own map? Do you write out the stats of all the npcs that could be encountered just in case the players try to fight one of them? What is a good amount of time to spend in a session on a module such as rising knight? I'm wanting to give the best game experience that I can so I can establish a regular c&c group so any help would be appreciated.

[Treebore]

I reveal maps as they go, using the tiles put out by WOTC, and in some cases, the versions put out by Paizo. When neither of those work, I use a dry erase vinyl map. Since your using a pre written adventure, and this is your first time, I'd try to have the monster on hand, and read them over several times before you actually run it. The modules also have most NPC's statted out for you, but if they don't having something worked out ahead of time is not a bad idea. I also pre select what weapons the monsters use, and when used by larger monsters, such as Ogres and Trolls, I increase the damage dice a step, so if a D8 in human hands, I make it a D10 in an Ogres or Trolls hand, and even higher in the hands of giants.

Rising Knight, I think, took about 4 hours to get through.

Also, this is your first time. You are going to do things "wrong", but as long as you keep your focus on being fun, and make your decisions aimed towards that, its still going to be a fun game, and they will want to do more. Then as you learn from your experiences, you will make fewer and fewer mistakes. So tell your players up front, that as you learn more, that things you allowed early on may no longer be allowed in the future, but fun will be your goal, so should be no problem.

[Buttmonkey]

The key is to be thoroughly prepared while simultaneously not overthinking it. Read the module a few times. I like to highlight details I'm pretty sure I'll forget in the middle of the play session if I don't have the yellow highlighting to remind me. As for monster weapons, I find there are a few standbys that you can drop into almost any situation. Most humanoid monsters will probably be armed with spears (1d6), short swords (1d6), short bows (1d6), or long swords (1d8). There's no point in agonizing over whether goblin #3 is using a pole arm. Same thing with NPCs. Fighter types use long swords (1d8). Clerics use maces (1d6). Thieves use short swords (1d6) or daggers (1d4). Wizards use daggers (1d4). Monks use their hands (see PHB).

I have been using a battle mat and drawing out the rooms, but only for combat. Otherwise, I have a dry erase board and I sketch the immediate vicinity the party is in. It's not to scale, but who cares? If the party wants to take the time to get an accurate mapping to scale, they can ask me how long a corridor is, I will tell them, and roll a wandering monster check. The party can make their own overall map or not as they desire. Of course, they may eventually get lost if they don't create their own map. I just draw their immediate area. When they move on, I erase the board and draw the new area. It's on them to keep track of where they are overall.

I'm running my group through Rising Knight currently. They have a little mopping up to do, but took out almost all of the humanoids during the last session. We've spent a lot longer than Tree's group, probably the equivalent of about 10 hours. We spent about 4 hours on top of that doing character generation in two waves. I also threw in some outdoor encounters between dungeon delves. Four hours is a little tight IMO. You'd need to have aggressive and competent players to clear things out that quickly. There are some meat grinder encounters in there (e.g., the wolves and the dining hall). My party needed something like 4 trips to the dungeon to take it out. They may do a 5th trip for mop-up tomorrow night. You can get a lot of play out of that module.

[Treebore]

The key is to be thoroughly prepared while simultaneously not overthinking it. Read the module a few times. I like to highlight details I'm pretty sure I'll forget in the middle of the play session if I don't have the yellow highlighting to remind me. As for monster weapons, I find there are a few standbys that you can drop into almost any situation. Most humanoid monsters will probably be armed with spears (1d6), short swords (1d6), short bows (1d6), or long swords (1d8). There's no point in agonizing over whether goblin #3 is using a pole arm. Same thing with NPCs. Fighter types use long swords (1d8). Clerics use maces (1d6). Thieves use short swords (1d6) or daggers (1d4). Wizards use daggers (1d4). Monks use their hands (see PHB).

I have been using a battle mat and drawing out the rooms, but only for combat. Otherwise, I have a dry erase board and I sketch the immediate vicinity the party is in. It's not to scale, but who cares? If the party wants to take the time to get an accurate mapping to scale, they can ask me how long a corridor is, I will tell them, and roll a wandering monster check. The party can make their own overall map or not as they desire. Of course, they may eventually get lost if they don't create their own map. I just draw their immediate area. When they move on, I erase the board and draw the new area. It's on them to keep track of where they are overall.

I'm running my group through Rising Knight currently. They have a little mopping up to do, but took out almost all of the humanoids during the last session. We've spent a lot longer than Tree's group, probably the equivalent of about 10 hours. We spent about 4 hours on top of that doing character generation in two waves. I also threw in some outdoor encounters between dungeon delves. Four hours is a little tight IMO. You'd need to have aggressive and competent players to clear things out that quickly. There are some meat grinder encounters in there (e.g., the wolves and the dining hall). My party needed something like 4 trips to the dungeon to take it out. They may do a 5th trip for mop-up tomorrow night. You can get a lot of play out of that module.

I ran it years ago, so it could have been easily 6 hours or more. My group was/is a seasoned group too.

[alcyone]

I find with Aihrde the best thing to do is figure out who all of these people in Malforten are and what they know. They make the difference between the party stumbling around the wilderness with no landmarks trying to find out anything and giving up or getting pulled in with clear goals.

Of course, if the party hates talking to people you can either let them keep walking past Malforten and turn it into a sandbox of random encounters or drag them in kicking and screaming.

For instance, to find Kuthrad Ondal, you need to talk to the pixies. To know there are pixies, the characters might hear about them stealing from the shrine of Wenafar, but only if they talk to Amanda or find themselves consorting with Ian. Or the CK can have a free interpretation of "20 miles north of Malforten" and just say if the characters walk for a while in any direction they'll run into them. Or maybe the random encounter table comes up Pixies.

There's just so much of that stuff (which works great for sandboxy groups), that it makes sense to do a little flowchart of people, locations, and their connections. Then, when the party loses the plot, you can gently steer them to the nearest node on that chart to what they need to accomplish.

By the time my group found the dungeon they pretty much forgot why they were even there and even left without encountering the big bad guy. Their morale was heavily squashed by the sheer numbers of opponents, frequent deaths, and complete lack of any magical healing (they didn't have a cleric, and the ones in town are jerks: Griffry is too depressed to leave and help anyone and only has 2 potions to his good name anyway). Having before that most recently run mainly 3.0 modules, which mostly hand the plot and a GPS to the players, I didn't grok at the time how to run that module, and I think it was pretty much a disaster.

BTW, A1 seemed easier for the party than A0, even accounting for the fact they were more experienced, though with that one I did a lot more prep.

To answer your other questions:
- I look up stats on the fly, though I sometimes print out pages of M&T I know I'll need so I have fewer pages to look through. Also I can keep notes about each combat, xp, and initiative on those sheets.
- I don't usually predetermine weapons, but if you have time you should, because it influences tactics. I do predetermine spells, as that takes me longer and slows down play.
- We play on a wet erase grid. For outdoors though, I sometimes change the scale to give archers and long range casters a reason for being. For A1 I blew up the main map so 1"=1 square and taped the pages together. Usually I map as I go if I map at all. The downside to a playmap and minis is people sometimes focus on the table and play the minis instead of their characters, and start picking apart the weaker (compared to D&D 3+) tactical rules in C&C. I generally find it worthwhile though, especially if your players interest is waning.
- NPCs just don't need a lot of stats to run. Again, I'll choose spells ahead of time, but otherwise I mostly run them as monsters.
- I don't like to run a session unless I have 3-4 hours to play that night. In recent years, the only published modules I've ever completed in one evening were Ruins of Ramat (an excellent starter module) and the D&D module The Gem and the Staff (a time bounded tournament module). I plan for about 4 sessions but our group is on the small side and tends to take a long time, some modules take months. Obviously if you can make a day of it they'll remember more and the continuity will be stronger. By month 3 of the same "simple", "short" module people forget who they even are.

[Ithai]

Another question about rising knight. In the encounter tables there are typically number ranges listed out to the side of most things that can be encountered. How have you all determined how many of something to run when your players encounter it when the number is greater than 1.

[Dracyian]

If the amount is something like 2-12, 1-10, 3-18 you can roll dice to cover the gap to maintain a true sense of randomness. If your players are still new at combet or haven't been very effective at dispatching larger foes you can go with a smaller amount to help them out. If you want it to be a challenge grab a bigger number. If you have a larger group stick with a larger number or if you have a smaller group toss out the two highest encounter numbers.

Just some quick suggestions hope they help

[NJPDX]

On a more general note I highly recommend picking up a copy of "The Lazy Dungeon Master" from Mike Shea. It can be a real revelation and it definitely helped me learn how to streamline my prep time and learn to focus my efforts where and when they are needed rather than trying to flesh out every minute detail that may never get seen by a player. And another thing to consider is that even with published modules, players are going to want to do things you don't expect. Being open to improvisation and not getting too bogged down trying to stick to the script is a valuable lesson and skill to learn. This book will also give you some good advice for that too.

http://slyflourish.com/lazy_dm

You can get it in e-book for $6 or get a dead tree version through Lulu for $10 (plus S&H).

[AGNKim]

Here is the single most important thing I have learned from my 25+ years DMing:

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Sure, the devil is in the details, so you should have an understanding of the rules and the adventure, but when trying to get the exact number of hp for henchman #5 while your party sits there waiting will just slow things down. There is nothing wrong with just winging it from time to time. If a creature has 20hp and someone rolls a natural 20 with their new magic sword and does 18 points of damage, just let it be the killing blow, complete with a great description of the carnage. On the flipside, if a creature has 20hp and you have a really cool effect coming when its initiative rolls around and someone gets lucky and does 20hp, screw it. It had 21. Yeah, stick to the plan 90% of the time, but don't be afraid of going off script.

[Lobo316]

Agree with AGN, don't sweat the details. Make a ruling and go with it. Heck, the player don't need to know what goes on behind the screen. Keep the game moving, don't get bogged down, and have fun.

And remember, the players are responsible for this as well. It's thier game to. They need to respect your rulings and help move along the story.

It's "collaborative storytelling"

[alcyone]

If you know the rules and where to look for the ones you don't (Screen covers most of it), and you know at least the immediate next part of the adventure, and you find you are making a mess of things, you might be holding the reigns too tight. Let the players fill in the blanks while you reset.

Finally, like all things in life, do it, screw it up, do it again, screw it up again. If you keep it light and do better next time, you are doing fine. You went the right direction in the first place picking a game like C&C that is all about unprepared DMs and winging it.

[rmckee78]

I usually write down all of the vital monster stats AC, hit bonuses, hit points etc on an index card, I do the same for the PCs. I create the monster index cards ahead of time. I then put the index cards in initiative order and use them to track initiative during the encounter. I track current HP right on the card, and have all similar creatures go on the same initiative number.

I generally do not map in C&C unless there is a very complicated tactical situation or room, then I will sketch it out on notebook paper. I describe the environment to the players and they make a map. I will only correct the map if I notice it is really, obviously off (I fell that this is likely due to my bad description). I can kind of be a jerk about the map. If you are fleeing, you can't look at the map. If you are running, you can't map. The map is physically with the character of the mapper, whatever happens to that character happens to the map.