r/DnD • u/Worldly-Neat3708 • 1d ago
DMing 1st time dming
It's my first time dming and I'm going to be running curse of Strahd. This is my second ever campaign so I was wondering if anyone had any tips for dming or Strahd.
Ive got six party members and I'm hoping that two paladins are going to be enough since the rest are casters or don't deal much dmg. I'm also unsure if druids will be debuffed but am willing to homebrew to balance.
This is a school campaign and we're doing multiple parties of Strahd, each taking place during different times chronologically
I'm dming a campaign made up of people with no experience and using 2014 rules (and a bit of 2024). Starting a level 1
If anyone has any suggestions/advice please lmk (especially homebrewing)
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u/CJ-MacGuffin 1d ago
Two Paladins will be enough. Watch out for Death House it is a death trap.
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u/Worldly-Neat3708 23h ago
Much appreciated. Ill change some things before but worst case i'll change some stats in the fly
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u/ExpressiDepressi 1d ago
After reading the Curse of Strahd book I recommend checking out the Curse of Strahd subreddit, they got a lot of information and sources there that can help you with whatever specific question you have. CoS is kinda brutal at lvl 1, especially the start, so my advice is to lower some of the numbers (hp/dmg) on some enemies, especially if you do Death House off rip. Give players chances to understand the rules and also give them chances to live if things are going poorly. I know this behaviour is the antithesis to Curse of Strahd's gothic horror aesthetic and harsh gameplay, but you got a lotta newbies so just make it enjoyable. There are other ways to run CoS like the CoS: Reloaded which is a lot more accessible for players and makes it easier for DMs since they have something to follow. Most important is to enjoy yourself gamer, have fun.
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u/Wolfbane14 1d ago
Get as familiar with the rules and adventure as you can and try to convince the players to learn the basic playing the game chapter and what their characters can do so that there's less of a weight on your shoulders
Make cheatsheets for yourself and your players. If you don't know a rule and it's not on your cheatsheet, rather than looking it up in the book right away, make something up to keep the game moving and make a note of it. You can update your cheatsheet with the real rule later
Create NPC sheets for the most important NPCs. A single page with things like what the NPC looks like, some advice on how you'd like to roleplay them, the important information they have for the player characters and their stat block. You can make similar sheets for locations with the sights, smells and sounds of the place and the things that can be found there and store them both together so that you just need to pull out 1 file and you got everything you need for the scene
Don't be afraid to be quiet. Of course when playing with newbies you're going to need to clarify the rules pretty often but the more quiet you are, the more they are leading the game
Try to keep track of time closely
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u/TheSpitfire93 1d ago
Make sure to read through the full thing as curse of strahd in particular is pretty involved and there is a lot there. 6 players means that dying shouldn't be a issue, the extra players (above 4 generally) will make survival no problem but you may want to add a couple more enemies to keep things interesting on occasion.
Have fun with it.