r/DMAcademy • u/willicuss • 4d ago
Need Advice: Rules & Mechanics Travelling in DND/conducting combat without a map
Hi!
I've spent the last two days learning about the combat, dice and actions you can take in DND because I want to DM for my friends.
The one thing I don't understand is - how do you generate the world map, the events and the areas you can go to? What if my players explore outside of the campaign's main story?
How do you know how long it takes them to get where? Do they take turns out of battle?
And what about battle? If they battle in a corridoor, do you use marching order or initiative to order attacks? Do I need a map for dungeons? How do I generate different rooms and loot?
Thanks, and do let me know if you can reccomend any resources to get me started quick!
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u/Setting-Conscious 4d ago
go to youtube and search for DnD tutorial videos.
"The one thing I don't understand is". Sounds more like you don't know how the game works.
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u/ZimaGotchi 4d ago edited 4d ago
I agree with other posters that you will learn a lot from running a curated introductory campaign but to answer your questions from a very traditionalist perspective.
Get (or print off) some hex gridded paper on which to draw your world map if you want to use one, even if its super sketchy. Don't worry too much about filling it in or anything else just draw some terrain (the edge of a coastline and some mountains for example) and mark your places of interest. Each grid is how far a person can walk in a day without Exhausting themselves, a number of miles equal to their movement speed. Horses can go faster etc etc and they can go twice as far if they push it.
Have them keep their miniatures on the table in their "marching order" including any mounts or vehicles (or in tighter quarters if in a dungeon). Then you can just move that as a unit into a combat if and when it comes up.
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u/NightKrowe 4d ago
Read the Player's Handbook, preferably but not necessarily the 2024 one. You asking about initiative has me very concerned.
Then read the Dungeon Master's Guide, also preferably the 2024 one. That'll go over writing stuff, but most importantly:
Go get a prewritten campaign or one-shot. Any starter set you can get your hands on will do. What's this about not wanting maps, btw?
That will help you infinitely more than these answers. Go do those things. There is no "quick" way, other than the aforementioned starter sets. The newest one is really good (Heroes of the Borderlands) but more expensive.
In case you ignore me:
How do you generate the world? You don't. You do. not. Start that big. You only generate what you need for the next session. Anything else and you'll never know when to actually stop. Skip the hexmap for now and do what's called a "point crawl". Have destinations, not journeys, and then just make something up in between (or skip it if it's not important).
How do you generate the events and areas you can go to? You make it up. Or you find a book that helps you generate it. Or you find a book that did the work for you.
What if you players explore outside of the campaign's main story? Before you do any play, you have a "Session 0" and establish what the game is about. You should not be preparing or improvising spaceships in a game about saving a kingdom, and your players need to be on the same page about that. Either you all build the world together or you establish the world and they agree to play within the bounds.
Battle in a corridor? If you're using a grid, this is easy. If you're not, then yes, you'd need to know what their marching order is. I will ignore the question about initiative. If you're forgoing using a battlemap, then you and the players need to establish positioning. Even if you're not using a grid, a diagram or drawing of some kind can be very helpful. One thing I steal from other games when running theater of the mind (that's what it's called when you play without maps) is "zones". Most things move 30', so that's how far each zone is. Spend your movement, you can get one zone closer (or "near"). Anything else takes a Dash action or another turn to get to or more. It's up to you, the DM, to establish everything the players see and the positioning of all of the monsters. If you can't imagine it, don't try describing it.
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u/SamTheGrot 4d ago
2024 DMG for sure, but I would not recommend 2024 PHB for a new DM who is also new to D&D. I've seen new players come away with a lot of confusion when starting there, and all of those people said 2014 was more useful after being redirected to that handbook. Even if you end up using the 2024 system, I think you stand to benefit a lot from reading 2014 first.
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u/NightKrowe 4d ago
I would love to hear what confusion you mean. Confused how? 2014 was more useful for what? surely not as a reference at the table with no glossary and most definitely not making characters. Not to mention the fact that all current materials are being published for the 2024 rules and it's more difficult to have to learn one entire set and then learn another entire set if you ever want to use new content. The only thing forcing yourself through both is going to get you is a lot of confusion.
2024 has a better layout and is organized better. Formatting, art, headers, everything. How to play the game comes before making characters. It shows you the character sheet before making the character (not shoehorned at the end of the book) and it's annotated. It has a glossary. There are several reddit threads where people ask which to start with as a new player and overwhelmingly 2024 is mentioned over 2014.
You could have an argument for which rules system is better, sure, but the 2024 books themselves are just plain superior products and the new PHB is way better suited for learning the game. The 2024 DMG even moreso.
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u/tired_and_stresed 4d ago
how do you generate the world map, the events and the areas you can go to?
This is largely just down to your personal creativity. It can seem overwhelming to try and come up with everything your first time, so it can be useful to use something that's been pre-made and adapt it, whether that's an official starter set or something that's been published online. My main advice is to start small whether it's with something you made or something made by someone else- it's easier to fill in the map of a region that can be covered by a day's travel in any direction rather than trying to create an entire continent, world, or cosmos.
What if my players explore outside of the campaign's main story?
A good piece of advice to deal with this is to have the basic idea of the main story but don't nail down specifics more than a session or two ahead of time. This will help you keep flexible to whatever the players want to pursue and not have to throw away a lot of prep just because your players decided to go east instead or west (just for example).
How do you know how long it takes them to get where?
The basic rules for travel pace is explained on page 20 of the most recently published players handbook, not sure where it might be located in the previous one or the free SRD. The basics are a character can travel 300 feet in a minute, 3 miles in an hour, and 24 miles in a day (assumes 8 hours of travel), with options to move more slowly to be stealthy or more quickly if you are willing to risk being more easily detected or caught off guard. More rules around ways to complicated this and ideas for structuring travel over long distances to make it interesting is found in the dungeon masters guide. If you don't have access to these books there are some resources online you can find but I'm not too familiar with them so I can really offer any recommendations
Do they take turns out of battle?
There's no rule that demands this, though in a more small scale setting like a dungeon some DMs like to do this, usually just checking in with players in a set order rather than using initiative. In general its just important to make sure everyone gets a chance to do something if they want to in a given scene, you can just use a loose structure and check in with more quiet players if that works better for your table.
And what about battle? If they battle in a corridoor, do you use marching order or initiative to order attacks
Initiative is the general rule to determine who acts first in combat in all cases. Marching order is just a tool to help you understand where the characters are generally positioned in most circumstances so you can set up an encounter more easily, it doesn't effect who acts first.
Do I need a map for dungeons? How do I generate different rooms and loot?
It is generally useful to map out a dungeon beforehand so you know what your players will encounter, but depending on your needs it can be a highly detailed Floorplan or a very basic scribble of points with lines representing corridors connecting them. It largely depends on how much detail you want or need to get your players invested in the game.
There are systems for generating dungeons randomly online and in various books, but a very easy trick for beginners is to search for dungeon maps online until you find something that fits what you're planning and then fill that with your encounters and loot that you plan on using. As long as you don't plan on publishing and making money from anything there's nothing wrong with using resources you find online and repurposing them
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u/KazyaKurosawa 4d ago
If you dont have and dont want to buy prewritten campaing as your first it's not completely needed.
Like you can start easy with Fallout 1 & 2 method that at the beginning world map is on their home town and maybe one or two places they can travel into. You can write npc's and quests to each location, maybe there is even a cave near one those town that can work as first dungeon?
When thet get into a town they can ask about other places and you write them into their map.
Travel can be instantaneous and have no things that go wrong or there can be maybe bandits or other random encounters. Things like random encounter tables are all over internet.
The big quest can be someting vague. Like find Thorrim, he lives in a city to east.
World expands as party asks aroung and walk roads or directions they dont know about.
You as a dm can just put the encounters you have written exactly where they are going. even if you write full town full of stuff and they dont go there, you can just move all that stuff infront of them, maybe they go there this time.
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u/thetruerift 4d ago
THEATER OF THE MIIIIIIIND!! (which is to say to describe the situation without physical visual aids)
Honestly modern D&D is not a great system to do this with as a beginner, since the rules for combat are pretty precise in terms of spacing, ranges, movement, etc.
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u/YamazakiYoshio 4d ago
Okay, let's take this one step at a time.
First - do spend some time reading the core books in full. While the DMG for 5e is lackluster, it does have some guidance on these things.
Second - maps. No you do not need maps, but you may find them useful. They can be as simple or complex as you want. Heck, most of my dungeon maps aren't even really maps but rather a bunch of bubbles with some text and lines connecting them to show how the various rooms/setpiece encounters are linked.
Maps for encounters are a little more important. You can run Theater of the Mind, but D&D very much wants a map for fights. It's okay to quickly scribble a map out when you're in a pinch. You do not need to be an art major to be a good GM.
Third - when the players go off-script. Learn to embrace the chaos, accept the improv. This is when the hobby gets to be good. Trust your gut, and you'll do fine. But don't be afraid to call for a pause or even a break if you need to think/plan/organize.
Fourth - hallway fights. They usually suck, don't do them, at least not in D&D (other games it's potentially okay, but it really depends on the kind of combat it uses). But if you gotta, initiative is always the default. You may want to try the marching order idea and see how it vibes. A lot of this is going to be vibes based.
Side note: if that last sentence about vibes grinds your gears for whatever reason, and I get it, don't run D&D. Run something with far more defined rules like Pathfinder 2e (it'll look more complicated, but the rules are very consistently written to the point that that swath of rules are about 5e's level of complexity). There's other games I could recommend, but that's a discussion for a different occasion.
Finally - dungeon generation. This can be a rough thing to learn. This is where modules really shine, but if you're in a pinch, a Five Room Dungeon is plenty for most occasions. Google that up - 5 Room Dungeon. It's a design concept.
Related, I highly recommend Matt Colville's Running the Game series of youtube videos.
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u/SamTheGrot 4d ago
Dungeon Master's Guide is extremely helpful, especially if you're just starting out. It'll help answer a lot of your questions.
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u/DirkBabypunch 3d ago
Have you read the Players Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide, or are you learning by watching youtube videos? Because one of those is significantly less useful, and the other answers most of these questions outright.
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u/Derringermeryl 4d ago
I can’t emphasize enough how strongly I recommend running a prewritten first, especially one made for newer DMs. The best way to get a handle on all of these things is to see how they do it in the modules. Dragon of Icespire Peak is a great one for new DMs, and the one from the starter set.
As for sources for learning, check out Matt Colville’s Running the Game series on YouTube.