Maia M I have been the defacto DM in my groups when I play. Being a DM is a lot of fun and I have found a lot of tips for beginner DM's are available on the web. I generally prefer to create my own world from scratch. This may be a little more time consuming than running a module, but I find it gives the most freedom and allows you to get the feel for being a DM a lot better. I start out with creating an overworld map, place a few towns, various types of geographical areas like forests, plains, lakes, mountains, marshes, seas, etc. Connect the towns with roads. Create a few extra interesting places like old battlegrounds, bridges over rivers, ruins, volcanos, temples and shrines, etc. Give everything a name. From there I would then go around and try to describe what is going on in each town. How big is the town, what kind of ruler is it, and what are the main "quests" going on. For instance in one town a rebel group may be plotting a revolt, and in another town there might be a bunch of empty graves discovered and then villagers start going missing, and yet in another town the farmers start complaining about giants destroying their crops. Next determine where the players will start, and start fleshing out that area more. What kind of buildings and shops are in this particular town? What is the name of the various shopkeepers and things they might talk about? The things they might talk about you can make some of this up on the fly during a game session, and names you could do as well, but its easier to prepare ahead of time if you have the time. After the world is generally created, then its time to determine what types of encounters the players might run into. Say if they are going to start in a small town and told that the nearby temple has been glowing orange at night and strange sounds coming from it, the players will probably go investigate. What monsters are in the temple? Will there be any traps involved? Are there any type of actions the players will need to take to be able to gain access to the temple? Then start fleshing out the inside of the temple in a basic map. What the shape of the rooms are, where the monsters will be, if they are hiding what their spot dc would be, where treasure is, etc. Its helpful to have a description of each room as detailed as possible, so when players enter the room you can read the description instead of saying 'you walk into a square room that is 20 feet by 20 feet and see a goblin in the middle.' Another tip about preparing for a game. Its not worth it to overprepare. Its OK to put some effort into things the characters will probably run into in the next session, but try not to put things in place for 3 or 4 sessions out, as the players tend to go in whatever direction suits them, and may not even encounter the content you spent time creating. Another reason planning for only the next session is a good idea is you will have a very good grasp of what type of encounter level the players will be able to handle, so you can tailor the encounters to be either easy, moderately challenging, or difficult say for a boss fight. Its good to mix up the difficulty some or the players will tend to get bored. Its also good to throw in variation of different types of combat like fighting 1 monster, fighting 3 monsters, rescuing someone from monsters, or defeating monsters before they reach some point or perform some action. Its also good to throw in noncombat style encounters, which can be a lot of different things, perhaps an npc that is lost and needs help, or someone who talks about something in particular, or distracting the prison guard while the rogue sneaks around and steals the keyring. During actual gameplay its helpful to take notes of things you make up. Its very helpful to have a scratch pad available so you can easily keep track of initiative and monster hp etc during battles, though keeping track of monster hp is also pretty easy using the roll20 interface. After the gameplay, usually best to do immediately after wrapping things up, its a good idea to send out an email or some other type of notification with a summary of what happened during the session. This will help to remember later on down the road what happened last session, or 2 sessions before so people can easily keep track of the story and plot lines.
