Few things are more daunting in tabletop roleplaying than playing as the DM for the first time, even more so if you’re starting a Dungeons and Dragons group from scratch with all new players. It requires preparation, trusting your own abilities, memorising new rules, and learning to manage a whole new social contract with friends or even strangers. I recently found a source of excellent advice for first time DMs in a surprising place – the Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG starter set.
You can find lots of great DMing advice online – in fact Wargamer has its own Dungeon Master guide full of advice for first time DMs, written by our tabletop RPG expert Mollie Russell. But most published supplements, particularly the DnD DMG, are aimed at people who are already confident running the game and are looking for advice on content to add to their games, not the procedure they should follow to create a group, organise a game day, and run a fun adventure.
I’ve received a review sample of the Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG starter set and have more complex thoughts about it than I have time to express here, but one area where it’s very strong is the new player experience. This starts in the player’s pamphlet, which has the most robust example of play I’ve ever seen: three double-page spreads, each presented as a scripted dialogue, as a comic, and summarised into bullet points. As well as pre-gen character sheets there are tactics cards for each of the characters, with rules summaries on their reverse side.
The gamemaster’s pamphlet crams in loads of great advice for first time DMs – particularly, the brave pioneers who’ve never played a game but are willing to run one who you’ll find in every small town and playground that’s isolated from the wider gaming community.
There’s advice about how to approach the role when you don’t feel confident: “let the other players know you’ll be learning as you go… feel free to pass the rulebook around the table for a group discussion if you get stuck”. There’s guidance about practical aspects that will be handy for younger GMs who’ve never organised social events: “be up-front about the time commitment… set a start and end time for the session that works for everyone”.
One particularly mature boxout gives advice on handling player disagreements and personality clashes, and even points out that there’s no point playing together if people aren’t having fun. It’s far too brief to cover every aspect of this thorny issue, but it gives a solid starting point on a challenge every DM will face at some point.
There’s a whole list of strategies for minimising the mental load a first-time DM faces as they try to remember the rules while responding to the unbridled creativity of the players. I’m particularly fond of “ask them to choose a different action”. Sure, it’s not the gold-standard for “yes, and” DMing. But if you don’t have the confidence to ad lib beyond the bounds of what’s pre-written or planned, it’s a reasonable way to keep the adventure on track and fun for the whole group.
As I say, this is just one aspect of the starter set: it has other strengths and weaknesses. The four starter characters are 100% combat focused, even more so than the 4th ed DnD classes, suggesting tactical combat is the central pillar of the game. The starter set is very light on world building, basically assuming that players already know FFXIV really well.
All of which makes me very curious what the full FFXIV TTRPG rulebook is like, and if it takes into account the new player experience quite as well as the starter set does. It also has me wondering about the next version of the Dungeon Master’s Guide coming up on the DnD release schedule: can it actually demystify the art of DMing for new players? Stranger things have happened.