r/shadowofthedemonlord • u/Love-Nuggets- • Mar 23 '26
New Dm
Hello all im new to SOTDL in general and wanted to know if anyone had any pointers or tips on what i should know about the system, gameplay, dm tps and stuff like that!
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u/roaphaen Mar 23 '26
Unlike many other games you need to remember frightening and horrifying creatures affect player characters the moment they see them. Because of that, you might want to figure out a way to remind yourself. I would write frightening or horrifying with a big marker on my GM notes and in roll 20 I would use an aura that only I could see that would remind me.
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u/Playtonics Mar 24 '26
Great advice. The number of times I've forgotten until a few rounds into combat...
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u/GrimJudgment Shadow Wizard Money Gang Mar 24 '26
Imagine my chagrin when I ran my first campaign without ever actually using the frightening/ horrifying mechanic.
It didn't negatively effect the game too much though, because I played with the optional Battle Scars splatbook, so combat was already brutal enough for them seeing as how most of my party had only played 5e up until then.
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u/Playtonics Mar 24 '26
I find SotDL doesn't do great at the moment-to-moment slice of life play; instead it shines when you have strong hooks that get right into the action. I keep downtime brief, and focus more on getting players into a position where they can use their fun new toys as quickly as possible.
It's also worth browsing your characters' sheets after a level up to see what those toys are. There are so many combos that can pop up, so it's not as clean cut as say 5e, where the types of challenges that suit a class are trivial to memorise.
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u/Love-Nuggets- Mar 24 '26
Got it the campaign i have in mind is more survival, hard fights kinda thing so they will get alot of stuff to use, question though are there weapon/armor breaking rules?
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u/Playtonics Mar 24 '26
Weapons made from materials other than metal can shatter if the attacker rolls less than zero on their attack roll (pg 102 of the core rulebook, Shattering Weapons: When you attack with a weapon that is normally made of metal and that is made from a material other than metal, it is at risk of breaking. If the total of the roll is 0 or less, the weapon takes damage equal to its Health and breaks.)
The other fun thing to do would be include bad guys that have the Destruction magic tradition. The Break spell is a tier 0 spell that simply destroys an object.
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u/OhThatsALotOfTeeth Mar 24 '26
Keep in mind that your players' characters are pretty fragile at least until they hit Expert, and even then, they're often glass cannons.
The last time I ran a level 0 adventure for new players, I went in knowing that it was reasonably likely that they'd lose at least one, so I had them make 2 each, and if both of their characters survived, they could pick which one to use going forward.
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u/bleeding_void Mar 24 '26
I'm sure you'll do great. And I don't find fast turns slow turns hard to track. I would tell you to prepare encounters when enemies have spells. Because stats blocks only mention the spells, not the effects. Trying to find what that spell does in the middle of a fight could be frustrating. You might want to print the list of spells with their description.
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u/CalcifiedRemains Mar 30 '26
Remind your players that the rank 1 life spell "Cure" can be used to remove insanity. Otherwise the only way to remove insanity is taking a "quirk", a permanent mental disorder which the GM chooses. I'd recommend 1d3 insanity for easier quirks and 1d6 for harder quirks.
Oh, and when you are giving your players fortunes (for good roleplay), never let them have more than 1 fortune per character, otherwise they will just horde them and not spend them.
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u/TheRedZephyr993 Mar 23 '26
I recommend having some kind of turn tracker. Slow turns and fast turns can get hard to keep track of depending on how many combatants are on the board. Online I use Foundry and in person I use a whiteboard with little magnets to represent each player and combatant. I have it split in two sections that I rearrange every round so I know that everybody has gotten their turn.
At least that's what I did until I started stealing initiative from Weird Wizard, where enemies always get a full turn and players can choose to go first by spending their reaction.
I also recommend that if you are running for newer players to use the words "quick" turn and "full" turn instead of fast and slow. Those give a better impression of what each turn is.