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[Hitty40]

So, I'm DMing a quick D&D dungeon on 3.5 with a new rulebook I got for christmas, and so I have a few questions.

1. Is it frowned upon to have a character you made in while you are the DM?

2. Any advice on creating a dungeon? I don't wanna create a huge-ass dungeon or have nearly impossible monsters to fight as a level 1.

[forsaken1111]

1. Is it frowned upon to have a character you made in while you are the DM?

DMPC is acceptable if the DM is capable of maintaining a separation between DMing and roleplaying. Often you think you can and you really can't. Could you honestly kill your PC due to a botched roll? Mostly it is frowned upon by the people I play with. The only time I've seen it accepted is when there simply weren't enough people in the game to fill a party and even then its preferable to toss an NPC in there and let a player control it instead.

2. Any advice on creating a dungeon? I don't wanna create a huge-ass dungeon or have nearly impossible monsters to fight as a level 1.

Download a map from the internet, reflavor to taste. 3.5 balance is wonky and finicky, but read up on challenge levels in the DMG. Toss some goblins at them, maybe an orc, and be ready to fudge the dice either way depending on how it goes. GET A DM SCREEN.

[Bdthemag]

1. Well, I assume you mean playing along side your character. But that kind of ruins the point of playing then, since being the DM you know every trick you're going to pull and you know what's going to happen next most of the time. I personally would find it slightly annoying, since the DM's job is to guide the player's along the story after all.

2. Pretty much what Forsaken said

[Hitty40]

Download a map from the internet,

Hmm, any good sites for finding dungeons maps?

[freeformschooler]

Uh... I don't know about pre-made maps, but you can have an entire d&d 3.5 dungeon generated on the fly right here. Suited to character level, of course.

[Hitty40]

Uh... I don't know about pre-made maps, but you can have an entire d&d 3.5 dungeon generated on the fly right here. Suited to character level, of course.

Yeah, I messed with that a little, does seems a bit interesting.

[IronyOwl]

1. Is it frowned upon to have a character you made in while you are the DM?

DMPC is acceptable if the DM is capable of maintaining a separation between DMing and roleplaying. Often you think you can and you really can't. Could you honestly kill your PC due to a botched roll? Mostly it is frowned upon by the people I play with. The only time I've seen it accepted is when there simply weren't enough people in the game to fill a party and even then its preferable to toss an NPC in there and let a player control it instead.

More importantly than "can I bring myself to kill myself," there's the issue of already knowing all the answers and having the same thought process as the monsters. It takes a lot of the playing out of the game when you can't vote on a hallway direction because you already know what's down each one, and can't really talk to the Duchess or outmaneuver the orcs because you can read each others' minds. "Is it worth the effort?" is usually more of a concern than "Can you not be invincible?"

2. Any advice on creating a dungeon? I don't wanna create a huge-ass dungeon or have nearly impossible monsters to fight as a level 1.

Download a map from the internet, reflavor to taste. 3.5 balance is wonky and finicky, but read up on challenge levels in the DMG. Toss some goblins at them, maybe an orc, and be ready to fudge the dice either way depending on how it goes. GET A DM SCREEN.

This is a good idea. Otherwise, just remember that you want roughly as many monsters as there are players. Balance starts to stop working when you try to face four PCs with one higher-level monster or a swarm of much weaker ones.

I disapprove of cheating, but using it to make sure your first few encounters don't go completely off the rails might be more acceptable. Also, balance is indeed wonky and finicky.

[Darvi]

On the subject of DMPC's, read DM of the Rings. It should tell you tons about what not to do.

[MorleyDev]

I'd rule cheating is fine when it's the GM's mistake in the first place. It's like if a game glitches and randomly removes half my health, I'll cheat to kill off a few enemies to fix the balance. Likewise, if as a GM I placed too many monsters or gave them too big AC, you can cheat to find a way around.

Or look for other ways around. I was playing the DnD Adventure Board Game with my sister and realised in making my own level and trying to create a boss monster, I accidentally gave the boss too much AC and he was soaking up every attack. So instead of fudging dice, I waited until all his mooks in the room had been dispatched of and declared "The Bugbear looks unconfirmed and unsure of himself now that his allies have all been slain", and lowered the AC by a single point (which was what was making a stupidly big difference, stupid board game knock-off). Fixed the problem, no fudging needed on the die end of things ^^

[forsaken1111]

Download a map from the internet,

Hmm, any good sites for finding dungeons maps?

Just doing a google image search for dungeon map returns a fuckton of them.

[Telgin]

I used to run my characters alongside other players' characters when I GMed a Star Wars campaign years ago.  We didn't really run into any problems with it.  It was almost necessary, because I only had one player: my brother.  A second "player" of sorts helped.

Of course, I was very careful to not lead the plot with him and he basically just followed my brother's character around.  I did use him as a means of helping reign in my brother though, since he was a bit of a megalomaniac.

In the end, it wasn't terribly different than just using an NPC there.  The only difference really was that I kept track of his character sheet and progression more closely than a regular ol' NPC.