So at a yardsale my girlfriend, her cousin, and I stumbled across what I think is a complete or near complete set of the New World of Darkness books. We've been wanting to play an RPG but didn't like the typical High Fantasy stuff, so this seemed like perfect timing. So we bought the box.

So now he is the dilemma. We have no idea how to play....

My experience with PnP Rpgs is about 2 sessions of D&D where I was just told what to do essentially.

It was decided that I should be the Game Master. But I'm not really sure how to create a good start to get the players and myself familiar. I've flipped through some of the books, on things like Mysterious Places (I love the room idea concept and want to work that into a campaign at some point), Antagonist, etc. But Im not really finding much to help me get started.

Anyway this is less about the World of Darkness specifcally and more about general Rpgs how do you, or your DM/GM start a story? Any tips on how to keep things from being slow to begin with?

Read the core rules. If your sure it's new world of darkness this book should be there. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YFNP17R1L._SL500_AA300_.jpg That has the basic rules for all of their game lines. Familiarize yourself with them. Now what kind of world of darkness are you playing? They have a lot of game lines. I'm assuming Vampire the Requiem. Then read that core rules as well and get an idea for the setting. Being the game master takes a lot of work and practice (mistakes are fine). But knowing the rules is key. Their other lines can be seen here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Darkness#New_World_of_Darkness_.28nWoD.29

What kind of game is it? A stand alone episode? A single story? A grand over arching story with a lot of plot? Start thinking of basics like that. Start small if your completely new. Perhaps a simple robbery gone wrong or something. And someone out to stop them. Maybe some mortals got their hands on evidence of something supernatural and they have to enforce the masquerade. Later if you want it could be revealed who is ordering them to do this, a superior? A rival blackmailing them? Prince's enforcer? I have no idea. I'm not too familiar with nWoD.

That's how to get started. Good luck and have fun. Remember it doesn't matter if you screw up a lot if everyone is having fun. There will be time to improve later.

Never played world of darkness, nor have I been a DM before, only a player, but an important thing to keep in mind with starting a session is to try and not seem nervous and encourage your players to engage if they don't do so right off the bat themselves. This of course mostly applies if your play group is playing the game more for the role-playing than the strategic battling.

When my group was just starting out a guy in it that had never even played a single game of PnP wanted to take a shot at being the DM, and ended up just about hyperventilating in front of the players with trying to start the game, I don't think he was quite comfortable in his own ability to make himself silly. To be able to not take yourself too seriously is a big factor to playing PnP's and especially as the DM who may have to make up many quirky and exotic characters. Our campaign started with just about everyone sitting silent after the DM having nervously said that we'd been dropped off at a crossroads, with us having hitched a ride in a caravan to get to a local city, and the caravan dropping us off at a split in the road where they had to take a different turn. Being rather unbashful myself I kicked things off with an extremely corny line that went something like "I, the paladin of Bahamut, Erias Thorne, will be heading straight to the city from this point to visit the local temple. Any one of you wishing to join me for the added security of traveling as a group is welcome to tag along, just state your name and intent and if I agree with you, we'll be able to travel together." something basic to get people to open their mouths and possibly introduce their characters and give you an idea of what kind of person they are.

If I was DM-ing I'd probably have the group start up together, traveling for some reason that would be fitting, and if no one took the initiative I'd have an NPC of some sorts come up to them and start asking questions, could be something like a guard on patrol around the countryside, looking for suspicious characters to keep the roads safe. And if I had a good grasp of the people playing, I'd have the guard talking to whichever player I felt was the least shy, at least to begin with. Just get the players feeling like they're not being foolish by acting it out.

Later down the line you can just start a campaign with your players, drop them in a random location, and you'll have one player playing a magical cat that can turn into a humanoid form, responding in "meow"s to anyone trying to talk to him while in cat form, another playing a hyperactive 15 year old farm-girl who giggles and squeels, an extravagant sounding businessman with a habit of talking out of his ass with authority he doesn't have, and so on and so on. (BTW: All of these are characters in my current GURPS game, which has a medieval magical setting. And yes, one of these characters is mine... XD) And those players will start exploring and seeking things to do all of their own initiative.

Just basically, don't just drop them into a town, make an evil laugh and yell "AMUSE ME!" out of the top of your lungs. At least not to start with, though you could do that later on, some sessions down the line.

Dedicated forum for http://www.giantitp.com/forums/. You can find myself, and more people there willing to help with anything you need. Also a funny comic if you played 3.5 and have any idea about it. Welcome to a world of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2pt2-F2j2g.

My friend and I are trying something out for a new campaign. We are essentially building a world (or at least a focused part of it) in Minecraft and we're going to use that as the main visual.

Though, it has been quite a challenge considering everything we are going to add, we basically have the first town nearly complete (with a population of 1000ish) and a few dungeons. No idea how it will work out though.

Neat, but I just want to game. Our group doesn't use minis or anything. If they need a map I'll just sketch one up on the fly.

We don't use mini's either, typically we either try and do narrative combat or some horrible combination of both. Part of it was also me wanting to build something like that in minecraft too.

The worst part is making the world how I need it to be, such as not having any snow around. So a few days ago I had to convert 49,000 layers of snow to air and change the biome just for that.

Posted this same topic there first

That was another reason we avoided D&D it seems very Mini heavy.

What edition of D&D was it? Can you find me a cover on the internet? 4th is pretty terrible. 3.5 has mini rules, but completely unnecessary. Most people use narrative combat.