How to people make so good minecraft servers?

Okay so I just bought minecrft, I know, I'm a noobie, but me and my friends wanna make a hunger game map and other kind of maps like ghost craft. I know the basics of making a hunger map but i don't know how to make like making the cheats restore items and how to make it fall and how to make the countdown and hearts dropping each day. Do I need mods? Or plugin? I mean I already know how to install plugins but I'm still learning about mods… But like how do you make like one server with multiple maps. Like you click on a sign and you transported to a map?!