Tanner shares a minor update about the podcast from his perspective, and talks about how to prioritize fun when starting a campaign. Hint: it's not with a lot of roleplaying like he did with his recent campaign...

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Why your combat Slogs

1. You haven’t set the epectations with your players
2. Because you’re building combats and not encounters
3. You haven’t red shirted it - you’re not familiar with the baddies or the mechanics
4. You as aren’t taking advantage of all 4 of the Pillars of DMing
5. The party doesn’t want to do a combat. 
6. You don’t know how to make the combat intense
7. Phones are at the table
8. You make it go on too long

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Your world deserves to feel alive. In this episode of How to Be a Better DM, Justin dives deep into the art of “show, don’t tell” — not for your villains this time, but for your cities and settlements. Discover how to make your game world feel like a living, breathing place through cultural cues, architecture, layout, and behavior. You’ll learn actionable techniques to bring immersive environments to life and create settlements that feel like characters in your campaign. Plus, a secret about “show, don’t tell” that no one talks about!

Special thanks to:

Benj Weyland for Graphic Design (https://www.instagram.com/benjweydesign/)

TJ Max, Juka, and TechSenpai for being amazing moderators

Kyle Wilson, Nick Ammann and Professor Nobody for being our patrons.

Mentioned in this episode:

Add the Magic of Sound to Your Gameplay

When you set the scene you need to tap into the five senses. When it comes to sound one of the best ways to do that is with music, sound effects, and ambience. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Monument Studios. Monument Studios provides an easy-to-use Soundboard perfect for Dungeon Mastering. If you want to see this in action, go to fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off of your first month of their Fantasy+ App by using the code BETTERDM at check out. Again that is fantasy-plus.com and BETTERDM at checkout.

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Wouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities? In D&D, characters can reach level 20, so why can’t dungeon masters? We’re happy to tell you that now, you can. We created the Dungeon Master Level-Up Guide. It’s a simple tool to gamify your progression to higher and higher levels of dungeon mastering. It includes Dungeon Master Levels 1 to 20 with associated XP requirements as well as a long list of Dungeon Master activities that will give you XP. Each activity has a Challenge Rating and an XP amount. In order to level up, all you need to do is find out how much XP you have, find out how much you need and pick activities to try. You can get the Dungeon Master Level-Up guide for free by going to session0studios.com/newsletter/, sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email you the Level-Up Guide. Finally, leveling up as a DM can be as fun as leveling up a character.

Level Up Guide

Give Us a Rating and Review

You obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.

Tanner Weyland (00:04.783)

Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I'm here with Justin Lewis. Say hi, Justin. Hi, Justin. We are here today to talk about a fun little topic, basically, Dungeons and Villages, when and how to use either. So I mean, this topic, I've always find it interesting, like the composition of a campaign, you know?

Justin (00:13.631)

Hi Justin.

Tanner Weyland (00:33.535)

If you treat it like a like a sandwich, it's like, okay, what you know, it's a nice BLT. Do you put the tomatoes on first? Do you put you know, are you a maniac and you just put a bunch of bacon and just like a leaf of lettuce? You know, what do you do? And how do you kind of balance it? That's kind of what a lot of DMS have to do when it comes to being like, Hey, I want a really cool dungeon. But I also want to have some of the more role playing heavy

Villages and kind of switch it up. Have you ever thought about this kind of balance that you have Justin?

Justin (01:09.986)

I haven't necessarily thought of the balance, but I certainly have fallen into the blunders that we're going to talk about with each of these. And when you do, it's pretty annoying because you kind of kick yourself and be like, dang, that dungeon could have been so fun or that village could have been so fun. I will say, I definitely think one might be a little bit easier because, well, we'll get

I'll reveal all as we talk.

Tanner Weyland (01:42.847)

Exactly. So for the purpose of this discussion, just to give a little roadmap, we'll kind of dive into dungeons and villages or cities, you know, we're saying villages, but we mean any kind of settlement where it's going to be, you know, more NPC centric built. So that's kind of what we're thinking about when we think of village. And it could be any size could be a little, you know, three shacks by the side of the road, or it could be an entire city.

Surrounded by huge walls with giant palaces within it, right? And it just kind of the that's we're bundling that as one experience done on the other side dungeons now It's not always a dungeon per se but it's kind of like a curated Experience where you know, the adventuring party is going into one specific place and exploring, you know

And it's not somewhere they're just traveling through. It's like, no, it's, it's a specific kind of, uh, self-enclosed experience. Uh, so kind of getting into it, let's, let's talk about dungeons and what kind of makes a dungeon special.

Justin (02:50.622)

Yeah. And one other thing I'd like to also add, just sort of a caveat. These are traditional dungeons and villages. You could theoretically take whatever we're talking about, like the aspects, and apply them to the other one, right? For example, by nature, dungeons will be, or seem more railroad-y, right?

Justin (03:19.85)

Choices have been made and now choices are restricted, right? Like once Aragorn follows the path of the dead and he goes into the mountain, the ghosts know he's there, right? He can't just, well, he could just turn around and walk out, but those are his only two choices. Proceed, stay where he is. I guess three choices or go backward. But, but theoretically you could make a village more railroad-y, but we're going to talk in general terms. So that's really the first.

point of a dungeon and kind of what it is once you're in it, it's either stay where you are, which is kind of not really a choice, go forward or go back.

Tanner Weyland (03:58.467)

Exactly and once you're at the dungeon you can kind of expect You know, I think it's gonna be reskinned and you're going to as a DM, you know We talked about this before you want to give a variety of experiences, you know, don't have every combat be the same Have interesting mechanics and include traps here and there and make sure they're not all the same either But that's kind of what you're expecting in the dungeon. You're gonna expect a lot of combats with various creatures

A lot of traps that or just you know obstacles and skill checks that the party is gonna have to deal with and of course loot. I think that that's Another big difference between villages and dungeons is a dungeon So long as you beat the enemy or the challenge or whatever it is The treasure is just sitting there. You don't have to barter. You don't have to pay anything you paid with your time And and your characters, you know

bodies essentially, right? And I think that's kind of you, that's what you expect. And yeah, it might be within a druids ancient enclave or something or it could be in a crypt, you know far below the city, you know, or whatever it is. The skin is going to look different and the types of monsters is going to be specific to the environment, but it's still kind of those elements, you know.

Justin (05:22.494)

Absolutely. Kind of to that point, you know, a traditional way of making dungeons is coming up with either the map first or kind of the end goal first, right? So if they're going into this crypt to destroy a lich, you know, you know that they're going to fight the lich at some point, unless they leave the crypt, right? That's just how it is. And then you sort of fill everything in

challenges to make it more difficult and things like that. So with all that said, compared to a village, a dungeon is a lot more obvious in terms of goals, right? People don't necessarily go into a dungeon and then halfway through be like, wait, like when we get to the end, what are we gonna do? It's like, no, we're gonna kill the baddie and take the loot, right? Like that's the dungeons part of Dungeons and Dragons.

Tanner Weyland (06:19.511)

Exactly. And so I find that dungeons are, they're nice in one way and they're difficult in another. First, they're really nice in the way that it's simple. You know, the players, like I was running a campaign and I had a dungeon.

You know, this was one of those campaigns that kind of sputtered out pretty early on because school happened and all this other stuff, right? But we had gone through it opened up with essentially a dungeon crawl, you know, kind of like a smaller to medium sized one took a few sessions and And then it was like a couple villages in a row and they the players like afterwards. They were like, Oh, I really like that initial dungeon.

And I think that the reason why is because like, Hey, when you're just opening up to adventure, uh, especially if your party isn't amazing at role play, you don't scratch that. Even if they are amazing at role play role playing, I think that you have, there's a lot of difficulty in launching right into role playing. If you haven't had kind of those more like grindy dungeons that you have to go through, right? You kind of need experiences.

in order to really enjoy a village. And I think dungeons are a perfect place for that.

Justin (07:40.778)

I couldn't agree more and I actually think based on what you said, it sparked kind of this thought in my mind that I often talk about galvanizing experiences at the beginning of campaigns or with one shots that force the party to be a party, right? And those galvanizing experiences can be, you know, shared trauma or they could literally be we've all been hired to do the same thing. And

Tanner Weyland (08:08.98)

Yeah.

Justin (08:10.134)

To your point, Tanner, I think doing dungeons at the beginning of a campaign is very important because it does allow the party to sort of form those bonds. And even thinking, you can do dungeons in sort of a very non-dungeony way. So the example I'm thinking of is the Erois campaign of high rollers. They're a group out of the UK, and I've been listening to them

lately and spoiler alert if you haven't listened to it but their campaign starts with session one they're on an airship and they're being attacked right and basically chapter one of this campaign the airship crashes in the lowlands which is a wild and inhospitable place right and there's like five or six survivors fibers including the party

Actually, there might be more because I think there were NPCs. But in a larger sense, that is a dungeon because their options are we have to find civilization or we're going to starve, be attacked by wild elves, things like that, right? And I might be kind of expanding the definition a little bit, but you can do things like that.

And I do think that starting campaigns with a dungeon is a very good idea. Because again, it does give everyone that clear reason of why are we traveling together? Why are we cooperating? Because everyone always likes to pick those characters that are mysterious and don't trust anyone, you know.

Tanner Weyland (09:53.531)

Yeah. And, and, you know, I think for all the strengths of a dungeon, because like you mentioned, it's, it's right in the name. As much as people love dragons, dungeons comes first. Uh, and, but I think that the issue is that sometimes they can be fatiguing, especially for a DM, but also for players, right? Where it's like, if, if it's big enough, well, I mean, caveat, if your players come in being like, Hey, I want to do a huge dungeon, you know.

Uh, just like multi-level and that's basically the entire campaign's one big dungeon that that's, that's the exception. If you're just including a dungeon as part of the campaign, if you do too long of a dungeon, then it's just, it's a lot of combats. It's a lot of the party being essentially on edge the entire time, right. Being like, Oh, you know, stealth into the next room for like 10 sessions in a row. You know,

And it just becomes so fatiguing. And so it's like, Hey, you know, pick your battles, uh, specifically by, you know, making it so that not every dungeon is super long, uh, occasionally, I think it's totally worth it to do a longer dungeon, especially if you've got really big consequences and if you build it up, then the players are like, Oh, okay. Prepare well. Cause you know, there's no coming back or not for a while, at least then, you know, a longer campaign can be fine.

It'll still be fatiguing, but it's kind of like the hard days work type of fatigue. Otherwise you don't want to do that consistently in my opinion.

Justin (11:24.138)

Yeah. I would actually add two examples of my current campaign. Um, so I had my group in the underdark and my thought process was, well, in the underdark, you don't really, you guys don't know where you're going. So you're, you're literally wandering around. Uh, and I was making the map as I went, basically rolling on random tables to see what rooms were, were next. And they weren't keeping a map, right?

And suffice it to say it went on far too long. And I did that because I was like, yeah, I want them to feel the frustration of being in the underdark, right? Being lost. But I think it failed because you don't want your players to feel that you want the characters to feel that. So exactly right, Tanner. You don't want to do too big of a dungeon, but you said something very important. If you prepare them for the scope of it and the scale.

I think that's the secret sauce.

Tanner Weyland (12:26.203)

Exactly, you know, because any type of here's the great thing. We talk about Dungeons and Dragons being about storytelling and it's absolutely right and stories come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but as a general rule, you know, if you're not really building a dungeon up, then maybe make it small to medium length, you know, and then for longer ones, you want to give that kind of a gravitas to it beforehand.

Um, but, but enough about dungeons, let's talk about villages and cities. Um, I think it's no surprise that first and foremost, they're just much more role playing focused, right? You don't go into a dungeon expecting to talk with every mimic who's pretending to be a chest, right? You go into a dungeon to just, you know, hack and slash and find stuff. Villages. It's like, no, that's, that's the key difference is like people. NPCs and you're going to be talking a lot.

and how you kind of utilize those role-playing opportunities can be the difference between a very boring city or village and a very exciting one, you know?

Justin (13:33.482)

Yeah, absolutely. Kind of what I was saying before, you know, Aragorn goes into the path of the dead. He's in the dungeon per se. It's not exactly the same thing, but his choices are stay put, move forward or go backwards in a, in a city, a village, a settlement. Your decisions are, uh, go forward, stay put, go backward, go right, go left, go up, go down, go inside, go outside that, you know, there's a lot more choices. And.

To this point, as I said with a dungeon, the game mechanics were a lot more obvious with a dungeon, right? There are traps that cause things. In a settlement, you have more choice, right? And because of that, you're...

The game mechanics aren't as obvious. You might gain favor in the eyes of a baron because you did something for them, which isn't a direct game mechanic, but it's something that your dungeon master or you might be factoring in because you slaughtered this orc that was holding this person hostage or something like that.

It's sort of a subtle game mechanic that's not so obvious, but it still has impact. That's another aspect of villages and cities that is very different than traditional dungeons.

Tanner Weyland (15:04.323)

Exactly. And I think, I think if you look at it the right way, then Villages provides you a lot more creativity, especially where, you know, like you were saying, the mechanics aren't obvious. So make your own mechanics, and specifically, make it in a way that provides both direction and development for characters. Because I think that's where Villages really shine, where it's like

if you look at a dungeon in terms of like, oh, that's a place where they get kind of galvanized together as a party, the place where they grow as individuals is in a city, you know, in a village, that's where the characters can be like, hey, I'm gonna go pray at the nearest, you know, temple of the God that they worship, right? Or they're going to go look for a specific type of equipment that they're looking for. Or maybe they're, they're like, hey, I want to go find

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Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, the Official Podcast of Monsters.Rent. If you are a podcast listener, I am currently waving at you because I am recording myself on video to add to our Youtube Channel, How to Be a Better DM.

Today’s show is going to talk about one of the most common D&D tropes out there. It’s the place where all great adventures start, and usually where most adventurers end their day. It’s the place that I like to imagine myself in when I record these shows, and you and I have sat down at a table to swap stories.

But before we get to that, I just want to take a moment to say thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I was chatting my my boss at my day Job, and he asked about the podcast and Monsters.Rent. We got to chatting and he looked us up on Spotify and Apple. Because of you, we have over 50 ratings on Spotify and over 15 on Apple Podcasts. That’s so awesome. Just seeing that made my day. I can honestly say that from. Myself and Tanner, if we didn’t have you listening and interacting, this would be much more lonely. So thank you so much for listening and adventuring with us :) 

A couple weeks ago, I was running the free Halloween one shot. Spoiler alert, but ther is a tavern in the one shot. If I can be Frank with you, during th one shot, the party went to the Tavern and honestly I did not have it as fleshed out as I wanted. Improv is great, and it’s a very important skill to have, but have a plan that goes well is usually better. I had to improvise. In my opinion, it wasn’t as cool as it should have been.

So it got me thinking. Basically every D&D campaign has taverns in them. They are a mainstay of th hobby. So I decided to do an entire podcast episode on taverns, specifically on how to use them and how to prepare them and how to populate them. We’ll talk about some tips to make it easy for you to run them in your games.

Let’s first talk about the importance of taverns.  First f all, you can choose not to hve them in your game, which is completely fine.

However, as I’ve already said, a tavern is a very classic trope of D&D games. It can function as the base of operations for your party. It can be sort of that “safe space” that your band finds all along their journeys.

It can be much more than that however. For one thing, it can be a place of great player-to-player roleplaying, which in my opinion is some of the most important roleplaying there is.  

Combat can be so quick paced and hectic, that sometimes it is nice to metaphorically kick back and have a nice drink with friends.

Sometimes you also need your bad guy’s to “Kick down the door” as Brandon Sanderson and Friends say on their podcast, Writing Excuses. What better place than a tavern.

I think the most important reason to feature a tavern in your game is because our characters are adventurers. That, by definition, means that they rarely return home. People still want to feel a sense of home, or at least a sense of coziness. That’s exactly what taverns were created to do. Throughout history, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, taverns became a place of refuge for people on the road. So why not sit back and enjoy the feel of a homely tavern with your friends.

Obviously, if you want to feature a tavern, then it would be good to know the most basic elements of a tavern. As I like to say though, once you know the rules, you can learn how to break them in fun and interesting ways. So let me tell you what you will most likely find in a tavern, and then you can change things up in very new and interesting ways, however you wish.

Since a tavern is a type of bar, you obviously need a barkeep. The most basic requirements of a barkeep are that they serve drinks. In more common tavern settings, the barkeep is behind the bar. Often they know a lot about the town or the setting, but sometimes they don’t. In most cases te barkeep is just as iconic as the tavern. That means that the tavern is a great time and place to really make a unique character that probably won’t become embroiled with the party as a pocket NPC.

Next, you have the patrons. While the party may or may not ask about the barkeep, they will most definitely ask about the patrons. That’s because the patrons pose possible threats, opportunities and surprises for the party.  Here too you can create characters that will delight and entertain your party, but don’t be surprised yourself when the party adopts one of them or tries to kill all of them. 

Taverns are food service establishments, and more importantly, drink service establishments. That means that you have to have food or at the very least, drinks. More importantly, you’ll need to know how much the food and drink costs because that will be a very real cost to your players.

If the tavern is big enough you may need to add in some servers. These are like waiters and waitresses in the real world. It’s a pretty simple thing to add in and these characters can even be unique and interesting or they can be simple and boring. It’s all up to you.  You see servers aren’t necessary to a tavern like a barkeep or food and drink are. 

Another interesting, yet unnecessary, piece to add into your tavern is the  Bulletin. This is simply a board with various notices pinned upon it. Most of the time, the notices are for jobs that need doing. This can function as a very important game element, drawing your players from one plot hook or adventure hook to another.  Simply add this to the corner of any tavern and watch your players dive into each adventure.

The last thing that you may or may not want to add to your tavern is “The Interest”. This is a blanket term for anything that makes the tavern experience memorable. First, if you don’t want or care that the characters or players remember this particular tavern, then don’t put an Interest in the tavern. An interest is anything that would make someone remember this tavern. One way you can think about this is, “Why would people come to this establishment over any other tavern?” Or you can simply think, “How can I make this tavern experience more fun for my players?” It’s similar to how you find some sort of quirk to add to NPC’s to try to make them more memorable too. To help you understand what I mean, let’s do a couple of examples.

In favor room in water deep there is a tavern called the yawning portal it’s a very famous tavern and there’s actually a source book named after it. The yawning portal actually has a well if I remember right in front of it. The well supposedly leads to the Waterdeep underground dungeons that’s one example of a interest it’s easy to remember and it makes the tavern somewhat famous more or less. Another example comes from the Halloween one shot that I hosted a couple weeks ago. I had a tavern in my one shot that is called Caliagri’s cavern. This tavern is actually in a sinkhole. When you enter the tavern building which resembles just a small shack, you descend into the sinkhole and that’s where you find the tavern and the end as well as a bathhouse using the natural spring that caused the sinkhole. That’s one example of an interest for a tavern.

Now that we’ve talked about basic elements of a tavern let’s talk about how to add one into your game. First we need to think about how often tavern show up and where. I think a good rule of thumb is for every 25 buildings in a settlement a small tavern should be present. For every 50 buildings in a settlement a large tavern should be present. When you start to add taverns to cities you don’t need to do this hard and fast rule because the city will be big enough that it will have many taverns. at that point what you need to do is sync up a list of taverns that would be most commonly recommended or most prominently found. It would also be a good idea to create a list of terrible taverns or bad taverns, because shady dealings of the underbelly of society happen in these bad taverns. you can also add taverns as way points or stopping points on large roads. They almost act as hostiles but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to add in a tavern there as well. I find that having a tavern in mind when a party enters a town is very important because more often than not they will seek out a N or a tavern for room and lodging.

As far as where the tavern should be placed, there are no rules. You could have a tavern out in the middle of nowhere. That said, With towns and cities, the center of the city will likely be home to older taverns and the periphery will probably have newer ones.

Now, let’s get to building your tavern.

For the most part, every tavern will need a name. No matter what though, every tavern will need something that it’s called by other people. Sometimes those two things are different. If you decide to have a tavern who’s owner never named it, everyone in the town might call it Some Guy’s Tavern, which would then be its defacto name, but not it’s actual name.

Naming taverns is quite easy, because you can do whatever you want. That said, here are some tips to help you do it even faster.

1. Focus on the interest. If you’ve already picked the interest for the tavern, then you can just go off of that. Going back to my two examples earlier, both the Yawning Portal and Caliagri’s Cavern draw their names from their interest.
2. Do it Quick without hesitation. If you are coming up with a tavern on the fly, then your players will sense your hesitation. So name the tavern, stick with the name and defend it. Don’t let your players bully you into thinking it’s a dumb name, even if it is.
3.  Verb + Noun. If you are having trouble making up a tavern name, you can take a cue from the Dungeon Master’s Guide and do the Verb/Adjective + Noun formula that might have gotten its start with J.R.R. Tolkein (i.e. the Prancing Pony). You simply pick a noun and then attach an adjective or an active ing verb to the front of it and you got a nice tavern name. Let’s do some real quick. The Red Blade Tavern, maybe something for pirates. The Belching Barrel. The Shifting Mercury. See, it’s pretty easy.
4. Name’s Noun. If that doesn’t fit what you are looking for, you can opt for the Name’s Noun formula. You pick a name, make it possessive and then pick a noun. For example, Cagliari’s Cavern, Arthur’s Round Table (that sounds like it should be a themed restaurant), Vergoin’s Vestibule. Lots and lots of names.

With these tips, naming taverns should be a piece of cake and your players will always think you are the most prepared DM in the universe.

After naming the tavern, describing it is the next step. 

First, don’t forget to do some work on the outside of the tavern. This is an easy trap for people to fall into, in fact, I struggle with this myself, but the tavern experience begins outside the tavern. Are there drunkards sleeping in the ditch off to the side of the tavern? Does the tavern have well-paid bodyguards? Is the plaster peeling or is the tavern made of rich mahogany wood? All of these facts tell your party about the establishment before they even set foot in the door.

Try and hint at what might be within the tavern when you describe the exterior. It’s important to do this most of the time so that when do decide to break the rules and make the inside the opposite or contrary to the exterior, you will catch your party off guard. That’s how you get the rewarding reveals.

Moving inside, don’t forget to describe the scene from the five senses. Tell your players what they smell, what makes their mouth water, what they hear, the temperature of the room. 

After you get that taken care of, it’s a good idea to explain the layout of the tavern. Obviously every tavern will be different so to help you out, let’s describe 3 generic tavern layouts that you can use in your games at the drop of the hat.

First, the Cantina. In this Tavern, the room can be any size but the bar itself juts out into the middle of the room with the barkeep being able to service people on both sides, or there being 2 barkeeps. The tables are arrayed around the bar in a circular pattern. 

Second, the classic Bar. In this tavern, one wall is dominated by the bar and the tables are arrayed throughout the room. 

Lastly, you have the L Shaped Bar. The room itself is l shaped with the bar following the shape of the room.  With these three tavern layouts, you can easily describe the shape of the tavern if you are pushed to create a tavern on the fly. 

Now, let’s talk about the most important part of the tavern, roleplaying. 

The first thing you need to know is that you don’t need to be ready to roleplay everyone in the tavern, but you do need to be ready to improv roleplay everyone in the tavern. What I mean by that is that you simply need to prepare a few select characters in the tavern. Everything else is just gravy. 

Being a dungeon master is a lot like being a fisherman. You prepare the bait, but the fish decides  whether they take it. So, being a good fisherman is knowing how to get the fish to take the bait. So with this metaphor, you need to prepare what you hope your characters will interact with. So spend much more time working on things that you actually want to play through. I make this mistake all the time, adding in interesting details about peripheral NPCs and then I get a,l surprised when the characters interact with that peripheral NPC instead of engaging with the important part of the story that I put forth. Obviously that’s where improvisation comes from, but it’s a better experience if your players think you are improvising but really you are going off of stuff you have prepared.

I ramble

So to roleplay  a tavern well, you simply take the basic parts we’ve already discussed and you flesh each out a bit more. 

We’ve talked about creating NPCs often enough on this show so I won’t talk about actual making the barkeep or the maids or the patrons more than just that you need to answer the

Welcome to How to Be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent.

Today, we have some self-reflection to do... Or rather, all DMs should be reflecting on how a session went right afterwards in order to maximize their improvement.

Got your journal out? Well, that's the first step!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Level Up Guide

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Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Today we talk about inviting guests to join you in your D&D campaign.

Here are some of the topics we talked about :

Should you have guest players?

Reasons For

The guest has never played D&D. Allowing them to play with an established group would give them a better experience than just having them find a random group who may or may not have played before.

Bringing in a guest might allow you to portray an important NPC in the story without having to roleplay them yourself

Reasons Against

Adding in a guest might disrupt the flow of the game and the group. They may not mesh because they probably don’t understand the inside jokes and comradery of the group

Why should you try having a guest player?

How Should You Do It?

How Should You Not Do it?

Mentioned in this episode:

Add the Magic of Sound to Your Gameplay

When you set the scene you need to tap into the five senses. When it comes to sound one of the best ways to do that is with music, sound effects, and ambience. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Monument Studios. Monument Studios provides an easy-to-use Soundboard perfect for Dungeon Mastering. If you want to see this in action, go to fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off of your first month of their Fantasy+ App by using the code BETTERDM at check out. Again that is fantasy-plus.com and BETTERDM at checkout.

Monument Studios

Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Welcome to How to Be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I’m your host today, Justin Lewis, and together we are going to talk about how to improve your gameplay both from a mechanical and storytelling point of view.

Today, I’m excited to talk about an aspect of the game that for me holds a lot of interest and for a lot of people can be a rich source of story elements and intrigue. At the same time, for other people it can be completely boring, and possibly offputting. I’m talking about Gods, faith and religion.

Before I get into the rest of today’s episode, I want to take a moment to talk about The Guild. For those of you who don’t know, the Guild is our unique membership for dungeon masters. It allows you to connect with other DMs like yourself and get access to a library of video courses and downloadable resources for your gameplay. Oh and it’s 100% free. I hope you’ll join us there, so go to monsters.rent/get-started and scroll all the way to the bottom.

Now, the very first thing you need to do is assess your table’s comfort level with the topics of God, Religion, and Faith. In some cases, you’ll have a natural understanding. In my case, a few members of my table are also members of my faith, so I knew that they would be ok having some of those topics in the game. 

In other circumstances, it would be a smart idea to ask if the table is alright with those themes and topics being in the game. In most D&D settings, having a mystical god or gods is all part and parcel to the game, but depending on how your players feel about it, then you might want to tread lightly. Some games might be focused on the path of divinity, others might have gods as simply an afterthought. No matter what you do, you want to avoid these two mistakes.

Saying this as a religious person, you absolutely do not want to turn your D&D sessions into sermons. I know you’re probably thinking that that would kind of be funny, and it might, but honestly, you don’t want to force players into roleplaying something they don’t want to roleplay. A person’s faith is a very personal thing, and if someone is not a person of faith, religion or Diety, then they don’t have to be even in a make-believe world.

On the other side of the coin, you definitely don’t want to make fun of religion and make it appear as something that is farcical. Even though your players may be ok with it, it’s best not to form bad habits because there will come a time when you sit down to play at a table with someone who cares, and then you’ll make the slip up of a lifetime. Best to avoid those big mistakes. Extend the same consideration and courtesy you would to any other sort of way of life.

Now, with your players on board for having Gods be an active part of the game, let’s talk about some other questions you need to ask. These questions apply to both homebrew settings and settings that are prewritten, but the questions will apply a little differently to each. 

The first question that you need to ask is how involved will Godhood (god or gods) be in your setting or game. This is important because if they won’t even matter, then you likely don’t need anything else in this episode. I’d still recommend listening to the end because you never know when a player might ask you a question or make a choice that will make the gods much more involved.

In different settings, Gods behave differently. In some games, Gods are active members of the universe, granting divine boons with ease. In other settings, Gods are basically hidden from sight, deigning not to intervene with their followers’ lives. 

It’s important that you know which type of setting yours is and how the Gods will interact with players and NPCs alike. Really, the interaction of Gods falls on a spectrum with an asterisk. The spectrum is set up with very involved on the left and not involved at all on the right. The asterisk stipulates that the spectrum can describe the entire setting and the involvement of each individual deity.  An entire pantheon can be relatively involved with one or two being basically inactive. Or you could have the inverse where the pantheon is basically a non-entity with one or two who are trying to control the universe. Both instances can make for a very fun campaign.

Unless you have players who make clerics or paladins you don’t necessarily need to have the gods or god interact with your players. In fact, you could make a case for why your god doesn’t interact with the devoted paladin or cleric. 

But if you do have gods who interact with players you need to know how involved the gods will be with those players. Will the god in question have multiple role playing scenes face to face with the player? If they did would that be normal for the player or the god? Each of these choices has impacts on the story and you should definitely help your players realize when something special is happening. 

Will your players know that it is a god they are interacting with? Maybe your deity has decided to be a beneficial patron of the player but will not show themselves. The players then may draw the conclusion that a wealthy land owner has decided to show them favor. 

Sometimes you’ll need to realize that if one God is involved, like very involved, then that might push another deity who is at odds with the one helping the party to get involved. You might put your party in between a turf war of two gods. That could make for a pretty epic campaign. 

I would say that you need to set some pretty simple yet clear guidelines for yourself on what the party members can expect from a deity. Do they hear whisperings of advice when the player has no idea what to do? Or does God just show up in a brief Vision and explain that a certain task needs doing? 

When you have established your “rules” for how Gods interact with players, then you get to occasionally break them, which becomes a very fun Plot device.

This question is more about the setting than the individual player interactions. Is your pantheon filled with numerous gods, only a handful or just one? This question naturally morphs into other considerations. For example, if your pantheon is filled with multiple gods, then the likelihood of all of the Gods having omniscience goes way down. Having 7 beings who all know everything that is happened yet have cross purposes becomes very difficult to handle very fast. Or, the gods just know everything to the point that the don’t really do anything against each other so then the Gods become more observers than actors. I suppose you probably could figure out a way to make it work, but I haven’t.

If you have one God, it’s much more possible for them to have omniscience, but having them favor certain things becomes more difficult. Either the God is the God of everything or for some reason your God just very partial to only a few things, like they’ve decided to be the God of the harvest, but there are no other gods. That could make for a very silly setting or one that just doesn’t make sense. 

With this question also comes the question of whether or not the characters and the world at large even know about all of the Gods. It might make a fascinating campaign if there are a slew of gods that hide from the world.

Now, that you’ve come up with the number of gods that will populate your pantheon, you need to decide whether or not they will be good, neutral, or evil. You also need to decide whether the gods will actively fight against each other or will they be friendly towards each other and, even if they are somewhat antagonistic towards one another, they’ll still be somewhat friendly? 

Let’s take an example. Let’s make up two gods. We have Ordos and Sruptos, the good god of order and the evil god of chaos respectively.

In your setting, will Ordos and Sruptos be battling each other, to the death if possible? Or will they, by nature of the invincibility of Gods, be forced to be cordial and respectful to each other, using mortals as pieces on a game board rather than soldier in a battle? All of these questions add to the narrative and help you know how to bend and twist the story.

If you have multiple gods, then it is common to have gods who have all sorts of alignments. 

If you have only one god, then alignment isn’t really useful, unless it is pivotal to the story. For example, if you only have one god, but that God just so happens to be evil, that could be the genesis for a very interesting campaign setting. I’d imagine that the God has some sort of rules that prohibit them from taken certain actions, which allows the characters to still choose to be Good if they want, or the entire cosmos is evil and everything just works within those parameters.

As you can see, how God’s act and react shapes in very large ways how your story goes.

Now, I just brought up a point that forces us to think about these next two questions: 1. Can Gods be killed? And 2. Can anyone become a god?

In the previous example of Ordos and Sruptos, I explained that they might have to treat each other like game partners because they can’t kill each other. The fact that both are invincible is very important because it explains why they would want to be nice to each other. They are essentially stuck with each other forever.

So in your campaign, you need to decide early on if Gods can be killed. It may be that that turns out to be the secret quest of one of your players. They want revenge on one of the Gods because they let their wife die or something like that. That can become a very epic story very quickly. 

You could also take the opposite approach and show that the God’s cannot be killed. In the same story of a player who wants revenge, the entire story could be about the God trying to gain back the trust of the vengeful player, while also explaining that they can’t be killed. The DM could even throw in some touching moments where the God explains that he’s tried to kill himself but it didn’t work.

If gods can be killed then you need to start figuring out what does and doesn’t kill a god. As I’ve already mentioned, that means that you also need to figure out why any other gods haven’t already tried killing their rivals. In most cases, God Killing will be a very difficult task. In many ancient mythologies, Gods were “killed” but if their body parts were reunited, the God was essentially brought back to life. In other fantasy settings, like Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, when a “god” dies, their power essentially either rests on the planet the God was bound to or the power seeks out another “host” transcending them to godhood. How will it be in your setting? Can anyone kill a god? What happens when the God dies? If they were the God of sunrises, does the sun stop rising? All of these are important

The next question that needs to be addressed is whether or not becoming a god is possible. This too could potentially become a personal quest of one of your party members, so you need to know whether or not it is possible. This question can be decided in the moment, though as you are roleplaying.

If the answer is yes to the question of can anyone become a god, then you probably need to answer the follow up question of “Why aren’t there more Gods?” The natural answer will likely be because becoming a God is very difficult. A more interesting answer might be that becoming a God is not even actually that desirable for reasons that are unknown to most people. 

The point I’m trying to make with these two questions of Killing or Becoming Gods is that diety can be very powerful plot points and since they can be very powerful, you must treat them with care and attention. Your player’s will wonder why Gods can be killed at the drop of a hat. You better have a good well thought out reason. True, you can probably come up with something cool in the moment, but it needs to make sense because in most cases Gods have their hands in a lot of pots, so to speak.

Now that we’ve talked at length about using Gods in your campaign setting, let’s start diving even deeping into how to move your story along. 

We all know that great stories in D&D start with plot hooks, or rather simple introductory elements that entice player’s to explore a particular story line more to eventually find a much large and more fulfilling story.

A simple example of a plot hook is, “While digging through this dungeon you find a strange bow made out of black wood in the hands of a corpse that dried up decades ago. You pick up the bow and in your mind you hear, “Hello!” The player does not know practically anything about the bow except that it said hello which is interesting and curious.

When it comes to faith, there are limitless plot hooks to use. That’s probably the most common way to use Faith or Religion or God as a plot device. It can help start the story.

Another interesting tidbit about plot devices is that they are just plot hooks, except usually you have knowledge that connects past experiences to the plot hook. 

An example of this would be, “While traveling on this long road to do your Diety’s bidding, you turn a corner and see your God bartering with a local merchant. He does not notice you. You approach him and confront him, only to have him completely vanish. Before he did though, you put your hand on his arm and were not shocked with his power. He felt warm, and mortal…”

This plot device has the same elements as a plot hook, in that it makes the consumer of the story curious and incentivized to finish the story, but we have some knowledge of the god before the exchange.

In my estimation, there are only two ways to really use plot devices and certainly only 2 when it comes to faith. The Push and The Pull

A plot device is designed to move the story along. Since our players are the main motivators of the story, a plot device in D&D is designed to get the players taking action in any particular direction. A good DM th

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent

We have an awesome podcast today for you. We were able to sit down and chat with Andrew Ashby, owner of We Geek Together. We Geek Together is a store focused on Tabletop Gaming but themed after a tavern, and it's located in Provo Utah. Last April, Andrew hosted the Dead Wars, which was a 1000+ Player D&D game that broke a world record. Today we talk a lot about Dead Wars but also about some important tips for DMs of all experience levels. Below are a list of questions we had prepared for Andrew, but the conversation was so much better than these questions.

Andrew also started his own podcast as well which you can find on his website.

Show Notes:

Warm up question: what have you been geeking out about recently?

Section 1: Dead Wars

Summary- Talking about orchestrating Dead Wars

Questions:

Where did the idea first begin for you to beat the world record?

What was the session prep like?

What were the biggest hurdles you had to overcome and how did you get past them?

How was finding players and DMs for the event similar to finding players for a normal game? Different?

Would you recommend this style of group D&D play to DMs wanting to get a big group together?

What tips would you give to any DM who wants to put on a multiple group session or event?

Section 2: Running the Tavern

Summary - Talking about setting up a D&D business that is very welcoming of DMs

Questions:

What made you want to start this kind of business?

How did you test and prove your business idea?

What specific goals or values are the focus of WGT?

What would you say is the best part of WGT for DMs, specifically?

How did you figure out what to put in the tavern?

Section 3: Patterns of the Most Successful DMs

Summary - talking about what sets the best DM’s apart

Questions:

What positive patterns do you see in the groups that play the most often?

How do your regular DMs do effective session prep? And how do they create immersion?

What sorts of tools or equipment do your regular DMs use?

What are the most noticeable differences between an engaged table of players, and one that is stalled?

Mentioned in this episode:

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Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Save time with Roll and Play Press

Save yourself some precious time with Roll and Play Press. Go to https://session0studios.com/rollandplay and use code BETTERDM10 at checkout.

Tanner hosts this episode of the How to Be a Better DM Podcast, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. He discusses how random encounters don't need to be simple filler, or poor storytelling tools for the overburdened DM. Rather, with some important tips, you can create a tool that saves you time but also adds fun in specific ways. Just remember to add pizzaz!

Mentioned in this episode:

Add the Magic of Sound to Your Gameplay

When you set the scene you need to tap into the five senses. When it comes to sound one of the best ways to do that is with music, sound effects, and ambience. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Monument Studios. Monument Studios provides an easy-to-use Soundboard perfect for Dungeon Mastering. If you want to see this in action, go to fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off of your first month of their Fantasy+ App by using the code BETTERDM at check out. Again that is fantasy-plus.com and BETTERDM at checkout.

Monument Studios

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Tanner Weyland:

Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. My name is Tanner Weyland and I'm here with Justin Lewis. Say hi.

Justin:

Hi there.

Tanner Weyland:

Well, everyone, we are so happy to be together. As you know, Justin with his new baby, we haven't had as much of a chance to record. How's it been, Justin?

Justin:

Honestly, having a baby is easier and harder, much harder than I thought, right? It's just, it's crazy. The effect. Honestly, if that doesn't tell you what you need

Tanner Weyland:

I'm

Justin:

to know about

Tanner Weyland:

sorry.

Justin:

having a baby, then I don't know what would.

Tanner Weyland:

Exactly. I love that though that Jan was timed perfectly.

Justin:

Seriously.

Tanner Weyland:

Either way, we're super happy to have you back and just to be recording again. Let's let's hop into a fun little topic, kind of a creativity focused topic about how to make a campaign that is focused on going on an expedition. namely what makes an expedition-based campaign different from a normal campaign. Now, Justin, have you ever seen any movies that come to mind of an expedition or a journey or something like that?

Justin:

Absolutely. There are many, many out there. And just to give you kind of an idea of sort of the breadth that you can go when you think of Expedition, there's Atlantis, the Disney animated movie, which is a hidden treasure, I'd say. I would love to play a D&D campaign in that world. That would be so fun. And on the other hand, there's Alien versus Predator. Both of those are expeditions right but obviously there's twists and turns along the way

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, exactly. You know, I think. I think it's such an important story format for movies especially, but for D&D there's so many great things that you can do with it. Many D&D campaigns, like longer running campaigns, kind of take the form of an expedition or they can, but I think that there are specific things that you can do that can kind of set it apart and offer a new type of experience. to players. But you know, I think that our greatest teacher of what makes an expedition different from a normal campaign is Dora the Explorer, if we're being honest.

Justin:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

I just I was thinking about it earlier and I was like actually she's like the kind of format of her thing of like, oh we need something we're going to go through this dark tunnel around the mountain, you know, for anyone who isn't from the US, Door of the Explorer is this cartoon that, you know, was supposed to teach, you know, English speaking. Children about how to speak Spanish, right? It was mostly in English But you know she'd have teach some Spanish phrases and the kind of the whole thing was like, oh she needed an object In order to get the object she would find the map in her backpack Look at it. It'd be like oh you do these go past these three places with their own challenges And then you reach the thing that you're trying to get and that's kind of I think that can really be a good benchmark for what makes an expedition different.

Justin:

Yeah, it's kind of the idea of... Well, and I guess we need to be careful when talking about expedition because it could be easy to think, oh, well, that's just the hero's journey, right? Because the hero is supposed to, you know, theoretically go on this quest. But generally expeditions have sort of a different feel, right? With the hero's journey... there's the quest, but I feel like the expedition, one of the biggest parts of the expedition is the travel. Right? It's the idea that we, like the quest is to travel, you know, to go there, to get there. And I think you're right exactly in that Dora the Explorer, every episode, well I haven't watched it in a while, so

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha.

Justin:

I don't know exactly every episode, but you know, she's always calling for the map, right? Which... tells you kind of the steps to get there, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, exactly. Like I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. An expedition is different in the way that the journey is kind of the main thing you're focusing on. And we're not saying this in a, you know, philosophical like, oh, find joy in the journey thing that we're

Justin:

Friendship

Tanner Weyland:

saying that literally.

Justin:

was the treasure all along.

Tanner Weyland:

Exactly. You know, I think that that's I don't want you to think well, duh, Tanner, everything's about the journey. No, I'm saying the X and expedition type campaign should be about the journey. It's about getting there. And it's about the things that you kind of carry through throughout the journey, right? Like to hop into it about like some specifics. I think that I think another thing that we could look at that's honestly analogous to Dory the Explorer is Indiana Jones. And if you kind of compare these two examples, you find out a few things that really, I've seen in a lot of D&D expedition campaigns that really work. Now first, I would say that it's very important that in an expedition, that in an expedition campaign, you emphasize time and resources. Now, by this I mean like usually and I do this too. DMs, we will kind of retcon or hand wave using rations from day to day or food or anything like that, right? And even like, oh man, it's really cold outside because it's winter. You know, we'll do flavor snow or flavor sun, if that makes sense, where we're like, oh, the sun's in the sky and it's hot. But then you just go into the inn and you're fine or oh, man, it's just it's pouring rain out there. Luckily, you're near your house or you go back inside with an expedition. You actually take these mundane elements and you're like, hey, roll skill checks, it's freezing outside. or man the rain has gotten really hard and there's a mudslide on the road that you're on you know and you kind of make the journey have traps you make the journey have enemies you make the journey have items in a way that usually you might reserve for just like a dungeon you know

Justin:

Absolutely. And in bringing that up, I think it's important to talk about two things. One is you can make an expedition, sorry, my kid's crying in the other room, but you can make an expedition campaign, not be an expedition campaign, right? So what do I mean by that? In my current campaign, right? The party entered the Astral Sea to get to, well, in my campaign, the Astral Sea is basically treasure planet rules, right? Where every

Tanner Weyland:

classic.

Justin:

plane is, yeah, super fun, every plane is a different planet and you can get there on basically, you know, spaceships. And they are trying to get to this far off planet to rescue some friends of one of the party members who have become slaves, right? So theoretically, that could be an expedition, right? Somehow, I made it not an expedition, right? And I think part of it was, I definitely forgot that you have very cool touristy spots, like we kinda talked about, it's this journey. But I think I also fell into the main trap of expedition-type stories in that I made it a slog. right? There's one side where you have to keep track of rations and you know you keep track of the days you're traveling and there's the other side where you're essentially playing you know Oregon Trail where every day is very similar right? Like you sort of run out of things to do every day and I think it might be good for us to talk about ways to make it so it isn't so much of a slog but you still incorporate some of those really interesting mechanics like, hey, it's been snowing every day, are you gonna get a point of exhaustion today, right? Or what can you do around that? So I think that might be something we should talk about too.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, I totally agree. Cause cause I've noticed that too, where it's like, hey, you might get excited as a DM about this concept of like, oh my goodness, I'm going to have him roll for survival in a real way, you know, uh,

Justin:

I'm gonna go.

Tanner Weyland:

the ranger is going to just hit his peak in this campaign because you know, we're going to be out in nature, but that can get really boring because it's one thing to be like, oh my goodness, a monster like breathes ice breath on you. You know, uh, roll this kind of check, right? Um, that's very different from like, oh, hey, you've been a cold for the past few days, roll a check to see if you get, uh, hypothermia or something, right? Uh, that if, cause like a monster is very exciting and it's very immediate. Uh, weather is not. And so I think that a few ways that you can do this is, you know, having limits and stating those kind of like. Limits to the players in a way that they can understand like being like, oh my goodness You see that the map you are halfway through this region. That's very snowy You still have another half What's your plan, you know and giving them specific things? consequences, but maybe even more specifically giving them like Explicit goals like being like if you do not find shelter you're going to have, I'm going to roll a thing and if you fit and if it passes, you lose a finger. Right? If you give certain things like that, that it's like time barred, it's not just a consistent thing. It's like, it's one event that you're being explicit about, but it has a consequence and it has a specific goal that you are giving them. I think that can add some good direction that will kind of make it less of a slog. If that makes sense.

Justin:

Oh yeah, I think you're exactly right. And another thing that you were, you were saying that really kind of triggered on me, maybe one of like the biggest keys of the expedition is the map, right? And normally it's, it's a multi-staged map, right? It's a, it's a treasure map where, you know, take 15 paces to this landmark and then do something else rather than go into the astral seat and then go to this planet, right? Like my, my case. uh, and with those sort of maps where it's like, uh, and then the map doesn't always necessarily need to be clear, right? But it does take you from point A to B to C to D to E to F, which is where you actually want to go all along the way. Those points are points of interest. And at that point, it becomes a lot easier to do every single day or do like what a lot of movies do and do sort of montages, right? where, you

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

know, for the next two or three days, you guys are walking through the snowstorm and, you know, behind the scenes, you can roll whatever you want and decide, oh, a storm hit. And guess what? Like Tanner said, you guys have to find shelter in the next half hour, or each of you are losing something that's attached to your body. And I think, you know, that makes it a little bit more manageable, even for the DM, because you know, all you have to worry about is this stretch. and then this stretch and then this stretch, right? And it's, I know we talk a lot about railroading a lot on the show.

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

It's railroading, except you're not railroading because they're railroading themselves, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah. And that's the thing. In Expedition, I think you have a little bit more license to Railroad because you're kind of being like, hey, I'm taking you on a literal journey. Come along with me. You know, so that kind of. brings us to another part of this that it's like, hey, if you're going to do an expedition type campaign, you're going to want some interesting spots along the way, right? Yeah, you want the journey to be interesting, but you want some specific spots that fulfill a couple of things. One, they show a change of pace, right? So it's not always going to be a city, you know, and it's not always going to be a dungeon. It's going to be a little peppering of each, right? And sometimes it's just going to be a little oasis, right? an oasis where it's like, oh. monster attacks them or You know or a trap or they find a little tunnel like at the bottom At the very center of the oasis of the pool that if they dive down into there's a treasure chest or something You know you want highlights along the way almost like tourist spots That stand out right much like you would in your if you were to go on an expedition I say in quote marks because like The most the closest anyone gets to an expedition now nowadays is going on vacation. But you have, like the travel is interesting, but it's less interesting if you're not going between interesting spots, you know?

Justin:

Absolutely. And even on that note, I would say the very last place has to be like the most interesting or the most desirable or something like that, right? Like, you know, it's the Holy Grail, you know, that you have to get at the end of the challenges, right? Or it's treasure planet, right? Which could theoretically be considered an expedition.

Tanner Weyland:

Oh yeah,

Justin:

So.

Tanner Weyland:

totally.

Justin:

You definitely want to bake that into the story. Whether you tell your party members everything, it's up to you, but they need to have some sort of large motivation to get there. And because of that, because there's often this large motivation to get there, there will often be reasons for others to try and get there as well. And

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

you know... in expeditions, I think one constant has to be danger, right? And the

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

unknown, right? You know, thinking about Jumanji, like the latest Jumanji movies where they're in a video game, right? That's sort of an expedition because they're going from point to point to point trying to do certain things and the goal

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

is to get out of the game. There's always this nemesis that kind of wants the opposite of what they want, but there's also like sort of environmental danger. And so You never know if when you get to point B, you're gonna see the nemesis or it's just gonna be like a sandstorm, right?

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Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. I was sick last week, so Justin was able to make time from his paternal duties with the baby, and I am truly appreciative. I’m glad to be talking with you all today again, and I wanted to talk about an important topic that is under appreciated in TTRPGs, but extremely focused on in video games: multiple-option dialogue options.

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Welcome dungeon masters to How to Be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. Today, I’m your host, Justin Lewis and together let’s discover how to make every session the best session of Dungeons and Dragons with you as the dungeon master.

Today, like so many other episodes, I’ll be discussing some tips for how to deal with a particular problem that faces many dungeon masters.

Unlike other episodes though, today I offer my point of view with the full knowledge that I myself am new at facing this particular challenge, and I hesitate to say anything because I don’t want to offend, or give the impression that I even know half of what I am doing. Today, we are going to talk about how to be a dungeon master and play D&D regularly when you have kids.

Big topic, I know.

As some of you might know, my child was born back in August of 2023 and him coming into my life has really shaken things up for me, as parenthood has for many people. I firmly believe that parenthood changes a lot of for you, but it doesn’t have to delete your hobbies and passions, and in fact, one of the great challenges of parenthood is finding ways to continue doing all the things you love with the addition of your family. I think that is a great example to set for your kids and it leads to a lot less resentment later in life. Obviously, I’m not saying to forget about your kids and your family. There is a fine line to walk and sometimes you do have to pass up a particular session because your family needs you. But hopefully, with these tips, that won’t happen as often.

Disclaimer

Before I get started into these tips, I need to give a brief disclaimer.

You absolutely need to know and understand that I am in no way a parenting expert. I do not give any of this as direct parenting advice. Instead these are ideas that you can try out. I’ve only been a parent for a little more than a month now and am not the guru of parenting that I wish I was. So take my advice at your own peril…

That said, these ideas aren’t that extreme. With some tweaking and changing, you should be able to make it work for your unique situation.

So with that, let’s get into it.

Get the Buy In of Your Significant Other

The first thing you need to do is get the buy in of your significant other. This is crucial because as we all know, communication is key in any relationship. It’s also important for you and your partner to both communicate your wants and wishes. You want something, in this case you probably want to play D&D. Your partner wants something too. The only way to know what they want and to let your partner to know what you want is to start communication.

This works the same way with partners where one partner is playing D&D or partners where both partners play in the same D&D group.

If the partners are in the same D&D group, then the buy-in you each need to give and get is for a commitment from each of you to do whatever it takes to make the games happen and make them fun for each partner. This means that each of you will need to be willing to adapt and try new things that might feel weird or look strange.

If only one partner is playing in a D&D group, then the buy-in changes a little bit. You both need to give your buy-in but in this case, the terms change. In the case of the non-player partner of the relationship, the buy-in needs to be such that they are willing to watch the child/children while you play D&D. They need to understand how long the games will be and the cadence of the games. They must not be surprised at the length or frequency of the games.

On the player side the terms are a little different. You will likely need to show a willingness to make it so the non-player partner can have a similar opportunity to hang out with friends. Be willing to watch the child while they go out every once in a while. Or just be willing to be a little more present with the child while you are at home. Honestly, it’s very possible that you don’t even need to give anything for your partner to be ok with you going to play D&D every week. But, make sure their wants and wishes are heard otherwise, you’ll be headed for disaster.

Get Table Buy In

Even after you and your partner come to an agreement, you’re not done getting buy-in. Now, you’ve got to get your table’s buy-in. Because this podcast is for dungeon masters specifically, I’ll talk from that viewpoint, but that doesn’t mean that this advice doesn’t apply to everyone at the table.

First, you need to help the adjust their expectations of you. You have a child, a family. That takes precedence. That means that sometimes, you won’t have as much time to prepare the sessions, or sometimes your D&D sessions will need to be cut a little short. It might even mean that you’ll have to DM with a baby on the hip. Your situation will look different and unique and your players need to understand and be given the chance to decide whether that’s something they want to deal with. It’s your child, not theirs. It wouldn’t hurt in this instance to also explain your commitment to the table as well. They would probably like to know that you care about the game and want it to be a success.

Just as long as everyone at the table is fully aware (for the most part) of the experience they will have while playing, and they are all ok with it, including you, then you have set your table up for success.

Enlist the Help of Relatives or Friends

The next thing you can do is start compiling a list of people that you 100% trust that would be willing to watch your child while you play D&D. Often relatives are a good place to start. If there are Grandparents in the mix, then that is an excellent place to start, but brothers, sisters, cousins, and neighborhood babysitters work too. The type of babysitter will change depending on how many kids you have and what ages. Also, if you can find a relative or someone who is willing to watch your child for free, that is ideal. Paying for a babysitter every week can start to add up. You might also consider doing some sort of a babysitting trade, finding someone who needs it on days or nights when you are not playing.

Adapt

The last general tip that I can give is that you need to be just as creative at finding a solution as you are when you play D&D. Life can be complicated and messy and when you can think outside the box to find uncommon solutions, things work all the better.

Now, let’s talk about some more specific methods that might be just what you need to make playing D&D with a child or children at home that much more possible.

D&D While Your Child is Sleeping

The first method you might give a try is to play D&D when the kid/s go to bed. Most kids have an earlier bedtime so playing afterhours might be the solution you’ve been looking for. If your group has content that belongs after-hours anyways, then this might be a match made in heaven.

If you do want to give this method a try, there are a few things that you should think about.

How loud is my group?

If your group happens to play loud and proud then you might consider trying a different method. Or you might think about soundproofing the room you play in. At the end of the day (pun intended) the last thing you want is for your child to not be able to sleep and to start crying or screaming or just having a bad time.

Will we be playing at my house?

If your group doesn’t play at your house, then having your child sleep may be somewhat strange depending on the circumstances. For example, if your group normally plays at the local game store, then having a child sleep while you play probably won’t work without a babysitter. On the other hand, if your group plays at a friend’s house and that friend is ok with you bringing a pack-n-play or a bassinet and setting it up in another room where the child can get some nice sleep, then that totally works.

Will the child sleep in the same room that we will play D&D in?

If you have a small infant like I do, then having them sleep in a different room would probably be a very unpleasant thought, at least in the newborn phase of your child’s growth. For me, I would need to have the baby in the same room in a bassinet or something. If the child is older, then having them in another room would likely be the ideal situation so that the child can get a good night’s sleep.

Will the child need monitoring?

If the child is young enough, monitoring might need to be set up to keep track of the child and to make sure that they do not fall victim to any danger that could harm them. If they are in the same room, then no worries. If they are in a different room, then you may want to bring all of your technological prowess to bear. Maybe the simplest and cheapest method of monitoring a child would be to set up a video call between two phones and position one to always be able to see the child.

More expensive options include things like an Owlet camera or a simple baby monitor and more.

D&D With Baby In Arms

If you have an infant like myself, then another option opens up and that is to play D&D with the child in your arms. Obviously, this option is only available if your table is open to it, knowing that there is a major possibility that at random intervals, the person holding the baby will have to tap out of the game for a moment to take care of baby, and also there is the obvious risk of a crying baby mid-game.

That said, if your baby is young enough then having them sit in your arms (or something like it) can be a great thing. For example, even as I wrote this episode, I had my son in a baby carrier strapped to my chest. I sat at my kitchen table writing while gently swaying back and forth to keep him calm and entertained. Whatever you have to do works.

When pursuing this method, it may help to have various tools at your disposal. For exampl the baby carrier that I already mentioned or some handy swaddles to keep the baby wrapped up nice and snug.

Having some clean binkies or toys might be what you need to do. If you are breastfeeding your baby, having one of those breastfeeding shawls or covers so you can feed while at the table would be helpful.

In this case, I would say having your character sheet on some sort of computer or ipad would be preferable to having it on paper because an electronic device is a lot harder to get mixed up when you have a squirming baby in your arms.

Of course, at the end of the day, what works for you is what works.

Get a Babysitter

Honestly, when it comes to getting a babysitter, I’ve said so much already that how can I possibly say more? Watch me!

When it comes to finding a local babysitter you can try a few different things. First, I would ask family and friends, in that order. Family is usually more willing to help but friends can be just as awesome too. Whoever it is, make sure you trust them completely and that you leave crystal clear instructions on how to care for your child and what to do in an emergency.

After that, you might try your neighbor kids if they are in that perfect babysitting age. 12-16 is generally a good range. Personally I would opt for a girl babysitter just because they would generally be more patient, kind and understanding of my child’s needs than a teenage boy would be but you do you.

If you still can’t find a babysitter, you can ask at your local church if you attend to see if someone there might be able to help.

After that, start asking people you know if they know someone. Always vet the baby sitter to hearts content when getting referrals because sometimes things aren’t as they appear.

Finally, you can hire a professional baby sitter from professional service, though that will likely cost you much more.

Involve Your Child

Now, if you are unlike myself and your kid/s are old enough to start to understand some of the game, then you might consider involving them a little in the game.

Again, though it doesn’t need to be said, I’ll say it anyways, you can only do this if your D&D group is ok with it.

You also need to realize that if your other players in the group have kids too they might want to involve their kids and the whole thing can spiral out of control real fast so be wise.

But if your child is 5 - 10 you might have them sit at the table and play the game with you. If your DM is ok with it, the Child could become sort of an NPC, like a child in the game or some sort of familiar. You can ask them what to do and how to act in certain situations.

If you play a paladin, cleric or a warlock, you might have your child play the part of your Diety or patron respectively, giving you guidance in moments of need. This will likely lead to some laughs along the way and you and your kid will bond over a very fun hobby, D&D.

If the child is younger, you might have them sit on your lap and roll the d20 anytime you need one rolled. They can be around you and the game and start to enjoy rolling the dice, seeing the outcome and hearing everyone at the table cry is dismay or triumph.

This all only works if your child cooperates obviously, so don’t press the point if kiddo isn’t impressed.

Play Shorter Sessions

One of the simplest tactics to take if you have to balance being a parent and a Dungeon Master is to play shorter sessions. I know that we are all thinking that this is probably the least desirable method, but you have to admit that it is effective. Ask your players if they would be willing to play shorter sessions. Most will agree just to be able to keep playing.

Doing shorter sessions is a good method to try for a couple reasons. For one, you don’t always have to play shorter sessions. Sometimes, you’ll get a good 4 hour game in and other times, you may have to cap it at one hour.

Secondly, having shorter sessions means that you have to prepare less. You don’t have to come to the table with 4 hours prepared if you are planning on only playing for 2.

Even though it might be a really great idea to do shorter sessions, you still need to keep some things in mind.

With shorter sessions, you will need your table to understand that they really need to pay attention and be courteous when the spotlight is on someone else. It often happens that one character is doing something while everyone else waits. In those momen

Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. Little 'ol Tanner is flying solo today with a great topic. We are going to talk about something that is important to every D&D interaction that we have with players: “Yes And”

This improv ability isn't just for comedy, and it isn't something that takes an improv class to implement in your D&D campaign. It just takes a shift in mindset and some practice.

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When you set the scene you need to tap into the five senses. When it comes to sound one of the best ways to do that is with music, sound effects, and ambience. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Monument Studios. Monument Studios provides an easy-to-use Soundboard perfect for Dungeon Mastering. If you want to see this in action, go to fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off of your first month of their Fantasy+ App by using the code BETTERDM at check out. Again that is fantasy-plus.com and BETTERDM at checkout.

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Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent! My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. Today, we just have one big announcement about Justin: he had his baby! Congratulations, Justin!

For today's topic, we are going back to the basics: Saving throws. Do you just see them as a slightly different type of roll, or do you see them as an opportunity to build suspense and prompt character struggle or change? Let's talk about it.

Find out more about our podcast and also Monsters.Rent here: https://monsters.rent/podcast/

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Here's the transcript of today's episode:

Tanner Weyland:

to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. This is Tanner Weyland, and I'm here with Justin Lewis. Say hi!

Justin:

Bye.

Tanner Weyland:

Hi. Perfect. We're glad to be here with you guys. And today we're going to have a little, you know, just a little question episode, just a little episode where we're answering one question. How do you convince a non-playing person to play D&D? Justin, let's get your thoughts.

Justin:

Alright, for me, step one, ask what movies they like to watch, right? Because most people like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, you know, or any number of fantasy movie. And once you know, oh, you like Harry Potter, well, how is Harry Potter any different than Dungeons and Dragons, right? That would be my first tip. Ask what movies they like.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, one thing that I would throw in there is convince the people around them. Like, for example, my wife, she's never played D&D, never wants to. She's firmly in the camp that's like, oh, that's nerdy stuff, you know, and yet she has friends, friends that she thinks are cool. who liked D&D and they heard that, you know, I'm into D&D. They're like, oh my goodness, you should have read a D&D campaign or a session for us, right? And I was like, oh yeah, that sounds great. And then, you know, the thought was planted in my mind. I was like, I can get Kirstie to join. These are her work friends. Of course she would play. Why would she not? She tried to play a little bit of hard to get. It's like, oh, I don't know. I just want to watch you guys play, but. I was like, I think I can get her specifically because she has friends, people that she respects as normal people, not as nerds like me. And that's a good way to convince them. And I think pairing with that, even if she doesn't play, if she sits and sees how an actual game is played, right? Because I got into D&D, frankly, because I started listening to podcasts, you know, live play podcasts. And that was, I was like, oh, this is really fun. I can do this. This isn't too far of a leap. She's never going to do that. What she could do is get a in-person live play podcast, quote unquote, you know, where I'm playing with her friends. If I'm unable to convince her, of course. And that would totally open up the way for like, Hey, if they like it enough and they want to do it again, she'd probably be willing to do the next time. Right.

Justin:

Absolutely. In fact, my wife's aunt still sort of thinks D&D is related to devils and demons, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Oh, yeah, the satanic panic kind of thing.

Justin:

Yeah, exactly.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

And it's not so much that she like actively thinks that. She just had a bad experience essentially, but her daughter, right, is living with my wife's parents and because of that her daughter, her daughter my wife's cousin, is not allowed to play D&D, right? But she's come over while we're having our sessions and watched us play and we ask her and we say like, hey, do you think there's anything wrong with this? And she's like, no, it kind of sounds a little boring. Which I mean, you know, that's her opinion, but exactly what Tanner said, expose them a little bit to D&D, right? Have them watch the D&D movie. And everyone knows the D&D movie was funny because you have, you know, lots of kind of new up and coming actors as well as some pretty old and storied actors, you know, who Hugh Grant has been in countless movies, but you have them

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

watch the D&D movie, they're going to laugh, they're going to see things that are pretty cool, and they're going to ask questions like, wait a second, is Thimbershod that giant fat dragon? Is he like a real character? And the answer is yes. He actually features in The Lost Minds of Vandelver, which is in fact basically like the first D&D anything that most people come in contact with, Would You Like to Play, right? That's an easy segue.

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm. Exactly. And, you know, above all, just... I think if you bring a good positivity to D&D when you talk about it, you know, talk about how fun it was. Talk about, you know, things that you think that they would really find funny or interesting. You know, if you're a DM, which I mean, you're listening to this podcast, so hopefully you're trying to be, then just be like, hey, I was really stumped with this thing, but then I came up with this cool solution. And they really enjoyed it. You know, just be super positive, even if they think you're so nerdy and that it's not to them, they're not going to be intimidated by it, right? And that kind of opens up a pathway for them to be open in other ways, right?

Justin:

Yeah, and along those lines, don't push too hard because our natural inclination as human beings is when someone tells us, you know, you need to do this. Our natural inclination is to say, no, I don't, and I'm not going to because you told me to, right? So in trying to get them to play, make simple invitations, say, it means a lot to me, and I enjoy doing it with my friends. In fact, it keeps my relationships with certain friends. strong, you know, sometimes you don't have the ability to see them, but everyone can schedule something and make it happen. But anyways, don't push too hard.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and I think something that I would just throw in as kind of a gateway drug to tabletop you know role-playing games is you know there are easy tabletop role-playing games and then there are also board games that include a little bit of role-playing right? I would say that that certain games like based off of mafia, like the, what is it? One Night Werewolf

Justin:

Yep.

Tanner Weyland:

game. Like to some extent that's a lot of like playing a role. And then there's other games where you're like working with someone to do like, it's kind of co-op, right? Like there's Pandemic, there's... Oh man, there's this firefighter board game. I'm blanking out the name. But anyway, there are these games where it's like, hey, you're embodying a role, you're role playing, and you know, you're working together with some people. Those are great gateways to doing something more serious. And then if you're trying to do a gateway role playing game, there's a lot of options, right? Like there's some games that... Like there's one game called Dread. It's kind of horror based, so I don't know if you, you know, do it with everyone who you're trying to get into D&D. But the whole idea is that you're playing Jenga. It's a role playing game based around Jenga.

Justin:

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Tanner Weyland:

And each time, like you have, you can find pre-written scenarios, but every time that a player wants to do something, they pull a block, put it on top. And then they do the thing that they said their character would do, right? But the moment that tower falls down, oh my goodness, that person's dead. And the DM, you know, who can be you in this case, kind of takes over that character and they die or transform or who knows what, right? Something horror related. That's a very simple game that doesn't require a lot of rules. And it can be a nice segue, you know.

Justin:

Yeah, another game is Betrayal at Hill House. That

Tanner Weyland:

Oh, exactly.

Justin:

one, it's basically an RPG in board game format. Kind of, you know, going the opposite way rather than using games. You know, if you know this person to be one who is very much into personal development, challenge them and say, have you ever wanted to try and see how quick you are at thinking? you know, using your wits, being creative. How creative are you at problem solving? How good are you at improvising? And how good are your performance and presentation skills? Well, Dungeon and Dragons is the best kind of mix of all of those because it's fun and it does challenge you to kind of think on your feet and improvise, take things as they come and try and craft new solutions that are unique and sometimes absurd.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and kind of as a last point from me, I think that what you said about not pushing is important. Now, if you did wanna do kind of a last hurrah, if you will, I think that you could try and ask them. to do a favor for you, you know, to be like, hey, I wrote this thing, I really think it'd be fun and I have a couple of friends, you know, or mutual friends who want to play it, but we really could use another player. Would you be willing to sit in just one time, right? Or you could even be more direct and be like hey, I've always loved the idea of playing with you But I never thought that you'd be into it Even though I'm sure you'd be great. Would you try it once for me? You know, and if they're like hard no, don't push it too much But I think a lot of a lot of people if you're that direct and that honest about like hey I would really like to try it because if you did like it, it'd be really fun then that would be, you know, I think some people would be willing to try that. I think that'd be the right approach for certain, you know, individuals. And if you're able to do that, then you try it. And if they don't like it, they don't like it. You know, you tried your best, you can move on. You can do it knowing that you've put your best foot forward and that they've actually tried it and you can be grateful and thank them for that. And it can be a memory, you know, to look back on.

Justin:

Absolutely. The last thing I'd say is, even though you shouldn't push too hard, you shouldn't give up. I have a friend who I've been inviting to play D&D with me for the last three years plus, and I feel like I can feel him slowly slipping, right? Eventually I'll get him to say yes. But sometimes people just aren't in the right space. You might ask them one day and they'll say yes. So don't give up.

Tanner Weyland:

Exactly. And with that, you know, we invite you to go out there. Give it another try with your friend, with your family member, your significant other, to, you know, invite them into the rich, rich world of D&D. And, you know, even if it doesn't work now, keep trying. Try in different ways because we know that it's going to be a great experience for you. And until next time, let's roll initiative.

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Suddenly, time seems to slow down. The arrows rain down like slow pebbles skipping across a lake rather than the hail of death they’d been seconds before. Lightning crawls across the sky, achingly slow, reaching for that next empty space. These demonlings rush about, and all the while, your eyes remain fixed on Eloin. You see her grip at her stomach, feeling around the blade that runs right through her abdomen. The demon facing her lifts his impaled sword so that Eloin is at his eye level. The demon laughs and then callously pulls her off his sword with one massive hand. He smiles a pointed grin and then tosses her behind him into the swarm of demonlings…

Dungeons and dragons is very fun game with very dynamic emotions and experiences. We all come to the table eager to experience things that we’ve never experienced. Sometimes we do experience things that we’ve been through before, and when that happens, there’s a 50/50 chance that the experience is nostalgic, or traumatizing.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. Today, I’m your host, Justin Lewis, and I want to talk about a pretty hard subject; death.

In the real world, people generally avoid the topic of death. For most people it causes a lot of discomfort. In the world of D&D, our characters provide death for many an NPC, yet when faced with their own demise, our players plead and beg the DM to make it not so.

That can be pretty hard as the DM. Should you cave to your players’ desires and let them live on? Or should you let things play out. If they die they die. Still, other DMs decide to play the part of the villain and rain down death as those demons I was talking about did.

It’s all a complicated discussion so, without further ado, let’s get into it.

In the Player’s Handbook, the rules for death state that when a character falls to 0 hit points, they fall unconscious, and begin death saving throws.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with how Death Saves work here’s a refresher.

The unconscious character maintains their spot in initiative, or an initiative is created.

Whenever their turn comes around they roll a d20. If their result is an 11 or higher, then that is considered a success. 3 success stabilizes their character, and they remain unconscious but are no longer dying.

If their result is a 10 or less, then that is considered a failure. 3 failures, and their character dies.

If their results is a natural 20, then the character immediately stabilizes, gains 1 hit point is conscious and can proceed with their turn (although there are many differing rules surrounding this particular part).

If their result is a natural 1 then that counts as 2 failures.

Obviously, there is a lot of room here for the addition of homebrew rules that can make death saves very fun.

One of my favorite homebrew rules is that the death saves have to be rolled privately between the player and the DM and that player cannot make the results known to the other players. They cannot speak in fact, because, they are dying. I heard this rule from an interview on Dimension 20.

But regardless of what you decide to do, there is an even more important question that you need to answer first.

Before your players even come close to dying, you need to decide whether or not character death will be allowed at the table.

You might scoff as you listen to this, thinking, “Well, of course my characters can die. There are no true stakes if they can’t die.”

Maybe, maybe not.

Death is a very powerful plot point. The Fellowship of the Ring would not have had half as much emotion if we all didn’t think that Gandalf had died halfway through. Anakin Skywalker might have had a harder time transitioning into Darth Vader had Padme survived. Death is a very powerful tool for the storyteller.

But with great power comes great responsibility.

One of the biggest responsibilities you have as a dungeon master is making sure that your players are generally happy.

Because D&D can sometimes be a mirror in which we can see reflections of our normal lives, we sometimes must be careful as to what we put into the mirror (bad analogy). For example, if a loved one of one of your players has passed away recently, then having someone die in their D&D session might not be the right thing.

Before you make any sort of decision, ask your players what sort of things they want to have in their D&D game. They get to choose what happens just as much, if not more than, you do.

You can ask them about all sorts of topics and themes to include in the D&D campaign, but definitely make sure death in there.

Assuming your players have opted to avoid the inevitability of death, you now have to do some fancy footwork to make the story believable and worthwhile.

On one hand, having a table that can’t die is fun because the players know that they have some pretty powerful plot armor. But that can quickly make the game boring. It’s not a big deal to fight a lich if you know that your player will not die.

So to make the stakes still high even though the mortality rate is low, here are a few things you can do:

1. Collateral Damage: Assuming your player characters are developed and have been able to form important relationships with other NPCs, those NPC can become the targets of your Villains malicious attempts. This is also known as “The Lois Lane” tactic. Superman is impervious, so Lois Lane, his lady love, often comes under the gun of Lex Luthor. Likewise with your  heroes, they can save the NPC in distress who really is just an innocent bystander… or are they…
2. Unintended Consequences: Another method you can try is to add tangential consequences anytime a hero “dies”. For example. Let’s say a particular Diety has decided to favor the party. This deity essentially prevents any party member from full dying. The death saves are still rolled, but if the character would die, the Patron God would step in and prevent them from dying miraculously. The God, however, gives this boon with some strings attached. Now the party has to do some sort of quest for the God in return for being preserved. Another consequence could madness. The more often a character should be dead but isn’t, the more insane the character becomes. You can spice this up with some fun voices that they can only hear and other things. Really your options for random consequences are endless.
3. Loss of limb or ability:  You could require that everytime a player would normally have died, they simply roll on a permanent injury table, losing a hand, leg, eye or just suffering some minor wound. This particular method only works for a short period of time because if it really was “long term” then after they lose a limb, combat would become harder, making the chances that they fall unconscious and do deaths saves again go up, which in turn would make them lose another faculty. It’s a vicious cycle.

Of course, there is nothing written down that you have to even do any of these methods. You could simply just decide that none of your player characters die. I think for very young groups, like maybe below 10, this would be an ok situation.

If you do decide that none of your PCs die, then you might also need to consider whether the enemies die as well. Will your game be one of all non-lethal damage?

I think for most tables, that just isn’t a situation that would please people. But it can be done.

So, now that we’ve talked about preventing Player Character death from happening at your table, we need to talk about letting it happen.

After your table has decided that they do want to let nature be nature and those things that die will simply pass on to the next existence, you need to consider a few questions.

You don’t really need to consult your players but if you want some of their input that’s fine. You need to decide what sort of gaming experience a character death will be. In video games, when you die, you usually revert to the last save or the start of the level. D&D usually isn’t like that (though, I suppose you could make an interesting game mechanic that reverts certain things if a character dies). Usually, the character dies, then in the next session, the Player introduces their new character in a fun and interesting way.

In some D&D groups, the player might just create a carbon copy of their previous character and call them a different name. Viva La Dirt League has a whole comedic sketch on this in their D&D Logic videos. Really, it’s up to the DM whether that sort of shenanigan will be allowed. For some players, it’s really more just about loving a specific class-race combo and playstyle that they want to emulate. For the most part though, players will create a new character when they die without problems.

You, as the DM, though, need to understand the mood of the table and the playstyle of the group, to correctly portray any individual death scene. For example, if your table is generally a table that laughs much more than they are serious, then making a death scene funny, might not be a bad thing. Even on a particular day, if the party seems to want to just goof off, then go ahead and goof off with them.

But….

If your party is of the more serious types, then you absolutely need to treat the character death with all the gravity that you can muster. We play these characters week in and week out. We know that they are not real and that they are just make believe, but surprisingly, when we play them, they start to feel a little real. We find ourselves doing things that “the character would do” that we would never do. So when a character dies, you need to be careful not to make light of the situation in case one of your players is not yet ready to let go of them.

Honestly, because it is a touchy subject, I would err on the side of being too serious rather than making light of a situation that could be difficult for one of your players. They could resent you, even subconsciously, and decide that they don’t want to play with you any more, which is a loss in my book.

Another consideration that you need to make as the Dungeon master is whether or not to actively seek the destruction of your players. Obviously, whenever combat comes up, every DM does “their best” to kill the players, but this consideration is a deeper decision. There are times when one player goes down, and the DM needs to think about whether the enemy would continue attacking the downed player to finish the job or if they would divert their attention to other targets. In some instances, the downed player becomes a bigger target because they are downed. 

When a DM acts like this, players will naturally be angry. As a DM, you will need to understand the decision you make and be able to defend it. In my opinion. Only do this if you know your players would still play with you after. You don’t want to have to find another D&D group just because you thought a particular enemy would not hesitate to kill.

Now that we have killed your Player Character, you need to also decide whether or not that player can return to the game. In many games, the group can pursue resurrection of the downed individual. You need to decide if that is an option at all, and if it is how easy or difficult it is to make it happen, and how one might go about resurrecting a fallen friend.

For some campaigns, the only thing that is needed it the spell Resurrection, and the 1000 GP diamond that the spell requires. Once your players have access to this spell, can decide that this is all that is needed to revive a character that has died. 

Or you can make things a lot more difficult.

For example, if you desire, you can choose the ban the Resurrection spell from any player character’s spell list. You may decide that NPCs can still cast the spell, so now the PCs need to find an NPC that likes them enough to resurrect one of them. 

Or perhaps, you decide that only high ranking Clerical NPCs can cast resurrect. This would make the quest of finding someone who can perform the spell and is also willing to do so for the party, much more difficult.

Still, other DMs might choose to make resurrection the object of larger quests. You may decide to have your party seek after the Fountain of Youth, or seek divine favor with a hard-to-please deity. Or you can have your party try to find a magic item that restores life, much like the latest D&D movie.

However you do it, if you do decide to make bring a character back to life more difficult or engaged, I would encourage you to make a story arc or a quest out of it. In D&D resurrection should be a very theatrical and earned event, meaning that if you just give it to your players they won’t appreciate it. 

Make it an adventure, that way, when the player does come back, there will be many opportunities for roleplaying, both on their side and on the side of the other players.

Now, assuming that one of your player characters have died, and that they aren’t going to be resurrected anytime soon, you obviously need to help the player who lost their character make a new one.

Here again, you need to make some decisions. 

Are they the same level as the other players?

How will they enter the game?

How do you help them establish relationships with the other players?

Let’s talk about all of these and more.

For the most part, character creation after a character death is just like making any other character. Have the player try and think of something original. They may want to do the same class, and maybe even the same race, but encourage them to give their new character some different personality traits. You don’t want a carbon copy of the old character because that j

Tanner Weyland:

Hello, this is Tanner Weyland. Welcome back to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I'm here with Justin Lewis. Say hi, Justin.

Justin:

Justin.

Tanner Weyland:

Hey, hey, no, don't do that. Just kidding, I'm joking.

Justin:

I'm sorry.

Tanner Weyland:

It's great to have you. Ha ha ha.

Justin:

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Tanner Weyland:

Perfect. So if anyone's new to the podcast, we are going to learn a bit about how to bring our DMing and storytelling to the next level. And today's podcast is kind of a thought experiment. Why don't we see more marriage and families happening, you know, with your players characters? Like, why aren't they starting their own little families and having little kids that they name and train and everything else, right? That's kind of the thought experiment, and finding out if, as DMs, we can do this and make it an enriching and enhancing part of an adventure. First off, Justin, what do you think about this topic?

Justin:

I think it is an amazing topic. First of all, for those of you who don't know, I'm actually expecting my first child as this podcast releases. My wife's due date is August 4th, so it's like two, a week and a half away. So thinking about families is definitely the top of mind. And so I've been thinking of different book ideas that can involve having a baby or just all sorts of. fun ideas and I think and actually on a different side note my own campaign my players have gotten pretty good like they're pretty high level and it's hard for me to throw a balanced challenge at them without killing them and so I was thinking you know what maybe I'll just give them like a baby and they'll just have to deal with that you know

Tanner Weyland:

Just do a little bit of just giving them responsibility, a cold

Justin:

Mm-hmm.

Tanner Weyland:

hard slice of responsibility and see how they deal with it.

Justin:

Exactly. I mean, the unfortunate part of doing that would be is how they treat NPCs thus far is not generally good. So I'm kind of

Tanner Weyland:

No.

Justin:

afraid, you know.

Tanner Weyland:

Well, that's perfect. I mean, in a way that kind of speaks to one of the opportunities of, uh, of making, you know, player relationships actually lead to kind of emotional attachment that speaks to it, right? Cause it's like, you can tell different stories if the players feel emotionally connected, because I think a lot of really great characters, players will try and do that naturally, you know, they'll try and be like, oh, let's find the emotional connection. that would make my character actually want to go save this town or save this little girl who got kidnapped or something, right? But not all players are like that, right? And so kind of giving them that natural connection of like, hey, it's your wife, it's your fiancee, it's the girl in the town who you've been spending more time with or your child. I think that that's just a very natural way to get player buy-in. if that makes sense.

Justin:

Yeah, and I think that can also be a reason why Dungeon Masters might avoid the family just because it might not feel earned, you know?

Tanner Weyland:

Mmm.

Justin:

Or you're trying to establish some sort of family relationship with a character, or sorry, not a character, with a player that generally doesn't do much role playing. And I mean, if you do that, there's a big chance that they'll be like, oh hey brother, okay bye, right. not a big payoff.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that kind of leads naturally into what I want to talk about next, which is like, why don't we see this more often? You know? Uh, and, and I think it's worth talking about from the player perspective and the DM perspective. Uh, for DMs, I think there's a few reasons, you know, frankly, I think that sometimes the subject matter might be awkward, you know, because in order to create a relationship, you have to have flirting. and or dating and you know and some people are just uh maybe don't want to touch that because that's not something they're super confident with uh personally or they don't want to role play flirting as an npc with a player because that can be a little uncomfortable too right especially if that player or the dm you know because it's dm's gonna be like this too especially if they want to like talk about like some of the nitty gritty with like sex or anything like that then it's like oh you're gonna you know makes quite a few people at the table uh uncomfortable honestly you know

Justin:

Absolutely. Honestly, this kind of goes a little bit into... Well, it touches on a topic that is connected to an episode I'm writing currently for later that deals with death, right? And allowing

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

death in your game. And really as a DM, you need to understand and to understand you have to ask your players what they're okay with, right? You know... my personal group and to be honest myself, I tend to shy away from some of the more PG-13 R rated aspects of playing D&D that could be in there, right? Just that's my natural personality, but even if it wasn't, I know that my group, that's generally how they would trend as well, right? We would prefer to stay away from some of the more scandalous types of encounters you could have in D&D. But. if you don't ask your players you won't know right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that I think communication with players is key because kind of jumping over to their perspective, I think that some players don't feel like they've got the metaphorical nod from the DM to be like, hey, you can pursue like some type of more relationship, a deeper relationship with this PC, because you're trying to flesh out your character, you can pursue that and I'm actually going to yes and what you're doing. You know, instead of being like, oh, I'm going to have this NPC not really show that much interest or there's always going to be like an invisible wall of like, hey, what are you wasting your time here with? Let's get back to adventuring. You know? And I think that if you have that kind of. understanding and you also do a little bit of push and pull with them role playing wise, then they'll feel more comfortable actually trying that and that might be a hurdle that they're willing to get over.

Justin:

Absolutely, and honestly I think that should actually be some sort of a you know an exercise that we as dungeon masters Kind of take upon ourselves because I know for me personally when a Character tries to flirt with another NPC or something like that I might get uncomfortable or I might make it kind of comical and pretty quick, right? but like you just said taking it as a yes-and moment and Using it to spice up the plot, right? And actually one of the other points we were gonna bring up was, you know, when that happens, it could be a form of splitting the party, maybe spending too much time on one person. But you know, using it as an exercise, you might be able to think of ways to kind of incorporate this NPC a little bit more. Maybe

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

they decide to flirt with someone else, kind of creating a love triangle in the party, or they're doing it on purpose, trying to split the party, right? And they become kind of a more deviant aspect. uh... or you just find ways to incorporate other people in their own kind of side quests for love i guess you can say or relationships is a better way to say it

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, totally. You know, and I like that idea of making it a multi character thing because I feel like that's another issue here is that if one person is like, not obsessing, but like really focused on like, hey, I saw this barmaid and I'm gonna you know, every evening, gonna go talk with her. Then that's a time sink, you know, and it's almost like You know, I think DMs already worry about one player kind of hogging the spotlight, you know, and if one player has this kind of side relationship that's solely about them. where they want these long conversations back and forth, then it's gonna get boring for the other players. It's gonna feel like it's not worth it for them and they're gonna get annoyed, you're gonna get annoyed that you're spending that time. And so I think that that's something that DMs and you'd be very cognizant of, right?

Justin:

Yeah. And I think, you know, we'll, we'll talk about a little bit of kind of some things you should and shouldn't do. And we'll definitely need to talk on this aspect of, uh, you know, if it is going to be a time sync, what are some things you can do to maybe mitigate that? But before we move on to, to some of our other points, one

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

last reason why I think, you know, we don't often see this and, um, both from a player. perspective and a DM perspective, I think is because, at least in the US, we're conditioned to, you know, they get married and they live happily ever after, end of story, right? Like that's the end

Tanner Weyland:

Yep.

Justin:

of story, which if you've ever been married or started a relationship, right, marriage is the beginning of like a big adventure, right? And

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

I think we need to recognize that we have that condition, right, in our brains. and recognize also that it's kind of hampering some of our creativity, because we're naturally prone to thinking you get a family and you settle down, right? But even in this modern day and age, we should get used to the fact that, you know, a lot of people work remote, so you can technically have your family on the road, and why should D&D be any different, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Absolutely, you know, because I think that some people worry that, oh hey, my type of adventure doesn't fit. And it's true for some of them, right? If you have a campaign or a mini campaign that's a dungeon crawl, it's like, yeah, having, you know, maybe your players could be related to each other, but, well, the player characters, but you're not likely going to have, you know, NPCs in that position. But if it was an expedition or like, or one where you have like a town hub where you're doing adventures from, that's such a perfect opportunity. right especially and we're going to talk about we're going to have an episode soon about you know how to do an expedition campaign, but in a setting like that, it's perfect because it's like, hey, you can have multiple NPCs on that, you know, in the wagon train, on the boat, whatever it is. And that's a great opportunity also for, you know, interacting with the same NPCs over and over again, and them really building a bond there. And I think you shouldn't shy away from that. I know it's easy to just focus on building the bond between, you know, players, characters. that's wonderful. We all want a metaphorical fellowship of the ring, right? Where everyone's like, oh, they're so tight, right? But

Justin:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

it's like, hey, but you can also have other kinds of relationships to just kind of flesh out the relationship meter, if you will, with your player characters. And that's just going to make the story better in general.

Justin:

Absolutely. You know, I think when we say having a Dungeons and Dragons family, right, a family in your D&D campaign, we all too often, and we've even been talking like this, we all too often think about lover, right, wife, husband, child. But I think it'd be interesting to, you know, throw in some dynamics like uncle, grandma, godfather, you know,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah,

Justin:

some of those

Tanner Weyland:

brother, sister,

Justin:

brother, right,

Tanner Weyland:

right? Mm-hmm.

Justin:

cousin, you know, because those... those bring sort of a small distance with them, but they can also bring somewhat of a familiarity, right? And I think that would be

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

a very interesting aspect to add to your story.

Tanner Weyland:

Totally, right? And I think that it's worth talking about, how can you actually implement this well? Because I think it's something that we should all try. It gets us out of our comfort zone, but I think it adds so much more reality to the stakes in the world and also the connection. So first off, what I wouldn't recommend that you do when you're trying to get your players to have these kind of family ties. let's keep in mind that you can have a lot of relationships, like Justin was saying, like in family, but then you can also have friend relationships, right? Like when was the time that the paladin in your party met? another paladin in the city and they went out for drinks and then they also you know went out uh to go you know sword like practice sword fighting together you know things like that can also add depth and an emotional connection that if that you know friend npc got like taken away or hurt suddenly you have like reason you know you have an M.O. to like pursue the bad guy who

Justin:

Absolutely and a couple words of warning with this You won't always plan correctly like sometimes your players will just randomly develop Relationships with NPCs you never planned and ones you did plan they won't care but also as the DM You will likely need to be vulnerable yourself, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

And what do I mean by that? I mean, when you're out having drinks with the paladin, right? The player is going to role play, or ideally they are, right? It's going to be somewhat

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

hard for them to kind of develop those positive emotions that they don't, but they're going to role play, and so will you. And because of that, you will likely need to sort of immerse yourself in these emotions, right? And it's possible that you will have to kind of be vulnerable as the character, which will make you vulnerable as a person, right? It's kind of hard

This episode is about D&D and it’s about life in some small way. Playing dungeons and dragons is something we do just like everything else we do, and because of that, we can often create expectations around the way we do things. 

I think it stems from our ability to think about how we think about things. Maybe subconsciously, we need some sort of purpose or we need to feel like we are achieving something.

Either way, having certain unchecked expectations can be pretty damaging and counterproductive. For the most part, D&D is just a game. For some people it’s a game that is part of their livelihood. Hopefully, for no one is it life or death. Because of that, I think we need to all relax a little bit, breathe and readjust some of our personal expectations that might be making things less than fun.

Believe me, I know that you have had your campaign going for years now and you don’t want to risk it’s fading away by taking a week or two off. I’m in the same boat. My group has been playing for a little over 3 years and to be honest, everytime I think about taking a week or so off, it gives me a little anxiety.

But guess what?

That anxiety is all in my head. 

If we took a week off, we would be back the next week. This expectation is false because everyone in my group is committed to the game.

I know that because we’ve been doing it for 3 years.

So if you have thought that maybe you could use a break as the DM, don’t let yourself stop you from getting a probably well-deserved break.

Either take a week off, or have one of your players DM for a session. In my campaign, I invited each of my players to take on the DMing of storiella within the campaign. Two have taken me up on my invite and we enjoyed their one-shots tremendously.

The best part for me was being able to relax for a week span here and there and let myself recharge a little bit. It also clued me into the fact that things might have gotten a bit stale. For example, I haven’t been doing as many combat encounters as I used to. I’ve also let the story sort of wander away from me, rather than directing it like a stagecoach driver.

As I mentioned before, I’ve recently noticed that I’ve been doing things the same way and things have gotten somewhat stale. I noticed this during my last session with my players in which is was pretty apparent that everyone was somewhat bored. I decided to end the session early and move onto the next story element, rather than making them slug away at the boring parts.

Too often, we slip into routine. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Routine helps us maximize effort and optimize brain power. It’s exhausting to think of everything, that’s why when you have new experiences it seems that time slows down or more fits into a period of time. When you do routine things instead, you find that time passed more quickly, and frankly, sometimes time passes without you realizing what is going on. You find yourself somewhere without knowing how you got there.

When it comes to D&D, routine can be both good and bad. The key is to key off your players. If they seem like they are enjoying every single session, then bully for you. If not, then you should change things up. As they say, “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you always got.”

Youtube is an amazing invention. It has probably educated more people than the public education system ever has, simply because now if you have wifi, you have access to hundreds of millions of videos on all sorts of subjects.

In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, there are Youtube Dungeon Masters a plenty. For the most part, these Online DMs are talented, practiced and have spent many hours and lots of money creating a great D&D production.

Sometimes though, you and I might fall into the trap of watching their shows, loving every minute of it, and then slipping into the thought that everything we do has to mirror or resemble their methods. I know that I often stop myself from doing things just because, “Well, on Critical Role they do this…”

It’s wonderful to have role models and people to try to emulate. Becoming great often involves some form of imitation. The problem arises though when we shackle ourselves to an idea that holds us back and prohibits us from actually having fun. In my last session, as I’ve already mentioned, things had gotten stale. Let me explain a little more about the situation.

My party has entered the astral sea, which in my campaign, functions a lot more like the universe of Disney’s Treasure Planet, with astral ships and so forth. The party is on a voyage to a distant planet that will take them 25 days to get there. At first, I started with a random table so that everyday had the possibility of generating some strange event. Then two of my players hosted one shots, each one filling up one of the days of the voyage. 

After a while, I realized that the traveling bit of it, was rather boring. So contrary to what I believed about how Critical Role functions, I decided to do something radical. I finished the session, and told my party that I’m going to time jump the travel time from now on. I needed to know their plans. 

Whenever you watch the online Dungeon Masters play, they don’t seem to ever have informal planning sessions with their players. Instead, they seem to have everything planned out. 

First, they might have those sorts of planning sessions behind the scenes, we just don’t know. 

But second, it doesn’t matter what they do. What matters is what I do and whether or not it improves the gameplay for myself and my friends. 

Whenever you find yourself falling into the trap of thinking, “I have to do it this specific way,” catch yourself and fling yourself out of the trap. You’ll be happy you did.

“Welcome to Bolgren’s Inn!”

“Penny for your thoughts…”

“At last, my master plan has come to fruition…”

These funny voices are very… well, fun! Everyone likes the funny voices and everyone wishes they could perfect their accent.

But guess what.

You don’t actually have to do any voices.

That’s right. Your best bet might just be making sure the session happens at all. For many DM’s getting players to show up is much more important than whether this character has a South Carolina Accent or an Alabama accent.

In fact, our recent podcast episode with Audiobook Voice Actor, Victor Bevine, sheds a little more light on this topic. Victor said that the main character of any audiobook should be the closest to the actors natural voice. This is because that’s the voice that will be use the most. So even in the big leagues, having a funny voice isn’t near as important as the inflection, the tone, and the emotion behind the voice. Victor voiced Drizzt Do’Urden in R.A. Salvatores fantastic book series set in the Forgotten Realms. If you’ve ever heard the audiobooks, then you know that even though Drizzt’s voice is Victor’s voice, the emotion and tone are perfectly performed. So if nothing else, keep your same voice, but change the inflections and the tone and the emotion and no one will be bothered about the fact that you don’t do accents. They’ll be captivated by your performance just like Victor’s portrayal of Drizzt captivates.

Now, you’re probably wondering why something like this would come from me, one of the founders of Monsters.Rent, a D&D mini subscription rental service…

Well, it’s because I truly believe that you don’t actually have to use minis. There are good reasons to use minis, but to be frank, if it is causing you headaches, then don’t bother with them.

I constantly say that at its heart, D&D is nothing more than a collaborative story. For that story you only need people, something to write, a story and an agreed-upon set of rules. Everything else is just extra layers. Sometimes in the world of being a dungeon master, you don’t have time to add the “extra layers” so don’t. Just do what you can and enjoy every second you can.

Obviously, we all want our players to love every single session. Honestly, it stings a little when you realize mid-session that your players are not having a fun time. There have been a few times when one player or another just hates what’s happening during the session. Because I’m a big softy, whenever this happens, I tend to lighten up things for that player and make it a little better.

But I don’t need to do that.

What I need to do is make sure the story is the best story they’ve ever heard.

In life, there are times that we really don’t like. But without fail, those times always teach us something and give us a different perspective. We may not like those difficult times, but we need the perspective. The same thing is true in a D&D session. Sometimes characters need the hard times to make their character more dynamic and to help them grow. If everything is easy, then the character’s life will be boring. Often, when things get difficult for the character, the player will not be happy, unless they are a masichist.

So rather than ensuring your players love every session, focus on helping your players love the campaign and the story. It’s not a perfect line to walk, but you can do it.

Asking for help is a very difficult thing for some people. Most people I know who Dungeon Master, have become dungeon masters for one of a few reasons:

1. No One Else will do it.

This reason is very common. Not many people want to dive into being a dungeon master so there are a select few who bite the bullet and step up to the plate.

1. They want to tell a story

Others become DM’s because they want to learn how to tell good stories and they believe they are the ones that can do it. There is a certain amount of pride in these people. They feel that they are good storytellers and that they can make an amazing experience.

1. They Love Performing

Still others relish the thought of performing in front of others and being the actor at centerstage. Here too, there is a fair amount of pride.

With the last two reasons, pride is at the heart of why a person becomes a DM. That means for a lot of people, asking for help is a very hard thing to do. But take it from me. Just ask for help.

I’ve already mentioned before how I asked my cohost Tanner Weyland for some help with a one-shot I was planning. It was a prison break type one-shot, and he completely removed one of the barriers I was having in creating the one-shot just by asking a simple question.

Even in my current campaign, I asked my players to help me by hosting one-shots themselves so I could have a small break. There is nothing wrong with asking for a little help. 

I don’t want to spend too much time on this one because frankly, it’s completely erroneous. Let me just tell you something. Either you are good enough to be a DM, or no one is. 

It’s a game for goodness sake. You may not do it as good as some of the more practice DMs, but that’s ok. It requires skills that need practice. 

Honestly, I myself have dealt with some feelings of inadequacy. I’ve been DMing for a while now, I recently have played a couple one-shots with my buddy Jake Packham of the Dungeon Mastermind podcast. He is amazing! I asked him how many times he’s DMd and he said a handful… But he is still so much better than I am. 

Guess what?

That is awesome!

That in no way makes me a worse DM. It just makes me want to play at Jake’s table that much more.

Instead of thinking how good everyone else is compared to you, spend time enjoying being a dungeon master. We tend to ruin ourselves by overthinking things.

Stop.

Just stop.

Enjoy the moment and you’ll realize that you are good enough and getting better everyday.

This last one might be controversial, but you don’t need to be perfectly prepared. There is such a thing as improvisation. Maybe you don’t have all the names of your NPCs perfectly picked out. No problem. Make them up. 

You’ll probably make up some pretty silly names but once you get better, no one will think twice about the names you make up.

Maybe your players decide to follow an adventure hook that is really only half baked. 

Great.

If you need to, put a pause on the session for 15 minutes to give you some time to prepare what comes next. That’s ok too.

No one has everything completely mapped out. No one needs to.

Instead, we need to roll with the punches, plan as much as we can and enjoy the game as it’s going along because we are a player in the game too.

Don’t forget that.

Often times, our expectations are what set us up for failure. Because D&D is a game, we should really lower our expectations of ourselves and our players. Simply enjoying the experience can make it much more enjoyable. Then again, expectations are what eventually make us great. Who’s to say that you shouldn’t hold yourself to the highest D&D standard. You could after all, become the world’s greatest DM who ever lived. If you do, I just ask that you invite me to your table once or twice. Thanks for listening to today’s show. We’ll be back next week for another amazing episode. Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

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justin:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm your co-host today, Justin Lewis, here with Tanner Wayland and Rob Van Auken. Go ahead and say hello, guys.

tanner_weyland:

Hey.

rob:

Good evening, everyone.

justin:

And you are joining How to be a Better DM in our mini-series on collaborating for homebrewing a adventure one-shot. And today, we wanted this to be raw and unfiltered, really, just to show you kind of the ins and outs of how to work with other people, the ebb and flow of ideas, and in our case, starting with one idea, refining it and kind of changing trajectory. Today we are going to be... going through our document that we've worked on together and kind of simplifying things, clarifying things, and we actually should be coming close to the end after I think we have everything figured out today. We should be able to send out some assignments to each of us, have things written up, and then probably the next time we'll have our final polishing session, but that might be wrong, so we'll see. And

tanner_weyland:

Yeah,

justin:

we are

tanner_weyland:

sounds

justin:

just

tanner_weyland:

great.

justin:

starting at the top of the document. And then one, one. word of advice to all of us, if we can just try and describe whenever we're like that part there, try and describe for the audio listeners, because I know this, we're doing it in a visual way, but the audio listener might not be. So.

tanner_weyland:

Okay, perfect. Um, and, uh, just for the listeners, uh, we've honestly been working on this for a sec with Rob, but he is just, I just have to say he's wonderful to work with. And I appreciate that. Just had to throw that out there at the start.

rob:

Aw, thanks fellas.

justin:

Agreed.

rob:

I feel the same way about you guys. You guys are consummate professionals. I appreciate the willingness to work with a newcomer and I'm enjoying myself. And you know, this is hard. This is hard. We're in two different time zones. Our lives are doing things in different times. So writing is hard to begin with and to collaborate across time zones. At least we have the tools now to do that. But it's been a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to polishing this thing up.

justin:

Excellent, excellent.

tanner_weyland:

Love it.

justin:

So I figure we would start at the, well, so we have kind of a page that's above like the actual one shot. Do we need to work on any of that? And that's kind of some of our thoughts or do we need to just kind of forget about that?

tanner_weyland:

Honestly, I think this is old. Go

justin:

Okay.

tanner_weyland:

ahead Rob.

rob:

So

justin:

Alright.

rob:

this page just outlined our original ideas, our locations, and a couple of reminders for ourselves to do the three pillars and things like that. But yeah, I think this stuff is all. We can next this.

justin:

Sounds good. So then

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, um...

justin:

for the listener, there's a portion that says theme, setting, three pillars, location, timeline, and then assignments and reminder. I'm going to delete everything above assignments to theme because that is no longer useful. I'll leave the assignments one there unless we feel like we do need to delete that.

tanner_weyland:

Um, I th-

rob:

We can...

tanner_weyland:

go ahead. Uh,

rob:

After you, Dad.

tanner_weyland:

yeah, I just think- I think we could leave that section. I don't think- we're going, I think that we're going to have to probably modify the assignments as they stand. Cause right now we're like, Oh, each of us is making two NPC mentors right now. They would be trial givers probably.

justin:

Right.

tanner_weyland:

Um, and then a random NPC just to flesh out the world a little bit more. Um, I don't know if that's what we're going to be doing like next. Cause

justin:

Okay.

tanner_weyland:

cause this time just for the listener, since our last, uh, kind of meeting with Rob, we've come up with a lot of ideas. and really solidified the direction of the adventure. And because of that, I think there's just a lot of fat that we need to trim on the document in general.

justin:

For sure.

rob:

I'm all in favor of keeping the assignments heading but deleting the current assignments so that when we leave here tonight

justin:

Okay.

rob:

we at least can put something up there.

justin:

Yeah, I actually think we can delete the assignments

rob:

Thank you.

justin:

as well now that I think about it. So if you guys want. There's also on the right, I believe in that section, there were comments on the right, yeah. There's a comment saying, replacing the mentors, and this is talking about the assignments we'd given ourselves, replacing the mentors with trials or events. I think this entire section we could probably mark resolved because I think this is like, down the line where we start talking about using bells and doing the trials of bells. I think that's definitely what we're going for. Yeah. Excellent. Then, under that assignment section, there's a section that says reminder and then two bullet points for representation and beginner DM suggestions. I believe the beginner DM suggestions were for me and Tanner to create suggestions throughout the doc for new DMs. You can feel free to do the same thing, Rob. I'll just put that under each of us as an assignment.

rob:

for me.

justin:

Or I guess, sorry, I didn't mean to take your job, Rob.

rob:

No, no, no. I'm comfortable. Ha ha ha.

justin:

I'm kind of an idiot because I'm like, hey, can someone be the scribe? And then immediately I'm like,

rob:

Yeah.

justin:

oh, all rights. Anyways, sorry.

rob:

Not alone,

justin:

Yeah,

rob:

not

justin:

but

rob:

alone.

justin:

for the representation bullet, I don't remember what that was for. Do either of you remember what that was for?

rob:

So yeah, I actually added that because for new DM creators, and just for the listeners, where this is coming from is that I've taken a couple of courses with professional writing companies to kind of flesh this sort of game style out. And one of the things that... you know, they stress is to reminder for representation. So that just means having a diversity of characters, whether it be racial backgrounds or just backgrounds in general, you know, able-bodied characters and things of that nature and just having a widespread of different NPCs to populate your, you know, your adventure or your game. So I just want to make a mental note for us to kind of just keep that sort of thing in our focus, right? So that, you know, kind of like, you know. wash over everything.

justin:

Very well.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, especially since we still, I spent some time working on some NPCs, but I didn't really flesh out like them in depth. More like, oh, these were some of the trial givers. And like, I came up with a name, and obviously they didn't be related to that trial. But, you know, it's a great reminder that when you are fleshing out and making more dimensional. three-dimensional characters, you know, don't just make them all like yourself. It gets

rob:

Yeah, exactly,

tanner_weyland:

boring that

rob:

and

tanner_weyland:

way.

rob:

that's all that was supposed to be. It was just a visual reminder to do that.

justin:

Sounds good. Cool, so then moving on. The next block of text is the title of the one-shot. Rob, you had put down how to be a better DM presents for whom the bell tolls. And then over to the right, there's the comment of just an idea. So Tanner, do you think that's a good thing? Do you have any comments? Or same Rob, do you have any comments?

rob:

I didn't want to feel like you guys need to oblige you to attach your name to this, but I just thought because I wanted to give you guys the due credit.

justin:

Hahaha

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, it's not a bad idea. I think with our revised title idea, namely, For Whom the Belt Holes colon, the Chime Fall Ceremony, for that, if we attacked on how to be a better DM, then it does feel a little bit long, but like that's fine, if necessary, right? I don't know.

justin:

To be honest,

rob:

again, as it.

justin:

I would... Go ahead, Rob.

rob:

Visually, if that's a concern, I can, of course, put a catty corner of that. The big

tanner_weyland:

I like to kind of have

rob:

cover

tanner_weyland:

to sit.

rob:

text will say, for whom the bell tolls, the chime falls.

justin:

Right. I actually think we should do title, for whom the bell tolls, colon, the Chime Fall Ceremony, gosh. And then kind of as it is on one of the cover arts that you presented to us, at the bottom how it says, authored by Justin, Rob and Tanner, I think we should have like underneath that say, you know, produced by How to Be a Better DM or something like that. You know.

rob:

I love it. Yeah, that works for

justin:

Rather,

rob:

me. Yeah.

justin:

you know, like let the title be the title. But that's my personal opinion.

rob:

I

tanner_weyland:

Perfect.

rob:

dig that, I dig that. Things like that, the cosmetic things about where to put, we'll do a whole round of that before

justin:

for sure.

rob:

we send this off, and we'll all sign off on the things like that. Speaking

justin:

Exactly.

rob:

of which, I hope you guys like those covers, because I was digging

justin:

Yeah.

rob:

them. Ha ha ha.

justin:

Yeah, they're sweet.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, honestly, at some point, I don't know if we want to do this now or at the end or something, we should pull those up and kind of just vote on which

justin:

Yeah,

tanner_weyland:

style

justin:

yeah,

tanner_weyland:

we like.

justin:

we can...

rob:

Yeah, we'll

justin:

What

rob:

do

justin:

do you

rob:

that.

justin:

guys

rob:

We'll

justin:

prefer?

rob:

do that. We'll re- We

justin:

Gotcha.

rob:

can do that at the end. Yeah, we'll wrap it up.

justin:

Yeah, sounds good. Tanner, do you want to lead us through like the next two sections, so tips for DMing and setting?

tanner_weyland:

Yeah. Um, so the tips for DMing, uh, basically it was just the idea that since we are about a podcast about how to be a better DM, uh, then we would actually have like. So a lot of adventures will have some general tips about like, oh, for this part, do this and this, but it's more just what to flesh out what the writer had in mind. What we want to do is have some tips for how they could do it better as a DM, like just in general, like just period, right? And so as far as echoes, I think this section, not a whole lot. to say other than I picture like the tips kind of like being off to the side of each

justin:

Mm-hmm.

tanner_weyland:

section you know. Like an example would be oh it's a it's a social encounter and giving some advice about like how to embody a character and how to draw out quieter characters like things like that right. That's

rob:

Yeah,

tanner_weyland:

a great

justin:

Yeah.

rob:

that's

tanner_weyland:

example.

rob:

a perfect example.

justin:

One

tanner_weyland:

Yeah

justin:

thing

tanner_weyland:

go ahead.

justin:

kind of came to mind just as you were saying that is some of these tips might come to our minds as we actually DM this for a live table, you know, so that might be part of kind of our beta testing. You know, we put together different one shots each of us or something and we see how it goes and we kind of take notes. But that's something we can decide later as you know, just kind of. Think about that if that's something you want to do.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah.

rob:

I think that works for the whole idea of this is how to be a better DM. I think those DM tips are clutch for newcomers too because we're making this very beginner friendly. It's our hope, I would think, that when we finish this, somebody who's never played the game of Dungeon & Dragons before or any RPG could pick this up and plop this into a home brew campaign or just say, you know what, I just want to test the waters with this and it's a one shot, it's non-committal, it's built for three, four hours. Let me try this out. But I really don't know where to start. Like you said, Tanner, it's a perfect example of the social encounters or maybe a tip on how to manage combat or we're gonna have these trials that are set up for characters' ability levels. And originally we were gonna have, I think it was six, and now because of what we've been discussing, we might h

Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. Today, we are going to jump right into the announcements!

If you would like to sign up for future one-shot podcasts, sign up at this link: https://how-to-be-a-better-dm.captivate.fm/one-shot. We always love playing with you!

With July 4th just behind us, here is our super-relevant topic for the day: Political D&D Campaigns.

Have you ever thought that roleplaying with nobility or the local government in your campaign falls flat? Well, have you considered welcoming your party into the political aspect of roleplaying? This could mean that you create a political D&D campaign with all sorts of intrigue, schmoozing, and rallies, and it could be a really good time for your players if you approach it correctly!

Mentioned in this episode:

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justin_lewis:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm Justin Lewis and I'm here with Rob Van Auchen. I said that right, right?

rob:

Yes, you did.

justin_lewis:

Awesome. And today we are continuing our mini series on a specific homebrew project that we are making with Rob. And today's gonna be a little bit different kind of an episode. For those of you who are new to the show, this is the show where we help you learn how to craft better stories for yourself and your players as you DM sessions. of D&D 5e and soon to be 1D&D. That is the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

huge thing. Yeah. So today, usually we talk about different tips, techniques, practices. Today we're actually kind of going to get into the making of the sausage, as you will. I'm not huge on that phrase, but that's what we're doing, in showing you how to work on a homebrew project such as a one-shot or a mini adventure or an encounter. but also how to collaborate with someone. So that way as a DM, you're not just doing it by yourself. You can reach out to other DMS or even players and take some load off of your shoulders and make it more fun and connect with other people. So to catch you up, last time we started work on essentially a festival slash recruiting event from a guild slash Academy of Adventurers. Because in this organization's past, recent past, they've lost a fair number of their members and they are trying to replenish. So the adventure slash one-shot will take place in really any city we want to make this agnostic towards any particular setting. And really the point is to introduce your characters to this academy slash guild and have them do trials, tests to see if they get in. And then we'll see what else happens. Uh, so let's go away with it. And actually on that note, uh, Rob, I was thinking, why do we have to limit it to a guild or an academy? We could just in it, just say guild slash Academy, uh, up to the DM's discretion. Cause really there's not that much of a difference, you know, like

rob:

Absolutely. I love that. I think that's a great idea to kind of, or even give them a randomized table to kind of have that decision.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

But yeah,

justin_lewis:

exactly.

rob:

we want to leave the DM some room to wiggle, right?

justin_lewis:

Yeah, yeah. And it'll be awesome to, although I am particularly partial to Robric's Academy of Adventuring the Name, what maybe we'll put that as, you know, in one of those appendix tables of names for your academy slash guild. But I think going that route will probably be a lot better than making us choose, we'll just let them choose.

rob:

I'm a, as I've gained some years under my belt as a DM, I have learned to lean into, I've learned to embrace uncertainty. And some of my best moments were when I had no idea what I was going to do. And in those moments, I may have leaned on a random table of something like the affiliates, a table of names or a table of weird things that take place. And so I love providing random tables, anything from D4s to D100s to just, You know, you need something, roll the die, and you're off and running. And I try and make those tables as provocative as possible so that the DM has some wiggle room to kind of insert and do what they want to do.

justin_lewis:

I love that, I love that. So let's go over some of the comments that we'd both made starting at the top. Let's,

rob:

Sure. I also

justin_lewis:

sorry.

rob:

just for your listeners who can't see what we're looking at right now, and then first of all, this is a lot of fun, right? So this is my first collaboration with another DM of any sort outside of like my homebrew groups and whatnot. And for those who are listening, like our tools, like what we're using to collaborate currently has been, we've been using Google Docs, which is really simple and straightforward and free for everybody. And some of the templates that we've. have borrowed from are from the DMs Guild, where they have a whole section on creator resources. So if you're a young DM or you're a young game designer and you're looking to get started and writing stuff is part and parcel for your happiness in life, by all means head on over to the DMs Guild and check out some of their creator templates. And my other really great resource has been an organization called Storytellers Collective or Stoko. as you'll hear me refer to them as, and they have these great sort of learn at your own pace workshops where they provide some templates, but they also provide you really good advice. And so that's kind of been my growth as a writer. And so for those of you who are listening, it's all me, check it out. But anyway,

justin_lewis:

So that

rob:

back

justin_lewis:

was

rob:

to you.

justin_lewis:

Storytellers Collective, you said?

rob:

Yeah, Storytellers Collective has been, it's cool because they're relatively inexpensive for their courses and a lot of the ones that they offer are free. But it's kind of like here's a writing workshop in 30 days and they give you these sort of projects to do at your own pace over that course and they attach a Discord to each of them so that as you're working through them, even if they offered a course, you know, three years ago, you could still hop on a Discord and get some somebody who's manning the ship over there to kind of give you some feedback. And they have everything from like creating treasure, to creating loot, to creating puzzles, to how to write your first adventure, how to write your first encounter. And one of the first things I published was with them, and it got published in their anthology, which is nice, because they do these things every summer and every spring, and it's a nice way to get your name out there that's attached to sort of a bigger entity to kind of help you into the process.

justin_lewis:

Wow, that's awesome. I'm actually gonna have to check that out for myself.

rob:

I'm looking forward to that. I think they do one in the fall too. I've always contributed to the spring encounter and the spring one is challenging because it's like a one-page encounter and it's a lot harder than it sounds. You think one page? That's easy. You wind up chopping out so much of what you want just to get it onto the page. But I digress. Back to our one-shot.

justin_lewis:

Yeah. So, um, as, as I mentioned before, the kind of the, the way that the, the story goes in this, in this one shot adventure, uh, is the party members go to this city or they find themselves in this city. It doesn't really matter how they get there. They just, they're there and they discover this festival for joining this, uh, guild or academy. And originally we thought that there would be like mentors. that would be offering trials, kind of like an internship or apprenticeship. Rob made the suggestion that, uh, instead we switch it to doing six ability score kind of trials and things like that. Um, one thought that I had on that is we definitely need to be very careful in doing that. So that way the, the trials and feats aren't, aren't just dice rolls. Like, I get worried that, you know, the person goes and does a constitution trial and all they can do is just a dice roll over and over again. So I guess I want to think of how we can make it so there can be other ways they can like think through certain problems as a player to supplement, you know,

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

their

rob:

and that's

justin_lewis:

dice rolls.

rob:

a wise decision, actually. Sometimes I get so caught up in the mechanism that I sometimes sacrifice the gameplay for half a second, but that's why this collaboration's cool, because you're there to check me on those things.

justin_lewis:

For sure. No, and I feel the same way.

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

Like,

rob:

so

justin_lewis:

reverse.

rob:

if in my mind's eye, I picture any one of our six events structured around any particular ability score, and so... What that would look like is there's like a feat of strength trial or there's a trial of constitution and trial of dexterity. And the players decide they want to head over there and test their metal. One of the complications. I can think of a few actually We can kind of go back to our original idea with not necessarily a mentor, but let's make a really interesting NPC as the host of that particular trial and maybe that NPC is really accommodating or maybe that NPC is really antagonistic and sort of, you know, criticizes the players and thinks that they'll fail. And I'm thinking of like the old fashioned guy at the dunk tank, right? Who, you know, he sits there and you can't, you know, dunk me and maybe before they throw their dexterity role to knock the jester into the dunk tank, they have to roll a constitution or charisma save. And if they fail it, there's some kind of, they have to roll with disadvantage, right? So there is some kind of. push and pull there. It is a series of dice rolls, but it's also like this role playing opportunity to how does your character respond to the jester at the

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

dunk tank. Another complication that we could do is we could have opponents or other people that are applying or attempting the same trial and thus it's not just simply a matter of do I get the highest dice roll and defeat this particular trial, do I defeat the other characters dice rolls, right? You can also add an easy, medium, hard opponent. So there's one character who is going to roll a DC5. There's

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

another character who's got your DC10, but maybe the top character is a DC15. And so as you're trying to best these other opponents, that is the case. And then my third choice would be it's not just a dice roll, but it's more like a dice roll tree. so that depending on your role, there are various outcomes that sort of fork off and any one particular dice roll can steer you into a series of different mishaps or benefits. So I think those are probably three ways to spice this up that excite

justin_lewis:

for sure.

rob:

me when I think about them.

justin_lewis:

particularly

rob:

Back to you.

justin_lewis:

like number two and three, I think we could, and I see what you mean with kind of your comment, excuse me, your comment going back to the one page competition that you entered in. I see how this can easily blossom into something a little bit too expansive, you know, cause I'm like, yeah, we could just make this giant table of all these NPCs and. And I'm totally up for it, but I'm worried about, you know, like the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

poor sap on the other end of the paper. But I do like the opponent's idea, because like you said, it's a very good role-playing opportunity where you can point out and say, hey, this one particular guy seems to have your number, you know.

rob:

Yeah, and I think of course the opponent, I guess, sits better for certain trials, right? So the trial by strength, if we were to say, and we've spit fired a couple, but if we produce a randomized table, a D4 table, and one of them is a cart lift and one of them is a fight pit, the fight pit is a perfect example of how to incorporate the opponents, right? It is a little combat heavy, but the idea that, you know, there's four guys in a ring doing all sort of like little mini battle Royale. And one of them is the DC five strength and one of the DC 10, one of the, you could kind of see, but also like, um, you know, adding opponents, you could watch them interact with each other too. So like the heavy hitter can knock out the lightweight and then you're stuck with the middle guy and then. You know, what happens

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

again at the DM's

justin_lewis:

I really

rob:

discretion.

justin_lewis:

liked that. I really liked that. Speaking of the fight pit, the way, the way just how you described it, have you ever heard of Florentine football?

rob:

If not, tell me more.

justin_lewis:

So you'll have to look it up. It's like one of the craziest sports that for some reason is still around. It's, it's an Italian thing. And I think it's only like one city. There's like 10 teams or something. Um, but essentially it's football with, uh, and you know, football, like American football has different roles and stuff. Um, there are running backs, there are grapplers, there are strikers, meaning like pugilists, like punchers. Um, and you watch it and you see people trying to run a ball and then over in the corner you see two people just punching each other and then next to them there are two people grappling on the ground. It's like the weirdest mix of just every sport. They're like, let's throw in punchers to football

rob:

boxing

justin_lewis:

or whatever.

rob:

with...

justin_lewis:

Yeah, no, it's insane. But...

rob:

I feel like I feel a grand finale in my head now.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

You know, like a looking at sounding a

justin_lewis:

honestly,

rob:

lot like for learning football.

justin_lewis:

that might be like the good, like the big incursion. Like, you know, they're

rob:

Yeah, yeah.

justin_lewis:

at a certain point, they're just like, ah, we don't have time. So we're just going to throw everyone in this pit and everyone do get out,

rob:

Right,

justin_lewis:

which

rob:

right.

justin_lewis:

would

rob:

Or

justin_lewis:

be

rob:

even like

justin_lewis:

kind

rob:

a

justin_lewis:<

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AI is here—and it’s not going anywhere. But what does it mean for Dungeon Masters?

In this episode, Justin and Tanner dive deep into how artificial intelligence is already impacting the tabletop RPG space—from ethical dilemmas to practical time-saving hacks. Is it a crutch or a creativity booster? Are you giving away core skills without realizing it? And how can you use it intentionally to become a better DM?

We’ll also share:

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If you're curious, concerned, or just cautiously optimistic about the AI takeover—this episode is for you.

Special thanks to:

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Tanner Weyland:

Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM. My name is Tanner Wayland and together we're all gonna learn how to make wonderful adventures for our players. I'm here with Justin Lewis. Justin, how you doing?

Justin:

A little sick, but I'm alive and well, so that's good.

Tanner Weyland:

I know, I know. Justin and I were gonna have a barbecue with some friends and that's right around the time that my wife started feeling sick. Justin was like, hey, I'm sick. And then the weather got bad. So, you know, the gods above were like, no, you're not having that barbecue. But we're just happy that you're feeling better.

Justin:

Thank you.

Tanner Weyland:

Um, so today we're going to actually talk about kind of a general topic and it's something that you could honestly apply elsewhere, but, uh, we're talking about improving as a DM and how you can plan for that. Uh, what do I mean? So if any of you have heard the, uh, the, of the book, seven habits of highly effective people, uh, on the seventh habit, so to speak is, uh, sharpening the saw. At least I believe that's how they phrase it, right?

Justin:

Mm-hmm.

Tanner Weyland:

And with that habit, it's all about like, hey, you're not going to improve bit by bit if you're not planning for it and setting plans that will make you successful in the end, right? And now we put out a lot of episodes about like, hey, you can get better in this way or this way or how you speak with your players or communicate or plan. All of that is good and it's fine and dandy, but You know, I think some people and I'm included with this sometimes when I'm trying to get better. I I kind of take the marination approach where I'm like, oh i'll just listen i'll read a bunch of books I'll listen to some podcasts things like that and then I don't actually end up I don't know justin if this happens with you, but like I just kind of hope that i'll through Photosynthesis

Justin:

Osmosis. Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

osmosis. Yeah, then i'll just get better instead of actually planning. Does that happen with you?

Justin:

Yeah, 100%. Especially, and it's kind of hard with this type of thing because it's a hobby for most people. And that's where things, especially for hobbies for me, where I tend to be more reactive with my growth and less decisive and intentional. And for more clarification, I believe the term sharpen your saw for this habit. in the book comes from a famous saying, I don't want to misattribute it, but I think it comes from Abraham Lincoln who said something like, if you give me four hours to chop a tree down, I'll spend the first three sharpening my saw. And it's really that idea that by spending dedicated time improving, it should simplify and streamline the actual activity and task itself. So I think this is a great topic to do today.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And so we're going to jump right in about how you can kind of set yourself up for success, uh, so that you aren't stagnating as a DM, but every time your players are like, wow, they've improved, you know, which, and once again, improvement isn't a negative thing. All of us could improve, uh, in different ways. And in the end, it's going to mean that you have a more fun time and you're going to be less stressed as a DM just straight up. So, Justin, how about you? How would you recommend people improve?

Justin:

So the very first thing I would say to do, and I would probably recommend this to people even outside of Dungeons and Dragons, just as a life skill, practice writing daily. And the reason why I say that is because successful people produce and everyone else consumes. You can spend lots of time reading, but if you spend even a quarter of that writing, you've created something new theoretically that the world didn't have before and maybe this is just top of mind for me because I've been trying to get my dad to adopt like a daily writing goal but ever since I adopted one and I use a tool called Write Track I believe it's called it's not sophisticated or anything but I love it you can set monthly goals or you can set daily goals and I've talked about this before but I set a monthly goal right which breaks down into a daily goal, but if I get ahead today, it affects how much I actually have to write tomorrow because I'm much more motivated to get done early. I don't know why, that's just how I work. And even when I do get done early, I just start the next month. But daily writing for me has really pushed me because there are those days where you have writer's block, which is just a fancy way of saying you don't know what to write. because you want to write everything well and you feel like what you write will not be good. But having a daily limit, or not limit, but goal. So right now my goal is essentially 500 words per day. And I split that up between a couple different projects, but doing that pushes me out of my comfort zone. It's comfortable to write when you have a great idea. It's uncomfortable to write when you have nothing. right? But it's also helped me start to learn some tricks so that way I don't have moments when I don't have ideas, right? And I'm talking about note taking during your sessions. And I think that might also be a whole other topic but I can't hammer down enough writing every day.

Tanner Weyland:

Okay, yeah, I agree with that because you know, DMs, we as DMs are inherently creative, right? We're always trying to come up with new ideas and everything. And, and if you're making that practice of writing, it could be writing about your next session. It could be writing about the story. It could be writing even about like how you felt you did, right? Like that kind of journaling, self-reflection, all of that can really help. Um,

Justin:

And one thing

Tanner Weyland:

yeah.

Justin:

I'd like to add is by writing every day, it splits the session prep and makes it a lot more manageable, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

Because really, writing 500 words, it takes me, and again, I'm not saying these words are perfect, but it takes me 10 to 15 minutes, okay? Now, obviously, session prep deals with some reading and stuff, so that's not accounted for, but. Words on paper, that's still something, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, absolutely. And on top of that, you know, if you're doing that kind of personal work, then I also think that's a great time to introduce some. some skill learning, some external work, so to speak. That could be, you know, if you're worried about your improv, which is a lot of DMing, right, it's kind of just being on the fly, it's worrying about, you know, how to react to what your players are doing in a way that isn't always defensive, but even just, you know, it's playful with what they're doing. You can train that, right? There are improv classes. Beyond that, there are also great books, like when we were talking with Victor last week, Victor Bevin, He recommended this book, Improvisation for the Theatre by Viola Spolin. And that's something you can read, but he was like, yeah, it was really helpful for me. And so honestly, it's worth looking up opportunities to kind of get yourself even out of your DM comfort zone so that you can, like once you're in the DM seat, you have a little bit more flexibility.

Justin:

100% agree to that. My brother-in-law, last time, so he's in my D&D campaign, he's one of the players, last week, he wasn't actually able to attend because he was attending a voice acting class that was offered as a continuing education class at our local university, UVU, Utah Valley University. I don't think it cost him more than 50 to 100 bucks for the class. And classes like that are very valuable because they're not tied to a grade or some arbitrary degree. I don't really like degrees, but that's my opinion. And you're paying for it. The level of involvement is a little bit higher. It's a little bit more worth it to you because you're taking time out of your day, you're taking money out of your pocket for something that is not going to bring you some sort of tangential, no not tangential, but tangible, excuse me, result. So I think experimenting with those types of classes would be a really good idea.

Tanner Weyland:

Yep, totally agree. Otherwise, I would say, aside from finding out those kinds of classes, doing improv, also, just a little plug here, if you ever wanted to kind of create your own like D&D maps or draw or anything like that, if there's any area that you're just kind of self-conscious about, work on it. That's one of the biggest things about improvement personally. But as a DM, there's so many different talents that like you deal with often, right? If you're constantly like, man, I wish this map just existed, but it's so hard to find the specific map I want, then take a drawing class, you know? I know as the person in my family that is literally the worst at art personally. I'm it's something I've always been self conscious about and like there are times and honestly with justin saying this i'm like You know, I should take an art class or you know something right? Um, just to get over that self-consciousness But this is kind of the end point None of this is going to happen if you don't plan for it that means that uh honestly during that time when you're when you're writing or right after, when you're doing your daily or weekly planning, put into that your goals and be like, okay, for this next session, I'm going to focus on, Tanner and Justin were talking about the, about improv, I'm going to really focus on. yes anding people. You know, if they have an idea, I'm going to try and roll with it instead of trying to show them how it's nonsensical, right? And then you like, while you're writing daily, leading up to it, you're having ideas about that goal. And also if you need a class, then you actually like daily You know, you plan that goal for like, hey, in two weeks I'm gonna go to class. And you spend that time researching the class, signing up. And then once you're signed up, you go to the class and you're great. You know, you just have to be cognizant of these goals and put them into your schedule, you know?

Justin:

100%. And I would... Excuse me. I would even say don't forget about the soft skills that are a little bit harder to identify and quantify. One such example, as Tanner said, when you go into a session, you can say, I'm going to work on this. There's been numerous times when I've realized during sessions I've been a little bit tense. I could feel the tenseness in my back. And I... was rushing things in the campaign and, you know, it was just not as relaxed and fluid. So in certain sessions, I've literally told myself, today I'm gonna practice taking a breath, like literally breathing, relaxing, and pausing even. And those types of things are important because your players, they take their cues off of you, right? But that just goes to show you that these skills that we're building, aren't just writing fantasy or painting minis, right? They're applicable all across lots of areas of life and vice versa, you know? So maybe you want to work on cooking, right? Find some Dungeons and Dragons recipes that you can actually incorporate into your game. Bring your players to... bring your characters to a tavern and tell them, hey, this is what you can order. And then when they order it, bring it out on a platter, that builds the immersion and it builds your cooking skills and vice versa. So definitely look for skills that you wouldn't normally think of and find some way to integrate them and build goals around them as well.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and that's one of the things I love about DMing. A lot of people think, you know, you see the Matt Mercer's of the world and you think, oh, that's what being a great DM is. But here's what actually being a great DM is. It's being the kind of DM that creates a very fun and interesting environment for your players, right? And yes, that is storytelling. Yes, that's, you know, how creative you are, you know, the minis and stuff you use, sure. But beyond that, like when you're having a game Or with some people that you know, you would like to be closer with the soft skills like cooking or you know having fun time That's gonna do nearly as much or even more good than just planning an epic campaign and stuff like that, right? And so I guess that's just kind of where we want to end off We know that you can get better as a DM. That's what we're trying to do And it's little by little so long as we're planning for it And, um, yeah, just any final thoughts.

Justin:

I think probably the biggest thing that will help you improve, that we didn't mention here, is to get feedback. This could be from people one time, or you could set up some sort of accountability partner or battle buddy. I don't know, you can call it whatever you want, but get someone who's willing to tell you things as they really are and accept that. feedback and grow from it. Honestly thinking, you know what, this feedback is a gift because now I have an idea of what I can do to move forward.

Tanner Weyland:

Great, I love that. Ending on peer review. Peer review works.

Justin:

I love it.

Tanner Weyland:

Okay, everybody, get out there. Go make a wonderful next session by planning for it and planning how you wanna improve. Go have some fun, learn some new skills. Sharpen your other ones. And until next time, let's roll initiative.

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Justin: Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I am Justin Lewis here with Tanner Wayland. Go ahead and say hello, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Hey Justin, hey everybody.

Justin:

And today we are celebrating our 100th episode. It is mind-boggling to think that we've been doing this for 100 episodes and thinking you know one episode a week that's almost that's a little over no that's just under two years of doing this show and the amount of growth we've seen has been just phenomenal. First thing before we do anything else on today's show, we just wanted to give a big thank you to all of you listeners out there, you in particular, and

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Justin:

make you aware of our deep gratitude for allowing us to do this. And when I say allow, I mean podcasting is somewhat lonely, right? But we've had certain experiences of... listeners reaching out and helping us remember that we're not alone and we're not just speaking into a you know a windstorm but What we're putting out is actually being received and you know you guys like it which is which is even more gratifying So a big thank you to you guys

Tanner Weyland:

Absolutely. It's been, you know, kind of shocking how much you guys care about what we have to say. And you know, we put work into this, but a lot of people put a lot of work into things, and it doesn't get reciprocated at all. And we just, we really appreciate, you know, knowing that you guys are listening, and that there's a big community out there who's trying to improve, you know, they're DMing right alongside us, you know?

Justin:

Absolutely, absolutely. So today's show, it's not going to be like normal shows to be honest. We're going to be a little bit more loose, a little bit more just random, I guess. But we wanted to talk about some of our thoughts for what we see moving forward and our goals and desires and wishes for how to be a better DM and betterdungeonmaster.com and kind of what we want to build moving forward. You know, as we get started, just wanted to ask Tanner, is there anything specific that you personally would just think would be the coolest thing to do or anything like that?

Tanner Weyland:

Um, something that I've really liked the idea of because, you know, in one of our recent podcasts, we were talking about peer reviewing and, and I think it's such a powerful tool for improving, uh, is just having that kind of critical look at specific moment to moments of DMing. Uh, something we really want to do is, uh, you know, provide some content where we're actually reviewing, uh, you know, some of our one shots and some that maybe other people send us. Uh, we, uh, I really like that idea. Cause I think seeing someone DM in action, it's a very different experience from talking about it in the theoretical, you know? Uh, so that's something that I'm really excited about. We've, uh, we've discussed, you know, uh, we're, you know, this is a little bit of a, Jump ahead, but we're doing a membership on our site and you know, we're gonna be posting some of the Recordings of our one shots, but we also thought it would be great to alongside that maybe at the same tier or a different tier of membership, do commentary on that, where we're like, hey, let's take this moment by moment, pause during the one shot and just talk about like, hey, here's what I loved about what they're doing or what we're doing if we're the ones podcasting or hey, here's maybe, they did okay here, here's how it could have been improved. And that kind of idea excites me a lot.

Justin:

I really like that too. Just the fact of, and I think we did this once before and we put it out as an episode,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

but looking at your dungeon mastering skills, not in a you're a terrible person kind of way, but in a man this would be so cool if you just did it this way, right? And thinking back to the episode that we did, I was the one being critiqued. and it was my Trouble in Autumn's Grace one-shot. And going through that critique, we only went through like the first 20 minutes, but even that really helped me improve the intro of that one-shot, specifically with regards to an NPC, the mayor of the town, and where he comes in and where you find him and meet him. Going through that critique really helped me kind of- streamline that and improve that a lot. So that is definitely something I'm looking forward to. As far as the membership goes, that's something that's kind of been a long time coming. We just released it. It's pretty new. It's in its infant state. The way I see it right now, right now, we... It's $1.33 a month. The 33 cents covers the cost for our payment gateway. So it's really just And the way I see that is our basic membership will always be $1.33. As we grow and we provide more content, we'll probably create higher levels. And at the time when we create any higher level, I think we will upgrade everyone in the previous levels, kind of one up, right? And grandfather them into that. So anyone who has signed up for the basic subscription now. When we create future levels, they'll just get moved up, pay the same price as they were always paying, but have access to the new stuff. That's the way I see it.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

And as far as that membership, right now we are creating VTT maps, so virtual tabletop maps on Dungeon Alchemist, putting those up, you can download those and use those in your campaigns online. Any of our one-shot videos we're going to put up there as well, we're going to stop Streaming those, I think, is what we said, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah, so we're going to stop streaming the one shots, but we're going to put those up on the membership so anyone can see those on the membership. And then we're also creating a course. Right now we're in the midst of creating a beginner Dungeon Master course and putting that up on the membership so anyone who has a membership can access that course. And obviously we're going to do more courses like that in the future. Is there anything else that I'm forgetting that we were going to add to the membership? Oh, the Discord, so anyone who signs

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

up for the membership can join our Discord and, you know, come party with me and Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, yeah, we had a member join just the other day. And we were talking all about maps. I was amazed at how many maps he just had just sketched out in his notebook. I was

Justin:

Right?

Tanner Weyland:

like, gosh, I love this.

Justin:

So cool,

Tanner Weyland:

And

Justin:

so cool.

Tanner Weyland:

we were just talking about like, he had this idea of doing a campaign in like essentially a Costco, a fantasy Costco or, or a real one. I, you know, and I was like, I love this. What could you do with the samples? Could the samples be buffs? Could some of them

Justin:

Ha ha

Tanner Weyland:

be

Justin:

ha

Tanner Weyland:

a

Justin:

ha.

Tanner Weyland:

trap? Um, and anyway, loved it. Uh, sorry, sorry to distract.

Justin:

No, no, no, I think that's so great. And that's just one of the benefits of coming in the Discord and just being able to shoot the breeze with anyone who really likes being a Dungeon Master. I think those are our plans for the membership right now. The next thing we're going to really focus on is one-shots. We're going to make a big push to have our one-shot scheduled up on our website so... You know, like, it's just easier to plan, easier to kind of work through that

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

and stuff like that.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, it's great. And honestly, probably one of the big things that I'm excited for is Justin's having a baby.

Justin:

Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, my wife is pregnant and she is due... Hold on. Sorry, I just got a text. Yeah, just give me one second.

Tanner Weyland:

You're fine.

Justin:

Sorry, someone just needed something and they're about to go somewhere, so I needed to tell them. Anyways,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, you're fine.

Justin:

yeah, so our baby is due in August and they will be the newest member of the Better Dungeon Master team. And just super excited to be a dad, interested to see how it's gonna change my life and change this. Hopefully it shouldn't change the podcast too much, but time will tell. And then,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah,

Justin:

go ahead.

Tanner Weyland:

oh go ahead. Anyway, I was just gonna say that we will definitely give Justin a break there, probably

Justin:

Yeah

Tanner Weyland:

record a lot beforehand so that he has that time to spend with the baby.

Justin:

One other thing as far as the one shots go is I do want to make a bigger push to get some of our podcast guests to play in the one shot. So, you know, if you sign up for a one shot, there's a possibility you could be playing with, you know, our last podcast interviewee or, you know, someone who we've had on the show before. Just to make it a little bit more interesting and a little bit more sizzle for you. Anything else as far as one shots go?

Tanner Weyland:

No, I'm just excited for you know laying it out and hopefully you guys are able to join one

Justin:

Exactly. Next up, we are going to be, we're gonna be working on more merch. Right now we just have hoodies, and the hoodies were designed, or at least the design on the hoodies were designed by one of our listeners. And we wanna give you this. offer as well. Anyone who designs a logo for us, we put it up on our website and it gets purchases, we will share the profit with you 50-50. So that includes t-shirts, stickers, whatever, right? But that means we will also be working on our own designs and we keep the profits. So if you want to steal from us, just go ahead and submit some of your designs to us and we'll get that up on our site. And you know, hoodies, t-shirts, t-shirts, sorry, stickers, you know, the whole stuff, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for those, especially, we're gonna have some nice stickers, I feel like. And I'm a sucker for stickers.

Justin:

I am a sucker for stickers too, except I don't put them on anything, I just collect them. You know?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, same. There's part of me that's like, oh, I love people use water bottles

Justin:

I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Tanner Weyland:

I have a bunch of stickers or their laptops, but I'm always such a pansy. I'm like, yeah, but what if I don't like it later?

Justin:

Mm-hmm.

Tanner Weyland:

But I really like Collecting stickers and who knows maybe after we get some awesome Designs created then you know that may change. I might start might start putting stickers You know on the things I care about who

Justin:

Agreed.

Tanner Weyland:

knows

Justin:

And then one day when we have our own location, our brick and mortar studio, we can have a sticker wall where that's the designated place for all the stickers we ever find. And that'll be it.

Tanner Weyland:

It'll be perfect. It'll be perfect. And we'll have a sticker car where we just, no, I'm just kidding. Yeah.

Justin:

Actually, having a sticker wall sounds like something like those SaaS companies out of like Silicon Valley or

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

Utah, Silicon Slopes. It sounds like something they would do. So I definitely

Tanner Weyland:

It

Justin:

want

Tanner Weyland:

absolutely

Justin:

to do that actually.

Tanner Weyland:

does.

Justin:

Next, we've toyed around with the idea of making like a custom DM screen. The ideas for that are pretty long out. So that's something we'll definitely have to think about. just kind of what we want it to look like, what it would be made out of, how we would create it, and what would be most useful. So stay tuned on that.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, that one's gonna be great, because you guys know how a lot of DM screens will have the numbers, like the stat blocks, the different rolling charts, right? This one though, we would try and make it about how you can be a better DM, kind of those softer skills, those reminders. So we're very excited about that one.

Justin:

Next, we're also slowly working on the ultimate dungeon master's guide. So essentially, like the go-to book for everything on being a better dungeon master. It'll essentially be a distillation of all the good juices that come from this podcast and everything about it. It might take some time, but... slowly we're gonna get there very slowly and we'll publish that and then get that created

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, that one, we just, you know, we realized that a weekly podcast is great. Certainly is, but you know, some of the ideas that we have and some of the recommendations get lost in the shuffle. What's a better way to do that? You put it in a book

Justin:

Ha ha.

Tanner Weyland:

or a course or whatever, you know,

Justin:

Sure.

Tanner Weyland:

so that it's cataloged. So yeah, very excited about that.

Justin:

Exactly. One other thing that I've been thinking about is maybe some meetups or something like that. Some live events that people, if they're in the area, can come join and, you know, I don't know, maybe we just go see a movie or something. I'm really bad at playing events, but, you know, maybe we do like a D&D tournament versus, you know, one table versus another. Who knows, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and honestly, Justin and I, we're going to most likely be at FanX,

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m your Host today, Justin Lewis and today, I want to talk about an aspect of D&D that is one-part storytelling prompt, one-part game mechanic, and overall an interesting facet of the game, namely alignment.

We’ve all heard the famous phrase of, “It’s what my character would do.”

Naturally, when someone says that, they are usually trying to justify something stupid, evil, weird, or just wrong that they’ve done. Sometimes they’ll cite their alignment as the main driver of their choice making process. For some reason that never really sat well with me. So today, I want to talk about a couple ways to think about alignment, and hopefully help you determine that you need to choose the way you’re going to look at alignment in your game, because it can radically change how your characters act and how you act towards your characters.

What is Alignment

Before we get into how to use alignment in your games, let’s first figure out what alignment is. Even defining it is going to be difficult because how you define it will also impact how you play with it. So i’m going to try to define it and explain it in a way that is agnostic of the way you choose to play with it.

Let me first start by saying that alignment is an optional mechanic of the game. Nowhere does it say in any rulebook or game module that you need to have alignment. Only certain items have requirements about alignment, and that’s simply for the purpose of attunement. As a DM, you can simply choose to disregard all of that, so if you feel that alignment just gums up the system and makes things harder to play, then great. Alignment is not necessary, though in my opinion, it does make things much more fun.

So in its most basic form, alignment describes your characters position relative to Order and Chaos and relative to Good and Evil. I won’t go too much more in dept quite yet, because I don’t want to affect how you think about alignment before I explain the two ways you can use it in game.

In the first edition of D&D, or really when it was just an add-on to the game Chainmail, there was only the choice between Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic. It was much simpler, but then as things progressed, D&D evolved to have the Chaotic and Lawful spectrum and the Evil and Good Spectrum.

What Purpose does Alignment Serve?

In reality, alignment, just like everything else in the game, only helps move the story along. You can take any mechanic out and still move the story along. So really Alignment is just a plot device in the sense that it’s supposed to theoretically impact how your character develops and the choices they make. In practice though, that becomes very messy. You start asking questions about morality, right and wrong, and to be honest the whole discussion becomes very philosophical.

So let me introduce you to my quandary and how I came to think about alignment.

My Quandary

In my current campaign, my wife’s character found himself stuck in his own mindscape. He had essentially been banned there by a being called Dreamtaker, who I’ve talked about on this podcast before. While in the mindscape, the character, Ransom, encountered an evil little character that inhabits part of his mind named Mtiq. Mtiq is supposed to symbolize the potential every being has to do evil. It’s the potential to become the worst version of ourselves. Well, Ransom had become very lost because the mindscape is a maze, naturally. So this evil Mtiq, offered Ransom a map to the mindscape in exchange for his “Innocence”.

Frustrated with the maze and wanting to get out, Ransom took the deal and escaped the mind-maze, but naturally lost his innocence. As soon as Ransom left the maze, I informed my wife that his alignment was now chaotic-evil.

She was not happy about that.

Since then she’s been asking me about ways she can get her innocence back, but really her question is about whether or not she can change her alignment.

Fast forward a few weeks and my brother-in-law, Drew is in town. He and his wife want to join us for one of our sessions. As chance would have it, my other brother-in-law, Ethan, who has a character in our campaign couldn’t make it that night, so Drew played Ethan’s Character Necro, while Drew’s wife played an NPC.

While playing, Drew decided to split Necro from the party and investigate a dockyard. At the dockyard, Drew had Necro pick a fight with and murder a dockworker. Ethan came back just at that moment and with despair saw what was happening with his character. Now this isn’t the first time Necro has murdered someone, but this time was different in that there weren’t any extenuating circumstances. Necro had just murdered this dockhand in cold blood. I told Ethan, that his alignment had shifted towards evil. He was upset naturally, as his character had been trying to make strides toward being good.

With both of these stories in mind, and the desire for these two players to have their characters to be good, I had an interesting thought cross my mind.

I wondered, “Is alignment prescriptive or descriptive?”

Does your alignment tell you how your character should act, or how they have acted in the past?

I’ve come to the conclusion, that you need to make that decisions because when you explain this to your players, you can then let them make choices moving forward with that in mind. So let’s look at the 3 options that this opens up to you (yes there is a secret 3rd option).

Descriptive

If you choose to let the alignment be descriptive, then it is more of a description of all their past deeds. It has little bearing on what they will do in the future and instead is more of a reputational aspect.

If you choose to play with this method, then I would adopt certain measures that somewhat in the old game Knights of the Old Republic. In that game when you pause the game, you’d see your character standing there with a spectrum and a guage showing how far they are into the light or dark sides. When they are in the light side, they stand tall and are surrounded by light and have an aura of good about them. If they are deep in the dark side, then their eyes have darkened and their face is covered by a permanent scowl. They are surrounded by darkness.

If you use the descriptive method of Alignment, then I would adopt similar attributes and if they make their way to being Chaotic Evil, then people start to perceive and mistrust them. Any persuasion checks that rely on trust or good will will receive disadvantage. On the other hand, any checks involving deception or intimidation should probably get some sort of advantage.

On the flip side, if your character is lawful good, then they should likely be naturally trusted.

Of course, this is simplifying things but you get the general idea. The alignment becomes a list of all the bad things they done or the good things. Over time, people would naturally get a sense of those things just by being around them.

In this method, if someone wants to change their alignment, then they have to consciously do actions over a long period of time to slowly change their alignment.

Prescriptive

The prescriptive method of Alignment is less about what you’ve done and more about what you aspire to be. The distinction is slight, but the big difference is that a character can choose to change their alignment in an instant. Changing alignment would likely require some large emotional experience but it could happen. From that moment, despite shortcomings, the character would try to live up to a certain ideal lifestyle.

From a DM’s perspective, you could reward strenuous attempts with advantage or inspiration and give de-inspiration for actions that go against the alignment.

The Combo

As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, the 3rd option is the combination of the 2. Really, this is closer to how we live in our real lives. We are partly our past and partly our aspirations for the future. If you can handle it, try and combine both of these methods to create a current alignment that correctly reflects the cumulative effect of all the decisions of the past and at the same time allows the character to aspire for different ways of life and try to make their way to that point.

I suppose you could also cut it down into “if you want to change your alignment you have to essentially get a certain number alignment points in this or that direction.” I might implement that as a test with my players, but it is going to be difficult. And why shouldn’t it be. We’re only talking about the concept of good and evil and how to act rightly in a difficult world.

As you go out and play your sessions with your players, I’d encourage you to bring in more and more moral quandaries and questions. Thinking of right and wrong and best and worst decisions is at the very nature of human existence. Your players will enjoy being pushed to think about what they really should do and what effect it will have on their characters. They will also enjoy the opportunity to try and do that in their own life. In that way, D&D becomes much more than a game.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. It was a little different and a lot more philosophical. I’m confident though that thinking about alignment will make your games more interesting. We’ll be back next week for another great episode. Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

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Justin:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. Today, I am Justin Lewis. I actually am always Justin Lewis, but today I'm joined with Tanner Whelan. Go ahead and say hi, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Hey guys.

Justin:

And we have today with us a very special guest, Victor Baveen. And for me, he's kind of, he has a special place in my heart because I first got introduced to really anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons by listening to the R.A. Salvatore books about Dredd Stoerden. I listened to them on audiobook and the voice actor who really personified, in my opinion, Drizztorodin was Victor Bavine. So having him here with us is a real treat for me personally because, like I said, I have fond memories of long road trips, listening to Drizzt battle the monsters of the Underdark and then make his way to the surface and kind of go through a, you know, a similar trek I think a lot of us go through when we're trying to find out who we are and where we fit in life. Thank you for being here, Victor. And if you want to, you can add to that introduction however you want. But thank you for being here.

Victor:

Sure, my pleasure. I'm thrilled that I've been doing the Driz books for about 10 years now. And I think I'm up to 40 plus. I've done all but I think three of them. And those were done before I got involved. And yeah, I've been an actor my whole life and I'm also a writer and entrepreneur. started doing audiobooks about 17 years ago and this was one of the first really big projects that I got. So, you know, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled the fans like it. I get a lot of really fun emails. In fact, the best one I've ever, one of the best ones I've ever gotten, I don't want to choose best, but this guy wrote me and said how... he was going blind actually, and he was unable to read to his children anymore. And so they would listen to the DRISD books as bedtime stories together. And it really brought a tear to my eye. So I'm thrilled

Tanner Weyland:

Wow.

Victor:

to be here, but I love the books, I'm thrilled to be here.

Justin:

Awesome. Yeah. Having experiences like that has to be life changing because in, you know, in accounting, you don't have the opportunity to change someone's life like that. Right. So, uh, well, let's get into some of our questions. Uh, and, you know, I thought one reason having you on the podcast would be so great is because as people play Dungeons and Dragons, uh, one thing that a lot of people kind of are drawn towards naturally is just kind of the the attempts at voice acting. And I think it's a really great way to help your players become immersed. And so I thought it would be a great, a great thing to have you on and kind of talk about that. But you also mentioned that you're also a writer. So tell us a little bit kind of how you got into voice acting and writing and kind of how those two interweave and things like that.

Victor:

Well, I pretty much always wanted to be an actor. I decided when I was five that I wanted to be an actor because I saw this TV show. I wasn't allowed to have a dog. I really wanted a dog and my mom wouldn't let me get a dog. And I saw this TV show about vaudeville and there was this one dog act and I got into my head that as an actor, I could have a dog.

Tanner Weyland:

Ha

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

ha.

Victor:

so anyway, so I decided I always wanted to be an actor and then I always thought it was, I love to read and I, you know, I just... Classically trained as an actor, so I've done a lot of Shakespeare. So I think it really sets you up well for reading large blocks of text and making it understandable, cuz that's the trick of being a narrator is knowing how to use language, what we would call heightened language to. to tell the story, but at the same time, keep it personal and human without getting too involved in technique. So anyway, so I had been acting for years and I was living in LA and toward the end of my time in LA, my manager asked me, how would you like to read the Bible? And I said, okay. I was hired by this company to do, there were like eight of us, and I read six books of the Old Testament, six books of the New. And it was pretty cool, pretty cool way to make a living. And then I moved back to New York and I actually bought this house in New Jersey, in Newark, for God knows why I did it. Because I wanted

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Victor:

a project to renovate this, renovate this old historic home. And so I... I was in the midst of doing that and it was right when Audible was moving to Newark, moving their headquarters to Newark. And I happened to see an interview with the CEO and the in the local paper and I got on the company website and I emailed him. I figured out his email address. It was dcatz at audible.com.

Tanner Weyland:

Ha

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

ha.

Victor:

so I just emailed. Thanks for taking a chance on Newark. I said I did the same thing. I bought this house and my friend said I was crazy to move from Santa Monica to Newark, but here I am and here's my voiceover demo. And I'd love to come in for an audition. The CEO emailed me two days later and said, yeah, come in for an audition. So that's how I got started to really do an audiobooks. And that was, gosh, 2007 or eight

Tanner Weyland:

Okay.

Victor:

and I've done probably 350 books at this point and I'd always wanted to be a writer. I'd been writing screenplays when I was in LA and almost got a couple of movies off the ground and then I had a project that almost was super close. We had the money and I'm almost in the bank and then the financial crisis hit and the money disappeared. I was supposed to direct it and I'd written the screenplay and So it all fell apart and I said, well, I've always wanted to write a novel, now's the time. So I wrote the first draft of the novel and it was awful. It was basically the screenplay without formatting and because I didn't know how to write fiction, it was right around that time that I started narrating at Audible. And then two years later, I picked up the novel again after having probably. narrated 40 books and I suddenly started writing again. I said, oh I know how to write prose fiction now Because it was that was like my 10,000 hours. It was all it was all there so that so it all did kind of meld really nicely together and So that's sort of how I got to do all of it

Tanner Weyland:

Wow, I love that so much. That's man, what a roller coaster. Hot

Victor:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

dang. So

Victor:

Yeah, it's the life of an artist.

Tanner Weyland:

did you find that you kind of naturally gravitated to narrating the fictional books or was that purely coincidental that they were like, hey, you're great for this?

Victor:

It was just coincidental. I've done a lot of, like I just, my most recent book I just finished last week was about the Russo-Ukrainian War. Very intense, deeply historical. really dense. Normally, the process is generally a book called takes about four or five days to record and then you come in for like an hour or two of pickups, stuff that you got wrong and you have to go in and fix. And normally the most I generally, I have anywhere between 20 and 50 pickups in a project when I can knock that out in an hour. This we had 350 pickups. because the names, the Ukrainian and Russian names, you know, they wanted them so specific and really perfect. So, and then the longest book I've ever done, single book was a book called Gotham, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning history of New York City. And it's two volumes and it's 4,000 pages. And that took four months.

Tanner Weyland:

Wait,

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

so

Victor:

that...

Tanner Weyland:

4,000, that many pages, how many hours is that? Like, it's gotta

Victor:

It's

Tanner Weyland:

be

Victor:

a

Tanner Weyland:

a lot.

Victor:

60 hours, about 60 hours. Yeah,

Tanner Weyland:

Hot day.

Victor:

yeah, it's a commitment. It's a great, it's a great book. I mean, it's a fantastic, I mean, you know, and I love New York, I'm a native New Yorker and I love delving into the history. And so it was fun. But then I loved doing the fantasy too. I loved doing fiction and I mean, I've done some, you know, classic fiction like Vonnegut. But... I'd done a couple of other fantasy series before I got the Drift. And the Drift thing was, you know, it was interesting how it came to me. Cause they had recorded a couple of the books, not starting from book one. And they had two different narrators and everybody hated the narrators apparently. And so they, Wizards of the Coast, came to Audible and they said, we need to find a new narrator. So they did a contest where they recorded, they had three of us that Ari Salvador approved, and then they put it on the fan website and the fans chose me.

Tanner Weyland:

Well, that's

Victor:

53%

Tanner Weyland:

awesome.

Victor:

of the fans chose me. So there was already like a lot of buy-in, you know? And I still get, when people come to those other books, I get all these like Twitter messages saying, what happened, where'd you go? Did they fire you?

Justin:

Ha ha ha!

Victor:

No, no, just be patient, I'll be back. But the

Tanner Weyland:

I'm

Victor:

fun

Tanner Weyland:

sorry.

Victor:

thing with the, so many of you were saying about character stuff, character voices, the fun thing about... about fantasy is that you really can take liberties with the voices. In general, they want you to be really subtle with characters and like obviously in you know non-fiction stuff but even in fiction they want you to be fairly subtle but you know you can just go crazy with the um I love some of the voices that I've managed to create and it's fun funny because I won't tell you. I will never reveal this, but Jarlaxle is one of my favorite voices that I created and a lot of people love that voice. And one of the ways sometimes I'll create voices is I'm so bad at celebrity impersonations that I'll

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Victor:

do a celebrity impersonation and it'll come out as a voice but nobody recognizes it.

Tanner Weyland:

I'm

Victor:

And that's

Tanner Weyland:

sorry.

Victor:

how Jarlaxle started. So he's based on a celebrity, but I will never tell you who it is.

Justin:

I'm gonna have to go back and listen and kind of play Celebrity Bingo and see, you know, like process

Victor:

Yeah,

Justin:

of elimination.

Victor:

I would love it if you guessed it, but I don't think you will. It's so bad.

Tanner Weyland:

That's amazing.

Justin:

Yeah, and I do have to say Jarlaxle is, he's one of my favorite characters too. He's complex, but he's also mysterious and kind of cheeky. And I think a lot of people idealize that and wish they were like that in real life, right?

Victor:

I think that the genius of Bob's books is that they're simple enough for young people to understand, but as opposed to so much fantasy or comic book fiction, I really think all great stories, truly great stories are about moral ambiguity. And that's the heart of the story, is moral ambiguity. It's like, how do you be a good person in an impure world? And I love I don't know if you last summer I got to do a compendium of all drizzed diary entries.

Justin:

Yeah, I heard that.

Victor:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

Oh wow.

Justin:

I haven't listened to it, but I wanted

Victor:

Yeah.

Justin:

to.

Victor:

Yeah, it was really fun. It was really, really cool. And at the same time, I did right around the same time I did the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. And it was similar.

Justin:

I was

Victor:

I mean,

Justin:

gonna say...

Victor:

it was very similar. Yeah.

Justin:

That's

Victor:

So

Justin:

so cool.

Victor:

So I love that people are getting, you know, like you say, Gerald Axel is such a great character because he's morally ambiguous.

Justin:

Yeah. And honestly, that is actually something I wanted to talk about because one of the things that really struck me about your voice acting style, specifically in the Drift books is in those diary entries, because it's one thing to just read a diary entry, but it's one thing to also kind of hear someone read it and, and really get, or feel like you get the emotion behind the entry, right? So, so how. And you mentioned this before with like heightened language and making it human. W what tips would you give to someone who is trying to really convey the deep emotion behind just the words they're saying, right?

Victor:

Good question. Well, let me go back to, so I do sometimes, I've done classes, audiobook classes for actors. And what I always start people out with is Shakespeare's sonnets. And, you know, there's a, there's a, this is sort of my motto as a writer is, Mark Twain said, the difference between the perfect word and the almost perfect word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. And so if you're reading really good fiction, you're really imbuing finding that. It's just, you know, you're, I mean, okay, let me back up. So one of the reasons I choose Shakespeare for people to work, start with, I do a sonnet and then we get into the books, is that the great fear that actors have with Shakespeare and with American actors is that it's gonna be boring. And the only way it's boring, because it's not boring material, the only way it's boring is to shy away from committing to the emotion of the

justin_lewis:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm one of your hosts today, Justin Lewis, and I'm here with Rob and Tanner Wayland. And I'll let Rob introduce himself in a second, but let me first tell you, the listener, about today's episode. So if you're new here, we are here to help you craft better stories for yourself and your players as you DM sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. And today, we're actually gonna dive into the world of homebrew creations. Specifically, we're going to show you kind of the start to finish, hopefully start to finish. We might split this episode up into two episodes, but the start to finish process of creating something, but also the start to finish process of collaborating with someone else in creating something, because being a DM can be somewhat lonely and it's very taxing if it is lonely. So when you team up with other people like Rob, you can make it easier for everyone. But also, it's just fun to connect and be cool with people. So. Rob, if you want to introduce yourself and then we can hop into what we're doing today. Oh, you're

rob:

Hello

justin_lewis:

muted.

rob:

there, hi, sorry

justin_lewis:

There

rob:

about

justin_lewis:

you

rob:

that.

justin_lewis:

are.

tanner_weyland:

You're good.

rob:

My name is Rob Van Auchen, and I write and publish a lot of stuff under DM Robrick. I'm just happy to be here with you guys. I've played with both of you in your one shots, and I'm a frequent listener, and I'm looking forward to this. Should be a lot of fun.

justin_lewis:

Yeah, yeah. And listener, if you wanna catch one of Rob's published encounters, you can go to betterdungeonmaster.com slash Robrick and purchase it, it's an awesome encounter called the Lorecraft Collection, did I get that right?

rob:

That's

justin_lewis:

The Lorecraft,

rob:

correct.

justin_lewis:

yes, yeah. So go ahead and publish that, all the proceeds go right to Rob, cause he's an awesome DM. But today, like I said, we're going to work on home brewing and We haven't prepared anything specifically to show you, you know, the ups and downs, the ins and outs and the exciting and boring parts of homebrew creation. So I have shared a document with all three of us. First of all, did either of you have any specific ideas on anything you wanted to create together?

rob:

I'm game for just about anything, but I thought I would put that question right back to you folks. I don't know the scale and scope of what you guys were thinking, but we can go anywhere from, you know, a fun random table to a one-page encounter to a several-page, you know, one-shot kind of adventure in a box kind of thing, if that's what you guys are looking for.

justin_lewis:

Sure. Tanner, any specific way you're leaning?

tanner_weyland:

Ooh, man, I've been thinking about this as well, because I think, I mean, it'd be cool to do a one-shot, but that is, you know, it takes a good amount of planning.

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

tanner_weyland:

So. I think we'd come up

rob:

Nope.

tanner_weyland:

with... Oh, go ahead.

rob:

No, no pressure.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah,

rob:

No

tanner_weyland:

I

rob:

pressure.

tanner_weyland:

know, right? I'm thinking that maybe we just figure out, like just how, huh, like how long

rob:

Yeah.

tanner_weyland:

we want it to last, and then essentially just go work backwards from there, come up with a

justin_lewis:

Sure.

tanner_weyland:

cool premise, move

justin_lewis:

Sure.

tanner_weyland:

from, I don't know,

rob:

So,

tanner_weyland:

that sound good? ["Spring Day"]

rob:

absolutely, to date, I don't wanna call it my area of expertise, because I'm still fledgling in the field here,

justin_lewis:

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

rob:

but I have created encounters that are circled around the three pillars, right? Exploration, combat, and social. And my goal with each of these encounters is to kind of put a little randomized table that could possibly lead crafty DMs down other avenues to kind of expand the encounter itself. So it's kind of like an encounter in a box with these sort of like little tendrils that allow DMs and players to kind of pick up things and maybe decide, oh, you know what? That was kind of an interesting little tidbit. Maybe I'll follow that idea and

justin_lewis:

Excellent.

rob:

let it grow. I don't wanna keep anybody, any DMs in a cage here.

justin_lewis:

Yeah, I love that. Let's do an encounter then. What were

tanner_weyland:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

you saying, Tanner?

tanner_weyland:

maybe an encounter. What if we just had like, we created like a kind of a little mini one shot with just one of each of those three pillars, you know,

justin_lewis:

Got

tanner_weyland:

some

justin_lewis:

it.

tanner_weyland:

exploration, some combat and some social, and then go from there.

rob:

love it

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

love it

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

love it

justin_lewis:

Um, and listener, we probably won't get all to all of this today because creating a one shot can be rather long. So we're probably going to split this episode up. Uh, so, uh, yeah, stay tuned. But first, um, let me just write down, I'll be the, I'll be the notes keeper, I guess, unless one of you is better at it because I'm not super great at giving

rob:

I'm

justin_lewis:

notes.

rob:

happy to

justin_lewis:

Okay.

rob:

help.

tanner_weyland:

Nope.

rob:

Happy to help however I can. Ha ha.

justin_lewis:

All right. So homebrew. I wish I could spell home brew creation. shot.

rob:

While you're typing, I'll put this idea to you both here. What is the flavor that you would like to capture? Are we going epic fantasy? Are we going squash buckling pirates? Are we going sort of for frivolous? I had the opportunity, I believe Tanner, you were the dungeon master for, it's kind of like a Halloween, almost like a Halloween theme. We, when we played, we had entered that kind of sort of creepy haunted pumpkin patch.

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

tanner_weyland:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

and there was a pumpkin headed villain. So, you know, October is coming up. So something like that might be kind of cool, like a campy kind of holiday themed.

justin_lewis:

I like

rob:

We

justin_lewis:

that.

rob:

can go, I know Spelljammer just came out. We can go, you know, D&D in outer space,

tanner_weyland:

No.

rob:

home rune outer space.

justin_lewis:

No, yeah. I like those ideas. I think we should definitely either do Halloween-themed one, Christmas-themed one, because Christmas is also coming up, and or Thanksgiving or a mix of the three. One other thought I did have is because I specifically want this one-shot to be very useful for anyone to play, specifically the introductory DMs. So if we could create a one-shot that And, you know, like Tanner said, it touches on the adventure, the exploration, sorry, not adventure, so the exploration, the combat and the social, and kind of introduces the DM to doing that. I think that would be extremely helpful to our listener. Um, so yeah, that's what that, those are my thoughts.

rob:

and.

tanner_weyland:

As far as the actual theme, let's say. I mean, space does sound cool, but I'm gonna,

justin_lewis:

Hehehe

tanner_weyland:

I'm gonna say maybe later. That might be a later one. I haven't even thought

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

tanner_weyland:

about space and I would wanna put more time into that. What do you guys think about an academy setting?

justin_lewis:

I like that. I think it's very

rob:

Okay,

justin_lewis:

reminiscent

rob:

I'm on board.

justin_lewis:

of Harry Potter, so that would be easy for a lot of people to relate to, in a sense.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, I also think that it provides a lot of opportunities for both social and exploration, and

justin_lewis:

for sure.

tanner_weyland:

then of course combat, whether you have it as part of a lesson that goes awry or they're exploring in the middle of the night or who knows what, right? I think it's a very approachable kind of setting.

justin_lewis:

Agreed. Cool.

rob:

Yeah, absolutely.

justin_lewis:

So theme,

rob:

I'm totally on board. Now,

justin_lewis:

or

rob:

I know.

justin_lewis:

I guess that's the setting.

rob:

Well, I know that you have a homebrew kind of world build that you've been working on, Justin. Is there a location or a place where this academy might be set?

justin_lewis:

Yeah, so there is one academy that is currently created. I'm still working on the world itself, but it's called the Brazen Academy. Um, I don't know if it would exactly fit this. So it is essentially an academy specifically created for teaching people how to smelt and mine this material called deep iron, which is, um, it's, it's harder than adamantine. In this world, everything that every magical item that is like plus three is made of this stuff. And this this academy belongs to this nation called the Kula Uwea Confederacy, and they guard it very highly. So once you get in, you can't get out. Like, there's no escape. Like, they'd kill you before they let you out because the secrets of smelting this type of iron is so closely guarded. I don't know if that would be a good location. But if you guys want we could also create a different Academy in the world that is a little bit less intense

rob:

Well, I'm just thinking if, and this is just me shooting the breeze here, an academy, and you want this to be useful for beginner DMs. So what if the academy was for a school of, I guess, it could be children, it could be anybody who's interested, but a school for would-be adventurers. And like each of the houses is led by your traditional. class types, right? So you've got like the barbarian

justin_lewis:

I like

rob:

house,

justin_lewis:

that.

rob:

you've got like the clerk house, you've got the wizard house, you know? And so the PCs could join a house with their desire and the purpose of this particular encounter would be to maybe pass the test, whatever the test may be. This way it's replayable, right? So PCs and players could play it over and over again as a different class. It's something that's kind of easy to jump into, that the purpose is kind of... I don't want to like railroad anybody or streamline,

justin_lewis:

Exactly.

rob:

but yeah, the tests would be things that we could make randomized tables for, or we could certainly

tanner_weyland:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

just insert something. And again, people could play this over and over again. This could be something really cool. A nice, almost like I teach for a living, so I'm always thinking of like, you know, how to bring kids and

justin_lewis:

Exactly.

rob:

young people into the

tanner_weyland:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

game.

justin_lewis:

No,

rob:

It sounds

justin_lewis:

that's

rob:

like

justin_lewis:

exactly...

rob:

this might be a good way to do that.

justin_lewis:

Yeah, I love that

tanner_weyland:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

idea.

rob:

All right,

justin_lewis:

I love that idea,

rob:

I like

justin_lewis:

especially

rob:

this.

justin_lewis:

because also, it's kind of meta. It's like, here's the test becoming an adventurer, and if this is played by new players, then it kind of actually is like, now you're an adventurer kind of thing. It's pretty funny. So...

rob:

Yeah. All right, so then I guess, well, go ahead, please.

justin_lewis:

No, I was just gonna say, so the theme then would be like school test type idea, not necessarily Halloween or Christmas, but I guess you could flavor it that specific way depending on when you play it.

rob:

It is back to school. So it

justin_lewis:

That,

rob:

does kind of

justin_lewis:

yeah,

rob:

fit

tanner_weyland:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

that, that makes

rob:

the

justin_lewis:

sense.

rob:

back to school and summers

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

out back to school.

justin_lewis:

Well.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, you know, I think there's a couple ways we could do this. Either one allows a lot of randomization or tables, depending on what, you know, DM wants

Justin:

Ulf woke up. He was in a cave, but he saw a face above his. It was Herlia. Ulf, we thought you were dead. Ulf sat up and saw Hepom sitting not too far off now, sporting a few more days' growth of beard. Ulf looked around. He could see the exit from the cave a few yards away. It was snowing outside. About a week. We still don't know what happened, Ulf, but we are sure glad to see you up and walking. We... we didn't know what to do." Hylia said as her voice trailed off. of breathed deeply. I'm sorry." Ulf looked into Herlia's eyes. I've failed you these past few weeks. I should have been more, but I thought just about myself. Herlia was taken aback. Ulf, we didn't blame you for what happened to Hüde and Kujari. Ulf began to stand up and walked towards the snowy cave entrance. He turned and looked back at Herlia. I was not asleep or in a coma. Instead, I was taken back to the home of my ancestors. There, I lived for weeks in a tribe, and I had to perform some sort of test. Actually, I still have to perform the test, the trial. Early, I stood up and rubbed her temples. Ulf, you're not making any sense. Ulf turned and looked at her once again. We have to go north. and conquer the tribes of the North. Silence. Then Hipon piped up and said, well, when do we leave? What would you like to do? Welcome back to today's show. I'm your host today, Justin Lewis, and in the world of being a dungeon master there are now essentially two types of dungeon masters. There are those that prefer playing in person and those that prefer playing online. And actually I guess there's probably a third group that likes either one. But today I want to give a small guide to preparing to preparing for an online session for those people who feel like the online format may be limited or they've just never done it before. Sorry about my voice cracking there. But hopefully this guide helps you feel ready and prepared for a nice game with your friends online. And this is generally what I do when I prepare for my one shots, which you can sign up for by going to betterdungeonmaster.com slash one dash shot. It is free and you can see this firsthand. So first step. find your players. As always, the first step to any session of D&D is to find players. And with an online game, your pool of players has both narrowed and expanded. Because now you can play with anyone all over the world, but you do need to find people who are willing to play online. Me, I can't even get my wife to play online, so I resort to asking people I've never met in person over my podcast. Namely, people like you. So second thing you need to do is send out a player brief. Second thing you need to do is prepare the story. You need to write a full story and the nice thing about playing D&D online is you don't necessarily need to change the story to fit the online format. For the most part, you can do everything online that you can do in person. Naturally, whispering in people's ears is a bit hard. However, it's still possible. You can, there are tools that allow you to send discrete messages, and if need be, you can just email each individual person because theoretically you will have each of their emails. So prepare the story, write it down, and we have tons of podcast episodes that should help you with that and get you where you need to be. So the second thing is you need to choose theater of the mind or virtual tabletop or a VTT. So the difference is with a theater of the mind, and this is more of a tech choice than anything, with theater of the mind, you don't need more than one software. Well, I guess, let me explain. So a virtual tabletop is essentially a platform that allows you to connect audio visual for seeing your face and hearing your voice, but it also allows you to play music over the connection. It also allows you to display a map whenever you are in combat or a similar situation. That's a VTT. A theater of the mind is where you simply use an audio visual connection like Zoom or Google Meet, whatever have you. I use Riverside just because I actually record my one shots online. But you have this visual and audio connection and that's it. And if you need to, I suppose you could share your screen and show anything you needed to. You rely mostly on your descriptive words to tell people where they are, even in combat. And even in Theater of the Mind, or just using, sorry. And even just using Zoom or Google Meet, you can still share your screen to show visual aspects of your campaign. And with that, you can include audio aspects as well. VTTs are just a little bit more native, so they're a little bit more set up for things like that. For example, when you share a map in combat, you can create tokens and assign each of those tokens to each of your players. and that allows them to move the player in the combat rather than you having to ask them where to go and things like that. And you need to choose this, and I guess number three is a little bit more than this, you need to choose your whole tech stack. So are you planning on streaming the encounter or the session? Are you planning on recording it like I am? In both cases, you need to make sure you understand exactly what your tech stack will be. So in my case, dabbled around using a few things. I'm actually recording this on the 29th of April, which is the day of our last one-shot. And I'm planning on using Riverside, which is a podcasting platform, so it allows you to podcast with guests online. I'm planning on using that as the audio visual portion of the session, which will record the show. And then I will use Roll20, which is a virtual tabletop. to actually play the game. And if that doesn't work, then I will actually probably switch to just using Roll20 and then using a, I believe it's called Streamlabs, which is a desktop streaming where you can capture what's going on on your screen and then stream it out to either YouTube or whatever. And that's kind of my backup. And then if that doesn't work, I'll probably resort to Discord and things like that. But as you see, you need to choose your tech stack and also, Be very aware of the fact that things might not work out. People might not have microphones, headphones, their internet might not work. Playing online, there's a lot more technical snafus that can go wrong, so you need to be aware of that and plan ahead. Number four, probably one of the most important ones you can do is send out the player brief, okay? And you would do this just like you would do it in any in-person session or things like that, especially if you're in one shot, but a player brief has it's like a packet of information or or Segments of information. It's not necessarily packet. I guess you can send an email or send multiple emails, but It has very important information for the player to get ready for the session and that starts with character creation. So Information about hey, you can have these types of characters. You can't have these types of characters so forth and so on. So in the one shot that I'm running today, and obviously, you know, no spoilers because this will be out after the one shot, but I told the characters or the players, they can make any character they'd like. The world is in, the session will be set in my homebrew world of integrity, which has its own pantheon of nine gods, and that's it. So if they are connected to a deity, they should let me know and I'd give them further information. But. As far as characters and classes, feel free to go forth and do what they want. Generally with Oneshots, I'm pretty flexible. Now in hindsight, I would tell my characters, or tell my players not to do any character that can breathe underwater. And the reason why that's important is because the Oneshot takes place on a cruise ship, and spoiler alert, but the cruise ship goes down, right? Naturally, that's what happens in Oneshots. And actually that brings me to the next point that you should include in your player brief, which is information about the situation. So in this case, the players will find themselves on this cruise ship, and mind you, integrity is set in a high fantasy world. So this cruise ship is really kind of top of the line. There are a few countries that have banded together to create this marvel, essentially, and it's fueled by the resources of one... country called the Bastion of the Crown. It's fueled by the ingenuity and the technical know-how of the Kula Uwea Confederacy and then it's fueled by the technology of the Sivarish, sorry, it's fueled by the technology of the Sivarish Protectorate. So it's kind of this joint creation of a few countries. So with that, the players, I told them you have to make sure that your character is from one of these countries because the ship is actually going from the Kula Uwea Confederacy to the Sivirish Protectorate and then finally to the Bastion of the Crown. So all of your characters need to have a reason to be on the ship and to go there, right? And with that I also explained a little bit of the situation around the world. Okay, so this ship is first of its kind, like nothing else like it. And it's also coming around in a time of disunity. So the world as a whole has become very unorganized and disintegrated, okay? So allies have severed and are now kind of looking at each other as enemies. And the whole world is in a commotion. So that's why the ship is so very important. It's kind of a symbol of the world kind of knitting itself back together. So that's the situation, that's the information I gave my characters about the situation. Now, the next thing you need to include is any information about the world. So for example, like what I said about the... the gods, the deities. So in integrity there are nine gods and each god has kind of their own domain. And one important thing about the gods is that their alignment constantly shifts, okay? So every year, and this is kind of how they gauge their zodiac, every year there is a lawful good god and then there is a chaotic evil god, all right? And during those years, those two forces are directly opposed. Okay, and every year it changes up randomly. And a lot of effort and time in other areas of the world is spent in figuring out which god is good because that determines some of the major events that will happen and things like that as far as political events or natural disasters things like that. So that might be something I would include in my brief, but in this case I didn't because none of my characters decided to be a cleric or a paladin. But I did extend the invitation to them saying, hey, if you would like more information, reach out to me. Another bit you need to know about this is that a lot of this information can be exposed or you can display through exposition in the game. So for example, the cruise ship is technologically powered by a substance called Spark, which is a, it's actually a magical drug that was first designed. kind of in other parts of the world, and then it came to the Sivirish Protectorate, and the government actually didn't regulate it or whatever, and many engineers and scientists found that you could use this drug to create a powerful energetic substance, right? So the entire ship is powered by this drug, this very volatile drug called Spark. That's something that the players will figure out in game because exposition and things like that, right? So again, you definitely need to include information about the world, but don't give too much, right? Make sure that it's salient to what the player needs and relevant. Lastly, you need to include links. So you need to include links to the online campaign. So if you're using D&D Beyond, which I neglected to mention, that's another tool that I'm using in my tech stack. That's essentially where all the players are making their characters in a place where I can see it. and I can actually use it to make encounters and things like that, which will come in very handy. You need links to the audio and visual, so I sent out links to Riverside for my players, and then links to the virtual tabletop if you use it. So I sent out links to Roll20. And that's essentially what you need to send in the player brief. Again, it doesn't need to be one single email or whatever. You can just make sure the information gets to your players and they feel ready. Number five. You need to... plan any encounters that you need. And what I mean by this is, you need to prepare the stats and the situations so that way when the time comes, you don't have to spend precious time doing that, but instead you can give your full attention to your players. Breaking the flow is not a very good thing in D&D unless it's intentional, in which case have at it, right? So what I did was I looked at the chain of events and on a cruise ship it's very nice. I suppose maybe it's railroading, but it is what it is. That's kind of the situation. They have limited choices as far as what the major events affecting the cruise ship are going to be. And then next you need to prepare any maps you need if you're using a virtual tabletop. So in my case, I use Dungeon Alchemist, which is an awesome tool. It's actually a 3D tool on Steam that you can purchase. And what it does is it allows you to create very in-depth maps for different situations. And I can actually, well, if you sign up for our Dungeon Master Guild Level 1, you can get access to a lot of the maps that we create and download them for free. So you can upload them to your VTT or whatnot. But essentially, Dungeon Alchemist allows you to drag and drop different elements into a map. So you can... click a specific room you want to create, you draw the shape and then you click the check mark and it auto-populates using AI that room and then you can go ahead and customize it using different objects, different floor tiles and things like that. And let me tell you, when I first backed it as a Kickstarter, it was very, it was pretty sparse, but now it has so many options, including Gingerbread House as one, Ice House. You can actually make caves now, which is a pretty cool feature. It's just becoming way more. Developed and in depth so now it's the time to get on it because it's just gonna get more in depth Last thing you need to do is follow up with your players The common bane of the dungeon master is not getting players to come to the sessions or having players bail things like that Even on one shots that happen because someone listened to a podcast and signed up with me people bail You know all the time And when I say bail, I don't necessarily mean that they just decide not to come. Oftentimes, it's like family issues or emergencies or things like that, but it does happen a lot. And so you do need to be flexible and follow up with your players the day of or the day before just to make sure that they have the right time, the right links, and there's no issues, right? Especially if you're new to

Justin:

Hi there listener, this is Justin Lewis and I have here Tanner Wayland with me today. Say hi, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Hi.

Justin:

And today on how to be a better DM we are going to talk about Sort of a niche topic One that I think a lot of people struggle with without knowing they struggle with so let me paint a picture for you It's session zero right and you've finally gotten all your PCs in the same room We'll say it's a tavern right there sitting at the same table a few of them know each other So you have two over here that know each other two over there and two over there with most groups, your players start saying, oh well my character's mysterious and untrusting of other people and you have to prove yourself to me. Except every player in your party is acting like that. So the question that we're gonna answer today is how do you get your players, or at least your PCs, to start treating each other like friends and to start wanting to travel together and to view themselves as a party? difficult things to do in session zero or in a one-shot, especially if you as the DM don't outright say, you guys have been traveling for a while, you are already friends. So naturally, let's get that one out of the way. The simplest way to do that specifically in one-shots is just to say, you guys are already friends. You have a long history, you don't need to worry about that. That method doesn't really work when it comes to long-term campaigns because the whole point of the campaign your party integrates and becomes solidified and galvanized, right? So

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

we'll get that one out of the way, but Tanner, any initial thoughts?

Tanner Weyland:

Uh, my initial thought is that like you were saying, it's not as clean of a process as, as you'd like, it's not as clear cut because not everyone has a fellowship of the ring type situation where they're all sitting, they all gathered for one reason and then they all, everyone who joined it volunteers and it's like, Oh, you have my acts, you know, that kind of thing. Most of the time it's like, Oh, they just happen to be in the same town together. And then this event happens, you know, but a party of orcs attacks the town. believe, you know, we like to skirt over the fact that like, oh, obviously these people band together to go fight the orcs. It's like, not everyone does that. Some people, when they see trouble, they just, you know, they, they get out of town, you know, but, but so that's why the inciting incident is so important. And also you have to have kind of external factors that tie them together. For example, you know, if they are in a town, like let's say that they're there festival, right? And you know, I'll keep with my example and an orc attack happens. You know, instead of just assuming the players are going to fight together, what you could do is have an initial fight in the plaza, you know, or in the town square. And of course, everyone's fighting there because all the players just happen to be there and stuff. But then after that, you could have it be like, Oh, everyone else that wasn't a town like specifically puts you guys together, right? Like inciting incidents like that, you kind of need that initial moment of obligation or obligated partying in order to then later build on that and hopefully make some more connection, if that makes sense. So, I'm gonna go ahead and start with the first one. So, I'm gonna start with the first one.

Justin:

Yeah, that makes total sense. And actually let's, let's kind of put this into an example. So let's use the example of our homebrew one-shot that we're working on with Rob from

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

New York, Rob Van Auken or, or no, wait, is that his DM name or his real? I think that's his real

Tanner Weyland:

That's

Justin:

name,

Tanner Weyland:

his

Justin:

right?

Tanner Weyland:

real name. Yeah.

Justin:

Yes. Roderick Van Helm, Rob

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

Rick Van Helm is his DM. Anyways. it's called For Whom the Bell Tolls, the Chime Fell Ceremony, right? And

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

thinking about this inciting event, the way the, gosh, I don't want to give too many spoilers away, but essentially your party comes to a town, participates in festivals and trials to win awards to kind of become a new ceremonial figure that protects the town in a sense, but also protects reality in a sense from And at one point a leader of the monastery hosting the event turns and basically summons the big bad that everyone was trying to keep out, right? So I think in this case, to kind of give an example to what Tanner just said, an inciting incident could be this session. Like this could be your session zero. All the players come from different places to participate in the Chime Fell ceremony and possibly gain the award, right? figure

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

and I feel like naturally as your players win because they naturally will they'll win those trials they'll come together to meet the chief monastery officer or whatever the name is that the abbot and that you know they'll meet each other and then the inciting event will be that large monster gets summoned and suddenly they have to work together to fix the problem right

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

I think that that we should hang out more, kind of an idea, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, I think that when you have a galvanizing like event, then that can cause a lot of connection. Otherwise, like I think it's a little bit harder with like longer journeys, you know? Because if you do have an inciting event that all happens in one town, like what happens in our, you know, the Chime fell ceremony, then that's like very easy because all the players are in one town, there's a festival, they're all there for the same purpose, in the same trials and you know that you that's certainly a way to make it happen and then just you as the DM as they're playing you're having little moments that you create of them like being like oh this person's not half bad you know this other character and things like that can kind of help them become more of a party how about if you were on like a longer journey style like campaign things along the way create connection there.

Justin:

When you say longer journey style campaign, can you give a little bit,

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

Like where they're going to multiple locations, you know, they go from a town to a dungeon, to a seaside port, to, you know, and they're like camping along the way, they run into bandits here and there. It's just like, it's a lot of traveling and

Justin:

Okay.

Tanner Weyland:

there's more, a bunch of small events versus one big event.

Justin:

Yeah, see even that I think is pretty easy. So I think deep down, and this is honestly, this is kind of a topic of social encounters anyways, there's a book called The Like Switch. And it's funny, these last few duo episodes where you and me have both been on, have been both about D&D, but also about life in general. So

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

this is more about life in general, but this book is called The Like Switch. an FBI agent writing a book about how to influence people and kind of gain relationships and things like that and he lays out what's called or what he calls the relationship formula right and he says your relationship is a formula derived from in proximity frequency intensity and duration so essentially

Tanner Weyland:

Hmm.

Justin:

you can boil down relationships to how close are you physically and like how intense are the emotions you feel and how long are you close together. See that's why in my opinion, when you go and work at a new place, at first you don't really make friends with the people sitting at your desk. You may or may not introduce yourself, but if you don't, after a month, you're gonna know each other's names and you're gonna start talking to each other just because you sit next to each other every single day. So in this case, with forcing your players to be together, have to get that formula in action, right? In the case of the galvanizing event, they are having such intense emotion that it's kind of like the foxhole friends, right? Shared trauma leads to strong emotional or at least somewhat strong relationships. But in the case of a long-term campaign, you're having them together for often, those natural occurrences are going to happen naturally. they would naturally relax and feel more comfortable around each other because kind of from a primal sense that person that unknown is becoming more known right. So I think just force the key to getting your PCs to want to travel together is to have them kind of fulfill that formula you know and there are obviously

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

other things to do but I think that's a good place to start.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, I like that too because it made me realize kind of an issue with a lot of DMs and characters, you know, because it's we're talking about parties here. But if you don't give like one, if you don't give your players the incentive to create good backstories. And then second, and this is where I realized with your comments, if you don't allow the where they can share parts about their character that they've created and parts of their character's personality then even if they have shared trauma like you were saying and even if they spend time together what are they going to know? It's like you're with someone at work who only ever talks about work, right? Are you going to actually ever know that person? Probably not. You know, you're only going to know them in work capacity because they never talk about their personal life and so if you ever saw them outside of work they'd be practically you. You know, it's like a teacher in school, right? Since kids never find out about what their teacher did, when they see them at the supermarket, they're like, what the heck, aren't you supposed to be at school? It's kind of like that where if your players are only having their characters talk about the event in front of them, the next goal, the next thing, and they never talk about their character backstory or, you know, or get opportunities, character do, then they won't have any latching on points for each other, right? I think that's an important thing.

Justin:

Yeah, I agree. And actually to that note, I think getting your party to gel together starts long before session zero and it begins with character creation. And naturally you're probably thinking like, oh, well, duh, you'd want, you know, a melee combat person in the same party as someone who casts spells or is ranged. Sure. But what I mean more is I think that relationship formula that I talked about, it might be a little bit... but incomplete, you probably need to add in the individual efforts of each person as well as the individual moral codes of each person. So, for example, in my current campaign, I have a character named Saban. He is a lizard folk artificer, and he's from the swamp, you know, he has a southern accent, and he's generally a very polite, caring individual, you know, I'd say he's neutral good tending towards lawful good. He's the kind of guy that like, if he sees someone struggling, he'll go help for no reason. He's just a good guy, right? And I

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

put him in there just for me to have a character that I can play around with. But sometimes, other of the players in the group, they are neutral or evil, depending on their situation. And so they'll do things that are questionable for Saban. And to be honest, it has made Saban think, do I really want to continue with this group when they're doing certain acts, right? you need to make sure that your character creation will not spawn characters that act in ways that are diametrically opposite of one another. If you have two characters that spend lots of time together in incredibly intense emotions, but they disagree with each other about the basic standards of life, they will probably come to hate each other, and that's how you get villains, to be honest.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, exactly. You have to have during character creation, you have to create characters who would in any world be willing to like spend some time around each other, right? If it's like, oh, this is just such a big event that they have to spend time together that I mean, that's okay, but you're not going to have as much of a gelled party as you need. One thing I realized is that you have to have opportunity like Incidents are a great way even better than I think bigger incidents for your characters to gel, right? let's say that you're in a town and your characters are at a tavern and You know, everyone's giving them the stink eye and the innkeeper is actually overcharging them and they see it because everyone else is like when the innkeeper is like gives them the like the tab essentially Like the players tab is like three times higher, right? such a small thing and you don't think that would like help the party gel but guess what that's a perfect incident to really reveal people's like characters because unlike a big bad where it's like oh everyone just hates these you know like what do you do about the local innkeeper who you can't just well you could just massacre but like most people are gonna try and find other solutions and that's where you're gonna see each individual characters

Justin:

you

Tanner Weyland:

personality but then they'll have to work together and be like hey what do we do because you I want to just steal from him and then the priest over there just wants to you know, turn the other cheek and leave, you know If you don't have small events like that Where people feel cheated people feel like their trust was betrayed People feel disappointed then they can't flesh out their character and they also can't make moral Decisions between characters, which is where a lot of that kind of connection comes from, you know

Justin:

Agreed. I think when it

Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. Today, we are going to jump right into the announcements!

Other than that, Justin and I are going to be at an event this Saturday, the 22nd of April! In Provo Utah, in the Provo Towne Center Mall, there is a D&D world record happening. The store “We Geek Together” is hosting an event called “Dead Wars” where they will have over 1,000 players playing the same game together—thus beating the world record. Justin and I will be there with the people from Monsters.Rent to talk about the minis and everything—we are also providing over 200 minis for the event to use, so we are so excited! If you are curious about the event info, look up wegeektogether.org to find more info. We hope to see some of you there!

Today's Topic: animal companions, and NPC party companions

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Is it important for you NPCs to "feel" a certain way when players interact with them? And more importantly, does making a fleshed out, goal-driven NPC add to the story or just add to your stress levels when prepping for your next session? Tanner discusses with DM Shea and DM Kyle from the Dungeon Master Talk podcast!

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Tanner Weyland:

Hello, my name is Tanner Wayland and I, along with my co-host Justin Lewis, are here on How to be a Better DM. How you doing, Justin?

Justin:

I am good. I'm good. How are you, Tenor?

Tanner Weyland:

Oh, doing well, doing well. It's a lovely day outside, you

Justin:

It

Tanner Weyland:

know?

Justin:

is.

Tanner Weyland:

It's great. Here in Utah, it's been winter for 20 years, it feels like. And

Justin:

It really does.

Tanner Weyland:

it's finally clearing up, and we're just gonna get so much flooding, but everyone's happy it's sunny. Ha ha.

Justin:

That's the truth.

Tanner Weyland:

Well, anyway, to get going with this, uh, with this topic today, we'll just hop right in. Um, the topic is how to be a DM when you're just busy, busy as all get out. Like how do you make time for it? Um, first off, Justin, has this ever happened to you where you just feel too busy to even meet or prepare or anything like that?

Justin:

Yeah, yes. I would say most recently it's been that I felt too busy that I wanted a break and I didn't want to actually have my players come over and have the game. I just kind of wanted a break. But I like what you said there, having to make time for it. Because I feel like DMing when busy, the art to DMing when you're busy, that you can do it and one of those is just making more time for it. You know, simple enough, you make it a bigger priority in your life, you get rid of other things. The unfortunate aspect with that is that it's a game. Like it's a hobby,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

you know. So if you are attempting to push out family matters or work or you know, religious obligations or social obligations, I don't know, I would maybe reconsider and try some of our other methods we'll talk about rather than stop working.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah. No. Yeah. I totally hear you because if there was something on the chopping block, I think for a lot of people, it would be, you know, running dungeons and dragons, frankly. And, and,

Justin:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

you know, I think just as an initial disclaimer on this episode, if you feel overburdened by your DMing, like you are absolutely entitled to stop, you know, to take a break, a longer term break. the kind of person who's like, Hey, I think I can if I could keep it going. And I really like it. If I change some things, that's kind of what this is for. Um, now like, I'll be honest, like there have been times like, uh, in the same campaign, I had to both, uh, at one point stop it, but then before then, uh, when I was in school, I had to learn how to deal with it during the school year versus summer, right? this was when I was in college and And you know, I think that it was actually an enlightening experience And I think this is what you'll learn too Is that you know, we all wish we had plenty of time to prepare for our sessions We all wish we could do like three four-hour sessions every week, you know but the fact is you know, sometimes you don't and it makes you actually kind of fall back on what's the core of Right? Like for me, and this was kind of my first tip, I guess, we were doing pretty long sessions. We were doing like three, sometimes four hour sessions. And my wife was just like, hey, Dan, you got a lot of other stuff you're trying to do. And then you always, she pointed out that I often complained about being short on time. And

Justin:

Hehe.

Tanner Weyland:

she's like, maybe don't do it as long. And initially I was like, oh, but what will they think? these stupid reasonings in my mind. But then I just did it. I was like, you know what, fine. We'll just plan for like an hour and a half. And then, you know, it usually ended up being like two hours sessions. But even that little change meant that I didn't have to prepare as much. It meant that I had more time. It also meant that the sessions felt punchier. And I really appreciated that change.

Justin:

Yeah, I would say with doing something like that, it definitely is like a good challenge for yourself because everyone wants to make every session impactful and fun and memorable.

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

And when you only have an hour and a half, you start to think of, okay, well, what is like most important? You know, like we can't

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

deal with the fluff, you know, and you probably could, So I really like that And you know what like Tanner said if you ever have problems with being super busy Talk to your players see if they can help out or give advice or just make changes like they did in Tanner's case You know communicate communication is very important right Tanner

Tanner Weyland:

Oh, you know what? I couldn't have said it better myself, Justin. Um, yeah, honestly, communication is huge because if you're feeling overwhelmed, then the worst thing you can do is keep that bottled up. Uh, so talk to, you know, in the case you will do have a significant other, like I can say that probably one of the reasons you feel so busy is because you have obligations there and that's not bad, you know, that's part of being in a relationship. Uh, but if you just hold it in, then there's going to be that tension. So talk about it, be like, hey, Deming's really important to me, but you're even more important to me. How can we make this both work? You know, and then once you discuss that, then talk with your players and be like, hey, here's some thoughts I had. Uh, have you guys had any thoughts? You know, maybe they'll be down to be like, Hey, yeah, we can, we can do once a month or,

Justin:

Mm-hmm.

Tanner Weyland:

you know, every two weeks instead of every week or something. Right. Um, I think people are

Justin:

I feel

Tanner Weyland:

more understanding.

Justin:

like, yeah, I

Tanner Weyland:

Go

Justin:

was just

Tanner Weyland:

ahead.

Justin:

gonna add, I feel like that is just good life advice in general. Over the last few weeks, I myself have been incredibly busy with Monsters.Rent, which if you guys haven't heard, that's our new company and Tanner's actually a part of it now.

Tanner Weyland:

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Justin:

But I've been super busy with that myself. So my wife has had conversations with me of like, well, something's gotta give and doing exactly what Tanner said saying here are some of my priorities, what are your priorities, and then how can we make both of these work together and you have to have an open mind. You know, like Tanner said, your DMing might have to go from once a week to once a month. And again, it's a simple fact of the matter that most of us, it's not our money making stream. Like, it doesn't make us money. So we can't always justify sacrificing other things for it. should but

Tanner Weyland:

Mm.

Justin:

I think you do definitely need to keep an open mind with what you might need to give up.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, absolutely. And so I think with communication, with the willingness to be flexible, uh, there's also, uh, this is maybe a simple tip. Some of you are very creative and you write all of your campaigns and all of your sessions and that's wonderful. Uh, I would argue that, that you could benefit though, during a very busy part of your life, um, you could benefit to switch to a pre-written material. that the others have done, whether that's free or you purchase it or whatever else. Um, that can help save you a lot of time in prep work because I mean, I think you'd agree, Justin, like the actual session, like the time you spend in the session, that's not all the time you're spending. You're spending like you're spending hours beforehand, like preparing for every little possibility, right? Uh, it's like, oh, if they're in a town, suddenly you have to do a bunch of prep they could have. And if you have to come up with all of that, that's all time you're spending. Unless you're getting a pre-written adventure. It doesn't save as much time as you'd like, because the fact is I've done a lot of pre-written adventures where you just you're very interested in the world and you're like oh I got to remember what happens here. But it does streamline the process and it takes a couple steps out. So I would suggest that honestly.

Justin:

Yeah. And to that point, there's nothing wrong with inserting this or that encounter from your favorite, uh, D and D DM, YouTuber or podcaster or whatever. Um, I know that, you know, I'm, I'm a fan of the high rollers in the UK with their Eros campaign. I really liked that campaign. And, you know, I used to watch that while working because my job, it just me to basically listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos basically all day while working. So I'd watch that. And thinking back, if I really needed to, I could insert a few of the minor story arcs into my campaign. You know, adding in twists and flavors here and there. And that might save some time in the prep. And this one might be a little bit controversial, but pull back on the stats and the rolling. You know

Tanner Weyland:

Mm.

Justin:

D&D, I've said before at its core, it is just a story with agreed rules and a system for how you interact, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

And if you need to, without your player's permission even, you can kind of dial back how many times you use the dice to interactions. You know, I'm not saying get rid of it all the way unless you want to, but really, you know, if you're having trouble coming up with this next session, don't prepare any combat encounters and make it a much quicker roll of the dice, you know, when it does happen. Obviously, if it's a big bad, you have to play it out, but if it's like, you know, a street urchin comes and fights you or something, I don't know, just one or two rolls and that should be fine. That way, fudge those numbers on the spot. And this method I think really works well, like Tanner said, in city environments where if they don't spend a ton of time in this one encounter with these street thugs, it's fine because there's thousands of other things to do in the city. And they probably have other things that they want to do as well. Uh, the only thing I'd, the only cautionary thing I'd add is make sure that you focus on the story when you do this. very plain and very boring like if you're not giving everything you can to the to the segments of role-playing and Actually kind of getting into character your players will start to realize like hey, we didn't really do much this session, you know

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and I think that that idea has at the core of its flexibility, right? It's, uh, it's being flexible with like, Hey, what, what is core to the thing? And having big old battles with a bunch of stat blocks. Uh, that's, I mean, sometimes that's fun, but like other times it's like the players just want to feel, you know, the concept of their players moving around the map, hitting, they don't, they don't need anything too complicated, right? And I was thinking about being flexible with your DMing style. I think that roles and map prep, all of that can be not fudged, but kind of loosened up a little, you know? Like with your roles, maybe you aren't being so harsh on like, oh, let me look up online. What's the challenge level to cross a wall in the winter? know, you don't have to be as like strict on that. Um, you can be like, Oh, it's a, it's a 15, you know, roll that and, and just be more flexible that way. Uh, further, I was thinking about it a lot of times in my DM prep and this, this took time, especially if you're using like an online, like a roll 20 and you have to find maps, you have to have, find a character's tokens. Uh, sometimes that takes time because you're like, Oh man, this idea for this enemy but I can't find the exact token and then you spend an hour you know stressing over this one thing because you want it to feel realistic you don't have to do that like if you're stressing about it guess what you could find a little token of Barney or the Teletubbies

Justin:

Hehehehehehehehe

Tanner Weyland:

and plop that in and your players would get a kick out of it and

Justin:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

it would save you an hour of stress obviously spend the time because I'm sure enemies, you're going to be able to find an easy token, you know, without too much effort. But if it's taking you too much time, just find the parts, the sticking areas in your prep and just be like, Hey, do I need to go as hard as I am here? Or can I, can I loosen up, you know?

Justin:

Yeah, and actually to that point I'd like to cite two examples of guests we've had on our show who have hosted one shots for us and they did it completely theater of the mind because that's what they do. That's what they love

Tanner Weyland:

Yep.

Justin:

and gauging the players experiences they enjoyed it, you know, if you remember Bone Daddy Rob and Thorn from This Dungeon is Occupied of the mind. And

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

that's a quick way if you're stressed out and busy as a DM. That's a quick way to shave off a bunch of prep time because you don't have to worry about getting minis, you don't have to worry about getting maps. I mean you can for reference but it might even be

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

easier to just kind of create it as you go along. And I think that naturally lends and things like that just because it has to fit what everyone can imagine.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and that's honestly a theater of the mind. That's a great way to, I think your players, it might take a little bit of getting used to, but if you just still provide some key descriptions, then people can get into that, right? And you're still gonna have roles, you're still gonna have a lot going on, and your players are still spending time together. That's key, right? Oth

“Mother?” Ulv whispered as he moved towards the visage of his long-dead mother.

“It is I little snowhare,” Ulv’s mother said, using Ulv’s childhood pet name. When he was younger, his hair was so blonde it was almost white. His mother had taken to calling him snowhare when he was a baby. Even though he’d hated the nickname as a teenager, she’d still used it. Now, hearing that nickname pricked his heart and tears slowly formed at the corner of his eyes.

“Yes, young one. We have come to oversee your trial.” Said a much more masculine voice. Ulv watched as the visage of his father appeared next to his mother, his arm resting lightly on her shoulder. “Honestly son, we are disappointed.”

Ulv stared dumbfounded. He’d expected them to say something comforting, but instead, they were here to judge him?

“We expected more from the youth who downed a frost cat in his 11th winter. Truly, what have you been doing?” Ulv’s father continued.

Ulv’s mouth went dry. “I..I..”

“Son, you cannot sit in dreams forever. Herlia and Hipam both need your help.” Ulv’s mother admonished.

“Cojari needs your help son. The Kingdom of the Golden Deer needs your help.” Ulv’s father added.

“But aren’t you here for the trials?” Ulv asked, confused.

“We are,” Ulv’s father said as he looked at Ulv’s mother. “But this vision, it is only a part of your trial. It is the initiation. You aren’t supposed to complete the trial here. Your trial is set to take place with the help of your friends.” Ulv’s father paused. “Son, you can’t just keep wasting away your time. I know it’s hard. You failed. Judir is dead. Nothing you can do can change that.”

Tears began falling slowly down Ulv’s face.

“I’m so untouchable,” Ulv said, bitterness punctuating his comment. “Everyone around me dies or is lost to me. Why is it me that has to survive? Why can’t I pass on to the realm of the gods? Why did you have to leave me?” Ulv said as his knees buckled and he slumped down to all fours.

“Son, Judir made his own choice. As did we all. You’ve been saved for something else. It doesn’t matter who lives and who dies. What matters now is the present. What matters is that you have 3 friends who desperately need you. Save those that can still be saved.” Ulv’s mother whispered into his ear.

What would you like to do?

Welcome back, dungeon masters. Today, you’re with me, Justin Lewis as we discuss mob combat. We all love to watch movies with amazing battle scenes at the end. I’m talking about Lord of the Rings when Aragon charges Mordor with the armies of all men behind him. I’m talking about basically every Star Wars movie ever that ends with one side fighting another. I’m talking about Avengers End Game where all of the snapped people come back to fight the final battle scene.

In each of these scenes, we have the main characters who fight their adversaries. We also see nameless foes occasionally jump into the mix to fight the main characters. On an individual basis, these nameless enemies are no match for our heroes, but in the sheer volume in which they are usually present, they present a formidable obstacle. 

So, today, let’s talk about using Mob combat effectively.

In simple terms, mob combat is using many low-level adversaries in an encounter to pose a much larger threat when all combined. This is the idea of throwing numerous baddies at your adventurers that, when encountered alone, would be just one swipe of an axe, but together, are endless axe swings. This is the concept of numbers over skill. 

You can use mob combat in many different situations. It doesn’t need to be an enormous battle scene like any I’ve mentioned before. One example is a swarm of ravenous ants. Sure the players can swipe at each of them individually, but an area of effect would work a lot better, as would just running away.

Because you’re not fighting just one foe but instead are trying to keep your head above a “rising tide” so to speak, mob combat functions like a mix between a skill challenge and a combat encounter. In fact, in my opinion, there are 3 ways to actually do mob combat.

1: Combined Method: In the combined method of mob combat, you essentially think of the actual numbers of adversaries. For example, in my campaign, I used mob combat when my players were fighting these small automaton drones. Each drone was a very paltry fight, but together they were formidable. I calculated that my group would face 4 “masses” of drones. Rather than having them fight individual drones, I decided that they would fight 4 mobs. Each mob contained 20 drones. The way I did it was the AC of each mob was equal to the number of drones left alive. Each drone technically had 3 hitpoints so each 3 hit points killed a drone. The mob’s attack was equal to 10 plus the number of drones left alive. So starting out the mob would hit for 30 and do 30 damage, but fairly quickly in the engagement, the damage would decrease because the number of drones would die very quickly. 

The reason why this method is called the combined method is that you actually do the math to put together all the baddies. This means you can scale the fight to whatever your group can handle. If they are level 20 and fighting orcs just isn’t what it used to be, have them fight mobs of 20 orcs and see how that works.

2. Simple method: In this method, you forget the math. You essentially just create a monster that is a mob of other creatures. Think of a swarm of rats as an example. They function as one creature, but in reality, they are multiple. There are already some creatures like this out there, but you could easily create your own if you wanted. To start with, I would pick the creature you want to work with. Then the easiest place to start would be to increase its heath substantially. You’re going for more of a gut feel for what would be good rather than using math to calculate it all. Next if that isn’t doing it for you, you can raise their AC. I would only raise it a few points because you still want your heroes to kill lots of the members of the mob. Lastly, maybe think about raising the attack bonus and maybe the damage. There are a lot of monsters within the mob, so theoretically they should be able to swarm the heroes and do damage.

3. Skill challenge: In this method, you do away with a lot of the math and you only roll initiative to see who goes first. Instead of rolling damage and attack bonuses, you essentially just roll a check to see if the hero makes it through the combat without damage. For each round I would assign a DC and a relevant skill to use, or you could just use your players attack bonus. Then assign the mob a specific DC. if the player fails the DC then they do not kill any adversaries within the mob. I would probably split it into a tier. So if the player rolls at least 10 below the DC then the mob scores a critical hit and the damage is doubled. If the player rolls 5 below the DC then the mob scores a hit and deals damage. If the player rolls just under the DC then nothing happens. If the player rolls above the DC then some damage is dealt to the mob (as an entity) if the player rolls 5 above the DC then it’s considered a critical hit and double damage is dealt. With this last method, you can simplify combat a lot. You could even turn the adventurers into a mob and take turns having different players roll for the DC to see what happens.

One of the most common reasons to use mob combat is to give variety to combat encounters. You don’t always want to have your heroes fighting someone of equal or greater skill proficiency. Sometimes, you just want to give your players a chance to lay waste to an entire army, much like the Avengers do. These mob rules could also theoretically be used for war combat in which so much is going on that you can’t really focus on one individual foe because you’re being harried this way and that.

The real reason to use mob combat is to shake things up for yourself. We’ve recently talked about losing your excitement as a DM and honestly, the best way to avoid that is to do cool new things that make your players stop and pay attention. You need to break their state of constancy, and honestly, you need to break yours sometimes too.

Mob combat can be placed in lots of scenarios. A rule of thumb is whenever a one-to-one fight isn’t satisfying enough. For example, you might consider adding some mob fighting to the big boss battle. Having your heroes harried by smaller adversaries while they are trying to focus on a bigger adversary. Or you might add mob fights when your characters are part of a larger engagement, like an alien invasion for example. Lastly, you could add mob combat when you want the stakes to be a little higher, or at least feel that way, without actually having to make the situation that much worse. It’s one thing to say you are now fighting a monster, and it’s another thing to say that you are now fighting a horde of monsters. Really, there are not too many bad places to put mob combat. If it can work in your story, then put it in.

Naturally, with mob encounters, it helps to play test certain things out. Or, you just let things fall where they may in game (for better or worse) and then adapt next time. If it helps, you can pick a monster or group of monsters whose challenge ratings would create a good enough challenge for the heroes you are playing with. Then from there, just change their “skins” and maybe a few of their abilities and you should have a pretty well-balanced encounter. Of course, if you go the skill-challenge route, you need to think less about balancing the encounter and more about creating an encounter that is fun and interesting.

For me, the most engaging mob encounters are one that are 2 things: 1) they intensely story driven and 2) they feel real and scary. Let me give you a great example. The Famous Youtubers High Rollers from the UK did this in their Aerois campaign. Spoiler alert. They had the heroes go to a lost city of insane Warforged and had them fight a fallen angel type warforged all while being attacked by masses of these crazed robots. The masses were in mob form but the Fallen Angel warforged was a standalone monster. Because the entire campaign had show the dangers of a warforged going crazy you knew full well how many there were as well as how tragic it is that they had gone crazy. You also could understand that in an enormous city, there would be 10’s of thousands of them. They also did it very well in their encounter because they brought them in in intervals which likely allowed the DM to balance the combat by bringing in a new mob whenever things got too easy.

I like the method of bringing in mobs, and slowly adding more or taking away extra when you need to. Plus, as a DM, you can always fudge the numbers. If the encounter is going way too fast, either let it finish and move on, or you can make it harder. On the flip side, if your players are getting frustrated with the mobs more than they ought to, then have the mobs die a lot faster than you’d originally anticipated. Having that DM screen is nice because you can change things up at the moment without having to let your players know. It’s not their job to worry about the stats of all of the monsters. It’s their job to be the best player-character possible.

That said, playtesting things is always a good idea. Generally, it does take much more time though so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just putting it in the campaign and making switches on the fly.

I think one big mistake that people might make is accidentally making the mob way too powerful. The mob should be a group of individuals that are easily taken down by themselves. So that means you should be able to narrate that with each swing, your PCs kill one or two at least. The whole point of a mob is to allow your PCs to feel like they are mowing down the enemies but there are so many enemies that it almost doesn’t matter. 

Another mistake I think you could make is not making the stakes high enough. Yes the party is supposed to be able to mow down the mob members, but they should still feel like their character is in danger.

You can scale mob combate easily using 1 of 2 methods. The first method is to add more mobs as the encounter goes on. This means that you need to start slow and only throw in mobs when you are sure it’s time. You’ll also need to prepare this narratively. It won’t seem naturally for another mob of gnolls to show up out of nowhere in the middle of the desert when you described that they were only 4. 

The second method is to tweak the stats of the mob mid-combat. Just like the other method, you want to do this one slowly but at least you don’t have to set this one up narratively. Both of these methods can be done in combat or while you are playtesting. Otherwise, I’d just say to use the encounter builder at DnDBeyond.

You can use terrain and the environment in many ways. This honestly could be its own entire podcast episode, but specifically with mob combat you want the terrain and the environment to highlight the feeling that fighting a mob brings. If you were to fight a mob in real life, you’d likely feel overwhelm, perhaps inevitability, maybe a hopeless at the sheer volume of creatures coming towards you. 

I would recommend using terrain to amplify or highlight these same feelings. So perhaps the adventurers are running out of safe places to stand and fight because the space they are in is filling up with baddies. Or maybe, you create some sort of shut-off valve mechanic, like the orcs can keep coming to the top of the city wall until the siege towers are destroyed. Something like that.

I already mentioned one that comes from the High Rollers’ Aerois campaign with the crazed warforge. Of course, there’s the classic encounter that everyone has when they are in the sewers fighting swarms of rats. Also, a quick sidebar, even when a creature is made of a swa

This episode of How to Be a Better DM is a special one! Justin and Tanner talk with Rob Wells (New York Times best selling author and avid wargame enthusiast) about how to write compelling characters as a DM, and how to help players develop their characters to the fullest.

To read more about Rob's books, visit here: https://robisonwells.com/

Or, if you want to see his amazing wargame blog, visit here: https://wargameexplorer.com/

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Questions

• Doing the Same thing Over and Over Again
• Not Trying Anything New
• Players stop trying
• DM’s “know everything”
• D&D just isn't a priority in their life right now.

• Afraid of Failure
• Not Sure of the Rules
• Feel stuck in a campaign
• They Get Comfortable

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Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy.

Today's topic: Borrowing story ideas for your D&D campaigns.

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Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, I’m Justin Lewis, here with my compatriot Tanner Weyland, and together we’re here to help you learn how to craft better stories while you DM sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.

• Brief description of cause: the causes of DM burnout (doing too much, to frequently, with not change)
• Get help:
• Ask others to DM
• Stop writing your own content, or doing huge campaigns. Just look for content online. DMs guild and other sources exist to make your time easier!
• Have online communities to ask advice from. An outside viewpoint can do a lot (Reddit examples of people in sticky situations)
• Simplify:
• Look at what you enjoy in DMing, and JUST do that for a bit (i.e. role playing with light combat, or just combat with light role playing)
• Shorten sessions.
• Consider switching up how you meet (if online, do in person; if in person, consider doing online)
• Ask the players what they like and want, and just do that. Their enjoyment will fuel you.
• Take a break:
• As a subset of the other two tips, it is always okay to quit. Genuinely. Take a break. And then come back. If the other tips don’t work for you, playing longer will only create negative feelings between you and your players. The sooner you listen to yourself, the sooner you can begin a well deserved break without creating unnecessary ill will.

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“Who goes there?” Ulv yells into the darkness. He’d found his way into this larger cave and had ultimately gotten lost. This cave was enormous. It honestly reminded of him when he and his old friends had delved into the Underdark looking for a lost library. To think that he had risked his life so Rowan could find a silly children’s book. He chuckled to himself. He’d do it again though. He loved his friends and would die for them.

“Even me?” asked a familiar voice.

Ulv Spun around, thrusting his torch into the enveloping darkness. “Racooni? Is that you?” The cave responded with silence and stillness. Truly this cave was enormous. How had he not found a wall yet?

“What are memories, but illusions.” The drifting voice of Judir echoed around from no direction in particular.

“Judir, my friend, I’m so sorry.” Ulv bellowed as he turned around. He’d briefly seen the visage of Judir right before it faded into the darkness of the cave.

“And apologies are just smoke from a dying fire.” This time the voice was that of Ulv’s adopted father. Ulv turned and saw the broken body of a dying man just before it faded into the black of shadow.

“You left us.” This time it was Rue’s voice and Ulv saw her, taller and thinner than usual with deep shadows ringing her eyes and a darkness behind. Then that too faded into darkness.

Ulv, kept spinning and spinning from voice to shadow to voice to shadow, until he stopped.

There standing in front of Ulv was a woman.

“Ulv, who are you?” It was Ulv’s birth mother.

What would you like to do?

Introduction

Hello there. It’s me, Justin and today we'll be discussing one of the most important elements of any D&D campaign - the villain.

Why is it so important to have a good villain?

A great villain can be the driving force behind your campaign. It can provide motivation for your players to continue the quest, and give them a tangible enemy to fight. A poorly-written villain, on the other hand, can make the campaign feel lackluster. You know that feeling you get when Thanos kills Loki, or when Saruman sends the horde of Urukhai to destroy Rohan, or when the Joker blows up a hospital? That is all only possible because of a well-written villain. So, let's dive in and discuss how to create a villain that your players will love to hate!

Part 1: What Makes a Good Villain?

Let's first explore what makes a good villain. A great villain is one that is complex, has clear motivations, and is relatable in some way. Players should be able to understand the villain's perspective, even if they don't completely agree with it.

Another key aspect of a good villain is that they pose a real threat to the players, either directly or indirectly. They should be challenging to defeat, and their actions should have consequences that impact the world around them. A villain that is too easy to defeat or doesn't pose a significant threat can leave players feeling unsatisfied.

So, when creating your villain, keep these factors in mind. Ask yourself questions like:

What motivates this character to act this way?

How can I make this villain a real threat to my players?

Would a normal person at least consider their arguments in a reasonable conversation?

Part 2: Different Types of Villains

As you create your villain, consider the different types of villains that you can use to add variety and depth to your campaign.

One type of villain is the classic "big bad" - this is the ultimate enemy that the players will face at the end of the campaign. They're often powerful, dangerous, and have a grand plan that the players must stop.

Another type of villain is the mastermind. This villain operates by pulling strings and manipulating events to achieve their goals. They may not be directly involved in combat, but players feel their influence throughout the campaign.

A third type of villain is the antihero - this is a character who is not necessarily evil, but whose goals conflict with those of the players. They may be motivated by a desire to protect their own interests or seek revenge against someone who wronged them.

Finally, consider the tragic villain. This is a character who is sympathetic in some way, perhaps because of a past trauma or a belief that their actions are justified. These villains can add a lot of depth to your campaign and make players question their own beliefs and motivations.

To be sure, your Villain might end up being each of these types at one point in their life. Anakin Skywalker moved from being an Antihero to a tragic villain and finally becoming Darth Vader and taking his role as Big Bad. Maybe your villain has a similar trajectory.

Part 3: How to Create a Good Villain

Now that we've discussed what makes a good villain, let's dive into how to create one.

The first step is to determine your villain's backstory. What events led them to become the person they are today? What traumas or life experiences shaped their worldview? A fleshed-out backstory can add depth and complexity to your villain.

Next, consider your villain's motivations. What do they hope to achieve? Are they seeking power, revenge, or something else ? Your villain's motivations should be clear and understandable to the players.

When designing your villain's personality, think about how they interact with the world around them. Are they charismatic and manipulative, or ruthless and brutal? How do they view their enemies and allies?

Finally, give your villain some unique traits or abilities that set them apart from other villains in your campaign. Maybe they have a special magical ability or are particularly skilled at combat. Whatever it is, make sure it adds to their characterization and makes them a more compelling foe.

Often villains have good motives but take the wrong approach. Other times, the villains are self-interested and purely want to watch the world burn. Make sure to flesh out these intersections of motivations and backstory to really make your villain stand out.

Part 4: Examples of Compelling D&D Villains

I also wanted to give some examples of great D&D villains that you can draw inspiration from.

One example of a compelling D&D villain is Strahd von Zarovich, the main antagonist of the "Curse of Strahd" campaign setting. Strahd is a vampire lord with a tragic backstory. He was once a nobleman who fell in love with a woman he couldn't have, and in his despair, he made a pact with dark powers that turned him into a vampire. He now rules over the land of Barovia with an iron fist, seeking to reclaim his lost love and exact revenge on those who wronged him.

Another example is Xanathar, the beholder crime lord who appears in the "Waterdeep" campaign setting. Xanathar is a ruthless and cunning villain. He commands a vast criminal empire, using his intelligence and magical powers to stay one step ahead of players. Despite his monstrous appearance, Xanathar is a complex character with a rich backstory.

A third example is the archdevil Asmodeus, who appears in various D&D settings as the ruler of the Nine Hells. Asmodeus is a powerful and cunning villain who seeks to expand his influence over the multiverse. He uses his mastery of magic and deception to achieve his goals. His status as a godlike figure and the ruler of a demonic realm makes him a formidable enemy for any party of adventurers.

Part 5: Live Example of Writing a Villain

To illustrate this point, let’s briefly discuss a villain I have in the campaign I am currently running. Before I go on, let just say if anyone is listening that plays at my table, turn this episode off. There are serious spoilers here. For everyone else, let’s talk about Dreamtaker.

Dreamtaker is an ancient Fey Being who looked upon the material plane with pity. He saw the immense suffering there and wanted to do something about it. He set out to turn the material plane into the Realm of Dreams. He was, of course, thwarted in his attempt and banished to the realm of nightmares he had accidentally created. While there, he found a convergence with the Shadowfell and was able to escape. He has now returned to the material plane to seek revenge and fulfill his plans of stopping reality and turning it into a dream.

Even as I wrote this episode and thought about Dreamtaker, I thought of ways to improve him as a villain. For one, I know he is a threat to my players and they know it too. He has a lot of power so that one was easy.

His motivations are clear, he wants to gain followers and, through their belief in him, transfer the material plane to the dream world.

As far as I can tell he is not as dynamic as he could be be. That’s where I need to work on him next.

So there you have it, a live example of a Villain in progress and a framework you can follow. I would say when you work on your own villains, write out everything you know first. Then summarize into those points mentioned above and then from there just edit. I’d love to see what kinds of villains you come up with. Make sure to post them on Instagram and tag @howtobeabetterdm to let us know what you made!

Thanks for listening to another episode. We’ll be back next week for another amazing episode. Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

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Ugh, another ad break. Let’s be real—ads are the worst. If you’re anything like my wife, you’d rather quit a show entirely than sit through another ad. So why suffer? Just skip them. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and enjoy ad-free episodes with exclusive patron-only content—all for just $5 a month. Look at you, all fancy with your uninterrupted listening experience. So stop wasting time on ads (like this one). Go to patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and upgrade your listening today!

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Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

It's another beautiful day to learn about How to Be a Better DM! Tanner shares how you can spice up a lackluster combat encounter as a DM, which should be a key part of your preparations for each session. Let's roll initiative!

Other than that, we have a favor to ask you: We are always trying to be better DMs, but we also want to become better podcast hosts so we can be more helpful and interesting to you. As part of that, we need your feedback. We set up a super quick survey at: https://betterdungeonmaster.com/feedback.

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Why Listen to Ads?

Ugh, another ad break. Let’s be real—ads are the worst. If you’re anything like my wife, you’d rather quit a show entirely than sit through another ad. So why suffer? Just skip them. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and enjoy ad-free episodes with exclusive patron-only content—all for just $5 a month. Look at you, all fancy with your uninterrupted listening experience. So stop wasting time on ads (like this one). Go to patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and upgrade your listening today!

Patreon

Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, I’m Justin Lewis, here with my compatriot Tanner Weyland, and together we’re here to help you learn how to craft better stories while you DM sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.

Suffice it to say, as hobbies go, this one requires a lot of dedication and stick-to-it-I've-ness. Sometimes you just don’t feel like prepping or running a session. Sometimes you just aren’t excited to be a DM. So, in that regard, Tanner and I are going to talk about how to stay excited and avoid DM burnout.

• Switch back and forth between prewritten and self-written content.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, I’m Justin Lewis, here with my compatriot Tanner Weyland, and together we’re here to help you learn how to craft better stories while you DM sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.

Suffice it to say, as hobbies go, this one requires a lot of dedication and stick-to-it-I've-ness. Sometimes you just don’t feel like prepping or running a session. Sometimes you just aren’t excited to be a DM. So, in that regard, Tanner and I are going to talk about how to stay excited and avoid DM burnout.

• Switch back and forth between prewritten and self-written content.

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

I Made a CR 100 Monster

I made a Monster with a Challenge Rating of 100 Why? Because I could—and it only took me 5 minutes using Worldsmith. And the best part? You can do this and much more. Get a free 7-day trial at session0studios.com/worldsmith and unlock their full suite of TTRPG generators from monsters to mythic magic items and everything in between. Yep, that’s a full 7-day trial—completely free. That’s a whole week of monsters, magic items, and more—whatever you need, zero burnout. Try it now at session0studios.com/worldsmith. Save time and make unlimited creations with Worldsmith.

Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Ulv had been living in the cave for 2 weeks. He’d managed to down an elk he had tracked. The elk seemed to have been separated from its herd because it was all alone. He’d fashioned a spear out of rock that he’d found in the cave. So far he felt pretty good about himself. He’d been at this trial for a couple weeks and hadn’t died. 

“Of course, you still haven’t made any progress towards the actual trial,” Ulv said to himself out loud. Ulv had always been comfortable being alone, but for some reason he found himself missing people. He missed Herlia and Hipam. He missed Cojari and he missed Judir. 

Ulv had always had a strange relationship with family. Being adopted meant that got to choose your family. Despite his gruff and stoic exterior, Ulv had always been quick to welcome people into his family. That’s probably why he felt to mourn the death of Judir so deeply. 

“Nope. Not going to think about that,” Ulv said to himself as he stood up and started pacing around the cave. No reason to start blubbering about the dead all over again.

“What about your parents?”

Ulv froze.  That voice had come from deeper in the cave. He looked into the darkness past the flickering light of his meager campfire. 

“Who goes there?” Ulv cried.

Drums began playing and briefly Ulv’s vision blurred. When he could see clearly again, he stared into the darkness, hearing the constant beat of distant drums.

What would you like to do?

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m your host, Justin Lewis, and I’m here to help you learn how to tell amazing stories as you DM sessions of D&D. 

Sometimes getting a handful of people with different schedules, wants, hopes, interests and experiences together to play a seamless session can seem just about as easy as herding a bunch of cats. Truly, managing players is one of the hardest parts of being a dungeon master. Luckily, it is a skill that you can master. To that point, here are some of my tips on exactly how to manage your players as you dungeon master.

In order to corral 3-7 people together to create a shared positive roleplaying experience, direct and honest communication is 100% necessary. You can’t hope to be able to manage your players if you can’t pull any single individual aside to talk about ways the gameplay can improve. Foster the ability to tell people about issues to their face. This is one part strength of the relationship, one part strength of your character and one part social acumen. You need to learn how to do it in an adroit way. What I find works best is only have as many people there as need to be there when you are delivering direct communication that may not be fun to hear. If you are making an announcement for the whole table, let everyone hear it. If you are giving correction to a player who is constantly distracting the other players at the table, only they need to be present.

You have to treat your players is if they were children. Children need routine, and so do players. Naturally, schedules are ever changing. That’s why having your game at the same time every week, or on the same day every week, helps a lot. Not everyone can do this. My own group doesn’t even do this. So instead, we’ve routinized other things. We always have it at my house. That lowers the work anyone needs to do to figure out where we are playing. They already know. It’s happening at my house. There are other things that you can routinize. Like when we play, I always start off by giving away tokens of advantage if someone in the group did something cool during the week that correlates with a D&D skill. This is a homebrew rule I made up, but I like doing it because it also starts to get us into the mood of playing D&D.

One huge part of managing players is finding players who are responsive. At some point, it needs to be understood that everyone in the group needs to communicate and respond to communications. This rings especially true for communications about when the gameplay is actually going to happen. If a certain player or two only respond the night of the session to say, “Hey, I can’t make it,” then something needs to change. 

In those instances, sit down with that player and explain to them that in order to make the game happen, you need everyone’s cooperation. We live in a day and age now where communication really does not take that much effort. All it takes is a little response to an instant text and you’re done. In some cases, the players will have to talk with their significant others to make sure there aren’t any conflicting plans. That might be where you can coach the player a little more about how to bring up the topic and how to talk with the significant other to make sure everything is kosher. 

The whole idea behind player management is to make it so you and the players are vibing on the same frequency. It’s to reduce distractions that are unwanted and increase player participation and cooperation. To do that, giving individual players duties and responsibilities is a very great way to make sure everyone is invested. You could have one player be in charge of keeping and tracking initiative during combat. You could give one player the duty of managing the battle map during combat. You could also give one player the duty to write down just the names of all the NPCs that are mentioned during the session. Whatever job you give any individual player, make sure that it is somewhat small and it doesn’t detract from that player enjoying the game and having fun. Giving players jobs also has the added benefit of making your life as a DM easier. A win win.

Simply put, your players need to understand and be willing to abide by your rules. You also need to understand and be willing to abide by their rules. Obviously, I use the term “rules” a little loosely here, but that’s essentially what they are. If you have a player that is uncomfortable with certain themes or experiences they might find in D&D, well you need to be aware of that and make sure to help them stay comfortable. Obviously, you can push the envelope with simple fears and such. I’m talking about true discomfort. 

On the flip side, your players should be well aware of what they can and can’t do. In my book, watching videos on your phone while we are playing is a big no-no. I’m a little bit of a pushover when it comes to this type of thing, but it’s something I’m actively working on. The problem I see is that half the table is interested in what I’m saying and the other half of the table wants to see the video. I want all my players to know what I expect and I want to know what they expect of me. This goes for expectations around responsiveness in communication as well as no-shows, and everything else that could come up. 

Just as I am an individual, my players are too. I have a married couple that plays in my group and I should still treat each of them as individuals. Honestly, neither of them causes me any trouble, but when it comes to making sure they get info about the next session, reaching out about backstories, and more, I need to do it individually. Sometimes, we think of managing players as managing a group. Really it’s managing 4 to 7 individuals who all have their own ideas, wants, wishes, fears, boredom, etc. This doesn’t mean that you won’t make table-wide announcements or have a group text message thread that reaches all of them. You will and should definitely do those things. When it comes to managing difficulties or making things even better, I find it works better on an individual level.

Sometimes, you gotta be tough. When everything else you’ve tried has failed, it may be time to “fire” one of your players. Pull them aside one day. Ask them if they’ve been enjoying playing. Look at their demeanor. If they say no, then simply explain that they don’t have to keep playing if they don’t enjoy it. If they do enjoy it, make it clear to them that they are making things much more difficult for you as a dungeon master. Explain that you need them to change their behavior. If they persist without little change, then pull them aside again and kindly let them know that they will need to find another gaming table. In my experience, after trying everything else, the player will likely respond and either quit coming on their own or change their behavior. Very few people want to be an annoyance on purpose.

In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of player management is setting up some sort of system to get feedback. Whether you go so far as to create a formal survey you hand out after every session, or you casually ask your players what they like and didn’t like, it doesn’t matter. You gotta know what makes your players happy and engaged in the game. If you are having problem players, it might be because they aren’t being stimulated enough by the experience. In this day and age, ADD and other challenges have become much more prevalent. If you can figure out that Player A is having a hard time focusing, but Player A also really loves the mythology of ancient China, well, it’s time to introduce a few Oni into the story.  Adding more of what your players love is, in my opinion, the best way to make sure that the players are attentive and cooperative.

Not every table will be filled with players who are completely engaged and hang on to your every word. In fact, in my experience, the more players sit at the table, the harder it gets to control them all. Your job as a DM isn’t to control them though. You just need to make sure that everyone at the table has a fun time. To do that, you might employ any of these methods of some you make up. Either way, get your players to buy in and give you their attention so they can have fun.

Thanks for listening to today’s show.

Send any feedback to howtobeabetterdm@gmail.com 

We’ll be back next week for another amazing episode.

Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join Our Discord

So a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army. That’s right, we’re building an army of amazing dungeon masters who want to make the world of D&D a better place. If you want to join our army and fight by our side against the evil forces of boredom and bad dming, join our Discord and lend your voice to the cause. Go to Session0studios.com/discord and join for free today.

Discord

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Add the Magic of Sound to Your Gameplay

When you set the scene you need to tap into the five senses. When it comes to sound one of the best ways to do that is with music, sound effects, and ambience. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Monument Studios. Monument Studios provides an easy-to-use Soundboard perfect for Dungeon Mastering. If you want to see this in action, go to fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off of your first month of their Fantasy+ App by using the code BETTERDM at check out. Again that is fantasy-plus.com and BETTERDM at checkout.

Monument Studios

Most villains fail not because they're weak—but because your players aren’t emotionally invested. In this episode, we kick off a powerful new storytelling series with a focus on “Show, Don’t Tell”—starting with the most misunderstood piece of storytelling in D&D: the villain.

You’ll learn:

• Why simply saying “he’s the bad guy” never works
• How to build villains that evoke real fear, anger, or awe
• A concrete method for triggering emotional investment
• Real-world villain examples (and mistakes to avoid)

Ready to turn your villains from forgettable into unforgettable? Let’s roll.

👉 Want even more insights? Patrons get bonus content featuring improv warm-ups, DM scene setting, and personal geeking out sessions. Join at https://session0studios.com/patreon

Special thanks to:

Benj Weyland for our Graphic Design

Techsenpai, Juka and TJ Max for being great moderators!

Foxy Beard for being a patron.

Mentioned in this episode:

Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Why Listen to Ads?

Ugh, another ad break. Let’s be real—ads are the worst. If you’re anything like my wife, you’d rather quit a show entirely than sit through another ad. So why suffer? Just skip them. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and enjoy ad-free episodes with exclusive patron-only content—all for just $5 a month. Look at you, all fancy with your uninterrupted listening experience. So stop wasting time on ads (like this one). Go to patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and upgrade your listening today!

Patreon

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Give Us a Rating and Review

You obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.

You and your companions make your way down the trail. You’d left the other companions a day or so ago. Now you’ve been traveling with Hipam and Cojari and frankly, these have been some of the calmest days in the previous months. Your other companions had made some very questionable decisions. Assassinations, lycanthropy, starting fights that were unwarranted, yes they were your friends, however, your conscience has never felt so good. 

“So what can you tell us about your uncle Judir?” Cojari asks in his deep and soulful accent. 

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know the man very well. My father never mentioned Judir.”

“Well how do you suppose we can convince him to join us?” asked Cojari, ever the practical one.

“Good question. We’ll have the next few days to figure it out. He’s stubborn. I know that. So we better have a good argument when we get there.”

So what would you like to do?

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. You’re here because you want to become a High-Class Dungeon master, crafting unforgettable stories for yourselves and your players as you guide them through games of Dungeons and Dragons 5e. I’m here, to help you do that. Whether you’re a noobie or a veteran, I can help. My name is Justin Lewis and today I’ll be your dungeon master on this journey of story crafting. If you’ve been around the game for a while, you’ve no doubt heard the term one-shot. You’ve also undoubtedly heard some controversy around one-shots, namely, are they worthwhile? Can you create fun one-shots? Are they just a waste of time? Why does gas cost so much? Oh, wait, no that last one was just my inner thoughts escaping. Anyways, today, I’m going to give you 10 reasons why I think you should give one-shots a try. I love doing one-shots and if you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you know that you can actually have an opportunity to play a one-shot with me or my counterpart, Tanner Weyland as your DM. Regardless of whether you sign up for that or not, I highly encourage you to try one-shots yourself. Here’s why:

1. Explore new environments

One of my favorite reasons for doing one-shots is the ability to explore new settings. Sometimes I see cool ideas on TV or in movies and it makes me want to try it out. For example, I’m a fan of the Netflix series based on League of Legends called Arcane. The series is in an arcane-punk setting that is similar to steam-punk. This would be an amazing setting to explore and in a one-shot, you can without too much commitment. I’m also a fan of StarCraft and think that would be another cool setting to explore.

1. Explore new rules

Doing one-shots is also a great way to pick specific rule sets you aren’t comfortable with and then put your story in. For example, I am not extremely familiar with the rules associated with being underwater or being on a different plane. A one-shot is a great place to make yourself learn those rules. Or have you ever had someone with lycanthropy? Or vampirism? One-shots are great places to figure out how to do that. It’s a low-commitment way to get it all figured out.

1. Explore new challenges

It’s also a great way to force yourself to do new challenges. Maybe you don’t necessarily do puzzle? Maybe you don’t force your group to split the party? One-shots are perfect opportunities to make yourself learn how to deal with those challenges. Or maybe, you’ve never done a group bigger than 4 or smaller than 4. Try a new experience and force yourself to learn and grow in those challenges.

The last few days of travel were uneventful. There was a small troop of goblins that you encountered, but Hipam cast a large spell and was able to scare the troop off. Perhaps you’ve misjudged that little one. When you first met him, he seemed naive and perhaps a little unprepared for the wide world around him. Living all your days in a monastery will do that to you… Well, you suppose he didn’t live his whole life in Summit Hall. There were the days before his parents were murdered by the Fire Cult.  Hipam seems a little more serious now. You don’t whether that’s due to the mission you’re on or the days spent in the Drow prison. Regardless, you better keep an eye on that one.

Your thoughts are interrupted as you finally enter a small clearing with a large log cabin. Gentle smoke rises lazily up from the chimney. The cabin seems to have undergone some major repairs and renovations. 

“I thought it would be longer before I saw you again little bear.” a deep and rhythmic voice says. You think about how similar Judir’s voice is to Cojari’s, or at least Cojari’s new voice.

“We’ve come back Judir, to come get you.”

“I told you boy, this isn’t my fight.”

What would you like to say?

1. Work on succinct storytelling

Stories are when something specific happens. Note how I said something and not something or even everything. Storytelling naturally highlights the best and most salient parts of a series of events and presents those events to the consumer in a pleasing way. In order to do that effectively, you do need to work on telling stories succinctly. What better way to Practice that than to force yourself to tell An interesting story within the confines of a single session Of D&D. One-shots help you get a better sense for session planning and short but effective storytelling. In my last one shot, I dialed what I normally plan back and I ended up being a little short of my target length, but it was still fun and better than going over or having to cut it short. One shots force brevity and pithiness.

1. Work on Pithy Roleplaying

Speaking of being Pithy, one-shots force you to get your role-playing right on the first time. Either you get it right or it takes up valuable time from other integral parts of the story. This assumes of course that you have some sort of time constraint. Most DM’s do have that time constraint and to be frank, it’s called the short attention span of players. Because of this, your roleplaying has to convey the important plot information as well as give the players a glimpse of the NPC you are trying to portray. Honestly, One-shot roleplaying can be much easier than other roleplaying opportunities because you don’t have to worry about repeating NPC’s too much. You can go crazy with an NPC with the knowledge that the players won’t see them again. 

1. Breaks from your campaign

I don’t know about you, but sometimes the campaign I am running can be somewhat stale. Or maybe it’s me that gets stale. Either way, stepping away and doing something else helps me to come back to the campaign with fresh eyes. I get the fact that once the session is done you’re doing something else, but I’ve also noticed that doing other stories helps me come back to my original story and see it in a new light and have fresh energy for it.

1. Play-test HomeBrew content

Home-brew content can be pretty hard to dial in. Sometimes you make items that are way too powerful and other times, the stuff you give your players isn’t where you want it to be. For example, in my campaign I had my players do a side quest where they go into a haunted mansion. I set up the mansion to almost exist in a pocket dimension and in order to ascend or descend the stairs to the next levels, the characters had to drink a potion that “faded” them. After they were “faded” they had to drink “revivification” potions to become normal again. I hadn’t playtested the “revivification” potions so when the players got more than they need to be normal and had a surplus I had to come up with some features of the potion on the fly. Suffice it to say, the potions were way overpowered and I was happy when the last extra potion was drunk.

1. Work on spotting and fixing plot flaws

I’m a big fan of the Youtube Channel, Pitch Meetings. I think the concept is brilliant. If you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s the premise. A man pitches movies to an executive who spots flaws in the story of the movies and the writer then just glosses over the flaws without fixing them. It’s hilarious.

Well, you and I need to learn how to do something similar. We need practice spotting and not laughing at but fixing plot flaws. In a way, you and i should treat ourselves as both the producer and the writer of our D&D stories. We need to ask the hard questions and poke holes in our stories so we can find the solutions to those problems. In my last one-shot, I was constructing the scenario and for some reason, it wasn’t quite working. I was stumped. Then I asked Tanner for some help and he helped me see a plot flaw and overcome it easily. Whether you use someone else or yourself, you gotta develop this ability to look critically at your stories. Because one-shots are a little more contained than other stories you can do that a little easier. That’s why you should do one-shots.

1. Allow your players to work on character ideas

Thus far, all of these reasons for why you should play one-shots have all been for you the DM. But what about your players? How do one-shots affect your players? Positively.

Most D&D players can create a new character very easily because they have so many creative ideas swimming around in the think-tank of their brain. In a way, they are the DM of their character, trying to write an interesting story and help add to the collective cognitive experience that is Dungeons and Dragons. 

By engaging in one-shots you’re allowing your players the opportunity to work on writing better characters. Creating a backstory is fun because you get to essentially explain why any given D&D character is insane, cooky, bold, angry, fat, sloppy, scarred, or almost any other adjective. By playing one-shots, you give your players this chance to hone their creative abilities.

1. Allow your players to work on role-playing 

Similar to number 9, your players need opportunities to practice their role-playing capabilities. Not every one of us is born as thespians or performers. In fact, in my own case, role-playing might be one of my weaker areas. The only way to actually improve is to practice. Players also get into a routine and it’s much easier to reassess and reactivate those roleplaying muscles when you break their state, put them in an unfamiliar situation, and force them to start asking themselves questions like, “What would this character do?”

Try one-shots as a way of encouraging players to act out characters that are different than their normal campaign characters. You’ll be surprised at the growth you see in your players.

“The blood of our fathers and of our children.”

Those were the words you said. Somehow, those were the words that changed a stubborn man’s mind. Judir is a child of the north as much as you are. Perhaps more. His blood runs wild with the strength of generations gone before him. His stubbornness runs almost as strong. Yet, somehow those words overcame that. Those words that you weren’t supposed to know changed him. How did you know those words? It doesn’t matter. He’s with you now and now you need to figure out the next step. As you trudge forward on the path, you ask, “So what is the plan now?”

Hipam responds, “Well mate, I suppose we need to assess how strong your brother’s hold is on the Kingdom.”

“We also need to create an army from nothing…. Maybe your relatives up north can help.” Cojari adds

“Without dying first…” Judir grumbles as he pets his enormous Bear’s head.

All good points. Well, it’s time to figure it out. 

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. We could not do this without you. We are so grateful for you and your support of us. We want to support you too. If you get an opportunity, reach out to us on Instagram and let us know how we can support you and your quest to become the world’s greatest DM!

We’ll be back next week but until then, let’s go ahead and roll the initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join Our Discord

So a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army. That’s right, we’re building an army of amazing dungeon masters who want to make the world of D&D a better place. If you want to join our army and fight by our side against the evil forces of boredom and bad dming, join our Discord and lend your voice to the cause. Go to Session0studios.com/discord and join for free today.

Discord

Why Listen to Ads?

Ugh, another ad break. Let’s be real—ads are the worst. If you’re anything like my wife, you’d rather quit a show entirely than sit through another ad. So why suffer? Just skip them. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and enjoy ad-free episodes with exclusive patron-only content—all for just $5 a month. Look at you, all fancy with your uninterrupted listening experience. So stop wasting time on ads (like this one). Go to patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and upgrade your listening today!

Patreon

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. I hope you are all doing well this new year, making lots of goals, and having a hopeful start to the year.

Today, we are talking about creating realistic and rewarding Family Relationships in D&D.

Mentioned in this episode:

Shhhhhh!! This is a Secret!

Hey! Here is a secret that Cayden and Tanner, hosts of the show don't know about. You can go to session0studios.com/video-courses/ and get the first video of our Dungeon Master Course for Free, and then sign up for the next videos if you want. Again, Cayden and Tanner don't know about this so keep it secret.

Dungeon Master Course

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Join Our Discord

So a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army. That’s right, we’re building an army of amazing dungeon masters who want to make the world of D&D a better place. If you want to join our army and fight by our side against the evil forces of boredom and bad dming, join our Discord and lend your voice to the cause. Go to Session0studios.com/discord and join for free today.

Discord

Today we talk about the OGL 1.1 License and explain some of our thoughts on the matter.

Obviously, the OGL 1.1 hasn't been released yet so we are really only speculating based on what has been leaked.

Also, Here's the link Justin mentioned about his upcoming business networking event:

https://dndmerchantsguild.com/event/dnd-dungeons-networking-and-dragons/

Thanks for listening to today's show!

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I Made a CR 100 Monster

I made a Monster with a Challenge Rating of 100 Why? Because I could—and it only took me 5 minutes using Worldsmith. And the best part? You can do this and much more. Get a free 7-day trial at session0studios.com/worldsmith and unlock their full suite of TTRPG generators from monsters to mythic magic items and everything in between. Yep, that’s a full 7-day trial—completely free. That’s a whole week of monsters, magic items, and more—whatever you need, zero burnout. Try it now at session0studios.com/worldsmith. Save time and make unlimited creations with Worldsmith.

Join Our Discord

So a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army. That’s right, we’re building an army of amazing dungeon masters who want to make the world of D&D a better place. If you want to join our army and fight by our side against the evil forces of boredom and bad dming, join our Discord and lend your voice to the cause. Go to Session0studios.com/discord and join for free today.

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