So maybe you’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a while and you’d like to take a turn at being a Dungeon Master. Or maybe you’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons before and would like to play with a group of friends and no one else wants to run the game. But it’s gotta be difficult right? Lots of memorizing rules and knowing all kinds of stats for monsters and weapons and armor. What if you do something wrong? What if you look like a dummy? This all sounds way too hard.
I want to tell you right now. Anyone can DM. And anyone can be a good DM. It’s a little more work than just showing up and playing a character, but if you really enjoy the game, it’s an incredibly rewarding experience and marvelous creative outlet.
BUT THE RULES! THERE’S SO MANY RULES!
I’m gonna give you my elevator pitch on why you can be a DM right now, without knowing anything else about the game. As you already know, DnD is just describing the situation to the players and asking them “What do you do?” If it’s a thing that’s simple, assume it’s done and describe how that affects the situation. If it’s something that’s more difficult, or more interesting if there’s a chance for failure, have them roll a check with a corresponding ability or skill to see if they’re successful. Have them beat a 5 if the task is relatively easy, 10 if there’s a moderate chance of failure, 15 if the task is difficult, and a 20 if what they’re doing is superhero-esque. It’s really that simple. It’s the paradigm for pretty much anything players can throw at you. Naturally, there’s nuances, and other tricks and rules that are helpful to know, and we’ll go over that here. I think everyone should try running a game at least once. First, because it gives you respect for the amount of work your DM puts into the games you play in, but more importantly, no one can run a game like you run a game, and a wide array of voices, styles, and lived experiences are what this hobby needs to continue to thrive. Too often games are dominated by people who are into the same types of media, who live relatively similar lives, often at the risk of excluding others. No one can tell a story exactly like you can, no one can run a game like you can. You’re someone’s ideal DM.
What you are as a DM
You’re the host. This is the most important part. It’s your job to get everyone together and make sure everyone is having a good time. You do that by making sure that your players have interesting challenges to overcome, everyone gets some time in the spotlight, and that player’s boundaries and preferences are respected.
You’re the starting point. It’s your job to provide a world that seems exciting and alive to your players. You’re the springboard off which their actions propel the story, which is why a lot of the DM’s work happens before anyone is ever sitting at the table to play.
You’re the referee. While you should familiarize yourself with the rules before starting to run the game, you don’t need to have everything memorized. You should by all means have a rough idea of how your player’s characters work, and a rough understanding of how combat works. However, if you come to a situation where you don’t know how the rules work, I have a simple solution: arbitrate with your players and then look it up on your next break or after the session. Nothing bogs down the pace of the game faster than constantly having to stop and flip through a book or google a rules question. Often times I will work the players to answer these questions:
How does this seem like it's supposed to work, given rules we know?
What’s the coolest, most dramatically interesting way this could work?
Always give your players the benefit of the doubt on these, within reason. You should always try and preserve a sense of danger and adventure when running a game, but your players are the heroes of the story, and all decisions should always defer to that premise.
What you aren’t as a DM
You’re not an author. I’ve had several people tell me they want to work on their fantasy novel by running a DnD campaign based off it. Don’t do this thing. The magic of Dungeons and Dragons lies in player agency. It relies on creating the illusion that the players can literally go anywhere and do anything. There’s a well worn term in DnD, “railroading”, where the DM forces their players down a particular path of the story. Eliminating their sense of control over what’s happening. I think part of this comes from people thinking running a DnD game is like designing a video game. Players go to place A and do thing 1 and then follow an artfully constructed breadcrumb trail to place B to do thing 2. This approach has two problems, your players will never do exactly what you want them to, and this approach runs a high risk of being super boring. You may be a great writer, but running DnD is a communal storytelling experience, the story you want to tell may not exactly be the story your players want to experience. We’ll cover more on the topic of setting expectations and ensuring that everyone is on the same page in terms of what they want out of the game later on, but back to the first point. Human beings are wildly unpredictable. You can put a giant glowing sign on right in front of your players that says “cool stuff this way” and invariably they’ll either think it’s a trick or get distracted by how the sign is glowing. Which bring us to the next point...
You’re not a director. Which is similar to not being the author but I want to talk about who directs action, who steers the ship. The vast majority of the time, it should be your players. I recently saw a clip of Trey Parker and Matt Stone talking about how they plot their stories and I thought it really nicely summarized how you should be plotting your DnD sessions. The gist of it is, if you describe your story by saying “this happens and then this happens and then this happens...”, then you’re not doing it right. A more player led game could be described as “this happens and therefore this happens but this happens…” The phrase “and then” means you’re steering the story beats, whereas “therefore” and “but” reflect a cause and effect relationship with the story that puts your players in the driver’s seat. Your players should not be characters moving through your world, rather your world should move around the characters. This seems like a daunting proposition, providing a living breathing world no matter what crazy plan your characters have, but I’ll give you a number of tools to help you improvise content, and use the material you do prepare no matter what they do.
You’re not an adversary. This is a tricky one. And one that could arguably not be considered in keeping with the way the game was played originally. Gary Gygax, designed his infamously deadly “Tomb of Horrors” module as a way to humble his players who he felt had gotten arrogant with their powerful characters. It’s an easy mentality to fall into, for both players and DMs. After all you control all the monsters, you spring all the traps on them, you embody the enemies that want to see them fail. From the DMs side, players run roughshod over work you spend hours on, or sometimes ignore it all together. And while that dramatic tension of overcoming opposition is crucial to DnD feeling “real” and having stakes, it’s important to remember one of the core tenants of being a good DM or player:
THERE IS NO WINNING IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
It’s a unique game in that sense, there’s no real end state unless you choose to have one. The only goal is to tell an engaging story with your friends and have a good time. As long as you keep that in mind, everyone “wins.” There’s no competition and you’re all on the same team and the actual adversary is boredom. Everyone sitting at the table wants to have fun, and as long as everyone is willing to give everyone else the benefit of the doubt and suspend their disbelief, the magic will happen.
GETTING STARTED
Getting a group
The only thing you really need to play DnD is people. There are ways around just about everything else. Ideally, these are people you want to hang out with for several hours at a time on a regular basis. From my experiences, groups of friends tend to be the longest lasting groups just by virtue of the fact that you all would be hanging out anyways, so you might as well play Dungeons and Dragons. Social stigmas surrounding the game can make it feel difficult to ask, but you’d be surprised how popular the game has become. In my experience more people are interested in trying out the game then not, and you’ll often find out more of your friends have played DnD than you realized. Additionally the internet has numerous places to find games near you. There’s FB groups and subreddits dedicated to hooking DMs up with players, and there’s always a good chance you can find some like minded people to play with.
Where to play?
Not everyone has an ideal spot to host a game. You need a space with adequate and comfortable seating for everyone and preferably a table. Distractions should be minimal. I’ve played in basements, garages, dining rooms, and dens. If you don’t have anyone with a suitable place who’s willing to host, local game shops sometimes have times that they make available to people to use their tables to play. Schools, libraries, apartment complexes and churches sometimes have communal spaces available for certain people to use. I’ve also seen people play in bars, restaurants, and coffee shops. These places can be a little distracting, and make sure you tip your server, bartender, or barista well for occupying a table in their establishment for a longer than usual time.
What stuff do I need?
You’ll want to have pencils, a character sheet for each player, at least one of each type of dice (but the more the better, ideally at least one full set per player), and whatever notes you have for the adventure you’re going to run. That being said, there are a plethora of free apps for both smartphones and tablets that fill the role of both character sheet and dice. Wizards of the Coast actually has a really solid smartphone app that’s free to use with the core rules, races, classes, and spells pre-loaded on it called D&D Beyond. Nice DMs will also provide some beverages or small snacks.
Pre-written or homebrew adventure? Length?
How do you pick an adventure to play? The first thing you should consider is the most obvious: does it look fun? Does it look like something you and your players would enjoy? There are literally thousands of pre-written adventures out there you can use, and many are available for free online. They will vary wildly in quality, though, so definitely read through them before marrying yourself to one. Additionally, you’ll want to consider the length. Most shorter adventures will take somewhere between one and three three hour sessions. The longer adventures (like the big books Wizards of the Coast publishes) can easily take months or even a year’s worth of sessions to get through, so consider the level of commitment both you and your group are ready for.
Maybe you’re thinking of writing your own adventure though? I think the most important thing is to start small. A lot of first time dungeon masters can get tripped up by planning the whole arc of their campaign from the beginning and end up with a boatload of characters and places and things to see and do and end up overwhelming their party with information. Start with a small set of challenges with a clear goal. Start with a dungeon or a cave full of goblins. An average session will have three to five encounters in it. For the purposes of this conversation, we’ll define encounters as anything that stops the player’s forward progress towards their objective. In Dungeons & Dragons this usually takes the form of a puzzle, or a trap, or combat. Social interaction with the various characters in your world would also be an encounter, for example interrogating a captured bandit. So design your dungeon with 3-5 encounters of various types to keep things interesting and you’re good to go for your first session. So let’s say we keep things very trope-y and you’re sending your off to rescue a local merchant who was captured by goblins on his way out of town. His wife is worried sick and will pay the party to recover him safe and sound. So your players storm the goblin’s cave and rescue the merchant, and loot the goblins. Where do you go for session two? The obvious choice would be to go back to town to collect the reward. So now you can design a whole town with shops and a tavern. You can also place little “adventure hooks” around the town. Maybe a guard drowning his sorrows in the tavern who needs help tracking down and capturing a cat burglar, or a poster offering a bounty for anyone who can deal with the owlbears that have been running off with local livestock. Each session, the player’s world and sphere of influence increase just a bit, and because this expansion is a result of their actions, they gain knowledge and ownership of the characters and the world you’re building organically. As they meet more people and do more things and gain levels, you can throw larger and larger challenges at them, and you’ll be surprised when your big climactic moment in the story writes itself.
Session 0, expectations, and consent
Ok, so now we’ve got players, and dice, and an adventure, and hopefully snacks, we’re ready to go right? NO! We’re about to hit the most important part of playing Dungeons & Dragons with people who you haven’t played with before: Session 0. Session 0 is the time you all get together and you explain what kind of adventure you have in mind, and players let you know what kind of adventure they want to play. You don’t want to run an adventure full of court intrigue and social interactions for a party that just wants to kick in doors and kill monsters. You also want to talk about the tone of the game you’re running. Some people want a very dramatic experience where a certain level of seriousness is expected, others feel more comfortable in a goofier sort of environment. Suspension of disbelief requires buy-in from everyone so it's important to get everyone on the same page. Also, you’ll want to communicate your expectations on how the game will be run, with any special rules you will be using. Session 0 is also a great time to roll up characters, talk about the backstories of the characters and the relationships they have with each other. Have the characters been adventuring together for a while? Does fate throw them together at the beginning of the adventure? Coming up with all this from the beginning gives everyone something to work with when the game starts. It is important for the players to feel their character has motivation to work with the other players. Additionally it’s important to check with characters on topics that might make them uncomfortable, people come from a variety of different lived experiences and some people have boundaries you may not be aware of. Fantasy settings, like the real world, can touch on issues of torture, racism, slavery, rape, and sexual assault and its important to have a frank discussion about these topics with your players if you plan on including them in the game you play. Additionally, it’s also important to discuss issues of romance between player characters and characters in the world. Consent is incredibly important, and unwanted attention from another player, even through the imaginary world of Dungeons and Dragons can become very real discomfort at the table. So with characters rolled, campaign outlines, and boundaries set, what’s next?
How do you actually start playing?
I’m going to be honest with you, the first five minutes of a campaign is excruciating for me as a DM. It’s the time before imagination and suspension of disbelief kick in and it always feels… awkward. But there’s a phrase that kicks off the magic, and it behooves you to get to that phrase as quickly as possible: “What do you do?” Too often I’ve spent ten, fifteen, twenty minutes trying to explain the world to the players. It’s like trying to give someone a drink of water with a firehose. Sure some of the exposition will land, but 90% of it flew right past them. Back in college, I took a screenwriting class and one of the things they tell you is “take your first ten pages and throw them away”. Don’t spend a bunch of time setting the table. Sit down and eat! Ok, enough metaphors let’s use the example of the kidnapped merchant in the goblin cave from earlier. So where do we start? You might be tempted to start by having the wife of the merchant offering to pay the players handsomely if they bring back her husband alive. That could work, but there’s also a chance the players ignore her entirely and go do something else, and we just made this cool goblin cave. At the very least you’ll inevitably have someone try to haggle with her about a better price, and while that can be compelling gameplay, the good stuff is in the cave. So instead, let’s start them at the cave. Maybe something like:
As you stare at the mouth of the cave, you think of the merchant’s wife blinking away tears and pressing a gold coin into your palm. “The goblins took my husband back to their cave to probably eat him. There’ll be much more where this came from if you bring him back to me safe and sound, but there’s not much time”. It’s been quiet at the cave for the last few minutes, you and your companions have taken up a position in some bushes about 50 ft from the entrance to the cave. WHAT DO YOU DO?
And there we go. Two minutes of talking and you’ve laid out what’s happening and what’s expected of the players. Get husband from goblins back to wife. Get gold. And this way, they’re already at the place where all the action is.
More coming soon...