On Game Prep

I'm back! Master of Dungeons is back again, with hopefully pseudo regular updates to help you to achieve the respectable title of Master of Dungeons. This week we discuss how you don't really need to prep for your game sessions. This has been discussed previously on the blog, most recently in this Quick Tip about DMing and Improv.

I'm a big advocate of improv as a DM. I see far too many Dungeon Masters spend hours and hours prepping a weekly game of DnD. This is fine, if you enjoy preparation, but it is completely unnecessary. I cringe every time I see a DM burn out from session prep, and cause his campaign to fizzle out, because it is completely unnecessary. Not only will overly prepping your games cause you to start dreading your favourite hobby, but it doesn't improve the game. If anything it limits it by causing you to railroad your players, else your preparation be for nothing.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have a basic idea of what you want to accomplish in a session, or in a campaign, but that is the sort of high-level preparation you can do while commuting or waiting in line at McDonalds. Complex maps and encounter preparation, and just generally planning out everything that will be done in a session is completely unnecessary.

In the blog's first ever Online Tools post I wrote about Kobold Fight Club. This website is the single greatest tool in a DMs toolbox. Before each session I muck about in this tool, writing down a few enemies that are a good level for my players level and numbers. I write down about how many of that enemy would make a good medium or hard encounter, and the page number. You can filter based on type or keywords, so it is effortless to create a handful of easy encounters in minutes. 

Kobold Fight Club is the easiest way to create encounters for your games

Sunday morning I had a session to run for my secondary group on Roll20, we hadn't met in three weeks and the group was just travelling without much planned. I was able to create a nice four hour session using only Kobold Fight Club, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and my own improv ability.

I hadn't run a dungeon yet with this group, so fifteen minutes before the session I thought this would be a good time for one. I searched the easy to use Roll20 site for a small dungeon map, although you could find one anywhere online. I decided that this dungeon looked like it might be occupied by undead, so I needed a reason for the players to enter the dungeon. 

I flipped through a couple NPC ideas I had rolling around in my head and landed on Professor Cogsworth, a gnomish professor who studies engineering and the manufacture of extravagant artifacts. I decided that he might have a brother, who is also a professor of sorts, but studies magic instead of the physical. Perhaps Cogsworth had come across some sort of magical question and needed to talk to his brother about it. His brother of course had a sort of magic laboratory in an underground dungeon because it had the proper combination of ancient arcane runes and triangulation of ley lines. 

The party would encounter a strange cart, it would stop in front of them and attempt to hire the party to investigate his brother's laboratory. Cogsworth had seem some sort of skeletons and gotten spooked and he needed the party to clear the place out and help his brother, who he assumed had been gnome-napped. For good measure I threw in a weird nerdy professor mixed with a stuttering yoda speech pattern, and he felt like a full-fledged NPC.

In the dungeon, I used the highly useful Random Dungeon tables near the end of the Dungeon Master's Guide. I tweaked each roll as I saw fit to better match the visuals and style of the dungeon and my group. Kobold fight club help me quickly populate it with Ogre Zombies, Gargoyles and Spooky Skeletons, and the party found a pair of true-sight glasses before nearly dying to Yellow Mold.

I actually lied to you at the beginning of this session, I said it took me only 15 minutes to plan a 4 hour session. In actuality the dungeon was only half-finished, so it only took 15 minutes to plan 2 sessions. Try out this kind of planning at your table, and I guarantee your game will be just as fun, if not more, and you'll save yourself the headache of planning a long session. Don't be afraid to tweak any results from a random table, and if you have any spur of the moment ideas, throw them in. Improvise, and have fun.

Tuesday Quick Tip - Describe Useless Info

This week for the Tuesday Quick Tip should seem obvious but it is something that lots of Dungeon Master's don't think of. Describing useless information.

If the first bridge you ever describe has a troll under it, if the only time you describe a lone man in an alley is when the man tries to assassinate the party, your players are eventually going to realize that everything you say is significant.

Obviously as Dungeon Masters everything we say is significant, but sometimes its important to throw in some useless information. For situation or setting, throw in some fluff that is totally useless. This is useful for two reasons. First it will acclimate your players to ignoring certain descriptions, making it easier to surprise them. Secondly, the unimportant descriptions may inspire may inspire an actual turn of events that you didn't plan during the preparation phase.

All of the really cool things my players have ever done have been by taking advantage of the setting in a way I didn't anticipate. If you describe some pretty fountains, trees, bridges, and buildings, you will be surprised in what clever ways your players are able to take advantage of them.

Tuesday Quick Tip #2 - Recurring NPCs

One of the most important things Dungeon Masters should be incorporating into their campaigns, is one of the easiest to overlook. I'll admit I often struggle to work these into my campaigns, but if you succeed the rewards in terms of immersion, and player interest, are huge.

I'm talking of course about Recurring NPCs. Minor characters, that appear from time to time in the campaign. I'm not talking about the librarian from which the party collects a powerful scroll for a quest, or the mayor who hires the adventurers to slay a foul beast. Although these are NPCs they don't necessarily make a great recurring NPC. Think of your favorite TV shows, there is usually a few main characters, those who show up in nearly every single episode,  but there are some that show up sporadically, a handful of times a season. These are your recurring NPCs.

Nothing drives home to your players that they are playing in a real, immersive world, more than having friends, acquaintances, and allies, that exist outside of the player characters. A favorite barkeep who swaps stories with them, a merchant who is willing to cut them a deal and give them any leads to valuable hordes, a noble or thief who has taken a liking to them, these are the characters that will make your players invested in your world.

Another thing recurring NPCs can be good for is driving roleplay opportunities for players who need the extra push. If you have a player who is a little shy around the table, or letting the louder voices take a tad too much of the spotlight, a recurring NPC that is friends only with their character could be a good option. When your party comes into a town, the NPC could seek out their character, and take a liking to them, while distancing themselves from the others in the party. This NPC could be a source of valuable information, giving the shy player his chance to shine.

If you've seen Star Trek: The Next Generation, there is a character on it named Q that is a great template for a recurring NPC. Q is a powerful god-like alien who can appear whenever he wants, and leave just as easily. He is incredibly powerful, and prone to boredom. In Dungeons and Dragons, a powerful demigod, fiend, angel, planewalker, or wizard could be similar. Coming and going when your players least expect it, often leaving situations messier than they were before. Perhaps offering clues, or items to assist them when they really need it.

Other good ideas for recurring NPCs are: mysterious traveling merchant, shows up when and where he is least expected with strange curiosities for sale, a retired wizard who knows most of the lore of the land and will continue to tell stories to anyone who will listen, or a prince attempting to pass himself off as a commoner in order to connect better with his people.

Recurring NPCs are a great way to keep your players invested. You'll find that they wonder how world events affect their favourites, and try to meet up with them when they're in the area.  Create NPCs wherever your players go and make small note to yourself, and if your players return try to expand upon that character. Since player characters are prone to moving around frequently, think  about having powerful recurring NPCs that can teleport or appear when least expected. Lastly, minor NPCs can often be turned into major NPCs in a later adventure or campaign. This makes your players far more invested in the story.

DM Quick Tips #1 - Flavour your magic descriptions

This is the first installment of DM Quick Tips, a series devoted to short tips that can help you become the Dungeon Master that your players deserve.

Today's Quick Tip: Flavour your players spells

Too often when combat starts all pretense of roleplaying goes out the window. Sometimes it's difficult to continue the immersive experience when we're busy calculating AC and rolling dice. But there are a few small things you can do to keep the flavour up, while still moving combat along at a healthy pace.

One of the interesting things about spells in D&D is that many of them are shared across classes. During combat when a player casts thunderwave they're far more likely to just tell you they're casting it, who they're targeting, and what they rolled. After all it's the DM's job to describe things, right?

Yes and no. Its important to impress upon your players that they can flavour their own characters. Maybe a wizard does a particular flourish with his wand whenever he casts an electrical spell, maybe his hair starts to stand up on its ends. I'm also an advocate for different classes using the same spells in completely different ways. While a druid who casts thunderwave may cause a loud roar of thunder to come out of seemingly nowhere when he taps his staff against the ground, a bard might play loudly on his lute, and the sound waves propel enemies away from him in the exact same manner as thunderwave. In this way a character watching the two spells might think they are two completely different spells.

This flavour can be provided by the player, but I find it's good to help them get started by at least describing the spell based on their class, without just saying the name of the spell. Then in the future they may be more likely to flavour it themselves.

Other spells that are good to flavor are utility spells like comprehend languages. A more traditional spellcaster might commune with spirits or point at a foreign book with their wand and have the letters rearrange themselves. However, a bard might be somewhat less magical. The bard might flip through dozens of books on languages that he studied in his bard college, aided of course with his inherent bard ability he's able to decipher the text.