Dear Dungeon Master: Crafting a Campaign and Finding Someone to Play It
A common thread in many of the emails I’ve received is new Dungeon Masters feeling a little lost. Being the DM is also being the rulekeeper, the storyteller, and the referee. And, yes, it can be extremely daunting. Luckily, I have some tips that have helped me greatly. First, let’s look at a few emails:
“I need your help. I fell in love with Dungeons & Dragons about a year ago when I watched some of my favourite YouTubers play a campaign and this past Christmas I have been gifted the Dungeons & Dragons starter set and some additional dice. I have read all the rules and I have a party of me (DM) and three others (who have no experience) ready to play. I have been trying to write my own adventure to play with them. However, I am stuck as I don’t know how to start.”
“Hi Jason! My name is Eleah, and I am a brand new Dungeon Master, I have only done one one-shot campaign before Christmas season 2017. Since then I have been looking to turn another one-shot I have into an actual multi-session campaign. I have been a player of D&D for 2 1/2 years now, so I have my dice, books, character sheets, pencils, the works. My questions for you are:
1) How should i go about making a one-shot longer to be a multi-session campaign?
2) Do you have any advice for this aspiring Dungeon Master?”
“Hello Jason,
I have been playing D&D for about a year my buddy twisted my arm to try it and I’m hooked. The reason for the e-mail is that we are each taking a turn to DM and my adventure is going to do with my Character’s backstory (half-elf rogue assassin with an urchin background). I have most of it figured out but I’ve never DM’ed before much less come up with an entire adventure before so I was wondering if you could throw some pointers my way or some do’s and don’ts.
Thanks!
Ramiro”
Every Dungeon Master has their own system for creating a campaign. There is no definite right or wrong way to do it, but I will simply offer you some insight into my process and ask you to give it a try.
I am very inspired by images and by music. I will put on some headphones and load up the score from The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Darkest Dungeon, or any other dramatic music that puts me in the right mindset. Then I will go to Reddit or Pinterest and seek out fantasy art. On Reddit, there are categories for Imaginary Characters, Imaginary Monsters, Imaginary Landscapes, and more. Scroll through these pages and save every image you see that excites you, scares you, or otherwise inspires you. Once you feel like you’ve got enough to start writing, crank up the music a little louder and start cycling through your “inspiration book.” Let me show a real-world example of how I once crafted a campaign out of four paintings.
I came across the art of David Karamudin and fell in love with the designs of his Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, but specifically it was the horses themselves that inspired me. My campaign started with the party of heroes arriving in a small village where the people were dying of hunger. They arrived with a cart of food only to discover that the town had plenty of food already. Oddly, the people and animals here were simply refusing to eat… except one horse. This seemingly normal animal was perfectly fine while all other living creatures were wasting away, seemingly on purpose.
Later on in the story, they discovered a city that was waging a civil war on itself. Every single person and animal in this city was fighting and killing everyone else for no discernible reason. However, one solitary horse was fine grazing, sleeping, and enjoying itself. Other creatures refused to attack this animal.
Using the four paintings by Karamudin, I crafted a whole story where the horses of the apocalypse were simply present in these normal places, but for some reason their presence was causing their apocalyptic dispositions to tear their homes apart. These horses of Death and War (and later, Famine and Conquest) were attempting to reach one another via some otherworldly instinct, and once together the world would come to a violent, bloody end.
Find inspiration and use it. Find a painting of a mangled, scarred orc and turn it into a villain for your story. Take a favorite book or film character and retool them to suit your fantasy world. Let music influence you. Don’t just sit there with a pad of paper and pen ready to create your own mythos from scratch. Start small, build from there, and even let your players fill in some blanks about your world. Is the party’s half-orc barbarian from a swampy wasteland savaged by constant storms? Add that place to your game world and have your player tell you about it. Player’s have great ideas sometimes, so use them.
This next batch of emails covers a very real problem with few real solutions:
“Hey Jason,
It’s inspiring to find those like you who are sharing their knowledge of this fine game to the edges of the internet.
I’m an aspiring dungeon master and I want to start running a table, but I’m terribly afraid of making a mess of a session. Is there a low risk way of practicing being a DM? And where can I find people who want to play? My friend’s eyes all glaze over the more rules you add to a game.
Regards,
Aspiring DM”
“Dear Dungeon Master
My name is Rudy and I’ve was also introduced into dnd well into my 20s and now I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m an avid video gamer and even enjoy board games and the such but dnd is on an entire plane of it’s own lol.
I have a group of 4 who I regularly play on Saturdays and was wondering how do I go about introducing this phenomenal game to my fiance someone who’s never thought much of it before?”
“Hi Jason,
Thanks for your article about the new Q&A you’re providing.
Is there an online version of D&D that’s very similar to the in-person game? Where you can bring your characters into new adventures with other online people and also friends?
Thanks,
Morgan”
You’ve got your Player’s Handbook, you’ve got your Monster Manual, you’ve got your story hook, and you’re ready to run a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Now, where the hell are the players? The honest answer is that they are everywhere, and yet also nowhere.
If you’re determined to play in-person, ask every friend you have. Ask your friend’s friends. Post on Facebook, post on Reddit, or wander up to your local game store and check the bulletin boards. Nothing there? Post something yourself. As I’ve said before, I currently play with 5 players who, prior to playing with me, had never played D&D before. One is an old friend, one is a co-worker, one is her husband, and two are friends of his. When you’re searching for people to play D&D with, take anyone who is interested. Try to convince friends and family who don’t seem like likely candidates, because I find that those people are the ones who end up loving it the most.
However, and this is a big one, ask your players what kind of game they want to play. Don’t find a group of folks who just want to crawl dungeons or murder monsters and offer them up a world-traveling spy mystery to solve. Cater to your players, or find new ones who are interested in your game. Make sure everyone at the table is prepared to play the same game or you’re in for a bummer.
Maybe playing locally isn’t an option. You’ve got no friends (aww) or your gamer buddies live hundreds of miles away. You’ve got no local game shop to ask around at, and your partner doesn’t give a rat’s ass about tabletop roleplaying games (like my wife!) Well, Al Gore invented the internet for this very reason.
Now there are things like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, or even just terrible, terrible Skype. Discord, too. There are many options for playing online, but finding people for online games can be just as difficult. Reddit has a Looking For Group (LFG) page for hunting down potential players and even Dungeon Masters. There are Facebook groups for the same reason. Do some homework, find these groups, and take your chances. I will always and forever choose to play in-person, but that is not always a possibility for all players. Services like Roll20 offer digital battlemats and convenient dice-rollers to emulate the tabletop experience, so most people will feel right at home going this route.
Thanks for writing in and thanks for reading! Remember to send all of your tabletop roleplaying questions to me at jason@geektyrant.com and you might just see them answered here on GeekTyrant! Talk to you soon.