Time-Saving Game Prep Tips for Busy Dungeon Masters
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- Опубліковано 20 лис 2019
- MONSTERS OF DRAKKENHEIM is 300+ pages of eldritch horror inspired monsters for 5e by the Dungeon Dudes! Coming to Kickstarter March 26th, 2024: www.kickstarter.com/projects/... Whether you're a meticulous planner or master improviser, any Dungeon Master can improve their game -- and reduce their workload -- by finding ways to streamline your game preparation. We discuss our favourite shortcuts, tips, and tricks for spending less time getting ready for game night -- and making better use of the time we spend!
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A great webcomic that has examples of how people play is called Darths and Droids. Ruining the DM's plans and the reckless shenanigans that are completely irrelevant.
Love you guys, would love if you started doing a kind of summary/recap of the foucs points at the end just to solidify everything in my brain ❤
"Time that could have been spent working on your PhD." Didn't need the explicit call out, guys. I know I should be writing.
The way he said it too and look in his eyes... Damn.
Literally my situation right now. 😂
Same here. I felt a strong kinship in that instant.
My people.
Yeah I felt that
*Spends hours prepping* Players: (20 minutes into the game) "Let's go the other way."
FUCK I HATE THIS, even when they know where the main enemy is they decide to go and start poking tombs and other things that have nothing in.
Use a campaign guide like ghosts of Saltmarsh. It has a storyline but also details for characters who go off the beaten path. Then I used a connected dream the players had to run a one shot where they fought krampus. I found a one shot guide that I very losely followed.
I always ask my party what they intend to do next game. We have an understanding that, if I know what they're doing I can make a better session
Nicholas Stewart i really like the system of deciding what the PCs goal is in the next session at the end of each session. it really helps with prep and lets you know if Players are lost or not engaged
Or you can give them the illusion of choice in which either path leads to the same location.
I realized this after my first Homebrew campaign. I developed a small world with a set narrative and the characters went the other way. It totally threw me off. But I figured this out later.
One of my DMs had note for an in-game festival that was just, "Bears??" Partway through the session, she remembered the note and began describing a carnival game called Beat The Bear, Win An Egg. It was literally an NPC at a booth with a caged brown bear and a ridiculous amount of illegally-owned owlbear eggs. If you could keep the bear pinned down for a given amount of time, he would give you an egg. That vague note turned into one of the most memorable encounters ever.
i read “Beans” at first i was so confused my friend
"see what the players do" is my go to gap filler
Just like Batman, a DM can do anything with prep time.
Also like Batman, the DM doesn't often get that prep time.
Thank you for that reference
Just like Batman, if you use the word "Martha" at the table, the DM will smack you over the head with the DM screen and kick you out of the group.
Most of my npcs are reskinned castaways from Gilligan’s Island. No one has noticed yet.
I spent 3 months of sessions working the party through one giant literature pun using the NPCs names as bits of it.
The groans at the end were so worth it.
@@Gauldame what was the pun?
Gauldame I beg of you, tell us the pun. I must know.
@@Gauldame I also request to know what this pun was.
WHAT IS THE PUN!!!
Out of context quote: "There's no harm in stealing things." Thanks Kelly! *packs up her thieves tools and runs to the nearest jewelry store.*
@Natasel wrong. The most harm done by stealing isn't to the thief. It would be ludicrous to think that. At most you risk punition, and you're not even guaranteed to have it. The harm is done to the victim. In the case of IP, it's the work of another human being you're pretending to be your own, reaping him/her from gains from it, for your personal greed or ambition.
Note that's where it doesn't matter in DM context. Copy a novel or a movie without a thought for the author, because they didn't make a DnD adventure, they made a novel or a movie. You're not making them win any less money. If anything some of your players could be interested. And making their themes and major story parts more famous (at least among your players), you're basically making them advertising.
The thing where you just think of a character or actor to copy for each NPC is seriously the most valuable DM advice that exists for improving your RP a lot, really quickly.
Even if it isn't a specific character/actor just using a trope or stereotype makes it super easy to make unique and memorable NPCs. Realistically your PCs aren't going to dig that deep into most of the NPCs so a 1 sentence description is all you need 90% of the time. e.g.
goth girl who sympathizes with freaks
rigidly professional judge with a dry sense of humour
lonely ghost looking for love
gentle, welcoming steward with a short-term memory problem
cocksure pilot with something to prove
loyal and proud servant
cold and bitter veteran cynical about the world
timid gardener who just wants to be left alone with his flowers
frustrated youth taking it out on anyone around them
Agilemind I cast suggestion “ I suggest you tell me of your family’s lineage and your own personal life story”
Agilemind - See? It’s example ideas like yours where I really wish YT allowed us to copy text as text!!
Yeah, I really liked that. Just write "Luna Lovegood", or "Cliche Spoiled Prince" and we're off to the races. A lot of valuable information presented here, but this one stood out to me as well.
I was just creating 2 flirting merchants that move across the map. I wrote down “Barry keoghan from banshees of inisherin”
My best advice is to accumulate 'Drop Anywhere' Encounters and Mini Adventures you can literally put anywhere in a campaign if you're in a bind for prepping for the main storyline. They take maybe a typewritten page of bullet points to write out, and I did a bunch before I even started my campaign., and adding more as I went along and had time.
For example, in my most recent campaign, I had a 'Ghost Girl' encounter that I sat on for nearly 13 game sessions before I was stuck and ended up using it. The party's cleric (and only him) kept seeing this crying little girl wherever he went, and it turned out she was the ghost of a little girl of his sect who was murdered. His deity allowed him to see her spirit as a test of his mettle/faith. It turns out she was killed by her mother, who had been turned into a vampire. But her mother had just enough control that she had to make a terrible choice, either succumb and feed on her daughter and turn her, or kill her before it happened. She chose the latter. That led the party to the girl's abandoned home, that the mother still mournfully visited, where they investigate, get the story, and end up fighting the mother. That in turn led them to the head vampire that turned her, and a big battle with him and his minions.
Vampires are easily scalable monsters, so it was an encounter I could keep at the ready until at least they turned 10th level or so. I try to have at least 3-4 Drop Anywhere Encounters ready to go at any one time.
Where could a new DM find some of these Drop Anywhere Encounters? Some players want me to start a spin off campaign from our main one.
I really like your ideas here - but I too haven’t been able to find anything called “Drop Anywhere” encounters. Please post a link if a collection somewhere, if if you’re own idea, please post your template and a couple completed examples. Thanks!
@@TriMarkC Sorry, it was from my personal notes, and UA-cam won't let me post links anyway. Just look for sources with one-page adventures or brief adventure outlines (there are a bunch of RPG blogs that have those) that you could just add some details to that could be used as drop-in adventures if needed.
As another example, I found a brief description in an old Traveller supplement '76 patrons' of a young couple, each from feuding noble families who, who pay the party a goodly sum of money to sneak them off-planet. It was easy enough to change that to a fantasy setting, and have them pay the party to sneak them out of whatever the local kingdom is. Of course there's the complication that neither family was told the couple was eloping, so both believe their child was kidnapped with the opposite family responsible, and send out agents to intercept and stop the fleeing couple, with the PCs being presumed by both sides to be mercenaries hired to be the kidnappers. To add even more complications, the couple stole a magic artifact from the girl's family that they planned to sell to fund their future nest egg. But of course the artifact is cursed in some way, and if broken/mishandled/removed from its binding circle or some such, it will eventually unleash some eldritch horror just at the worst possible time. So if things work out, the party will have to deal with first one family's troops catching up and confronting them, then the other arriving in the middle of that, and then the unleashed monster for a big climax.
Again, the NPCs involved are easily scalable up and down according to whatever the party's level happens to be. The couple can be 1st level, the pursuing family agents should be just high enough to give the party some problems (like half the party's level to even with them), and the monster should be strong enough (i chose an angry demon at 2x their level) to challenge the party as a whole.
This is exactly what I do. I try to make sure I have a couple of small dungeons I can use to stand in for the cave complex, ancient tomb, ruined keep, bandit encampment, etc that my players discover when they suddenly decide to plunge off the road and into the hills while enroute to the next chapter of the overarching story. Ditto for shops, merchants, etc. When my players encounter one of these, I lock it down in my notes for that campaign in case they return to it. Scavenging and reskinning content from published adventures absolutely rocks as a time saving measure for this.
Nice, good idea, like the story, and a pretty cool segway.
“I did read the module book, front cover to back cover, five times.”
- spoke like a classically trainer actor/theatre person!
I'm doing game prep for my Friday night game while watching a video on game prep.
Same tho
Im doing my prep for my game tonight while watching
So am I.
Same but sunday
I'm not doing game prep while watching a video about game prep
I watch all the UA-cam channels I can find on Dungeons and Dragons. These two guys are consistently the best. I know, there are a few "Running the Game" Matt Colville videos which are epic. But, week after week, useful information upon useful information, clarity and efficiency, these guys rule.
One thing I always try and keep in mind is that your players will (9 times out of 10) react in ways I didn’t predict. As a DM, you’ve got to be open to unexpected possibilities
I've solved this problem by simply not prepping at all.
IF I'M NOT READY THEN NEITHER ARE YALL!!!
Honestly same
Then let me know in advance so I never play in those games.
Random Encounter Tables, here we come
@@TheSwamper good thing is there's no shortage of players.
My favorite part of every video is when they say "And we are the dungeon dudes". Gets me every damn time
*Relevant and Supportive Comment*
As a meticulus planner dm, I find time management is the most important thing.
1st: take a look at your schedule, and whenever you are doing something that doesnt take brain power, think about the upcoming session. Such as. Your commute or in the shower. Then when you get the chance, make a note of it for later.
2nd: be efficient with your prep time. If you have been working for 20min on a monster that the party may never face, is that 20min something you could have spent on something else? This also involves sometimes going with the quick and dirty solution to a mechanical/narrative problem than the lengthy elegant one.
3rd: split up your prep time, and take breaks. Nothing stifles imagination more than obligation. And when you come back to what you had, you have a fresh mind, and fresh perspective.
4th: sometimes you just dont have it in you to prep/run a session. Thats okay. Just let everyone know ahead of time you wont be running that week. Alternatives are movie night or game night.
5th: Nothing is ever wasted! If you spent 20min on that monster but the party circumvented it, save it for later. Maybe reskin it as something else. As a dm, no work is wasted work.
6th, write lots of list
@@zerobones8989 I mean, I do have more, but I figured those were the most pressing
I have pages and pages of lists of things like this. You never know when something comes up that you might need a little note from beforehand.
@@Kename so long as you keep it organized, thats awesome! Cause if you cant find what you need then you effectively dont have it... I learned that the hard way.
Devan Hayes Very true!! I had jotted down the island continent’s King & Queen, the Duke & Duchess of the country the PCs are in, the 7 districts & each of their Lords & some stats, and even a few key towns that are in my campaign. But when they actually got out of the first town... I couldn’t find those notes. So I winged it for a session or two, and then had to edit my actual notes with the new names I had made up.
One of the players keeping our campaign log actually wrote, “DM TBD info” more than a couple times. :-/
I once ran a one shot for level 11 characters and I wanted the monsters to be zombies but knew that would be too easy so I got the stat block from hill giants and just said it's a big zombie now, the stat block from the flail snail removed the specialist stuff from it and said it's multiple zombies stitched together with lots of limbs that eventually fall off of it takes enough damage, the stat block from the war horse and made it another zombie. This made a lot of unique enemies that were easy to make and difficult enough for the party.
Wow that's Amazing. Stealing!
I did this with a werewolf. It was an undead werewolf, who was also a giant. As if a giant got infected with lycanthropy, died, and was resurrected. (There is a faction responsible for creating this monstrosity as well).
I am the overthinking DM, I am doing A LOT of prep.. from experience I know I can improvise and probably not that badly as I´ve improvised like 2 hours of session and players didn´t even noticed. But I just can´t help it to write a lot of stuff, which is tedious and takes a lot of time. Thank you for this video, this is incredibly useful to me !
I understand, I have to fight the urge to prep so not all of the big houses are having entire family tree written yet, of course including people already dead for decades or hundred years and people on another continent and so on... But I just love when it all makes sense and you can see the struggle of control over villages and cities using also marriage and so on... Just players almost never notice and if they notice they do not care :-D
I don't go to those lengths, but I've found that having the basic layout(s) gives me reasons to go in one direction or the other when I go into "Improv Mode" and I can generally provide more detail with something that's prepared beforehand than something that's not. But being able to improv stuff on the fly, flying by the seat of your pants is always fun too! 😅
"You find a room with 3 Kobolds. One is wearing a colander, another a jester hat, and the last what looks like a bowl of tin foil."
I roll a Nat 20 on Insight.
"You instinctively know these are the hats forged by gods. The colander looking hat was crafted by Myrkul to filter the spirit as it passes into the next life. The jester hat is made of whips and spurs as a symbol of Loviatar. The bowl hat is made from Bhaal to collect the blood from sacrifices....roll initiative."
Underrated comment
LMAOOO
How the fuck would insight tell you that, that’d be a religion check most likely
I think this was my favorite segment you've offered so far. Even though I have (and do) used almost all of the tips you offer here, simply listening to your discussion got the creativity moving again in the brain. I 100% agree with all of your tips and observations, ESPECIALLY the part about lots of reading. When somebody calls me creative, 99% of the time it is plagiarized from a great author, with a little reskinning. The fact that I read many different genres, and HISTORY, gives me a lot of source material.
Thank you, I DM mainly for my husband but having tips like these really help me to make the game more fun for him.
I spend so much free time just thinking about my campaign a tiny bit, and spend not as much time as I should throwing things together before the game but oh well. Great tips
Watching Dungeons of Drakkenheim was the best GM prep ever. I have been running a game for my teenagers and its my first exposure to DnD5e (Vampire Masquerade and Cyberpunk player when i was a teen). Bingeing your campaign gave me such fantastic tips on level appropriate encounters (same party size), aswell as ideas for certain NPCs (we have a goblin named GumGum who is kind of there Rat Prince) aswell as i loved the angle of your church of the sacred fire, the overzealous texan faith healers, and have used that flavor for the church in my world.
So in short, thank you to the Dungeon Dudes (Monty and Kelly, Jill Joe and Kyle!) for being such an effective muse to an old cretin just trying to find a way to game with his kids. Cant wait to see how the campaign wraps up!
"...Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere"
Me: Wait, wut? Elsweyr?
An impressively lazy name for a nation.
Same
Same
@John Doe yes Sam 100%
I had the same reaction and figured I couldn't be the only one so went through comments before adding my own.
Prep tips.
1. I assume my players will see through any well thought out plan.
2. Mind map the plot, to have an overarching idea of generally what's supposed to happen.
3. Have two to three scenes to drop in the game, with the following questions: a)who is there b) what do they want c) what's stopping them and finally *d) how does this interact with the pcs.*
4) map out fanctions simply with a-d of 3, with one sentence descriptors.
5) have a few general ideas on how the answers to 4 will interact with the PC's plans.
6) as the players after the game "so, what does xxy want?"
So when invariably when everything goes tits up they don't realize my entire process is basically juggling a plot, how things are bouncing around it and how the players are mucking everyone's finely laid out plans (including 9 out of 10 of their own).
And when my players are like, "so were you planning on having xyz happen all along?"
The answer is "why yes, you're so clever for figuring it out."
One session at my table last 8-9 hours which is often split in to two days of play. We play once every month. I tend to spend double that, if not more, to prepare for each session. This might including drawing out a maps, writing dialog and making sure questions are answered to keep the parties interest while introducing new challenging for them to face. A large part of this campaign is revolved around time travel and their is a lot to wrap your head around for both prepping the game and avoiding confusing the players during play. I try to keep my notes as detailed as possible so I have plenty to go on to avoid these scenarios. Everything is going well so far, but unfortunate downside is some sessions just take a long time to prep. But its not time wasted because my wife and i are using the detailed notes to make a comic book adaptation of the campaign.
Technically... You dont need detailed notes or good memory.
"This wasnt like that"
"Well you guys are messing with time so..."
My favorite way of prepping is a story flowchart. Beginning, Setting, Action, Rising Action, Climax, resolution, and then end it with a cliff hanger if possible to bring the anticipation for next session.
In old school, we had dungeons with 6 levels and we rolled for each room on the random encounter table!
The energy Kelly brought this episode made for the best intro yet
Build a collection of NPCs to use whenever needed
Regarding your notion of using actors for NPCs: I, too, use and love this idea - except for once, when it blew up in my face...
The players encountered a crazy old sage, who I described as being voice-acted by Mako (the actor who voiced Aku in Samurai Jack and Uncle Iroh in avatar, and who played Akiro the wizard in Conan the Barbarian). On the up-side, the players instantly loved him, because Mako was awesome. On the down-side, I spent the next six hours having to do a boisterous sandpaper voice with a ton of inflection. By the end, by vocal chords were hamburger; I was hoarse for the next two days.
The character is still talked about - but choose your NPC voices wisely! XD
I'm really glad I discovered your channel. After 20 years away from the game and coming back straight into the DM's role, you guys have gotten me up to speed and confident in just a couple of days.
I wish I could play in one of your campaigns, I bet it's a blast.
I love Kelly's nods to himself and Monty in reference to improvised and meticulous DM at around 1:14 lmao!!!
OH AND THE POINTS TOO AHAHA
"Kolbolds, and hats..... What was I on last night?"
Have you ever been high on weed watching lamas with hats and then binging the whole playlist of Basically D&D or something similar? Because that's what happens
I had playable kobold PCs in my campaign, and one was a wizard, so a kobold in a funny hat wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. Another of the PCs (same player, different party -- the guy just liked kobolds) was at the extreme lower limit of kobold size (2 feet exactly) and wore full plate, so became known as "lizard in a tin can". He was also an exceptionally effective fighter, so he usually made people regret calling him that. We also had a 7'6" lizardfolk character in that party, and they ended up married so that they could benefit from a Ceremony spell. As a couple they were every bit as entertaining as you imagine, and after a check of the erotic fantasy chart of interspecies compatibility (not gonna give you a link, sorry) I decided they actually *could* produce living children, if the player wanted them to. (The erotic fantasy chart was used _only_ to determine what races can interbreed, and how difficult it is, and what the results are -- it was far easier than trying to come up with our own system.)
@@mal2ksc They look alike, they smash. Pretty common houserule
Hey, you guys are the shit. Me and 4 friends are doing our first ever "session zero" this sunday after being curious about this game for a few years. I write as a hobby so I was elected the DM. I've been watching a lot of your stuff over the last couple weeks and its made this very large and intimating role seem very easy to pick up. Thanks a lot! Hopefully I'll be watching your player character videos in the near future.
You know I feel like the "fusion speak" line is getting better with every video 😂
One tip that I'm learning is incredibly useful is having a notepad beside your bed. I come up with crazy ideas, npcs and plot hooks when I'm lay in bed waiting to nod off. A quick note in the pad refreshes those thoughts the following morning instead of just being lost to slumber.
Some of my players favourite moments have come from barely awake note scribbles turned into fleshed out encounters.
I spent a weekend working on encounters and dungeons by reskinning pre written encounters, and now I have the next couple weeks prepped
I'm definitely a prep time gm. Something about the fluid orchestration appeals to me.
Thank you for taking the time to make this video.
The issue I struggle with, after around 3 and a half years of DM-ing is that running the game from published sources takes way longer. I ran two homebrew campaigns first and then jumped into Storm King's Thunder. Since then, my prep time has increased horribly, north of 15 hours, because I don't have time to read the book 5 times and I also need to go through SCAG for additional info. All the prep advice we find online, however, advertises ratios that don't include a lot of the pre-campaign prep that you have to do when you don't know the setting, in this case, Forgotten Realms.
It's easy for a seasoned DM to just say "wing it" or "take what you need" but you don't know what you need cause you don't know the setting by heart, like a majority of DMs seem to do.
Sure, we can talk about prep-ing a one shot that's just a bit of RP and a lot of exploration with some encounters there, but this advice really doesn't apply to actual campaigns, where people wanna invest and immerse themselves in the world and story and feel like they are part of it. That doesn't happen without the player knowing the broad context (setting) and without planning their future individual paths that work well with the main storyline, don't interfere with it in a way that breaks the entire narrative but ALSO leaves a lot of room for player agency.
Basically, the whole 1h of prep / 1h of play really comes down to 1h of prep / 1h of play + 2 weeks of reading books multiple times and taking a lot of notes while trying to remember everything.... + minis + encounters + maps + handouts + dialogue + professions + personal journeys etc.
I always give my npc’s a celebrity to give my players a visual reference. I’m so glad you mentioned that.
I'm a first time DM with almost no actual play time. I had one day with the W:DH book before our session 0/1. I thought a module would keep my prep down to a minimum for a weekly game. But I've found myself rewriting every interactive & NPC part to help memorize and highlight. I have been very anxious about not knowing the lore of this bar or that shopkeep and Waterdeep in general and as helpful as the r/waterdeepdragonheist has been it's also overwhelming as I try to make the story better and more intricate for my players.
That said, you two addressing almost all of my constant worries during prep have really made me much calmer after watching this. I love D&D, have listened to so many actual plays for years, and I love improv from great DMs like yourselves, but my actual experience in all of those has felt crippling. I have very grateful and patient players and now I have the ability and room to experiment and learn on the go. Thank you for this and all your videos, your friendly dispositions and encouragement from afar.
We are going into our 4th session and Ch 2 has a lot of room for improv. I'm just going to try it and learn. Thank you thank you thank you for this.
Game Prep is what I am doing at the moment. I have my setting decided and that's all I have to work with XD
You guys are amazing! I’ve been binging your videos for the last few weeks and have learned so much. I’m a DM and I always feel overwhelmed. Watching your class videos and DMing guides has helped me better understand what classes can and can’t do and how to be a better DM. Thank you so much for making these!
Dungeon Dudes, thank you! I am a long time player but brand new DM. I am preparing to start my first campaign with some really close friends. I am finding your videos AMAZINGLY useful. I have subscribed and will be checking in often!!
Best DM I ever had ran his stuff with zero prep and made his stuff up as he went along.
Tips: know WHO your villains are. Motivations, perhaps a quirk or catch phrase, and how they might react to stuff. Practice them away from game.
Then when it’s game time, you’ll find yourself improvising dialogue during the action, and the players will eat it up.
Pinterest, Donjon, One Page Dungeon By Watabou, and Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator are your friends.
Know your players. I say this because your players react to stimuli regardless of who they’re playing. I have one who’s great at puzzles, one who lives for combat, and one who’s bitchin at RP. Create a moment for each to shine and their agency will fill the time.
Leave puzzles open ended sometimes. Or create an item like a torn up map with pieces missing. Players will obsess over this. If your short on time, drop a few of these gems. The players will fill the time. Now you’ve got future hooks.
Know your world with a passing familiarity like you live there. You don’t have to know every town or road, but a good grasp on cultures or relationships will help. That makes improvising travel easy.
I have actually made a ton of home brew monsters and magic items in any spare time I had. They keep my players guessing. It’s not for everyone, but if you find the time, try it.
Surround yourself with what inspires you. For me it’s music. Prepping is always easier in the right environment
Poker face. Get one. If you’ve nothing ready, don’t let them see you sweat. Matt Colville has a saying: “Orcs Attack”. In other words, create a couple of easy to run combats and drop them in whenever.
Unusual events are also good for this. Sighting a ghost ship, having a Magic Mouth garble out a cryptic or nonsensical message, or discovering the site of an ancient battle will keep players occupied for a long time.
If the players take the reigns in one session, build on that. If they want a certain direction, then all you need to do is feed that hunger the next time.
That’s just a few.
Thanks guys for a great topic. I’m a very busy DM who’s prep often happens 30 minutes before my game.
Mike Gould I definitely need to find better puzzles!! Especially interactive one! And examples or links you can offer??
Thirty plus years of DM'ing and playing experience have given me the ability to prepare a session on the fly.
Initial preparation for a whole new campaign or model may take me anywhere from an hour to week depending on complexity.
I am well known among my players for 'stealing' and rescinding materials.
My overall multiverse, which I have been running since 1981 started on the basis of an old war game I once played called War of the Ring where I lost and the One Ring was not destroyed. That multiverse is still ongoing, and I have fitted every rpg I have ever run into it. (Rolemaster, Pathfinder, all versions of D&D except 4E which doesn't exist for me, but I do reserve the right to 'steal' from it'.)
As much as I am current pissed of with WotC, I still love most of your videos. They can be useful, like this one, for any RPGs.
Keep up the good work.
16:30 I'm a planner that is working like an imrovisor. XD
In other worlds, I'd like to prepare, but I don't have the time or forget about it. And luckily, I have enough improv skills to do it, but boy, how I'm tired. :)
Thank you for putting out such great content guys, I really enjoy listening to your talks about D&D, I look forward to it every week.
thank you dungeon dudes you never make me regret spending my time on your videos a great portion of my good and well spent preparation times i owe to you as you've always inspired me and now you've made a video i needed as im running 2 back to back campaigns on saturdays and sundays morning and get to work right after and barely have any time to prepare them and mostly i just get some npc and monsters and on my way to work (i run my D&D sessions at work b4 work) i manage to put some logic and relevance for them to the story (i might also add i love homebrewing monsters and npc and it takes quite some times 15-60 minutes or more at times but this gets well appriciated by my players)
Thank you. I find these tips very encouraging. I'm learning and getting better at DM'ing. So, I do appreciate videos like this one.
Thanks, guys! I love the idea of casting your NPCs. I've never heard that before but I'm very excited to use it
Thank you guys so much for this video. This is exactly what I needed to hear right before running my game tonight
I've actually watched several of your videos, but I think this was my favorite so far. Your strategies of relating NPCs to actors or falling back on real experiences/locations to establish your setting were incredibly useful concepts. I also loved you thoughts on creative pressure for monsters. Really good work, guys.
Thanks for the encouraging tips guys, running my first homebrew game for some friends at school tomorrow! This will totally help!
Thanks for this, I have been both a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants and a let's-just-wing-it-and-see-what-happens DM. I think Kelly's point of reading thru the module is a good one. When I was starting as a DM I wasn't thorough, just feeling since it was written already I could wing it. Not True! Slowly incorporating your ideas into my game and this one makes my life easier when I realize it's Sat morning and my group will be here in 2 hours.
Oh I get it. This video is just for me! Thanks, dudes! I was literally just thinking about how I haven't had much time to prep for my next session, and I get a notification. Lol
Totally agree! I always print a photo and think of role an actor played in a movie for my npc's.
I found this really insightful guys, thanks for the tips. I'm a first time DM, running a campaign at work with a group of colleagues, so my prep for that is a little interesting in that we play for 1 hour over lunch, 3 times a week, rather than having one longer session to get through a specific set amount of content. It's been an interesting way to try and run things, but there's definitely a lot of stuff mentioned in this video that's helping me out.
Another high quality content episode, Dudes! Exceedingly useful ideas and info I plan to make heavy use of. Thanks yet again!
This is so useful! You guys are awesome.
Also, i wish you a lot of success in the making of your thesis Monty! You got this!
omg, the actor who plays the npc tip is just pure unmitigated genius, thanks!!
Love you guys!! I prep general story concepts and pre-stage the maps and scenery, but improv NPCs and environmental conditions.... a perfect mix imo
Your gritty rules variant video was my favorite freaking DnD advice video on the net, that I have seen so far! You guys rock!
This is a topic I wish more D&D videos covered. Great job, guys!
Guys im so glad you did this video! I have a very bussy life and knowing THAT IM NOT THE ONLY ONE on this, your video really inspired me to keep going on my free time, big shout out from Tijuana Mexico, keep it up guys!
you guys are awesome, been watching you for hours and my first two sessions dm-ing went really well and its so much fun!
Great advice. This will help cobble something together for family games.
Yes! It's been so hard for me to dedicate all the time my campaign deserves! This helps me a lot! Thanks!
One of your best DM guide videos! Thanks! On my way to bring a couple players into my world.bthisbwas very fortuitous timing
You guys are fabulous! You have given me so much help to make my games better and more enjoyable. Thanks so much!
You guys are so good at what you do, thank you for putting out so much good content. One of the best DnD channels
Thank you for making these guides, Dudes, they are fun, informative and well made :D
The pointing and knowing smirks gave me a good chuckle. Thanks for another video, Dudes.
I honestly mostly come up with our adventures on the spot. I come up with the idea of what I want to do a day or two in advance, go through it in my head over and over, and then I write down the stats if the monsters or enemies they run into. That's it. I write down character names too. I don't even write down when and how they'll be attacked, nor do I write down lore tidbits. If I come up with a puzzle its usually on the spot, if not I'll make something really quick and throw it in. So far my campaign (on my first) is going amazingly. My players love it and I do too.
I'm definitely a seat-of-her-pants DM. It worked a bit better for VtM, where I once winged a 14 hour session with zero prep. Theatre of mind doesn't work as well for D&D, but it does save a lot of time, and I've found that a grid and minis aren't as important as they first appeared.
Yep, never used miniatures myself. They're just a revenue-making scheme (though they do look cool 😄). But, being able to mark the player's positions (and their opponent's too) so I can see how an engagement develops is critical to the gameplay imo.
14 hour session?!? How?
@@goldengaruda8935 We started one evening, played all through the night, took a break for breakfast, and continued the next day till noon. My GMing style has always been to more or less wing it, and it was a setting I knew very well. Also there were only 3 of us for that session, and we all had the next day off.
Fantastic tips gents, I'm a newish DM and these tips are GOLD.
Some other tips I could suggest is have a list of 10-15 names for each of the main races on a sheet of paper. On another one, have about 20 class features, and character questions asking "What do they want?" "what do they fear?" and "what can they offer?" for each.
The great part of this, is you can mix and match on the fly, and have some really unique characters formed from that too.
Personally, If I'm writing a character I also put beside the type of accent or way they speak beside a character (i.e. "texan, german, rough and gutteral, talk like you have cheeks full of rocks and an underbite, or mysterious and whispy). I love the tips for associating it with an actor/actress you mentioned too, that's fantastic!
Cheers!🎮🍹
Solid advice! In a time crunch I find simply writing a few words about an npc, place, or encounter makes it easier to improvise and remember your choices next session.
That said, always go with your gut! Sometimes the table needs a light hearted npc/encounter and sometimes it needs to be rocked with an encounter or npc that gets the players out of there heads and into the game.
You know what's crazy? I learned how to map from Dyson Logos; we live in the same city and played Labyrinth Lord with him. While I haven't updated in quite some time, you can find some of my maps at the Dais & Column.
I’m a new DM(noob). I’m doing my first run tomorrow. I’ve watched many videos, read parts of dm guide and prep today. Wish me luck. By the way i think DM is the real mvp out there!
I’ve been binging your content, awesome stuff
Great video! This will surely save me lots of time
This might be my favorite video from you guys! DnD Resources were awesome Thanx!
I've always been convinced that you guys had Canadian accents, but now with the Roots shirt I have no doubt.
This was freaking awesome. Liked and saved this video.
Working on my thesis... You're preaching to the choir, Monty. Bravo.
I love these. A lot of great work and mainstays here.
Everything is a skill. Be it improv, long prep, outlines, and much more. Swing into the tools you enjoy and work for you.
I do 8-10 bullet points to accomplish in the two hour session and then have random generation needs on browser tabs. The rest is improv and swinging into the paths the players choose to focus on.
Awesome content! Thanks for the tips 👍🎊🎊🎊
This was super helpful, thank you!
Your video was part of the prep. Thanks!
Thank you guys! I really appreciate all the info you'll put out there. I'm a new DM to a group of new players ( We are having a blast).
This showed up in my feed at the perfect time. I found out today I am running tomorrow. Let's do this.
My groups first session was escaping the prison from the opening of ES Oblivion, all I had to do was figure out how many goblins there should be and adapt the loot, great time saver
I've been DMing a very long time and have done it both ways. I'm a good improviser but some prep work always helps. At first I had everything planned out to a tee and then the party decided to go in a totally different direction, blowing all my prep work out the window. I have developed a style that helps in any situation, some prep work needed. But I won't go into all that now, if you want to have a run down just reply. Long story...I guess this is the long, do what works and that makes your players happy and makes you happy. Make one of them DM for awhile so you don't get burned out.
Thanks for the video, guys. I've got a game to prep for tommorrow.
Oh my god guys.. THANK YOU! I’m a new dm starting Hoard of the Dragon Queen (5e) with some friends and this helped me out a lot. 😁
Working on tonight’s session right now thanks dudes
In the DMG, there’s a couple of tables for dungeon rooms. You can use theatre of the mind instead of drawing a complete map containing each room, and roll for a new room every time the group goes somewhere else, and then just draw that room. Roll for random encounters, room description, and maybe some loot all at once, and run that room until they go somewhere else, rinse, repeat. Essentially, build the dungeon as you go through it.