How to Be a Better DM: Dungeon Master Tips for the DM Newbie, the Hobbyist and the Forever DM

Have you ever seen amazing terrainscapes worthy of legend and have looked on with envy?

Do you want to learn how to start getting into terrainscaping so you can have amazing battlemaps like all of the famous actual play shows?

Well, this is the episode for you.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.

Today Justin and Tanner are joined by Jay from Jay's Tabletop Terrain on Instagram. You can learn more about Jay and what he does by going to: https://www.instagram.com/jays_tabletop/

In today's episode we talk about questions like these:

• How does one start into crafting or assembling terrain for their D&D games?
• Which is cheaper in the longer run, buying/3d printing or crafting terrain?
• What handful of pieces are staples and should be first in the list to start with?
• How do you measure distance for tactics in combat if there isn't a grid?
• How do you use terrain to improve the gameplay rather than taking away from it?

And more.

Let us know how you like this episode, but thanks for giving it a try.

We'll be back next time with another great episode.

Until then, let's roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

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.

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So a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army.

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Welcome to How To Be a Better DM. In today's episode I (Cayden) go over 3 of the biggest lessons I've learned over this past year as I've started running D&D games for my friends & family. Hopefully something in this episode inspires those of you who have yet to give DM'ing a shot, to try it out.

Mentioned in this episode:

Play D&D with Us

Did you know that you can have one of our hosts here at How to Be a Better DM be your dungeon master?

Dungeon Master for Hire

Join Our Discord

So a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army.

Discord

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.

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Should you encourage your players to run a business in your campaign? What would that even look like? And, most importantly, can allowing players to run a business in your D&D Campaign become an additive to the overall story, or a distraction? Tanner explores these questions, their many other nuances, and the effects of a player-run, in-game business on your campaign.

Also, if you'd be interested in supporting us and this show, sign up for our new Patreon: patreon.com/Session0Studios

Mentioned in this episode:

Join Our Discord

So a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army.

Discord

Try Worldsmith Today!

Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith!

Worldsmith

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.

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.

Today is a special bonus episode. We were fortunate enough to have been invited onto RPG Academy. Listen to our conversation but absolutely check them out at https://therpgacademy.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

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.

Do You Want to Earn some Money?

🎲 Want to Earn Some Extra Gold?

Try Worldsmith Today!

Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith!

Worldsmith

“You creep slowly through the cobwebbed dark of the crypt, your breath coming out in puffs of steam that you’re trying your hardest to cover. You reach the corner and peer around down the hall. You see the source of the thumping sound. It’s a creature the size of an ogre, with the same proportions. The only difference is that where an ogre would have 1 head, this creature has 6, along with 3 extra arms and a 3rd leg that it drags behind it. Oh… and the entire body seems sewn together in the most grotesque way….

It’s some night in the future. That’s the sound of you pulling off the perfect one-shot. You’ve gathered a full party of friends and now you’re playing a once in a lifetime game.

But how do you create the once-in-a-lifetime One-Shot?

One-shots are fun, but getting them right is a skill that needs to be developed. Luckily for you, I’m going to share some tips that will help improve every single one-shot you ever play. The more often you play, the more likely it is that you create the Once-In-a-Lifetime One-shot.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. This is the show that helps you, the Dungeon Master, craft better stories in less time and with less stress. We’ve been helping dungeon masters new and old for over 150 episodes now. I’m Justin Lewis and I’ll be your guide for today.

I love one-shots!

You probably know that if you’ve listened to the show for any amount of time.

If you want to go back and listen to the other episodes I’ve done about one-shots you can listen to:

Episode 1

Episode 12

Episode 24

Episode 38

Episode 82

And Episode 101.

The Most important would be Episode 82 which is 10 Reasons to Do One-Shots as a Dungeon Master.

So I’m not going to talk about why you should do one-shots, but just know that you absolutely should.  

Instead, today I want to talk about some more tips to help you push the limits of your abilities. I want you to make your next one-shot the best the world has ever seen.

Going all out for a campaign could be daunting and possibly exhausting depending on a lot of factors and circumstances. 

Going all out for a one-shot is much easier in comparison. So with this next one-shot you do, give it everything you got.

It’s a simple fact of dungeon master, and most things in life actually, but what you put into something is what you’ll get out of it.

With your next one-shot, go all out!

Obviously I say that hoping you’ll exercise some degree of temperance. I don’t expect you to rent out a suit of armor and act out every single part. Use your judgment.

But if you are thinking critically, then you’ve probably thought of at least some sort of 1% type action that you could do that you don’t normally do. Maybe you don’t do music and you could add it to your game. Maybe getting some real candles could spice up the atmosphere. Try to push yourself just that little bit and go the extra mile. Your players will appreciate the effort.

As a DM, you’ll need to practice the creativity it takes to manage and perform full campaigns. Practicing your writing abilities goes a long way toward that end. So with your next one-shot, try to write the entire thing yourself. It’s a great practice in story creation, development, pacing and character creation. 

Because one-shots are so short, your story needs to be punchy as do the characters. You know pretty easily and clearly, if the story doesn’t really land.

One-shots are also a great opportunity to try writing stories that you don’t normally tell to stretch yourself and push your limits.

When preparing your one-shot, prepare the character creation options for your players. Because it is a one-shot, you are going to go all out. Your players are going to do the same exact thing. They will try to make the most wacky characters and sometimes the most min-maxy characters. This could easily break your one-shot.

If you’re trying to write and publish a one-shot then this is a good thing. You want to test out the limits of what you’ve created.

But if you’re just playing for fun, then maybe say no to the changelings or the flying creatures. 

At least just know what you want to allow and what you don’t so that when character creation happens, you aren’t making things up on the spot. 

To make the one-shot even more fun, plan a small break in the middle. Announce the break at the beginning of the game and explain when it will happen. This will help your players manage themselves so that they don’t get up and grab something during some of the best parts of the one-shot.

It also makes the mood much more relaxes and allows you to strategize and gameplan in the middle of the session.

Since you’ve written this one-shot, I’d highly recommend playtesting it as much as is possible. If all you can do is just a quick run-through in your head, that is exponentially better than not doing that.

If you can, test out parts of the one-shot, either with yourself or with some volunteers to make sure the mechanics work and are interesting. You’re also trying to ensure that the game isn’t too easy or too difficult.

Playtesting will allow you to make sure the game is going to be fun.

More than anything though, it will allow you to just remember what you’ve got going on. Going through it once or twice will allow you to more easily recall the important elements during the game.

This tip goes in line with the tip to go all out, but this is your opportunity to try a rule you’ve never used before. Try out insanity mechanics or the Alert Level mechanics. If you get it wrong, that’s fine because it’s a one-shot.

Some other interesting mechanics you may try out are:

Diseases

Called Shots

Possession

Metamorphosis/Transformation

Reputation

Sentient Weapons

Weapons that Grow or Build

Persuasion of the Masses.

Those are just some examples, but hopefully, they got you thinking of what you could try out.

This tip might be somewhat contradictory of tip #1, but don’t worry about making it unique. 

What I mean by that is that you might be tempted to try to make it something no one has ever seen before. Even as I write this, I am thinking of a one-shot I’m preparing. As I’ve been working on it, from time to time I’ll think, “Well that sounds exactly like so many other shows out there. This character won’t work because it’s such a cliche”.

Don’t worry about that. The uniqueness that we all crave so much will come in time. Just focus on making this one-shot as fun as possible. If you do that and you really care about your party, then it will all fall into place.

One problem one-shots can run into is having 3 rangers in the party (speaking from experience).

If that’s what the party wants, then that’s fine, but if you sense some awkwardness as the party is describing and introducing their character, then that’s probably why.

When people make characters, they often want their character to feel special and unique. Often, if there is more than one character with the same class at the table, there is a chance that one of them doesn’t feel unique.

Before the one-shot, connect all your players together with a text thread, a phone call, an email or even an in-person meeting **GASP**.

Let them talk about what each of them want to play as before the game begins. This can help them form a good party, or just avoid forming a bad one. 

It can also allow the party to hash out how their characters know and relate to each other. If you want, you can insert that bit yourself, but giving them parameters (you all know each other and have worked with each other for a while) can allow them the creative freedom to come up with some pretty cool stuff.

You see this on a lot of actual play shows where there is a time limit, but they do skip a lot. In your one-shot play, you don’t need to do the traveling and exploring if you don’t want to. If there is something that seems boring, then move on.

Because one-shots are often with limited time, you often do have to trim the fluff or risk not being able to finish.

This is actually good practice for normal games. Sometimes we ask for skill checks just to add some sort of difficulty rather than actually pushing for an interesting story. When you trim the fluff and skip the boring bits, you’re always evaluating whether the current encounter or scene is worth doing. Having that mental critique is useful because hopefully, at the end of the day, everything that happened was 100% worthwhile to the party.

I know that nowadays in the crazy digital age, we’re all slaves to our devices. But every once in a while, it’s a nice treat to get back to the origins of tabletop roleplaying games. 

Do away with the phones and tablets and computers. Have everyone agree to use pen and paper for the one shot. They can write down the spells they are going to use before hand.

I know this is (weirdly) a big ask.

But getting them to give you their full attention (so no phone distractions) can make for a very fun game. Plus, I think a good amount of us need the break.

There you have it, 10 more tips to help you make each one shot you do even better than the last. As I mentioned at the start of the show, one-shots are so important. 

Often, getting a group to stay together is one of the hardest parts of a being a dungeon master. If you can get good at doing one-shots, you’ll enjoy yourself much more because your scheduling headaches will be limited to just one day rather than week-in and week-out.

With these 10 tips, you’ll be able to have a much more fun time. I am curious though. What sort of one-shot will you create?

When you do any sort of one-shot, reach out to us and let us know how it goes for you. We’d love to be a part of your journey.

As you go on and DM, you’ll have ups and downs and all arounds. No matter the challenges you face, keep going. Every man, woman and child is better on the other side of challenge. Thanks for listening to How to Be a Better DM. It’s you who makes this possible. So with your blessing, we’ll be back next week for another great episode, but until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

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.

I Made a CR 100 Monster

I made a Monster with a Challenge Rating of 100

Do You Want to Earn some Money?

🎲 Want to Earn Some Extra Gold?

How do you improvise things that make the game better? How do you add comedy to the game without making it corny?

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. Today I talked with TJ Salmon from Comedy Sports, located in Provo Utah. For more information check out https://www.comedysportzutah.com/

The biggest lesson of today's show is that improv, and comedy, both of them, it's not about you. The best Dungeon Masters do everything they can for their players. They build the story on what their characters add. The best way to be a DM is to DM for your players.

Thanks for listening today.

Mentioned in this episode:

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.

Do You Want to Earn some Money?

🎲 Want to Earn Some Extra Gold?

I Made a CR 100 Monster

I made a Monster with a Challenge Rating of 100

In today's episode, we talk to Jake Packham, who is the dungeon master behind our live-play show "The Pact & Boon." Listen as we ask Jake how he goes about applying his inspiration to create compelling campaigns, and grow his home-brew world of Calignos.

Mentioned in this episode:

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.

Do You Want to Earn some Money?

🎲 Want to Earn Some Extra Gold?

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

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Here's a bonus episode for you about how to World Build with Your players and Characters in mind.

Here are some helpful tips:

• When you world build for players, you leave open spaces that players can help fill
• It gives your worldbuilding direction, which makes the story that much better.
• It saves time and effort because you only build about 20% more than what the players will interact with. Think about rendering in Minecraft.
• Your players get to help build the world 
• You can add cool things as you progress through the story

Hope you enjoyed this Instagram Live episode.

Happy DMing

Mentioned in this episode:

Start Leveling Up As a DM

Wouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities?

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.

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

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

In today's episode of How to Be a Better DM, we are continuing our exploration of downtime activities, and we are focusing on the mother of all "timewasters," carousing! But, is it a waste of time? Or is carousing in D&D one of the best opportunities to enrich your story, introduce characters, and build memories through the craziest experiences!

Mentioned in this episode:

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.

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

Start Leveling Up As a DM

Wouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities?

Level Up Guide

Abridged Show Notes

Feeling overwhelmed by D&D campaign planning? Struggle to connect your grand ideas into a single, captivating story? This episode unveils the CASE Framework, a simple yet powerful system that will transform your planning sessions. Learn how to craft unforgettable campaigns, memorable story arcs, and engaging encounters that will leave your players begging for more. Listen in and unleash the true potential of your D&D world!

This episode dives into the CASE Framework, a system for planning D&D campaigns of any size.

The CASE Framework stands for:

• Campaign: The overall plot of your entire campaign.
• Arc: Story Arcs within the campaign, like modules you might run from a book.
• Session: Individual sessions that make up your story arcs.
• Encounter: Specific challenges or interactions within a session (combat, puzzles, social encounters, etc.)

The framework helps you brainstorm and organize your ideas, ensuring everything ties together into a cohesive story.

FULL SHOW NOTES

Why is planning sometimes the hardest part of being a dungeon master? Wouldn’t it be nice to have some sort of guide to help you through your planning, no matter what you are planning for? On today’s episode, I’m going to introduce you to the CASE framework. Through it, you can take any aspect of the entire campaign and work on it without having to worry about writer’s block. This framework will help new Dungeon Masters the most, though old DMs will likely benefit from using it as well.

The CASE Framework is incredibly simple, but often, it’s the simple things in life that save us time, energy and money. 

This is How to Be a Better DM, brought to you by Session 0 Studios, and I’m your host Justin Lewis. Our show has been helping dungeon masters new and old for over 150 episodes now and today we are going to help you tell better stories for yourself and your friends as you play D&D. 

Want to start out the show today with a few words of gratitude. Over the last couple of months, the show has grown, we’ve launched our new Actual Play show, we’ve done a panel at our first live event, and we’ve just been blown away by the support you’ve given us.

Now enough sappiness. Let’s talk about the CASE Framework.

The CASE Framework will help you break down each individual part into smaller constituent parts. It will also help you make sense of the smaller parts by fitting them into the larger framework.

One of the most important parts of the story is the throughline. It’s not a story unless all of the events are connected. If they weren’t, they’re just random events, not necessarily one story. Having the same character throughout each event isn’t enough. They need to tie together somehow. You can have “side quests” but the campaign should feel like a campaign.

The nice thing about the CASE Framework is that you can really start your planning with any part of the framework. It helps to remember the framework as a whole so that as you do plan the S for example, you keep in mind the A and the E and to a lesser extent the C.

Let me also explain that this framework doesn’t touch improv during your game. This is all about the prep so any improv you do will have to use some of our other tips.

One last thing that is nice about this framework is that it can help you plan the timing of your game. Despite how much we may not want them to, all things come to an end. That’s a good thing, because the longer something goes on, the higher the chance there is that it spoils. Every story has a climax then a wrap-up and a close. D&D is no different. Knowing the climax and the end from the beginning can help make sure the campaign doesn’t get stale. If it’s boring, it’s time to move on.

Now let’s get into the framework.

The framework goes as follows

Campaign

Arc (as in Story Arc)

Session

Encounter

C stands for Campaign. As I mentioned at the start of today’s episode, each part of the framework is tied to the parts before and after. The C and E are a little bit different because obviously they are only tied to one other part. 

In this step, you think about the main plot line of the campaign. The CASE framework works so well because you can start with any part of it, whatever is easiest for you to get going. 

You also need to think about the scope of what you are planning. If you want to run a full campaign then you need to do the C. If you only want to run a small Campaign, or a Story Arc then you just need the ASE. Lastly, if you want to do a one-shot, then you just need the SE.

A campaign is generally made up of at least a few story arcs. 

For the purpose of the CASE Framework, when you work on the C you’re going to work on it in 3 parts.

1. The General Idea (You’ll get used to doing this)
2. Break the Idea into Steps (Story Arcs)
3. Develop the Important Players

Let’s go through each of these.

When planning a campaign and you decide to start on the C of CASE, the easiest way to start is with the general idea of the campaign. 

In my case, this is where I toy with multiple ideas to settle on the one that I actually want to pursue. For example, I’m starting to plan the next homebrew campaign for my friends.

If any of you are listening, stop listening right now. Also for the rest of you, this will likely give away some spoilers for any one-shots that I put on for you in the future, so keep that in mind. 

I’m planning on putting the next campaign I run in my homebrew world of Integrity. I’ve talked a lot about this world, but it’s constantly changing. 

So as of right now, I’ve got a few main plot lines bouncing around in my head, for example

• Humans are dying off because their connection to an Elder Diety is gone, so now there is an organization called the Unseen that is trying to reverse that but they are going about it in the very worst ways
• The world itself is in chaos and every nation is poised for all out war. Basically the world is on the brink of world war. There is also a secret organization called The Breach that is led by a man who wants to bring peace to the world. To do this, he is trying to conquer the world. He believes that either he will succeed and conquer everything, uniting the world under himself, or the rest of the world will unite against him. Either way, he believes the world will be united.
• Originally, on this world, the Elder Diety was threatened by the falling of a corrupted seed from the Worlds Tree (Yggrdasil). That seed fell into the world and started corrupting the lesser gods, turning many of them to be evil. That seed is still in the world, and whatever protection the elder god used to keep the corruption at bay is no longer working, and now the corruption is not just moral but it’s also physical.

I have more ideas but you get the idea. I’ve been working on these major plotlines for a while. They all seem very interesting to me, but I don’t want to create a campaign that lasts forever. 

So what will likely happen is that I will pick maybe one or two of these major plot points and set them into motion, meanwhile, I might pick one or two of the plot lines I didn’t choose and use them as minor story arcs. Either way, putting the ideas on paper like this helps me to realize what I want to do with my campaign. 

I know a lot of people love to wing it, and that’s totally fine, but you don’t get the amazing callbacks or foreshadowing that you may find in well-thought-out novels if you do that. Having a strategy is never a bad thing.

It’s also the opportune moment to think of the theme for your campaign. Some people don’t care to put themes in the campaign, but I think it can leave a nice little easter egg for your players if they are paying attention (and if you do it right).

The theme should help flavor and govern everything you do to a very small extent. For most part, about 20% of what you do should be overtly theme related and the other 80% should be subtly theme related.

Let’s talk about an example just to hammer down this point.

One theme that I’ve been thinking about that may or may not connect with any of the previous plot lines I mentioned is the idea of change.

I might not be able to articulate it well, but what is mean is the involuntary change that happens throughout the course of life. It’s that feeling you get when you look back over a year, two or three and realize that without even trying to, you have changed and become something different, for better or for worse.

I’ve thought that it might be cool to create some enemies, or big bosses that can literally corrupt, even from the viewpoint of turning humans into monstrous creatures. Perhaps, summed up, the theme would be metamorphosis. I think it might be cool to play with that.

For most of the campaign I would probably try to make it so NPCs react to the PCs differently after some time to highlight the changes. For the overt 20% that is highly tied to the theme, I would probably have some sort of traumatic event happen to one of the PCs that could possibly force them to multiclass or physically change them somehow.

But that’s enough about the campaign at large. Let’s dive into story arcs.

The Story Arcs could be considered a campaign within a campaign. Often the modules you can run from books could be considered either Campaigns or Story Arcs, depending on how long the module is or how long the DM strings it out to be.

Just like most stories, the story arc has a beginning a middle and end. One of the major differences between the story arc and the Campaign is that the Campaign plot line might be interrupted by a non-salient story arc while the story arc might be interrupted by a non-salient session or two.

Let explain what I mean.

In a campaign, let’s the say the main plot line is to have the party fight the Dragon Queen.

As a DM you are well within your rights to introduce a story arc that follows the desire of one of the PCs to acquire an ancient Ancestor Blade. In this story arc, the party fights not dragons, but giants and the entire feel is off. The party would understand that this isn’t the main plot line and when they are done they will get back to what is more pressing.

Now in the Story Arc where the party decides to look for the ancestor blade, there might be a few sessions where they decide to just go shopping, which doesn’t necessarily move them towards their goals. They might want extra gold for the shopping, so they could theoretically take a job in the local town of clearing out a nearby band of gnolls. That would take a couple sessions and would not be connected to the giants or the dragons in any way.

Does that make sense?

When it comes to story arcs, the theme and purpose can be much more specific than the campaign. In my previous examples, my campaign plot lines were focused on the world as a whole. The themes had to do with personal change, unwanted or otherwise.

Within this campaign, I’ve been thinking of toying around with some story arcs that would fit within it, for example:

• A story arc that involves the party getting shipwrecked.
• A story arc to introduce the Breach, the worldwide domination organization
• A story arc to walk my party through Spark, a very unstable and powerful magical drug that one of the countries actually uses for technology

And these aren’t even touching any of the story arcs my players will introduce just by having compelling backstories.

Just like campaigns, story arcs need adventure hooks. The best part about a story arc is that the adventure hook and how your players react to it determines whether the story arc will pan out and become part of the campaign. If you drop the hook, but your party doesn’t grab onto it then you don’t really need to worry about that particular story arc.

If the hook is related to an important plot point for the campaign, then tough luck. I hate to tell you this, but unless you want to railroad your party then they can choose what to pursue or what not to pursue.

That said, there is nothing wrong with making consequences happen from choices the party makes or doesn’t make.

Let’s say you drop the hook that there is a kingdom nearby where the king has been curse and is suddenly an undead lich. Let’s also say they don’t investigate that hook.

They can’t get mad at you when the Lich’s kingdom suddenly attacks one of the neighboring kingdoms, a kingdom the party is in, with an undead horde. You as the DM introduced a problem and they let the problem simmer and grow. The problem still exists despite the party’s lack of interest in the problem.

Some story arcs will go the way of the dinosaurs though and won’t even exist if the party doesn’t investigate them. That’s ok. Let it happen. You have so many other fun and interesting ideas anyways.

After the Story Arc comes the Session. These are the daily building blocks of your story arc and campaign. Without the session, nothing happens.

Just like with the Arc and the Campaign, you want to think about the purpose and goal of your session.

I think it’s good to remind you about the PUT A CLUE framework that I introduced back around episode 151.

P stands for Purpose

U stands for Unfinished Business

T stands for Timeline

A stands for Arcs and Acts

C stands for characters

L stands for location

U stands for the Unexpected

E stands for encounters.

I won’t go into the full framework, but I do want to touch on a few parts.

First of all, like I said, you want to think about the purpose and goal of the session. This is so very very important because it sets the tone for everything else you do as far as session prep is concerned. You need to think about the feeling and mindset you want your party members to be in at the end of the session. You can even think about what they were feeling at the end of last session to help bring it all toge