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

justin:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm your co-host today, Justin Lewis, here with Tanner Wayland and Rob Van Auken. Go ahead and say hello, guys.

tanner_weyland:

Hey.

rob:

Good evening, everyone.

justin:

And you are joining How to be a Better DM in our mini-series on collaborating for homebrewing a adventure one-shot. And today, we wanted this to be raw and unfiltered, really, just to show you kind of the ins and outs of how to work with other people, the ebb and flow of ideas, and in our case, starting with one idea, refining it and kind of changing trajectory. Today we are going to be... going through our document that we've worked on together and kind of simplifying things, clarifying things, and we actually should be coming close to the end after I think we have everything figured out today. We should be able to send out some assignments to each of us, have things written up, and then probably the next time we'll have our final polishing session, but that might be wrong, so we'll see. And

tanner_weyland:

Yeah,

justin:

we are

tanner_weyland:

sounds

justin:

just

tanner_weyland:

great.

justin:

starting at the top of the document. And then one, one. word of advice to all of us, if we can just try and describe whenever we're like that part there, try and describe for the audio listeners, because I know this, we're doing it in a visual way, but the audio listener might not be. So.

tanner_weyland:

Okay, perfect. Um, and, uh, just for the listeners, uh, we've honestly been working on this for a sec with Rob, but he is just, I just have to say he's wonderful to work with. And I appreciate that. Just had to throw that out there at the start.

rob:

Aw, thanks fellas.

justin:

Agreed.

rob:

I feel the same way about you guys. You guys are consummate professionals. I appreciate the willingness to work with a newcomer and I'm enjoying myself. And you know, this is hard. This is hard. We're in two different time zones. Our lives are doing things in different times. So writing is hard to begin with and to collaborate across time zones. At least we have the tools now to do that. But it's been a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to polishing this thing up.

justin:

Excellent, excellent.

tanner_weyland:

Love it.

justin:

So I figure we would start at the, well, so we have kind of a page that's above like the actual one shot. Do we need to work on any of that? And that's kind of some of our thoughts or do we need to just kind of forget about that?

tanner_weyland:

Honestly, I think this is old. Go

justin:

Okay.

tanner_weyland:

ahead Rob.

rob:

So

justin:

Alright.

rob:

this page just outlined our original ideas, our locations, and a couple of reminders for ourselves to do the three pillars and things like that. But yeah, I think this stuff is all. We can next this.

justin:

Sounds good. So then

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, um...

justin:

for the listener, there's a portion that says theme, setting, three pillars, location, timeline, and then assignments and reminder. I'm going to delete everything above assignments to theme because that is no longer useful. I'll leave the assignments one there unless we feel like we do need to delete that.

tanner_weyland:

Um, I th-

rob:

We can...

tanner_weyland:

go ahead. Uh,

rob:

After you, Dad.

tanner_weyland:

yeah, I just think- I think we could leave that section. I don't think- we're going, I think that we're going to have to probably modify the assignments as they stand. Cause right now we're like, Oh, each of us is making two NPC mentors right now. They would be trial givers probably.

justin:

Right.

tanner_weyland:

Um, and then a random NPC just to flesh out the world a little bit more. Um, I don't know if that's what we're going to be doing like next. Cause

justin:

Okay.

tanner_weyland:

cause this time just for the listener, since our last, uh, kind of meeting with Rob, we've come up with a lot of ideas. and really solidified the direction of the adventure. And because of that, I think there's just a lot of fat that we need to trim on the document in general.

justin:

For sure.

rob:

I'm all in favor of keeping the assignments heading but deleting the current assignments so that when we leave here tonight

justin:

Okay.

rob:

we at least can put something up there.

justin:

Yeah, I actually think we can delete the assignments

rob:

Thank you.

justin:

as well now that I think about it. So if you guys want. There's also on the right, I believe in that section, there were comments on the right, yeah. There's a comment saying, replacing the mentors, and this is talking about the assignments we'd given ourselves, replacing the mentors with trials or events. I think this entire section we could probably mark resolved because I think this is like, down the line where we start talking about using bells and doing the trials of bells. I think that's definitely what we're going for. Yeah. Excellent. Then, under that assignment section, there's a section that says reminder and then two bullet points for representation and beginner DM suggestions. I believe the beginner DM suggestions were for me and Tanner to create suggestions throughout the doc for new DMs. You can feel free to do the same thing, Rob. I'll just put that under each of us as an assignment.

rob:

for me.

justin:

Or I guess, sorry, I didn't mean to take your job, Rob.

rob:

No, no, no. I'm comfortable. Ha ha ha.

justin:

I'm kind of an idiot because I'm like, hey, can someone be the scribe? And then immediately I'm like,

rob:

Yeah.

justin:

oh, all rights. Anyways, sorry.

rob:

Not alone,

justin:

Yeah,

rob:

not

justin:

but

rob:

alone.

justin:

for the representation bullet, I don't remember what that was for. Do either of you remember what that was for?

rob:

So yeah, I actually added that because for new DM creators, and just for the listeners, where this is coming from is that I've taken a couple of courses with professional writing companies to kind of flesh this sort of game style out. And one of the things that... you know, they stress is to reminder for representation. So that just means having a diversity of characters, whether it be racial backgrounds or just backgrounds in general, you know, able-bodied characters and things of that nature and just having a widespread of different NPCs to populate your, you know, your adventure or your game. So I just want to make a mental note for us to kind of just keep that sort of thing in our focus, right? So that, you know, kind of like, you know. wash over everything.

justin:

Very well.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, especially since we still, I spent some time working on some NPCs, but I didn't really flesh out like them in depth. More like, oh, these were some of the trial givers. And like, I came up with a name, and obviously they didn't be related to that trial. But, you know, it's a great reminder that when you are fleshing out and making more dimensional. three-dimensional characters, you know, don't just make them all like yourself. It gets

rob:

Yeah, exactly,

tanner_weyland:

boring that

rob:

and

tanner_weyland:

way.

rob:

that's all that was supposed to be. It was just a visual reminder to do that.

justin:

Sounds good. Cool, so then moving on. The next block of text is the title of the one-shot. Rob, you had put down how to be a better DM presents for whom the bell tolls. And then over to the right, there's the comment of just an idea. So Tanner, do you think that's a good thing? Do you have any comments? Or same Rob, do you have any comments?

rob:

I didn't want to feel like you guys need to oblige you to attach your name to this, but I just thought because I wanted to give you guys the due credit.

justin:

Hahaha

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, it's not a bad idea. I think with our revised title idea, namely, For Whom the Belt Holes colon, the Chime Fall Ceremony, for that, if we attacked on how to be a better DM, then it does feel a little bit long, but like that's fine, if necessary, right? I don't know.

justin:

To be honest,

rob:

again, as it.

justin:

I would... Go ahead, Rob.

rob:

Visually, if that's a concern, I can, of course, put a catty corner of that. The big

tanner_weyland:

I like to kind of have

rob:

cover

tanner_weyland:

to sit.

rob:

text will say, for whom the bell tolls, the chime falls.

justin:

Right. I actually think we should do title, for whom the bell tolls, colon, the Chime Fall Ceremony, gosh. And then kind of as it is on one of the cover arts that you presented to us, at the bottom how it says, authored by Justin, Rob and Tanner, I think we should have like underneath that say, you know, produced by How to Be a Better DM or something like that. You know.

rob:

I love it. Yeah, that works for

justin:

Rather,

rob:

me. Yeah.

justin:

you know, like let the title be the title. But that's my personal opinion.

rob:

I

tanner_weyland:

Perfect.

rob:

dig that, I dig that. Things like that, the cosmetic things about where to put, we'll do a whole round of that before

justin:

for sure.

rob:

we send this off, and we'll all sign off on the things like that. Speaking

justin:

Exactly.

rob:

of which, I hope you guys like those covers, because I was digging

justin:

Yeah.

rob:

them. Ha ha ha.

justin:

Yeah, they're sweet.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, honestly, at some point, I don't know if we want to do this now or at the end or something, we should pull those up and kind of just vote on which

justin:

Yeah,

tanner_weyland:

style

justin:

yeah,

tanner_weyland:

we like.

justin:

we can...

rob:

Yeah, we'll

justin:

What

rob:

do

justin:

do you

rob:

that.

justin:

guys

rob:

We'll

justin:

prefer?

rob:

do that. We'll re- We

justin:

Gotcha.

rob:

can do that at the end. Yeah, we'll wrap it up.

justin:

Yeah, sounds good. Tanner, do you want to lead us through like the next two sections, so tips for DMing and setting?

tanner_weyland:

Yeah. Um, so the tips for DMing, uh, basically it was just the idea that since we are about a podcast about how to be a better DM, uh, then we would actually have like. So a lot of adventures will have some general tips about like, oh, for this part, do this and this, but it's more just what to flesh out what the writer had in mind. What we want to do is have some tips for how they could do it better as a DM, like just in general, like just period, right? And so as far as echoes, I think this section, not a whole lot. to say other than I picture like the tips kind of like being off to the side of each

justin:

Mm-hmm.

tanner_weyland:

section you know. Like an example would be oh it's a it's a social encounter and giving some advice about like how to embody a character and how to draw out quieter characters like things like that right. That's

rob:

Yeah,

tanner_weyland:

a great

justin:

Yeah.

rob:

that's

tanner_weyland:

example.

rob:

a perfect example.

justin:

One

tanner_weyland:

Yeah

justin:

thing

tanner_weyland:

go ahead.

justin:

kind of came to mind just as you were saying that is some of these tips might come to our minds as we actually DM this for a live table, you know, so that might be part of kind of our beta testing. You know, we put together different one shots each of us or something and we see how it goes and we kind of take notes. But that's something we can decide later as you know, just kind of. Think about that if that's something you want to do.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah.

rob:

I think that works for the whole idea of this is how to be a better DM. I think those DM tips are clutch for newcomers too because we're making this very beginner friendly. It's our hope, I would think, that when we finish this, somebody who's never played the game of Dungeon & Dragons before or any RPG could pick this up and plop this into a home brew campaign or just say, you know what, I just want to test the waters with this and it's a one shot, it's non-committal, it's built for three, four hours. Let me try this out. But I really don't know where to start. Like you said, Tanner, it's a perfect example of the social encounters or maybe a tip on how to manage combat or we're gonna have these trials that are set up for characters' ability levels. And originally we were gonna have, I think it was six, and now because of what we've been discussing, we might h

Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. Today, we are going to jump right into the announcements!

If you would like to sign up for future one-shot podcasts, sign up at this link: https://how-to-be-a-better-dm.captivate.fm/one-shot. We always love playing with you!

With July 4th just behind us, here is our super-relevant topic for the day: Political D&D Campaigns.

Have you ever thought that roleplaying with nobility or the local government in your campaign falls flat? Well, have you considered welcoming your party into the political aspect of roleplaying? This could mean that you create a political D&D campaign with all sorts of intrigue, schmoozing, and rallies, and it could be a really good time for your players if you approach it correctly!

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

I Made a CR 100 Monster

I made a Monster with a Challenge Rating of 100

Signup for Our Email Newsletter

Do you love the show but can't always listen to it?

Level Up Guide

justin_lewis:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm Justin Lewis and I'm here with Rob Van Auchen. I said that right, right?

rob:

Yes, you did.

justin_lewis:

Awesome. And today we are continuing our mini series on a specific homebrew project that we are making with Rob. And today's gonna be a little bit different kind of an episode. For those of you who are new to the show, this is the show where we help you learn how to craft better stories for yourself and your players as you DM sessions. of D&D 5e and soon to be 1D&D. That is the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

huge thing. Yeah. So today, usually we talk about different tips, techniques, practices. Today we're actually kind of going to get into the making of the sausage, as you will. I'm not huge on that phrase, but that's what we're doing, in showing you how to work on a homebrew project such as a one-shot or a mini adventure or an encounter. but also how to collaborate with someone. So that way as a DM, you're not just doing it by yourself. You can reach out to other DMS or even players and take some load off of your shoulders and make it more fun and connect with other people. So to catch you up, last time we started work on essentially a festival slash recruiting event from a guild slash Academy of Adventurers. Because in this organization's past, recent past, they've lost a fair number of their members and they are trying to replenish. So the adventure slash one-shot will take place in really any city we want to make this agnostic towards any particular setting. And really the point is to introduce your characters to this academy slash guild and have them do trials, tests to see if they get in. And then we'll see what else happens. Uh, so let's go away with it. And actually on that note, uh, Rob, I was thinking, why do we have to limit it to a guild or an academy? We could just in it, just say guild slash Academy, uh, up to the DM's discretion. Cause really there's not that much of a difference, you know, like

rob:

Absolutely. I love that. I think that's a great idea to kind of, or even give them a randomized table to kind of have that decision.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

But yeah,

justin_lewis:

exactly.

rob:

we want to leave the DM some room to wiggle, right?

justin_lewis:

Yeah, yeah. And it'll be awesome to, although I am particularly partial to Robric's Academy of Adventuring the Name, what maybe we'll put that as, you know, in one of those appendix tables of names for your academy slash guild. But I think going that route will probably be a lot better than making us choose, we'll just let them choose.

rob:

I'm a, as I've gained some years under my belt as a DM, I have learned to lean into, I've learned to embrace uncertainty. And some of my best moments were when I had no idea what I was going to do. And in those moments, I may have leaned on a random table of something like the affiliates, a table of names or a table of weird things that take place. And so I love providing random tables, anything from D4s to D100s to just, You know, you need something, roll the die, and you're off and running. And I try and make those tables as provocative as possible so that the DM has some wiggle room to kind of insert and do what they want to do.

justin_lewis:

I love that, I love that. So let's go over some of the comments that we'd both made starting at the top. Let's,

rob:

Sure. I also

justin_lewis:

sorry.

rob:

just for your listeners who can't see what we're looking at right now, and then first of all, this is a lot of fun, right? So this is my first collaboration with another DM of any sort outside of like my homebrew groups and whatnot. And for those who are listening, like our tools, like what we're using to collaborate currently has been, we've been using Google Docs, which is really simple and straightforward and free for everybody. And some of the templates that we've. have borrowed from are from the DMs Guild, where they have a whole section on creator resources. So if you're a young DM or you're a young game designer and you're looking to get started and writing stuff is part and parcel for your happiness in life, by all means head on over to the DMs Guild and check out some of their creator templates. And my other really great resource has been an organization called Storytellers Collective or Stoko. as you'll hear me refer to them as, and they have these great sort of learn at your own pace workshops where they provide some templates, but they also provide you really good advice. And so that's kind of been my growth as a writer. And so for those of you who are listening, it's all me, check it out. But anyway,

justin_lewis:

So that

rob:

back

justin_lewis:

was

rob:

to you.

justin_lewis:

Storytellers Collective, you said?

rob:

Yeah, Storytellers Collective has been, it's cool because they're relatively inexpensive for their courses and a lot of the ones that they offer are free. But it's kind of like here's a writing workshop in 30 days and they give you these sort of projects to do at your own pace over that course and they attach a Discord to each of them so that as you're working through them, even if they offered a course, you know, three years ago, you could still hop on a Discord and get some somebody who's manning the ship over there to kind of give you some feedback. And they have everything from like creating treasure, to creating loot, to creating puzzles, to how to write your first adventure, how to write your first encounter. And one of the first things I published was with them, and it got published in their anthology, which is nice, because they do these things every summer and every spring, and it's a nice way to get your name out there that's attached to sort of a bigger entity to kind of help you into the process.

justin_lewis:

Wow, that's awesome. I'm actually gonna have to check that out for myself.

rob:

I'm looking forward to that. I think they do one in the fall too. I've always contributed to the spring encounter and the spring one is challenging because it's like a one-page encounter and it's a lot harder than it sounds. You think one page? That's easy. You wind up chopping out so much of what you want just to get it onto the page. But I digress. Back to our one-shot.

justin_lewis:

Yeah. So, um, as, as I mentioned before, the kind of the, the way that the, the story goes in this, in this one shot adventure, uh, is the party members go to this city or they find themselves in this city. It doesn't really matter how they get there. They just, they're there and they discover this festival for joining this, uh, guild or academy. And originally we thought that there would be like mentors. that would be offering trials, kind of like an internship or apprenticeship. Rob made the suggestion that, uh, instead we switch it to doing six ability score kind of trials and things like that. Um, one thought that I had on that is we definitely need to be very careful in doing that. So that way the, the trials and feats aren't, aren't just dice rolls. Like, I get worried that, you know, the person goes and does a constitution trial and all they can do is just a dice roll over and over again. So I guess I want to think of how we can make it so there can be other ways they can like think through certain problems as a player to supplement, you know,

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

their

rob:

and that's

justin_lewis:

dice rolls.

rob:

a wise decision, actually. Sometimes I get so caught up in the mechanism that I sometimes sacrifice the gameplay for half a second, but that's why this collaboration's cool, because you're there to check me on those things.

justin_lewis:

For sure. No, and I feel the same way.

rob:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

Like,

rob:

so

justin_lewis:

reverse.

rob:

if in my mind's eye, I picture any one of our six events structured around any particular ability score, and so... What that would look like is there's like a feat of strength trial or there's a trial of constitution and trial of dexterity. And the players decide they want to head over there and test their metal. One of the complications. I can think of a few actually We can kind of go back to our original idea with not necessarily a mentor, but let's make a really interesting NPC as the host of that particular trial and maybe that NPC is really accommodating or maybe that NPC is really antagonistic and sort of, you know, criticizes the players and thinks that they'll fail. And I'm thinking of like the old fashioned guy at the dunk tank, right? Who, you know, he sits there and you can't, you know, dunk me and maybe before they throw their dexterity role to knock the jester into the dunk tank, they have to roll a constitution or charisma save. And if they fail it, there's some kind of, they have to roll with disadvantage, right? So there is some kind of. push and pull there. It is a series of dice rolls, but it's also like this role playing opportunity to how does your character respond to the jester at the

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

dunk tank. Another complication that we could do is we could have opponents or other people that are applying or attempting the same trial and thus it's not just simply a matter of do I get the highest dice roll and defeat this particular trial, do I defeat the other characters dice rolls, right? You can also add an easy, medium, hard opponent. So there's one character who is going to roll a DC5. There's

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

another character who's got your DC10, but maybe the top character is a DC15. And so as you're trying to best these other opponents, that is the case. And then my third choice would be it's not just a dice roll, but it's more like a dice roll tree. so that depending on your role, there are various outcomes that sort of fork off and any one particular dice roll can steer you into a series of different mishaps or benefits. So I think those are probably three ways to spice this up that excite

justin_lewis:

for sure.

rob:

me when I think about them.

justin_lewis:

particularly

rob:

Back to you.

justin_lewis:

like number two and three, I think we could, and I see what you mean with kind of your comment, excuse me, your comment going back to the one page competition that you entered in. I see how this can easily blossom into something a little bit too expansive, you know, cause I'm like, yeah, we could just make this giant table of all these NPCs and. And I'm totally up for it, but I'm worried about, you know, like the

rob:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

poor sap on the other end of the paper. But I do like the opponent's idea, because like you said, it's a very good role-playing opportunity where you can point out and say, hey, this one particular guy seems to have your number, you know.

rob:

Yeah, and I think of course the opponent, I guess, sits better for certain trials, right? So the trial by strength, if we were to say, and we've spit fired a couple, but if we produce a randomized table, a D4 table, and one of them is a cart lift and one of them is a fight pit, the fight pit is a perfect example of how to incorporate the opponents, right? It is a little combat heavy, but the idea that, you know, there's four guys in a ring doing all sort of like little mini battle Royale. And one of them is the DC five strength and one of the DC 10, one of the, you could kind of see, but also like, um, you know, adding opponents, you could watch them interact with each other too. So like the heavy hitter can knock out the lightweight and then you're stuck with the middle guy and then. You know, what happens

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

again at the DM's

justin_lewis:

I really

rob:

discretion.

justin_lewis:

liked that. I really liked that. Speaking of the fight pit, the way, the way just how you described it, have you ever heard of Florentine football?

rob:

If not, tell me more.

justin_lewis:

So you'll have to look it up. It's like one of the craziest sports that for some reason is still around. It's, it's an Italian thing. And I think it's only like one city. There's like 10 teams or something. Um, but essentially it's football with, uh, and you know, football, like American football has different roles and stuff. Um, there are running backs, there are grapplers, there are strikers, meaning like pugilists, like punchers. Um, and you watch it and you see people trying to run a ball and then over in the corner you see two people just punching each other and then next to them there are two people grappling on the ground. It's like the weirdest mix of just every sport. They're like, let's throw in punchers to football

rob:

boxing

justin_lewis:

or whatever.

rob:

with...

justin_lewis:

Yeah, no, it's insane. But...

rob:

I feel like I feel a grand finale in my head now.

justin_lewis:

Yeah,

rob:

You know, like a looking at sounding a

justin_lewis:

honestly,

rob:

lot like for learning football.

justin_lewis:

that might be like the good, like the big incursion. Like, you know, they're

rob:

Yeah, yeah.

justin_lewis:

at a certain point, they're just like, ah, we don't have time. So we're just going to throw everyone in this pit and everyone do get out,

rob:

Right,

justin_lewis:

which

rob:

right.

justin_lewis:

would

rob:

Or

justin_lewis:

be

rob:

even like

justin_lewis:

kind

rob:

a

justin_lewis:<

Tanner Weyland:

Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM. My name is Tanner Wayland and together we're all gonna learn how to make wonderful adventures for our players. I'm here with Justin Lewis. Justin, how you doing?

Justin:

A little sick, but I'm alive and well, so that's good.

Tanner Weyland:

I know, I know. Justin and I were gonna have a barbecue with some friends and that's right around the time that my wife started feeling sick. Justin was like, hey, I'm sick. And then the weather got bad. So, you know, the gods above were like, no, you're not having that barbecue. But we're just happy that you're feeling better.

Justin:

Thank you.

Tanner Weyland:

Um, so today we're going to actually talk about kind of a general topic and it's something that you could honestly apply elsewhere, but, uh, we're talking about improving as a DM and how you can plan for that. Uh, what do I mean? So if any of you have heard the, uh, the, of the book, seven habits of highly effective people, uh, on the seventh habit, so to speak is, uh, sharpening the saw. At least I believe that's how they phrase it, right?

Justin:

Mm-hmm.

Tanner Weyland:

And with that habit, it's all about like, hey, you're not going to improve bit by bit if you're not planning for it and setting plans that will make you successful in the end, right? And now we put out a lot of episodes about like, hey, you can get better in this way or this way or how you speak with your players or communicate or plan. All of that is good and it's fine and dandy, but You know, I think some people and I'm included with this sometimes when I'm trying to get better. I I kind of take the marination approach where I'm like, oh i'll just listen i'll read a bunch of books I'll listen to some podcasts things like that and then I don't actually end up I don't know justin if this happens with you, but like I just kind of hope that i'll through Photosynthesis

Justin:

Osmosis. Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

osmosis. Yeah, then i'll just get better instead of actually planning. Does that happen with you?

Justin:

Yeah, 100%. Especially, and it's kind of hard with this type of thing because it's a hobby for most people. And that's where things, especially for hobbies for me, where I tend to be more reactive with my growth and less decisive and intentional. And for more clarification, I believe the term sharpen your saw for this habit. in the book comes from a famous saying, I don't want to misattribute it, but I think it comes from Abraham Lincoln who said something like, if you give me four hours to chop a tree down, I'll spend the first three sharpening my saw. And it's really that idea that by spending dedicated time improving, it should simplify and streamline the actual activity and task itself. So I think this is a great topic to do today.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And so we're going to jump right in about how you can kind of set yourself up for success, uh, so that you aren't stagnating as a DM, but every time your players are like, wow, they've improved, you know, which, and once again, improvement isn't a negative thing. All of us could improve, uh, in different ways. And in the end, it's going to mean that you have a more fun time and you're going to be less stressed as a DM just straight up. So, Justin, how about you? How would you recommend people improve?

Justin:

So the very first thing I would say to do, and I would probably recommend this to people even outside of Dungeons and Dragons, just as a life skill, practice writing daily. And the reason why I say that is because successful people produce and everyone else consumes. You can spend lots of time reading, but if you spend even a quarter of that writing, you've created something new theoretically that the world didn't have before and maybe this is just top of mind for me because I've been trying to get my dad to adopt like a daily writing goal but ever since I adopted one and I use a tool called Write Track I believe it's called it's not sophisticated or anything but I love it you can set monthly goals or you can set daily goals and I've talked about this before but I set a monthly goal right which breaks down into a daily goal, but if I get ahead today, it affects how much I actually have to write tomorrow because I'm much more motivated to get done early. I don't know why, that's just how I work. And even when I do get done early, I just start the next month. But daily writing for me has really pushed me because there are those days where you have writer's block, which is just a fancy way of saying you don't know what to write. because you want to write everything well and you feel like what you write will not be good. But having a daily limit, or not limit, but goal. So right now my goal is essentially 500 words per day. And I split that up between a couple different projects, but doing that pushes me out of my comfort zone. It's comfortable to write when you have a great idea. It's uncomfortable to write when you have nothing. right? But it's also helped me start to learn some tricks so that way I don't have moments when I don't have ideas, right? And I'm talking about note taking during your sessions. And I think that might also be a whole other topic but I can't hammer down enough writing every day.

Tanner Weyland:

Okay, yeah, I agree with that because you know, DMs, we as DMs are inherently creative, right? We're always trying to come up with new ideas and everything. And, and if you're making that practice of writing, it could be writing about your next session. It could be writing about the story. It could be writing even about like how you felt you did, right? Like that kind of journaling, self-reflection, all of that can really help. Um,

Justin:

And one thing

Tanner Weyland:

yeah.

Justin:

I'd like to add is by writing every day, it splits the session prep and makes it a lot more manageable, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

Because really, writing 500 words, it takes me, and again, I'm not saying these words are perfect, but it takes me 10 to 15 minutes, okay? Now, obviously, session prep deals with some reading and stuff, so that's not accounted for, but. Words on paper, that's still something, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, absolutely. And on top of that, you know, if you're doing that kind of personal work, then I also think that's a great time to introduce some. some skill learning, some external work, so to speak. That could be, you know, if you're worried about your improv, which is a lot of DMing, right, it's kind of just being on the fly, it's worrying about, you know, how to react to what your players are doing in a way that isn't always defensive, but even just, you know, it's playful with what they're doing. You can train that, right? There are improv classes. Beyond that, there are also great books, like when we were talking with Victor last week, Victor Bevin, He recommended this book, Improvisation for the Theatre by Viola Spolin. And that's something you can read, but he was like, yeah, it was really helpful for me. And so honestly, it's worth looking up opportunities to kind of get yourself even out of your DM comfort zone so that you can, like once you're in the DM seat, you have a little bit more flexibility.

Justin:

100% agree to that. My brother-in-law, last time, so he's in my D&D campaign, he's one of the players, last week, he wasn't actually able to attend because he was attending a voice acting class that was offered as a continuing education class at our local university, UVU, Utah Valley University. I don't think it cost him more than 50 to 100 bucks for the class. And classes like that are very valuable because they're not tied to a grade or some arbitrary degree. I don't really like degrees, but that's my opinion. And you're paying for it. The level of involvement is a little bit higher. It's a little bit more worth it to you because you're taking time out of your day, you're taking money out of your pocket for something that is not going to bring you some sort of tangential, no not tangential, but tangible, excuse me, result. So I think experimenting with those types of classes would be a really good idea.

Tanner Weyland:

Yep, totally agree. Otherwise, I would say, aside from finding out those kinds of classes, doing improv, also, just a little plug here, if you ever wanted to kind of create your own like D&D maps or draw or anything like that, if there's any area that you're just kind of self-conscious about, work on it. That's one of the biggest things about improvement personally. But as a DM, there's so many different talents that like you deal with often, right? If you're constantly like, man, I wish this map just existed, but it's so hard to find the specific map I want, then take a drawing class, you know? I know as the person in my family that is literally the worst at art personally. I'm it's something I've always been self conscious about and like there are times and honestly with justin saying this i'm like You know, I should take an art class or you know something right? Um, just to get over that self-consciousness But this is kind of the end point None of this is going to happen if you don't plan for it that means that uh honestly during that time when you're when you're writing or right after, when you're doing your daily or weekly planning, put into that your goals and be like, okay, for this next session, I'm going to focus on, Tanner and Justin were talking about the, about improv, I'm going to really focus on. yes anding people. You know, if they have an idea, I'm going to try and roll with it instead of trying to show them how it's nonsensical, right? And then you like, while you're writing daily, leading up to it, you're having ideas about that goal. And also if you need a class, then you actually like daily You know, you plan that goal for like, hey, in two weeks I'm gonna go to class. And you spend that time researching the class, signing up. And then once you're signed up, you go to the class and you're great. You know, you just have to be cognizant of these goals and put them into your schedule, you know?

Justin:

100%. And I would... Excuse me. I would even say don't forget about the soft skills that are a little bit harder to identify and quantify. One such example, as Tanner said, when you go into a session, you can say, I'm going to work on this. There's been numerous times when I've realized during sessions I've been a little bit tense. I could feel the tenseness in my back. And I... was rushing things in the campaign and, you know, it was just not as relaxed and fluid. So in certain sessions, I've literally told myself, today I'm gonna practice taking a breath, like literally breathing, relaxing, and pausing even. And those types of things are important because your players, they take their cues off of you, right? But that just goes to show you that these skills that we're building, aren't just writing fantasy or painting minis, right? They're applicable all across lots of areas of life and vice versa, you know? So maybe you want to work on cooking, right? Find some Dungeons and Dragons recipes that you can actually incorporate into your game. Bring your players to... bring your characters to a tavern and tell them, hey, this is what you can order. And then when they order it, bring it out on a platter, that builds the immersion and it builds your cooking skills and vice versa. So definitely look for skills that you wouldn't normally think of and find some way to integrate them and build goals around them as well.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and that's one of the things I love about DMing. A lot of people think, you know, you see the Matt Mercer's of the world and you think, oh, that's what being a great DM is. But here's what actually being a great DM is. It's being the kind of DM that creates a very fun and interesting environment for your players, right? And yes, that is storytelling. Yes, that's, you know, how creative you are, you know, the minis and stuff you use, sure. But beyond that, like when you're having a game Or with some people that you know, you would like to be closer with the soft skills like cooking or you know having fun time That's gonna do nearly as much or even more good than just planning an epic campaign and stuff like that, right? And so I guess that's just kind of where we want to end off We know that you can get better as a DM. That's what we're trying to do And it's little by little so long as we're planning for it And, um, yeah, just any final thoughts.

Justin:

I think probably the biggest thing that will help you improve, that we didn't mention here, is to get feedback. This could be from people one time, or you could set up some sort of accountability partner or battle buddy. I don't know, you can call it whatever you want, but get someone who's willing to tell you things as they really are and accept that. feedback and grow from it. Honestly thinking, you know what, this feedback is a gift because now I have an idea of what I can do to move forward.

Tanner Weyland:

Great, I love that. Ending on peer review. Peer review works.

Justin:

I love it.

Tanner Weyland:

Okay, everybody, get out there. Go make a wonderful next session by planning for it and planning how you wanna improve. Go have some fun, learn some new skills. Sharpen your other ones. And until next time, let's roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree.

Why Listen to Ads?

Ugh, another ad break.

Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. Today, I am talking about how to make D&D one-shots impactful for our players (hint: it's not about doing just combat).

If you would like to sign up for future one-shot podcasts, sign up at this link: https://how-to-be-a-better-dm.captivate.fm/one-shot. We always love playing with you!

Mentioned in this episode:

Save time with Roll and Play Press

Save yourself some precious time with Roll and Play Press.

Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For Free

Take a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree.

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Justin: Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I am Justin Lewis here with Tanner Wayland. Go ahead and say hello, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Hey Justin, hey everybody.

Justin:

And today we are celebrating our 100th episode. It is mind-boggling to think that we've been doing this for 100 episodes and thinking you know one episode a week that's almost that's a little over no that's just under two years of doing this show and the amount of growth we've seen has been just phenomenal. First thing before we do anything else on today's show, we just wanted to give a big thank you to all of you listeners out there, you in particular, and

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Justin:

make you aware of our deep gratitude for allowing us to do this. And when I say allow, I mean podcasting is somewhat lonely, right? But we've had certain experiences of... listeners reaching out and helping us remember that we're not alone and we're not just speaking into a you know a windstorm but What we're putting out is actually being received and you know you guys like it which is which is even more gratifying So a big thank you to you guys

Tanner Weyland:

Absolutely. It's been, you know, kind of shocking how much you guys care about what we have to say. And you know, we put work into this, but a lot of people put a lot of work into things, and it doesn't get reciprocated at all. And we just, we really appreciate, you know, knowing that you guys are listening, and that there's a big community out there who's trying to improve, you know, they're DMing right alongside us, you know?

Justin:

Absolutely, absolutely. So today's show, it's not going to be like normal shows to be honest. We're going to be a little bit more loose, a little bit more just random, I guess. But we wanted to talk about some of our thoughts for what we see moving forward and our goals and desires and wishes for how to be a better DM and betterdungeonmaster.com and kind of what we want to build moving forward. You know, as we get started, just wanted to ask Tanner, is there anything specific that you personally would just think would be the coolest thing to do or anything like that?

Tanner Weyland:

Um, something that I've really liked the idea of because, you know, in one of our recent podcasts, we were talking about peer reviewing and, and I think it's such a powerful tool for improving, uh, is just having that kind of critical look at specific moment to moments of DMing. Uh, something we really want to do is, uh, you know, provide some content where we're actually reviewing, uh, you know, some of our one shots and some that maybe other people send us. Uh, we, uh, I really like that idea. Cause I think seeing someone DM in action, it's a very different experience from talking about it in the theoretical, you know? Uh, so that's something that I'm really excited about. We've, uh, we've discussed, you know, uh, we're, you know, this is a little bit of a, Jump ahead, but we're doing a membership on our site and you know, we're gonna be posting some of the Recordings of our one shots, but we also thought it would be great to alongside that maybe at the same tier or a different tier of membership, do commentary on that, where we're like, hey, let's take this moment by moment, pause during the one shot and just talk about like, hey, here's what I loved about what they're doing or what we're doing if we're the ones podcasting or hey, here's maybe, they did okay here, here's how it could have been improved. And that kind of idea excites me a lot.

Justin:

I really like that too. Just the fact of, and I think we did this once before and we put it out as an episode,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

but looking at your dungeon mastering skills, not in a you're a terrible person kind of way, but in a man this would be so cool if you just did it this way, right? And thinking back to the episode that we did, I was the one being critiqued. and it was my Trouble in Autumn's Grace one-shot. And going through that critique, we only went through like the first 20 minutes, but even that really helped me improve the intro of that one-shot, specifically with regards to an NPC, the mayor of the town, and where he comes in and where you find him and meet him. Going through that critique really helped me kind of- streamline that and improve that a lot. So that is definitely something I'm looking forward to. As far as the membership goes, that's something that's kind of been a long time coming. We just released it. It's pretty new. It's in its infant state. The way I see it right now, right now, we... It's $1.33 a month. The 33 cents covers the cost for our payment gateway. So it's really just And the way I see that is our basic membership will always be $1.33. As we grow and we provide more content, we'll probably create higher levels. And at the time when we create any higher level, I think we will upgrade everyone in the previous levels, kind of one up, right? And grandfather them into that. So anyone who has signed up for the basic subscription now. When we create future levels, they'll just get moved up, pay the same price as they were always paying, but have access to the new stuff. That's the way I see it.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

And as far as that membership, right now we are creating VTT maps, so virtual tabletop maps on Dungeon Alchemist, putting those up, you can download those and use those in your campaigns online. Any of our one-shot videos we're going to put up there as well, we're going to stop Streaming those, I think, is what we said, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah, so we're going to stop streaming the one shots, but we're going to put those up on the membership so anyone can see those on the membership. And then we're also creating a course. Right now we're in the midst of creating a beginner Dungeon Master course and putting that up on the membership so anyone who has a membership can access that course. And obviously we're going to do more courses like that in the future. Is there anything else that I'm forgetting that we were going to add to the membership? Oh, the Discord, so anyone who signs

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

up for the membership can join our Discord and, you know, come party with me and Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, yeah, we had a member join just the other day. And we were talking all about maps. I was amazed at how many maps he just had just sketched out in his notebook. I was

Justin:

Right?

Tanner Weyland:

like, gosh, I love this.

Justin:

So cool,

Tanner Weyland:

And

Justin:

so cool.

Tanner Weyland:

we were just talking about like, he had this idea of doing a campaign in like essentially a Costco, a fantasy Costco or, or a real one. I, you know, and I was like, I love this. What could you do with the samples? Could the samples be buffs? Could some of them

Justin:

Ha ha

Tanner Weyland:

be

Justin:

ha

Tanner Weyland:

a

Justin:

ha.

Tanner Weyland:

trap? Um, and anyway, loved it. Uh, sorry, sorry to distract.

Justin:

No, no, no, I think that's so great. And that's just one of the benefits of coming in the Discord and just being able to shoot the breeze with anyone who really likes being a Dungeon Master. I think those are our plans for the membership right now. The next thing we're going to really focus on is one-shots. We're going to make a big push to have our one-shot scheduled up on our website so... You know, like, it's just easier to plan, easier to kind of work through that

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

and stuff like that.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, it's great. And honestly, probably one of the big things that I'm excited for is Justin's having a baby.

Justin:

Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, my wife is pregnant and she is due... Hold on. Sorry, I just got a text. Yeah, just give me one second.

Tanner Weyland:

You're fine.

Justin:

Sorry, someone just needed something and they're about to go somewhere, so I needed to tell them. Anyways,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, you're fine.

Justin:

yeah, so our baby is due in August and they will be the newest member of the Better Dungeon Master team. And just super excited to be a dad, interested to see how it's gonna change my life and change this. Hopefully it shouldn't change the podcast too much, but time will tell. And then,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah,

Justin:

go ahead.

Tanner Weyland:

oh go ahead. Anyway, I was just gonna say that we will definitely give Justin a break there, probably

Justin:

Yeah

Tanner Weyland:

record a lot beforehand so that he has that time to spend with the baby.

Justin:

One other thing as far as the one shots go is I do want to make a bigger push to get some of our podcast guests to play in the one shot. So, you know, if you sign up for a one shot, there's a possibility you could be playing with, you know, our last podcast interviewee or, you know, someone who we've had on the show before. Just to make it a little bit more interesting and a little bit more sizzle for you. Anything else as far as one shots go?

Tanner Weyland:

No, I'm just excited for you know laying it out and hopefully you guys are able to join one

Justin:

Exactly. Next up, we are going to be, we're gonna be working on more merch. Right now we just have hoodies, and the hoodies were designed, or at least the design on the hoodies were designed by one of our listeners. And we wanna give you this. offer as well. Anyone who designs a logo for us, we put it up on our website and it gets purchases, we will share the profit with you 50-50. So that includes t-shirts, stickers, whatever, right? But that means we will also be working on our own designs and we keep the profits. So if you want to steal from us, just go ahead and submit some of your designs to us and we'll get that up on our site. And you know, hoodies, t-shirts, t-shirts, sorry, stickers, you know, the whole stuff, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for those, especially, we're gonna have some nice stickers, I feel like. And I'm a sucker for stickers.

Justin:

I am a sucker for stickers too, except I don't put them on anything, I just collect them. You know?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, same. There's part of me that's like, oh, I love people use water bottles

Justin:

I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Tanner Weyland:

I have a bunch of stickers or their laptops, but I'm always such a pansy. I'm like, yeah, but what if I don't like it later?

Justin:

Mm-hmm.

Tanner Weyland:

But I really like Collecting stickers and who knows maybe after we get some awesome Designs created then you know that may change. I might start might start putting stickers You know on the things I care about who

Justin:

Agreed.

Tanner Weyland:

knows

Justin:

And then one day when we have our own location, our brick and mortar studio, we can have a sticker wall where that's the designated place for all the stickers we ever find. And that'll be it.

Tanner Weyland:

It'll be perfect. It'll be perfect. And we'll have a sticker car where we just, no, I'm just kidding. Yeah.

Justin:

Actually, having a sticker wall sounds like something like those SaaS companies out of like Silicon Valley or

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

Utah, Silicon Slopes. It sounds like something they would do. So I definitely

Tanner Weyland:

It

Justin:

want

Tanner Weyland:

absolutely

Justin:

to do that actually.

Tanner Weyland:

does.

Justin:

Next, we've toyed around with the idea of making like a custom DM screen. The ideas for that are pretty long out. So that's something we'll definitely have to think about. just kind of what we want it to look like, what it would be made out of, how we would create it, and what would be most useful. So stay tuned on that.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, that one's gonna be great, because you guys know how a lot of DM screens will have the numbers, like the stat blocks, the different rolling charts, right? This one though, we would try and make it about how you can be a better DM, kind of those softer skills, those reminders. So we're very excited about that one.

Justin:

Next, we're also slowly working on the ultimate dungeon master's guide. So essentially, like the go-to book for everything on being a better dungeon master. It'll essentially be a distillation of all the good juices that come from this podcast and everything about it. It might take some time, but... slowly we're gonna get there very slowly and we'll publish that and then get that created

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, that one, we just, you know, we realized that a weekly podcast is great. Certainly is, but you know, some of the ideas that we have and some of the recommendations get lost in the shuffle. What's a better way to do that? You put it in a book

Justin:

Ha ha.

Tanner Weyland:

or a course or whatever, you know,

Justin:

Sure.

Tanner Weyland:

so that it's cataloged. So yeah, very excited about that.

Justin:

Exactly. One other thing that I've been thinking about is maybe some meetups or something like that. Some live events that people, if they're in the area, can come join and, you know, I don't know, maybe we just go see a movie or something. I'm really bad at playing events, but, you know, maybe we do like a D&D tournament versus, you know, one table versus another. Who knows, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, and honestly, Justin and I, we're going to most likely be at FanX,

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m your Host today, Justin Lewis and today, I want to talk about an aspect of D&D that is one-part storytelling prompt, one-part game mechanic, and overall an interesting facet of the game, namely alignment.

We’ve all heard the famous phrase of, “It’s what my character would do.”

Naturally, when someone says that, they are usually trying to justify something stupid, evil, weird, or just wrong that they’ve done. Sometimes they’ll cite their alignment as the main driver of their choice making process. For some reason that never really sat well with me. So today, I want to talk about a couple ways to think about alignment, and hopefully help you determine that you need to choose the way you’re going to look at alignment in your game, because it can radically change how your characters act and how you act towards your characters.

What is Alignment

Before we get into how to use alignment in your games, let’s first figure out what alignment is. Even defining it is going to be difficult because how you define it will also impact how you play with it. So i’m going to try to define it and explain it in a way that is agnostic of the way you choose to play with it.

Let me first start by saying that alignment is an optional mechanic of the game. Nowhere does it say in any rulebook or game module that you need to have alignment. Only certain items have requirements about alignment, and that’s simply for the purpose of attunement. As a DM, you can simply choose to disregard all of that, so if you feel that alignment just gums up the system and makes things harder to play, then great. Alignment is not necessary, though in my opinion, it does make things much more fun.

So in its most basic form, alignment describes your characters position relative to Order and Chaos and relative to Good and Evil. I won’t go too much more in dept quite yet, because I don’t want to affect how you think about alignment before I explain the two ways you can use it in game.

In the first edition of D&D, or really when it was just an add-on to the game Chainmail, there was only the choice between Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic. It was much simpler, but then as things progressed, D&D evolved to have the Chaotic and Lawful spectrum and the Evil and Good Spectrum.

What Purpose does Alignment Serve?

In reality, alignment, just like everything else in the game, only helps move the story along. You can take any mechanic out and still move the story along. So really Alignment is just a plot device in the sense that it’s supposed to theoretically impact how your character develops and the choices they make. In practice though, that becomes very messy. You start asking questions about morality, right and wrong, and to be honest the whole discussion becomes very philosophical.

So let me introduce you to my quandary and how I came to think about alignment.

My Quandary

In my current campaign, my wife’s character found himself stuck in his own mindscape. He had essentially been banned there by a being called Dreamtaker, who I’ve talked about on this podcast before. While in the mindscape, the character, Ransom, encountered an evil little character that inhabits part of his mind named Mtiq. Mtiq is supposed to symbolize the potential every being has to do evil. It’s the potential to become the worst version of ourselves. Well, Ransom had become very lost because the mindscape is a maze, naturally. So this evil Mtiq, offered Ransom a map to the mindscape in exchange for his “Innocence”.

Frustrated with the maze and wanting to get out, Ransom took the deal and escaped the mind-maze, but naturally lost his innocence. As soon as Ransom left the maze, I informed my wife that his alignment was now chaotic-evil.

She was not happy about that.

Since then she’s been asking me about ways she can get her innocence back, but really her question is about whether or not she can change her alignment.

Fast forward a few weeks and my brother-in-law, Drew is in town. He and his wife want to join us for one of our sessions. As chance would have it, my other brother-in-law, Ethan, who has a character in our campaign couldn’t make it that night, so Drew played Ethan’s Character Necro, while Drew’s wife played an NPC.

While playing, Drew decided to split Necro from the party and investigate a dockyard. At the dockyard, Drew had Necro pick a fight with and murder a dockworker. Ethan came back just at that moment and with despair saw what was happening with his character. Now this isn’t the first time Necro has murdered someone, but this time was different in that there weren’t any extenuating circumstances. Necro had just murdered this dockhand in cold blood. I told Ethan, that his alignment had shifted towards evil. He was upset naturally, as his character had been trying to make strides toward being good.

With both of these stories in mind, and the desire for these two players to have their characters to be good, I had an interesting thought cross my mind.

I wondered, “Is alignment prescriptive or descriptive?”

Does your alignment tell you how your character should act, or how they have acted in the past?

I’ve come to the conclusion, that you need to make that decisions because when you explain this to your players, you can then let them make choices moving forward with that in mind. So let’s look at the 3 options that this opens up to you (yes there is a secret 3rd option).

Descriptive

If you choose to let the alignment be descriptive, then it is more of a description of all their past deeds. It has little bearing on what they will do in the future and instead is more of a reputational aspect.

If you choose to play with this method, then I would adopt certain measures that somewhat in the old game Knights of the Old Republic. In that game when you pause the game, you’d see your character standing there with a spectrum and a guage showing how far they are into the light or dark sides. When they are in the light side, they stand tall and are surrounded by light and have an aura of good about them. If they are deep in the dark side, then their eyes have darkened and their face is covered by a permanent scowl. They are surrounded by darkness.

If you use the descriptive method of Alignment, then I would adopt similar attributes and if they make their way to being Chaotic Evil, then people start to perceive and mistrust them. Any persuasion checks that rely on trust or good will will receive disadvantage. On the other hand, any checks involving deception or intimidation should probably get some sort of advantage.

On the flip side, if your character is lawful good, then they should likely be naturally trusted.

Of course, this is simplifying things but you get the general idea. The alignment becomes a list of all the bad things they done or the good things. Over time, people would naturally get a sense of those things just by being around them.

In this method, if someone wants to change their alignment, then they have to consciously do actions over a long period of time to slowly change their alignment.

Prescriptive

The prescriptive method of Alignment is less about what you’ve done and more about what you aspire to be. The distinction is slight, but the big difference is that a character can choose to change their alignment in an instant. Changing alignment would likely require some large emotional experience but it could happen. From that moment, despite shortcomings, the character would try to live up to a certain ideal lifestyle.

From a DM’s perspective, you could reward strenuous attempts with advantage or inspiration and give de-inspiration for actions that go against the alignment.

The Combo

As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, the 3rd option is the combination of the 2. Really, this is closer to how we live in our real lives. We are partly our past and partly our aspirations for the future. If you can handle it, try and combine both of these methods to create a current alignment that correctly reflects the cumulative effect of all the decisions of the past and at the same time allows the character to aspire for different ways of life and try to make their way to that point.

I suppose you could also cut it down into “if you want to change your alignment you have to essentially get a certain number alignment points in this or that direction.” I might implement that as a test with my players, but it is going to be difficult. And why shouldn’t it be. We’re only talking about the concept of good and evil and how to act rightly in a difficult world.

As you go out and play your sessions with your players, I’d encourage you to bring in more and more moral quandaries and questions. Thinking of right and wrong and best and worst decisions is at the very nature of human existence. Your players will enjoy being pushed to think about what they really should do and what effect it will have on their characters. They will also enjoy the opportunity to try and do that in their own life. In that way, D&D becomes much more than a game.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. It was a little different and a lot more philosophical. I’m confident though that thinking about alignment will make your games more interesting. We’ll be back next week for another great episode. Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join Our Discord

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

Discord

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

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

Welcome to How to Be a Better DM! Tanner talks about how you can take immersion to the next level through the snacks that you prepare as well as the food you introduce to your players' characters.

Also, if you'd like to sign up for one of our One-shots, do so here: https://how-to-be-a-better-dm.captivate.fm/one-shot

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by Session 0 Studios

Visit session0studios.com for more information.

Join Our Discord

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

Discord

Why Listen to Ads?

Ugh, another ad break.

Patreon

Justin:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. Today, I am Justin Lewis. I actually am always Justin Lewis, but today I'm joined with Tanner Whelan. Go ahead and say hi, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Hey guys.

Justin:

And we have today with us a very special guest, Victor Baveen. And for me, he's kind of, he has a special place in my heart because I first got introduced to really anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons by listening to the R.A. Salvatore books about Dredd Stoerden. I listened to them on audiobook and the voice actor who really personified, in my opinion, Drizztorodin was Victor Bavine. So having him here with us is a real treat for me personally because, like I said, I have fond memories of long road trips, listening to Drizzt battle the monsters of the Underdark and then make his way to the surface and kind of go through a, you know, a similar trek I think a lot of us go through when we're trying to find out who we are and where we fit in life. Thank you for being here, Victor. And if you want to, you can add to that introduction however you want. But thank you for being here.

Victor:

Sure, my pleasure. I'm thrilled that I've been doing the Driz books for about 10 years now. And I think I'm up to 40 plus. I've done all but I think three of them. And those were done before I got involved. And yeah, I've been an actor my whole life and I'm also a writer and entrepreneur. started doing audiobooks about 17 years ago and this was one of the first really big projects that I got. So, you know, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled the fans like it. I get a lot of really fun emails. In fact, the best one I've ever, one of the best ones I've ever gotten, I don't want to choose best, but this guy wrote me and said how... he was going blind actually, and he was unable to read to his children anymore. And so they would listen to the DRISD books as bedtime stories together. And it really brought a tear to my eye. So I'm thrilled

Tanner Weyland:

Wow.

Victor:

to be here, but I love the books, I'm thrilled to be here.

Justin:

Awesome. Yeah. Having experiences like that has to be life changing because in, you know, in accounting, you don't have the opportunity to change someone's life like that. Right. So, uh, well, let's get into some of our questions. Uh, and, you know, I thought one reason having you on the podcast would be so great is because as people play Dungeons and Dragons, uh, one thing that a lot of people kind of are drawn towards naturally is just kind of the the attempts at voice acting. And I think it's a really great way to help your players become immersed. And so I thought it would be a great, a great thing to have you on and kind of talk about that. But you also mentioned that you're also a writer. So tell us a little bit kind of how you got into voice acting and writing and kind of how those two interweave and things like that.

Victor:

Well, I pretty much always wanted to be an actor. I decided when I was five that I wanted to be an actor because I saw this TV show. I wasn't allowed to have a dog. I really wanted a dog and my mom wouldn't let me get a dog. And I saw this TV show about vaudeville and there was this one dog act and I got into my head that as an actor, I could have a dog.

Tanner Weyland:

Ha

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

ha.

Victor:

so anyway, so I decided I always wanted to be an actor and then I always thought it was, I love to read and I, you know, I just... Classically trained as an actor, so I've done a lot of Shakespeare. So I think it really sets you up well for reading large blocks of text and making it understandable, cuz that's the trick of being a narrator is knowing how to use language, what we would call heightened language to. to tell the story, but at the same time, keep it personal and human without getting too involved in technique. So anyway, so I had been acting for years and I was living in LA and toward the end of my time in LA, my manager asked me, how would you like to read the Bible? And I said, okay. I was hired by this company to do, there were like eight of us, and I read six books of the Old Testament, six books of the New. And it was pretty cool, pretty cool way to make a living. And then I moved back to New York and I actually bought this house in New Jersey, in Newark, for God knows why I did it. Because I wanted

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Victor:

a project to renovate this, renovate this old historic home. And so I... I was in the midst of doing that and it was right when Audible was moving to Newark, moving their headquarters to Newark. And I happened to see an interview with the CEO and the in the local paper and I got on the company website and I emailed him. I figured out his email address. It was dcatz at audible.com.

Tanner Weyland:

Ha

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

ha.

Victor:

so I just emailed. Thanks for taking a chance on Newark. I said I did the same thing. I bought this house and my friend said I was crazy to move from Santa Monica to Newark, but here I am and here's my voiceover demo. And I'd love to come in for an audition. The CEO emailed me two days later and said, yeah, come in for an audition. So that's how I got started to really do an audiobooks. And that was, gosh, 2007 or eight

Tanner Weyland:

Okay.

Victor:

and I've done probably 350 books at this point and I'd always wanted to be a writer. I'd been writing screenplays when I was in LA and almost got a couple of movies off the ground and then I had a project that almost was super close. We had the money and I'm almost in the bank and then the financial crisis hit and the money disappeared. I was supposed to direct it and I'd written the screenplay and So it all fell apart and I said, well, I've always wanted to write a novel, now's the time. So I wrote the first draft of the novel and it was awful. It was basically the screenplay without formatting and because I didn't know how to write fiction, it was right around that time that I started narrating at Audible. And then two years later, I picked up the novel again after having probably. narrated 40 books and I suddenly started writing again. I said, oh I know how to write prose fiction now Because it was that was like my 10,000 hours. It was all it was all there so that so it all did kind of meld really nicely together and So that's sort of how I got to do all of it

Tanner Weyland:

Wow, I love that so much. That's man, what a roller coaster. Hot

Victor:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

dang. So

Victor:

Yeah, it's the life of an artist.

Tanner Weyland:

did you find that you kind of naturally gravitated to narrating the fictional books or was that purely coincidental that they were like, hey, you're great for this?

Victor:

It was just coincidental. I've done a lot of, like I just, my most recent book I just finished last week was about the Russo-Ukrainian War. Very intense, deeply historical. really dense. Normally, the process is generally a book called takes about four or five days to record and then you come in for like an hour or two of pickups, stuff that you got wrong and you have to go in and fix. And normally the most I generally, I have anywhere between 20 and 50 pickups in a project when I can knock that out in an hour. This we had 350 pickups. because the names, the Ukrainian and Russian names, you know, they wanted them so specific and really perfect. So, and then the longest book I've ever done, single book was a book called Gotham, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning history of New York City. And it's two volumes and it's 4,000 pages. And that took four months.

Tanner Weyland:

Wait,

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

so

Victor:

that...

Tanner Weyland:

4,000, that many pages, how many hours is that? Like, it's gotta

Victor:

It's

Tanner Weyland:

be

Victor:

a

Tanner Weyland:

a lot.

Victor:

60 hours, about 60 hours. Yeah,

Tanner Weyland:

Hot day.

Victor:

yeah, it's a commitment. It's a great, it's a great book. I mean, it's a fantastic, I mean, you know, and I love New York, I'm a native New Yorker and I love delving into the history. And so it was fun. But then I loved doing the fantasy too. I loved doing fiction and I mean, I've done some, you know, classic fiction like Vonnegut. But... I'd done a couple of other fantasy series before I got the Drift. And the Drift thing was, you know, it was interesting how it came to me. Cause they had recorded a couple of the books, not starting from book one. And they had two different narrators and everybody hated the narrators apparently. And so they, Wizards of the Coast, came to Audible and they said, we need to find a new narrator. So they did a contest where they recorded, they had three of us that Ari Salvador approved, and then they put it on the fan website and the fans chose me.

Tanner Weyland:

Well, that's

Victor:

53%

Tanner Weyland:

awesome.

Victor:

of the fans chose me. So there was already like a lot of buy-in, you know? And I still get, when people come to those other books, I get all these like Twitter messages saying, what happened, where'd you go? Did they fire you?

Justin:

Ha ha ha!

Victor:

No, no, just be patient, I'll be back. But the

Tanner Weyland:

I'm

Victor:

fun

Tanner Weyland:

sorry.

Victor:

thing with the, so many of you were saying about character stuff, character voices, the fun thing about... about fantasy is that you really can take liberties with the voices. In general, they want you to be really subtle with characters and like obviously in you know non-fiction stuff but even in fiction they want you to be fairly subtle but you know you can just go crazy with the um I love some of the voices that I've managed to create and it's fun funny because I won't tell you. I will never reveal this, but Jarlaxle is one of my favorite voices that I created and a lot of people love that voice. And one of the ways sometimes I'll create voices is I'm so bad at celebrity impersonations that I'll

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Victor:

do a celebrity impersonation and it'll come out as a voice but nobody recognizes it.

Tanner Weyland:

I'm

Victor:

And that's

Tanner Weyland:

sorry.

Victor:

how Jarlaxle started. So he's based on a celebrity, but I will never tell you who it is.

Justin:

I'm gonna have to go back and listen and kind of play Celebrity Bingo and see, you know, like process

Victor:

Yeah,

Justin:

of elimination.

Victor:

I would love it if you guessed it, but I don't think you will. It's so bad.

Tanner Weyland:

That's amazing.

Justin:

Yeah, and I do have to say Jarlaxle is, he's one of my favorite characters too. He's complex, but he's also mysterious and kind of cheeky. And I think a lot of people idealize that and wish they were like that in real life, right?

Victor:

I think that the genius of Bob's books is that they're simple enough for young people to understand, but as opposed to so much fantasy or comic book fiction, I really think all great stories, truly great stories are about moral ambiguity. And that's the heart of the story, is moral ambiguity. It's like, how do you be a good person in an impure world? And I love I don't know if you last summer I got to do a compendium of all drizzed diary entries.

Justin:

Yeah, I heard that.

Victor:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

Oh wow.

Justin:

I haven't listened to it, but I wanted

Victor:

Yeah.

Justin:

to.

Victor:

Yeah, it was really fun. It was really, really cool. And at the same time, I did right around the same time I did the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. And it was similar.

Justin:

I was

Victor:

I mean,

Justin:

gonna say...

Victor:

it was very similar. Yeah.

Justin:

That's

Victor:

So

Justin:

so cool.

Victor:

So I love that people are getting, you know, like you say, Gerald Axel is such a great character because he's morally ambiguous.

Justin:

Yeah. And honestly, that is actually something I wanted to talk about because one of the things that really struck me about your voice acting style, specifically in the Drift books is in those diary entries, because it's one thing to just read a diary entry, but it's one thing to also kind of hear someone read it and, and really get, or feel like you get the emotion behind the entry, right? So, so how. And you mentioned this before with like heightened language and making it human. W what tips would you give to someone who is trying to really convey the deep emotion behind just the words they're saying, right?

Victor:

Good question. Well, let me go back to, so I do sometimes, I've done classes, audiobook classes for actors. And what I always start people out with is Shakespeare's sonnets. And, you know, there's a, there's a, this is sort of my motto as a writer is, Mark Twain said, the difference between the perfect word and the almost perfect word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. And so if you're reading really good fiction, you're really imbuing finding that. It's just, you know, you're, I mean, okay, let me back up. So one of the reasons I choose Shakespeare for people to work, start with, I do a sonnet and then we get into the books, is that the great fear that actors have with Shakespeare and with American actors is that it's gonna be boring. And the only way it's boring, because it's not boring material, the only way it's boring is to shy away from committing to the emotion of the

justin_lewis:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm one of your hosts today, Justin Lewis, and I'm here with Rob and Tanner Wayland. And I'll let Rob introduce himself in a second, but let me first tell you, the listener, about today's episode. So if you're new here, we are here to help you craft better stories for yourself and your players as you DM sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. And today, we're actually gonna dive into the world of homebrew creations. Specifically, we're going to show you kind of the start to finish, hopefully start to finish. We might split this episode up into two episodes, but the start to finish process of creating something, but also the start to finish process of collaborating with someone else in creating something, because being a DM can be somewhat lonely and it's very taxing if it is lonely. So when you team up with other people like Rob, you can make it easier for everyone. But also, it's just fun to connect and be cool with people. So. Rob, if you want to introduce yourself and then we can hop into what we're doing today. Oh, you're

rob:

Hello

justin_lewis:

muted.

rob:

there, hi, sorry

justin_lewis:

There

rob:

about

justin_lewis:

you

rob:

that.

justin_lewis:

are.

tanner_weyland:

You're good.

rob:

My name is Rob Van Auchen, and I write and publish a lot of stuff under DM Robrick. I'm just happy to be here with you guys. I've played with both of you in your one shots, and I'm a frequent listener, and I'm looking forward to this. Should be a lot of fun.

justin_lewis:

Yeah, yeah. And listener, if you wanna catch one of Rob's published encounters, you can go to betterdungeonmaster.com slash Robrick and purchase it, it's an awesome encounter called the Lorecraft Collection, did I get that right?

rob:

That's

justin_lewis:

The Lorecraft,

rob:

correct.

justin_lewis:

yes, yeah. So go ahead and publish that, all the proceeds go right to Rob, cause he's an awesome DM. But today, like I said, we're going to work on home brewing and We haven't prepared anything specifically to show you, you know, the ups and downs, the ins and outs and the exciting and boring parts of homebrew creation. So I have shared a document with all three of us. First of all, did either of you have any specific ideas on anything you wanted to create together?

rob:

I'm game for just about anything, but I thought I would put that question right back to you folks. I don't know the scale and scope of what you guys were thinking, but we can go anywhere from, you know, a fun random table to a one-page encounter to a several-page, you know, one-shot kind of adventure in a box kind of thing, if that's what you guys are looking for.

justin_lewis:

Sure. Tanner, any specific way you're leaning?

tanner_weyland:

Ooh, man, I've been thinking about this as well, because I think, I mean, it'd be cool to do a one-shot, but that is, you know, it takes a good amount of planning.

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

tanner_weyland:

So. I think we'd come up

rob:

Nope.

tanner_weyland:

with... Oh, go ahead.

rob:

No, no pressure.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah,

rob:

No

tanner_weyland:

I

rob:

pressure.

tanner_weyland:

know, right? I'm thinking that maybe we just figure out, like just how, huh, like how long

rob:

Yeah.

tanner_weyland:

we want it to last, and then essentially just go work backwards from there, come up with a

justin_lewis:

Sure.

tanner_weyland:

cool premise, move

justin_lewis:

Sure.

tanner_weyland:

from, I don't know,

rob:

So,

tanner_weyland:

that sound good? ["Spring Day"]

rob:

absolutely, to date, I don't wanna call it my area of expertise, because I'm still fledgling in the field here,

justin_lewis:

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

rob:

but I have created encounters that are circled around the three pillars, right? Exploration, combat, and social. And my goal with each of these encounters is to kind of put a little randomized table that could possibly lead crafty DMs down other avenues to kind of expand the encounter itself. So it's kind of like an encounter in a box with these sort of like little tendrils that allow DMs and players to kind of pick up things and maybe decide, oh, you know what? That was kind of an interesting little tidbit. Maybe I'll follow that idea and

justin_lewis:

Excellent.

rob:

let it grow. I don't wanna keep anybody, any DMs in a cage here.

justin_lewis:

Yeah, I love that. Let's do an encounter then. What were

tanner_weyland:

Yeah,

justin_lewis:

you saying, Tanner?

tanner_weyland:

maybe an encounter. What if we just had like, we created like a kind of a little mini one shot with just one of each of those three pillars, you know,

justin_lewis:

Got

tanner_weyland:

some

justin_lewis:

it.

tanner_weyland:

exploration, some combat and some social, and then go from there.

rob:

love it

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

love it

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

love it

justin_lewis:

Um, and listener, we probably won't get all to all of this today because creating a one shot can be rather long. So we're probably going to split this episode up. Uh, so, uh, yeah, stay tuned. But first, um, let me just write down, I'll be the, I'll be the notes keeper, I guess, unless one of you is better at it because I'm not super great at giving

rob:

I'm

justin_lewis:

notes.

rob:

happy to

justin_lewis:

Okay.

rob:

help.

tanner_weyland:

Nope.

rob:

Happy to help however I can. Ha ha.

justin_lewis:

All right. So homebrew. I wish I could spell home brew creation. shot.

rob:

While you're typing, I'll put this idea to you both here. What is the flavor that you would like to capture? Are we going epic fantasy? Are we going squash buckling pirates? Are we going sort of for frivolous? I had the opportunity, I believe Tanner, you were the dungeon master for, it's kind of like a Halloween, almost like a Halloween theme. We, when we played, we had entered that kind of sort of creepy haunted pumpkin patch.

justin_lewis:

Mm-hmm.

tanner_weyland:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

and there was a pumpkin headed villain. So, you know, October is coming up. So something like that might be kind of cool, like a campy kind of holiday themed.

justin_lewis:

I like

rob:

We

justin_lewis:

that.

rob:

can go, I know Spelljammer just came out. We can go, you know, D&D in outer space,

tanner_weyland:

No.

rob:

home rune outer space.

justin_lewis:

No, yeah. I like those ideas. I think we should definitely either do Halloween-themed one, Christmas-themed one, because Christmas is also coming up, and or Thanksgiving or a mix of the three. One other thought I did have is because I specifically want this one-shot to be very useful for anyone to play, specifically the introductory DMs. So if we could create a one-shot that And, you know, like Tanner said, it touches on the adventure, the exploration, sorry, not adventure, so the exploration, the combat and the social, and kind of introduces the DM to doing that. I think that would be extremely helpful to our listener. Um, so yeah, that's what that, those are my thoughts.

rob:

and.

tanner_weyland:

As far as the actual theme, let's say. I mean, space does sound cool, but I'm gonna,

justin_lewis:

Hehehe

tanner_weyland:

I'm gonna say maybe later. That might be a later one. I haven't even thought

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

tanner_weyland:

about space and I would wanna put more time into that. What do you guys think about an academy setting?

justin_lewis:

I like that. I think it's very

rob:

Okay,

justin_lewis:

reminiscent

rob:

I'm on board.

justin_lewis:

of Harry Potter, so that would be easy for a lot of people to relate to, in a sense.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, I also think that it provides a lot of opportunities for both social and exploration, and

justin_lewis:

for sure.

tanner_weyland:

then of course combat, whether you have it as part of a lesson that goes awry or they're exploring in the middle of the night or who knows what, right? I think it's a very approachable kind of setting.

justin_lewis:

Agreed. Cool.

rob:

Yeah, absolutely.

justin_lewis:

So theme,

rob:

I'm totally on board. Now,

justin_lewis:

or

rob:

I know.

justin_lewis:

I guess that's the setting.

rob:

Well, I know that you have a homebrew kind of world build that you've been working on, Justin. Is there a location or a place where this academy might be set?

justin_lewis:

Yeah, so there is one academy that is currently created. I'm still working on the world itself, but it's called the Brazen Academy. Um, I don't know if it would exactly fit this. So it is essentially an academy specifically created for teaching people how to smelt and mine this material called deep iron, which is, um, it's, it's harder than adamantine. In this world, everything that every magical item that is like plus three is made of this stuff. And this this academy belongs to this nation called the Kula Uwea Confederacy, and they guard it very highly. So once you get in, you can't get out. Like, there's no escape. Like, they'd kill you before they let you out because the secrets of smelting this type of iron is so closely guarded. I don't know if that would be a good location. But if you guys want we could also create a different Academy in the world that is a little bit less intense

rob:

Well, I'm just thinking if, and this is just me shooting the breeze here, an academy, and you want this to be useful for beginner DMs. So what if the academy was for a school of, I guess, it could be children, it could be anybody who's interested, but a school for would-be adventurers. And like each of the houses is led by your traditional. class types, right? So you've got like the barbarian

justin_lewis:

I like

rob:

house,

justin_lewis:

that.

rob:

you've got like the clerk house, you've got the wizard house, you know? And so the PCs could join a house with their desire and the purpose of this particular encounter would be to maybe pass the test, whatever the test may be. This way it's replayable, right? So PCs and players could play it over and over again as a different class. It's something that's kind of easy to jump into, that the purpose is kind of... I don't want to like railroad anybody or streamline,

justin_lewis:

Exactly.

rob:

but yeah, the tests would be things that we could make randomized tables for, or we could certainly

tanner_weyland:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

just insert something. And again, people could play this over and over again. This could be something really cool. A nice, almost like I teach for a living, so I'm always thinking of like, you know, how to bring kids and

justin_lewis:

Exactly.

rob:

young people into the

tanner_weyland:

Mm-hmm.

rob:

game.

justin_lewis:

No,

rob:

It sounds

justin_lewis:

that's

rob:

like

justin_lewis:

exactly...

rob:

this might be a good way to do that.

justin_lewis:

Yeah, I love that

tanner_weyland:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

idea.

rob:

All right,

justin_lewis:

I love that idea,

rob:

I like

justin_lewis:

especially

rob:

this.

justin_lewis:

because also, it's kind of meta. It's like, here's the test becoming an adventurer, and if this is played by new players, then it kind of actually is like, now you're an adventurer kind of thing. It's pretty funny. So...

rob:

Yeah. All right, so then I guess, well, go ahead, please.

justin_lewis:

No, I was just gonna say, so the theme then would be like school test type idea, not necessarily Halloween or Christmas, but I guess you could flavor it that specific way depending on when you play it.

rob:

It is back to school. So it

justin_lewis:

That,

rob:

does kind of

justin_lewis:

yeah,

rob:

fit

tanner_weyland:

Yeah.

justin_lewis:

that, that makes

rob:

the

justin_lewis:

sense.

rob:

back to school and summers

justin_lewis:

Yeah.

rob:

out back to school.

justin_lewis:

Well.

tanner_weyland:

Yeah, you know, I think there's a couple ways we could do this. Either one allows a lot of randomization or tables, depending on what, you know, DM wants