Michael E. Shea's Blog, page 22

How to Customize Published Campaign Adventures

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

Richard B. a Sly Flourish patron, asks:

Do you have any advice for a fairly new DM about going through a published adventure and making alterations to make it work for the group. I sometimes hear about things needing a fix but have no idea how to do that.

For experienced DMs, it's easy to forget how we go about customizing published adventures. There's a method to our chaotic hacking and slashing of a published adventure, however, and it's worth diving into the details.

This article focuses on larger campaign adventures, like the published hardcover adventures from Wizards of the Coast. Most of this advice is likely overkill for customizing a single-session or short adventure, though some of it still stands.

My friend Sharon offers three great pieces of advice for customizing shorter-run adventures:

Are there mutliple quest-givers before your players reach the heart of the adventure? Cut one of those. You'll never miss 'em.Cut things that won't make sense for your players: puzzles, riddles, language, ideas, or lore from other adventures. Replace them with stuff your players care about.Review the loot! There's almost always something you can include that means more to your players than the stuff in the published adventure.

These ideas can work well for longer-run campaign adventures as well.

Nothing Is Sacred

Change anything in a published adventure to suit it to your group. Nothing is sacred. If you generate your own adventure from the inspiration of the cover art alone, you're still doing it right. Whether you only change a few NPCs or a touch of the flow of the adventure or hack it down to a root and rebuild it into a new forest, there's no wrong way if it works for you and your group. There is no honor in running an adventure as written at the expense of the fun of your game.

Change anything in a published adventure to suit you and your group.

Customize the Adventure Around the Characters

One of the most effective ways to customize a campaign adventure is to thoroughly connect it to the characters. There are two ways we can do this:

First, ensure players build characters suited to the campaign during our [session zero]. A good one-page campaign guide like this one for Rime of the Frostmaiden helps players build characters focused on the themes of the campaign.

Second, modify the campaign to suit the characters. We can do this through NPC connections, historical connections, location-based connections and others. Here's a list of ten ways to tie characters to published campaigns:

A character has a history with a villain.The character's heritage connects them to a major location in the adventure.The character owes an NPC a debt.The character is related to an NPC or villain.A character has visited or has knowledge of a location.A character's relative has a history tied to a location or villain.An NPC is a rival of one or more of the characters.A character once served a villain or sub-boss but broke free.A character worships a god interwoven into the adventure's story.A character underwent a ritual connecting them to a villain either in a bond or as an enemy.

Sharon's idea of customizing loot is another fantastic way to tie characters to the adventure.

Connecting the characters to the adventure goes a long way to engaging players with the story of a campaign.

Tune Encounters for Pacing and Beats

Published adventures have no idea how the pacing or beats of your game are going to go. You usually have no idea either until you're running it. Regardless of what the published adventure describes, change the number and type of monsters in any given location based on what's fun at the moment.

If the characters just had a big fight against some monsters and the next room has six more of them, feel free to cut them down to one. Oscillate between hard and easy encounters as you see fit. Mix up gameplay types as well. Maybe what appears like a fight is actually a conversation or some other way to bypass the situation.

Always have your hands on the dials.

Add Subquests & Cut What You Don't Like

As you run a published adventure, you're likely to get ideas of your own. Maybe one small throwaway location really grabs you and you want to add a whole subquest around it. Go crazy. Add your own small adventure in the middle if it feels cool to you. This might make the overall adventure longer but, just as we add our own quests, we can cut the parts of the published adventure that we don't dig. Move the MacGuffins around to change up the nature of the campaign if we need. Maybe that vital clue left in the published Medusa's garden fits better in the crypt of the forgotten king we decided to add ourselves.

Adding our Own Stories

As we read the plot of a published campaign, our own mind might wander off and start playing "what if". What if the mind flayers of the Id Ascendent traveled into the Underdark with they're dying elder brain and allied with Orcus to save it? What if the power of the endless night in Icewind Dale was actually caused by a crack in an elven sarcophagus that encased the elder evil Thruun in the bowels of the lost city of Ythryn? What if a githyanki armada was soon headed to Faerun to rid the land of its mind flayer influence?

Sometimes we read a published adventure and are disappointed it isn't something else. Make it something else. Go with your ideas. The adventure is yours now.

Mashup Multiple Adventures

My friend Jeff at the Tome Show loves to take multiple adventures and mash them together. What if you took Waterdeep Dragon Heist, Curse of Strahd, and Out of the Abyss and put their events into one campaign? Now your players have big choices they can make with big changes in the story depending on the path they follow. We needn't mash up whole adventures either. Instead we can take dungeons we like from one adventure, story elements we like from another, and an overland map we like from a third. We can shuffle all sorts of things from multiple adventures together. I wrote more about this in how to mash up Dragon of Icespire Peak and Lost Mine of Phandelver together.

Customized published adventures let us capitalize off of the tremendous investment publishers have put into these published adventures and still run campaigns that are all our own.

Related ArticlesThe Case For Published AdventuresUsing Published AdventuresReading Published AdventuresChoosing the Right Steps from the Lazy DM ChecklistConverting Older D&D Adventures and SourcebooksWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

How Long Does it Take You to Prep Your D&D Game?

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

Sly Flourish Patron MonsterVTpilot asks "What is your ratio of preparation time vs. play time for your games personally? For every hour of play do you think we spend 3 hours to prepare? What do you think is a normal ratio."

Three hours per hour?? I certainly hope not.

For a video on this topic, see my YouTube video "How Long Does it Take to Prep a D&D Game?".

In April 2020 I posted a Twitter poll asking DMs how long they prepared for a roughly four-hour D&D game. Here are the results from 3,663 responses:

Response% of totalAbout 30 minutes or less10%About an hour33%About two hours28%About three hours or more29%

Just about a third of surveyed DMs spend three hours or more preparing on a four hour game. A little less than half spend an hour or less. Another quarter spend about two hours.

Personally, it takes me about 30 minutes to an hour to prepare for a 3 hour game using the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and that feels about right to me. When I'm on my own and not livestreaming my preparation it usually takes about 30 minutes. That's assuming I'm in the middle of a published adventure I'm already running. This amount of prep-time changes depending on the type of game I'm running, where we are in that campaign, and what I've already prepared. If I'm running a single-session game from scratch, it could take one to two hours to get everything ready.

How Long Do YOU Need?

We each likely need a different amount of time to prep our games. There's no single right answer. Sometimes the platform on which we play takes more or less time. I whip things up quickly in Owlbear Rodeo but others love to build big multimedia experiences in Roll20 or Foundry and that takes a lot of time. If I want to set up a nice Dwarven Forge setup, I'm not whipping that up in 30 minutes. It's going to take a couple of hours.

There are, however, diminishing returns. I experimented by taking a full day preparing for a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign and saw these diminishing returns in action. Some things had a big impact on the game including reading the whole adventure and considering connections between the characters and the story of the adventure. Other things, like setting up music playlists and printing out big poster maps, offered little value for the time spent.

Regardless of how much time we spend prepping on our games, it behooves us to look at each part of our prep and ask ourselves how much better our game will be because of it. Often we're driven to prep more than we need. Sometimes what we prep doesn't help at all. Sometimes it makes the game worse — it gets in the way.

Which Steps are the Right Steps?

We each decide what most benefits our game. Of course, I believe in and use the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and focus on the next game I'm going to run instead of what may happen in future sessions. Those steps work for me and seem to work for a lot of people. But each of us can ask ourselves what preparation makes for a great game and what does not to determine how long it takes us to prep our game.

Related ArticlesSpending a Whole Day Preparing a D&D Game2016 D&D 5th Edition Dungeon Master QuestionnairePrepare a D&D Game in 15 MinutesDungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition Facebook and Twitter Survey ResultsChoosing the Right Steps from the Lazy DM ChecklistWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Writing a One-Page Campaign Guide

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

When you're getting ready to run a new campaign, write up a single-page guide for your players to get them on board with the campaign and steer your campaign in the right direction.

For a video on this topic, see my Writing a Single Page D&D Campaign Guide YouTube video.

This single-page guide has many advantages:

It helps players understand the world and the campaign in which they're going to play.It helps you focus on the most important parts of the campaign. It builds an agreement between you and the players about the type of game you're going to run.It gives the players information to help them build characters around the theme and focus of the campaign.

This article breaks down the details of a single-page campaign guide and goes hand-in-hand with the idea of running a session zero. Here are a handful of one-page campaign guide examples:

Descent into Avernus Campaign One-pagerGhosts of Saltmarsh Campaign One-pagerEberron Second Mourning Campaign One-pagerRime of the Frostmaiden Campaign One-pager

Patrons of Sly Flourish get access to the Word template used to format these one-page campaign guides.

Keep It to One Page

We're going to be tempted to write out a big campaign bible for our game. Avoid that temptation. We're all busy. Our players are busy. The longer the guide, the less likely players read it. Even if you must include supplemental information, write up a single page guide covering everything the players should understand about the campaign. Keeping it down to a single page makes it far more digestable than a longer campaign guide.

The Campaign's Pitch

Hook the players with an evocative pitch. What is the single-sentense or short paragraph drawing them into the world? Make the pitch specific enough that the players understand the role of their characters in the campaign. As much as we don't want to reveal surprises, avoid being so vague that no one understands what it's actually about.

Examples from the WOTC hardcover adventures include:

Draconic cults rise on the Sword Coast threatening to bring their goddess, Tiamat, into the world.You and your fellow adventures find yourself trapped in the gothic lands of Barovia under the watchful eye of the vampire lord Strahd.Typically secluded giants now threaten the villages and cities of the Sword Coast.Hellish cults rise in the lands surrounding the city of Elturel.An endless night has overtaken Icewind Dale isolating Ten Towns from the rest of Faerun and threatening its people with a frozen death.

What is the single-sentense hook grabbing onto your players' imaginations and drawing them into your campaign? Write that down first in your one-page campaign guide and then fill in a short paragraph on the theme of the campaign.

The Truths of the Campaign

What are the six truths of your campaign setting it apart from all other campaigns and worlds the players have played? These truths are known to the characters in the world. They're not secrets. These six truths help players understand how this campaign differs from others and helps them begin to scope out their characters.

You don't always need six. Shorter campaigns might only have two or three. You get to choose how many but don't go beyond six.

Here are five example truths for my Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign:

The sun hasn't risen in Icewind Dale for two years.The two-year night has cut off the frozen northfrom the rest of the Sword Coast.The Children of Auril demand sacrifices from thepeople of Ten Towns in the Frostmaiden's name.Ancient and powerful secrets lie under the ice.Shadowy figures lurk in the mountains hammeringupon strange black metal.

These truths refine the concept of the campaign in the players' minds. It shows them what matters, what's important, and what sort of character fits best.

Potential Factions or Patrons

If you enjoy starting your campaign focused around a patron or faction, offer up to three choices for potential patrons or factions. These patrons or factions connect the characters together and give them a clear source for the quests that drive the rest of the campaign. Being able to choose which patron or faction they prefer gives the players agency over the campaign. These choices come out in your session zero with the agreement that the group together determines one primary patron or faction.

Character Creation Guidelines & Houserules

Offer guidelines for character creation. What sources are allowed? What ability score generation method do you use? Do you have any important houserules the players should know about?

Most important, what key theme or bond should players wire into their character to connect them together and focus them on the campaign's theme?

Here's an example from my Eberron Second Mourning Campaign One-pager:

"You seek to travel with your band of companions, in cooperation, to prevent the second Mourning."

Note the reinforcement of cooperation. No loner edge-lords thank you very much.

Safety Tools and Themes

As part of our contract with our players we can describe our campaign's safety tools. I prefer a mix of "lines and veils" with descriptions of some expected lines and veils for this campaign along with a version of the X card I call "pause for a minute". The discussion of safety tools is an open conversation piece, of course, and can get further refined during your session zero. Update the guide with the players' described lines and veils as well and resend it out to the group so everyone is clear.

A Single Page to Steer the Campaign

One-page campaign guides help steer your entire campaign. Mixed with a solid session zero, they ensure players play characters focused on the campaign's themes, are built with the right drivers in their backgrounds, and join together in cooperation to engage in high adventures.

Related ArticlesRunning Session ZerosReinforce Cooperative Character MotivationsRime of the Frostmaiden Session ZeroSession Zero of Storm King's ThunderWolfgang Baur on WorldbuildingWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Non-Focal, Past, Future, and Combined Random Encounters

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

Justin Alexander at the Alexandrian had an awesome article on Non-Focal Random Encounters. Justin defines these as random encounters that don't necessarily happen to the characters but to things the characters care about. Justin uses the jawa attack on Mando's ship in the Mandolorian as an example of a non-focal encounter.

Justin recommends building a list of the people or places the characters care about and rolling on that list to see if something happens there while the characters are elsewhere. It's another great way to make the world feel like a living breathing place.

There are lots of ways to use random encounters in different ways to make the world feel real. Here are some others I've enjoyed.

Past or Future Encounters

Instead of rolling random encounters for what happens to the characters right now, we can roll to see what sort of encounter previously happened along the path the characters travel. As the characters travel along a wild game trail, they might come to signs that a huge reptile crashed through the underbrush, smashing trees two-feet thick.

We can also indicate encounters that may happen in the future. The characters may hear the guttural calls of giants in the distance getting closer.

Using random encounters to show what has already happened and what may happen in the future gives the characters choices they don't otherwise typically get. Do they follow the huge lizard or leave it be? Do they set up an ambush for the coming giants or do they move along out of their path?

Joining Two Encounters

Instead of running into a single encounter, we can roll twice and have the characters arrive to witness two encounters already engaged with one another. A pack of ravenous ghouls may be swarming over a pair of cyclopses. A bunch of goblins may be on the losing side of a skirmish with some giant spiders currently cocooning them up high in the trees. Encounters like this give the characters an interesting situation and interesting choices. Do they save the goblins? Do they circle around the ghoul and giant frenzy?

Fixed + Random Encounters

Other times we may have an encounter we know is going to happen. The characters meet up with a vital NPC out near the elven ruins. When they arrive, however, perhaps that NPC's already awoke a tomb full of specters. Adding a random encounter to a fixed encounter changes the variables in ways even we didn't expect.

Squeezing More Value out of Random Tables

Random encounter tables have been part of D&D for half a century. Justin's idea of non-focal random encounters and the concepts of past, future, or combined random encounters give us tons of new ways to use these simple tables to make the world come alive for us and our players. We're squeezing ever more value out of the tables we've had in our hands for years. Give it a try.

Related ArticlesRun Meaningful Random EncountersExploring ChultThree Things to Do While TravelingRandom Creativity in Dungeons & DragonsBreaking Conventional Thought with Random TablesWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Running Frostmaiden Chapter 3 & 4: Sunblight and Destructions Light

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

This article is one of a series of articles covering the Wizards of the Coast hardcover D&D adventure Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. The other articles include:

Rime of the Frostmaiden Session ZeroRunning Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden Chapter 1Running Rime of the Frostmaiden Chapter 2

Like these articles, this article contains spoilers for Rime of the Frostmaiden.

Quick Checklist of Changes

Here's a quick checklist of the changes I recommend for chapters 3 and 4 of Rime of the Frostmaiden.

Have Xardorok Sunblight launch the chardalyn dragon when the characters are soon to face him in the citadel instead of as soon as they arrive.Offer an alternative access path to enter Sunblight Fortress through the underdark.Connect Xardorok's madness with Auril instead of Asmodeus.Ignore the timeline of the chardalyn dragon's attack against Ten Towns. Choose yourself which towns get destroyed and which can be saved.If the characters ignore Sunblight Fortress, let them return to Ten Towns as its being attacked by the chardalyn dragon.Narrowing the Focus

Chapter 3 and 4 of Rime of the Frostmaiden narrows the focus of the adventure from the wide range of areas and quests in chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 3 focuses on one location, Sunblight Citadel, while chapter 4 focuses on the attack of the chardalyn dragon on Ten Towns. Because the two chapters are so intertwined, I'm covering both of them in this single article.

Much of the Sunblight chapter can be run as-is. The whole complications of Grandolpha's attempt to usurp the power from Xardorok can be great fun and go in lots of different ways. In my own game, Grandolpha was convinced to marry one of Xardorok's sons to restart the dynasty without Xardorok himself involved.

In my other game, the characters never made it to Sunblight themselves, instead returning from Solstice island to find the dragon already attacking Ten Towns.

Underdark Access

The single access point to Sunblight Fortress is a narrow switchback path easily guarded and protected by a single dwarf with a snowball if they wanted to. Even though the guards are on Grandopha's side and let the characters in without trouble, the characters and players don't know this. Any reasonable adventurer would never walk up a switchback path at the base of a huge defended tower. Instead, they'd take a different path.

There is an alternate path to get into the citadel but it isn't included in the book: the underdark access. With a little help from other adventures or your own bit of homebrew, you can set up a pointcrawl journey through the underdark to reach this less-well-defended back door. You might even start the journey from the big shaft in the mines of Termalaine.

"I Did It 35 Minutes Ago"

Instead of having the chardalyn dragon fly off as soon as the characters arrive at the fortress, consider having it launch while the characters are still in the fortress. Maybe they hear the sounds of something huge moving as the duergar lift the dragon to the roof and let it free. Maybe not. Either way, when the characters face Xardorok atop the roof of Sunblight Fortress, he lets them know they are too late. The dragon has been unleashed and there's nothing they can do about it.

This gives the players a chance to crawl Sunblight without feeling like they have to turn right around again as soon as they just got to the front doors which feels like a lame bit of back-and-forth travel.

Also, instead of Xardorok being duped by Asmodeus, have him be duped by Auril, the cult of Auril, or some other powerful villain or entity you already have in your Frostmaiden campaign. This way you're not introducing an entirely disconnected entity into the story. In my own game, because I dropped an elder evil named Thruun in a huge sarcophagus in the lowest reaches of Ythryn, I connected Xardorok to this elder evil through a twisted priest of Thruun feeding Xardorok bad information.

Choose Your Own Chardalyn Attack

The book has a big complicated timeline for how long it takes the chardalyn dragon to reach Ten Towns and how fast the characters can arrive. Ignore this. Choose which towns can be saved and which are destroyed by the time the characters arrive. Give the characters the agency to come up with creative ways to get back to the city. Maybe their ghostly friends are the ones to call on Velynne Harpell's aid and maybe her undead-direwolf-led sleds can make tremendous time across the frozen plains.

Likewise, if the characters travel off in other directions after a fair number of warnings that the duergar are building some kind of war machine, let the characters return to Ten Towns with it under attack by the chardalyn dragon. The world doesn't wait for their arrival. If, for example, you put all three main paths in front of the characters; exploring Grimskalle, exploring the Caves of Hunger, and exploring Sunblight Fortress; and they choose one of the other two, that's enough time for the duergar to launch their war machine. It makes the world feel more alive — maybe except for the people of Dougan's Hole.

Tuning the Chardalyn Dragon

Depending on your intent, you may want to tune the statistics for the chardalyn dragon. In my case, I turned it into a legendary monster by giving it legendary resistance and letting it make claw attacks as a legendary action. For two legendary actions it could bat its wings and attempt to push characters away before taking flight and landing nearby. Customize your chardalyn dragon to suit your game.

Fine Tuning an Otherwise Fine Chapter

These changes are relatively easy to implement and, overall, the chapter isn't too difficult to wrangle into shape. With a few changes to how the characters arrive, when the dragon departs, and a few other bits of fine tuning, chapters 3 and 4 can be a lot of fun for you and your players.

Related ArticlesRunning Rime of the Frostmaiden Chapter 2Rime of the Frostmaiden Session ZeroRunning Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden Chapter 1A Guide to Official D&D 5th Edition Published AdventuresReinforce Cooperative Character MotivationsWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

It's Five Minutes to Game Time

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

Matt A., a Sly Flourish patron, asks:

"What motivational advice would you give a DM five minutes before their game starts? What's your pep talk?"

Ok, here it goes.

It's five minutes to game time. You've done your prep. You've got your materials. Or maybe you don't, but eff it, you're doing it live.

You're about to engage in an amazing experience no other creature in the known universe can do. You're about to sit with your friends (online or in real life) and build a universe together. It may be a small universe, or a piece of a universe you and your friends already started creating, but it doesn't exist now and in a few hours it will.

You can do anything in this universe. You can explore crashed planar vessels or explore ancient cities buried under miles of ice. You get to save entire nations from the tyranny of the dragon queen. There are no limits to what might happen.

And you get to do this with your friends. You get to be kids again! You get to fight monsters and explore cobwebbed dungeons and save the world from hideous mutated giant rats. You get to do that together and share the stories for the rest of your life.

Don't lose yourself peering into the vastness of these yet-to-be universes. Start small. Start strong. Hook them into adventure. Think about the characters. Give them interesting people to meet, places to explore, secrets to discover, monsters to fight, and treasure to acquire.

Lean on your friends around the table. They love you. They want to have a good time. They're not there to judge you or criticize you. They want to get lost for a while. They want to see their characters do awesome stuff. Be fans of their characters. Listen to the players. Smile. Laugh.

You're going to do great.

Related ArticlesCreative Mind Exercises for D&DGetting Started with Dungeons & DragonsYour Most Important GameGoing ThereThe Emotional Investment of Dungeon MasteringWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Facilitating Choices

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

At some point in all D&D games, groups of adventurers, and the players who run them, must sit down and make a choice. It might be about a particular direction they're going to take. It might be about an important negotiation. It might be about whether to kill, capture, or let a villain go.

At this point players spend time discussing their options, come up with ideas, and eventually make a decision. This may not be as easy as it sounds. Debates get heated. Strong personalities push down quiet ones. Arguments become circular and burn a lot of time. Or everyone stays quiet waiting for others to talk.

During these times our DM role changes. Instead of facilitating storytelling, we're facilitating a group discussion. We have an important job in this situation and it's worth taking time to understand this job, what pitfalls we might face, and ensure everyone still has a good time at the game.

Clarify the Goal

First, we can help players understand the goal they're trying to achieve. What, exactly, are they aiming for? What do they want? Is their goal clear? We can do this best by asking questions rather than telling them anything.

"What's your goal?"

Players can lose track of their intentions and we can help them out. We might ask questions to lead them back to the goal or we just remind them about what their characters already know.

Lay Out the Options

Next, we can help the players lay out the options. We can start by asking the players to describe their options and then help them clarify them if they're having trouble. Hopefully there aren't too many options. Three options are often best.

Ensure Everyone Gets a Voice

It's easy for a strong personality to dominate the conversation and make the choice for the group without the full group's concent. If the stakes are low, the rest of the group may just go along. As a facilitator, we can stop and ask each player what they think. Ensure everyone gets a voice.

Break Character With "Pause for a Minute"

Sometimes a player may have their character perform an action that bypasses the choices of the other characters have. A character might kill a prisoner or reveal some vital information to an NPC or something else that marks a permanent shift in the story. While this action may be fast in the world, we can pause the story and talk to the players out of character by saying "pause for a minute".

With "pause for a minute" we stop the action of the game and talk to the players outside of their characters. We can make sure every player is at least ok with the choice before jumping back into the game to let the action continue. "Pause for a minute" is a great tool to get past "that's what my character would do" sort of situations.

Unanimous or Majority Decisions

Most of the time a decision can be reached when a majority of the decide to go a certain way. Sometimes, however, the stakes are high enough or have a big enough effect on the game that we want to ensure there's a unanimous decision. If a decision is going to have a big effect on one or more characters, those characters need to at least accept the choice. Players shouldn't feel like their character had to go directly against their bonds and ideals when they didn't have a stake in it.

It can be hard to know which choices require a unanimous vote and which can be decided by a majority vote. The best way to tell is to ask them. Once a majority chooses, ask the minority if that's acceptable. If they say "sure, everyone else is ok with it, I'm fine" then go forward. If you get the feeling that they're uncomfortable with the choice, or the discussion ends in a stalemate, return to the discussion and look for different options. Reframe the question or the situation. Break out of the false dichotomy and look for a new approach upon which the group can agree.

An Important Moment in our Games

Facilitating choices is an important moment for us GMs. It's the time when we're most able to ensure our players build trust with each other. It's a time when we can ensure the environment is friendly and everyone has the opportunity to make a choice. Take the time to recognize the moments and practice the skills to facilitate interesting choices.

Related ArticlesThree Plus Infinite ChoicesOffer Real Choices Safety ToolsLearning About the CharactersGiving Characters Hard ChoicesWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Battling the Resistance That Wants You to Fail at D&D

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

"You're not ready to run your next D&D game."

If you're like me and lots of other DMs out there, you hear this voice in your head nearly every time you're getting ready to run a D&D game. This voice tells you you're not ready to run your game. You may never be ready.

Steven Pressfield, in his book The War of Art, refers to this voice as "the Resistance". The Resistance is the lizard-brain voice in our heads doing everything it can to keep us from making art, whatever that art is. It tells us that our art isn't any good, that we'll be laughed at, or that it's too hard to do.

The Resistance doesn't want us to fail. The Resistance wants us not to even try.

For a video on this topic, see "You Are Not Prepared for your Next D&D Game" ��� Battling the Resistance.

Many DMs feel this anxiety before they're going to run a D&D game. Creating art is hard and creating art in front of our friends is even harder. Add on that we don't really know what sort of art we're going to create at the table and it's even easier to see why it can be so scary.

Whether you've DMed hundreds of times, only just a few, or you haven't DMed at all — that feeling of anxiety, the feeling that you're not ready to run, is common.

Experience doesn't make the Resistance go away, but it does help us recognize it and learn how to get past it.

Combatting the Resistance

I propose three ways to combat the resistance:

Have some sort of system to help you prep your game.Keep the tools on hand that make you feel confident to run your game.Remember your friends are with you, love you, and want you to succeed.

Having some sort of system to help you prepare your games helps battle the Resistance. I think that's why so many have found the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master so valuable. It's one system, one that works for a lot of people, and helps you say "I know I'm prepared enough because I've gone through my steps and have what I need to run a game". Even if you modify the steps to fit your style or even if you have your own unique steps, having some system to help you prep helps you combat the Resistance.

The tools you keep on hand to run your games help combat the Resistance as well. If you've used these tools before, they help remind you that you can do this because you already have. Think of your tools as totems to keep away the evil spirits telling you you're going to fail. You'll be fine. You've done it before.

Finally, our friends are on our side. They just want a fun game. They're not looking for the best game ever. They're looking for a good time sharing a few laughs while enjoying a fantastic tale of high fantasy. Your friends are with you. Don't let the Resistance tell you otherwise.

We need not fight the Resistance. The Resistance is part of us. Don't arm-wrestle it. Instead embrace the Resistance as an old friend, thank it for its service against the sabertoothed tigers of old, and set it aside when you sit down at the table and enjoy a great game of D&D with our friends.

Related ArticlesGaining Confidence to Run D&D Games2016 D&D 5th Edition Dungeon Master QuestionnaireLetter to a New Dungeon MasterImprovisation for New D&D Dungeon MastersThe Hard Parts of Running D&DWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Campfire Story Prompts During Rests in D&D

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

Here's a quick trick for adding some fun roleplaying to your D&D games and giving you a chance to glean cool ideas from your players. The next time the characters take a rest, ask each of the players to describe what they're thinking, feeling, or talking about as they bind their wounds, check their spellbooks, sharpen their blades, and otherwise prepare for the next day of adventure. You can either ask for a volunteer to start or roll randomly to determine the order. People are free to pass if they don't have anything at the moment.

Twenty Campfire Talk Prompts

If we want, we can choose one or more prompts for these campfire talks that steer the players towards one particular type of story. Here are twenty such prompts we might offer.

What are you looking forward to at your next stop?What scares you about the direction you're taking?What does your present circumstance remind you of?What disturbs you about your past actions?What secret do you need to reveal about yourself?What did you always want to tell one of your companions?What is something you seek in a future journey?What friend do you miss?What location does your current location remind you of?What loved one do you miss?What was the most morally questionable choice you made?What villain do you remember?What location did you best enjoy?Where do you wish you were right now?Who did you leave behind?What villain is still out there?What happened with your last adventuring party?What is your fondest memory?What was your darkest moment?What was your favorite meal?Culling Campfire Tales for Story Ideas

Most of the time campfire stories are just enjoyable stories. Sometimes, though, a hook will come out of it. Perhaps the villain the monk always hunted is still out there and can be wired into the story. We need not hang on tight to these short tales but sometimes they might lead into a great hook.

Other Articles of Note

Here are a few other variants of this theme from other writers.

Tales at the Campfire; getting players in character, and developing their story with just a deck of cardsCampfire Stories: A Quick Roleplaying Activity for D&D

Next time the characters are taking a long rest, ask them what they talk about and watch the story of your campaign grow.

Related ArticlesHandling Rests in D&DLearning About the CharactersEasy Tricks from DMs on TwitterPlaying D&D AnywhereBuilding a Great D&D CharacterWant More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

My Top Advice for D&D DMs

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here!

Hello friend!

We're in the final days of the Kickstarter for the Lazy DM's Companion! The Lazy DM's Companion is a book of guidelines and inspirational generators, built around the lazy DM style, to help you prepare and run fantastic games for your friends and family. Take a look and check out the free 17 page preview with tools you can use right now!

On to the article!

I've spent the past decade running D&D games, talking to other DMs, writing articles, shooting videos, writing books, and designing adventures for both publication and running in my own games. I've spent much of this time collecting as much good advice as I could from the far reaches of the hobby.

This article contains my top advice to DMs for running great D&D games. These ideas aren't original. They're also one level deeper than the surface-level advice of the "relax and have fun" variety. I aimed for practicality. They're often opinionated ideas. Some DMs no doubt run great games either ignoring these suggestions or going directly against them. As always, your mileage may vary.

Let the story unfold at the table. The tales of our games don't happen when we prepare them but at the table itself. DMs bring the world, the situation, the quests, and the non-player characters to the table and then watch and react as the characters crash into them. We don't know what's going to happen. Expecting the game to go a certain way is the most common mistake DMs make and have made for nearly four decades. Instead, remember that the story unfolds at the table, and not before.

Set up situations and let the characters navigate them. Instead of developing plots for our games, with directions we expect the characters to follow, develop situations in which the characters get involved. Think of this like a heist movie. There's a location, there's a goal, and there are inhabitants at the location. The situation changes as the characters choose their path and engage with the situation in whatever way they choose. Ensure there are multiple possible ways the characters can deal with the situation and don't let the whole situation hang on a single ability check.

Be on the characters' side. DMs are not competitors to the players. We're facilitators for the game. It's our job to help the characters look awesome. We want to help them meet their intent. Players only understand about half of what we're describing and the characters are much more aware of what's going on than the players are. Remember that and help players avoid doing clearly stupid things because they don't grab the whole situation. Treat characters as the heroic experienced adventurers they are.

Use tools and techniques that help you prepare to improvise. The tips, tricks, and tools that best serve us are the ones most easily used to help us improvise during the game. A blank dry-erase poster map is far more useful than one with a map printed on it. A set of general purpose tokens more easily serves the game than crates of pre-painted miniatures. The best tools are the ones you can keep directly in your head like knowing that difficulty checks are generally between 10 and 20 or that roughly one quarter of a mob of attacking skeletons are likely to hit or make their saving throws. Grab on to the most useful and simple tools you can to help you stay flexible during the game.

Focus on your next game. We may have big ideas for a multi-year campaign but the only game we should worry about is the next one we're going to run. Don't worry about preparing the next six sessions of a game or spending hours building out your huge end-game dungeon. Worry about where your next game is going to start, what may happen during that session, where they are going to go, what they might find there, and what secrets and clues they might uncover while there. As huge as our campaigns may be, we only have to worry about having the material to fill in the specific hours of our very next session. Worry about that.

Build your world, campaign, and adventures from the characters outwards. When developing your own campaign or game world, instead of starting with gods and histories and huge maps, focus the campaign down to what matters to the characters and what matters to the players. As much as you love your huge campaign world, your players love their characters and largely aren't paying attention to the larger world. What is the central theme of your campaign? What makes it unique among campaigns? Where do the characters start? What local locations might the characters be interested in? What three adventure locations lie just over the horizon, or just below the adventurer's feet? Focus your attention in the characters and what's around them before building out the larger world far outside their view.

Pay attention to pacing. I've played in a lot of D&D games and the most common problem I see is with pacing. It is really hard not to get stuck in a scene with no way out and really easy to lose track of time and find yourself halfway through a planned session with twenty minutes left in the game. Track your time and find ways to continually move things forward. Get into the action. Drop monster hit points to 1 when it's time for a battle to end. Have minions turn to dust when the final boss is defeated. Always be ready to cut the middle of your adventure to get to the end.

Focus on the fiction first and the mechanics second. It's easy to get lost in the dice and the mechanics of D&D's monsters and characters. The story comes first and the mechanics support that story. Instead of starting with the mechanics for things like a series of skill checks, puzzles, or combat encounter building; start by asking yourself what makes sense in the world itself and let that drive the mechanics to represent it.

An Endless Evolving Hobby

Dungeons & Dragons isn't like other games. It continually evolves and we evolve with it. We can make it whatever we want and learn entirely new ways to play it. Every tip we take in we can match up against what we know about the game and shift our style just a little bit to test it out and see how it goes. The DMs we are today are not the type of DMs we might have been years ago or the types of DMs we'll be years into the future. Above all, if we want to improve as DMs, it comes down to three words:

Always be learning.

Related ArticlesGetting Started with Dungeons & DragonsThe Story Focus of D&DImprovisation for New D&D Dungeon MastersStarting Strong At Your First Dungeons & Dragons GameTips for New Dungeon Masters Want More from Sly Flourish?Read more Sly Flourish articlesSubscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletterWatch Sly Flourish's YouTube videosSupport Sly Flourish on PatreonCheck Out Sly Flourish's Books Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master Lazy DM's Workbook Fantastic Lairs Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot Fantastic Adventures

Send feedback to mike@mikeshea.net.

Article copyright 2021 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.