8 Steps to DMing a Successful Dungeons and Dragons Campaign

A Dungeon Master is someonewho leads a group of players through game of Dungeons and Dragons. This article is aimed at new or up and coming DMs, and features advice about building a game around your own style to help your game run as smooth as possible. I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons for about four years now and want to share what I have found to be the most helpful tips to ensuring a fun campaign for you and your adventuring party.

Most instruction sets on Instructables.com are meant to be followed to the Tee in order to make something of your own from scratch. This instruction set features advice on building something you’ve already made, or have an idea for, to create a better experience for your D&D game! Make sure that if you’re going to be Dungeon Master-ing you start with at least these materials:

- 1 set of dice (d4-d100)

- D&D Players Handbook (edition 5e)

- Plenty of free time to plan your game

Ask your players what kind of game they want to play! If they are experienced players, ask them what they enjoyed about their previous adventures. If they’re new, get to know them a little bit with some questions like these:

- What do they like to do in their free time?

o If they play video games, which ones?

o If they read, what are their favorite types of books?

- What’s their favorite food?

- Have they ever played a role-playing game?

o If yes, what kind of characters have they played in the past?

- Do they work well with others?

These questions not only will give you a better sense of who they are, it might also key you in on how they play.

It is especially important to familiarize yourself with the rules of Dungeons and Dragons, such as how number scores work and how magic is cast, so that you as a DM can keep games running as smooth as possible. All information that a player would need for creating their character and playing as them can be found in the D&D Player’s Handbook. It contains all the races and classes, as well as an encyclopedia of the different spells used by magic casting classes. This book is essential for anyone new to the game, and is an extremely valuable resource for a DM. For additional information, Wizards of the Coast has also released a Dungeon Masters Guide to help up and coming DM’s in running games. As a DM, I would not be able to run games without thorough knowledge of the Player’s Handbook, and online copies of it are available online for free if you look hard enough. Here are some links you can use to purchase the books:

https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rp...

https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rp...

World building is amajor part of setting up a campaign. It helps as well to draw or generate a rough sketch of your world so that you can lay out where your players start and where your kingdoms lay. This step is the beginning of the most beautiful step, writing your story!

Here are some good questions to ask yourself when building your world:

- What is the atmosphere you’re trying to cultivate?

- What are the climate and ecosystems like in your world?

- What is the geography like in your world?

- What are some major historical events that have occurred in your world?

- Who inhabits this world? Where do they live? How are they organized?

- What are the major ruling powers in your world?

Plan out a basic story and remember that telling a story with others is different than writing a story on your own. As you begin to write the story your players will experience, it is important to remember a few things:

- Story structure should be linear, but non-descript

o You should have a solid idea of where you want your players to end up, but loose outlines of how they get there

- Your antagonist should be convincing and threatening

o As a driving force of your campaign, your antagonist should rile your players up and encourage them to work to defeating them.

- Be selective about which parts of your story you want to focus on, don’t be afraid to play favorites!

o If it’s your favorite part about the world, chances are it will be your player’s favorite part too

- Consider your player’s backstories!

o To make the experience the most enjoyable for your players, include their backstories into the lore of your world (you might have to alter or cut parts of it, and that’s okay!)

Don’t be afraid to get really big-picture with your story. Just make sure that you have a solid starting point for your players, and the rest can be as fluid as you want.

It’s common for DMs to think that they’ve planned enough things to take up the whole time for the session, only to run out of encounters halfway through. Give yourself up lots of time to prep what you’re going to be using in the session. Some tips I can give you are:

- Role the stats of creatures you want to use before combat

- Plan out your encounters to make sure they don’t take up too much time

- Look up and bookmark spells that your players commonly use, or you use yourself

During the global pandemic, new online resources for playing D&D have been created to make it easier for players and DMs to connect and play! One of my favorites has been Roll20.net, an interactive map-building program that offers a comprehensive tutorial on how to work it and is free to use! With it you can schedule and run games with multiple players on a single map that everyone can see. It is a great way to run games online.

This step can have limited applications if you are playing online, but it is important to establish atmosphere outside of the game, so that your players can feel totally immersed! If playing on a physical map like the one shown below, you could get customized miniatures, a token to represent each players character on the map. I have also found that simple things such as lighting or music can add a new layer of immersion for your players. A funny voice for an NPC also goes a long way! Set the mood!

Once you have your game going, and your players are into it, make sure to start each session off with a recap of what happened last time! This will keep the momentum of the story moving. Some extra tips are:

- Don’t fear the retcon! If you must change something in the past to make it work in the future, that’s your prerogative

- Don’t service the players too much.

o Make sure that the players are aware of the consequences of their character’s actions! It your world they’re just living in it. That’s what new characters are for!

Congratulations on taking up the task of DMing for your friends! Every game you play adds experience under your belt, and you’ll get better at it every time. Hopefully, this will help you create a fully functioning, and thrilling Dungeons and Dragons game!

If you have further inquiries about DMing, there are great videos out there by Matthew Coville that cover a wide variety of hiccups and extraneous situations. Thanks for reading, adventurer!