There’s one mistake I’ve made over and over as a DM, and every time, it has sucked the life out of my campaigns. The worst part? I didn’t even realize I was doing it. But fixing it? That took just one simple change. Today, I’m sharing that tip with you—along with 12 others—to make sure your early campaign isn’t just fun but keeps your players hooked all the way to the endgame.IntroWelcome back to How to Be a Better DM, the show that helps you craft unforgettable D&D sessions. I’m Justin Lewis, and for over three years, my cohosts and I have explored every dungeon master challenge under the sun. Today, we’re tackling a crucial question: How do you make your campaign’s opening strong enough to keep players coming back for more? Whether you’re a new DM or a veteran, these 13 tips will help you sidestep common pitfalls and build a campaign that players can’t wait to continue.The first few sessions of your campaign determine whether your players stay invested—or quietly start looking for another game. If you get this wrong, you might find yourself scrambling to keep their attention, dealing with last-minute cancellations, or, worst of all, facing a total campaign collapse. But if you get it right? Your players will be hooked, excited, and fully immersed in your world. Let’s make sure that happens.Starting their first campaign is exciting yet nerve-racking for many people. You want to make sure you’ve gotten it all right! Most often, though, we feel we are falling short of where we want to be. That’s all right, though. Almost nothing is more instructive than doing things wrong and learning from them.Your campaign's early stages can be a pivotal period for your party and yourself as a DM. Everyone is still learning how to play together and the early stages of any campaign are when it is most fragile. It’s not that difficult to stop playing because the emotional investment hasn’t yet been made.So to help you safeguard your early campaign and help you overcome the fragility, here is a simple list of Do’s and Don’ts for your early campaign.And there’s one tip near the end of this list that completely transformed my campaigns. It’s something I overlooked for years, but once I figured it out, my players became way more engaged. I’ll share that one toward the end—so stick with me.Before I get deeper into this particular rabbit hole, let me just say that every DM has their own way of doing things—these are just my lessons. Take what works for you and leave the rest.Ok here are my do’s and don’ts for the Early Campaign.Do Plan out the Story ArcsBecause the early campaign is so fragile, one way to strengthen it is by planning out your story arcs. That’s why you should apply the CASE method. For those of you that don’t know that that is, check out episode 157, but in brief, the CASE method stands for Campaign, Story Arc, Session, Encounter.You use the case method to plan each portion of a campaign by building that portion with its smaller constituent parts, encounters build sessions, sessions build story arcs and story arcs build campaigns.Have you ever felt lost 2 sessions into your campaign? That’s why the CASE Method exists.In this case, that means that you storyboard and timeline the general story arcs you think are going to happen. You want to do this so that at the very minimum, you have a general idea of the flow of the campaign. Your Story Arc plan is not going to be what happens. Player choice and the natural flow of the game is going to dictate which story arcs get played and which simply fade into irrelevance. It’s important to have a general idea of the direction of the campaign so that you can tease certain things that are coming down the pipe (more on that when we get to number 13).For example in one of my professional DMing groups, the story revolves around the party being essentially stuck in the Underdark. I’ve given the party a magical item that transports them to the surface, but only for 24 hours, and then returns them to the Underdark. While at the surface, I’ve prepared some minor story arcs to explore each player’s back story. Planning these out can help me pace what is happening on the surface compared to what is happening in the Underdark.Don’t OverplanEven though you should have a general idea of what is going to happen, you should only ever be 2 to 3 sessions. When I say prepared, I mean prepared. As I’ve already mentioned you should always have a general idea of where the story is going to go (though you should also remember not to “Should” all over yourself), but don’t worry about having the nuts and bolts of 5 sessions down the line prepared. Things will change so much by then that there is no possible way you’ll be able to predict what your players will want to do and therefore what will be salient to your session planning.One great example is my current personal campaign. The party had done a long trip through the Astral Sea and had finally returned home to Waterdeep. There they discovered a lot (honestly far too many) plot lines that were intersecting and all seemed either too urgent or not urgent enough. The party essentially decided to skip a year of gameplay, fast-forwarding through a lot of story arcs that I had been working on. I was ok with this, but a portion of the work had to be chucked out because we simply didn’t have the time to do it. So plan general notes, but don’t overplan, because the second you do, your party will skip what you got. It always happens.Do Allow Room for Player Added Story Arcs or SessionsOne big mistake I made as a novice DM was not allowing for room for players to create story arcs or sessions that are added to my game. I’m not saying that the player becomes the DM though that is certainly an option. What I mean is any particular player makes decisions left and right. Some of those decisions can blossom into full adventure side-quests comprising sessions or full story arcs. If your story is too rigid and prevents that from happening, your players won’t feel as much ownership of the story. This will limit their emotional involvement and therefore their engagement and their fun. When they can drive sessions and story arcs, but there are still sessions and story arcs where the world drives the conflict, the players will be engaged and immersed in the world because it will feel real and responsive.Another example of this comes from my campaign. One of the party members wanted to go on a quest to find some long-lost friends. This arc eventually took the party through the Astral Sea. They ended up being slaves for a time and it was a fun and interesting story arc that only existed because the player’s character had the desire to go save his friends. I wasn’t planning it, but that player helped add something new and unique to the story. Thank goodness he did.Don’t Forget the SizzleSell the sizzle, not the steak. You gotta have the steak, but you can’t forget the sizzle either. In this metaphor, you need the substance of your game to be good, the steak. But it’s the sizzle that your players remember. It’s the sizzle where you take the game to the next level. The world’s greatest dungeon masters have learned how to derive their main source of enjoyment from seeing their players enjoy the game. Therefore, the greatest DMs are always looking for ways to make the game more fun and memorable for their players, hence the sizzle! A great example of this comes from our Cayden Ottley, who’s been on this show quite a bit. Last summer, Cayden ran our group through a small campaign of his own design. The campaign had us going through a very large and whimsical forest.  Cayden is a skilled artist and he paints really good miniatures. Our jaws literally dropped when he placed a massive snail on the table—its shell wasn’t just a shell; it was an intricately painted house, with tiny glowing windows and moss creeping up the sides. Suddenly, we weren’t just playing D&D; we were there, in the world. Now obviously Cayden has a 3d Printer and can print some cool things, but it was the care and detail he put into the painting of the minis that made our jaws drop. It sizzled. At the start of today’s episode, I mentioned that there’s a mistake I constantly make and it has hurt me time and time again. This is that mistake. I fail to make my sessions exciting and I fail to bring the sizzle. Because of this, I’ve often wondered how fun and engaging my sessions are. So here’s my challenge for you: What’s one thing you can do this week to add more sizzle to your game? A prop, a sound effect, a player-driven story arc? Try it out, and let me know how it goes. Message me on Instagram or drop a comment on our latest post—I’d love to hear your ideas!Do Settle on a General Theme for the CampaignWithin the early campaign, it’s a great time to settle on a general theme for your overall campaign and to start trickling out signs of that theme. Foreshadowing has to come before whatever happens next, so in the early campaign that’s the best time to make that happen. For new people, a campaign theme is a general idea or pattern of messages that seems to resonate with the campaign. For example, in your campaign you may have the theme of friendship and what that is. Then from your theme, you “ask” interesting questions about your theme in the form of putting the characters in situations where you don’t know what they would do. An example of questions you could ask about the friendship theme is having one of the best friends of one of the characters show up as one of the party’s enemies. Throughout the campaign, you could have this frenemy do things to antagonize the party, but also do things to help their individual friend. The question would be, are the frenemy and the character who knows them still friends? When did they stop being friends if they did? Pick a theme idea, and then start to let that seep into the very essence of the game.Don’t Force that Theme Every SessionOne of my biggest critiques of Disney’s batch of Star Wars movies and shows is that often, Disney tries to shove their message down your throat, rather than trusting the audience to be intelligent enough to read between the lines and discover whatever message they are trying to sell you. Frankly, I’m a bit against most things Disney has done in the last couple of decades, but that’s a whole different podcast.With your games, you should avoid the Disney treatment. Don’t force the theme down the throats of your players. Don’t make it obvious, especially in the early campaign, and don’t make it so every session has to do with the theme. It should be sprinkled about until large theme elements come up, for example, the BBEG might be heavily connected to the theme. That means when you foreshadow the BBEG it’s likely that you may need to also sprinkle theme elements about. Often though, theme elements will come in the form of scenarios or questions that you essentially pose to the party and see how they react. But overall, let the theme color the story and not get in the way of it. If the party is having a hard time connecting to the story because the Theme is in the way, then just get rid of it. The theme should somewhat feel like the pacing of the story. The closer to the climax the more theme elements you can drizzle out. This is a nice tactic because when things get serious and the stakes are high, players can also look around and see a lot of familiar threads and then they’ll make a lot of connections to earlier parts of the game.Do Figure Out What Motivates Each Player and Each CharacterIn your early campaign, find out what motivates each player and what gives the highest level of satisfaction and enjoyment from D&D. You do this by testing out different scenarios and observing the reactions of each player to each scenario.Every player plays for different reasons and every player enjoys D&D for different reasons. I’ve seen this a little more lately since I started Dungeon Mastering professionally for clients. For example, in one of my groups, there is a player who is very much motivated by loot-crafting items and acquiring stuff. Because of that, I’ve tried to help him find cool ways to use a particular crafting ability that comes with his character. I’ve tried to open up the crafting so that he can craft a lot more and craft cooler stuff. Moving forward, I think I need to sprinkle in interesting and useful random magical components, or materials that could be used in crafting so that he can then go crazy trying to think up ways to use it.Other players in that same group, however, are not so loot-focused, though they very much do like loot. For these players, I add in puzzles or combat or whatever else it is they are interested in.You also need to figure out which of your players care more about hanging out with friends than they do about the story. And as a pro tip, the motivations of players can change, even from session to session. Sometimes the group gets together after a hard week in the real world and it takes a bit longer to get the game started and a bit longer to get things going seriously. News flash!That’s because that week the group is motivated by hanging out with their friends, so you don’t need to make things as interesting or serious. Instead, be relaxed and roll with the punches, possibly adding in some funny and low-stakes encounters for the party just to blow off some steam.Additionally, find out what motivates each character. Matt Coleville of MCDM says that you need to chase your characters up a tree to get them engaged. You can’t chase them up a tree unless you know what they care about. Find out what the character cares about and twist it to your aims.Don’t Go Nuts with the Sprinkles (Magic Items)It can be a challenge for new DMs to know when and how to dole out loot, especially magic items. In the early campaign, do not give out too many magical items. This is for 2 reasons.First, when figuring out encounter difficulty, the Challenge Rating of monsters is pitted against the average Party Level, at least how the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide has you do it. This method does not consider the magical items within the group very well. Adding magical items throws a whole new variable into the system that can be hard to deal with.Second, the party may just want to sell the magical items because often magical items can be worth thousands of gold pieces. This can very quickly offset the economy of your adventuring party which can result in the acquisition of other, more powerful items, or the creation of lucrative situations that could quickly unbalance the game. If this happens you can just make things harder, but often the solution to giving the party so many toys up front is to take away the toys or to devalue them by making everything else harder. Often this solution is not so fun. Better to trickle out the sprinkles a little at a time.Do Homebrew MonstersEarly on in any campaign, make sure to do homebrew adversaries often. Even if you are a very experienced DM, doing the practice of making a baddie that is correctly balanced to the skill level of the party is a great exercise. In the later campaign, you may probably want or need to homebrew a baddie because of player choice and improvised situations. You want to be able to already have the skills necessary to do homebrew them without a lot of stress. Hence the early campaign practice.For example, if you have a group that is between levels 1 and 5, it’s easy to make a monster that balanced, well at least easier than making a monster balanced for a party between levels 15 and 20. The monster will have one or two abilities and that’s it. Not so many variables.In one of my paid campaigns, the party is fighting some Goliath Gnoll Demon Hybrids. Homebrewing those was a lot easier than homebrewing the BBEG in my campaign where the party is level 16.Don’t Flesh out the Entire WorldDo not flesh out the entire world while still in the early campaign. This goes for homebrew campaigns as well as prewritten modules. Worldbuild just enough to make problems and enough to make those problems interesting.A great example of this is the old Dreamworks movie Robots. I love that movie. I used to have to watch that movie in Spanish for some Spanish homework. I was watching Robots the other day and I noticed one particular scene. It’s the scene where Madame Gasket climbs up the ventilation shaft to talk to Ratchet who is getting a back massage. If you look around that room he’s in during that, there’s nothing there. They are literally in a no-name room with nothing interesting going on around them. That’s because the storytellers at Dreamworks know that you match the details of the world to the problems of the story you’re telling.Do Be Willing to Go Off ScriptEarly on in your campaign, you will have written something down for your session, or you’ll be playing off of the pre-written module. Then a player will want to do something not in the “script” or even better, you’ll have a better idea of something to add to the game. Do it.This is officially your permission to just go with it. Follow that instinct you have and go off script. It’s especially important to follow these feelings to go off script in the early campaign because 1) it sets the tone for the rest of the campaign, and 2) it allows you to follow the added story elements for longer (which will result in a much more fun campaign).A great example of this comes from one of my paid campaigns. The party is in the Underdark and I had set up for them to find this temple. I’m running Out of the Abyss so this is the Temple of Ooze I’m talking about. In one of the central chambers, I had decided to add an Oracle to give the party the “Quest” to sort of speed things up for the party, giving them some crucial information.While roleplaying this part, I feel like the Oracle felt sad for the party. So in a moment of Inspiration, I had the Oracle give the party a boon; Magical manacles that could transport the party to the surface, to a place where they’ve been before, for 24 hours, and then at the end of the 24 hours, the manacles would bring the party back to the Underdark to a place they know. I loved this idea because it really follows one of the major themes I’m trying to get across and it also facilitates fast travel, which in this campaign we’ve done away with the tedious day-by-day travel, so it just makes sense overall. Doing stuff like this is crucial in the early game because it will set the game up later to be fully driven by table interactions.Do ForeShadowEarly on in the campaign, you should sprinkle in foreshadowing elements. Foreshadowing, for those of you who don’t know, is where you drop elements that connect to later events. In Star Wars Episode 1, when Yoda says, “Much fear I sense in you” about Anakin, that’s an example of foreshadowing. It’s important to sprinkle in these foreshadowing elements early in the game, even in a somewhat vague form because it helps make the entire story feel cohesive. You do need to be careful though not to foreshadow too much. It can’t be too obvious nor can it be too ambiguous. A simple example of...

Welcome back to the 5th installment of our short series on writing a Homebrew one-shot. In this episode, we're joined by our friend Rob Van Auken and we continue work on The Chimefall Ceremony: For Whom the Bell TolIs.This miniseries is designed to help give you an idea of how to collaborate on a project like this and how to write and publish a one-shot.Mentioned in this episode:Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Give Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.We Like YouHey Bud… How’s it going? Just wanted to say… we like you. We’re think you’re pretty cool. We hope you like us too. If you do like us and what we’re doing, you can support us on our Patreon. Just $1 a month is enough. Just go to https://session0studios.com/patreon and show your support. But even if you don’t… we still like you. See ya around bud. PatreonTry Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmith

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.Today, Tanner and Justin are joined by Ryan and Allison from The Kids Table DND (https://www.youtube.com/@thekidstablednd).Playing D&D with kids is a very intimidating concept for some DMs, and in today's show, we dive into how to do it right and the benefits it can lend to the kids and to the adults playing alongside them.Today's show is not just for parents. It' useful for every DM to really diveinto Simplicity and learn how to do things in an easy and user friendly way.Mentioned in this episode:Try Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmithGive Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.We Like YouHey Bud… How’s it going? Just wanted to say… we like you. We’re think you’re pretty cool. We hope you like us too. If you do like us and what we’re doing, you can support us on our Patreon. Just $1 a month is enough. Just go to https://session0studios.com/patreon and show your support. But even if you don’t… we still like you. See ya around bud. PatreonBrought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.

Have you ever been... frustrated with D&D? Or with your game? Or even your player interactions? Great news: you can always solve the frustrations that come as a DM--the problem is that a lot of DMs try to push down and ignore the signs of their own frustration, leaving their game and their feelings towards it to get worse and worse. Today, Tanner discusses some easy ways to resolve frustration with various aspects of the D&D experience.Mentioned in this episode:Give Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.We Like YouHey Bud… How’s it going? Just wanted to say… we like you. We’re think you’re pretty cool. We hope you like us too. If you do like us and what we’re doing, you can support us on our Patreon. Just $1 a month is enough. Just go to https://session0studios.com/patreon and show your support. But even if you don’t… we still like you. See ya around bud. PatreonTry Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmithBrought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.On today's show, we are joined by Rob Van Auken to continue our work on our homebrew one-shot, For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Chimefall Ceremony.This episode should help you learn how to do a collaborative project with friends as well as how to write and publish a one-shot.Here are the links to the previous episodes in case you need them:Part 1: https://session0studios.com/podcast/homebrew-collaboration-with-rob-van-auken-part-1/Part 2: https://session0studios.com/podcast/the-chimefall-ceremony-homebrew-project-building-with-rob-van-auken-part-2/Part 3: https://session0studios.com/podcast/for-whom-the-bell-tolls-homebrew-collaboration-part-3/Mentioned in this episode:We Like YouHey Bud… How’s it going? Just wanted to say… we like you. We’re think you’re pretty cool. We hope you like us too. If you do like us and what we’re doing, you can support us on our Patreon. Just $1 a month is enough. Just go to https://session0studios.com/patreon and show your support. But even if you don’t… we still like you. See ya around bud. PatreonGive Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.Try Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmithBrought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.Today is a coaching episode with Samantha Fortune.We talked about using a timeline to prep sessions and to use real-life weather to inspire the weather in games. Samantha also highlights the power of in-game favors and using those to motivate characters to do things or to intimidate them to do things.Mentioned in this episode:Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Give Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.Try Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmithStart Leveling Up As a DMWouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities? In D&D, characters can reach level 20, so why can’t dungeon masters? We’re happy to tell you that now, you can. We created the Dungeon Master Level-Up Guide. It’s a simple tool to gamify your progression to higher and higher levels of dungeon mastering. It includes Dungeon Master Levels 1 to 20 with associated XP requirements as well as a long list of Dungeon Master activities that will give you XP. Each activity has a Challenge Rating and an XP amount. In order to level up, all you need to do is find out how much XP you have, find out how much you need and pick activities to try. You can get the Dungeon Master Level-Up guide for free by going to session0studios.com/newsletter/, sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email you the Level-Up Guide. Finally, leveling up as a DM can be as fun as leveling up a character. Level Up Guide

Welcome back!Today, I'll talk about my goals as a DM for 2025. May these inspire you to make your own goals.Develop my SizzleCreate the Ultimate Session Planning FrameworkFinish and Publish 3 One-shot AdventuresImprove combat / Make it Less BoringPerfect the CASE MethodWork on my SkillsWork on Interpersonal Communication and RelationshipsWork on the Game part of Roleplaying gamesImprove my min/maxing of Combat encountersMentioned in this episode:Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Give Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.Start Leveling Up As a DMWouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities? In D&D, characters can reach level 20, so why can’t dungeon masters? We’re happy to tell you that now, you can. We created the Dungeon Master Level-Up Guide. It’s a simple tool to gamify your progression to higher and higher levels of dungeon mastering. It includes Dungeon Master Levels 1 to 20 with associated XP requirements as well as a long list of Dungeon Master activities that will give you XP. Each activity has a Challenge Rating and an XP amount. In order to level up, all you need to do is find out how much XP you have, find out how much you need and pick activities to try. You can get the Dungeon Master Level-Up guide for free by going to session0studios.com/newsletter/, sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email you the Level-Up Guide. Finally, leveling up as a DM can be as fun as leveling up a character. Level Up GuideTry Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmith

In any publicly traded company, shareholders who own a portion of the company can expect a year-end review and a prospectus of what the new year will bring. This is to give some accountability of those running the company to those who’ve invested their time and money into it.Well, seeing as how you’ve decided to invest at least your time into this podcast, I think it only fair that we give you some sort of report so that we can be somewhat accountable to you for what this show is doing and what it will do in the future.Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.I’m Justin Lewis and for over 3 years now, you and I have been figuring out better ways to help you improve your DMing craft without having to devote extra time, money or stress. You might be new to the show, in which case, thanks for giving us a chance and letting us invade your earspace, or you might have been with us from the beginning, in which place, please make yourself known to us because we actually have no idea who has been listening to us since the beginning. Whoever you are, we’re happy your here.Let me let you in on how I view things.I view you listening to us as an investment. Of course, we are doing everything we can to make sure you get tremendous value everytime you pop us in your earbuds and go for a run, or do the dishes, but frankly, we know what we are. We know we aren’t the most professionally produced show. You can probably tell simply by hearing my baby boy in the background. We also know that we don’t do this full-time and honestly, are still growing as dungeon masters ourselves.But…Many of you choose to listen to us anyway. In fact, many of you are grateful to us and have binged our show! Somehow, despite our weaknesses, you’ve still managed to find some good and enjoy it. To me, that shows that you are putting an investment into us. You’re devoting some of your precious time to listen to us and to us that investment of yours requires us to do the very best we can to make the show better.So for this episode, don’t consider yourself a dungeon master only, but also consider yourself an investor in our show and consider me the CEO giving you a report of how things went this year. Now I know this analogy only goes so far, but I hope you get the idea.Let me first start off by giving a brief summary of what we did this year:Monsters.Rent: When we first started 2024, we had just closed up shop on our previous business model of Monsters.Rent. Obviously, for us to be able to keep doing this podcast, we needed to figure out some way to use it to get resources so we could make it better. Previously, we tried creating a D&D mini subscription rental service. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t figure out how to make the logistics of it work. We had a nice run, but over time we just realized we couldn’t make it work. Session 0 Studios: So instead, we pivoted to Session 0 Studios. We brought on Cayden and Jake and created Session 0 Studios and started our new show The Pact and Boon. For those of you that don’t know, The Pact and Boon is our sister show which is an actual play show following the stories of 3 unlikely adventurers who start their journey in the pits of Hell. Full transparency, over this last year, we had quite a few road bumps with that particular show and have honestly had a pretty hard time aligning ourselves on how to keep it going. If you follow that show, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been on hiatus for a second. First off, we’re very sorry about that. Because The Pact and Boon is so new, we got excited and bit off more than we could chew. So coming in the new year, we’re going to restart up the show and settle on a more consistent posting schedule even if we don’t post as much. We’ll also have a new element added in where each of us will switch off being the Dungeon Master! Starting in January of 2025 we’ll have Tanner running the show for a while so make sure to tune back in because it will be a very fun time!Conventions! With the switch to Session 0 Studios, we made a bigger play to go to events and conventions. I say bigger but really that just means we went from 0 events to technically 3. The first event was Dead Wars hosted by our friend Andrew Ashby of We Geek Together in Provo Utah. Andrew has been so great to us and our shows and we were very lucky to not only attend Dead Wars but also to host one of the panels at the event. Towards the end of this year, I was also able to host 2 panels at Dragonsteel Nexus 2024 which was so fun and, with luck, we’ll be able to release the audio for those of those panels on this show as podcast episodes so stay tuned! Podcast Guests: Over this last year, we were able to get some really great guests on the show! Among some of the more noteworthy were author Dan Wells, and influencers Jay Foster from Swole Initiative and Jay from Jay’s Tabletop Terrain. We were really lucky to make these connections and we’re hopeful to keep doing more with these guests as well as other guests in the future. Our Podcast Appearances: We also appeared as guests on a handful of podcasts which was such a great experience and is honestly one of the best ways to expand our reach and get our name out there.Services: As I mentioned, one of the biggest challenges we’ve had with the podcast was getting resources so we could improve the quality of the show, expand our reach, and honestly justify this project to our wives. This year were able to make some great headway into that department. We created a few affiliate relationships with brands like Monument Studios and Roll and Play Press, which, thanks to you, have proven to be pretty successful relationships! In addition to that, we began offering our Professional Dungeon Master services which have grown fairly well, though we expect that particular service to still be in its beginning stages. That service is particularly important because it gives us more experience and puts us in unique and challenging circumstances, all of which helps us create better podcast episodes and help you more and more. In addition to that, we began offering our Dungeon Master coaching services with the first session being a free offering to anyone willing to let us record that and put it up as a podcast episode. So far this service has been very fun, and a great learning experience. We’ve met some very awesome people (spoiler, we’ll be releasing their sessions as episodes in the new year so you can meet them too) and it’s really helped us learn how better to help more and more people. Instagram: Over the last year, I have put a fairly big emphasis into Instagram and growing our presence there. I have not become InstaFamous, and if you know me personally, you know that if it weren’t for the podcast, I wouldn’t really be on Instagram at all. I’m proud of the growth we’ve had on Instagram and that’s important to us because the more reach we have, the easier it will be for us to get higher-tier podcast guests and the more social proof we have. Essentially, the more reach we have, the better we can make the podcast and its content for you.Overall 2024 was a really great year of growth and new horizons!Now let’s get into 2025.Let’s get real. First of all, let me be completely frank about the show. This is just from my perspective as I haven’t been able to chat with the other hosts about this yet. While I would love to do this full-time and be able to devote much more time to the show, it’s just not there yet, and unless some things change pretty drastically, I’m not sure that it would be able to sustain even one of our cohosts on a full-time basis. We are all going to do the very best we can, but for most of us, we have other commitments and frankly, other areas of life that require more of our time, attention and diligence. We love the show, and we care deeply for you our listener, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. So in this next party when I talk about all of the stuff I hope to be able to do in 2025, take it all with a grain of salt. We might not be able to do it simply because we’re doing other stuff to take care of our families. Podcast Episodes: Ok with that out of the way, the first thing I hope to be able to do is to start releasing extra episodes every week. These episodes will often be Coaching Episodes, sessions from our Professional Dungeon Mastering, or the Homebrew Project we’ve been working on with Rob Van Auken. From time to it might be me giving one of my RAW episodes, and if you’re new what that means is that it’s an episode where I don’t really edit it, and the rules are if I yawn in the episode more than 5 times I owe you another episode. I’ve had a theory for a while that you’d appreciate a 2nd episode each week, and the only way to prove or disprove that theory is to get your feedback via direct messages or just to see whether or not you listen to those episodes.Podcast Guests: Next, my plan is to get better guests on the show. I’m very likely going to have Jay Foster back on the show and maybe Jay from Jay’s Tabletop Terrain. I’m also hoping to start to reach out to bigger names like maybe Matt Colevile. I also want to have Zach from ZachtheBold on Instagram on the show and some of the people that I paneled with at Dragonsteel Nexus. The big thing I really want to do this year is to make real connections with guests rather than have them on the show and just have it be a once and done thing. I’d love to have the guests on the show and then maybe do a one-shot with them and really connect while having fun. Social Media: This year, I’m going to experiment with social media a little more. I’m going to release the content I’ve been putting out on Instagram, but put it out on TikTok, and maybe even dabble a little into Linkedin, though that will mostly be team-building stuff and I’m still unsure about that. One thing is for sure though, I’m going to scale back the new social media content production to a much slower pace. Posting a new video every day was just too much, and honestly, I think it was somewhat counterproductive algorithm wise. I also think it would be better for me to spend my time creating better quality content rather than more content. But I also hate social media so yeah there’s that.The Pact and Boon: As I’ve already said, we’ll be restarting the Pact and Boon and because of the work we’ve put in in other areas of Session 0 Studios, we do have a little bit more resources to make recording those shows better and easier for us so that it’s both a more convenient experience and a more fulfilling one for you. Professional DMing: We’re going to continue working on getting professional DMing clients and building out our client base as well as expanding our skill set.DM Coaching: We’re going to continue offering free recorded sessions and hopefully gain a paying client or two, though for now the free session episodes is helping us content wise as well.Patreon: Since we already have Done For You DMing in the form of Professional DMing and Done With You DMing in the form of DM Coaching, we’re going to really work on our Patreon to offer Do It Yourself content in the form of courses, homebrew resources and more. YoutubeResource ModulesWolrdSmith.IoMentioned in this episode:Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Give Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.Try Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmithStart Leveling Up As a DMWouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities? In D&D, characters can reach level 20, so why can’t dungeon masters? We’re happy to tell you that now, you can. We created the Dungeon Master Level-Up Guide. It’s a simple tool to gamify your progression to higher and higher levels of dungeon mastering. It includes Dungeon Master Levels 1 to 20 with associated XP requirements as well as a long list of Dungeon Master activities that will give you XP. Each activity has a Challenge Rating and an XP amount. In order to level up, all you need to do is find out how much XP you have, find out how much you need and pick activities to try. You can get the Dungeon Master Level-Up guide for free by going to session0studios.com/newsletter/, sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email you the Level-Up Guide. Finally, leveling up as a DM can be as fun as leveling up a character. Level Up Guide

Welcome back to today's show.Here's a simple session 0 checklist to help you set your games up for successGet the First Session ScheduledSet Expectations2a. Your Expectations2b. The party’s Expectations and WantsTable RulesThe Premise of the StoryPlaytestingParty ConnectionsToolsMentioned in this episode:Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Give Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.Try Worldsmith Today!Give yourself access to infinite possibilities with Worldsmith! It's the ultimate tool for Dungeon Masters to spark creativity or just save your bacon when you're in a bind. You can generate infinite stories, traps or treasures. Sign up at https://session0studios.com/worldsmith-podcastWorldsmithStart Leveling Up As a DMWouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities? In D&D, characters can reach level 20, so why can’t dungeon masters? We’re happy to tell you that now, you can. We created the Dungeon Master Level-Up Guide. It’s a simple tool to gamify your progression to higher and higher levels of dungeon mastering. It includes Dungeon Master Levels 1 to 20 with associated XP requirements as well as a long list of Dungeon Master activities that will give you XP. Each activity has a Challenge Rating and an XP amount. In order to level up, all you need to do is find out how much XP you have, find out how much you need and pick activities to try. You can get the Dungeon Master Level-Up guide for free by going to session0studios.com/newsletter/, sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email you the Level-Up Guide. Finally, leveling up as a DM can be as fun as leveling up a character. Level Up Guide

It's hard knowing what to throw at your players during an encounter. Luckily, D&D has a nifty challenge rating system set up to help you out. Easy!.... right? Actually, no. So many DMs don't know how to approach Challenge Ratings for their encounters because of the dense tables and calculations. However, it isn't something worth stressing about at all, as you'll learn in today's episode.Mentioned in this episode:Start Leveling Up As a DMWouldn’t it be nice to gamify your dungeon master abilities? In D&D, characters can reach level 20, so why can’t dungeon masters? We’re happy to tell you that now, you can. We created the Dungeon Master Level-Up Guide. It’s a simple tool to gamify your progression to higher and higher levels of dungeon mastering. It includes Dungeon Master Levels 1 to 20 with associated XP requirements as well as a long list of Dungeon Master activities that will give you XP. Each activity has a Challenge Rating and an XP amount. In order to level up, all you need to do is find out how much XP you have, find out how much you need and pick activities to try. You can get the Dungeon Master Level-Up guide for free by going to session0studios.com/newsletter/, sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email you the Level-Up Guide. Finally, leveling up as a DM can be as fun as leveling up a character. Level Up GuideGive Us a Rating and ReviewYou obviously have really good taste, you’re listening to How to Be a Better DM after all. We thank you for your support. If you’ve ever gotten anything useful from our show, take a minute to give us a rating and a review. It goes a very long way to making it so How to Be a Better DM can help many more dungeon masters just like you. If you love our content, help others become better dungeon masters too.Always Have Your Sessions Prepared!You work 8 hours a day. You spend time with your family when you come home. You do work around the house and it seems you never have as much time as you would like to prepare your D&D sessions. Does this sound like you? Wouldn’t it be amazing to have endless material prepared for your D&D sessions anyways? That’s where Roll and Play Press comes in. Roll and Play Press provides D&D 5e Compatible materials for any type of session. Running a one-shot? Check out their One Shot Wonders book with over 100 one-shot ideas. Getting started with your new sci-fi campaign? Get their Game Master’s Sci-Fi Toolkit to have your games much more prepared. Why reinvent the wheel? Check out Roll and Play Press at rollandplaypress.com and get 10% off when you buy something by using the code BETTERDM10. Roll and Play PressBrought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.