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

Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. Today, I am talking about how to make D&D one-shots impactful for our players (hint: it's not about doing just combat).If you would like to sign up for future one-shot podcasts, sign up at this link: https://how-to-be-a-better-dm.captivate.fm/one-shot. We always love playing with you!Mentioned in this episode:Save time with Roll and Play PressSave yourself some precious time with Roll and Play Press. Go to https://session0studios.com/rollandplay and use code BETTERDM10 at checkout.Get The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree For FreeTake a trip down to the bayou in The Swampberry Moonshine Jamboree. We teamed up with Studio Fantasms to bring you a raucous one-shot adventure full of gatorfolk, catfishing, and a whole lotta moonshine. We wrote the adventure, they designed the minis—it’s a sweet little bundle, and it’s totally free for the month of May. Just head to https://session0studios.com/fantasms and sign up to grab it. Don’t wait—May’s free, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.

Justin: Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I am Justin Lewis here with Tanner Wayland. Go ahead and say hello, Tanner.Tanner Weyland:Hey Justin, hey everybody.Justin:And today we are celebrating our 100th episode. It is mind-boggling to think that we've been doing this for 100 episodes and thinking you know one episode a week that's almost that's a little over no that's just under two years of doing this show and the amount of growth we've seen has been just phenomenal. First thing before we do anything else on today's show, we just wanted to give a big thank you to all of you listeners out there, you in particular, andTanner Weyland:HahahaJustin:make you aware of our deep gratitude for allowing us to do this. And when I say allow, I mean podcasting is somewhat lonely, right? But we've had certain experiences of... listeners reaching out and helping us remember that we're not alone and we're not just speaking into a you know a windstorm but What we're putting out is actually being received and you know you guys like it which is which is even more gratifying So a big thank you to you guysTanner Weyland:Absolutely. It's been, you know, kind of shocking how much you guys care about what we have to say. And you know, we put work into this, but a lot of people put a lot of work into things, and it doesn't get reciprocated at all. And we just, we really appreciate, you know, knowing that you guys are listening, and that there's a big community out there who's trying to improve, you know, they're DMing right alongside us, you know?Justin:Absolutely, absolutely. So today's show, it's not going to be like normal shows to be honest. We're going to be a little bit more loose, a little bit more just random, I guess. But we wanted to talk about some of our thoughts for what we see moving forward and our goals and desires and wishes for how to be a better DM and betterdungeonmaster.com and kind of what we want to build moving forward. You know, as we get started, just wanted to ask Tanner, is there anything specific that you personally would just think would be the coolest thing to do or anything like that?Tanner Weyland:Um, something that I've really liked the idea of because, you know, in one of our recent podcasts, we were talking about peer reviewing and, and I think it's such a powerful tool for improving, uh, is just having that kind of critical look at specific moment to moments of DMing. Uh, something we really want to do is, uh, you know, provide some content where we're actually reviewing, uh, you know, some of our one shots and some that maybe other people send us. Uh, we, uh, I really like that idea. Cause I think seeing someone DM in action, it's a very different experience from talking about it in the theoretical, you know? Uh, so that's something that I'm really excited about. We've, uh, we've discussed, you know, uh, we're, you know, this is a little bit of a, Jump ahead, but we're doing a membership on our site and you know, we're gonna be posting some of the Recordings of our one shots, but we also thought it would be great to alongside that maybe at the same tier or a different tier of membership, do commentary on that, where we're like, hey, let's take this moment by moment, pause during the one shot and just talk about like, hey, here's what I loved about what they're doing or what we're doing if we're the ones podcasting or hey, here's maybe, they did okay here, here's how it could have been improved. And that kind of idea excites me a lot.Justin:I really like that too. Just the fact of, and I think we did this once before and we put it out as an episode,Tanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:but looking at your dungeon mastering skills, not in a you're a terrible person kind of way, but in a man this would be so cool if you just did it this way, right? And thinking back to the episode that we did, I was the one being critiqued. and it was my Trouble in Autumn's Grace one-shot. And going through that critique, we only went through like the first 20 minutes, but even that really helped me improve the intro of that one-shot, specifically with regards to an NPC, the mayor of the town, and where he comes in and where you find him and meet him. Going through that critique really helped me kind of- streamline that and improve that a lot. So that is definitely something I'm looking forward to. As far as the membership goes, that's something that's kind of been a long time coming. We just released it. It's pretty new. It's in its infant state. The way I see it right now, right now, we... It's $1.33 a month. The 33 cents covers the cost for our payment gateway. So it's really just And the way I see that is our basic membership will always be $1.33. As we grow and we provide more content, we'll probably create higher levels. And at the time when we create any higher level, I think we will upgrade everyone in the previous levels, kind of one up, right? And grandfather them into that. So anyone who has signed up for the basic subscription now. When we create future levels, they'll just get moved up, pay the same price as they were always paying, but have access to the new stuff. That's the way I see it.Tanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:And as far as that membership, right now we are creating VTT maps, so virtual tabletop maps on Dungeon Alchemist, putting those up, you can download those and use those in your campaigns online. Any of our one-shot videos we're going to put up there as well, we're going to stop Streaming those, I think, is what we said, Tanner.Tanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:Yeah, so we're going to stop streaming the one shots, but we're going to put those up on the membership so anyone can see those on the membership. And then we're also creating a course. Right now we're in the midst of creating a beginner Dungeon Master course and putting that up on the membership so anyone who has a membership can access that course. And obviously we're going to do more courses like that in the future. Is there anything else that I'm forgetting that we were going to add to the membership? Oh, the Discord, so anyone who signsTanner Weyland:Yes.Justin:up for the membership can join our Discord and, you know, come party with me and Tanner.Tanner Weyland:Yeah, yeah, we had a member join just the other day. And we were talking all about maps. I was amazed at how many maps he just had just sketched out in his notebook. I wasJustin:Right?Tanner Weyland:like, gosh, I love this.Justin:So cool,Tanner Weyland:AndJustin:so cool.Tanner Weyland:we were just talking about like, he had this idea of doing a campaign in like essentially a Costco, a fantasy Costco or, or a real one. I, you know, and I was like, I love this. What could you do with the samples? Could the samples be buffs? Could some of themJustin:Ha haTanner Weyland:beJustin:haTanner Weyland:aJustin:ha.Tanner Weyland:trap? Um, and anyway, loved it. Uh, sorry, sorry to distract.Justin:No, no, no, I think that's so great. And that's just one of the benefits of coming in the Discord and just being able to shoot the breeze with anyone who really likes being a Dungeon Master. I think those are our plans for the membership right now. The next thing we're going to really focus on is one-shots. We're going to make a big push to have our one-shot scheduled up on our website so... You know, like, it's just easier to plan, easier to kind of work through thatTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:and stuff like that.Tanner Weyland:Yeah, it's great. And honestly, probably one of the big things that I'm excited for is Justin's having a baby.Justin:Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, my wife is pregnant and she is due... Hold on. Sorry, I just got a text. Yeah, just give me one second.Tanner Weyland:You're fine.Justin:Sorry, someone just needed something and they're about to go somewhere, so I needed to tell them. Anyways,Tanner Weyland:Yeah, you're fine.Justin:yeah, so our baby is due in August and they will be the newest member of the Better Dungeon Master team. And just super excited to be a dad, interested to see how it's gonna change my life and change this. Hopefully it shouldn't change the podcast too much, but time will tell. And then,Tanner Weyland:Yeah,Justin:go ahead.Tanner Weyland:oh go ahead. Anyway, I was just gonna say that we will definitely give Justin a break there, probablyJustin:YeahTanner Weyland:record a lot beforehand so that he has that time to spend with the baby.Justin:One other thing as far as the one shots go is I do want to make a bigger push to get some of our podcast guests to play in the one shot. So, you know, if you sign up for a one shot, there's a possibility you could be playing with, you know, our last podcast interviewee or, you know, someone who we've had on the show before. Just to make it a little bit more interesting and a little bit more sizzle for you. Anything else as far as one shots go?Tanner Weyland:No, I'm just excited for you know laying it out and hopefully you guys are able to join oneJustin:Exactly. Next up, we are going to be, we're gonna be working on more merch. Right now we just have hoodies, and the hoodies were designed, or at least the design on the hoodies were designed by one of our listeners. And we wanna give you this. offer as well. Anyone who designs a logo for us, we put it up on our website and it gets purchases, we will share the profit with you 50-50. So that includes t-shirts, stickers, whatever, right? But that means we will also be working on our own designs and we keep the profits. So if you want to steal from us, just go ahead and submit some of your designs to us and we'll get that up on our site. And you know, hoodies, t-shirts, t-shirts, sorry, stickers, you know, the whole stuff, right?Tanner Weyland:Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for those, especially, we're gonna have some nice stickers, I feel like. And I'm a sucker for stickers.Justin:I am a sucker for stickers too, except I don't put them on anything, I just collect them. You know?Tanner Weyland:Yeah, same. There's part of me that's like, oh, I love people use water bottlesJustin:I'm going to go ahead and close the video.Tanner Weyland:I have a bunch of stickers or their laptops, but I'm always such a pansy. I'm like, yeah, but what if I don't like it later?Justin:Mm-hmm.Tanner Weyland:But I really like Collecting stickers and who knows maybe after we get some awesome Designs created then you know that may change. I might start might start putting stickers You know on the things I care about whoJustin:Agreed.Tanner Weyland:knowsJustin:And then one day when we have our own location, our brick and mortar studio, we can have a sticker wall where that's the designated place for all the stickers we ever find. And that'll be it.Tanner Weyland:It'll be perfect. It'll be perfect. And we'll have a sticker car where we just, no, I'm just kidding. Yeah.Justin:Actually, having a sticker wall sounds like something like those SaaS companies out of like Silicon Valley orTanner Weyland:Yes.Justin:Utah, Silicon Slopes. It sounds like something they would do. So I definitelyTanner Weyland:ItJustin:wantTanner Weyland:absolutelyJustin:to do that actually.Tanner Weyland:does.Justin:Next, we've toyed around with the idea of making like a custom DM screen. The ideas for that are pretty long out. So that's something we'll definitely have to think about. just kind of what we want it to look like, what it would be made out of, how we would create it, and what would be most useful. So stay tuned on that.Tanner Weyland:Yeah, that one's gonna be great, because you guys know how a lot of DM screens will have the numbers, like the stat blocks, the different rolling charts, right? This one though, we would try and make it about how you can be a better DM, kind of those softer skills, those reminders. So we're very excited about that one.Justin:Next, we're also slowly working on the ultimate dungeon master's guide. So essentially, like the go-to book for everything on being a better dungeon master. It'll essentially be a distillation of all the good juices that come from this podcast and everything about it. It might take some time, but... slowly we're gonna get there very slowly and we'll publish that and then get that createdTanner Weyland:Yeah, that one, we just, you know, we realized that a weekly podcast is great. Certainly is, but you know, some of the ideas that we have and some of the recommendations get lost in the shuffle. What's a better way to do that? You put it in a bookJustin:Ha ha.Tanner Weyland:or a course or whatever, you know,Justin:Sure.Tanner Weyland:so that it's cataloged. So yeah, very excited about that.Justin:Exactly. One other thing that I've been thinking about is maybe some meetups or something like that. Some live events that people, if they're in the area, can come join and, you know, I don't know, maybe we just go see a movie or something. I'm really bad at playing events, but, you know, maybe we do like a D&D tournament versus, you know, one table versus another. Who knows, right?Tanner Weyland:Yeah, and honestly, Justin and I, we're going to most likely be at FanX,

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m your Host today, Justin Lewis and today, I want to talk about an aspect of D&D that is one-part storytelling prompt, one-part game mechanic, and overall an interesting facet of the game, namely alignment.We’ve all heard the famous phrase of, “It’s what my character would do.”Naturally, when someone says that, they are usually trying to justify something stupid, evil, weird, or just wrong that they’ve done. Sometimes they’ll cite their alignment as the main driver of their choice making process. For some reason that never really sat well with me. So today, I want to talk about a couple ways to think about alignment, and hopefully help you determine that you need to choose the way you’re going to look at alignment in your game, because it can radically change how your characters act and how you act towards your characters.What is AlignmentBefore we get into how to use alignment in your games, let’s first figure out what alignment is. Even defining it is going to be difficult because how you define it will also impact how you play with it. So i’m going to try to define it and explain it in a way that is agnostic of the way you choose to play with it.Let me first start by saying that alignment is an optional mechanic of the game. Nowhere does it say in any rulebook or game module that you need to have alignment. Only certain items have requirements about alignment, and that’s simply for the purpose of attunement. As a DM, you can simply choose to disregard all of that, so if you feel that alignment just gums up the system and makes things harder to play, then great. Alignment is not necessary, though in my opinion, it does make things much more fun.So in its most basic form, alignment describes your characters position relative to Order and Chaos and relative to Good and Evil. I won’t go too much more in dept quite yet, because I don’t want to affect how you think about alignment before I explain the two ways you can use it in game.In the first edition of D&D, or really when it was just an add-on to the game Chainmail, there was only the choice between Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic. It was much simpler, but then as things progressed, D&D evolved to have the Chaotic and Lawful spectrum and the Evil and Good Spectrum.What Purpose does Alignment Serve?In reality, alignment, just like everything else in the game, only helps move the story along. You can take any mechanic out and still move the story along. So really Alignment is just a plot device in the sense that it’s supposed to theoretically impact how your character develops and the choices they make. In practice though, that becomes very messy. You start asking questions about morality, right and wrong, and to be honest the whole discussion becomes very philosophical.So let me introduce you to my quandary and how I came to think about alignment.My QuandaryIn my current campaign, my wife’s character found himself stuck in his own mindscape. He had essentially been banned there by a being called Dreamtaker, who I’ve talked about on this podcast before. While in the mindscape, the character, Ransom, encountered an evil little character that inhabits part of his mind named Mtiq. Mtiq is supposed to symbolize the potential every being has to do evil. It’s the potential to become the worst version of ourselves. Well, Ransom had become very lost because the mindscape is a maze, naturally. So this evil Mtiq, offered Ransom a map to the mindscape in exchange for his “Innocence”.Frustrated with the maze and wanting to get out, Ransom took the deal and escaped the mind-maze, but naturally lost his innocence. As soon as Ransom left the maze, I informed my wife that his alignment was now chaotic-evil. She was not happy about that. Since then she’s been asking me about ways she can get her innocence back, but really her question is about whether or not she can change her alignment.Fast forward a few weeks and my brother-in-law, Drew is in town. He and his wife want to join us for one of our sessions. As chance would have it, my other brother-in-law, Ethan, who has a character in our campaign couldn’t make it that night, so Drew played Ethan’s Character Necro, while Drew’s wife played an NPC. While playing, Drew decided to split Necro from the party and investigate a dockyard. At the dockyard, Drew had Necro pick a fight with and murder a dockworker. Ethan came back just at that moment and with despair saw what was happening with his character. Now this isn’t the first time Necro has murdered someone, but this time was different in that there weren’t any extenuating circumstances. Necro had just murdered this dockhand in cold blood. I told Ethan, that his alignment had shifted towards evil. He was upset naturally, as his character had been trying to make strides toward being good.With both of these stories in mind, and the desire for these two players to have their characters to be good, I had an interesting thought cross my mind.I wondered, “Is alignment prescriptive or descriptive?”Does your alignment tell you how your character should act, or how they have acted in the past?I’ve come to the conclusion, that you need to make that decisions because when you explain this to your players, you can then let them make choices moving forward with that in mind. So let’s look at the 3 options that this opens up to you (yes there is a secret 3rd option).Descriptive If you choose to let the alignment be descriptive, then it is more of a description of all their past deeds. It has little bearing on what they will do in the future and instead is more of a reputational aspect.If you choose to play with this method, then I would adopt certain measures that somewhat in the old game Knights of the Old Republic. In that game when you pause the game, you’d see your character standing there with a spectrum and a guage showing how far they are into the light or dark sides. When they are in the light side, they stand tall and are surrounded by light and have an aura of good about them. If they are deep in the dark side, then their eyes have darkened and their face is covered by a permanent scowl. They are surrounded by darkness.If you use the descriptive method of Alignment, then I would adopt similar attributes and if they make their way to being Chaotic Evil, then people start to perceive and mistrust them. Any persuasion checks that rely on trust or good will will receive disadvantage. On the other hand, any checks involving deception or intimidation should probably get some sort of advantage.On the flip side, if your character is lawful good, then they should likely be naturally trusted.Of course, this is simplifying things but you get the general idea. The alignment becomes a list of all the bad things they done or the good things. Over time, people would naturally get a sense of those things just by being around them.In this method, if someone wants to change their alignment, then they have to consciously do actions over a long period of time to slowly change their alignment.PrescriptiveThe prescriptive method of Alignment is less about what you’ve done and more about what you aspire to be. The distinction is slight, but the big difference is that a character can choose to change their alignment in an instant. Changing alignment would likely require some large emotional experience but it could happen. From that moment, despite shortcomings, the character would try to live up to a certain ideal lifestyle.From a DM’s perspective, you could reward strenuous attempts with advantage or inspiration and give de-inspiration for actions that go against the alignment.The ComboAs you’ve no doubt guessed by now, the 3rd option is the combination of the 2. Really, this is closer to how we live in our real lives. We are partly our past and partly our aspirations for the future. If you can handle it, try and combine both of these methods to create a current alignment that correctly reflects the cumulative effect of all the decisions of the past and at the same time allows the character to aspire for different ways of life and try to make their way to that point.I suppose you could also cut it down into “if you want to change your alignment you have to essentially get a certain number alignment points in this or that direction.” I might implement that as a test with my players, but it is going to be difficult. And why shouldn’t it be. We’re only talking about the concept of good and evil and how to act rightly in a difficult world.As you go out and play your sessions with your players, I’d encourage you to bring in more and more moral quandaries and questions. Thinking of right and wrong and best and worst decisions is at the very nature of human existence. Your players will enjoy being pushed to think about what they really should do and what effect it will have on their characters. They will also enjoy the opportunity to try and do that in their own life. In that way, D&D becomes much more than a game.I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. It was a little different and a lot more philosophical. I’m confident though that thinking about alignment will make your games more interesting. We’ll be back next week for another great episode. Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.Mentioned in this episode:Join Our DiscordSo a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army. That’s right, we’re building an army of amazing dungeon masters who want to make the world of D&D a better place. If you want to join our army and fight by our side against the evil forces of boredom and bad dming, join our Discord and lend your voice to the cause. Go to Session0studios.com/discord and join for free today. DiscordBrought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Add the Magic of Sound to Your GameplayWhen you set the scene you need to tap into the five senses. When it comes to sound one of the best ways to do that is with music, sound effects, and ambience. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Monument Studios. Monument Studios provides an easy-to-use Soundboard perfect for Dungeon Mastering. If you want to see this in action, go to fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off of your first month of their Fantasy+ App by using the code BETTERDM at check out. Again that is fantasy-plus.com and BETTERDM at checkout. Monument Studios

Welcome to How to Be a Better DM! Tanner talks about how you can take immersion to the next level through the snacks that you prepare as well as the food you introduce to your players' characters.Also, if you'd like to sign up for one of our One-shots, do so here: https://how-to-be-a-better-dm.captivate.fm/one-shotMentioned in this episode:Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Join Our DiscordSo a little bit of a spoiler alert. We’re building an army. That’s right, we’re building an army of amazing dungeon masters who want to make the world of D&D a better place. If you want to join our army and fight by our side against the evil forces of boredom and bad dming, join our Discord and lend your voice to the cause. Go to Session0studios.com/discord and join for free today. DiscordWhy Listen to Ads?Ugh, another ad break. Let’s be real—ads are the worst. If you’re anything like my wife, you’d rather quit a show entirely than sit through another ad. So why suffer? Just skip them. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and enjoy ad-free episodes with exclusive patron-only content—all for just $5 a month. Look at you, all fancy with your uninterrupted listening experience. So stop wasting time on ads (like this one). Go to patreon.com/betterdungeonmaster and upgrade your listening today!Patreon

Voice actor Victor Bevine, known for his portrayal of Drizzt Do'Urden in the R.A. Salvatore books, discusses his career and narrating the Drizzt series for over 10 years. They also talk about the interconnection between voice acting and writing, the challenges of narrating fictional books, the selection process for narrators, and the importance of conveying deep emotion in voice acting.

justin_lewis:Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. I'm one of your hosts today, Justin Lewis, and I'm here with Rob and Tanner Wayland. And I'll let Rob introduce himself in a second, but let me first tell you, the listener, about today's episode. So if you're new here, we are here to help you craft better stories for yourself and your players as you DM sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. And today, we're actually gonna dive into the world of homebrew creations. Specifically, we're going to show you kind of the start to finish, hopefully start to finish. We might split this episode up into two episodes, but the start to finish process of creating something, but also the start to finish process of collaborating with someone else in creating something, because being a DM can be somewhat lonely and it's very taxing if it is lonely. So when you team up with other people like Rob, you can make it easier for everyone. But also, it's just fun to connect and be cool with people. So. Rob, if you want to introduce yourself and then we can hop into what we're doing today. Oh, you'rerob:Hellojustin_lewis:muted.rob:there, hi, sorryjustin_lewis:Thererob:aboutjustin_lewis:yourob:that.justin_lewis:are.tanner_weyland:You're good.rob:My name is Rob Van Auchen, and I write and publish a lot of stuff under DM Robrick. I'm just happy to be here with you guys. I've played with both of you in your one shots, and I'm a frequent listener, and I'm looking forward to this. Should be a lot of fun.justin_lewis:Yeah, yeah. And listener, if you wanna catch one of Rob's published encounters, you can go to betterdungeonmaster.com slash Robrick and purchase it, it's an awesome encounter called the Lorecraft Collection, did I get that right?rob:That'sjustin_lewis:The Lorecraft,rob:correct.justin_lewis:yes, yeah. So go ahead and publish that, all the proceeds go right to Rob, cause he's an awesome DM. But today, like I said, we're going to work on home brewing and We haven't prepared anything specifically to show you, you know, the ups and downs, the ins and outs and the exciting and boring parts of homebrew creation. So I have shared a document with all three of us. First of all, did either of you have any specific ideas on anything you wanted to create together?rob:I'm game for just about anything, but I thought I would put that question right back to you folks. I don't know the scale and scope of what you guys were thinking, but we can go anywhere from, you know, a fun random table to a one-page encounter to a several-page, you know, one-shot kind of adventure in a box kind of thing, if that's what you guys are looking for.justin_lewis:Sure. Tanner, any specific way you're leaning?tanner_weyland:Ooh, man, I've been thinking about this as well, because I think, I mean, it'd be cool to do a one-shot, but that is, you know, it takes a good amount of planning.justin_lewis:Yeah.tanner_weyland:So. I think we'd come uprob:Nope.tanner_weyland:with... Oh, go ahead.rob:No, no pressure.tanner_weyland:Yeah,rob:Notanner_weyland:Irob:pressure.tanner_weyland:know, right? I'm thinking that maybe we just figure out, like just how, huh, like how longrob:Yeah.tanner_weyland:we want it to last, and then essentially just go work backwards from there, come up with ajustin_lewis:Sure.tanner_weyland:cool premise, movejustin_lewis:Sure.tanner_weyland:from, I don't know,rob:So,tanner_weyland:that sound good? ["Spring Day"]rob:absolutely, to date, I don't wanna call it my area of expertise, because I'm still fledgling in the field here,justin_lewis:I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.rob:but I have created encounters that are circled around the three pillars, right? Exploration, combat, and social. And my goal with each of these encounters is to kind of put a little randomized table that could possibly lead crafty DMs down other avenues to kind of expand the encounter itself. So it's kind of like an encounter in a box with these sort of like little tendrils that allow DMs and players to kind of pick up things and maybe decide, oh, you know what? That was kind of an interesting little tidbit. Maybe I'll follow that idea andjustin_lewis:Excellent.rob:let it grow. I don't wanna keep anybody, any DMs in a cage here.justin_lewis:Yeah, I love that. Let's do an encounter then. What weretanner_weyland:Yeah,justin_lewis:you saying, Tanner?tanner_weyland:maybe an encounter. What if we just had like, we created like a kind of a little mini one shot with just one of each of those three pillars, you know,justin_lewis:Gottanner_weyland:somejustin_lewis:it.tanner_weyland:exploration, some combat and some social, and then go from there.rob:love itjustin_lewis:Yeah.rob:love itjustin_lewis:Yeah.rob:love itjustin_lewis:Um, and listener, we probably won't get all to all of this today because creating a one shot can be rather long. So we're probably going to split this episode up. Uh, so, uh, yeah, stay tuned. But first, um, let me just write down, I'll be the, I'll be the notes keeper, I guess, unless one of you is better at it because I'm not super great at givingrob:I'mjustin_lewis:notes.rob:happy tojustin_lewis:Okay.rob:help.tanner_weyland:Nope.rob:Happy to help however I can. Ha ha.justin_lewis:All right. So homebrew. I wish I could spell home brew creation. shot.rob:While you're typing, I'll put this idea to you both here. What is the flavor that you would like to capture? Are we going epic fantasy? Are we going squash buckling pirates? Are we going sort of for frivolous? I had the opportunity, I believe Tanner, you were the dungeon master for, it's kind of like a Halloween, almost like a Halloween theme. We, when we played, we had entered that kind of sort of creepy haunted pumpkin patch.justin_lewis:Mm-hmm.tanner_weyland:Mm-hmm.rob:and there was a pumpkin headed villain. So, you know, October is coming up. So something like that might be kind of cool, like a campy kind of holiday themed.justin_lewis:I likerob:Wejustin_lewis:that.rob:can go, I know Spelljammer just came out. We can go, you know, D&D in outer space,tanner_weyland:No.rob:home rune outer space.justin_lewis:No, yeah. I like those ideas. I think we should definitely either do Halloween-themed one, Christmas-themed one, because Christmas is also coming up, and or Thanksgiving or a mix of the three. One other thought I did have is because I specifically want this one-shot to be very useful for anyone to play, specifically the introductory DMs. So if we could create a one-shot that And, you know, like Tanner said, it touches on the adventure, the exploration, sorry, not adventure, so the exploration, the combat and the social, and kind of introduces the DM to doing that. I think that would be extremely helpful to our listener. Um, so yeah, that's what that, those are my thoughts.rob:and.tanner_weyland:As far as the actual theme, let's say. I mean, space does sound cool, but I'm gonna,justin_lewis:Hehehetanner_weyland:I'm gonna say maybe later. That might be a later one. I haven't even thoughtjustin_lewis:Yeah.tanner_weyland:about space and I would wanna put more time into that. What do you guys think about an academy setting?justin_lewis:I like that. I think it's veryrob:Okay,justin_lewis:reminiscentrob:I'm on board.justin_lewis:of Harry Potter, so that would be easy for a lot of people to relate to, in a sense.tanner_weyland:Yeah, I also think that it provides a lot of opportunities for both social and exploration, andjustin_lewis:for sure.tanner_weyland:then of course combat, whether you have it as part of a lesson that goes awry or they're exploring in the middle of the night or who knows what, right? I think it's a very approachable kind of setting.justin_lewis:Agreed. Cool.rob:Yeah, absolutely.justin_lewis:So theme,rob:I'm totally on board. Now,justin_lewis:orrob:I know.justin_lewis:I guess that's the setting.rob:Well, I know that you have a homebrew kind of world build that you've been working on, Justin. Is there a location or a place where this academy might be set?justin_lewis:Yeah, so there is one academy that is currently created. I'm still working on the world itself, but it's called the Brazen Academy. Um, I don't know if it would exactly fit this. So it is essentially an academy specifically created for teaching people how to smelt and mine this material called deep iron, which is, um, it's, it's harder than adamantine. In this world, everything that every magical item that is like plus three is made of this stuff. And this this academy belongs to this nation called the Kula Uwea Confederacy, and they guard it very highly. So once you get in, you can't get out. Like, there's no escape. Like, they'd kill you before they let you out because the secrets of smelting this type of iron is so closely guarded. I don't know if that would be a good location. But if you guys want we could also create a different Academy in the world that is a little bit less intenserob:Well, I'm just thinking if, and this is just me shooting the breeze here, an academy, and you want this to be useful for beginner DMs. So what if the academy was for a school of, I guess, it could be children, it could be anybody who's interested, but a school for would-be adventurers. And like each of the houses is led by your traditional. class types, right? So you've got like the barbarianjustin_lewis:I likerob:house,justin_lewis:that.rob:you've got like the clerk house, you've got the wizard house, you know? And so the PCs could join a house with their desire and the purpose of this particular encounter would be to maybe pass the test, whatever the test may be. This way it's replayable, right? So PCs and players could play it over and over again as a different class. It's something that's kind of easy to jump into, that the purpose is kind of... I don't want to like railroad anybody or streamline,justin_lewis:Exactly.rob:but yeah, the tests would be things that we could make randomized tables for, or we could certainlytanner_weyland:Mm-hmm.rob:just insert something. And again, people could play this over and over again. This could be something really cool. A nice, almost like I teach for a living, so I'm always thinking of like, you know, how to bring kids andjustin_lewis:Exactly.rob:young people into thetanner_weyland:Mm-hmm.rob:game.justin_lewis:No,rob:It soundsjustin_lewis:that'srob:likejustin_lewis:exactly...rob:this might be a good way to do that.justin_lewis:Yeah, I love thattanner_weyland:Yeah.justin_lewis:idea.rob:All right,justin_lewis:I love that idea,rob:I likejustin_lewis:especiallyrob:this.justin_lewis:because also, it's kind of meta. It's like, here's the test becoming an adventurer, and if this is played by new players, then it kind of actually is like, now you're an adventurer kind of thing. It's pretty funny. So...rob:Yeah. All right, so then I guess, well, go ahead, please.justin_lewis:No, I was just gonna say, so the theme then would be like school test type idea, not necessarily Halloween or Christmas, but I guess you could flavor it that specific way depending on when you play it.rob:It is back to school. So itjustin_lewis:That,rob:does kind ofjustin_lewis:yeah,rob:fittanner_weyland:Yeah.justin_lewis:that, that makesrob:thejustin_lewis:sense.rob:back to school and summersjustin_lewis:Yeah.rob:out back to school.justin_lewis:Well.tanner_weyland:Yeah, you know, I think there's a couple ways we could do this. Either one allows a lot of randomization or tables, depending on what, you know, DM wants

Justin:Ulf woke up. He was in a cave, but he saw a face above his. It was Herlia. Ulf, we thought you were dead. Ulf sat up and saw Hepom sitting not too far off now, sporting a few more days' growth of beard. Ulf looked around. He could see the exit from the cave a few yards away. It was snowing outside. About a week. We still don't know what happened, Ulf, but we are sure glad to see you up and walking. We... we didn't know what to do." Hylia said as her voice trailed off. of breathed deeply. I'm sorry." Ulf looked into Herlia's eyes. I've failed you these past few weeks. I should have been more, but I thought just about myself. Herlia was taken aback. Ulf, we didn't blame you for what happened to Hüde and Kujari. Ulf began to stand up and walked towards the snowy cave entrance. He turned and looked back at Herlia. I was not asleep or in a coma. Instead, I was taken back to the home of my ancestors. There, I lived for weeks in a tribe, and I had to perform some sort of test. Actually, I still have to perform the test, the trial. Early, I stood up and rubbed her temples. Ulf, you're not making any sense. Ulf turned and looked at her once again. We have to go north. and conquer the tribes of the North. Silence. Then Hipon piped up and said, well, when do we leave? What would you like to do? Welcome back to today's show. I'm your host today, Justin Lewis, and in the world of being a dungeon master there are now essentially two types of dungeon masters. There are those that prefer playing in person and those that prefer playing online. And actually I guess there's probably a third group that likes either one. But today I want to give a small guide to preparing to preparing for an online session for those people who feel like the online format may be limited or they've just never done it before. Sorry about my voice cracking there. But hopefully this guide helps you feel ready and prepared for a nice game with your friends online. And this is generally what I do when I prepare for my one shots, which you can sign up for by going to betterdungeonmaster.com slash one dash shot. It is free and you can see this firsthand. So first step. find your players. As always, the first step to any session of D&D is to find players. And with an online game, your pool of players has both narrowed and expanded. Because now you can play with anyone all over the world, but you do need to find people who are willing to play online. Me, I can't even get my wife to play online, so I resort to asking people I've never met in person over my podcast. Namely, people like you. So second thing you need to do is send out a player brief. Second thing you need to do is prepare the story. You need to write a full story and the nice thing about playing D&D online is you don't necessarily need to change the story to fit the online format. For the most part, you can do everything online that you can do in person. Naturally, whispering in people's ears is a bit hard. However, it's still possible. You can, there are tools that allow you to send discrete messages, and if need be, you can just email each individual person because theoretically you will have each of their emails. So prepare the story, write it down, and we have tons of podcast episodes that should help you with that and get you where you need to be. So the second thing is you need to choose theater of the mind or virtual tabletop or a VTT. So the difference is with a theater of the mind, and this is more of a tech choice than anything, with theater of the mind, you don't need more than one software. Well, I guess, let me explain. So a virtual tabletop is essentially a platform that allows you to connect audio visual for seeing your face and hearing your voice, but it also allows you to play music over the connection. It also allows you to display a map whenever you are in combat or a similar situation. That's a VTT. A theater of the mind is where you simply use an audio visual connection like Zoom or Google Meet, whatever have you. I use Riverside just because I actually record my one shots online. But you have this visual and audio connection and that's it. And if you need to, I suppose you could share your screen and show anything you needed to. You rely mostly on your descriptive words to tell people where they are, even in combat. And even in Theater of the Mind, or just using, sorry. And even just using Zoom or Google Meet, you can still share your screen to show visual aspects of your campaign. And with that, you can include audio aspects as well. VTTs are just a little bit more native, so they're a little bit more set up for things like that. For example, when you share a map in combat, you can create tokens and assign each of those tokens to each of your players. and that allows them to move the player in the combat rather than you having to ask them where to go and things like that. And you need to choose this, and I guess number three is a little bit more than this, you need to choose your whole tech stack. So are you planning on streaming the encounter or the session? Are you planning on recording it like I am? In both cases, you need to make sure you understand exactly what your tech stack will be. So in my case, dabbled around using a few things. I'm actually recording this on the 29th of April, which is the day of our last one-shot. And I'm planning on using Riverside, which is a podcasting platform, so it allows you to podcast with guests online. I'm planning on using that as the audio visual portion of the session, which will record the show. And then I will use Roll20, which is a virtual tabletop. to actually play the game. And if that doesn't work, then I will actually probably switch to just using Roll20 and then using a, I believe it's called Streamlabs, which is a desktop streaming where you can capture what's going on on your screen and then stream it out to either YouTube or whatever. And that's kind of my backup. And then if that doesn't work, I'll probably resort to Discord and things like that. But as you see, you need to choose your tech stack and also, Be very aware of the fact that things might not work out. People might not have microphones, headphones, their internet might not work. Playing online, there's a lot more technical snafus that can go wrong, so you need to be aware of that and plan ahead. Number four, probably one of the most important ones you can do is send out the player brief, okay? And you would do this just like you would do it in any in-person session or things like that, especially if you're in one shot, but a player brief has it's like a packet of information or or Segments of information. It's not necessarily packet. I guess you can send an email or send multiple emails, but It has very important information for the player to get ready for the session and that starts with character creation. So Information about hey, you can have these types of characters. You can't have these types of characters so forth and so on. So in the one shot that I'm running today, and obviously, you know, no spoilers because this will be out after the one shot, but I told the characters or the players, they can make any character they'd like. The world is in, the session will be set in my homebrew world of integrity, which has its own pantheon of nine gods, and that's it. So if they are connected to a deity, they should let me know and I'd give them further information. But. As far as characters and classes, feel free to go forth and do what they want. Generally with Oneshots, I'm pretty flexible. Now in hindsight, I would tell my characters, or tell my players not to do any character that can breathe underwater. And the reason why that's important is because the Oneshot takes place on a cruise ship, and spoiler alert, but the cruise ship goes down, right? Naturally, that's what happens in Oneshots. And actually that brings me to the next point that you should include in your player brief, which is information about the situation. So in this case, the players will find themselves on this cruise ship, and mind you, integrity is set in a high fantasy world. So this cruise ship is really kind of top of the line. There are a few countries that have banded together to create this marvel, essentially, and it's fueled by the resources of one... country called the Bastion of the Crown. It's fueled by the ingenuity and the technical know-how of the Kula Uwea Confederacy and then it's fueled by the technology of the Sivarish, sorry, it's fueled by the technology of the Sivarish Protectorate. So it's kind of this joint creation of a few countries. So with that, the players, I told them you have to make sure that your character is from one of these countries because the ship is actually going from the Kula Uwea Confederacy to the Sivirish Protectorate and then finally to the Bastion of the Crown. So all of your characters need to have a reason to be on the ship and to go there, right? And with that I also explained a little bit of the situation around the world. Okay, so this ship is first of its kind, like nothing else like it. And it's also coming around in a time of disunity. So the world as a whole has become very unorganized and disintegrated, okay? So allies have severed and are now kind of looking at each other as enemies. And the whole world is in a commotion. So that's why the ship is so very important. It's kind of a symbol of the world kind of knitting itself back together. So that's the situation, that's the information I gave my characters about the situation. Now, the next thing you need to include is any information about the world. So for example, like what I said about the... the gods, the deities. So in integrity there are nine gods and each god has kind of their own domain. And one important thing about the gods is that their alignment constantly shifts, okay? So every year, and this is kind of how they gauge their zodiac, every year there is a lawful good god and then there is a chaotic evil god, all right? And during those years, those two forces are directly opposed. Okay, and every year it changes up randomly. And a lot of effort and time in other areas of the world is spent in figuring out which god is good because that determines some of the major events that will happen and things like that as far as political events or natural disasters things like that. So that might be something I would include in my brief, but in this case I didn't because none of my characters decided to be a cleric or a paladin. But I did extend the invitation to them saying, hey, if you would like more information, reach out to me. Another bit you need to know about this is that a lot of this information can be exposed or you can display through exposition in the game. So for example, the cruise ship is technologically powered by a substance called Spark, which is a, it's actually a magical drug that was first designed. kind of in other parts of the world, and then it came to the Sivirish Protectorate, and the government actually didn't regulate it or whatever, and many engineers and scientists found that you could use this drug to create a powerful energetic substance, right? So the entire ship is powered by this drug, this very volatile drug called Spark. That's something that the players will figure out in game because exposition and things like that, right? So again, you definitely need to include information about the world, but don't give too much, right? Make sure that it's salient to what the player needs and relevant. Lastly, you need to include links. So you need to include links to the online campaign. So if you're using D&D Beyond, which I neglected to mention, that's another tool that I'm using in my tech stack. That's essentially where all the players are making their characters in a place where I can see it. and I can actually use it to make encounters and things like that, which will come in very handy. You need links to the audio and visual, so I sent out links to Riverside for my players, and then links to the virtual tabletop if you use it. So I sent out links to Roll20. And that's essentially what you need to send in the player brief. Again, it doesn't need to be one single email or whatever. You can just make sure the information gets to your players and they feel ready. Number five. You need to... plan any encounters that you need. And what I mean by this is, you need to prepare the stats and the situations so that way when the time comes, you don't have to spend precious time doing that, but instead you can give your full attention to your players. Breaking the flow is not a very good thing in D&D unless it's intentional, in which case have at it, right? So what I did was I looked at the chain of events and on a cruise ship it's very nice. I suppose maybe it's railroading, but it is what it is. That's kind of the situation. They have limited choices as far as what the major events affecting the cruise ship are going to be. And then next you need to prepare any maps you need if you're using a virtual tabletop. So in my case, I use Dungeon Alchemist, which is an awesome tool. It's actually a 3D tool on Steam that you can purchase. And what it does is it allows you to create very in-depth maps for different situations. And I can actually, well, if you sign up for our Dungeon Master Guild Level 1, you can get access to a lot of the maps that we create and download them for free. So you can upload them to your VTT or whatnot. But essentially, Dungeon Alchemist allows you to drag and drop different elements into a map. So you can... click a specific room you want to create, you draw the shape and then you click the check mark and it auto-populates using AI that room and then you can go ahead and customize it using different objects, different floor tiles and things like that. And let me tell you, when I first backed it as a Kickstarter, it was very, it was pretty sparse, but now it has so many options, including Gingerbread House as one, Ice House. You can actually make caves now, which is a pretty cool feature. It's just becoming way more. Developed and in depth so now it's the time to get on it because it's just gonna get more in depth Last thing you need to do is follow up with your players The common bane of the dungeon master is not getting players to come to the sessions or having players bail things like that Even on one shots that happen because someone listened to a podcast and signed up with me people bail You know all the time And when I say bail, I don't necessarily mean that they just decide not to come. Oftentimes, it's like family issues or emergencies or things like that, but it does happen a lot. And so you do need to be flexible and follow up with your players the day of or the day before just to make sure that they have the right time, the right links, and there's no issues, right? Especially if you're new to

Justin:Hi there listener, this is Justin Lewis and I have here Tanner Wayland with me today. Say hi, Tanner.Tanner Weyland:Hi.Justin:And today on how to be a better DM we are going to talk about Sort of a niche topic One that I think a lot of people struggle with without knowing they struggle with so let me paint a picture for you It's session zero right and you've finally gotten all your PCs in the same room We'll say it's a tavern right there sitting at the same table a few of them know each other So you have two over here that know each other two over there and two over there with most groups, your players start saying, oh well my character's mysterious and untrusting of other people and you have to prove yourself to me. Except every player in your party is acting like that. So the question that we're gonna answer today is how do you get your players, or at least your PCs, to start treating each other like friends and to start wanting to travel together and to view themselves as a party? difficult things to do in session zero or in a one-shot, especially if you as the DM don't outright say, you guys have been traveling for a while, you are already friends. So naturally, let's get that one out of the way. The simplest way to do that specifically in one-shots is just to say, you guys are already friends. You have a long history, you don't need to worry about that. That method doesn't really work when it comes to long-term campaigns because the whole point of the campaign your party integrates and becomes solidified and galvanized, right? SoTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:we'll get that one out of the way, but Tanner, any initial thoughts?Tanner Weyland:Uh, my initial thought is that like you were saying, it's not as clean of a process as, as you'd like, it's not as clear cut because not everyone has a fellowship of the ring type situation where they're all sitting, they all gathered for one reason and then they all, everyone who joined it volunteers and it's like, Oh, you have my acts, you know, that kind of thing. Most of the time it's like, Oh, they just happen to be in the same town together. And then this event happens, you know, but a party of orcs attacks the town. believe, you know, we like to skirt over the fact that like, oh, obviously these people band together to go fight the orcs. It's like, not everyone does that. Some people, when they see trouble, they just, you know, they, they get out of town, you know, but, but so that's why the inciting incident is so important. And also you have to have kind of external factors that tie them together. For example, you know, if they are in a town, like let's say that they're there festival, right? And you know, I'll keep with my example and an orc attack happens. You know, instead of just assuming the players are going to fight together, what you could do is have an initial fight in the plaza, you know, or in the town square. And of course, everyone's fighting there because all the players just happen to be there and stuff. But then after that, you could have it be like, Oh, everyone else that wasn't a town like specifically puts you guys together, right? Like inciting incidents like that, you kind of need that initial moment of obligation or obligated partying in order to then later build on that and hopefully make some more connection, if that makes sense. So, I'm gonna go ahead and start with the first one. So, I'm gonna start with the first one.Justin:Yeah, that makes total sense. And actually let's, let's kind of put this into an example. So let's use the example of our homebrew one-shot that we're working on with Rob fromTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:New York, Rob Van Auken or, or no, wait, is that his DM name or his real? I think that's his realTanner Weyland:That'sJustin:name,Tanner Weyland:hisJustin:right?Tanner Weyland:real name. Yeah.Justin:Yes. Roderick Van Helm, RobTanner Weyland:Yes.Justin:Rick Van Helm is his DM. Anyways. it's called For Whom the Bell Tolls, the Chime Fell Ceremony, right? AndTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:thinking about this inciting event, the way the, gosh, I don't want to give too many spoilers away, but essentially your party comes to a town, participates in festivals and trials to win awards to kind of become a new ceremonial figure that protects the town in a sense, but also protects reality in a sense from And at one point a leader of the monastery hosting the event turns and basically summons the big bad that everyone was trying to keep out, right? So I think in this case, to kind of give an example to what Tanner just said, an inciting incident could be this session. Like this could be your session zero. All the players come from different places to participate in the Chime Fell ceremony and possibly gain the award, right? figureTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:and I feel like naturally as your players win because they naturally will they'll win those trials they'll come together to meet the chief monastery officer or whatever the name is that the abbot and that you know they'll meet each other and then the inciting event will be that large monster gets summoned and suddenly they have to work together to fix the problem rightTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:I think that that we should hang out more, kind of an idea, right?Tanner Weyland:Yeah, I think that when you have a galvanizing like event, then that can cause a lot of connection. Otherwise, like I think it's a little bit harder with like longer journeys, you know? Because if you do have an inciting event that all happens in one town, like what happens in our, you know, the Chime fell ceremony, then that's like very easy because all the players are in one town, there's a festival, they're all there for the same purpose, in the same trials and you know that you that's certainly a way to make it happen and then just you as the DM as they're playing you're having little moments that you create of them like being like oh this person's not half bad you know this other character and things like that can kind of help them become more of a party how about if you were on like a longer journey style like campaign things along the way create connection there.Justin:When you say longer journey style campaign, can you give a little bit,Tanner Weyland:Yes.Justin:yeah.Tanner Weyland:Like where they're going to multiple locations, you know, they go from a town to a dungeon, to a seaside port, to, you know, and they're like camping along the way, they run into bandits here and there. It's just like, it's a lot of traveling andJustin:Okay.Tanner Weyland:there's more, a bunch of small events versus one big event.Justin:Yeah, see even that I think is pretty easy. So I think deep down, and this is honestly, this is kind of a topic of social encounters anyways, there's a book called The Like Switch. And it's funny, these last few duo episodes where you and me have both been on, have been both about D&D, but also about life in general. SoTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:this is more about life in general, but this book is called The Like Switch. an FBI agent writing a book about how to influence people and kind of gain relationships and things like that and he lays out what's called or what he calls the relationship formula right and he says your relationship is a formula derived from in proximity frequency intensity and duration so essentiallyTanner Weyland:Hmm.Justin:you can boil down relationships to how close are you physically and like how intense are the emotions you feel and how long are you close together. See that's why in my opinion, when you go and work at a new place, at first you don't really make friends with the people sitting at your desk. You may or may not introduce yourself, but if you don't, after a month, you're gonna know each other's names and you're gonna start talking to each other just because you sit next to each other every single day. So in this case, with forcing your players to be together, have to get that formula in action, right? In the case of the galvanizing event, they are having such intense emotion that it's kind of like the foxhole friends, right? Shared trauma leads to strong emotional or at least somewhat strong relationships. But in the case of a long-term campaign, you're having them together for often, those natural occurrences are going to happen naturally. they would naturally relax and feel more comfortable around each other because kind of from a primal sense that person that unknown is becoming more known right. So I think just force the key to getting your PCs to want to travel together is to have them kind of fulfill that formula you know and there are obviouslyTanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:other things to do but I think that's a good place to start.Tanner Weyland:Yeah, I like that too because it made me realize kind of an issue with a lot of DMs and characters, you know, because it's we're talking about parties here. But if you don't give like one, if you don't give your players the incentive to create good backstories. And then second, and this is where I realized with your comments, if you don't allow the where they can share parts about their character that they've created and parts of their character's personality then even if they have shared trauma like you were saying and even if they spend time together what are they going to know? It's like you're with someone at work who only ever talks about work, right? Are you going to actually ever know that person? Probably not. You know, you're only going to know them in work capacity because they never talk about their personal life and so if you ever saw them outside of work they'd be practically you. You know, it's like a teacher in school, right? Since kids never find out about what their teacher did, when they see them at the supermarket, they're like, what the heck, aren't you supposed to be at school? It's kind of like that where if your players are only having their characters talk about the event in front of them, the next goal, the next thing, and they never talk about their character backstory or, you know, or get opportunities, character do, then they won't have any latching on points for each other, right? I think that's an important thing.Justin:Yeah, I agree. And actually to that note, I think getting your party to gel together starts long before session zero and it begins with character creation. And naturally you're probably thinking like, oh, well, duh, you'd want, you know, a melee combat person in the same party as someone who casts spells or is ranged. Sure. But what I mean more is I think that relationship formula that I talked about, it might be a little bit... but incomplete, you probably need to add in the individual efforts of each person as well as the individual moral codes of each person. So, for example, in my current campaign, I have a character named Saban. He is a lizard folk artificer, and he's from the swamp, you know, he has a southern accent, and he's generally a very polite, caring individual, you know, I'd say he's neutral good tending towards lawful good. He's the kind of guy that like, if he sees someone struggling, he'll go help for no reason. He's just a good guy, right? And ITanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:put him in there just for me to have a character that I can play around with. But sometimes, other of the players in the group, they are neutral or evil, depending on their situation. And so they'll do things that are questionable for Saban. And to be honest, it has made Saban think, do I really want to continue with this group when they're doing certain acts, right? you need to make sure that your character creation will not spawn characters that act in ways that are diametrically opposite of one another. If you have two characters that spend lots of time together in incredibly intense emotions, but they disagree with each other about the basic standards of life, they will probably come to hate each other, and that's how you get villains, to be honest.Tanner Weyland:Yeah, exactly. You have to have during character creation, you have to create characters who would in any world be willing to like spend some time around each other, right? If it's like, oh, this is just such a big event that they have to spend time together that I mean, that's okay, but you're not going to have as much of a gelled party as you need. One thing I realized is that you have to have opportunity like Incidents are a great way even better than I think bigger incidents for your characters to gel, right? let's say that you're in a town and your characters are at a tavern and You know, everyone's giving them the stink eye and the innkeeper is actually overcharging them and they see it because everyone else is like when the innkeeper is like gives them the like the tab essentially Like the players tab is like three times higher, right? such a small thing and you don't think that would like help the party gel but guess what that's a perfect incident to really reveal people's like characters because unlike a big bad where it's like oh everyone just hates these you know like what do you do about the local innkeeper who you can't just well you could just massacre but like most people are gonna try and find other solutions and that's where you're gonna see each individual charactersJustin:youTanner Weyland:personality but then they'll have to work together and be like hey what do we do because you I want to just steal from him and then the priest over there just wants to you know, turn the other cheek and leave, you know If you don't have small events like that Where people feel cheated people feel like their trust was betrayed People feel disappointed then they can't flesh out their character and they also can't make moral Decisions between characters, which is where a lot of that kind of connection comes from, you knowJustin:Agreed. I think when it

Hello, and Welcome to How To Be A Better DM. My name is Tanner Weyland, and together we will learn about how to prepare the best adventures and environments for our players to enjoy. Today, we are going to jump right into the announcements!Other than that, Justin and I are going to be at an event this Saturday, the 22nd of April! In Provo Utah, in the Provo Towne Center Mall, there is a D&D world record happening. The store “We Geek Together” is hosting an event called “Dead Wars” where they will have over 1,000 players playing the same game together—thus beating the world record. Justin and I will be there with the people from Monsters.Rent to talk about the minis and everything—we are also providing over 200 minis for the event to use, so we are so excited! If you are curious about the event info, look up wegeektogether.org to find more info. We hope to see some of you there!Today's Topic: animal companions, and NPC party companionsMentioned in this episode:Save time with Roll and Play PressSave yourself some precious time with Roll and Play Press. Go to https://session0studios.com/rollandplay and use code BETTERDM10 at checkout.Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Do You Want to Earn some Money?🎲 Want to Earn Some Extra Gold? We’re offering a referral incentive for our professional Dungeon Mastering services! Here’s how it works: 1️⃣ Refer someone to session0studios.com/prodm 2️⃣ They sign up for a free consultation. 3️⃣ They mention they were referred by a podcast listener. 4️⃣ We DM an unforgettable session for them. 5️⃣ They get 10% off their booking. 6️⃣ You get 10% of what they paid—straight into your coin purse. 7️⃣ We celebrate with a virtual high-five. 🙌 We run games for private groups and corporate teams—whether it’s a one-shot or a long-term campaign. 💰 Want to earn some gold and help someone level up their game night? Send them to session0studios.com/prodm and start earning today!

Tanner Weyland:Hello, my name is Tanner Wayland and I, along with my co-host Justin Lewis, are here on How to be a Better DM. How you doing, Justin?Justin:I am good. I'm good. How are you, Tenor?Tanner Weyland:Oh, doing well, doing well. It's a lovely day outside, youJustin:ItTanner Weyland:know?Justin:is.Tanner Weyland:It's great. Here in Utah, it's been winter for 20 years, it feels like. AndJustin:It really does.Tanner Weyland:it's finally clearing up, and we're just gonna get so much flooding, but everyone's happy it's sunny. Ha ha.Justin:That's the truth.Tanner Weyland:Well, anyway, to get going with this, uh, with this topic today, we'll just hop right in. Um, the topic is how to be a DM when you're just busy, busy as all get out. Like how do you make time for it? Um, first off, Justin, has this ever happened to you where you just feel too busy to even meet or prepare or anything like that?Justin:Yeah, yes. I would say most recently it's been that I felt too busy that I wanted a break and I didn't want to actually have my players come over and have the game. I just kind of wanted a break. But I like what you said there, having to make time for it. Because I feel like DMing when busy, the art to DMing when you're busy, that you can do it and one of those is just making more time for it. You know, simple enough, you make it a bigger priority in your life, you get rid of other things. The unfortunate aspect with that is that it's a game. Like it's a hobby,Tanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:you know. So if you are attempting to push out family matters or work or you know, religious obligations or social obligations, I don't know, I would maybe reconsider and try some of our other methods we'll talk about rather than stop working.Tanner Weyland:Yeah. No. Yeah. I totally hear you because if there was something on the chopping block, I think for a lot of people, it would be, you know, running dungeons and dragons, frankly. And, and,Justin:Yeah.Tanner Weyland:you know, I think just as an initial disclaimer on this episode, if you feel overburdened by your DMing, like you are absolutely entitled to stop, you know, to take a break, a longer term break. the kind of person who's like, Hey, I think I can if I could keep it going. And I really like it. If I change some things, that's kind of what this is for. Um, now like, I'll be honest, like there have been times like, uh, in the same campaign, I had to both, uh, at one point stop it, but then before then, uh, when I was in school, I had to learn how to deal with it during the school year versus summer, right? this was when I was in college and And you know, I think that it was actually an enlightening experience And I think this is what you'll learn too Is that you know, we all wish we had plenty of time to prepare for our sessions We all wish we could do like three four-hour sessions every week, you know but the fact is you know, sometimes you don't and it makes you actually kind of fall back on what's the core of Right? Like for me, and this was kind of my first tip, I guess, we were doing pretty long sessions. We were doing like three, sometimes four hour sessions. And my wife was just like, hey, Dan, you got a lot of other stuff you're trying to do. And then you always, she pointed out that I often complained about being short on time. AndJustin:Hehe.Tanner Weyland:she's like, maybe don't do it as long. And initially I was like, oh, but what will they think? these stupid reasonings in my mind. But then I just did it. I was like, you know what, fine. We'll just plan for like an hour and a half. And then, you know, it usually ended up being like two hours sessions. But even that little change meant that I didn't have to prepare as much. It meant that I had more time. It also meant that the sessions felt punchier. And I really appreciated that change.Justin:Yeah, I would say with doing something like that, it definitely is like a good challenge for yourself because everyone wants to make every session impactful and fun and memorable.Tanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:And when you only have an hour and a half, you start to think of, okay, well, what is like most important? You know, like we can'tTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:deal with the fluff, you know, and you probably could, So I really like that And you know what like Tanner said if you ever have problems with being super busy Talk to your players see if they can help out or give advice or just make changes like they did in Tanner's case You know communicate communication is very important right TannerTanner Weyland:Oh, you know what? I couldn't have said it better myself, Justin. Um, yeah, honestly, communication is huge because if you're feeling overwhelmed, then the worst thing you can do is keep that bottled up. Uh, so talk to, you know, in the case you will do have a significant other, like I can say that probably one of the reasons you feel so busy is because you have obligations there and that's not bad, you know, that's part of being in a relationship. Uh, but if you just hold it in, then there's going to be that tension. So talk about it, be like, hey, Deming's really important to me, but you're even more important to me. How can we make this both work? You know, and then once you discuss that, then talk with your players and be like, hey, here's some thoughts I had. Uh, have you guys had any thoughts? You know, maybe they'll be down to be like, Hey, yeah, we can, we can do once a month or,Justin:Mm-hmm.Tanner Weyland:you know, every two weeks instead of every week or something. Right. Um, I think people areJustin:I feelTanner Weyland:more understanding.Justin:like, yeah, ITanner Weyland:GoJustin:was justTanner Weyland:ahead.Justin:gonna add, I feel like that is just good life advice in general. Over the last few weeks, I myself have been incredibly busy with Monsters.Rent, which if you guys haven't heard, that's our new company and Tanner's actually a part of it now.Tanner Weyland:I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.Justin:But I've been super busy with that myself. So my wife has had conversations with me of like, well, something's gotta give and doing exactly what Tanner said saying here are some of my priorities, what are your priorities, and then how can we make both of these work together and you have to have an open mind. You know, like Tanner said, your DMing might have to go from once a week to once a month. And again, it's a simple fact of the matter that most of us, it's not our money making stream. Like, it doesn't make us money. So we can't always justify sacrificing other things for it. should butTanner Weyland:Mm.Justin:I think you do definitely need to keep an open mind with what you might need to give up.Tanner Weyland:Yeah, absolutely. And so I think with communication, with the willingness to be flexible, uh, there's also, uh, this is maybe a simple tip. Some of you are very creative and you write all of your campaigns and all of your sessions and that's wonderful. Uh, I would argue that, that you could benefit though, during a very busy part of your life, um, you could benefit to switch to a pre-written material. that the others have done, whether that's free or you purchase it or whatever else. Um, that can help save you a lot of time in prep work because I mean, I think you'd agree, Justin, like the actual session, like the time you spend in the session, that's not all the time you're spending. You're spending like you're spending hours beforehand, like preparing for every little possibility, right? Uh, it's like, oh, if they're in a town, suddenly you have to do a bunch of prep they could have. And if you have to come up with all of that, that's all time you're spending. Unless you're getting a pre-written adventure. It doesn't save as much time as you'd like, because the fact is I've done a lot of pre-written adventures where you just you're very interested in the world and you're like oh I got to remember what happens here. But it does streamline the process and it takes a couple steps out. So I would suggest that honestly.Justin:Yeah. And to that point, there's nothing wrong with inserting this or that encounter from your favorite, uh, D and D DM, YouTuber or podcaster or whatever. Um, I know that, you know, I'm, I'm a fan of the high rollers in the UK with their Eros campaign. I really liked that campaign. And, you know, I used to watch that while working because my job, it just me to basically listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos basically all day while working. So I'd watch that. And thinking back, if I really needed to, I could insert a few of the minor story arcs into my campaign. You know, adding in twists and flavors here and there. And that might save some time in the prep. And this one might be a little bit controversial, but pull back on the stats and the rolling. You knowTanner Weyland:Mm.Justin:D&D, I've said before at its core, it is just a story with agreed rules and a system for how you interact, right?Tanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:And if you need to, without your player's permission even, you can kind of dial back how many times you use the dice to interactions. You know, I'm not saying get rid of it all the way unless you want to, but really, you know, if you're having trouble coming up with this next session, don't prepare any combat encounters and make it a much quicker roll of the dice, you know, when it does happen. Obviously, if it's a big bad, you have to play it out, but if it's like, you know, a street urchin comes and fights you or something, I don't know, just one or two rolls and that should be fine. That way, fudge those numbers on the spot. And this method I think really works well, like Tanner said, in city environments where if they don't spend a ton of time in this one encounter with these street thugs, it's fine because there's thousands of other things to do in the city. And they probably have other things that they want to do as well. Uh, the only thing I'd, the only cautionary thing I'd add is make sure that you focus on the story when you do this. very plain and very boring like if you're not giving everything you can to the to the segments of role-playing and Actually kind of getting into character your players will start to realize like hey, we didn't really do much this session, you knowTanner Weyland:Yeah, and I think that that idea has at the core of its flexibility, right? It's, uh, it's being flexible with like, Hey, what, what is core to the thing? And having big old battles with a bunch of stat blocks. Uh, that's, I mean, sometimes that's fun, but like other times it's like the players just want to feel, you know, the concept of their players moving around the map, hitting, they don't, they don't need anything too complicated, right? And I was thinking about being flexible with your DMing style. I think that roles and map prep, all of that can be not fudged, but kind of loosened up a little, you know? Like with your roles, maybe you aren't being so harsh on like, oh, let me look up online. What's the challenge level to cross a wall in the winter? know, you don't have to be as like strict on that. Um, you can be like, Oh, it's a, it's a 15, you know, roll that and, and just be more flexible that way. Uh, further, I was thinking about it a lot of times in my DM prep and this, this took time, especially if you're using like an online, like a roll 20 and you have to find maps, you have to have, find a character's tokens. Uh, sometimes that takes time because you're like, Oh man, this idea for this enemy but I can't find the exact token and then you spend an hour you know stressing over this one thing because you want it to feel realistic you don't have to do that like if you're stressing about it guess what you could find a little token of Barney or the TeletubbiesJustin:HeheheheheheheheTanner Weyland:and plop that in and your players would get a kick out of it andJustin:Yeah.Tanner Weyland:it would save you an hour of stress obviously spend the time because I'm sure enemies, you're going to be able to find an easy token, you know, without too much effort. But if it's taking you too much time, just find the parts, the sticking areas in your prep and just be like, Hey, do I need to go as hard as I am here? Or can I, can I loosen up, you know?Justin:Yeah, and actually to that point I'd like to cite two examples of guests we've had on our show who have hosted one shots for us and they did it completely theater of the mind because that's what they do. That's what they loveTanner Weyland:Yep.Justin:and gauging the players experiences they enjoyed it, you know, if you remember Bone Daddy Rob and Thorn from This Dungeon is Occupied of the mind. AndTanner Weyland:Mm-hmm.Justin:that's a quick way if you're stressed out and busy as a DM. That's a quick way to shave off a bunch of prep time because you don't have to worry about getting minis, you don't have to worry about getting maps. I mean you can for reference but it might even beTanner Weyland:Yeah.Justin:easier to just kind of create it as you go along. And I think that naturally lends and things like that just because it has to fit what everyone can imagine.Tanner Weyland:Yeah, and that's honestly a theater of the mind. That's a great way to, I think your players, it might take a little bit of getting used to, but if you just still provide some key descriptions, then people can get into that, right? And you're still gonna have roles, you're still gonna have a lot going on, and your players are still spending time together. That's key, right? Oth