Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.Today, Tanner and Justin talk about the joys of 2023 and what to look forward to in 2024. The transcript is below.We also mention today's sponsor, Magic Mind.Get 1 month free off of a 3 month subscription by going to https://www.magicmind.com/JANbetterdm and using the code BETTERDM20 at checkout!Justin (00:03.449)Welcome back to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I'm your host today, Justin Lewis, here with Tanner Wayland, my brother in arms, my compadre, my colega. How's it going?Tanner Weyland (00:18.222)Such a good man. I'm so many things. I'm excited.Justin (00:22.386)Well, you are everything, but you're also Tanner. And that's exactly what we need. I'm being a little nostalgic today because today is the last podcast episode of 2023. Now I never thought we would get to 2023, right? Because you never see yourself moving forward in time. But I think today it would be ad propo, whatever that means, to take a look back.Tanner Weyland (00:28.891)HahahaJustin (00:50.253)at 2023 and also take a look forward into 2024, maybe do some divination magic and see what the future holds for us. What do you think, Tanner?Tanner Weyland (01:00.042)I'm down for that. Yeah, let's, oh, go ahead, sorry.Justin (01:01.773)Excellent. Well, I was gonna say, let's start with 2023. And Tanner, if you want to kick us off.Tanner Weyland (01:07.463)Ciao.Tanner Weyland (01:10.826)I mean, yeah, just to on a personal note, it's been, it's been a busy year. One things have gotten busier with the podcast as we'll talk about, but also, uh, I mean, just personally got a dog. We got a house, uh, a house at the start of the year, dog halfway through the year, good old banjo. He's a, he's a cutie. He probably just heard me bless his heart. Um, but yeah, it's been a great Christmas season. Uh, Kirstie and I are doing well. Uh, otherwise, you know, just.Things are busy, but we're keeping up over here. How about you, Justin?Justin (01:42.841)Yes, things are also busy for us. We had a baby. That's probably the biggest thing that happened to us personally this year, back in August, my wife and I had a baby. Funny story, for nine months, we thought the baby was gonna be a girl. The ultrasounds told us it was gonna be a girl. And then the baby came out as a boy. So check your ultrasounds, people. You don't wanna surprise like that. But having a baby has been very rewarding, very tiring.both those things.Tanner Weyland (02:13.962)Yeah. And I mean, I believe that that's, that's the thing about kids. You get a lot from them, but, uh, they request everything from you.Justin (02:22.277)Absolutely, absolutely. Well, specifically talking about the podcast, we've had actually a really good year. It's been fun seeing the podcast grow. And one of my favorite things this year has been just in November, we had our highest download month. We had 5,000 downloads in the month, over 5,000 downloads, which is not a small thing, right? I think...Most podcasts never get past 10 episodes, right? Just that's how it is statistically. And you're in the top 50% of podcasts if you get more than 100 listens on any episode within the first seven days, and we get around 200. So we're probably in the top 70% of podcasts maybe. Obviously it is kind of an exponential curve, but it's really cool to see the growth we're having. And more than that, I think isyou know, having people reach out and being like, yeah, you guys are helping us, you know, DM better or helping me. I just like listening to you guys. And it's just, it's fun to think, you know, we did something that people like, which in this day and age is pretty, pretty rare.Tanner Weyland (03:40.914)Yeah, you know, I think that it's a great thing just seeing that, you know, I don't think of us as any kind of exceptional people. Like, obviously, we have a lot of advice on being DMs, but it's nice to know that it's like, hey, if we and, you know, the guests we bring on, just share some of our thoughts, you know, think a little deeper about the individual parts of being a DM, then you can do really good work. It's kind of like a journaling in your personal life where it's like, yeah.If you just spend a little bit more thought deconstruct things a little bit, uh, regurgitate it in a good way, then essentially you, you learn, there's a lot to learn from just a simple review of things. Right. And so that's, that's been kind of an interesting thing. And I've loved knowing that we're, we're helping people that way.Justin (04:30.853)Absolutely. I mean, even though we talk a lot about DMing, I would in no way, shape or form claim us to be the world's best DMs. Well, I can't speak for Tanner, but myself, I DMed just last night, and afterwards I was like, man, I need to get way better. But I'm sure that that's how a lot of people feel. And honestly, that's why how to be a better DM exists, because we want you to not feel that way instead. Finish the session being like, wow, that was so great. I'm just so happy.Tanner Weyland (05:01.65)Yeah, exactly. And you know, we try and change it up with the with the topics if you know, in the future, if you guys ever are like, hey, we want specific topics or types of content, like, we've considered, you know, reviewingother people's games, you know, as they DM we considered a lot of different types of things. We always try and get on guests who we think would be valuable. But if any of you have any ideas, we of course welcome that.Justin (05:32.785)Yeah, actually, you can go on Instagram, look up at howtobetterdm or at monsters.rent, send us a message, suggestions, or even content that we missed in an episode. You know, if you think that a particular episode needs to be fleshed out a little bit more, definitely let us know. Or if, like Tanner said, you want us to basically, you know, commentate on your session, you just have to record your session and send it to us. But...Really over this last year, like Tanner mentioned, we had some pretty great guests. I think one of my favorites was Victor Bovine. And that's mostly just because, you know, I kind of cut my teeth on the Forgotten Realms by listening to the Drizzt o'Urden series by R.A. Salvatore. And Victor Bovine was the voice actor, right? And so, you know, his voice for me is Drizzt o'Urden. And it was really cool to, you know, to listen to him. It was also fun, you know, hanging out with Andy from WeGeek together. And,having like that live podcast feel, which is kind of rare for us just because our guests are mostly not in the same locale. Though I do think, you know, moving into the next year, I think it would be cool to have more and more in-person guests if we can get them.Tanner Weyland (06:47.254)Yeah, agreed. Like Andrew, he was great. Cause I mean, you should have seen all the technical issues we had going into that. Cause we, we weren't onsite, you know, we, we didn't do it at either of our places or at a studio, we went to we geek together, you know, his store set up there, just so many technical issues getting it set up. And then once it was finally done, it was just cool to actually have a chill conversation and we even thought that we had lost like the, the recording and we found it. And so like that one.I think I'm nostalgic for it from like a trauma standpoint because it was like both you had the bitter and the sweet you know but that one was memorable for meJustin (07:26.663)Yeah.Justin (07:29.817)Agreed, agreed. Also, we want to say thank you to everyone who participated with us in the one-shots of last year. We know that they weren't as periodic. They didn't happen every month. But we were grateful to you for joining us and having fun with us, even amidst the technical difficulties of the one-shots. I know the last one that I did, very technically difficult.And hopefully in the next year we can have more one-shots and more people join. Even if there are opportunities for live one-shots in person, if there's a group of listeners here in the Utah region, we can get together and do a one-shot that way. That would be fun, I think. But again, just wanted to say thank you for everyone who participated and also for all the guest DMs we've had over the last couple of years.Tanner Weyland (08:24.298)Yeah, absolutely. It's always fun seeing you guys, meeting you guys, and also just playing. We learn a lot every time that we do, because it's one thing playing with a party that you've played with consistently. Playing with a new one always is such a learning experience. So thank you for being, I mean, our friends and our guinea pigs to some extent. So thank you.Justin (08:48.895)YeahAbsolutely. Another great thing that we did this year was the guild. And the guild is sort of a kind of collaboration between the podcast and Monsters.Rent. And really it's all the same thing, but just for your information, the guild is basically a free community that the goal is to connect people.who are like-minded in the same space, but also give them resources and things like that, right? We have the beginning of a Dungeon Mastering course, and we have some downloadable resources available online through the guild, again, all free. And for me, the coolest thing of the guild has been, one, seeing people slowly kind of come in, right? And every new person that enters the guild adds so much to everyone who's already there, and...hopefully to themselves, but also seeing the collaboration between the people within the guild, seeing people talk about homebrew monsters that they're working on or puzzles that they found. It's just really cool to sort of sit back and see you guys, because if we could bottle up all of your knowledge and experience, I think that would be way more informational and helpful than what we can say.And it's frankly just kind of a treat just to be kind of on the receiving end of that.Tanner Weyland (10:18.93)Yeah, absolutely. That one's been just fun seeing like it's growing slowly because we haven't been doing it that long. But but every time it does then you feel you know, like, like you each new person is like a measurable help to everyone else. And I love that.Justin (10:35.013)Yeah, yeah. It's also growing slowly, I'd say, because I don't know about you, Tanner, but I have no idea how to do Discord, right? Like, I don't know technically very well. But also, I'm not like a people person, per se, so it's kind of a stretch for me being like, yeah, welcome, let's talk about these things. So it's definitely a new experience.Tanner Weyland (10:58.962)Yeah, absolutely. So thank you for your patience with us, if you are a part of that. And if you're not, come join, you know? Add to the milieu, as the French say, of the voices and everything. For us, I mean, probably the thing that's made me busiest this year is, I mean, aside from the podcast in general, it's Monsters.Rent. You guys have heard us talk about that, you know, for a hot second now. But...Yeah, it's just been kind of an eye opening experience where it's like, yeah, there's a lot more to a, uh, miniature rental business than you'd think. Uh, but it's, it's had a lot of, uh, a lot of ups, some downs, but, um, you know, I think for me, like, uh, a big up was just, you know, at the start, there's always a question when you're starting kind of like a side venture, a side project.of like, okay, how much do we throw ourselves into it at the start? And do we do it slowly? Do we just jump in and, you know, see if we can swim? And I think we got a good experience with that with the dead wars that we geeked together through, through back in, was it May?Justin (12:14.773)I think it was May, April, around there.Tanner Weyland (12:17.25)May, April. Yeah. Because you know, we, we made and painted like, what it was like 200 minis for that. And then beyond that, we, like we went to the show, we had a booth, you know, we got a sign printed, you know, we kind of put our best foot forward. And that was kind of a an interesting experience. I really like that.Justin (12:26.345)200. Yep.Justin (12:43.293)Yeah, I think it was fun for us because it helps solidify kind of the real business aspect. When you start a business, it's sort of like in your head until it goes out in public, right? Once you start getting people signed up and people buying things from you, then you're like, wow, this is like a real business. And for me, that was just really fun. It was also sort of...kind of validation, talking to a lot of people saying, yeah, this is like a really great idea. Now, obviously, people saying that and people buying whatever you have to sell, two very different things, but it was a big event for us. And I think it did move us forward, at least in maturity, business-wise, right? But another kind of highlight was when we sort of upgraded our boxes, and we're still sort of working on this process actually,Tanner Weyland (13:33.303)Yeah.Justin (13:41.001)the inside of the boxes, but we started using these wooden boxes that were kind of custom designed. They have the Monsters.Rent logo and everything on them. Actually, if you go to our website on mobile, you can see there's like a cover image of a video that actually displays the box really well on the homepage. But those boxes are pretty sweet. And honestly, just the box itself is like cool enough that...someone should like want to buy it, but I mean, who knows?Tanner Weyland (14:13.798)Yeah, exactly. That was, it's kind of nice having a little bit more individuality, uh, to our products, cause that's what we hope to do. The priority obviously is just like, Hey, we want to make easily accessible and rentable minis, you know, that are affordable so that people don't have to, you know, buy a bunch that just sit around cause they don't want to reuse same minis all the time, but it's also nice to, you know, make a little bit more of an individual product that way. Uh, I've really enjoyed, uh,beyond that, also we've just gotten some really good help, like some amazing help from a few influencers. And obviously, you know, it's more in the D&D space and the, you know, but we really like Bennett and Courtney, Bennett, you, if you don't follow him, you should, you absolutely should. He's at, he's at the Ben Chewie, C-H-E-W-Y. And Courtney, she's at the Curly.K U R L I G I R L I cosplay. So it's the Curly Gurly Cosplay. They've both been so helpful, honestly. We really loved the videos that they put out for us and kind of having that partnership set up. And if you haven't heard of them, go check them out, because they're great.Uh, regardless though, we're so grateful for them and everyone else who's been helpful along the way, because you know, we've, we've worked with quite a few people, some people haven't been able to keep working with us, uh, like just because of time constraints or, or other things, and we're just so grateful for anyone who's, you know, put any time into this and, and also to any of you who, you know, gave us a shot. And so we were truly appreciative for that.Justin (16:02.737)Absolutely. Uh, probably the biggest thank you that we can give from a monsters.rent is to the current users of it, uh, the people who are sticking with us regardless of, you know, how many technical hiccups we have or, or how, uh, non user friendly the website may or may not be at any given moment because, you know, it's always in flux, um, and actually, you know, Bennett going back to that.Uh, the video, he made us a video and you can see that video on the homepage right now, if you, if you go there, uh, it's a pretty sweet video, uh, really well done, so definitely go to at the Ben Chewie on Instagram, tick talk and you know, give them a follow, but I think another cool thing that really for us has been just kind of a treat has been the ability to accumulate or have the ability to produce something like over a hundreddifferent minis, including 12 bundles of different themed minis. And seeing the different files and things has been really fun and nice. We actually signed up for the commercial license of someone on my mini factory. Right. And that's allowed us to kind of accumulate these minis and they're really well done. But I think moving forward, we have hopefully, you know, some other plans. We'll tell you that in a second.But anything else you want to talk about in terms of 2023?Tanner Weyland (17:30.606)Uh, mostly I, one thing that we forgot to mention with the podcast was just sponsorships really, because we've been, you know, one nice thing is we, we like putting out the podcast, uh, up till now though, we like, with a couple exceptions, it hasn't really made us money, you know, which we're happy to still do it, but it's nice that the sponsorships allow it to be more of a long-term thing.And like for example, Magic Mind. Honestly, we've been working with them recently and they've been so helpful and supportive and we just really appreciate that.Justin (18:10.909)Yeah. Uh, when they first reached out, um, and this is sort of a little bit behind the scenes, like how the sausage is made kind of deal. Obviously the podcast costs money every month for the hosting and things like that. It costs us time. And, you know, we really love it. And. We, if we do the podcast, we can't do other things that might provide for us financially, you know, for our families and things like that. Tanner has a wife and a dog. I have a wife and a dog and a baby.So we can't do this all day every day just because we have jobs. When Magic Mind reached out and they're like, yeah, we'd like to partner with you. Honestly, it sounded a little bit too good to be true. So I was like, is this real? Just because I've had people, on Instagram you always get those people are like, yeah, you're woman of the year. And I'm like, I'm a man. So they were like, yeah, we'd like to work with you guys. Andthrough the whole process, they've just been so nice. And to me, it shows me really what's behind their product, which is Magic Mind, it's a productivity shot, but it shows kind of the culture of their company. With our first sort of promotion, it was kind of a little creative, I was a little nervous of how they'd receive it, and we sent it over, and our contact over there was just like, yeah, this is so great, she was just so praising of us, that to me, again, it just showedif they are that excited and that emotional and energetic about, you know, the promotion, then that's obviously what's behind the productivity shot, Magic Mind, which is, you know, a subscription for it's supposed to replace your coffee or your...

Welcome to How to Be a Better DM! And Merry Christmas!Today, we are going to try and make our hearts grow three sizes by sharing our gifts as DMs! And we'll be having the ghosts of Christmas help us!This episode was sponsored by Magic Mind! Find out more info here: https://www.magicmind.com/betterdmUse our code, BETTERDM20 to get up to 50% off of a subscription!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. PatreonBrought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.

Welcome back to today's show. Today we talk about tragedy.Here are some of the questions we talked about today on the show:Writing Tragedy into your GameWhat is tragedy in D&D and what are some examples?Why use tragedy?Environmental TragedyPersonal TragedyWhat makes tragedy earned?What are some wrong ways to go about adding tragedy to a D&D campaign?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. PatreonListen to Our New PodcastAs a listener of this show, you obviously love story. Now that you’ve learned how to craft your own story on this show, wouldn’t it be nice to have some inspiration? Or maybe just a moment of immersion and escape? Then come join us in our new Actual Play D&D 5e show, Pact and Boon. Enter the World of Calignos where our characters, Jolly, Wolfgang and Alon will meet each other in Hell. Enjoy our troublemaking and near-death experiences wherever great podcasts are heard. Just go to session0studios.com/pactnboon and start listening today. Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.

What to Do When a Player Misses a SessionWelcome back to How to Be a Better DM, the Official Podcast of Monsters.Rent, the only rental subscription service for D&D minis.I’m your host today, Justin Lewis, and today, you and I will talk about a topic that affects every gaming group at least once in their campaign. To be honest, it’s somewhat a thorn in my side as I personally hate when this happens. It can interupt the flow of the game and cause some confusion as far as the story goes as well. It’s a plague, and today we will find the cure…But before we get to that, I just want to let you know that we want to hear from you, literally. We want to start featuring some listener questions or tips on the show, so go to Instagram, then go to @monsters.rent and send us a message, either audio, video or text, of a question you want answered, or a tip you have found helpful in your DMing experience. We’ll mention it on the show and also give you a quick shoutout.  We realized that you have a wealth of experience that should be shared as well. So why not share it. Again, go to @monsters.rent on Instagram and send us a message and we’ll get it up on show.So, the plague that I was talking about earlier? It’s when a player misses a session or can’t make a particular session.Let’s take a scenario. This is a text thread between you and your group.DM: D&D tonight at 6. Does that work for everyone?Alex: Yup, I can’t wait.Sean: Of course bruh, I’ll bring the soda.Maddy: I’ll bring snacks. Does everyone like Japanese Algae candy.Alex: No way, that stuff’s gross.Maddy: Alex, I saw you eat like 10 handfuls of the stuff last week.Jerry: I’m really sorry guys, I can’t make it tonight…The rest of the thread: stunned silence for the next 3 hours.This is a very common situation. The reason why there is stunned silence in the text thread for the next 3 hours is because every wants to play D&D that night. Jerry is the only one not able to make it. Everyone else is wondering, “What do we do?”That is, in part what I want to talk about today. What do you do?First off, let’s talk about what you can do and then let’s talk about why and when you should or shouldn’t do any particular thing.I also want to make it very clear. Don’t feel guilty for wanting to play D&D without one of your players there. It happens. Also, don’t feel guilty for rescheduling for a later time. I’ve said this before, but D&D is a hobby and other things take precedence sometimes. That said, let’s talk about your options.Here are, as I see them your only options:Reschedule the Session for a Different TimePlay AnywayKidnap the delinquent player, duck-tape them to a chair, wax their eyebrows off for the impertenence of missing a session, and play anywaysThat’s everything you can do. That last one might be somewhat…. Hmmm I think the word is illegal… but you get what I mean.So now that we know what can be done, let’s talk about what should be done….Reschedule the SessionProbably the least the desirable option is to reschedule the session. This is likely the least desirable because it’s assumed that everyone in the group wants to play D&D. This is essentially making everyone suffer. I’m not bitter, I’m just stating the facts.Sometimes though, it is the right choice.The most common reason for a rescheduling is that multiple people in the group can’t make it. You’ll have to come up with your own hard and fast rules, but in my group, if 3 people can’t make it, then for sure we are rescheduling. If 2 people can’t make it, then it’s like 85% sure that we are rescheduling. If 1 person can’t make it, it’s 60% sure that we are rescheduling.I would say that rescheduling, regardless of the right choice, is likely the easiest option for the DM. Everything else is somewhat more involved. Now, I will say, just because you reschedule DND doesn’t mean that you have to reschedule games. You could still meet up with the members of the group who can make it and play a different game or even play a one-shot. There’s nothing wrong with that. For that reason alone, rescheduling is a very powerful option when it comes to a player missing a session.It’s also a good option because you don’t really have to make any other considerations.So with that, let’s transition away from this option that is really the simplest and easier, and let’s make things a bit m ore complicated.Present but Non-ParticipatingSo, for the next few options, we are assuming that only one player is absent and that the DM and the rest of the group have decided to proceed forward regardless of their absence.Now, you have to make a choice as the DM as to what happens to the character who, for the time being, is without a puppet-master.The next obvious and next easiest method here is to simply have that character present, but not doing anything. Whenever roleplaying situations happen, that character doesn’t interact and just is a walking potato. This method might work, but more often than not, it will be comical to the other players who will ask, “What does Gregarious do in this situation” to which you’ll have to respond as the DM, “Gregarious seems zoned out and doesn’t really respond to the rest of you.”While funny, this method sort of breaks the 4th wall, remind you and your players that this a game and decreasing the overall immersion. If your players are wonderful and considerate players, they may not mess around with the C (it’s just a character since the P or Player is missing).I don’t prefer this method because it’s far too easy to just transition to one of the other methods anyways. I feel like doing it this way with the Character being present but Not-participating is just a non-decision, as if the DM couldn’t decide what to do.Besides we all know that as soon as combat happens, it will be as if the character isn’t there or someone will take control over the, so let’s talk about the other methods because those are much more likely.Present and SubbedOne method you can employ is the Present-And-Subbed method. In this method, you let someone else at the table take control of the character. For all intents and purposes the missing player is being “subbed” or substituted by another player at the table.If you do go with this method, I would put a couple of stipulations on the gameplay.First of all, I would recommend that the subbing player does not do any roleplaying for missing player. I recommend this because no one wants words put in their mouths so if you have someone playing for you there is a chance that things would be said that the original player would never say or things would not be said that the original player would say. It just gets really confusing really fast. I would just avoid it.Next, and this actually has to apply whether you or another are controlling the missing PC, but can they die. In my games, if you are not present, your character can’t die. That’s just because I don’t trust myself or my rolls enough to keep characters alive, so if you were going to die and bleed out, you don’t because you are “on loan” and that’s just not fair. In your games, are characters whose players are gone able to die?If they can, make sure the missing player knows that. In fact, that should be a table rule set up at the beginning of the campaign before any players are ever missing.You also need to decide if the missing player has the right to Retcon anything when they return. In my opinion, I would opt against this except for various roleplaying aspects. When it comes to the major choices, the player shouldn’t get to choose what happens when they are gone. That said, the players controlling them shouldn’t be able to make any big decisions with them either. When a character is being subbed they should really almost just be an NPC that gets to help the party in combat. Simple.Present and Under Control of the DMThat last option that allows the character to still remain present is controlling them yourself as the DM. In my opinion, this can be pretty simple to do, but it can also get annoying. For example, if your players use digital character sheets that you the DM can see then it gets a little easier to play the character. If they don’t then you’ll have to keep track of a sheaf of papers.Also, the more obvious consideration is that as the DM you are controlling scores of baddies. Do you really want to be in charge of another character during combat? My general opinion is to give a player control over the character during combat at the very least depending on how many adversaries there are. If there is just one, then I’m find doing itSo if keeping a character around is so energy and focus consuming, why would anyone choose to keep the character present instead of just having them leave?There are a few reasons. The first reason is that, depending on your party and table rules, the character has to be present to gain XP. That’s how it works in video games, but that may or may not be how it works at your table, for example, I prefer to just have everyone in my party level up at the same time based on story points. That’s because I don’t like math. Also, I don’t have players who leave for extended periods of time.The second reason a DM might choose to have a character stick around while their player is not present is because they are integral to the current story at hand. This might be the same reason that you choose to reschedule the session if a player is not around, because they need to be present to make certain decisions. Having the character participate without the player is not an ideal situation but it does allow the story to move on and it makes it so the entire party isn’t just waiting on the one person.The third reason is that it doesn’t make sense for the character to just disappear. There are different ways to make the character disappear which we’ll talk about next, but if you are in the middle of a dungeon or stuck on a speeding train, having the character just say, “Gotta go” doesn’t make sense and breaks the immersion.Not PresentSo now that we’ve talk about keeping the character present, let’s talk about having the character be absent in addition to their player.There are in my opinion 3 ways to make this happen.You can have the character stay behind.You can have the character actively choose to leave.Or you can have something else pull the character away.When you have the character stay behind, this is simply that the party decides to go somewhere and the character decides to remain where they are waiting for the rest of the party to return. I saw a great example of this in High Rollers, the group from the UK when one of the players was not there they had her character, Nova, just stay at the inn. Obviously this worked because the party was staying at an inn in a city. If there were in the middle of a desert without food or water, having the character stay behind would be nonsense.When you have your character leave, the character decides that another path is more important than traveling with the party, even for a short time. In the 2nd campaign of Critical Role, Yasha did this multiple times because the player had other commitments.When you choose this method, you have to have the player or yourself come up with a logical reason as to why the character left. If the reason is, “Because I wanted to find mushrooms in the forest,” that either fits with your campaign or your character or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, the other players will not find that a rewarding answer. More than anything, when a character leave the party and comes back, that should be an excellent opportunity to develop the story arc of that character, providing great roleplaying for the party when the character returns. So don’t waste it. Use it as an opportunity to have something cool happen.How to explain why they come back?Speaking of the character coming back, when a character leaves, you will have to decide if they will come back or not. If the character was just a temporary thing, or the player wants to have a new character then having them leave is not a bad thing. In most cases though, the character will come back, and that means that you and the player who was missing need to figure out a plausible reason not only for why the character leave but more importantly, why they came back and how they came back.In some instances, it’s easy.Nicholas Tracagious left to go commune with his deity in the forest. He came back because he was done. The only reason that specific scenario could work is because in this case, the party remained in the same city, able to move freely. If the party had been embroiled in a dungeon, then having Nick Tracagious show up would be somewhat weird, unless, his deity in the forest had shown him a specific place in the dungeons where he could special psychedelic mushrooms and the place where those mushrooms are found just so happen to coincide with where the party is. Honestly, even that scenario would seem a little too coincidental.A quick sidenote though.D&D is your story. That means that even though some things might seem coincidental, it isn’t because you are the weaver, tying all the threads together, weaving a great and beautiful tapestry. Was it a coincidence that Han Solo and Chewbaca were in the Mos Eisley cantina when Ben Kenobi went looking for a way off planet? Or was it the force? Was it just coincidence that Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were all present at the Council of Rivendel or were they destined to be there. It doesn’t matter, because they were there. Sometimes I analyze things too much and fall into the trap of thinking, “What a funny coincidence that those two characters are there,” and then decide not to make that part of the story happen. In movies and stories, “coincidences” happen all the time, and honestly that might be why the stories or the movies even have a plot, because of the “coincidences”. So, I know I say that you have to make things “make sense”, and I know that I’ve been using a “lot of air quotes”, but just as long as your story is gripping and entertaining, don’t worry to much about it.Side note over.So, thinking about reasons why a character would return, there are a few possiblities, but obviously, if you can think it up, then it will probably work.The simplest reason is that, like what I’ve already mentioned, the character that left finished the thing they went to do, so they came back. Simple, easy, doesn’t need much more explanation than that. Another simple reason is that the thing they went to do lead them back to the party anyways. This method is great if you want to tie in the reason they come back with what the party has going on right now. An example of this would be DewStar the Druid left because she had a strange vision about her communing with nature in a white glade. She leaves, finds the white glade, and while there has another vision about finding a black glade and her party. She starts her search. She finds the black glade, right as a Death Night begins attacking her party in the very black glade she saw in her vision. After the party dispatches the black glade,  DewStar discovers that at the center of the glade there is the grave of an ancient druid who’s spirit is at unrest for some reason. See, the character left and returned, both seemingly for plot points.Another simple reason is that the missing character had their own agenda and then whatever the party was doing leads the party to the missing character. It’s somewhat similar to the previous reason, but there are slight differences. In this case, the missing character doesn’t really have any intention of returning to the party, or they intend to return much later. The party then, does the returning, surprising everyone involved.When it comes down to it, you don’t need to make it make sense, unless you want to dwell on the fact. If you just want to gloss over that so-and-so returned from skinny dipping in a mountain lake, that’s fine. Gloss over and move on. The rest of your party will move on too, no problem. If you do want to spend time on, make sure that it’s a satisfying and fulfilling answer to the question of, “Why did you come back here and now.”Table Rules for CommunicationWhile we are on the subject of players missing sessions and things like that, I think it would be apropos to talk about how communication around missing sessions happen.Here’s the truth of it: it will change on a case by case basis.Here’s the ideal that we all strive for: Every missing player alerts the group at least a couple days in advance.I know things don’t always pan out that way, but it’s best to alert the group as soon as you know you will be missing so the group can make decisions and plan what they will do.For example. This previous week, I was sick. I was hoping I would feel better by the time the day of our session came around, but I wasn’t. So I texted the group that I couldn’t do it that day. On other occasions, members of our group have had conflicts and they’ve alerted us that they would be out of town a week in advance.This allows the rest of us to decide if we will continue playing anyways or if we will hold off and wait until they get back. So really the only rule for communication is communicate early, clearly and often.What if the Missing Player is Integral to the StoryWhat do you do if the missing player is integral to the story?Here’s where I put on my Tough Love hat.The simple fact of the matter is that you will have to decide yourself. But let me tell you that no decision is wrong. If you decide to move along with the story, that’s totally fine. In fact, maybe the player being gone will help you write a more creative story. Either way, you are the DM, you are ultimately the person with the most control over the session and whether it happens. Yes, your players may all decide to skip a week, but you get to decide if the week is skipped any time you want. Don’t forget that. Also, lord that over your players in a really jerky way. Just know that if a player is missing, and their character happens to be a big decision maker right in the center of what’s going on in the story right now, you can play without them. They may not like that, but if that’s what it takes to keep your group playing and having fun, then do it.From sickness, to work trips, to family conflicts, our players will have lots of reasons why they may or may not be able to make the session happen. That’s probably especially true in this next month and a half as we move towards Christmas and the New Year. When your player turns up missing,...

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM.Today, I sit down with Andre Clayton, founder of Foundry VTT to chat about VTTS, virtual D&D sessions, and AI.Thanks for listening.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. PatreonAlways 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.

In this week's episode, Tanner discusses the need to focus on the positive aspects of being a DM, as the negativity can lead to burnout.Happy Thanksgiving to all of our listeners!Mentioned in this episode: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.Signup for Our Email NewsletterDo you love the show but can't always listen to it? Do you prefer written content? Go to session0studios.com/newsletter/ and sign up to get weekly tips and tricks sent to your inbox so you can become the greatest DM the world has ever seen.Level Up Guide

Tanner Weyland (00:04.783)Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I'm here with Justin Lewis. Say hi, Justin. Hi, Justin. We are here today to talk about a fun little topic, basically, Dungeons and Villages, when and how to use either. So I mean, this topic, I've always find it interesting, like the composition of a campaign, you know?Justin (00:13.631)Hi Justin.Tanner Weyland (00:33.535)If you treat it like a like a sandwich, it's like, okay, what you know, it's a nice BLT. Do you put the tomatoes on first? Do you put you know, are you a maniac and you just put a bunch of bacon and just like a leaf of lettuce? You know, what do you do? And how do you kind of balance it? That's kind of what a lot of DMS have to do when it comes to being like, Hey, I want a really cool dungeon. But I also want to have some of the more role playing heavyVillages and kind of switch it up. Have you ever thought about this kind of balance that you have Justin?Justin (01:09.986)I haven't necessarily thought of the balance, but I certainly have fallen into the blunders that we're going to talk about with each of these. And when you do, it's pretty annoying because you kind of kick yourself and be like, dang, that dungeon could have been so fun or that village could have been so fun. I will say, I definitely think one might be a little bit easier because, well, we'll getI'll reveal all as we talk.Tanner Weyland (01:42.847)Exactly. So for the purpose of this discussion, just to give a little roadmap, we'll kind of dive into dungeons and villages or cities, you know, we're saying villages, but we mean any kind of settlement where it's going to be, you know, more NPC centric built. So that's kind of what we're thinking about when we think of village. And it could be any size could be a little, you know, three shacks by the side of the road, or it could be an entire city.Surrounded by huge walls with giant palaces within it, right? And it just kind of the that's we're bundling that as one experience done on the other side dungeons now It's not always a dungeon per se but it's kind of like a curated Experience where you know, the adventuring party is going into one specific place and exploring, you knowAnd it's not somewhere they're just traveling through. It's like, no, it's, it's a specific kind of, uh, self-enclosed experience. Uh, so kind of getting into it, let's, let's talk about dungeons and what kind of makes a dungeon special.Justin (02:50.622)Yeah. And one other thing I'd like to also add, just sort of a caveat. These are traditional dungeons and villages. You could theoretically take whatever we're talking about, like the aspects, and apply them to the other one, right? For example, by nature, dungeons will be, or seem more railroad-y, right?Justin (03:19.85)Choices have been made and now choices are restricted, right? Like once Aragorn follows the path of the dead and he goes into the mountain, the ghosts know he's there, right? He can't just, well, he could just turn around and walk out, but those are his only two choices. Proceed, stay where he is. I guess three choices or go backward. But, but theoretically you could make a village more railroad-y, but we're going to talk in general terms. So that's really the first.point of a dungeon and kind of what it is once you're in it, it's either stay where you are, which is kind of not really a choice, go forward or go back.Tanner Weyland (03:58.467)Exactly and once you're at the dungeon you can kind of expect You know, I think it's gonna be reskinned and you're going to as a DM, you know We talked about this before you want to give a variety of experiences, you know, don't have every combat be the same Have interesting mechanics and include traps here and there and make sure they're not all the same either But that's kind of what you're expecting in the dungeon. You're gonna expect a lot of combats with various creaturesA lot of traps that or just you know obstacles and skill checks that the party is gonna have to deal with and of course loot. I think that that's Another big difference between villages and dungeons is a dungeon So long as you beat the enemy or the challenge or whatever it is The treasure is just sitting there. You don't have to barter. You don't have to pay anything you paid with your time And and your characters, you knowbodies essentially, right? And I think that's kind of you, that's what you expect. And yeah, it might be within a druids ancient enclave or something or it could be in a crypt, you know far below the city, you know, or whatever it is. The skin is going to look different and the types of monsters is going to be specific to the environment, but it's still kind of those elements, you know.Justin (05:22.494)Absolutely. Kind of to that point, you know, a traditional way of making dungeons is coming up with either the map first or kind of the end goal first, right? So if they're going into this crypt to destroy a lich, you know, you know that they're going to fight the lich at some point, unless they leave the crypt, right? That's just how it is. And then you sort of fill everything inchallenges to make it more difficult and things like that. So with all that said, compared to a village, a dungeon is a lot more obvious in terms of goals, right? People don't necessarily go into a dungeon and then halfway through be like, wait, like when we get to the end, what are we gonna do? It's like, no, we're gonna kill the baddie and take the loot, right? Like that's the dungeons part of Dungeons and Dragons.Tanner Weyland (06:19.511)Exactly. And so I find that dungeons are, they're nice in one way and they're difficult in another. First, they're really nice in the way that it's simple. You know, the players, like I was running a campaign and I had a dungeon.You know, this was one of those campaigns that kind of sputtered out pretty early on because school happened and all this other stuff, right? But we had gone through it opened up with essentially a dungeon crawl, you know, kind of like a smaller to medium sized one took a few sessions and And then it was like a couple villages in a row and they the players like afterwards. They were like, Oh, I really like that initial dungeon.And I think that the reason why is because like, Hey, when you're just opening up to adventure, uh, especially if your party isn't amazing at role play, you don't scratch that. Even if they are amazing at role play role playing, I think that you have, there's a lot of difficulty in launching right into role playing. If you haven't had kind of those more like grindy dungeons that you have to go through, right? You kind of need experiences.in order to really enjoy a village. And I think dungeons are a perfect place for that.Justin (07:40.778)I couldn't agree more and I actually think based on what you said, it sparked kind of this thought in my mind that I often talk about galvanizing experiences at the beginning of campaigns or with one shots that force the party to be a party, right? And those galvanizing experiences can be, you know, shared trauma or they could literally be we've all been hired to do the same thing. AndTanner Weyland (08:08.98)Yeah.Justin (08:10.134)To your point, Tanner, I think doing dungeons at the beginning of a campaign is very important because it does allow the party to sort of form those bonds. And even thinking, you can do dungeons in sort of a very non-dungeony way. So the example I'm thinking of is the Erois campaign of high rollers. They're a group out of the UK, and I've been listening to themlately and spoiler alert if you haven't listened to it but their campaign starts with session one they're on an airship and they're being attacked right and basically chapter one of this campaign the airship crashes in the lowlands which is a wild and inhospitable place right and there's like five or six survivors fibers including the partyActually, there might be more because I think there were NPCs. But in a larger sense, that is a dungeon because their options are we have to find civilization or we're going to starve, be attacked by wild elves, things like that, right? And I might be kind of expanding the definition a little bit, but you can do things like that.And I do think that starting campaigns with a dungeon is a very good idea. Because again, it does give everyone that clear reason of why are we traveling together? Why are we cooperating? Because everyone always likes to pick those characters that are mysterious and don't trust anyone, you know.Tanner Weyland (09:53.531)Yeah. And, and, you know, I think for all the strengths of a dungeon, because like you mentioned, it's, it's right in the name. As much as people love dragons, dungeons comes first. Uh, and, but I think that the issue is that sometimes they can be fatiguing, especially for a DM, but also for players, right? Where it's like, if, if it's big enough, well, I mean, caveat, if your players come in being like, Hey, I want to do a huge dungeon, you know.Uh, just like multi-level and that's basically the entire campaign's one big dungeon that that's, that's the exception. If you're just including a dungeon as part of the campaign, if you do too long of a dungeon, then it's just, it's a lot of combats. It's a lot of the party being essentially on edge the entire time, right. Being like, Oh, you know, stealth into the next room for like 10 sessions in a row. You know,And it just becomes so fatiguing. And so it's like, Hey, you know, pick your battles, uh, specifically by, you know, making it so that not every dungeon is super long, uh, occasionally, I think it's totally worth it to do a longer dungeon, especially if you've got really big consequences and if you build it up, then the players are like, Oh, okay. Prepare well. Cause you know, there's no coming back or not for a while, at least then, you know, a longer campaign can be fine.It'll still be fatiguing, but it's kind of like the hard days work type of fatigue. Otherwise you don't want to do that consistently in my opinion.Justin (11:24.138)Yeah. I would actually add two examples of my current campaign. Um, so I had my group in the underdark and my thought process was, well, in the underdark, you don't really, you guys don't know where you're going. So you're, you're literally wandering around. Uh, and I was making the map as I went, basically rolling on random tables to see what rooms were, were next. And they weren't keeping a map, right?And suffice it to say it went on far too long. And I did that because I was like, yeah, I want them to feel the frustration of being in the underdark, right? Being lost. But I think it failed because you don't want your players to feel that you want the characters to feel that. So exactly right, Tanner. You don't want to do too big of a dungeon, but you said something very important. If you prepare them for the scope of it and the scale.I think that's the secret sauce.Tanner Weyland (12:26.203)Exactly, you know, because any type of here's the great thing. We talk about Dungeons and Dragons being about storytelling and it's absolutely right and stories come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but as a general rule, you know, if you're not really building a dungeon up, then maybe make it small to medium length, you know, and then for longer ones, you want to give that kind of a gravitas to it beforehand.Um, but, but enough about dungeons, let's talk about villages and cities. Um, I think it's no surprise that first and foremost, they're just much more role playing focused, right? You don't go into a dungeon expecting to talk with every mimic who's pretending to be a chest, right? You go into a dungeon to just, you know, hack and slash and find stuff. Villages. It's like, no, that's, that's the key difference is like people. NPCs and you're going to be talking a lot.and how you kind of utilize those role-playing opportunities can be the difference between a very boring city or village and a very exciting one, you know?Justin (13:33.482)Yeah, absolutely. Kind of what I was saying before, you know, Aragorn goes into the path of the dead. He's in the dungeon per se. It's not exactly the same thing, but his choices are stay put, move forward or go backwards in a, in a city, a village, a settlement. Your decisions are, uh, go forward, stay put, go backward, go right, go left, go up, go down, go inside, go outside that, you know, there's a lot more choices. And.To this point, as I said with a dungeon, the game mechanics were a lot more obvious with a dungeon, right? There are traps that cause things. In a settlement, you have more choice, right? And because of that, you're...The game mechanics aren't as obvious. You might gain favor in the eyes of a baron because you did something for them, which isn't a direct game mechanic, but it's something that your dungeon master or you might be factoring in because you slaughtered this orc that was holding this person hostage or something like that.It's sort of a subtle game mechanic that's not so obvious, but it still has impact. That's another aspect of villages and cities that is very different than traditional dungeons.Tanner Weyland (15:04.323)Exactly. And I think, I think if you look at it the right way, then Villages provides you a lot more creativity, especially where, you know, like you were saying, the mechanics aren't obvious. So make your own mechanics, and specifically, make it in a way that provides both direction and development for characters. Because I think that's where Villages really shine, where it's likeif you look at a dungeon in terms of like, oh, that's a place where they get kind of galvanized together as a party, the place where they grow as individuals is in a city, you know, in a village, that's where the characters can be like, hey, I'm gonna go pray at the nearest, you know, temple of the God that they worship, right? Or they're going to go look for a specific type of equipment that they're looking for. Or maybe they're, they're like, hey, I want to go findyou know, the best pie in the city or whatever it is, right? The point is, is that in a city, if you encourage it, players can really get connected with their characters. They can get really invested in their characters, uh, personal, you know, goals and aspirations and growth. And that's, you know, that's just such a great, uh, part of it. And in terms of the mechanics being more fluid, uh, you know, I think that in a city and once again, just as a.caveat here, cities also should be, you know, you shouldn't keep a player in a city too long, you know, um, kind of same as a dungeon, uh, they should go out and then come back kind of thing. But with that in mind, uh, you should be willing to kind of play around with some interesting mechanics, like, Hey, maybe your players want to start up a food cart or a business, or they want to, you know, go and study at the local library and like get something out of it.Justin (16:34.312)Heh.Tanner Weyland (16:58.639)Villages, you know, if you're creative, they can be so much more than just a place where they get a couple side quests from some needy passerbys and also buy equipment from the local store, right? They can be something where you actually do real things that we do in life, right? But for a party of players, right?Justin (17:20.21)Absolutely. And I think in a city, it is the time to really pay attention to those moments where your players express sort of an interest of their character that might seem unorthodox or kind of like a waste of time. Go full in on that, right? If someone's like, you know, like my character likes animals, so maybe they would want to go see a zoo. Spend time making some pretty cool encounters at the zoo.where they could actually make some progress in their character's life. Like they could maybe find an animal companion or a secret treasure or something, like treat their simple interests as important because then they'll share them more often and they'll kind of go down those rabbit holes. And also kind of going back to what you were saying about your own game mechanics. I think one of those thatwe're going to talk about on a future episode is character reputation. And, uh, sorry, my computer just, did I cut out there? Okay. Yeah. My computer just was like, Nope, I'm going to sleep. Anyways, um, character reputation can be a very powerful mechanic, especially in a city because there's people with whom you can gain reputation or lose it. Right.Tanner Weyland (18:30.895)You're good.Tanner Weyland (18:49.707)Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, aside from developing personal character arcs, developing relationships with NPCs, that can't be understated, right? Because it's like, hey, it character reputation is important on the city wide level. And I think that's really fun. But also like with individual characters, you know, in video games, they do it really well, where they're like, Oh,You kind of have to reach a certain level of like favorability with an NPC. And then that unlocks different opportunities or, or whatever, you know. And I think that we, as DMs, when there's a city, I feel like it's actually worthwhile to kind of create, you know, a little, you know, a little, uh, level. Uh, for some, at least for some of the major NPCs, right. That they're going to be interacting with on a regular basis and kind of make it so that they are.not only encouraged to develop themselves, but also develop relationships with NPCs by doing like side quests and stuff. And I think side quests is, you know, something that you should really emphasize in general in a bigger city. Because it's like, you know, with a main quest, you kind of think of it as continuously going forward and moving on to the next place and the next place after that.in a city you don't especially if it's bigger, you don't want to go there, visit once, and then just never use it again. You know, especially if the players haven't had the time to really wring it of all its good, you know, opportunities. And so it's nice in a city to, like you were saying, it's like, hey, make essentially a side outing, or a side quest of going to the zoo, or oh, hey, my uncle's farm, I haven't heard from him in a while.Could you help me? You know, and you just really, it's a chance for you to play around with different, you know, opportunities and kind of quest lines that aren't just the main big earth shattering quest, you know?Justin (20:56.99)Absolutely. Thinking about this and thinking about some of the challenges that you will probably encounter when running cities in your game. I'm just thinking about some of the challenges I've had in the first one is it's really easy for the one player who usually...

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, the Official Podcast of Monsters.Rent. If you are a podcast listener, I am currently waving at you because I am recording myself on video to add to our Youtube Channel, How to Be a Better DM.Today’s show is going to talk about one of the most common D&D tropes out there. It’s the place where all great adventures start, and usually where most adventurers end their day. It’s the place that I like to imagine myself in when I record these shows, and you and I have sat down at a table to swap stories.But before we get to that, I just want to take a moment to say thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I was chatting my my boss at my day Job, and he asked about the podcast and Monsters.Rent. We got to chatting and he looked us up on Spotify and Apple. Because of you, we have over 50 ratings on Spotify and over 15 on Apple Podcasts. That’s so awesome. Just seeing that made my day. I can honestly say that from. Myself and Tanner, if we didn’t have you listening and interacting, this would be much more lonely. So thank you so much for listening and adventuring with us :) A couple weeks ago, I was running the free Halloween one shot. Spoiler alert, but ther is a tavern in the one shot. If I can be Frank with you, during th one shot, the party went to the Tavern and honestly I did not have it as fleshed out as I wanted. Improv is great, and it’s a very important skill to have, but have a plan that goes well is usually better. I had to improvise. In my opinion, it wasn’t as cool as it should have been.So it got me thinking. Basically every D&D campaign has taverns in them. They are a mainstay of th hobby. So I decided to do an entire podcast episode on taverns, specifically on how to use them and how to prepare them and how to populate them. We’ll talk about some tips to make it easy for you to run them in your games.The Importance of a TavernLet’s first talk about the importance of taverns.  First f all, you can choose not to hve them in your game, which is completely fine.However, as I’ve already said, a tavern is a very classic trope of D&D games. It can function as the base of operations for your party. It can be sort of that “safe space” that your band finds all along their journeys.It can be much more than that however. For one thing, it can be a place of great player-to-player roleplaying, which in my opinion is some of the most important roleplaying there is.  Combat can be so quick paced and hectic, that sometimes it is nice to metaphorically kick back and have a nice drink with friends.Sometimes you also need your bad guy’s to “Kick down the door” as Brandon Sanderson and Friends say on their podcast, Writing Excuses. What better place than a tavern.I think the most important reason to feature a tavern in your game is because our characters are adventurers. That, by definition, means that they rarely return home. People still want to feel a sense of home, or at least a sense of coziness. That’s exactly what taverns were created to do. Throughout history, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, taverns became a place of refuge for people on the road. So why not sit back and enjoy the feel of a homely tavern with your friends.Elements of a TavernObviously, if you want to feature a tavern, then it would be good to know the most basic elements of a tavern. As I like to say though, once you know the rules, you can learn how to break them in fun and interesting ways. So let me tell you what you will most likely find in a tavern, and then you can change things up in very new and interesting ways, however you wish.The BarkeepSince a tavern is a type of bar, you obviously need a barkeep. The most basic requirements of a barkeep are that they serve drinks. In more common tavern settings, the barkeep is behind the bar. Often they know a lot about the town or the setting, but sometimes they don’t. In most cases te barkeep is just as iconic as the tavern. That means that the tavern is a great time and place to really make a unique character that probably won’t become embroiled with the party as a pocket NPC.PatronsNext, you have the patrons. While the party may or may not ask about the barkeep, they will most definitely ask about the patrons. That’s because the patrons pose possible threats, opportunities and surprises for the party.  Here too you can create characters that will delight and entertain your party, but don’t be surprised yourself when the party adopts one of them or tries to kill all of them. Drinks - FoodTaverns are food service establishments, and more importantly, drink service establishments. That means that you have to have food or at the very least, drinks. More importantly, you’ll need to know how much the food and drink costs because that will be a very real cost to your players.ServersIf the tavern is big enough you may need to add in some servers. These are like waiters and waitresses in the real world. It’s a pretty simple thing to add in and these characters can even be unique and interesting or they can be simple and boring. It’s all up to you.  You see servers aren’t necessary to a tavern like a barkeep or food and drink are. The BulletinAnother interesting, yet unnecessary, piece to add into your tavern is the  Bulletin. This is simply a board with various notices pinned upon it. Most of the time, the notices are for jobs that need doing. This can function as a very important game element, drawing your players from one plot hook or adventure hook to another.  Simply add this to the corner of any tavern and watch your players dive into each adventure.The InterestThe last thing that you may or may not want to add to your tavern is “The Interest”. This is a blanket term for anything that makes the tavern experience memorable. First, if you don’t want or care that the characters or players remember this particular tavern, then don’t put an Interest in the tavern. An interest is anything that would make someone remember this tavern. One way you can think about this is, “Why would people come to this establishment over any other tavern?” Or you can simply think, “How can I make this tavern experience more fun for my players?” It’s similar to how you find some sort of quirk to add to NPC’s to try to make them more memorable too. To help you understand what I mean, let’s do a couple of examples.In favor room in water deep there is a tavern called the yawning portal it’s a very famous tavern and there’s actually a source book named after it. The yawning portal actually has a well if I remember right in front of it. The well supposedly leads to the Waterdeep underground dungeons that’s one example of a interest it’s easy to remember and it makes the tavern somewhat famous more or less. Another example comes from the Halloween one shot that I hosted a couple weeks ago. I had a tavern in my one shot that is called Caliagri’s cavern. This tavern is actually in a sinkhole. When you enter the tavern building which resembles just a small shack, you descend into the sinkhole and that’s where you find the tavern and the end as well as a bathhouse using the natural spring that caused the sinkhole. That’s one example of an interest for a tavern.How to Add One in Your GameNow that we’ve talked about basic elements of a tavern let’s talk about how to add one into your game. First we need to think about how often tavern show up and where. I think a good rule of thumb is for every 25 buildings in a settlement a small tavern should be present. For every 50 buildings in a settlement a large tavern should be present. When you start to add taverns to cities you don’t need to do this hard and fast rule because the city will be big enough that it will have many taverns. at that point what you need to do is sync up a list of taverns that would be most commonly recommended or most prominently found. It would also be a good idea to create a list of terrible taverns or bad taverns, because shady dealings of the underbelly of society happen in these bad taverns. you can also add taverns as way points or stopping points on large roads. They almost act as hostiles but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to add in a tavern there as well. I find that having a tavern in mind when a party enters a town is very important because more often than not they will seek out a N or a tavern for room and lodging.As far as where the tavern should be placed, there are no rules. You could have a tavern out in the middle of nowhere. That said, With towns and cities, the center of the city will likely be home to older taverns and the periphery will probably have newer ones.Now, let’s get to building your tavern.Naming TavernsFor the most part, every tavern will need a name. No matter what though, every tavern will need something that it’s called by other people. Sometimes those two things are different. If you decide to have a tavern who’s owner never named it, everyone in the town might call it Some Guy’s Tavern, which would then be its defacto name, but not it’s actual name.Naming taverns is quite easy, because you can do whatever you want. That said, here are some tips to help you do it even faster.Focus on the interest. If you’ve already picked the interest for the tavern, then you can just go off of that. Going back to my two examples earlier, both the Yawning Portal and Caliagri’s Cavern draw their names from their interest.Do it Quick without hesitation. If you are coming up with a tavern on the fly, then your players will sense your hesitation. So name the tavern, stick with the name and defend it. Don’t let your players bully you into thinking it’s a dumb name, even if it is. Verb + Noun. If you are having trouble making up a tavern name, you can take a cue from the Dungeon Master’s Guide and do the Verb/Adjective + Noun formula that might have gotten its start with J.R.R. Tolkein (i.e. the Prancing Pony). You simply pick a noun and then attach an adjective or an active ing verb to the front of it and you got a nice tavern name. Let’s do some real quick. The Red Blade Tavern, maybe something for pirates. The Belching Barrel. The Shifting Mercury. See, it’s pretty easy.Name’s Noun. If that doesn’t fit what you are looking for, you can opt for the Name’s Noun formula. You pick a name, make it possessive and then pick a noun. For example, Cagliari’s Cavern, Arthur’s Round Table (that sounds like it should be a themed restaurant), Vergoin’s Vestibule. Lots and lots of names.With these tips, naming taverns should be a piece of cake and your players will always think you are the most prepared DM in the universe.Describing TavernsAfter naming the tavern, describing it is the next step. First, don’t forget to do some work on the outside of the tavern. This is an easy trap for people to fall into, in fact, I struggle with this myself, but the tavern experience begins outside the tavern. Are there drunkards sleeping in the ditch off to the side of the tavern? Does the tavern have well-paid bodyguards? Is the plaster peeling or is the tavern made of rich mahogany wood? All of these facts tell your party about the establishment before they even set foot in the door.Try and hint at what might be within the tavern when you describe the exterior. It’s important to do this most of the time so that when do decide to break the rules and make the inside the opposite or contrary to the exterior, you will catch your party off guard. That’s how you get the rewarding reveals.Moving inside, don’t forget to describe the scene from the five senses. Tell your players what they smell, what makes their mouth water, what they hear, the temperature of the room. After you get that taken care of, it’s a good idea to explain the layout of the tavern. Obviously every tavern will be different so to help you out, let’s describe 3 generic tavern layouts that you can use in your games at the drop of the hat.First, the Cantina. In this Tavern, the room can be any size but the bar itself juts out into the middle of the room with the barkeep being able to service people on both sides, or there being 2 barkeeps. The tables are arrayed around the bar in a circular pattern. Second, the classic Bar. In this tavern, one wall is dominated by the bar and the tables are arrayed throughout the room. Lastly, you have the L Shaped Bar. The room itself is l shaped with the bar following the shape of the room.  With these three tavern layouts, you can easily describe the shape of the tavern if you are pushed to create a tavern on the fly. RoleplayingNow, let’s talk about the most important part of the tavern, roleplaying. The first thing you need to know is that you don’t need to be ready to roleplay everyone in the tavern, but you do need to be ready to improv roleplay everyone in the tavern. What I mean by that is that you simply need to prepare a few select characters in the tavern. Everything else is just gravy. Being a dungeon master is a lot like being a fisherman. You prepare the bait, but the fish decides  whether they take it. So, being a good fisherman is knowing how to get the fish to take the bait. So with this metaphor, you need to prepare what you hope your characters will interact with. So spend much more time working on things that you actually want to play through. I make this mistake all the time, adding in interesting details about peripheral NPCs and then I get a,l surprised when the characters interact with that peripheral NPC instead of engaging with the important part of the story that I put forth. Obviously that’s where improvisation comes from, but it’s a better experience if your players think you are improvising but really you are going off of stuff you have prepared.I rambleSo to roleplay  a tavern well, you simply take the basic parts we’ve already discussed and you flesh each out a bit more. We’ve talked about creating NPCs often enough on this show so I won’t talk about actual making the barkeep or the maids or the patrons more than just that you need to answer the question of why are they in the tavern still. In the barkeeps case, it will probably have something to do with why they started the  tavern because often they will be the owner. Or, they could just be like a helping hand that needed a job. for the servers it might involve not being able to find work elsewhere or working to go somewhere else. Those motivations are easy generally. With the patrons, it goes a little deeper. The patrons are there for drinks, of course, but why are they there in a large sense? Why have they come to this town or settlement or city? are they regulars? Are they new like the party?You see, in a sense, good roleplaying is just asking questions about a character, answering those questions, and then acting out the answers. That’s a bit simplified, but you get my point.So the next thing you need to do is decide whether the character in question regards the party or a given character in a positive, neutral or negative light.Understanding how any given NPC will treat the party goes a long way to helping you roleplay them. As a default, most people will treat them in a neutral way. One thing to remember too is that people go to taverns for different reasons. Some people go to get drunk. Others go to socialize. If you know why your NPC has come to the tavern, then when the party approaches them to talk, you can respond in the right way with either, “Piss off, leave me to my drink,” or “I don’t recon I’ve seen you lot in town. Where’s abouts you’ve come from?”When it comes down to it, roleplaying NPCs in a tavern is not any more difficult than roleplaying any particular NPC except that they all have a reason to be in the tavern. Helpful TipsTo finish up the episode, let’s talk about a couple helpful tips to remember to make your party’s tavern experience sublime.Always have the NPCs in a Tavern Fleshed out a littleAs I’ve said before, anything you put in the scene is likely to be interacted with by your characters. Don’t put an NPC in a scene tht you don’t want to or are severely underprepared to roleplay. So whenever you create a tavern, write what NPCs are in there whenever the party enters. Write down at least a couple tidbits about the NPC just to help you when it comes time to roleplay. This is a tip specifically for beforehand prep, it does not apply to improvising. That said, it would not be a bad idea to keep a quick reference list of NPCs who have been somewhat fleshed out that you can put into your tavern. I would make the list tavern specific so that you’ve covered the “Why are they in the tavern” bit.Flesh out the BarkeepJust as important as the NPCs is the barkeep. This is the person who the story of the tavern itself revolves around because they are most likely the owner, most often the operator. If the tavern is supposed to be forgettable then the barkeep doesn’t matter, but we don’t play D&D to spend hours and then forget them. So give your barkeep some sizzle. Give them an interesting quirk and help the players remember them.Make Sure to Charge Your CharactersThis tip goes for every economic encounter in the game, but don’t forget to make your players deduct money from their character. It’s important because it helps with the immersion, but it also factors in a real cost to the characters. While 1 or 2 gold might not seem like enough, it could be the difference between buying a suit of armor or not. As I’ve said before, have a list of costs that could be incurred in the tavern. Try and make them specific to the tavern, but if not, you could just use sort of a blanket tavern cost for drinks and food and lodging if it is available.Explain the Difference Between an Inn and a TavernSpeaking of lodging, I find it helpful to explain to my party members whether or not the tavern has any lodging attached to it. An inn is different than a tavern, though they share similarities. An inn always has lodging and a tavern always has drinks. Sometimes an inn has a bar and drinks and sometimes a tavern has lodging. When you describe your tavern, make sure your players know whether lodging is available.Helpful ResourcesI want to give you some helpful resources, so in the show notes of this podcast episode, or if you go to the URL of the podcast on our website, there will be a list of resources at the bottom of the show notes. Hopefully these help you create the best taverns ever!Things to RememberAs we come to the close of this episode, I hope you enjoyed talking about taverns and I hope that you got some great ideas for ways to add taverns to your game. They can be the best place for some deep roleplaying, or they can just be a nice pause point in between battling epic monsters. Last thing I’m going to say is that as always, if you...

Welcome to How to Be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent.Today, we have some self-reflection to do... Or rather, all DMs should be reflecting on how a session went right afterwards in order to maximize their improvement.Got your journal out? Well, that's the first step!Mentioned in this episode:Signup for Our Email NewsletterDo you love the show but can't always listen to it? Do you prefer written content? Go to session0studios.com/newsletter/ and sign up to get weekly tips and tricks sent to your inbox so you can become the greatest DM the world has ever seen.Level Up GuideBrought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.Listen to Our New PodcastAs a listener of this show, you obviously love story. Now that you’ve learned how to craft your own story on this show, wouldn’t it be nice to have some inspiration? Or maybe just a moment of immersion and escape? Then come join us in our new Actual Play D&D 5e show, Pact and Boon. Enter the World of Calignos where our characters, Jolly, Wolfgang and Alon will meet each other in Hell. Enjoy our troublemaking and near-death experiences wherever great podcasts are heard. Just go to session0studios.com/pactnboon and start listening today.

Today we talk about inviting guests to join you in your D&D campaign.Here are some of the topics we talked about :Should you have guest players?Reasons ForThe guest has never played D&D. Allowing them to play with an established group would give them a better experience than just having them find a random group who may or may not have played before.Bringing in a guest might allow you to portray an important NPC in the story without having to roleplay them yourselfReasons AgainstAdding in a guest might disrupt the flow of the game and the group. They may not mesh because they probably don’t understand the inside jokes and comradery of the groupWhy should you try having a guest player?How Should You Do It?How Should You Not Do it?Mentioned in this episode: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 PressFollow us on InstagramThanks again for listening to our show. If you like our content and would like to engage with more of our content, head over to our Instagram account, @howtobeabetterdm, and give us a follow. Make sure to watch some of our helpful Dungeon Master Rules videos to give yourself some structure and procedure as a Dungeon Master. Don’t forget to reach out with a DM and we can talk shop. https://www.instagram.com/howtobeabetterdmpodcast/Brought to you by Session 0 StudiosVisit session0studios.com for more information.