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: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!Brought 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.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!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.

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, don’t feel...

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: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!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 StudiosBrought 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: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 StudiosBrought 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: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 StudiosFollow 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.

Welcome to How to Be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I’m your host today, Justin Lewis, and together we are going to talk about how to improve your gameplay both from a mechanical and storytelling point of view.Today, I’m excited to talk about an aspect of the game that for me holds a lot of interest and for a lot of people can be a rich source of story elements and intrigue. At the same time, for other people it can be completely boring, and possibly offputting. I’m talking about Gods, faith and religion.Before I get into the rest of today’s episode, I want to take a moment to talk about The Guild. For those of you who don’t know, the Guild is our unique membership for dungeon masters. It allows you to connect with other DMs like yourself and get access to a library of video courses and downloadable resources for your gameplay. Oh and it’s 100% free. I hope you’ll join us there, so go to monsters.rent/get-started and scroll all the way to the bottom.Table ComfortNow, the very first thing you need to do is assess your table’s comfort level with the topics of God, Religion, and Faith. In some cases, you’ll have a natural understanding. In my case, a few members of my table are also members of my faith, so I knew that they would be ok having some of those topics in the game. In other circumstances, it would be a smart idea to ask if the table is alright with those themes and topics being in the game. In most D&D settings, having a mystical god or gods is all part and parcel to the game, but depending on how your players feel about it, then you might want to tread lightly. Some games might be focused on the path of divinity, others might have gods as simply an afterthought. No matter what you do, you want to avoid these two mistakes.Avoid Pushing ReligionSaying this as a religious person, you absolutely do not want to turn your D&D sessions into sermons. I know you’re probably thinking that that would kind of be funny, and it might, but honestly, you don’t want to force players into roleplaying something they don’t want to roleplay. A person’s faith is a very personal thing, and if someone is not a person of faith, religion or Diety, then they don’t have to be even in a make-believe world.Avoid Making A Farce of ReligionOn the other side of the coin, you definitely don’t want to make fun of religion and make it appear as something that is farcical. Even though your players may be ok with it, it’s best not to form bad habits because there will come a time when you sit down to play at a table with someone who cares, and then you’ll make the slip up of a lifetime. Best to avoid those big mistakes. Extend the same consideration and courtesy you would to any other sort of way of life.Now, with your players on board for having Gods be an active part of the game, let’s talk about some other questions you need to ask. These questions apply to both homebrew settings and settings that are prewritten, but the questions will apply a little differently to each. How Involved Will Your Gods BeThe first question that you need to ask is how involved will Godhood (god or gods) be in your setting or game. This is important because if they won’t even matter, then you likely don’t need anything else in this episode. I’d still recommend listening to the end because you never know when a player might ask you a question or make a choice that will make the gods much more involved.In different settings, Gods behave differently. In some games, Gods are active members of the universe, granting divine boons with ease. In other settings, Gods are basically hidden from sight, deigning not to intervene with their followers’ lives. It’s important that you know which type of setting yours is and how the Gods will interact with players and NPCs alike. Really, the interaction of Gods falls on a spectrum with an asterisk. The spectrum is set up with very involved on the left and not involved at all on the right. The asterisk stipulates that the spectrum can describe the entire setting and the involvement of each individual deity.  An entire pantheon can be relatively involved with one or two being basically inactive. Or you could have the inverse where the pantheon is basically a non-entity with one or two who are trying to control the universe. Both instances can make for a very fun campaign.Interactions with PlayersUnless you have players who make clerics or paladins you don’t necessarily need to have the gods or god interact with your players. In fact, you could make a case for why your god doesn’t interact with the devoted paladin or cleric. But if you do have gods who interact with players you need to know how involved the gods will be with those players. Will the god in question have multiple role playing scenes face to face with the player? If they did would that be normal for the player or the god? Each of these choices has impacts on the story and you should definitely help your players realize when something special is happening. Will your players know that it is a god they are interacting with? Maybe your deity has decided to be a beneficial patron of the player but will not show themselves. The players then may draw the conclusion that a wealthy land owner has decided to show them favor. Sometimes you’ll need to realize that if one God is involved, like very involved, then that might push another deity who is at odds with the one helping the party to get involved. You might put your party in between a turf war of two gods. That could make for a pretty epic campaign. I would say that you need to set some pretty simple yet clear guidelines for yourself on what the party members can expect from a deity. Do they hear whisperings of advice when the player has no idea what to do? Or does God just show up in a brief Vision and explain that a certain task needs doing? When you have established your “rules” for how Gods interact with players, then you get to occasionally break them, which becomes a very fun Plot device.Will You Have One God or ManyThis question is more about the setting than the individual player interactions. Is your pantheon filled with numerous gods, only a handful or just one? This question naturally morphs into other considerations. For example, if your pantheon is filled with multiple gods, then the likelihood of all of the Gods having omniscience goes way down. Having 7 beings who all know everything that is happened yet have cross purposes becomes very difficult to handle very fast. Or, the gods just know everything to the point that the don’t really do anything against each other so then the Gods become more observers than actors. I suppose you probably could figure out a way to make it work, but I haven’t.If you have one God, it’s much more possible for them to have omniscience, but having them favor certain things becomes more difficult. Either the God is the God of everything or for some reason your God just very partial to only a few things, like they’ve decided to be the God of the harvest, but there are no other gods. That could make for a very silly setting or one that just doesn’t make sense. With this question also comes the question of whether or not the characters and the world at large even know about all of the Gods. It might make a fascinating campaign if there are a slew of gods that hide from the world.Is Your God Good, Neutral or EvilNow, that you’ve come up with the number of gods that will populate your pantheon, you need to decide whether or not they will be good, neutral, or evil. You also need to decide whether the gods will actively fight against each other or will they be friendly towards each other and, even if they are somewhat antagonistic towards one another, they’ll still be somewhat friendly? Let’s take an example. Let’s make up two gods. We have Ordos and Sruptos, the good god of order and the evil god of chaos respectively.In your setting, will Ordos and Sruptos be battling each other, to the death if possible? Or will they, by nature of the invincibility of Gods, be forced to be cordial and respectful to each other, using mortals as pieces on a game board rather than soldier in a battle? All of these questions add to the narrative and help you know how to bend and twist the story.If you have multiple gods, then it is common to have gods who have all sorts of alignments. If you have only one god, then alignment isn’t really useful, unless it is pivotal to the story. For example, if you only have one god, but that God just so happens to be evil, that could be the genesis for a very interesting campaign setting. I’d imagine that the God has some sort of rules that prohibit them from taken certain actions, which allows the characters to still choose to be Good if they want, or the entire cosmos is evil and everything just works within those parameters.As you can see, how God’s act and react shapes in very large ways how your story goes.Can Gods be Killed?Now, I just brought up a point that forces us to think about these next two questions: 1. Can Gods be killed? And 2. Can anyone become a god?In the previous example of Ordos and Sruptos, I explained that they might have to treat each other like game partners because they can’t kill each other. The fact that both are invincible is very important because it explains why they would want to be nice to each other. They are essentially stuck with each other forever.So in your campaign, you need to decide early on if Gods can be killed. It may be that that turns out to be the secret quest of one of your players. They want revenge on one of the Gods because they let their wife die or something like that. That can become a very epic story very quickly. You could also take the opposite approach and show that the God’s cannot be killed. In the same story of a player who wants revenge, the entire story could be about the God trying to gain back the trust of the vengeful player, while also explaining that they can’t be killed. The DM could even throw in some touching moments where the God explains that he’s tried to kill himself but it didn’t work.If gods can be killed then you need to start figuring out what does and doesn’t kill a god. As I’ve already mentioned, that means that you also need to figure out why any other gods haven’t already tried killing their rivals. In most cases, God Killing will be a very difficult task. In many ancient mythologies, Gods were “killed” but if their body parts were reunited, the God was essentially brought back to life. In other fantasy settings, like Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, when a “god” dies, their power essentially either rests on the planet the God was bound to or the power seeks out another “host” transcending them to godhood. How will it be in your setting? Can anyone kill a god? What happens when the God dies? If they were the God of sunrises, does the sun stop rising? All of these are importantCan Anyone Become a God?The next question that needs to be addressed is whether or not becoming a god is possible. This too could potentially become a personal quest of one of your party members, so you need to know whether or not it is possible. This question can be decided in the moment, though as you are roleplaying.If the answer is yes to the question of can anyone become a god, then you probably need to answer the follow up question of “Why aren’t there more Gods?” The natural answer will likely be because becoming a God is very difficult. A more interesting answer might be that becoming a God is not even actually that desirable for reasons that are unknown to most people. The point I’m trying to make with these two questions of Killing or Becoming Gods is that diety can be very powerful plot points and since they can be very powerful, you must treat them with care and attention. Your player’s will wonder why Gods can be killed at the drop of a hat. You better have a good well thought out reason. True, you can probably come up with something cool in the moment, but it needs to make sense because in most cases Gods have their hands in a lot of pots, so to speak.Using Faith as a Plot DeviceNow that we’ve talked at length about using Gods in your campaign setting, let’s start diving even deeping into how to move your story along. We all know that great stories in D&D start with plot hooks, or rather simple introductory elements that entice player’s to explore a particular story line more to eventually find a much large and more fulfilling story.A simple example of a plot hook is, “While digging through this dungeon you find a strange bow made out of black wood in the hands of a corpse that dried up decades ago. You pick up the bow and in your mind you hear, “Hello!” The player does not know practically anything about the bow except that it said hello which is interesting and curious.When it comes to faith, there are limitless plot hooks to use. That’s probably the most common way to use Faith or Religion or God as a plot device. It can help start the story.Another interesting tidbit about plot devices is that they are just plot hooks, except usually you have knowledge that connects past experiences to the plot hook. An example of this would be, “While traveling on this long road to do your Diety’s bidding, you turn a corner and see your God bartering with a local merchant. He does not notice you. You approach him and confront him, only to have him completely vanish. Before he did though, you put your hand on his arm and were not shocked with his power. He felt warm, and mortal…”This plot device has the same elements as a plot hook, in that it makes the consumer of the story curious and incentivized to finish the story, but we have some knowledge of the god before the exchange.In my estimation, there are only two ways to really use plot devices and certainly only 2 when it comes to faith. The Push and The PullThe PushA plot device is designed to move the story along. Since our players are the main motivators of the story, a plot device in D&D is designed to get the players taking action in any particular direction. A good DM then, gives lots of reasons for players to have their characters choose various paths.The Push method is generally something that happens or exists in the space a character is in that the character wants to avoid or eliminate. In the case of faith or religion, a few examples includeThe character grew up as a child of insane cultists worshiping a demon lordThe character lives in a town where a religion runs rampant and is very xenophobicThe character has been persecuted themselvesThe character does not agree with the popular religion of their areaFor the most part, the Push method is the installment of some sort of negative circumstance for the character. The idea here is that the character wants to avoid something negative. The PullThe pull method then is quite the opposite. It is the pursuit of something positive. Usually these circumstances exists (or don’t yet exist) elsewhere. Some great examples of this are:The Character wants more peace in their mortal lifeThe character wishes to attain great spiritual powerThe character wants to rid the world of evil (or good)The character wants to restore a religion to its previous gloryIn all of these, the character is reaching for something that they do not yet have.In reality both of these methods are really the same. It doesn’t matter much whether a character is running from the hopeless condition they are in, or if they are running to find hope somewhere else. In fact, it only matters if it matters to the player and the character.Using Faith as a Character DriverNow, let’s talk about using faith and religion as tools to affect change within a character’s life and make them more dynamic. Usually, this means introducing conflict. I sometimes view conflict in a story as sort of a very hard object that will either break a clump of minerals of crack bits off, slowly revealing the precious gemstone inside.Either way, we use these elements to create instances in which the character knows that things have changed and that they can’t continue being the person they were.Religion, faith, and God are perfect for this kind of application.My go-to usually involves something that my character in question already wants. I then try and make them want that thing either more difficult, more confusing, or strangely attainable.  I figure they already have this motivation, so let’s put a twist on the motivation. When it comes to religion and faith, there are a few examples that you might try.The Faith CrisisThe first method is one that a lot of us have probably experienced so I would maybe opt for this one first, although it strangely might be harder within a fantasy D&D setting. This is the faith crisis. Most of us who grew up with one faith or another probably had wonderful experiences as a kid but then realized that the world is a lot harder to make sense of when we grew up. You could have the same thing happen to your player. Admittedly, it’s very common that a faith crisis develops when someone thinks about the religious organization rather than the tenets of the religious organization, but there is nothing wrong with a character questioning the tenets of their God. In the very well written books of R.A. Salvatore, spoiler alert, Drizzt Do’Urden, the skilled Drow Elf from the Underdark realizes that he has no affinity for the teachings of the Spider Queen Lolth. He experiences a faith transformation and decides to forgo all the customs and teachings of his entire people in favor of what he believes to be right and good. That’s a perfect example.Also, a quick side note, these Character Drivers must always come with some benefits and some negative consequences. In the case of Drizzt, he was able to live with a clean conscience, but he was also forced to leave his homeland or face death.Now let’s make up an example of a faith crisis that your character might undergo. The most obvious faith crisis would be for the character to discover that a large part of their religion is just a cover for malignant activities. That’s too easy. Let’s do something a little more nuanced.Also, I must add that a faith crisis doesn’t always mean that the character abandons the faith. Sometimes the Faith Crisis turns into a metamorphosis.So for our example, let’s say Exander the Tiefling Paladin serves my homebrew god of Coronus, or Crown as he is commonly called. Crown champions the leader, the patriarch, those in command, and those who make difficult decisions. He is all about guiding those who lead people. Exander decided to follow Crown because Exander’s father, Exantos, prayed to Crown for guidance in protecting and providing for his family....