Important Lessons Learned in 2024 about being a Dungeon master

All things must end. But endings always bring new beginnings. As the year 2024 comes to a close, many of us become thoughtful and introspective. In my case, the introspection has allowed to think on the many changes I’ve personally made throughout this year and the dungeon master I’m morphing into. So today, I’d like to share some of the most important lessons I’ve learned over this last year and hopefully some of these lessons can help you too.

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. If you’re listening to this show, you’ve tried not being the dungeon master. You’ve stopped DMing and have just tried to be a player for a while, but for whatever reason, you just can’t not be the DM. Other people stop showing up, you feel the urge to write and run the story or it’s just in your blood. And because of that, we made this show to help you with your affliction! I’m your host Justin Lewis and I’m very happy to be chatting with you today of all days because tomorrow on December 6th, I will be guesting on 2 panels at Dragonsteel Nexus in Salt Lake City. Dragonsteel Nexus is the convention put on by Brandon Sanderson’s company Dragonsteel and I’m lucky enough to be able to participate. If you’re in the area, you should grab a ticket and come and hang out with me in real life. I’ll be joining a panel on TTRPGs for Authors and Writers and another on GMing 101. It should be a fun experience and frankly, I am a little nervous so any positive vibes are appreciated.

This year was the first year where any of us here at Session 0 Studios and How to Be a DM were able to guest on panels. The first happened earlier this year at Dead Wars in Provo Utah and frankly, we’ve all evolved a lot since then.

But before I get to the lessons learned, I must tell you guys something; I’m going to be a little vulnerable here.  I’m a sham.

I’m not saying this for sympathy or anything, I’m just trying to be real and vulnerable. On most days, I feel like a big fat phony. It’s mostly because I honestly consider myself to be a pretty mediocre Dungeon Master. Looking back over my DMing career, I see a huge gap between where I am and where I want to be. It’s humbling really. I’ve gotten so much better over this last year, but that improvement has really only made me more aware of how much farther there still is to go.

When I first started How to Be a Better DM, I started it for a few reasons. First of all, I love podcasts and I love podcasting. Back in 2016 and 2017, I’m pretty sure I told people that podcasts were among the things I did for fun. I love the medium and I love being able to say something. I think we all have something to say, and maybe podcasting is my way of saying something.

Secondly, and this is something most of you are probably not aware of, I had a previous podcast and that turned out to be less than successful, as least in my eyes. I want to do this full-time and the previous podcast wasn’t really going anywhere. It was a personal development podcast about doing hard things to make your life better. I called it The Hard Thing Podcast. Yeah… I know… Not the greatest name. Towards the end, I actually ended up rebranding it to Becoming the Hero which is actually still live to this day. I stopped doing that podcast because I’d tried putting together a summit of previous guests which included a couple navy seals, army rangers and a CIA spy. It was an online summit and even with a small advertising budget, I didn’t get any signups even when I dropped the price to free. I felt like I didn’t have any authority in that space and I eventually stopped putting out episodes because I felt the target market was too broad and that I couldn’t compete. When I stopped putting out episodes and nobody reached out asking where I’d gone, I knew it was the right decision.

In contrast, I saw Dungeons and Dragons as a great market to get into. I love the game and I felt like I did have something to offer. I also felt like the audience was much more specific so maybe my content would resonate more. So far, this show has been much more successful than the previous podcast and that is in no small part thanks to you, my listening friend.

We’ve come a long way to be sure, but the farther we come, the more I realize we need to get so much better and put out much better content for you. Again, it’s humbling to realize the responsibility we have to make our show better because of the trust you’ve put in us. 

So on one hand I feel to say thank you. You’ve allowed me to do some really cool things, things that I don’t necessarily feel like I deserve or merit, but still you’ve allowed me to do them all the same. 

And on the other hand, I feel a weight of responsibility. I want to fulfull on that responsibility, and I want to tell you that I’ll do my best. It’s because of this weight of responsibility that I want to share what I’ve learned this year, to help you know that your investment is paying off.

So let’s get to the most important DMing lessons I’ve learned this year:

Let Go

This is probably the most important lesson I’ve learned as a Dungeon Master, a podcaster and a business partner. Let go. This might be a lesson that is perhaps too individualized for myself, but I tend to grab a hold of things that are important to me and then not let them go, even after I probably should. I grab so tight that they don’t have a chance to grow on their own.

In my D&D games this is manifested in sessions that seemed too stressed out or forced. Deep down it stems from a fearful attitude towards life and  a scarcity mindset.

For you this might show up as never feeling like you have enough prepared for your sessions and always worrying that you won’t know what to do. You might feel a particular road block in your writing and you’ll tend towards trying to railroad your players, not because you actually want to direct the story, but because you are afraid of just letting go and seeing where the story takes you.

To fix this, practice trusting yourself. You don’t have to have everything perfect, but if you trust yourself and believe that whatever the party throws at you will be fun and that you’ll be able to throw something fun back at them, then you’ll see that everything will work out. In a more practical way, prep a session where you purposefully only prepare half of the session, the first half, and then you see where the story takes you.  

What If Questions

I’ve learned, from various podcast interviews that one of the roles of the Dungeon Master is to be a mad scientist. We’re literally supposed to look at the game and the story with a curious eye in addition to our judgemental eye. For me, the most important questions that I could ask are, “What would the party do it….” or “what would happen if I …”

This is the best way to drive your story, because it’s the players that are driving it and you’re simply giving the party the ingredients and they do all the baking, of half-baking in many cases.

When you don’t do this, there isn’t any wonder fo you and you risk telling your players a story rather than letting them discover the story that the table wants to tell. The reason this is an inferior experience is because the game is a collaborative storytelling experience, it’s built so that everyone can build the story together. Besides, everyone at the table has something to contribute, and if you want to tell a story all by yourself, then go write a story!

To do this in practice, between now and your next session ask yourself what would the party do if this happened. In my current campaign, the party is attending a memorial service that then erupted into some sort of cosmic battle with an ancient red dragon appearing out of nowhere. If you’re in my campaign, stop listening.

I was thinking about the red dragon and how they are likely not strong enough to defeat it yet. So I thought, who would be an interesting NPC to introduce? I then had the though, what would happen if the enemies of the party appeared and helped them defeat the red dragon and then asked for a truce with the party to fight a different enemy? What would the party do?

This is an interesting question because I honestly don’t know what the party will say, but I do think that it would be fun to investigate both alternatives.

Sizzle It Up

This lesson is one I learned from our very own Cayden Ottley on the show here. Over the summer, Cayden took over our private campaign to run a story he made and it was a fun and enlightening experience. Cayden is really good at painting miniatures and he used to be a band (see Texture Love on spotify), and as he DMed for us, he used his high-quality painted minis and he even used some voice changing gear and both of these tools made the experience much more fun.

I contrasted that to my own DMing (which is actually something that you shouldn’t do lol, don’t compare) and I realized that I never really put sizzle into my games. Despite what I’ve said on here many times, I wasn’t that much of a showman. 

To be clear, each DM has their own style and each game comes with its own expectations, and you should certainly try to meet those expectations. 

You can however, find ways to add sizzle to the game, add things that might impress the party, add things that take it to the next level. Because of Cayden’s inspiration, I’ve decided to try to start learning how to paint minis and see what other ways I can add sizzle to the game.

In practical terms, here’s what to do. Think about what resources you have at your availability. If you have a room where you can dim the lights, do that. If you have a 3d printer, use that. If you have access to music or ambiance, use that. But don’t just use it, leverage it. Really find out all the tools that you can use and use them to make the game sizzle.

Lean into Your Strengths

In my previous lesson, I mentioned how Cayden is really good at painting minis and he has a background in sound technology. Naturally, he used these two assets to make his game better. Earlier this year, we had a podcast with author Dan Wells. Dan explained that you should figure out what your strengths are as a DM and lean into those, that’s exactly what Cayden did and that’s what I’m trying to do more and more of. 

For sure, finding your strengths as a DM is pretty hard. It takes effort and trial and error. I’m slowly learning that I am better at puzzles and roleplaying than I am at combat. It’s hard to realize that you aren’t that great at combat or whatever it is in your case, but the sooner you can learn the better because then you can do something about it.

I’ve started to lean more into roleplaying and trying to portray characters better.

Have Fun