It’s been a while since I’ve written about D&D. And I want to do a series on things that are useful when you’re the Dungeon Master of your group. I think that often times being a Dungeon Master is an intimidating process because it feels like a ton to do. You need to generate a story, on the fly, or you need to spend a lot of time planning out the perfect session. I want to let you know that it’s simpler than that and that you can be a Dungeon Master.

Dungeon Master Tools – The Campaign

Let’s start out with the big thing, the campaign. This is what you’re going to be playing for weeks, months, or even years of time. My current campaign started in 2020, I believe, and it’ll probably be wrapping up late spring/early summer. That is a long time so the question is how do you create a campaign that goes that long?

The Scary Part

That is the scary part. And the intimidating part that I want to help people get past when being a Dungeon Master. There is this idea that you need to know your campaign before going into it. You pick what you want to run, you spend time studying up, if it’s homebrew, you create the setting, you create towns, and you come up with NPC’s and once you do all of that, you are ready to start your campaign. But I think it’s way simpler than that. So let’s talk about how it is easier to implement.

How To Break It Down

There are two things that you need to start your campaign. One is going to be for you as the Dungeon Master, and one is going to be for your group or prospective players.

• An Elevator Pitch
• An Idea of the End

Let’s start with the Elevator Pitch. This is going to be that get the players interested in your idea pitch. It is going to give them a little bit of an idea of how the campaign is going to start. And some elements of the setting, mainly, is this high fantasy or low fantasy, a lot of magic, or a little magic. It’s not going to explain the whole setting to them or anything like that. It’s just going to be that one paragraph of three or four sentences and that’s it. It could even be as simple as a movie tagline to get them interested.

The other thing that you want to know is loosely how the story is going to end. Why, because you want to keep that in you mind as you plan out the sessions. And we will cover planning out your first game play session in an article soon. But I do want to emphasize to hold onto it loosely. Players might get creative and take the plot in a different way. Or you might come up with a better idea. So don’t hold onto it too tightly.

Examples

So, let’s look at what this can look like, and I’ll give you a couple of examples for it.

Example 1

Elevator Pitch

The party is facing off against the final boss, a terrible Lich who has caused destruction and been a scourge on the lands. You are unprepared for the bosses power and then you wake up. You find yourself back in your home town but you remember the Lich and all the destruction that he caused upon the land. Can you stop it this time around?

Ending

Defeat the Lich.

Example 2

Elevator Pitch

Mysterious towers appeared across the lands. They brought forth monsters into the world but also gave the average person powers to defeat those monsters. Now they are just a part of life, but something seems to be stirring. And there are rumors that if you make it to the top, you find out why these towers appeared. But is that true or is it just a legend?

Ending

Find out what is at the top of the tower.

Dungeon Master Tools Final Thoughts

So let’s wrap up this creating a campaign. Why not put more effort into it? You could, but always first get that buy-in from the players. And we’ll be talking about working with the players in a future article. When you come up with an idea, it’s as simple as starting out with those two things, and they will get built upon as you go.

So what are going to be the next Dungeon Master Tools?

• Session 0
• Session 1
• Story Arcs
• World Building
• Combat
• Exploration
• NPCs/Social Interactions
• Meta Game and Players at the Table

And let me know if there are other things to cover as well that you want to know more about, or help with. I think that there are a ton of different things that new Dungeon Masters are curious about or that feel intimidating. So I hope that I can help make them clearer and simpler for you. And this one is really that first step that you can take before you even start to think about the other elements.

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