Dungeon Master Tools – Session 1

What Not To Do

Let’s start out with what you shouldn’t do as the Dungeon Master. And I know that some of these things that I’ll write about are much easier said than done.

Don’t stress about it. This is the one that is by far easier said than done. But your players are going to like your campaign because they are going to like playing Dungeons and Dragons, for example. So the opportunity to play the game is going to be the important part, not that the game is perfect. And I’ll talk more about what you should or maybe shouldn’t do to keep your stress lower.

Don’t over plan it. Now, I’m going to talk more about this in what to do or describe how I plan things. But don’t over plan the first session or really the campaign. You want to plan some for the session. That is going to help with stressing. But don’t build out your whole world. If you won’t go to a town this session, like the capitol of the land, don’t create the capitol and NPC’s who live there, unless they are key to some element that you know the players will get to.

What To Do

Let’s start by talking a bit about what you should plan for your first session of a campaign. My big thing is keep it simple. When I wrote about the campaign itself, I told you know your hook and have an idea of where you want to end. You can read that here.

So now it’s time to play out that hook. And you want to plan out a few things with that hook and for the first sessions.

• How the characters meet
• NPC Interactions
• A Combat

How The Characters Meet

Let’s start out with maybe the simplest but the hardest as well. How do the characters meet? The simplest way to do this is say, you are already in a party. If they are already a party, they come up with how they meet. If not, create some story hook for it.

Let’s say that they are going to get the quest from someone to kickoff the campaign. Like go deal with the goblins who are causing issues somewhere. Well, all the players grab the same notice off of the job board and then go meet at the house or location where the quest giver will give them some more details. That way you form the party.

Or maybe you want to do the classic, “you are all at a tavern when…”. That’s going to be your hook where you bring the quest giver to them, or whatever that jumping off point might be. Even if it’s the fight in the tavern and the players band together to stop the fight.

The big thing is keep this simple and let this hit the plot quickly. So this is an area where you can reduce your stress by not overthinking it. Go with the simple and/or classic option to get the game moving. Or, better yet, in session 0, let the players create a group that is already a party. Now you just need them to show up and get given a plot hook.

Social Interactions

Let’s talk about social interactions then as well. I think you want some social interactions in the first session. There is an obvious one that we already talked about. You talk with the quest giver to give them that first plot hook. But that might be a more one sided conversation. You talk with Tom Bombadil and he gives you the quest. When you do that, though, Tom tells them to go talk to another NPC to get more information.

Now with this second NPC, and you can even hint at it, they aren’t as talkative. You decide, do they just not want to share the information. Or are they traumatized because, in my previous example, the goblins took over their home or killed a party member or something like that? Give them a single simple reason for not being that talkative. Now the players get to use some rolls to try and get that player to talk more.

The big reason for this is to get the players talking more. And when the players do get the NPC to talk more, now they get a bunch of information, including information about maybe a small boss monster or something like that. And maybe some challenges that the players might face.

The reason for those little extra things, you want to players to talk about it. And they players are going to ask questions, to each other, about if they need to prepare, what their plan should be, and maybe if the person who gave the quest was lying or didn’t know there was a bigger monster out there.

Combat

Next up let’s talk about combat. I think that you want some combat. So you want to move the NPC interaction along pretty quickly. But your quest should be, here is what you need to know, here is where you need to go, and it is a quest where you need to fight something. Keep that moving.

And because you know you need to fight something, you can prepare. Now, I recommend that you keep combat to start pretty simple. I suspect what intimated some people about combat is watching Critical Role where there is always a big set piece combat that happens, or nearly always. You don’t need to do that. If you want to do a combat with minis, buy a few cheap minis or use tokens or something to represent the players and monsters and grid paper. Don’t spend a ton of money, this first combat is meant to be simple.

I personally use theater of the mind most of the time. Why, because that is even simpler. We all just need to imagine what the battlefield looks like. Now that is a bit to keep in your head. But it might be a simpler and lower barrier of entry than trying to map out a combat. If it feels like a lot, take notes of where everyone is, generally, in combat. The fighter went up next to the group of two goblins, that is all the note needs to say. But, let’s get to the next point.

Keep Planning Simple

Mainly I want to get to this next and last point of keep it simple. This is on a lot of levels. I’ve really drilled in that you want to keep it simple with the NPC interactions. You want to keep it simple with combat. But there is even more. Keep it simple, still with your world building.

Example

Let’s use the example again of the goblins taking over a dungeon and a previous group having gone in there and gotten beaten. If that’s the case what do I need for the first session as the Dungeon Master?

• Quest Giver NPC
• NPC who was with the adventuring party
• Name of dungeon
• First room for combat in the dungeon
• Goblin stat block

That is about all that you need. It is really a keep it simple. What is missing from my list? There is no world built yet. I think you might add in the name of the town and the name of the bar where you find the NPC who was part of the adventuring party. That is all that you need to kick off this campaign, it is that simple.

Avoid the temptation to build out a ton more. So don’t build out the kingdom, don’t set-up rulers, and other towns, make it only about what you absolutely need for that session. And if someone asks the name of the kingdom, crowdsource, ask the players what they think it should be called. You go with that, and you work it all together, you don’t need to build it alone.

But if that seems like too little for it. There is very little else that I’d add to your plate. At most, a shop, a shop keeper and what they have. Your adventurers should be about broke, so that makes it simpler. But that’s it, nothing more.

Final Thoughts

The whole point of this Dungeon Master Tools series is to keep things as simple as possible for you. And it’s a reminder for me to keep it as simple as possible as well. Because I know the desire to create more than I need or to plan more than I need. And the more you Dungeon Master and play your campaign the easier things will become to not over plan. Why, because you already know all of it, you build a town, the players come back to it. You don’t need to build it again.

But the temptation is that you need it all to be ready at the start. And let’s say that you are with a group of mean players. Those players go the wrong way, they leave town and don’t head in the direction of the dungeon, in your head or that was given to them. Well, make the drunk adventurer be wrong. Yes, it is okay to railroad them into what you’ve planned by just moving the dungeon, in this case. You don’t do that all the time, but always keep it simple for you because when you don’t feel stressed and overworked as the Dungeon Master, the game is more fun for everyone.

So what is next?

• 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.

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Dungeon Master Tools – Session 0

What Is A Session 0?

A session 0 is your first session of your RPG campaign, kind of. Everyone gets together, like you would normally to play the game. But instead of just playing the game, you instead are getting ready to play the game. Players don’t come with rolled up characters or anything like that. This session is for chatting, talking through your character ideas and rolling up those characters.

Why Do A Session 0?

We know what a session 0 is now. The better question might be, why do a session 0? Is there a very good reason for doing it, or is this just extra work for everyone and you should just jump right in? I’ll give you a spoiler, it’s a good thing to do.

Players Handbook

One of the reasons it’s a good thing to do is because not everyone has a players handbook. And that is a bit of an investment for a players handbook that in all fairness the fighter might not really need 99% of the time. So it makes sense to share the players handbook around the table so everyone can create their own character. If even one player doesn’t come to that first playing session without a built character, you’re going to spend most of the time making the character, so might as well have everyone do it at once.

Player Conversation

Beyond that practical reason, it’s great to have players talk and bounce character ideas off one each other. You can do that via an e-mail, but if someone is waffling between what stats to make strongest, a couple of different character backstories, things like that, the Session 0 is amazing for players to work together and create their party that can work cohesively. The example would be the rogue and the paladin. How do they work together, well, if they are created together to be in the same party, the players can talk through that.

Dungeon Master Benefits

And for the Dungeon Master it is great as well. You see what the players want to play. And as part of the conversation, you know what elements are the most important to the players. Is the background an urchin, but the backstory is really focused on the fact that they were a noble who got lost and lived as a urchin? Well, now I know all of that if I am part of the character creation process.

What Else Can Be Done in Session 0?

So, I talk a lot about character creation. And I think that is going to be the bulk of the time that is spent in a session 0. But it is also a chance for players who maybe don’t know each other to get to know each other. Because I find that I often pull in from different groups of friends to play in a campaign. So they might not know each other at the start of the campaign. A session 0 is a great way for people to get to know each other.

And as the Dungeon Master it is a great time to workshop other ideas. If you want a list of NPC names, have the players right down five each. If you want locations, let the players create some of the locations. This is a chance to flesh out some of that stuff that I think Dungeon Masters often try and do themselves for the campaign. Take off some of the load and share the fun and frustration of some of that creation on the fly with the players.

Finally, it is a chance as the Dungeon Master to pitch more of the tone of the game. This might be in giving the elevator pitch again. Or it might be adding to that pitch as you’ve planned a bit more, or integrating things from what the players are talking about. But this somewhat goes back to character creation. If someone is creating a character that doesn’t fit the tone, you know ahead of time.

Final Thoughts

This is a really useful tool. I think, and I don’t want to over emphasize it, but also don’t want to under emphasize it, it’s a great chance to socialize. Even if it’s a friend group, it is going to let you set the tone for the time and keep that focus on the fun of the game. Though every session is going to have tangents and things like that.

But for a new Dungeon Master or even someone who knows the game really well and has run many campaigns, this is very nice to use. Especially because you get to know the characters and see that work done collaboratively. It immediately cuts down on potential party friction if someone believes that there character should work in one hyper specific way that goes against what the rest of the party wants. And yes, this is something that happens.

So what is coming up next?

• 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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*queue Benny Hill music*

And our adventuring party has arrived.

Should D&D be a serious game, a silly game, or both and how can you keep the tone that you want?

First, I’ll say, there isn’t a right way to play D&D, you can have a serious game in a grim dark fantasy world or you can have a light and fun game where everyone who seems at all bad can be killed off by your roving party of murder hobos and that’s completely fine. But setting a tone and being willing or able to adjust if need be is something important to be able to do.

So with setting the tone, when and how do you do that?

I’m going to go to one of my favorite answers, Session 0. So, before you start playing when you are pitching ideas, you can talk about what sort of story it is going to be, but talk about how serious the game is going to be. It might be that a story with drow fighting a war and being a group infiltrating that, might seem like a time for silly high jinx for players, but you might have meant that as a serious game. Or maybe it’s a decent into the 9 hells, and your demon lord is going to be like Satan from South Park, but the players think it’s going to be very serious. So, in session 0 when pitching things, talk about what sort of fantasy setting it is, and how serious a game it might be or might not be as that might influence how much players like the idea or what type of game that they want to play.

But beyond that, as a DM, you need to be able to adjust the tone as you continue to play. This can be done in a couple of ways. Maybe you start out with a serious game, but the characters keep on doing goofy things or off the wall things and making it more light hearted or less grim dark at least. Then you have to adjust your DMing in one of two ways in game.

The first one is that you can adjust your game to be more light hearted, maybe that is what your players really wanted and they just didn’t want to say that in session 0. This can be tough to do, because your story might be focused in on a more serious setting. So you might not be able to use the whole idea like you had planned for the players. So adjusting might mean setting aside some of that idea for a later game. Or it might be taking what you had planned and making it less grim and serious.

The second option would be to almost double down on the more serious or more light hearted tone. Focus on providing those moments that really enforce the tone that you’re going for, and when the players do something against that tone, if it’s being serious in a lighter situation or goofy in a serious situation, have the NPCs react to what the PCs are doing. This one is tougher to do because you might be pushing against what the players want in a game. So I’d lean towards adjusting with the first option, though, there is a third out of game option that I’d recommend.

The best option, is out of game, and less passive aggressive, and that’s just to ask the players what tone they want. If, for example, you had planned a more serious game, you can ask the players if they want the game to stay serious or if you should adjust the story to more of a lighter game. It might be that they didn’t realize they had shifted into doing lighter and goofier things, especially if that’s how they are used to playing. Now, conversations out of the game can be a bit trickier, especially if you talked about it in session 0. but generally it’ll be what helps your game the most.

But, let’s say that you have a group where you’ve played for several years and always played lighter games, and now you want to play a grim dark game. How do you go about doing that?

If you are used to playing light games without many consequences and without tracking things like arrows, food, etc., it’s going to be a big change. Instead of going for all of it at once, I would slowly build up to it. So start tracking arrows at the start, but keep the players so that they are always ending up in a town before food would be an issue, and just tell them that they are spending a bit of money to reload. And once they figure out that they need to track arrows, then they can start tracking food as well. And the same with theme as well, start with what seems like a more standard quest, you can then start to add in more grim dark elements to it. And the same goes with going from a more serious to a lighter game, go slowly, it’s going to be an adjustment if people only know it one way.

Now, there are going to be other things that you can do to adjust, and there are going to be ways to keep a game on track, such as rewarding role playing that fits the type of game that you want to run. But I’d really say, session 0 is going to be your best friend for planning out the game and I can’t overstate the importance of it.

How do you set tone in your game? Are there certain things you do to describe or set-up the story in such a way to help enforce a tone?

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But I tend to split up character creation and some of the planning that goes into a campaign that the group can do together into a session 0, and then in session 1 is when the game play actually starts.

So what was our hook again?

Our Fighter, Cleric, and Wizard who all know the Paladin were helping defend the temple after the powerful Wizard in the town demanded that everyone gives him all their gems in order to prevent some unknown future disaster. The temple has several gems of great value, and now there is a mob outside the door that is fighting, some trying to break in and get the gems, and some trying to stop the other side from stealing things.

Okay, so what do I need to set-up for session 1 with the hook?

You might think about picking my monsters who will play the mob, and giving them hit points and weapons. But for me, I don’t think that’s extremely important. I tend to think that the mob will have a few key players and whatever side the players decide to go with, they will face off against the other sides keys. So I might go through and quickly grab a couple of bad guys, but that’s less important than other things to me.

What does the temple look like and where are the gems, that’s more important. The gems are likely kept in a back room, probably attached to some ancient relic. If the players want to protect it, they are going to have to go outside of the temple or deal with the people as they come crashing through the door. The main area of the temple has some chandeliers and some pews as well as an altar in the front.

Outside of the temple is the town square where there are a couple of other temples in other parts of the square. There are also some of the nicer and fancier shops, the best blacksmith in town, or the one who advertises himself as that. There’s also a “the best” woodworker and other such businesses. In the middle of what is generally a fairly open square there’s a stand where the local noble will give speeches.

You can start to see how the town is coming together for what the players need to know. The temples, while frequented by most of the people in the town are also in the nicer section or more expensive section of the town. In fact, it’s probably a mob of more commoners up against the city watch at this point, with some people who are worried about their businesses also with the watch.

The mob is going to be coming from off in the direction of the city bazaar where most of the common people shop to get their wares as compared to the town center. The mob will definitely have picked up some looters as well with the group who are going to be causing the city watch to have to split their attention which is why they aren’t driving back the common folk.

If the players want, they can probably turn the mob aside to a jewelry merchant, which might seem like a better place to go, but the jewelry shop is better secured, and the common people know more about the temple than they do about that shop.

At this point in time, I don’t know that I would flesh out too much more about the town or for session one. If things go quickly as they fight against the mob and try and get it turned, which it won’t because the players will spend some time planning, then I would have to move onto the next part of the story.

That would be skipping ahead a day and either having the Wizard or Grima Wormtongue character coming and thanking the players if they helped the jewels get stolen, or the noble for helping turn the tide of the mob, or the noble complaining about them not turning the tide of the mob. But whatever it would be, it would be some role playing for the players to do.

That’s a bit more free form and requires less planning. Just know what stat block you’re planning on using for the noble, wizard, and Wormtongue, just in case the players decide to attack. And if they do that, have the person do non-lethal damage to the characters. Unless you decide to have the players all play the B-Team.

And what’s how I’d create my first session and start building out the town. You can see that I left a lot of the town building blank. I’d start asking the players, if they start wondering, for shop ideas that the rich would want in the town center. The players can help you fill out the town and even come up with some of the physical characteristics of what the city watch might look like, what the noble or wizard could even look like as well. It means that you have to be ready to improvise and work with it on the fly, but it will give the players even more buy-in to the world and story.

What do you think of that session 1? Would you have planned out more of it in your game, or maybe less of it? How much input do the players have in world building?

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First, I would say that you can’t truly make those moments happen. It’s going to happen naturally in your game, but you can try and encourage those situations. Whenever you have a huge aha moment, that might get remembered, but the ones that are going to be talked about are going to happen more organically.

Now, like any good organic garden, you still have to plan the seeds and tend it, this stuff doesn’t happen on it’s own.

So you can lay the groundwork, starting in session zero to encourage those fun moments. In session zero, when players are creating their characters, don’t just think about combat and what you’re going to do with that. Your character is a whole lot more than just swinging a sword for a lot of damage or shooting some crossbows for damage. And while you might have a martial character who really cares about combat, put ore into your character than that. They can easily not know social norms because they grew up with the sword being their best friend. Or maybe they have a very unique set fighting moves and sword preparation, but let your character be unique and don’t create Joe Soldier who has no personality except for hitting stuff with a sword.

Also, consider giving the character a signature move. Now, it might be in combat or it might not be. But in combat, maybe you are a rogue who uses a crossbow. So your special move is a dive and roll while firing and getting yourself in hiding. Or maybe you are a hopeless flirt and every single bartender that you meet hoping to get information from them.

Why would those things give you cool moments?

Because as the rogue, you roll behind the pillar and find a surprised enemy who is also hiding behind the game pillar, now what do you do? Or you are in a dark cave and you roll behind a rock outcropping and find that there are stairs going down, as you slowly roll and bounce down them. Or for the character who flirts every time with the bartender for information, it will be a running joke that they never get any good information and maybe you end up on wild goose chases (literally) because of some information that you’ve gotten. Or, what happens when the bartender flirts back, or when the bartender actually has some real information. The cheer that will go up around the table because it was actually worth it, people will remember those moments.

So, those are some things that are more player focused, what can you do as a DM?

First, keep combat interesting. While you don’t need to do something super special every time, make it unique from time to time. Also go with alternate objectives. Combat doesn’t just have to be about knocking heads. I’ll touch a bit more on alternate combat objectives, but if you want a good podcast on it, check out this one by Total Party Thrill. Alternate objectives in combat can be things like stopping a sacrifice from happening. Sure, you might lop off a few heads of the acolytes guarding the cultists, but will you get to the cultists before they finish their chanting in four rounds of combat. Or are you having to try and keep the villains away from the caravan that you were hired to protect. These alternate objectives will give some memorable moments and keep the combat feeling different.

Likewise, it doesn’t have to just be an alternate way to beat the combat, it can be a unique combat setting. Maybe you are fighting on a narrow ledge next to flowing lava. Now, you could give advantage for having the higher ground, because as Star Wars Episode III taught us, that’s important. Also, don’t take any more life lessons from Star Wars Episode III than that. That one has a clear idea of pushing someone into the lava, but you can make unique terrains. Recently I ran a combat where there were two different levels of the combat. A barbarian jumped down into a pit to fight some monsters while two other character stayed up top, however, some of monsters crawled up to them as well. That gives a combat moment that is different than it would have been before.

Then, there are ways you can do that out of combat. And the easiest way is to just have interesting characters. I need to be better at this personally, because a lot of the NPC’s, I’m coming up with them on the fly, so they aren’t always the most unique. Thankfully, I have a player who is good at giving me a lot to work with in terms of dialog and lies that he is telling the NPC’s, so that gives me time to build out the character that I came up with. But we had a fun situation, one time, that players will likely remember, where one of the characters had gotten to the shore of a pirate island, found a very flirty dwarf pirate captain, and they had to figure out as a player and for their character, how not to insult the pirate captain so that they didn’t lose their head. It ended up being pretty memorable, because fake in game flirting can be hilarious a lot of the time, just make sure everyone is comfortable enough with it.

What are some other ideas that you have to help those more organic moments of surprise and stories that people remember happen in your game? Have you used any of these before? Keep in mind, if you do use some of these ideas as a player or as a DM, there is no guarantee that you will have those really memorable moments, but some of these ideas might tease out more. And find what works best for your group, maybe you have modules that you like to run, and what your group really remembers is the big boss battles at the end, that is equally as good a memorable moment for your group, but figure out if it’s social interactions, weird combats, big combats, or shocking twists that your group remembers most and go from there.

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Session 0: You are going to be really tempted to sit people down at your table, roll up your characters and get playing immediately, you might even be tempted to have characters already for your players, but resist the urge (resist it). Before you can really start playing, especially a long campaign, you need to have some sort of session 0. Session 0 is about setting expectations, giving the players a little information about what you are thinking of running, and creating characters.

I would definitely recommend that you create characters with your players, around a table, before you start playing a longer game. Even if the game happens once a month for a year, your players are going to be more apt to keep coming back to the table if they are invested in their characters, and character creation is a great way for that to get started. If there aren’t many/any magic users that don’t use divine magic in your world, this also allows you to limit that. If you just let them build their characters, they might forget and accidentally build a wizard because it looks cool. Another reason for building the characters at the table is that as the DM, you might be the only one with the book, especially if they are new players. Even in Dungeons and Flagons, I’m still the only one with the player handbook, and that’s okay, especially since the players have spell cards.

Second reason to run a session 0 (and this should be done before creating characters) is that you can tell them what type of game you are going to run. It could be something like: “You are going to be starting in a sea town in the Leith Barony and are going to be exploring new areas.” This doesn’t tell them much about the game, it doesn’t tell them that they are going to be tracking down different parts of a beholder or if they are going to be on the trail of an international assassin who killed someone in the barony. It just tells them that they are starting in a sea town and are going to be doing a lot of exploring. This helps them know what type of character to build, and to come up with a reason why they are all there and possibly all together. While as a DM, you are going to be telling the story, the characters and players need to come up with a reason to be together. You can do it as the DM, but if the players don’t buy into it, it’ll be weird. Knowing that it’s an exploring game helps sets the players expectations. If you don’t do that, the players might be all gung-ho for session after session of role playing conversations, and they are out in the wilderness with no one to talk to. Without setting some expectations about what type of game it is, players are more apt to lose interest.

Finally, session 0 also helps you come up with a social contract. The social contract is a loose set of rules that all the players are going to agree upon for at the table. It can be things like no phones or side conversations at the table while you are playing. Or that you are going to have pizza and pop or beer half way through every session. Or it could be a situation where you have some subjects that are taboo. Or, the social contract, could contain things about what language will be appropriate if you have people of a wide range of ages or beliefs. Each table is going to have a slightly different social contract. There might be some tables where horror and grotesque descriptions are out, and you have to adjust your DM’ing style to that or even the adventure that you were going to be running.

There are some basic rules to consider though:

1. That your players are paying attention most of the time. No one can pay attention all of the time, so they might miss something, but no playing cellphone games at the table, no scrolling through Twitter of Instagram.
2. Be respectful of the other people at the table. Just because you aren’t bothered by something, doesn’t mean that it might not trigger an emotional response in someone else. So be aware of that, and if it does trigger that response in you, say something about it, and the DM can direct the story somewhere else away from that. There is no scene that is so needed in an RPG that you cause players to stop playing.
3. If you disagree, know how to end the disagreement. There are often times when players will disagree with each other or the DM or characters could disagree, know how you are going to handle it. If you don’t have a rule in place (which can just be, I’m the DM so we’re sticking with it that way until I can look up the rules), you can derail a gaming session and ruin the fun for everyone. So know how you are going to decide stuff, player vs DM is probably as simple as the DM says something is their final decision and then stick to that. If it is character vs character in a disagreement, let them talk it out for a certain amount of time and then if one person hasn’t changed their view, they just do a straight D20 roll, and whomever rolls higher, the other character has to figure out a way that they’ll agree with them (or leave the party and roll up a new character).

Know that your social contract isn’t probably going to cover everything, and things might change as your table changes, your game changes, and all of you mature as role players. The social contract is a living document and let it change as it goes, but make sure everyone is on board with the changes. Maybe it starts out with – “What the DM says goes.” and one of your players then starts reading a lot of the books, pass off being the rules expert to them, and they can look up things on the fly. Or maybe you decide that people want to talk too much before the game starts, so pizza in the middle doesn’t make as much sense and you move it to the front of your session.

These are just some good general ideas for starting out a game, especially a longer campaign, where you want to keep the player buy-in for a long time. There are more things you can cover in your session 0, maybe even a little role playing between the DM and each player separately so that you can bring them all to the starting point. But don’t be afraid to have a session 0 that just takes the whole night, that’s what we did for Dungeons and Flagons, and it made it easier when actually starting your story.

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