First Time DM Tips
Running your first Dungeons & Dragons session can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. This primer on first-time Dungeon Master tips will help you focus on what to prepare, streamline your games, and create a more enjoyable experience for your players.
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What is the Dungeon Master’s role?
Collaborative storytelling games like Dungeons & Dragons are unique because they require one of the players to manage the sandbox the others are playing in. Taking on the role of Dungeon Master, or DM, is a rewarding experience when done well but can quickly become a chore if you don’t know where to begin.
The primary role of the DM is to arbitrate the rules and present the story to the players. Their secondary function is to make sure the players are having fun. Toss away those misguided notions about vengeful gamemasters or invoking the DM’s wrath - a good DM is not a bully and doesn’t enjoy intimidating their fellow players.
If you choose to accept it, your mission is to facilitate an incredible story with your friends. If you don’t see yourself getting maximum level satisfaction doing this, then maybe #DMlife is not for you. But if you do, the tips and tactics in this post will help you elevate your game. Let’s get into it with the first step, preparation.
DM Preparation
Solid preparation creates a strong foundation for your game, even if it’s your first time running one. What you need to prepare is going to differ between DMs - we’re here to give you options and tools to help you prep what’s right for you.
What Materials Do You Need To DM?
Thankfully, you don’t need much to run a thrilling adventure. Wizards of the Coast provide a free and open-source 5th Edition Systems Reference Document (SRD) that gives you a bare-bones version of the game to start. Aside from that, a full set of dice or an easy-to-manage dice app is a must.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual are both obvious DM staples, but the Player’s Handbook is also a helpful guide for rules, spells, character traits, and features. This ‘Holy Trinity’ is the standard material for most DM’s, but you can also look to the many official and unofficial expansion books to add new elements to your game. For a new DM, though, we’d recommend sticking with the core rules initially, which also leads us to our next point.
What Kind of D&D Game Should You Run?
The correct answer is different for everyone, but we suggest first-time DMs run a pre-written adventure for their first session. Professional writers and long-time players create these adventures, so they’re guaranteed to provide a good time for you and your table. They include everything you need to run the game outside of the core rules and are a great way to learn the ropes. Here are some of our favorites:
Official Adventure Books
The Lost Mines of Phandelver
Candlekeep Mysteries
Tales of the Yawning Portal
How To Prep For Each Session
A typical D&D session can run anywhere from 2-6 hours, depending on your table. But how much do you actually need to prepare? This is a skill that you’ll develop over time, but a good general rule of thumb is roughly a page an hour if you’re going off your adventure book.
Prep Only What You Need (It Isn’t Much)
If you’re running a pre-written adventure or your own, consider this approach: identify the main story elements the party must accomplish to progress, and what are the ways they can do it? Keep these elements broad and general enough, so the party has multiple ways to achieve them, and don’t be afraid to adjust the pre-written adventure if you need to.
Here’s an example: let’s say the party must somehow acquire an invitation to the baron’s soirée to investigate a murder. Instead of plotting how they’re going to find it or forcing the party on a path to obtain it, allow them to come up with a creative solution. They could steal it, charm it off someone, or do some unsavory favor in exchange for one. It’s less work for you as a DM and makes the party feel like they’re driving the story instead of being driven.
Run Session Zero
Zero sessions give you and the players a chance to sit down and talk about the game you’re going to play before you play it. It lets you set the campaign, rules, tone, and any other parameters you want to set as the DM. It gives the players a chance to share their ideas for the story, character, and party dynamics and talk about any boundaries or themes they want to avoid in the campaign.
Session zero is also an opportunity to understand everyone’s familiarity with the game, comfort with roleplaying, and in-game preferences. Check out our post and episode on how to run great zero sessions - they’re hands down the best way to level up your game from the very beginning.
Learn the Characters, Their Motives, and Flaws
Once you finish your zero session and your players have submitted their character sheets, it’s time to study those to learn everything you can about the characters. They’re the stars of the story, so any information you can pull from their background, history, equipment, and skills will help make the game more immersive and magical for them. This can be as simple as aligning the church in your starting town to the Paladin’s deity or the rogue finding a clue to his missing sister’s whereabouts.
Many folks believe that the DM is the storyteller, but we don’t think that’s entirely accurate. The DM is more like a director, deciding when and where to place the camera. It’s up to the director to set the scene, then get out of the way and let the characters play out the story. Excellent DM’s knows when to take control and when to disappear. Try disappearing more often and giving your players more control!
Keeping Things Moving
Another important job of the DM is to keep the game moving. One common way new and veteran DM’s do this is by asking, “what do you do next?”. This can be an effective way to prod the players, but it doesn’t always have the intended effect. Asking the players, “what do you do” when you haven’t given them anything to do is a great way to elicit blank faces.
Take the director’s approach and place the camera at the precise moment of decision or action. Here’s an example - after describing the tavern where the party begins their journey, don’t ask them what they do. Instead, have the bard tantalize them with rumors of an ogre’s hoard out in the badlands. There’s a time and place for “what do you do?” and if you see your players struggling when you ask this, it means you need to provide better context or options.
Outsource to Your Players
Another way to keep the game moving along is to outsource some of the creative elements to the players. This can be anything from describing how people, places, or things look to the actions the characters take. Letting your players add their creative mark and inspiration as much as possible will keep them coming back to the table.
If you’re having trouble working through some game or story challenges, be open and talk to the players so you can work it out together (as long as it doesn’t spoil the story). If you listen to our live plays, you’ll notice that we occasionally pause the game to work through things as a group. We leave those in not to take up your time, but folks listening realize that these situations can and will come up, and using your table to resolve it is often the fastest solution.
Use Tables & Improvise
Another quick shortcut for new and advanced DM’s is to use tables and lists to quickly bring NPCs, monsters, treasure, and places into your game without stalling the game. What you use tables for will depend on your game.
A list or table can be as simple as a bulleted list or spreadsheet filled with information. It doesn’t need to be complicated or contain a ton of information. Just provide enough spark of inspiration to get the flames of creation burning.
Take Smart Notes
Throughout your game, the players will take actions to which you’ll be reacting. Taking thoughtful notes of the character’s actions, the NPC’s reactions, and how that can impact the story forms the basis of what a DM needs to keep track of their sessions.
Any more than that and you can overwhelm yourself with details, and any less can derail your story. You’ll also want to take notes during combat, particularly turn order, HP, status effects, and any expendable resources like spells or potions used.
Recap Each Adventure
Every time you begin your campaign, start with a recap. This can be something you choose to present, or you can let your players recall their last adventure. There are merits to both approaches.
Recapping for the players ensures you cover the most critical elements from the last session primes the party for the next session. It lets you put on the “director’s hat” and set the scene before thrusting the party into action.
Allowing the party to recap is a more organic and collaborative approach. It gives you insight into the player’s perspectives, what they remember, and what they’re prioritizing. You might not even need to do anything to start the adventure - the party might just take it from there! The other benefit to this approach is that you can fill in any gaps in the party’s recount - don’t be a jerk and withhold vital information from the party they’ve already found.
Scaling Encounters
Sometimes, by no fault of anyone, bad guys can roll well, and the party rolls poorly. Or, the encounter is so easy even the Wizard is taunting the baddies. It’s not particularly fun for any table to get your butt kicked when you’re doing everything right or to steamroll every encounter. How do you handle unexpectedly challenging encounters for the party without putting on kid gloves or making it obvious you’re adjusting the encounter? Thankfully, there are a few levers you can pull to scale encounters to varying degrees.
Just Fudge It
This comes with a cautionary warning - fudging numbers can be a slippery slope. The dice are there for a reason. But every once in a while, you’ll need to turn that natural 20 into a less deadly 19. Or, the party thinks they’re invincible, and you want that bugbear to make a point that they’re not. If you’re rolling behind the screen, that comes with a contract of trust. Abuse that trust, or appear to abuse that trust, and your table will dissent!
Remind the Players About Tactics
Combat is only a part of D&D, and players often forget to use the in-game mechanics to tip the scales in their favor during combat. Encourage your party to use cover, which increases a character’s armor class, or AC. Half cover provides +2 to AC, three-quarters cover provides +5, and full cover completely protects a character. This can be especially helpful for characters who tend to stand in place or are getting pegged by ranged attackers.
Let your players know if there are environmental hazards they can use to their advantage. Even if you haven’t thought of it initially, if the party asks or is struggling, you can use your DM inventiveness to provide them some fun ways to leverage the environment.
Inspire Them
If you’re using Inspiration points, don’t forget to remind your players to use them in a pinch. You can also give them ways to help or use the assist action to give each other advantage on their attacks. Rolling with advantage is a considerable boost to output and can shift an encounter, as is imposing disadvantage on enemies.
Catching Mistakes & Retcons
We wholly disagree with the mindset that the DM is infallible. Everyone makes mistakes, especially new DM’s. But that’s okay! You will build more trust with your table admitting errors when you catch them and resolving them fairly than you will by covering up or hiding them. Instead, own the mistake and invite the table to help you fix it if you’re struggling.
Another method for fixing mistakes is through retroactive continuity (retcon for short). This is where you and the party hop into a time machine to revisit the past to course-correct. If there’s something so important that the narrative can’t proceed without a retcon, then make the necessary change to save your game. We recommend leaving retcons off the table in general, though, because they can be a very slippery slope.
Be Flexible, But Consistent
There will be times when you’ll need to make quick judgment calls to keep things moving. Remember that you’re an advocate for the party, so keep your rulings consistent and flexible enough to let them do what they want (within reason) and keep their trust. Writing these rulings down in your DM notebook where you’ll see them is a great way to keep this consistency.
Always Be Learning!
Whether you’re a first-time DM or have been running games for a while, we believe you can always find new ways to improve. We hope this guide has given you some new tools and tactics you can use for your games, but we’d love to hear your ideas. Drop us a note in the comments section to share your very best DM tips!