Creating your Own D&D Adventures (DM's Journey)

if you've been a dungeon master for long you've probably felt a bit of that Dungeon Master's block game night is just a couple nights away or maybe a couple hours away and you just don't know what to do somehow or another you always seem to stumble into something that works pretty well but you're not quite sure how to duplicate that success and you want to become more efficient and you want to be more confident when you step up to the table or maybe you're totally new to this you've finally worked up to the guts to volunteer to be the DM and you just don't know where to start well stay tuned because in this video we'll be talking about how you can plan your own amazing RPG adventures no published adventure book just your brain and maybe a little help from the funny-looking guy on the Internet let's do it [Music] hi everybody welcome to wasd 20 my name is nate and you are watching the dungeon masters journey this is a series where I talk about all things relevant to Dungeon Master's game masters whatever you might remember a few months ago on the Dungeon Master's journey we talked about running published adventures adventure modules are great and I think there's a lot of Dungeon Master's who benefit from them I'll put a link to that video up at the top there and you can definitely go check that out but today we're gonna be talking about running your own adventures this was a comment that I got a lot on that video actually people asking if I would do a video on running your own adventure so in this video we're gonna be talking about the basic building blocks of your own adventure then we'll be talking about different types of adventures different types of activities that your characters will be engaging in during these adventures we'll be talking about encounter archetypes loot NPCs and probably a couple other things as well so first off the building blocks what do you need you need a world you need a setting for your game now don't think about it especially if you're new that you need to create an entire world here you could use a pre published setting if you want to but I highly recommend if you're brand new starting with a town in a surrounding wilderness area and maybe the characters aren't even going to be getting into the town in this first adventure maybe they're just going to be on the wilderness and that's fine there's monsters out there it's a great place for an adventure once you have your setting established you'll want to think about a story that would make sense for this setting now don't write the whole story that's a big mistake you want to make sure since this is a tabletop role-playing game that you leave room for a player agency and for the player characters who should be the stars of the story to have some level of direction in the narrative now in order to tell a good story you're obviously going to need some conflict you're gonna need a threat or maybe the conflict is a mystery to be solved or maybe the conflict is things that the players encounter on a quest as we start talking about adventure types and encounter archetypes I definitely recommend you think in scenes and to plan out somewhere between two and ten scenes for a two and a half to three and a half hour session which is really the sweet spot for me that's a pretty wide range I usually plan three to five scenes and this is also something that sly flourish talks about in the lazy Dungeon Master which is a book I highly recommend as you're planning your scenes don't overdo it just a few lines is really all you need if you're doing more than that you're gonna get too invested in one of these scenes and what if your players happen to decide actually to bypass a scene if you over prep you're not gonna be as adaptable in general and your players will have less agency in the game and I think that's a problem another book that you may have heard of is the Dungeon Master's guide for D&D 5th edition another really good one in this book they talk about two basic types of adventures and some more types within those but the two basic types are location-based adventures and event based adventures location-based adventures are going to be the most common and probably the most simple you are going to have your players exploring an area or maybe delving a dungeon the most common sorts of areas are dungeons which are not only underground prisons right dungeons can be a castle a ruined temple it could be a maze it could be a Wizards Tower any sort of enclosed area where the dungeon master has a little more control over the encounters is going to fit that archetype of a dungeon it could be a wilderness area a dungeon or a wilderness area are going to be the two most common adventure locations but there are all sorts of other possibilities as well the players might be for example defending a town or maybe they're escaping from a prison I guess that one's kind of like a dungeon maybe they have a moving location maybe they have to retrieve a stolen item from a caravan or a ship all of these are location-based adventures and they work really well almost all the adventures I run are location-based adventures but you could also have event based adventures you're gonna want to start with an event if you're doing this some kind of framing event it could be a festival a religious festival a historical commemoration it could be the coronation of a ruler it could be a tournament the likely objectives in an event based adventure would be securing aid from a ruler perhaps winning the tournament overthrowing a ruler or maybe stopping some sort of growing corruption event based adventures could take the form of a mystery a mystery is just a strange occurrence it could be a disappearance or maybe a gruesome murder it could also take the form of intrigue this would probably be like going back to what I said about securing aid from a ruler or overthrowing a ruler those are forms of intrigue it's when your characters are basically playing politics they're making connections they're exchanging favors perhaps the thing with these event based adventures especially with mysteries and intrigue is they're a little more complex you as the dungeon master have to be either really comfortable with improv or you have to know certain locations and NPCs really really well in order to make these work so if you're new to it and you're maybe planning your first adventure I would recommend most likely sticking with the location-based adventure so early on I did run a mystery game and I thought it actually went really well so if you feel comfortable go for it so those are two basic adventure types now in this book they also do talk about the three pillars of RPGs and those are exploration social interaction and combat those are things that personally I try to find balance of in each and every session some sessions are gonna be heavier on one than another but I try to put at least a little bit of each in any given session sometimes we're gonna find that my players are comfortable with very little combat if there's a lot of good social interaction and story development that can be okay other groups are not gonna be okay with that they're gonna want a lot of combat so once you get to know your group a little better you'll be more comfortable with this but if you're just starting off I recommend trying to find a pretty good balance between exploration social interaction and combat those three pillars before we get much further into the video I want to take a quick second here to thank my partners over at roll gate I'll put a link to their site in the video description roll gate is an amazing tool for play by chat role-playing game experiences I've had a lot of fun with it over the last couple months they're starting to feature my videos occasionally and I really appreciate it and I want to make sure I keep giving them support as well so go check them out in the game mastery guide for Pathfinder which is a book I recommend even if you never plan to play a Pathfinder this is a really really good resource a lot of good system agnostic stuff here that can work for any fantasy RPG I highly recommend it but they talk about different types of encounter archetypes within the dungeon section here and those encounter archetypes can also be useful to think about including a little bit variety if you're in a dungeon which is a common adventuring location you'll probably want to have some combat I think you know what that is you're probably going to want to have some hazards or obstacles now these could be very static hazards and obstacles like forwarding a river or climbing up a cliff or something like that or they could be much more dynamic like a lightning storm or something like that you might want to include some puzzles that's another encounter archetype personally I'm not very good at them and I usually have to end up looking up someone else's puzzles but they can be a lot of fun you might want to include some random encounters if your players decide to rest or they decide to travel these are a good thing to include you might roll first of all to see if one even happens and then if it does happen usually you have a random encounters chart you can get those in books like this or you can find them all over the end often they're based on the type of environment that your characters are in so a fair number of those probably are going to be encountering a monster or wild animal but it could be an NPC and it could be hostile or it could be neutral or it could be friendly or it just depends on how your party interacts with that encounter there could also be weather-based encounters too you can roll for all sorts of things that doesn't just have to be combat another encounter archetype mentioned in here our story encounters and these I would kind of put under the pillar of social interaction in most cases but a story encounter could be a major development of the story based on a discovery of something in a dungeon for example an ancient tome or some sort of artifact either way a story encounters can be really valuable you want to make sure it's not just all about killing monsters and getting loot if you want to tell a greater story lastly this book does mention special encounters and those are basically combinations of at least two of the above so you might have a combat in which there's also a puzzle to be solved that could end that combat more quickly for example so as you're thinking about these you might want to think of them in scenes now a dungeon might be one scene or depending on how you look at it a dungeon could be multiple scenes but once you've got your basic adventure type and then some of the activities your characters are likely to engage in during this adventure you'll also probably want to think about NPCs loot and possibly a twist so NPCs I definitely recommend keeping your descriptions of NPCs very brief come up with a name you can use random name generators or look them up you can come up with an occupation personality appearance maybe a bond or flaw or secret of some kind but I really keep them very brief just a line or two the thing is if you over develop your NPCs you might find that your characters just decide they're going to kill this NPC or not talk to them anymore and kick them out and then you've done a whole lot of work and that NPC is totally out of the picture so I definitely recommend keeping it very brief if you need a stat block you can always look that up on the spot or as I often do just make up some stats but give them some personality and make your PCs a lot of fun for your party loot this is a major weakness of mind I often kind of forget about the loot and just end up winging it and it usually doesn't go all that well I could do to spend a lot more time looking up some loot tables in a book like this or looking them up online looking up the appropriate amount of gold for a party of a certain level so that you're not totally breaking your economy I can't give you much advice on that because I'm just not very good at it but there are resources out there and you should probably think ahead and actually plan some loot that your characters will find in this location or that location a twist I would definitely recommend trying to include a twist in most of your adventures and it doesn't have to be some huge plot twist that's just mind-blowing every single time that would probably be overdoing it but I like to include ways that the players discover that there's more to a situation than they initially thought perhaps the Big Bad they finally encounter is actually not so bad or perhaps the Big Bad is only the minion of a much bigger bad that the players didn't previously know about perhaps if the players are trying to root out some corruption they actually find that the relative of one of the player characters is actually at the heart of some of this corruption or the mayor of the town or whatever it might be including these twists can really hook your players in and get them more engaged in the story that you are telling together and speaking of this a last point that I definitely want to drive home is I think that one of the big advantages of running your own adventures home brew your own creation is that you can tie in player backgrounds and backstories I think this is a huge advantage that an adventure module just can't touch because those people who wrote that module don't know your characters like you do as you are learning more and more about these characters and asking your players questions about them which is something I recommend you do use those backstories maybe the quest giver for a given adventure is actually a relative of one of the player characters maybe the villain is actually a fellow faction member of the fighter of your party or maybe the ruined temple that the party is going to is actually dedicated to the deity that your cleric worship try to think about at least one sort of player-character hook a way that you can tie in at least one of your player characters backgrounds and as you get better at this it'll happen more naturally and you can do more than one certainly and you might find little ways to insert hooks into each of the player characters background in every session that might be a bit ambitious but either way give it a try tying in your players background and stories if you're not doing this I think you're missing out on some major opportunities for amazing collaborative storytelling so to review don't forget the building blocks so you've got your setting first then you get your store in your conflict it's important to think about adventure type and some of the encounters or scenes that will be taking place in your adventure think ahead about NPCs and loot and consider a twist if you feel like I'm missing something here definitely leave your comments down below I know there's a lot more experienced Dungeon Master's out there than me and you might have a lot of good things to say so leave it down below if you have some tips some resources for people prepping their own D&D adventures that's all for this one everybody I want to thank you so much for joining me I want to thank my patrons very much for their support you can join with them in support of this channel by going to patreon.com that some pretty cool rewards and even a dollar or two a month can actually add up to make a big difference for me so I really appreciate it if you're not able to support on patreon another great way you can support is by buying through some of my affiliate links I've got affiliate links to some of the books I mentioned down in the video description and if you enjoyed this one make sure you give it a thumbs up make sure you're subscribed I want to thank you all so much for joining me everybody take care you'll see me again very soon [Music] [Music]

Channel: WASD20

Views: 141,713

Keywords: d&d, dungeons and dragons, dungeon master's journey, dm tips, gm tips, game master, dungeon master, running the game, wasd20, dm journey, session prep, homebrew, running your own adventures, dnd prep, dm prep, game design, adventure design, creating rpg adventures, creating dnd adventures, matt colville, dnd, pathfinder rpg, game mastery guide, lazy dungeon master, lazy dm, dungeon master's guide, 5e, 5th edition

Id: jTYQ0MbJ-ro

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018