What Pro DnD DM's Do Before Their Sessions

I'm dming a new campaign and while prepping for my first session I started wondering how do the most celebrated DMS in the world prep for their games so I decided I'd watch hours of videos of actual players and d and d advice videos from DMs like Matt Mercer and benen and Lee Mulligan but also from DMs like Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford who actually writes the official core rule books telling you how to DM I also grabbed tips from a few surprise DMS too so let's start with Chris Perkins who is a game architect at wizard of the coast and is probably one of the most consumer facing DMS who also designs the game itself Chris has a ton of advice for prepping for D and D games starting with write out a short list of planned events or encounters that you want to touch on in that session anticipating where the game is going to go very simple basic advice but it's solid advice when I prep I like to think in scenes you know I really want four scenes to happen this session in this order I'm comfortable improvising between those scenes and the scenes are flexible enough to happen in different places so the players still have that freedom of movement but just writing down these scenes beforehand it makes me think more about them and that alone gets me in a much better head space when it comes down to how I want to Pace the game the flow of it and if the players throw curveballs at me during the game at least I've thought a little bit about what could happen I also don't often hit all my planed scenes in that session usually because of time constraints or maybe the players go just completely off in a different direction and it's just not viable anymore and I'm fine with that you should be okay with either merging scenes or cutting them out entirely or potentially postponing them to the next session which is actually a tip I stole from Ven and Lee Mulligan but we're still on Chris Perkins whose next hack is to prepare a map for the session not even for the players a map just for you if you're visual DM like I am and you like illustrations to help you describe NPCs or use battle maps and minis for combat and you probably also find it useful to have maps of key areas that the players are going to be exploring you know I love being able to just look at a map and say oh yeah there's two do in this room one to the north one to the East and there's like a pedestal in the center of the room then as the players move around this room I can just visualize much better where they are and if they split up and the players go into a different room completely I can still keep track of what is happening way better just by looking at this map and I especially like using a map for like a city the different districts where the different bars are the different names of things if you're a DM who doesn't really find Visual things that useful then sure like a block of text could do the job too but for me a visual map just allows me to grab all the information so much faster and you know they don't even have to be good maps just it's just for you so just scroll whatever on a piece of paper and you can write on them and change them on the Fly depending what's happening in the game just like you can hit the Subscribe button on this channel and then change that back at any point if you change your mind during his prep time Chris Perkins also writes out Recaps He suggests doing a little previously on section at the start of your sessions where you go through what happened last time so before the game he takes a look over his old notes he remembers what happened and he gets it all down in a paragraph or two and he'll add whatever key important things that might have happened sessions upon sessions ago that might be important for this session and it's exactly what TV shows do as well if you're watching one they have the recap that it's just little slithers of important information that happened before that is actually going to come into play in this episode and writing out this recap beforehand does a few things obviously during the session it will remind the players what's going on it can also set the scene or even foreshadow things that are about to happen but it can also remind you the DM of what happened last session because sometimes it's easy to forget things so just by sitting down looking through your notes you can be like oh yeah I should bring this back or this has to happen this session and also just the act of having this as like a ritual that you do before the start of every session it can become a moment every week where you pretty much signal to your players that like hey D and D starts now this is the rec cap stop talking about how hard your day at work was it's game time now Jeremy Crawford who's the other super consumer facing dm/ game architect at Wizards of the Coast actually asks his players to recap the story for him at the start of every session and this can be a great alternative I mean I still think it's important for you to write out your own recap just for yourself to make sure that you remember all the fine details and also cuz you can't always trust your players memories but getting your players to recap and tell each other what happened in the last session is actually a great way to get them more invested in what's going on I mean knowing that they have to recap every single session probably will make them take more notes because it's like a little test and it can also make them feel like they're just more part of the world and are driving the story forward too because you're not telling them what happened they're telling you it's also a cheeky way to find out what the players remember the most or paid more attention to or get more excited about because that's the stuff you want to put more of into the game just double check with your play plays beforehand if they're cool with recapping because not every table's down for it okay let's take a look at Matthew Mercer who says that preparation is the key to not being unprepared and by that he means pretty much be prepared for the unexpected which is obviously impossible cuz it's the unexpected but you can try and predict the unexpected when planning your session make contingency plans what if your players decide not to fight that boss or take that Quest well maybe this or this could happen or this this and this could happen you don't have to plan out entire other sessions depending on whether the players decide to go left or right but just know that occasionally things are not going to go your way in fact more often than not and just by thinking of a few contingencies just by just having one single thought on like what if it'll put you in a much better place to improvise the issue or similar issue if it does indeed happen in the game because it's not simply just taking you completely off guard by surprise and speaking of when this happens in your games when your players give you a curveball when you end up in a place that you've done zero prep for cuz you just didn't think in a million years is your players would get themselves in this situation learn to embrace those moments as a DM learn to enjoy when you lose control over the story cuz that's when it becomes a true collaboration it's one of Matt Mercer's favorite things being somewhere he's not prepared for and then just yes anding and seeing where the story takes him Matt also has the preparation advice of don't railroad your players now for me when I say railroading I mean would you get frustrated if your players went off your story beats or did something unexpected and can your players choices actually affects outcomes if your players can affect outcomes with their choices and if you are fine with things veering off track a little bit you're not railroading but actual railroading the thing that has negative consequences where you have a very clear idea of what is going to happen and it has to happen like that this usually happens because of one of two things it's either that the DM didn't do enough prep under preparation the DM's kind of sat down for 20 minutes and been like okay cool I want this to happen this to happen this to happen this to happen and they haven't thought about anything else and it just like this is how it has to go or two it could be because of over preparation the opposite where the DM has sat down for hours upon hours upon hours planning out every single little detail and like they think it's awesome it probably is awesome and they find it so hard to let that go because what a waste of their time otherwise and the best way I've come to think about pushing a story forwards without the idea of railroading is to think less of it like a train track and more like a highway because as a DM you do want to tell a good story and a good story has structure you know it has a beginning middle and end and you may have really cool ideas for events to happen along the way that you really want to see come into reality and that's fine so be on a highway driving towards those destinations and sometimes your players will make a choice and you'll have to change lanes or stop at a service station for a bit or even get off the highway completely take the scenic route go on a detour and then get back on the highway further down the line so when prepping forget about the one track and think about multiple lens now I think Matt Mercer's best DM tip and just one of the best DM tips I've ever heard is to keep a list of Fantasy names nearby when you're prepping come up with a list of random names that would suit the location your players are in then if your players Veer into an area that you didn't expect them to go into and you didn't prep anything for it and they start talking to an NPC and ask that dreaded question hey what's your name you can just grab your list choose a random name off it then improvise the rest you also get the added bonus of your players thinking that you prepared way more than you did because they're like who he even fleshed out this random dude you can also of course take this to the next level make just a full table of NPCs full of details their descriptions their personality traits little side quests they could have then if you ever need to use one just cross it off the list um takes a lot more effort and you might be veering into the over preparation side of things here because really this list is like a breaking case of an emergency for NPCs who might have three lines but if you are the type of DM who wants to be PR for anything very useful a Bria irar has a great method for prepping that really is worth talking about she uses flowcharts and I think she mostly uses these for her bad guys in combat encounters where she has like a piece of paper and at the top of it she has what she would want her villain to do first for example if she's playing a barbarian rage then below you'd have the next ideal thing you would do that turn which if your bad guys a barbarian it's probably moving close to like the tank and attack twice then you can remind yourself next to that that you do extra damage cuz you're raging and then underneath that you could even remind yourself to say like a line that your bad guy needs to say like you'll never take me alive and this can be done for a ton of different classes for example if you were playing a rogue you could have all the cunning actions at the top and then a kind of do you have sneak attack like do you have advantage in attack or do you have an ally next to the Target and then you can have like a yes or no coming off if no attack is normal if yes adds sneak attack damage then under that you can have a section that says if you have not used a bonus action yet you can do your cunning actions again or take another bonus action now I thought this was kind of silly when I first heard about it because maybe if I was a beginner player and I wanted just an easy to read sheet for what I can do during combat sure thing but I've got all the information as a DM you know our monster stat blocks aren't as complex as a players but tomorrow I have the last session in my current campaign and it's the big boss battle and this guy has lay actions legendary actions reactions multiple attacks they can do and yeah it's all there on the stop loock slash a block of text next to it but when I put it out into a flowchart everything became so much easier for me to understand you see I have a really bad habit when I'm dming combine en counters where I care so much about the players having fun and about running it smoothly and getting through it quickly that I always forget to do obvious things like rage as a barbarian then at the end of the com I'm like man that was fun but my players kind of stomped me there and I don't understand how do I just have to make these fights harder and in reality no I just need to play smarter and better and utilize everything my NPCs can actually do and that's really all these flowcharts are they're taking the information on the stop block and putting it into just like digestible visual information and putting it into like a preferred order so my boss flow chart look like at the top of the round I should do one of three layer actions then on my go I should move and then do one of the two attacks then under that I should say something in character to drive the story forwards and you know make the combat less just combat then under that I have a section of legendary actions that you can do at the end of other people's turns then under that I have a section of stuff I can do if my character is attacked and honestly it accomplishes two things the first one is that now I can just look at oh it's my go or oh I've just been attacked can I do anything and just see it way quicker and the second thing is just by trans Ferring all that information over onto another sheet of paper I Now understand the stat blocks way better and I understand like how the flow of this battle is going to go and I can see the best tactics to use it really is such a great exercise more than anything okay let's talk about some DM tips from DM Mark Humes who just recently finished the balers Gate 3 actual play with the actual voice actus playing their actual characters it's honestly amazing and Mark has some great tips for prepping for Gam GES as well the first is to take inspiration from other things in life watch and listen and consume media in a ton of other forms stuff you like then don't be afraid to borrow from it popular TV shows are popular for a reason popular games are popular for a reason and you can take character ideas or plot points or big moments from this other media change it little bit put your own spin on it and place it directly into your games I'm not saying steal it completely don't just you know know have a red wedding from Game of Thrones in your next session but yeah you can take the idea of it the feeling of it the the impact of it and then massage it into a different shape and place it into your games for sure and actually I often personally find that my players love it when I do something very similar to like a show that we're all watching or introduce like a character who's very similar to a character from you know something we all know cuz then my players are just like oh man he's just like that character from that anime or it's just like that moment from that movie and you know it's your home D and D game it's not like you're going to get sued for copyright infringement but of course tailor this for your own players cuz just because my players like it maybe yours might not but you can definitely test out and see if they do like it speaking of liking like this video and Mark has another bit of great advice for prepping and that's be invested in your own games prepping assession will be so much more efficient and you'll get so much more out of it and the end result will be so much better if you are invested in the story in the NPCs in the player characters but being a DM can sometimes feel like a chore and we can put our players fun above our own or sometimes the direction of the campaign just isn't going where you thought it would or just isn't as fun as you thought it would be for you and this can lead to you feeling bored or uninterested in your own game and that sucks because you'll put less time into prepping and the game will suffer because of it but there is a way to get that investment back and that is to change things up if you're running a pre-written adventure uh it's okay to scrap it find another pre-written adventure just jump in halfway through there and just sew it together like some weird Frankenstein's monster if it's your own campaign even easier just Veer away from what you're doing and and go explore someplace else your players don't actually know what you've got planned so you can do whatever you want you can prematurely end plot points if you had a big bad who you just don't like anymore have another big bad come in and kill that big bad and then have another plot going on hell just take the characters to a whole new setting as long as your players are still having fun you can you can do whatever you want the DM is a player too so obviously if the DM is invested and excited they're going to put more time into prepping then the entire game goes to the next level and probably the best advice when it comes to prepping for DN D is try and enjoy it and if you're in one of those rare situations where your players love the game right now and you as the DM just are not feeling it and you feel trapped and you can't change it because why take that fun away from the players it's not worth it just talk to your players about it let them know that you're not enjoying it find out why they are enjoying ening it and then as a group you can pivot somewhere else where you get the best of both worlds something for you the DM and continuing doing the thing that they enjoy you can do anything in D and D so you can you can find a thing that everyone at the table enjoys and then you can do it don't don't waste your time on anything where even just one player or the DM is not having fun just don't waste your time on it and now let's look at Bren and Lee Mulligan and I won't lie to you a lot of you won't like this advice but it's a hard truth when Brenan preps for his sessions he only really has to concentrate and putting the work in to really important stuff like the moments the ideas and the things that really make his players and audience go wow and he doesn't really have to worry much about all the other stuff because he relies so much on improv to fill in those gaps between and Brennan has some actionable advice here something that you can do to get better at improv and the advice isn't just to get good well actually it kind of is but he tells you exactly how to get good and that's by putting in the time play a lot of D and D and when you play D and D try and improve as much as possible push yourself out of your comfort zone and just keep trying and trying and trying it's like a muscle that you build up the more you do it the stronger it will get you can also research and watch videos on improv techniques and start using those more and more in your sessions but the best way to get better at improv and therefore react quicker in games come up with more entertaining scenarios on the Fly and yes do less prep work is I'm afraid to take improv classes which you can just Google and hopefully find one near you and this is some of Brennan's advice that I think is so good that I haven't taken yet because improv classes scare me but I do want to do them and hopefully I can overcome my fear and get some courage and give it a go one day because I know it will make me a better DM I'm not going to go backwards it will only make me better and that's the truth of the matter I see a lot of people when they look at Brennan Lee Mulligan be like oh yeah of course he's an amazing DM he's like an improv comedian but what can we may portal do and the truth of the matter is that you can build up the same skills he's built up I mean might take you a long time to get to where he is because he's got so much experience in it but you can start on that path and see results let me know in the comments if you want to take an improv class or if you have taken an improv class and if it's helped you as a DM also if you have a D20 nearby give it a roll and if you get over a 15 watch this next video and don't forget to add your modifier it's plus 14

Channel: Bonus Action

Views: 121,556

Keywords: critical role, dimension 20, dnd, dungeon master, nadpod

Id: iJP5NhVZMVk

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2023