Dungeon Master Growth Patterns

            Those who have been following my blog for a while will have noticed how much Dungeons & Dragons has become a part of my life in the past few years. In that time, I’ve been part of about fourteen different games, and I’m currently involved in five active games. During this time, I’ve been both a player and a Dungeon Master, but what has captured my attention today is the rise of new DMs and how they follow roughly the same growth pattern that I went through.

            Most people starting out as a Dungeon Master (though not all) have played the game before, so they have a pretty good idea of how it works on the players’ side of the table. They know that it’s a challenge to switch to being behind the DM’s screen, where they essentially have to create and control an entire world – much like a writer does, only a writer doesn’t need to account for the craziness that players come up with.

            The first game the new DM runs isn’t bad (with a good group of players, it’s very hard to have bad D&D), but it isn’t quite where they want it to be. Often the plotline railroads the players – that is to say, there’s pretty much only one way for the players to go, and one way for them to solve problems. This isn’t ideal in a game that revolves around the decisions made by players, but it’s also extremely understandable – because allowing players complete freedom takes a lot of thinking on your feet, and that takes practice.

            That first game usually falls apart within the first few sessions, but the new DM doesn’t give up. They learned a lot in those games, few though they were. The next game they run is significantly better. They’ve learned to prepare for players doing crazy things, and so they adapt their new game for that. This game goes much better, but it still isn’t perfect. The rails are still there, and still noticeable, and the DM runs into two similar problems: the players don’t catch on to what they were certain was obvious, so they need to improvise huge hints; and the players respond to things in ways previously unanticipated. Once again, the game usually falls apart at this point – but the DM has learned even more.

            Now comes the time for over-preparedness. The new DM has realized that players are wild and uncontrollable, and so the solution is to have a plan for everything. A massive world begins getting built, populated with interesting people and things. Histories and mythologies are created, as well as multiple dungeons and ways to attract the players to them. It becomes overwhelming, and at some point the DM realizes that if they keep this up, they’ll never get to play again – and so they take a leap of faith and start the game with what they’ve prepared.

            This time, the game goes very differently. Instead of the players going in crazy directions and forcing the DM to improvise, they seem to stick to the plot and avoid 90% of the content the DM has painstakingly created. This isn’t out of malice – this is simply because the DM has improved enough that the players feel that they are on the most natural course. The game lasts longer, and now the DM learns and perfects the rest of their skills. Their world is more in-depth, so they find improvising easier when it’s necessary. They get more of a feel for how to run and balance the game. They learn how to anticipate what their players are going to do, and to plan accordingly – but also how to have backup plans for when the players surprise them.

            Finally, DMing begins to come naturally, and less preparation is needed for each game. A lot of work still goes into running the game, but it becomes easier and more natural – as does coming up with things on the fly when the player throws a curveball at them.

            This isn’t a precise formula, as different people improve at different speeds. Some people manage to hold together that first game, improving as they go, while others have a few more false starts. However, by and large, this is the basic pattern of learning and growth I’ve observed in multiple new Dungeon Masters, and I find it to be fascinating – because running Dungeons & Dragons isn’t a skill you can learn everything about by being taught, or reading a book. It’s a form of art that you can only learn by doing.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

D&D Brings People Together

            When Colleen and I signed up to start playing Dungeons & Dragons at a local board game cafe almost two years ago, I honestly had no idea what to expect. We’d played D&D with friends and family before, and enjoyed it, but the games had never lasted long. It seemed likely that a pay-to-play game with a set schedule would have a good turn-out. It was also a bit experimental for me because I find socialization to be extremely taxing, so it was a test to see if I could handle it.

            We were very surprised when we got to the game and discovered that we already knew one of the other players – a member of a home-school group we’d run some chainmaille workshops with. As more players came in, I was impressed to see such a diverse age range. Here we had a group of people with the youngest being twelve and the oldest in their forties. All had different amounts of experience (both with life and D&D), but we all had interest in the same game.

            The fascinating thing is how well the group got along, right from the start. We were a random group of people who had signed up for this game, and from the moment we started playing it was like we’d known each other for years.

            I may have passed it off as chance, but when we signed up for the follow-up game, the same thing happened. Two of the players from the previous game had been replaced, but the newcomers were welcomed in and got along well with everyone.

            Then, last spring, we signed up for the third game being run by the same Dungeon Master, and it happened again. We had one of the other players from the first game and three brand new ones, and this group got along even better than the others. And when, over the eight or so months that the game ran, two of the players had to leave, the players that replaced them fit in well and also got along with the group.

            Now I’ve seen it happen again, this time from the perspective of the DM – the one running the game rater than playing in it. A group of random people were brought together, from teens to forties. A few knew each other, but they were mostly strangers – yet here they were, playing a game together and becoming fast friends.

            It’s been amazing to experience and observe. We’re generally expected to only get along with people in our own age-group, and it’s supposed to be hard to make new friends – yet, here I have evidence that this isn’t the case. All you need is a set time and place, and a good tabletop role-playing game.

            Dungeons & Dragons brings people together.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Swords & Wizardry

            Yesterday I had the delightful experience of playing Swords & Wizardry, which is essentially a revamped version of the very first version of Dungeons and Dragons (available for free from Frog God Games). Aside from being a lot of fun, it gave me a glimpse at what the game was like back in the day. Apparently, back then, Dungeons and Dragons was far more deadly for the characters.

            Before I get into some of what happened in the game, I think it’s important to note some major differences between Swords & Wizardry and modern D&D. The biggest difference is that the newer game is more about storytelling – you put a lot of work into your characters and their back story and the game, and there is a big focus on why the heroes are adventuring as they are. The older game is what we call a dungeon crawl – while there is still some story, the primary goal is to fight through dungeons and gather as much treasure as you can. The difference may not seem very big, but it leads into the second major difference: balance.

In modern D&D, when your characters end up in battle, it is almost guaranteed that you can win – because the game is designed to be balanced. S&W is not so kind. It functions under the more realistic assumption that, were you to go out adventuring, whatever you ran into was what you ran into – it doesn’t matter if you’re level one, you can still encounter something like an ancient dragon that you can’t even hit. This, combined with the third major difference, makes for a high mortality rate.

            In newer games, there are a number of abilities and skills to help your character detect traps, secret doors, and a variety of dangers. Not in the old games – no, you have to specifically say your character is looking at something for you to see it, which means it is way easier to walk into traps.

            So, essentially, in D&D you go into the game expecting to make a character that is not all that likely to die, whereas in S&W you go in expecting that your character will die, so you’re prepared to make a new one so you can rejoin. The way characters’ ability scores are rolled – in newer games, you usually roll four six-sided dice, add the top three together, and then assign that number to whichever ability you want it in. In the old game, you roll three six-sided dice and fill in the stats from top to bottom – making them completely random. As you can see highlighted in red on my character sheet below, that doesn’t always turn out very well.

            For frame of reference, the highest roll possible is 18. Anything below an 8 is really bad, and for something to be useful it needs to be 13 or higher. As you can see, this character’s only decent ability was charisma which, in this game, is almost completely useless. However, the one thing it is good for is having hirelings – extra people paid to follow your character around and do their bidding. And so begins the epic tale of Gorbon the Slovenly, the halfling thief – the character with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, and who, starting with only 3 hit points, we all thought would be the first to die (but we joked he’d be the only one to survive in the end).

            While the four other adventurers were spending their starting money on armor and weapons, Gorbon the Slovenly bought a push-cart, hired two men-at-arms and ten torch-bearers (the cheapest minions around, who can’t even fight – I later claimed many of them were hired from an orphanage). Gorbon paid all his hirelings a week in advance and promised them a share of whatever treasure they helped him carry back. He then climbed into his pushcart and sat back to relax as his minions carted him around.

            The adventurers were then sent to retrieve a book from a temple that had been taken over and desecrated by an evil cult. En-route, they stopped to investigate some desecrated shrines. The statues of gods within had been beheaded – only one head was still around. Gorbon promptly ordered one of his minions to put the head back on the statue. However, the moment the torch-bearer, lifted the statue’s head, he burst into flame and died.

            The amount of damage done by the magical trap – hidden on the bottom of the head an impossible to detect – was enough that it could have outright killed any of our characters except the ranger. It was an eye-opener for the players as to what kind of game this was.

            Gorbon the Slovenly, however, was unconcerned. He heaved himself out of his cart, wobbled over to his fallen minion, and looted the week’s advance pay. He then climbed back into his cart, ready to move on. One of the other players jokingly called the dead torch-bearer “Jimmy” and I resolved to name every one of my minions when they died (you can see the list on the righ-hand side of the character sheet).

            I think I’ve given a good idea of Gorbon’s character by now, so I’ll skim to some more interesting parts. In a secret tunnel, he lingered behind to steal four valuable tapestries that the “lawful” characters wouldn’t take because it would be sacrilegious. When some very powerful spiders attacked the group in a forest, six more torch-bearers died and a seventh (I named him Bilbo) fled into the forest, chased by one of the spiders. Gorbon stayed in his cart, shooting arrows, while keeping his men-at-arms at his sides in case anyone came too close. After the battle, he looted his money back from his dead minions and the adventurers moved on.

            At this point, I started doodling Gorbon being pulled in his cart, along with his dead minions, around the outside of my character sheet. Yes, there is a little corpse for each dead minion – they shall not be forgotten.

            They finally arrived at the temple, thanks to the sacrifice of Gorbon’s minions – of which there were now two torch-bearers and two men-at-arms. That quickly became one torch-bearer when to one Gorbon sent ahead into the temple was killed by another magical trap (on the ceiling we hadn’t thought to look at).

            From this point forward, Gorbon became more careful with his minions, as he needed them to pull his cart. The remaining three survived as everyone fought skeletons, wound their way through a secret passage and into tunnels. However, they came to a place that to proceed forward they had to climb over short walls – the cart had to be left behind. And as soon as they were in one of the parallel tunnels (both with the barricades), an enormous ogre attacked the party from behind.

            When the ogre crushed the group’s other (much better) Halfling thief into jam with one blow, Gorbon took his minions and ran – straight into the ogre’s lair. There he spotted treasure and paused long enough to order his men-at-arms to grab a chest of it, then circled back to his cart via the second of the parallel tunnels.

            By a stroke of luck (a critical hit, for which we had an awesome deck of cards to generate special results), our human fighter beheaded the ogre. Gorbon hid the chest on his cart and assured the others that he had been circling around to attack from behind, not merely fleeing.

            The adventurers found a great deal of treasure in the ogre’s lair, loaded it into the cart, but left it where it was and continued on foot (joined by the paladin that replaced the dead thief) down a side passage – much to Gorbon’s dismay, as he was counselling them to return to town to hire more minions with their treasure. They fought some skeletons, then came upon a wight – which cast a spell of fear that caused all but two of the adventurers to run away. One joined his fleeing companions, while the ranger (having been drained to level 1 by the wight which we couldn’t hurt without silvered weapons) stayed behind and sacrificed himself.

            The spell wore off when they were halfway into the woods. Gorbon convinced everyone to go back for the treasure, then go into town – they agreed on the condition that they run at the first sign of trouble. They collected the treasure and made it back to town without trouble, where they bought silvered weapons. Gorbon opened his secret chest to find three potions, one of which was poison and killed his last torch-bearer who was testing them to identify what they would do.

            Gorbon hired twenty more torch-bearers. All the other characters, being “lawful”, couldn’t bear the thought of hiring people and sending them to their deaths, so they set out again. By the time they reached the temple again, three torch-bearers had fled and another eleven had been killed by orcs and spiders.

            We then took a different route in the temple, that led us to a room that spawned four skeletons every two rounds that a “lawful” character was in it. Gorbon wisely told them to retreat, but the other adventurers decided that there couldn’t be that many skeletons. When the cleric died (leaving only two of the original adventurers alive), the remaining three decided to run to the exit on the far side of the room, the whittle down the remaining skeletons once they stopped spawning. Gorbon, still in the first hallway, had his minions pull him all the way back to the edge of the forest while he fired arrows at the two skeletons chasing them. There he was joined by the cleric’s replacement, who was a “neutral” character (he’d learned his lesson) that helped slay the skeletons.

            Back inside, the other skeletons were killed off, but not before one of the three was knocked unconscious. The new “neutral” character crossed the room to join them, but Gorbon the Slovenly stayed behind – his henchmen were all lawful, and he wasn’t going to go on without them (or his cart), and he certainly wasn’t going to let them spawn more skeletons. He did, however, go far enough into the room to loot the dead cleric.

            The remaining three adventurers carried on until they found a large glowing rune. The two “lawful” characters (one carrying their unconscious companion) stood back while the “neutral” character opened the secret door, breaking the rune and, in so doing, summoning an frog-demon which magically changed all but the fighter (the second last of the original adventurers) into its minions. The fighter dropped his unconscious companion and fled – but not fast enough. The frog-demon destroyed him, and walked deeper into the dungeon with its new minions in tow.

            And so it was that Gorbon the Slovenly, he with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, was the only one to survive the adventure. In the end, the game claimed the lives of five adventurers and twenty torch-bearers. A further three torch-bearers fled home, and one was lost in the woods, being chased by a giant spider.

            We still don’t know if poor Bilbo survived.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.