Getting Started
I shared a story about how I started down the path of running a Dungeons and Dragons game for my son and his friends for the past 3 years. I mentioned in that story how it all started with an after school club with some of the High School students where I taught. Fast forward 6 years and one of those students is about to get married and he asked me to plan and run a D&D game for his bachelor party. HOW FUN IS THAT. I figure this is a great time to share some tips on how I plan my games.
Big Plans
I remember planning my first game for those High School kids. I wanted it to be a blast and I wanted to have a story that really just blew them away. I spent a whole weekend coming up with puzzles, secrets and treasures. I drew up an intricate map of a dungeon and placed all of my secrets and treasures around in different rooms. I made some rooms have traps or puzzles that triggered (in my mind) EPIC monster encounters. On paper, it was all looking great.
My game didn’t really end up going the way I planned. Turns out, the boys had their own ideas on how they should be exploring MY dungeon. They were bypassing rooms with treasure! They completely skipped over several rooms of really SWEET PUZZLES. COME ON.
Because I spent so much time planning it all out, bit by bit, I had to constantly fight the urge to railroad the players. I kept trying to guide them to the puzzles and secrets I had placed around the map because I had tied chunks of the story into them visiting these locations. I learned quickly, this approach isn’t really fun for anyone, players or DM. A lot of what makes these games so great and memorable are the spontaneous moments of improv!
Get Lazy
While searching around for planning materials, I stumbled across Mike Shea’s Sly Flourish website. Mike has tons of great articles and tools for DMs on his site, but the one that jumped out to me was Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. I was definitely intrigued by the premise. I immediately plunked down the eight bucks (I am in no way sponsored by Mike but seriously this is a STEAL) for the eBook and dove right in.
The whole idea around the “Lazy DM’ philosophy is to plan only what you have to and give your story and your players room to breathe and improv. Instead of spending hours on hours planning out and prepping. Using the Lazy DM checklist below, I now spend about 30–40 minutes either the night before or the morning of my game.
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Review the characters
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Create a strong start
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Outline potential scenes
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Define secrets and clues
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Develop fantastic locations
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Outline important NPCs
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Choose relevant monsters
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Select rewards
I do a quick review of my notes from the previous section and think about how we’re going to kick off the next session. I love starting with an encounter or with some semi-important event as it gets the players involved right away and gets them focused on the game. Other than that first encounter, I don’t really script much else out. I keep my notes for all of the potential scenes, NPCs, secrets/clues etc. handy and I just drop them in where and how I see fit. This frees up the world for the players, so that they don’t feel so locked in and it keeps them from missing out on clues or story bits. I can just drop in the important clues, NPCs and encounters wherever they’re needed.
Expect the unexpected and have fun!
I will say this up front. You do need to be comfortable, to a degree, with some improv and thinking on your feet. Your players will find new ways to surprise you with scenarios you never even thought of. Embrace it and roll with it. That is what makes this so much fun!
It took me 2–3 sessions to really start feeling comfortable with this process, but I am so glad that I started doing my planning this way. Some of my favorite moments with my son’s group have been completely off the cuff. They likely wouldn’t have even happened if I had tried to plan out every small detail.
If you are interested in learning more about The Lazy DM method, Mike has published a Youtube series discussing all eight checklist items along with lots of great tools for DMs on his website.
Good luck and have fun!