Dungeon Master Tips for Flexible Prep and Better Improv

Don't try to plan everything, you'll find out you're stuck when the players don't do what you thought they would. Rather, create the loose threads of the story; "Why is the bad guy being bad? Where is the big bad? Why should they go fight the big bad?"

The main thing I had to learn was players never do what you think, and more importantly, no matter how much you think whatever you put there is obvious, it isn't.

I know about taking inspiration and resources from everywhere. I talk to my players constantly getting their feedback after sessions and chatting when we hangout outside of the game. I am as unattached to my NPCs as I possibly can be. I am relaxed when game day comes and I'm ready to improv on game day. What are your advanced dnd tips you've only figured out recently?

Don't hold off on the cool stuff you have planned. When I started out I kept envisioning all the cool encounters or events that would happen down the road. Find a way to move that stuff to the front.

Now I just keep trying to up the stakes and push the pace on the party. It's so much more fun as a DM when I'm constantly throwing something big at the party.

Clues and foreshadowing, clues and foreshadowing everywhere ! It's good to seed little tidbits about the next arc or adventure during every session, but you can also do it for arcs you barely have a plan for or even just ideas you want to put in the game at some point.

Put small clues like letters, symbols, rumors, prophecies, or poems everywhere. Imagery and iconography are also great tools. Keep them relatively vague or cryptic. The more you seed those everywhere, the more your players will read into them. You can then either adapt their cool ideas or play around them to surprise them when the arc in question come up !

Your players will praise you for being a genius when they get to the snake temple and learn about the ancient snake god, thinking you had planned them getting there all along, when in reality you just put some snake iconography around some of your dungeons.

Do this for villains, and you'll have the most memorable moments when your party finally meets them.

Yesterday was my 28th birthday, and to celebrate, here are 28 lessons I've learned as a Game Master:

1. Flexibility > rigid planning; your story should evolve with the players choices
2. Listen more than you speak; player ideas can fuel epic adventures
3. Every NPC has a motive; knowing it makes the world alive
4. Balance is key, in challenges, rewards, and spotlight time
5. Failures are plot twists, not dead ends
6. Prep what matters; improvise the rest
7. The Rule of Cool can occasionally beat the rulebook
8. Silence is a powerful tool; use it to build tension
9. Personal quests make players deeply invested
10. A villain’s backstory is as important as the hero’s
11. Props and music can transform good sessions into great ones
12. Safety tools enhance the game for everyone
13. Feedback loops with players are gold
14. 'Yes, and...' fosters creativity; 'No, but...' keeps it real
15. Every session should end with a hook
16. Downtime is where characters become real
17. Not every mystery needs solving
18. A well-placed cliffhanger can make the week fly by
19. Remember: You’re playing with them, not against them
20. Every group is different; adapt your style
21. Laugh at the chaos, don’t fight it
22. Know when to take a break
23. Invest in relationships outside the game
24. Learning never stops; every session is a lesson
25. Maps aren’t just tools; they’re inspiration
26. Less can be more with descriptions; let imagination fill the gaps
27. Conflict drives the story, but so does resolution
28. Finally, enjoy the journey; it’s about fun, not just the destination

What would you add to this list?

Keep in mind that the game isn't "GM vs The Players". You're all there to be awesome, engage in a story, and (most importantly) have fun.

Remember the Rule of Cool: If it sounds fun, but there isn't a specific game mechanic for it, let it happen anyway. If you want to take it further, give the character a bonus for doing such an action, be it a few more dice for damage, a temporary morale bonus, etc.

Don't let your players walk all over you. Some players just want to play a game because they know the most overpowered combo and want to break the game with it. There are specific threads about this (just search "powergamer" or "munchkin"), but the general idea is to let them be powerful, just not so much that it overshadows all other players.

Sometimes a crutch isn't a crutch; it's the solution. Many D&D problems are subjective and bound up with interpersonal stuff. Treasure the moments where you can kill a problem for good in one shot. Sometimes when the problem can be solved simply, you should just hit the nail with the hammer and leave it at that.

"How do I signal to my players a fight is too hard?" Give them a DBZ scouter if that's what it takes. Give the mage a cantrip that just reads out everything's CR. "My players won't go on the adventure!" Fine. The town just got burned to the ground by reptilian warriors; it's a survival game now. "My murderhobo won't stop killing quest givers and shopkeepers!" Tell the other players to hold an in-character kick vote. He's out if it goes against him.

You know what I mean? When something is open to a simple one-piece fix, don't overcomplicate that.

NPC templates

If you ever find yourself struggling to come up with NPCs on the fly, especially if you need to keep them consistent because your game involves intrigue or investigation and you want to avoid contradicting yourself, there is a simple way: adaptable templates

Robert is a [race] [profession], he has always been poor but recently has gained a bit of wealth, drawing the attention of his neighbours. He knows a secret about the villain and is being paid to keep it a secret and notify him of any foreigner that comes in asking questions. He need the money for his sick wife.

There. You can use Robert in your next game set in waterdeep. Oh, players went to a dwarven fort instead? Robert is a dwarf in that fort.

You can use him in spelljammer, in dragonlance, in a call of cathully campaign. If your players interrogate the innkeeper, he's the innkeeper. If they go to a doctor, he's a doctor.

Prepare a couple dozen templates and you're set for your next 2 or 3 sessions. Make more as needed.

Edit: Wow! Thank you guys for the awards and all the comments contributing your own advice. I didn’t really think anyone would see this post but I’m happy to help some other DM’s out! New DMs, definitely check out the comments on this because other people have offered their own advice and built upon mine to make it even better!

I always felt like when I started out I’d be looking for advice and people would say the obvious things like “don’t overprep”, “don’t be afraid to improv”, “read your materials and know them well”, and “describe smells” — you get that one a lot. Not sure why because while it will make it interesting, your players smelling the room isn’t all that helpful to you taking on this huge task of being a DM. Don’t get me wrong, that’s all good advice, but I had such a huge learning curve about a lot so here’s some of the things I learned on my own that I wish people had told me. Some are more important than others but here’s everything:

(1) I recommend having a laptop/phone/tablet ready (I’ve found laptops to be the easiest) with a couple of tabs open. - A name generator. If you struggle coming up with names on the fly like me, keep open a name generator to help you name NPCs. - Google images. I also struggle visualizing people and areas. If you can keep google images open you can quickly google “dwarf adventurer” or “abandoned shack” to get some quick things to describe. - A shop list. Something that has what people sell and prices. I use this. - Your module. Now this is kind of up to you and what works for you. I’ve found having a pdf module and a physical module works the best for me. This way I can make my dm notes off to the side of the pdf. - Your dm notes. - A map of where your players are at (If relevant). - Monster stats. I either know who they’re going to be facing this session and pull them up, or I keep a folder on drive full of different monster stats that I can pull up at a moments notice, but you can also google these during the session if needed.

(2) That being said, have your books on hand! Mark important pages such as adventuring gear, magic items, the classes of your players, and maybe even their spells if you have the time. It’s super helpful to be able to quickly turn the the page in the book to quick reference something.

(3) Learn the rules pretty well, write down anything that seems important to you on your dm screen.

(4) It’s nice to know your players spells and abilities, but it’s not your responsibility. If it’s clearly on their spell cards/character sheet, it’s their problem if they don’t use it. (Except for maybe passive abilities like dark vision and stuff.)

(5) Make eye contact with your players. Even if you are reading something, glance up and make some eye contact. It pulls them in more to have you interacting with them, not a sheet of paper or computer screen.

(6) If the module you are running comes with descriptions for each room, don’t read them word for word. (This one is probably LMoP specific.) My players hated when I read these descriptions. Instead, give them the general vibe of the room, make it sound like it’s coming from you, not the module. Listening to someone read is boring, but listening to someone tell you a general description with more feelings about the room than schematics is so much better.

(7) NPCs don’t have to have voices if you can make them stand out well enough. (Or at all really.) This can be how they phrase their sentences, quirks they have while they talk to you, or something about how they look. Voices are fun, but aren’t always for everyone.

(8) You can force ability checks. This probably seems obvious. But I learned this recently from playing Baulder’s Gate 3. If there’s a cool bit of history or factiod nearby, and you know your players won’t ask about it. Have them make a check for it! That way you can tell them the cool thing.

(9) I’ve found the best way to take down initiative for me isn’t to ask everyone to tell you down the line or who rolled the highest, but to actually say, “Okay 25-20? 19-15? 14-10?” And so on. I used to ask my players who rolled the highest and they’d either yell out their rolls a million times to try to work it out, or they’d not pay attention to what everyone else rolled and just answer when they thought they fit. This way everyone just rolls and then you can quickly go down from highest to lowest.

(10) While we’re on initiative. If you know an encounter is going to happen, pre roll it and write it out! I like to write it down a line on a lined sheet of paper, leaving a space or two on either side of each number, and then putting the AC and health of the creature next to where it sits on initiative. Then you can fill in your players as needed. For example:

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20 Goblin 1 - AC 12 - 7 HP

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15 Bugbear - AC 15 - 27 HP

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7 Goblin 3 - AC 12 - 7 HP

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3 Goblin 2 - AC 12 - 7 HP

—

—

(11) If you plan to use a battle map, don’t try to have your players draw it. I had seen some people say that they designated a drawer to do their room layouts, so I rewrote every area description so the player could draw it more easily. If you use a battle map you have to draw on, just draw it for the combat and then give it to the players.

(12) Standing during combat helps you see the battle map and what the players are doing. I actually like standing the whole session cause it doesn’t feel like I’m hiding behind my screen and feel like I’m part of the game, but standing during combat especially helps.

(13) Describe your combat! Don’t just roll and ask if things hit, pull your players into it! “Okay, Oskar, you draw back your great axe and charge towards the beast - roll your chance to hit. That hits! Go ahead and roll damage. Nice. You swing your axe down as the beast tries to rear back, but not before you slice right down his chest, leaving a large wound glistening with fresh blood that is now staining his fur.” Is a lot more interesting than: “You wanna hit it? Okay, roll your chance to hit. That hits, roll damage. 9 damage. Cool it’s now Bree’s turn.” It takes a lot of practice, I still haven’t gotten it down yet, but once I do combat will be so much more fun. - Here’s a little bonus tip I learned also. If you want to draw other players into a different players turn, mention them: “Bree, as you are trying to sneak up on this monster you see Oskar charging into it screaming. You watch as he swings his axe down into his neck and watch the blood splatter against his wild looking face.” The second you mention Bree’s name she’s going to immediately be more interested because you are talking to her. It makes the combat more fun for everyone!

(14) Think like the enemy. Wolves won’t fight to the death if they’re trying to steal your food. Goblins often aren’t loyal enough to their cause to fight to the death. The enemy can run and your players can still chase them down or just get XP.

(15) Award XP for completing encounters, not just killing bad guys, and make sure to make it clear to your players you’re doing this. This really encourages creative solutions to encounters. I remember I had a nothic that half the party did not want to kill, but ended up killing for the XP. I didn’t want to chime in during the session to influence their decision since the other half did want to kill it, but reminded them afterwards it was for completing encounters, not killing. They said they didn’t remember because I didn’t make it clear enough. So just make sure they know if you’re doing this.

(16) Try not to end the session until you know what the players are doing for the next session. This probably seems obvious but I struggled so much prepping cause I didn’t know if my players would go here or there. So I’d prep everything. Try to get your players to make a plan for the next session, then end it. Then you know what you need to prep.

(17) Google it! Don’t understand how to run something? Don’t know how a certain monster should act? Someone else probably had the same question. I stole a whole green dragon encounter from Users cause I googled how to run it.

(18) Talk to someone outside your campaign. I get my best ideas talking to people that aren’t involved. But often I don’t have anyone to talk to so...

(19) The internet helps! If you look through my post history I am constantly asking for help and ideas. Even if I only get one comment, an outside perspective can really get the ball rolling. I wrote an entire one shot for one of my players by making a couple posts on Users and talking with a couple of people in a group on Facebook. No matter how stupid it sounds, if you need help, someone will likely answer!

Hopefully this helps! I spent a couple days working on this trying to think of things I wish I’d been told starting out. It’s a lot at first and sometimes you just need someone else’s experience to help get you started.

If you want fast combat use average damage for all damage rolls (even spells) and add damage upwards rather than subtraction. This leads to much faster combat on the DMs side and reduces the maths burden for you.

Being a dungeon master is a thankless and forlorn job. Not only must we craft stories of such depth and engagement that they surpass the works of Martin, Lewis, and Moorcock, but we must also deal with ignorant and dull-witted players who constantly try to the change the narrative and take the spotlight away from our NPCs. Fortunately, as a DM I have won numerous sessions, so here is my advice in order to have the best gaming experience:

1: The first, and the most important to remember, is that the relationship between a dungeon master and the players is adversarial. Their goal is to successfully complete the adventure, your job is to stop that from happening.

2: Always a plan an adventure around the weaknesses of the party. If none of the players are rogues, have traps everywhere. The group is staying in an inn? Trap their room. About to ride a wagon? Trap the wagon. If the party has lots of spellcasters, give monsters spell-resistance or the ability to cast ‘Anti-Magic Field’ as an at-will ability.

3: Third-party material often provides more races and sub-classes for players. This gives them more options during play, and so allows them to have more fun. For this reason, such material should banned. The DM, however, is allowed to utilize third-party content, especially monsters, if it makes things more difficult for the players.

4: If the players request specific house rules, or small changes to races or backgrounds to tailor the gaming experience to their preferences, always say no.

5: Randomly require players to roll an ability check to perform rudimentary or basic tasks, like drinking a mug of ale or walking up a small flight of stairs. Make the DC exceptionally high, and always have the consequences for failing the check be very serious (failing to drink the mug of ale means they spill it, violently angering the inn-keeper who is actually a polymorphed Green Dragon).

6: Whenever the players defeat a major foe, immediately announce so it wasn’t the real opponent, and now the party has to face a fresh enemy while they are badly wounded and have exhausted all their spells and abilities. You can say the one they just fought was actually a simulacrum, or it was only the first of several forms.

7: Narrate the player performing an action that immediately places them in a dangerous situation so they cannot avoid it. For example, if the party is standing at the entrance to a dungeon, describe them immediately walking in and triggering a trap that results in ‘Wail of the Banshee’ being cast. If they are having an audience with a king, state that one the players insults the monarch and spits on him.

8: Whenever the players complain, penalize them by reducing the total XP their characters have.

9: If one of the players is a paladin, have quests where, no matter the outcome, their character breaks their oath and falls.

10: Always have the players be accompanied by an NPC that has higher attributes than the rules allow, is always a higher level, and gets credit for all the heroic deeds.

If you do all this, I guarantee that every adventure will play out exactly as you pictured in your head as you wrote it.

Hi All, I'm back with another edition of my popular D&D advice column. Today I'm going to cover my all time two greatest tips for dungeon masters. These are both excellent pieces of advice, so you may well have heard your favourite D&D personalities cover them already.

1. Talk to your players. Run a comprehensive session 0 where you discuss all of the themes of your campaign and make sure everyone is on the same page. Check in with your players regularly and make sure they're still happy with everything you're doing. Always obtain your players' enthusiastic consent, and give them safety tools to help communicate if something goes wrong. Honesty and transparency are the greatest virtues that a DM can possess.

2. You should fudge your dice, but don't let your players know you are doing it. Roll your dice behind a screen, or even better roll them in the open, but adjust enemy hit points on the fly so your players don't realise anything is up. Sometimes you should roll dice for no reason, just to keep your players on edge. Call for passive perception scores, then just say "Hmm that's interesting..." and refuse to elaborate further. Make your players *think* they're playing in a tabletop game with rules and mechanics, when in fact they are in Plato's cave, watching the dance of your gaslit shadows tell the story you want to tell.

I freaking love this. I will say, point 13, I wouldn't describe every single action. That can really drag out an encounter. Sprinkle it in every 2 or 3 attacks, but keep it flowing. This helps make the combat more fast and furious.

Looking for rare DMing tips. That one only acquits after hundreds of hours of directing games.

Please be kind.

Great post.

Regarding XP, most DMs (that I’m aware of) give up using it after a while and opt for Milestone levelling instead.

Worldbuilding is a lot of fun and you should get into it but a word of advice: if you're not already a very experienced player that pays attention to encounter balancing and creating sandboxes it's very easy to bite off more than you can chew, consider using some premade assets (these can be encounters, mini adventures, puzzles) and reskinning them to your needs.

Run a session 0. 70-80% of the issues in here stem from no expectations being discussed or set from the beginning.

Keep the table having fun as the priority in your mind, it's what you're all there for :)

Try running a handful of published/pre-written one shots first. Get some feel for your style of play, and your players, before locking in to a whole homebrew campaign.

The "Itsamimic" podcast is an amazing resource with hundreds of episodes geared toward DMing. It's helped me a lot with understanding mechanics, the pillars, monster types, and campaign building. R/itsamimic

While the world is ultimately whatever you want it to be, encourage the players to add to the lore. If it’s something that will be counterintuitive to how you’ve got things set up then change it a little, but let them have input. It gives them more ownership

You're going to fuck up the rules and that's okay. No one expects you to be perfect.

Hey I am currently a new dm looking for some guidance or tips on random stuff, I started my campaign last week and I'm about to start my next session but my minds currently going from idea to idea in randomness and sometimes they make sense others dont, so I am just trying to get some story tips from other dms or monsters we run into or other things like NPCs, POIs, anything is welcome and thanked also some note or session planning tips and necessities are welcomed as well I'm currently running on core books binder and regular notebooks

Wow, this list is great! I've been a DM for a long time and have a couple specific bits I'd like to add. Overall, though, OP has done well.

(1) I keep a digital version of my campaign plan, but I only like to heavily plan out 2-4 sessions in advance. I might have story beats in an outline, but nothing is fleshed out beyond that. My weekly prep is fleshing out my notes and building the combat encounters. I even put the monster stats and the page number they are in right into the notes. Each week before the game, I print off the pages I think we will get to. And then, depending on what happens in the game, I might revise the upcoming parts of the campaign.

(2) If you can afford it, I recommending having one core book for yourself and one for your table. If you can't afford both, maybe ask your players if one of them will pick up a copy. If you have the laptop open, having a digital copy for yourself works too, especially if it is searchable.

(3) You can use post it notes or small slips of paper and scotch tape to add extra stuff to the dm screen. This is a trick I learned from Matt Mercer. Another option you can purchase is a custom DM screen that lets you print and place your own screen pages. I usually have 1 game specific screen, and then my custom screen with my own print-offs.

(14) I like to give all my NPC's my players will fight some very simple motivations and defeat conditions. X enemy fights to the death because of reason Y. Z enemy will try to flee when they reach 25% or fewer hit points, etc. I find having it in writing makes it easier to remember in the moment.

(15) HARD agree that awarding xp based on the CR of the NPC is really bad. All it does is encourage murderhoboing for maximum xp gain. Over the course of m DM career I have gone from XP by CR -> Encounter XP -> Session/Milestone xp. I recommend the most frequently you award XP is at the conclusion of each session, and the least frequently being when they complete milestones. How you are going to award XP should be laid out in Session 0 to set expectations.

(18/19) After a section of an adventure I like to get the pulse of my group. Ask what they liked, what they didn't. Ask what they would like to see more of and less of. I'm incredibly fortunate that we have 3 DM's with 20+ years of DMing experience each at our table, so I think it would be a waste to let all that knowledge go to waste. I actually use one of the other DM/Players to bounce pieces of a campaign I am working on off of and get his reaction - not plot twists in the story, mind you, but usually homebrew stuff I think would make a good addition to the game.

When planning a session, think of scenarios that prompt the players into action and make them think on their feet. A common begginer mistake is to write out the possible sequences of events and plan for each choice (like "if players do X, then Y; if players do A, then B), this is bad because it makes your prep rely on specific and expected outcomes which the players will not follow. Instead, have goal-oriented opponents; dont try to guess what your PCs will do and then plan for each possibility, just ask yourself “What is the bad guy trying to do?” It's up to the players to figure out how to stop them, so you just have to know the villains goals and plan what would happen if the players didnt intervene.

For misteries or hidden plots, think of the questions you want the PCs to answer and come up with at least 3 clues for each. That way if the players dont find one or dont understand it when they do, you have extra to give. These should be non-linear so they can be discovered in any order and you can hide them in different locations or behind different obstacles like puzzles, combat and social encounters.

What have you done thus far? What's your world/setting like?

I like to do my best to flesh out with as much detail as possible the scenes the players are actually going to interact with (usually the beginning of the session before things go off the rails.) If there's an npc you know the characters are going to interact with a lot, spend time making the details of that character. If there's a fight that you know will eventually happen, make sure you have a battle map and statblocks ready. If the party is going to a town, make sure you have a list of the names of shops and buildings around town. The more time you can spend prepping for things the party is actually going to interact with the better.

From there you need to know what else is going on in the area. What political/criminal/social drama is happening around town--doesn't need to be anything more than a paragraph. Jot down some names for the important people around the area. This is your source of inspiration when things go off the rails. You'll know what sort of things to improv because they make sense. (Like if the party travels on a road used for smuggling weapons, they'll come across some weapon smugglers.)

From there what is the big picture of your world. What are the most powerful beings in your world doing? How was the world made? Where do Elfs come from? You can stick to traditional dnd lore for this or go nuts if you like, but you can also use this as a source of inspiration when actions from the worlds super powers trickle down to your players. But! Dont get bogged down in this kind of world building--the players generally wont seek out this kind of information. It's better if it's discovered naturally by exploring the world. You dont need to know everything about your world, you can make it up slowly over time.

I also suggest having a catalog of npcs that you can pull into the game at any time. Have the names and basic descriptions of 5-10 npcs. Whenever the characters go into a random shop or run into someone on the street you can quickly bring in someone from your bench without feeling stressed of figuring out a whole person on the fly.

Lastly--reuse and recycle! If something you prep for doesnt get used, put it in your pocket and think about how you can rework it so that it can fit into another session. I use dungeons I made a decade ago for my current group, just with some minor changes to enemys, loot, and decore. Have a few "goto" encounters (combat and noncombat) that fit in anywhere and can kill some time before you have to go back to improv. Sometimes the players will throw you a curvball. It's good to have some encounters ready that "just randomly happen" for those times you have a genuine brain fart on what you should do next.

Hope this helps! have fun!