Preparing For Your First Session As A DM

Eventually at some point in our TTRPG career we decide to take the wild leap from player to DM, stepping into the Narrator and facilitator role. This move can seem daunting and anxiety inducing even for those that have been playing in the system in which they desire to take the reigns in. I'm all about empowering you all to do what brings you joy in this hobby so I would like to help. I'd like to take my trial by fires stepping into my first DM roles, the lessons I've learned through the years, and the processes I've developed in order to help you. Hopefully this will help ease your anxiety some and at least give you a foundation on which to build from. This is all supposed to be a helpful starter and shouldn't be taken as gospel since as you grow and become comfortable as a DM your style may evolve and change as well. So don't freak out if not everything here helps you or is a perfect fit, as with any homebrew related things we talk about, tweak it for your type of play and your table.

Now my first time as a DM was a disaster on the scale of those global movie disasters. Well at least on my side of the screen it was, I happen to be very good at BSing things and improv so for the most part my players were unaware of the pure shenanigans I was pulling. I've found this often to become the case in my current games as well when my players decide to go flinging themselves in a direction I never anticipated. So my first suggestion to any budding DMs, GMs, and Lore Masters would be to get comfy with the idea of on the fly thinking. Alot of people will tell you to go take an improv class, and that is actually a great way to do that. For those like myself with anxiety triggered by large groups of new people, there are a few other solutions. When you are improving the flow of the game to match where your players are heading off to, trying to adjust things on the fly to avoid a TPK or simply trying to loop the planned story back into where the players are what you are really doing is spontaneous creation.

Growing up I devoured books to the point where I was probably reading some not so age appropriate stuff from my Father's bookshelf in the basement. I also wrote like crazy including taking random words I had learned from the books above my level to spawn stories around. This process of being able to take a piece of information and generate pages of material is my foundation on creating any kind of homebrew campaign. Like anything, it is a skill you can develop in a few ways the easiest of which I'll walk you through.

First find an image or a painting, don't think too hard about it, my favorite for people just trying this out for the first time is either 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' by Johannes Vermeer or 'Nighthawks' by Edward Hopper. These are two well recognized paintings that tell a story that shifts depending on the viewers perspective. It's that perspective we are going to play with to stretch our content generation muscles. Look at the picture, really look at it. What is the body language telling you? What is the lighting saying? What emotions are you reading from the face(s)? What actions are happening that might shape the tale?

Take the next 5 minutes and write me a story that encapsulates that moment in time the painting is showing. By that I mean write about the events that encircle this brief glimpse you are able to get. How did the girl come to be the subject of a painting? Where did the pearl earring come from? Was it a gift? How do the people in the Nighthawks painting know each other? Do they know each other? What is going on in their lives that would cause them all to be here at this dinner so late?

The second exercise is to take 5-7 strange, new, or interesting words you've found and generate a story inspired by them that incorporates them. Lets say we wanted to set up for Call of Cthulhu type game so it will probably be in the 1920's. We will take Bearcat, Bluenose, cake-eater, icy mitt, rub, zozzled, and sockdollager. All very time period slang terms and words that you would have heard in regular use at that time. Take the next 5 minutes and write me a story that MAKES SENSE and uses these words at least once in a way that isn't jarring and seems natural to the story. Don't try and shoehorn it in just go with the flow~.

As you do more and more of these 5 minute spontaneous generation exercises you'll find them to be easier and easier. You might be wondering what the point of these are, at the very least how they apply to you being a great DM. Well as a player how many times have you or the group done something the DM didn't expect at all? How did that interrupt the flow of the game? If you can generate stories based off of nothing more then images and a few words you can easily take what your players do in stride and make it up on the fly if need be. The word exercise helps you keep goals in mind while doing this so you never get far from the intended goal of the campaign. Our painting exercise helps you take visual cues and expand just what those mean to be able to paint a fuller picture for your players without a script. You are making your world a rich, full and interactive place by allowing the flex needed with your players.

So one helpful tip and skill build out of the way, what shall we tackle next but the elephant in many rooms - knowledge. Now some folks will say you must be a master of the system before running the system for others but honestly that is complete hogwash. We live in an age of information and access to the knowledge of the masses. People who have been in these systems from the beginning all the way to the new databases of info like DnD Beyond. You don't need to know everything to build and play but you do need to learn how to recognize what you don't know and how to find it out. Now obviously having at least a base knowledge of the system is going to help you do this but it doesn't necessarily mean you need all of the published works. Take D&D, they created a Basic Rules set just to be able to make sure the barrier to actually getting involved and playing is very low. Alot of other publishers have various version of this and if its not obvious where its located just reach out to them, this community is really fantastic about being here for each other. (but don't be and jerk and try to demand free products, I'm not here for that)

Okay so how do we recognize what we might need to research when setting up for our first session? Easiest place to start at is with our players. What are they thinking about playing? Has anyone set in stone their character yet? Its not your job to play a PC for them by knowing everything about their abilities BUT understanding how the character will play and what problems you could run into are important when building your world and story. A War caster and a rogue have different strengths and can be challenged without being killed in different ways. Each also have different areas in which they can truly shine, knowing these lets you make the players feel more involved and important in the world. Then we look at what will challenge the players - monsters, terrain, antagonists, governments, organizations, etc. You don't have to have everything they may run into conflict with figured out but it is helpful to plan out a session or two with broad strokes to for pillars to go by for the rest of the campaign. If the players are traveling through a forest then research things that they might come into conflict with. Things like traps, spiders, bears, wolves, etc. Pick 2-3 things that might create conflict or friction with the players in the session and run with it. They don't have to be specific, just like how our example was just something in the woods, but it will let you research and maybe find some unexpected things. The more you research you'll naturally gain more and more knowledge of the system because you've organically worked it in and made it instantly useful as opposed to just cram in for a non-existent DM examine.

Also if its your first time don't be afraid about being upfront about that with your players and that there might be times where you ask for help or opinions on things. I will however say be sure to make it clear that your word is still the final say in the matter because never forget, RAW in any system are meant to be a guide not the end all be all. Even now as there is always so much to remember and be aware of I stop and ask my players about their abilities because they have become experts in them after a year of play, while I've been focused on becoming an expert on the world I've crafted for them.

So on that note lets talk about worldbuilding. Most of my ideas come from outside the hobby and I've always been of the mind that to create you have to consume. If you are wanting to take on creating your own world for a campaign that's perfectly fine and I'll talk more about doing that in a sec. However it may be beneficial to start off with a created and contained adventure or one shot. It gathers all of the materials and references you need in one spot and lets you see how things can be interconnected and grow. My favorite example for this is actually one of D&D's more recent books in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. It allows for multiple villains to step forward and be the antagonist for your players based off their decisions and Waterdeep is such a rich trove of info and history in multiple editions of the game that you can research and pull in. Running your group for a pre-created one will let you learn your players game pace as well. Meaning how they tackle and handle certain problems, how long it takes them to resolve them. how long it takes them to make decisions, etc. Which will be heaps useful should you decide to spin it off into a more homebrew campaign.

Ya'll know by now that homebrew is kind of my jam on here. I'm going to share some of my secrets on setting up a homebrew campaign and building the world for it. First take a piece of paper and make 3 columns. These columns represent your 3 kinds of play for TTRPG social, explorative, and conflict. The names of these shifts slightly to match systems like D&D calls conflict combat instead. Start by listing 3 things in each column that your players will interact with or that affect them. For instance - corrupt government, monster infestation, and famine could all be listed conflicts they players will face in one way or another. In the case of the corrupt government and monster infestations, they may even directly fight those things. Now take each of these things and expand on the idea with 3-5 sentences. Corrupt government becomes "A corrupt government has been taken advantage by the old established families of the kingdom to further line their pockets and deepen their holdings. No regard for the poor or working-class is taken as the rich work to further shove the citizens to the margins. People question if there is even a reason to fight it anymore as no justice seems to be in sight as judges are paid off before the case it brought forth." Well you just made a vague idea into a direct conflict that if your players decided to tackle you would have direction on what they'd need to do. 1 - find out just who is taking advantage of it, 2 - how high does it go, 3 - how to find and release evidence for change.

Now you have some elements for your campaign you can use but now you need a world to put them into. A fiction world comes in a few parts that we can easily tackle one at a time. For each element write a few sentences or bullet points about what is particular about this system, and if your world has more then one country do this for each of those. You'll need to think about Government, Economy, Agriculture, the Arts, Culture, Social Structure, Education, Religion, Language, Makeup of the people (things like common races), and established Organizations. Look I know that seems like a rather daunting list but trust me and take it one at a time,  it doesn't have to be in a particular order so if you have an idea of what you want the religion to be but not anything else in the list then start there. Let what you lay out for the religion section shape or inspire the rest. Maybe they become an extremely religious country whose government is lead by the divine religious leader rather than a king. How does that affect how the people see their leader or how the leader handles any naysayers? It would definitely mean that things like a religious order would be well established and prominent.

We have pillars of our campaign from the work with the columns and now we have the foundations of the country or countries involved in the world. Lets add where in the world they are to give them more context. I'm a big fan of the method of taking handfuls of dice and throwing them on a paper or whiteboard to determine geography. You can find some more detailed examples about how to do that here and here. Feel free to google it though there are many ways the same dice throwing application have been handled for the map-making and each of them have their benefits and pitfalls. But now you have a map to use with topography and geographical data in it which means its time to add your countries in. At this point I have several copies of the based map so that I can play with how I want the countries arranged, how big I want them, who I want them by etc. Once I'm happy with it I look at what countries border each other and write down a few things about what their relationship would be like. Maybe a really religious country bordering a more art-driven country might try to conquer and convert or maybe they might become major economic benefactors of the country as they get all of their art from them. Once you've established how border countries feel about each other tackle how each country feels about the rest, or even if they know that country exists. Just because you know all of the countries that populate your world doesn't mean your players do or even the country your players are from do. Maybe no one knows of that nation of islands out in the ocean because they've been too busy fighting with each other.

Recap time - we have pillars of the campaign, we have countries, we have geography and therefore maps. All that's really left for your first session is to generate the starting areas your players will be interacting with. This most likely will include the town or city they are starting in as well as the surrounding area. To generate shops check out my ongoing OMG Shops series, it will also help give you a jumping off point for creating alot of the NPCs your players will interact with. Make a few major places like a tavern, town hall, maybe a guard post to start filling out the town or city your players are in. The first place doesn't have to be super complicated because for the first few sessions you and your players are going to be learning together what they want to explore and what details are important to them. You don't want to take a ton of time dumping in lots of NPCs if your players are the social interaction types just like you don't want to create a lot of detailed buildings your players are going to gloss over. This is also a great time to decide what encounters you are going to have with your players for the first few sessions as they will be taking place in these spaces.

Encounters can really be anything and everything. Navigating government bureaucracy, fighting monsters, stealing important documents, etc. Anything that requires rolls from your players to overcome and gain something is an encounter. This will also be a learning experience as you learn what kind of encounters each of your players enjoy so that you can include a nice mix of things. Keep in mind what classes your players are using when doing these as well so that you can allow for moments with in them where your player's characters could possibly shine. A trap that the Rogue can disarm, an arcane object the wizard can identify, etc. I'll do a later post tackling building an encounter in more detail that I'll try linking here when it happens.

I'm going to pull in some classic fiction writing into this part of our prep. Think of your sessions and encounters like story arcs. An encounter should be a tiny self-contained story arc that affects and pushes forward the larger story arc intended for the session. (we say session but alot of the time a planned session ends up being stretched over multiple actual sessions of play cause players) It should have exposition which gets the players involved or interest, rising action as you introduce the risks and conflict, a climax where that comes to a head, falling action as the players come out on top and a resolution on what happens because of the victory or loss. Read as many short stories as possible and watch alot of episodic TV shows (personally I'm biased for Leverage, the Librarians, and Rizzoli & Isles) and you'll see alot of examples of this. Absorb them and think about why it works or doesn't work in each case. Learn what you like and don't like about them and then apply that to what you are working on.

For some loose end prepping you'll want to make a few lists that you can pull from when your players inevitably ask a question you weren't expecting. I suggest you make ones for NPC names and races, for items or things they can find on successful investigation rolls, and names of businesses. They aren't super necessary but will help you as you move further into your campaign as well. You'll also want to have any stat blocks gathered and on hand for encounters even if you didn't intend for them to be combat encounters. I'd also grab some notecards and right down the main goals that the PCs need to accomplish to complete whatever story arc you've created for the sessions.

Also my teacher gf and I would like to remind you that the last thing you need to do before your game session is to sleep. Pulling an all-nighter right before can be tempting because you never quite feel prepared enough. But getting enough sleep is actually important for your brain and therefore out purposes. Cause the world and all your players interact with are residing up there. You are the AI through which all input and output flows so if you are tired and not firing on all cylinders you are going to have stumbles you wouldn't have otherwise. So sleep dammit!

My last piece of advice for those prepping for their first session as a DM is to take a deep breath and slowly drop those shoulders. Its going to be perfectly fine no matter what. You are all coming together to play a game and have fun because you chose to. No one is under any obligations. You got this. Your world will expand and grow and become richer the longer your players interact in it because what you dive into creating will be dictated by them. You don't need anything and everything figured out beforehand because TTRPGs are meant to be a co-op storytelling experience that everyone can enjoy. And yes that means you too.

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.