A Few Tricks for Running Dungeons and Dragons 5e Campaigns

Ok Dungeon Masters, today we're talking about how to tackle those epic campaign adventure books for 5e. Here are just some simple #DMTips for you. Oh and these will work for Paizo or Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition... whatever you're playing.

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[ogrejehosephatt]

I've run Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and currently running Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. I feel like these books are written in a way that requires you to read the whole thing. They don't write these books in a way that you can just run them from the books. It doesn't give you a heads up when a characters is important and will come back later in some capacity. I'd recommend people read the whole book weeks in advance of running it, but when you get the actual game organized, only prep for a session or two ahead, like you say.

[ZvelHaj]

The key to travel encounters is to make them less random. When you know the players are gonna travel in an upcoming session, make those rolls ahead of time, but feel free to change them, rearrange them, or mash a couple together. This gives you time to think about how you can make these encounters contribute to the overall game instead of just "whoops, gnolls!" You rolled giant spiders? Have an NPC webbed up that the party can rescue once the spiders are slain. Have one encounter with werewolves and the other with revenants? Put them together, and have the party find the werewolves and revenants fighting each other; do your players pick a side to support? Pepper clues about the world/plot into these encounters, so that they raise questions that the party wants to find answers to (possibly even at their destination). If there's going to be a particular type of enemy where they're going, having them encounter a small group on the road can help the players get some intel before they proceed into a lair filled with 50 of that enemy. Hell, they might be an opportunity to weave in one of those backstory moments. The most useful part of randomly rolling to me is just to see how far down the road the encounter is and what time of day it happens. A horde of zombies is a different fight depending on whether you find them on the road, they come out of the woods while you're having dinner, or if they creep up on you while you're asleep.

Basically, planning out your travel encounters ahead of time lets you weave them into the game. Now they're no longer speedbumps, but just another part of the adventure.

[matthewmasur]

I ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen my first time DM-ing, and going entirely by the book definitely didn't hold my players' attention. Their favorite session was a wrestling tournament I invented at a tavern along the road. They even picked up a bear cub companion along the way.

[Calebgoblin]

Not gonna lie this advice really slaps and it wasn't super obvious like a lot of D&Dtube is. I really appreciate that

[ts]

OK, so first I'd read through the whole thing and make notes: campaign outline, important npc, interesting ideas, themes, things I can cut, things I could add or twist, etc Then I think about the group I'm running for. What kind of game do they like? How long should it be? Is this adventure a good fit for them as is? How much additional work and time does it need to make it fun for everyone? If you're going to rewrite the whole thing from scratch then reading the whole thing and then stealing the best bits is ideal. Otherwise, streamlining the adventure by cutting the bloat is often a good idea if you actually want to finish the damn thing, so knowing what and where to cut whilst keeping the salient information is key.

[pacio]

I've run homebrew for 30 years, until I ran a public AL version of Storm King's Thunder and for the first time was using published material. (Early experiences left bad tastes in my mouth from published modules, all the way back to Red Box/Blue Box days). SKT was pretty decently done, but I was amazed at all of the gaps in development in the book. I then went on to run Dragon Heist and Mad Mage, and played through Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden, and in each of them whether as player or DM, I found these huge gaps in development, in action, giant plot holes, etc.

I think it's essential to do more than just skim through the whole book. I especially found for Mad Mage that the 'traditional' style of map key and room contents, while indeed hearkening back to the old style of play like they sort of intended with the campaign, it doesn't help the DM. Not at all.

I realized then that the thing in common with all of the adventures I've seen or run is that the books simply don't give enough of the right kind of information. Not nearly enough information on who the major "players on the board" and "political situations" are. Once I started skipping over the map keys for who's where, etc. and writing up dossiers on the major NPC movers and shakers, then things began to get to a point where they came alive for me and the party much more.

And unfortunately, if you don't do a cursory read-through of the whole text up front, you can't figure out who's who, what's where, and what the major steps are in solving the campaign. If you as the DM can't sketch out a quick outline of the overall plot and who the major players are... before the PCs step onto the board... then you should prep more before you try to run the game.

Once you have a sense of who's who and what's where overall, then you can focus only on the next session. Then you can use your prep time wisely to take a quick peek at "Who are the major players ==in this session coming up==, and do I know how they feel about everyone else? If not, spend some time making up your mind how they relate to one another.

For example, in Mad Mage, the different relatives within the Drow House in the upper levels that the party runs into... I made certain to know which sisters liked each other more, who was just pretending, etc. When my party decided to try and talk their way out of certain things instead of just murder-hobo through things, I was able to play consistently from session to session. As they ran into the same Drow House members and additional family members downstairs a couple of levels, they weren't just running into NPCs standing in places on the map. They were running into the consequences of how they had interacted with the other family members of the Great House. In fact, they were seen as meddlers who the matriarch had already determined to take off the board as quickly and with as little risk to herself as possible. So they got blindsided by the consequences of their actions, and they really, really, really grew to hate the Drow.

But if you don't kind of read through everything and look for the gaps in plot and explanation, and attack things sideways, then having a ginormous map key and monster stat block isn't going to make your game much fun.

[sleepinggiant]

Could not disagree more on #1. Reading the whole things tells you what's going on and how things are connected from chapter to chapter and will help you know where information is located so you can look it up later. PLus you can wing it if they get past (or skip) your prepared stuff. Much better than ending the session. This also allows you to drop information and allow for other than linear progression. Don't ignore random encounters, make them impactful. Plan them out ahead of time and make them memorable rather than throw-away. Ctrl+F is useful outside of D&D Beyond as well (it's a windows shortcut for find, not specific to D&D Beyond). It also works on Macs (Command+F). Most applications support this shortcut. When using a prepared adventure, I have found it hard to connect the dots or I find the connections illogical. Searching the internet and D&D forums for what other DMs did is very useful.

[skillmatey]

I don't read the whole book for prepping purposes, but I do like to read the book more as a story and understand the wide scope of things. To make it more convenient I utilize the text to talk options and allow the book to be read to me during my commute. I don't intend on remembering everything and when I focus on prepping it's on the upcoming session only. But this is something I do because I enjoy reading the books like a story and it gives me an idea whether or not I want to run the campaign. Great video thanks for the information!

[MegaVolz]

This was super helpful. I've picked up Curse of Strahd and was planning on reading the whole book before I DM for my kids. Love your videos!

[jjmeyer]

While running LMoP in my first ever campaign, the standout session was one I put together involving rescuing a Hill Giant mother from the orc camp with the aid of her 6ft toddler. It was heart wrenching and my 2 player party loved having a unique sidekick.

[Lionrhod]

Can't agree more on deleting some of the random encounters! Playing Icewind Dale right now as a PC - I read about half the book before one of our DMs decided to run it for us, and that was ages ago, so I'm not sure what encounters were from the book and which he added or modified, but man, we were forever running into blizzards and (what seemed) random encounters to the point where it became annoying to travel between towns. They were cool at first, but after a while...

[romainpascaud]

Curse of Strahd 5E was the first module I had my players fully play through. Reading the room, I ran it with much less dread than the book asks for, and made Barovia looks brighter with every victory for the players. They got so engaged in it that we still talk about some 5 years later. Make the modules right for your players. The books are only guidelines.

[anionhero]

One of my favorite modules was from 3rd edition. I forget the name of the adventure, but it took place deep in the heart of Orc territory. The module stated the players had to allow themselves to be polymorphed into orcs in order to infiltrate the orc territory and achieve the objective. I can't remember what the objective was though because my players never finished the module. They hated having to play as Orcs and hated that one of the dangers of the module was the fact that if you spend too long polymorphed into an orc, you run the risk of losing your identity and becoming an actual orc in mindset as well. I loved orcs as villains back then. My players couldn't stand it though and quickly asked to scrap the whole thing and start a different campaign. Still, I would have loved to play that module through. Oh well. Gotta give the players what they want.

[NebulaOcton]

I have been DMing for only a few years and mostly with the same group. I am happy to know that naturally I hit about half of these tips. Thanks for your videos and especially your series on Roll20

[VaughnRipley]

It was a breath of fresh air (and seems to go against conventional wisdom) to hear you say say, "Don't read the whole thing first." LOVE IT! Thank you so much for making me feel ok with myself for never reading it all up front. I much prefer to kind of learn the story/adventure (albeit a hair ahead of them) along with my players! Plus, I simply don't ever have the time and like you say, wouldn't retain the info anyway.... Keep up the most excellent work!

[crimsonbandito]

I started a Ghosts of Saltmarsh for a bunch of new players and they are fixated on one of those minor baddies that got away and now I’m working on promoting him to a mid level boss to reappear and throwing in a few “random” encounters for hinting at his whereabouts

[xaltedone_]

Yeah, I read the whole book. Let’s me know where the game goes. Let’s me know roughly how to handle divinations and NPC motivation.

Also, it was butter spread over to much toast.

[Jescribano]

I'd add: Always check the subreddit about the campaign! The community is always revising encounters, commenting their homebrews, some art, maps... Specially the most popular ones like COS

[theenoogie]

Agreed on all fronts except the not reading the whole adventure. It may be true of linear adventures but as with Waterdeep Dragon Heist, you might be better off reading it a couple times as it is both dense in details and lacking severely in information. This duality of depth means the DM has to fill in a ton of gaps in every situation so knowing the whole situation will help with plugging holes on the fly without poking new holes in the ship.

[russelljackson]

I'm going to disagree and say that I really liked modules. For one thing, they weren't these $50 bound books and had nice features like fold-out maps and illustrations. They were easy to fit into any setting and instead of being a campaign, were easily inserted into one.