Perfecting Your Craft – Introduction
I am going to go on record and say this now. Being a Dungeon Master is hard work.
Your players will read their character sheet between sessions. They may even look to the Players Handbook to clarify their understanding of the certain rules but, more often than not, they will turn up to the session not having done anything since you last played together.
You, on the other hand, will most likely have done a lot more.
You’ll also have read their character sheets. You’ll have read through your notes. You may even type them up or, heaven forbid, blog them. You’ll have a list of things each week that you need to either canonise into your game world or fix in a future session. As I said in a recent tweet;
I’ve been DMing now for 8 sessions. I have come to realise this, the vast majority of preparation is working out how to fix all the things you screwed up last week.
— Accidental DM (@accidental_dm) August 3, 2020
In addition, you’ll probably have been reading the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Monster Manual and more. You’ll have been on Reddit, or other websites and, most importantly, you’ll have been either reading through a pre-written module or writing your own content.
Do not think for one moment this is easy.
Don’t be disheartened though. It’s one of the most rewarding social experiences you can have. OK look….it’s definitely top 20.
You’ll get the most out of this experience the more you put into it. In the Perfecting Your Craft series, I want to delve into some of the things you can do to become the best Dungeon Master you can be.
In the first in the series, which you can find here, let’s focus on the reading aspect of your craft.