3 Roles of a Dungeon Master
(Some of these articles become scripts for YouTube videos, others start life as transcriptions. You can view this one here)
You can be a Dungeon Master and run your own game of Dungeons and Dragons. Even if you have never done it before, even if you have never even played before. If you want to get into D&D but don't have a game you can join, you can start your own and lead your friends in an incredible experience. If you've been playing for awhile and are thinking about taking your first foray into running the game, maybe you want to see the view from behind the DM screen or you have an idea for an adventure, awesome, you've got this. But I promise, you don't need any experience to get started. The first time I ever played Dungeons and Dragons I was the Dungeon Master. You can do it too.
If you think you want to but it sounds big and scary this might address some of your concerns, because it is absolutely worth doing even if you're afraid.
This is the start of a series aimed at getting you to begin your Dungeon Master journey. Being a DM is more work than being a player, but what they don't tell you that work can be a lot of fun. A Dungeon Master is playing way more DnD than their players, and are seeing way more aspects of the story and the game. On deck I'm going to help you do that work and prepare an adventure. I'm going to walk you through the Lost Mines of Phandelver, maybe the most popular adventure of all time at this point, and an excellent place to start. Once that is complete, I am going to show you how I am using that adventure from the Starter Set and combining it with a few other things to create a massive, dynamic, open world sandbox for my own personal home game. I'm very excited about about all that: But first, let's talk about the three main roles of a Dungeon Master.
The Dungeon Master can often be the game recruiter, the schedule coordinator, the party host, even the mediator sometimes... we wear a lot of hats. I'm going to tell you don't be afraid to ask for help and delegate, but also don't be surprised when a lot of it lands on you anyway because you are occupying a leadership role, and oftentimes you simply want it more. Still, it is OK to ask for help from the rest of the table, especially with real world concerns. But during the game the Dungeon Master is responsible for fulfilling three main roles: We are the Referee, the Narrator, and the World.
The Referee
As referee the The Dungeon Master is the interpreter of the rules. When the player decides that their character does a thing, the DM decides if there is a check required, what modifiers get added to the roll, and how difficult the thing is to accomplish. Then they call it: success or failure. Most of the time, that's it. As player characters and enemies gain more abilities things can get a little more complex, but good news: you get to level up as a Dungeon Master as the game progresses just like everyone else. You don't need to figure out how two sixth level spells might interact right now if you start the party at level 1. And you don't need to know the finer points of smite or sneak attack if you don't have a paladin or a rogue in the party. But you definitely want a solid grasp of the general rules to get started. My DND101 series is a great place to start. I am also going to include a link to the Starter Set rule book, which is by far the simplest at 32 pages. Here’s the Essentials Kit rules as well, that's twice as long since that covers the basics of character creation. The last couple pages also gives you simple sidekick rules which will allow you to run for 1 or 2 players. For overachievers here are the basic rules as well, which are longer and have a lot more but I suggest keeping it simple to start.
Do your best to learn everything, but keep in mind: Nobody knows all the rules. People who have been playing the game for decades don't know all the rules. No one expects you to know everything, especially as you are just starting out. “Rulings not Rules” is a catchy phrase that will take you a long way in running a fun game. There are a lot of rules in D&D and there are plenty of scenarios and edge cases where it isn't clear exactly how those rules are supposed to be applied, so it ok for the DM to use their best judgment, make a call, and keep things moving. The best thing you can do when the game is getting bogged down is to make a ruling and continue playing. You can always say something like “this is how we're going to do it for now, we'll figure out the official rule later and do it that way next session.” You may even find that you like your interpretation better than the RAW (Rules as Written) version, that's how a lot of homebrew gets started.
Keep in mind, it is also OK to look stuff up sometimes. If it is something that is going to come up a lot, like a player character ability for instance, it is worth taking an extra minute to figure it out at the table. Even Matt Mercer will stop and look stuff up sometimes. You can do it at home, it's alright. Again, you don't have to know everything. Also the DM doesn't have to be the only one looking stuff up either, the players should especially be invested in knowing how their character works. It can be a conversation at the table, but ultimately the Dungeon Master is the referee who makes the final decision. Do your best to be fair and consistent, and if you get it wrong don't be afraid to fix it next time.
The Narrator
There's some overlap of course but if being the referee is the science side of being a DM, then the art side is fulfilling the role of the Narrator. Before the players can do anything the Dungeon Master describes what is in front of them. The player's decide how to interact with the environment, the DM puts on their referee hat to determine the game mechanics, and then back to narrator as they describe the results. My best advice to being a good narrator is to read a lot. It will help your vocabulary and give you plenty of inspiration. Also movies, shows, video games, any media that is remotely close to fantasy, action, adventure, is good, but almost anything at all will help. There's definitely an idea on my list for recommended reading and viewing, and the DMG has a long list in the back, but I'd love to hear recommendations down in the comments. Don't be afraid of lifting tropes and clichés, they work and they are instantly recognizable so your players will easily understand. Originality is all well and good but you can definitely overdo it and lose people.
Another easy way to improve your narration is to engage the senses. We often default to the visual but we have five senses and should use all of them in our descriptions. I try not to overdo it, but sometimes I'll even include a sixth sense as well. You don't want to tell your players how their character reacts to something, that is their domain, but I will absolutely tell them when they get a feeling, catch a vibe from a location because that's sensory input. That rubs against another classic: the old show don't tell. Honestly most advice for writers serves Dungeon Masters. But perhaps the most important thing I'm going to tell you about being the Narrator: It is vitally important that you understand that being a Dungeon Master is not writing a story. It is going to feel very much like it is, and many a DM, new or not, has fallen into that trap. But the story happens at the table, not in prep.
When you write a story you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. That applies to adventure design too, even campaigns, but those are not stories. Listen, the Dungeon Master provides the beginning. An adventure is really just a series of beginnings. The middle, the story itself really, is what happens when we play the game. The players are going to do things you never could have anticipated, they are going to think of crazy and cool ways to solve problems, they are going to pull the story in ways you did not expect. And that is what D&D is all about. It’s what makes it fun, for the players and for the Dungeon Maser. Lean into it. This is what makes it special, and unlike any other game.
“Being a Dungeon Master is Not Writing a Story”
If you know the middle, if you decide there is one way for the players to do a thing, you have taken away their agency and they are going to feel railroaded. The same goes for endings. You can know the next new beginning that happens when they walk into the next room or whatever, but how any given encounter ends should be up to the player's decisions and the dice. If you know how it ends it's no longer a game. Sure, you might know the most likely outcomes to be better prepared for them, but don't become stuck to one particular ending. We do not figure out how an encounter ends during our prep, we watch how it plays out at the table. The Dungeon Master interprets the outcome using the rules and dice rolls as the Referee, and then they describe that outcome as the Narrator.
It helps to remind yourself that the player characters are the protagonists of the story. They are the heroes and what they do matters. What they do in the middle determines the end, encounter by encounter, adventure by adventure. One of the best approaches to being a Dungeon Master is to create scenarios that give the PCs chances to make decisions and be awesome. And the main way that we do that is by being the World.
The World
Everyone else at the table is controlling a single character, but the Dungeon Master is controlling the world. Every non-player character, every monstrous bad guy, the physical layout of the environment, even the weather is in the Dungeon Master's hands. The players get to be the heroes but the DM is the World. I believe one of the primary goals of a good DM is to provide a consistent and believable world. However fantastical and magical things might be, a good DM gives the players a world they can lose themselves in. It is a wonderful gift to give your friends.
Having a command of the rules and being descriptive go a long way, but the best advice I can give to new Dungeon Masters on how to present a believable world comes down to two things: Play the monsters and NPCs as if they were real, and have the world respond to the players actions.
A huge part of being a DM is running the monsters, so spend time in prep learning what they can do and thinking about how they might act based on what they want. A beast is going to have different goals and tendencies than a demon, an orc is going to behave differently than a dragon. The bad guys don't want to stand around and get killed by some band of adventurers, they want to win, they want to live. That does not mean the Dungeon Master is playing against the players. It is definitely going to feel that way sometimes, especially to new players, so it is good to get out in front of that and remind everyone at the table that the Dungeon Master is not the antagonist. The DM wants to challenge the PCs, certainly, but we want the PCs to survive so that the players can experience the other cool stuff we spent all that time preparing. The Dungeon Master does not want to kill the PCs, but the monsters do. You can play a little sub-optimally, pull punches and fudge rolls to a degree, but if the players feel like the monsters are not playing to win it sucks all the tension and a lot of the fun out of the game. And it takes away from the believably of the world.
The stakes are usually not as high when you are running an NPC, but the same thing applies. The other characters in your world are not walking in prescribed circles with a few canned responses on a dialogue tree. The more you can do to make them feel real, the more your world will feel real. It does not take much, you don't need an elaborate backstory or to be a voice actor. Just a descriptive detail, maybe a mannerism, and some sort of motivation; a secret, a goal, even if it's simple like “run this shop to make a profit and feed my family.”
The other part is a little more advanced but doesn't come up until the campaign has been going for a bit so you should be ready to pull it off when the time comes: Have the world respond to the PCs actions. Again, the Dungeon Master's character is the world and acting is reacting. If you want to make the world feel real and have the players feel important, have the world react to them. This is the good stuff for me. When I say the Dungeon Master gets to play more D&D outside of the session this is a big part of what I'm talking about. What is the world doing because of what the players did? If the party kills a bunch of bandits on the road, maybe word gets out and they gain a reputation. It could be that the mayor of the nearby town gives them a reward, or has a new quest for them, or wants to deputize them, with whatever benefits and responsibilities that entails. Maybe the Bandit King hears about them and now the next time the party is on the road there are bigger, badder bandits out there looking for them. Maybe the next time they come back to this town it has grown because trade is prospering with travel made safer, and now there are some cool magic items up for sale where there used to be only basic gear. A dynamic responsive world is going to feel real and show the players what their characters do actually matters.
Yes, there is a lot of overlap in these three roles and you can excel at all of them. You might be naturally better at some aspects and need to try harder at others, but you can get the rules down, narrate the story, and create a living world. You can bring a lot of joy to your players, make some memories and have a great time in the process. You can be a great Dungeon Master! The Starter Set is a great way to begin your D&D career and it's super affordable. If you pick it up through my affiliate link it helps me out and costs you nothing extra. In the next posts I am going to help you run the adventure in here, piece by piece. Join me in Phandalin, where we're going to have a lot of fun.
