How I made running D&D fun again

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Dungeon Masters: Know the Beginning, Not the End

Knowing the beginning, not the end, is a quick DMing trick that can get your sessions up and running while keeping your players engaged. Are there other ways to run a session? Sure. But this method will help if you don’t have time to prep but still want to play D&D. Let me set it up for you.

There’s no time for a Session Zero because scheduling is a nightmare, and we all have jobs and families. So what you’re going to do is tell your players to make characters on their own time. Give them guidelines if you wish: Level one, no Goliaths. Or level five, no multiclassing. Or all your characters have to know each other. Or the only class allowed is Bards. Whatever suits your fancy.

When you gather for the first session—hang with me now—you’re going to railroad the heck out of it for the first 10 to 20 minutes. You’re going to tell the players where their characters are, what they’re doing, and then you’re going to throw combat at them.

This cuts out tons of wasted time and kicks things off with a bang.

How I made running D&D fun again

Now, the dungeon master doesn’t have to know what comes after the combat because this is where we open things up and player agency comes into play. Most likely, players will want to search the monsters they just killed. Using random tables to place items on the bodies can lead to campaign seeds: a map to a legendary library, a sealed letter addressed to the queen, and so on.

Of course, there will probably be at least a couple of players who will want to search for their character’s long-lost sister or start their mercantile empire. Roll with it. A ring found in the gnoll’s belongings seems to bear a resemblance to the long-lost sister’s ring. The crate in the ogre’s lair is marked with the emblem of a famed merchant house.

These are all clues for active players to seize on, and then we as DMs react to them. We know the beginning, but not the end. Because who wants to know the end before anything happens? Who wants to know the end of the movie before you see it? Who wants to know who the murderer is before you read a mystery novel? No one.

I got bored knowing the end of sessions and campaigns, so I don’t anymore. Let the players decide where the story goes, and we can interject NPCs, locations, situations, and twists as needed.

I’ll give you a few concrete examples of how to set these up, as if talking to players:

Example One: Your characters just completed a job for the miller who helps keep the village safe. You each get three gold pieces. You’re relaxing in the inn and enjoying a meal when flaming debris crashes through a window, followed by four goblins. Roll initiative.

Example Two: A wizard hired you to get several leaves of a plant that only grows on the rim of a volcano. As you make the arduous climb up the side of the volcano, you reach a resting spot. While resting, a huge boulder rolls out of the way, revealing an angry stone giant. Roll initiative.

Example Three: While you’re walking in the forest traveling from one town to another, six bandits appear and demand your gold. Roll initiative.

As you can see, each of these examples kicks off play instantly and doesn’t require hours of prep. All you need is something to draw vague battle positions on, like scrap paper or a small whiteboard, plus a few different monster or NPC stat blocks.

Once your players start asking questions, you can fill in the blanks with your imagination. Say one of the players in Example Two asks about the wizard—only when the question is asked should you think of something to say about the wizard. Don’t think about what the wizard is like before the question, because what if the players don’t ask and do something completely different? Don’t waste time creating what the players don’t need.

Let Story Emerge in D&D

Story hooks based on clues and player questions that will emerge in the aftermath of the encounter will fill out the rest of the session. Then start making stuff up—that’s what DMs do. If session two never comes, you still had fun and didn’t waste days or weeks planning a huge campaign that didn’t happen.

Hopefully, this gives you a sense of how to just jump into a session without tons of planning. If you liked this video, please like and subscribe. I create dungeon master resources to help DMs have more fun and cut down prep. You can find the links in the description below. Thank you, and keep gaming!


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