There’s one mistake I’ve made over and over as a DM, and every time, it has sucked the life out of my campaigns. The worst part? I didn’t even realize I was doing it. But fixing it? That took just one simple change. Today, I’m sharing that tip with you—along with 12 others—to make sure your early campaign isn’t just fun but keeps your players hooked all the way to the endgame.
Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, the show that helps you craft unforgettable D&D sessions. I’m Justin Lewis, and for over three years, my cohosts and I have explored every dungeon master challenge under the sun. Today, we’re tackling a crucial question: How do you make your campaign’s opening strong enough to keep players coming back for more? Whether you’re a new DM or a veteran, these 13 tips will help you sidestep common pitfalls and build a campaign that players can’t wait to continue.
The first few sessions of your campaign determine whether your players stay invested—or quietly start looking for another game. If you get this wrong, you might find yourself scrambling to keep their attention, dealing with last-minute cancellations, or, worst of all, facing a total campaign collapse. But if you get it right? Your players will be hooked, excited, and fully immersed in your world. Let’s make sure that happens.
Starting their first campaign is exciting yet nerve-racking for many people. You want to make sure you’ve gotten it all right! Most often, though, we feel we are falling short of where we want to be. That’s all right, though. Almost nothing is more instructive than doing things wrong and learning from them.
Your campaign’s early stages can be a pivotal period for your party and yourself as a DM. Everyone is still learning how to play together and the early stages of any campaign are when it is most fragile. It’s not that difficult to stop playing because the emotional investment hasn’t yet been made.
So to help you safeguard your early campaign and help you overcome the fragility, here is a simple list of Do’s and Don’ts for your early campaign.
And there’s one tip near the end of this list that completely transformed my campaigns. It’s something I overlooked for years, but once I figured it out, my players became way more engaged. I’ll share that one toward the end—so stick with me.
Before I get deeper into this particular rabbit hole, let me just say that every DM has their own way of doing things—these are just my lessons. Take what works for you and leave the rest.
Ok here are my do’s and don’ts for the Early Campaign.
Because the early campaign is so fragile, one way to strengthen it is by planning out your story arcs. That’s why you should apply the CASE method. For those of you that don’t know that that is, check out episode 157, but in brief, the CASE method stands for Campaign, Story Arc, Session, Encounter.
You use the case method to plan each portion of a campaign by building that portion with its smaller constituent parts, encounters build sessions, sessions build story arcs and story arcs build campaigns.
Have you ever felt lost 2 sessions into your campaign? That’s why the CASE Method exists.
In this case, that means that you storyboard and timeline the general story arcs you think are going to happen. You want to do this so that at the very minimum, you have a general idea of the flow of the campaign.
Your Story Arc plan is not going to be what happens. Player choice and the natural flow of the game is going to dictate which story arcs get played and which simply fade into irrelevance.
It’s important to have a general idea of the direction of the campaign so that you can tease certain things that are coming down the pipe (more on that when we get to number 13).
For example in one of my professional DMing groups, the story revolves around the party being essentially stuck in the Underdark. I’ve given the party a magical item that transports them to the surface, but only for 24 hours, and then returns them to the Underdark. While at the surface, I’ve prepared some minor story arcs to explore each player’s back story. Planning these out can help me pace what is happening on the surface compared to what is happening in the Underdark.
Even though you should have a general idea of what is going to happen, you should only ever be 2 to 3 sessions. When I say prepared, I mean prepared. As I’ve already mentioned you should always have a general idea of where the story is going to go (though you should also remember not to “Should” all over yourself), but don’t worry about having the nuts and bolts of 5 sessions down the line prepared. Things will change so much by then that there is no possible way you’ll be able to predict what your players will want to do and therefore what will be salient to your session planning.
One great example is my current personal campaign. The party had done a long trip through the Astral Sea and had finally returned home to Waterdeep. There they discovered a lot (honestly far too many) plot lines that were intersecting and all seemed either too urgent or not urgent enough. The party essentially decided to skip a year of gameplay, fast-forwarding through a lot of story arcs that I had been working on. I was ok with this, but a portion of the work had to be chucked out because we simply didn’t have the time to do it. So plan general notes, but don’t overplan, because the second you do, your party will skip what you got. It always happens.
One big mistake I made as a novice DM was not allowing for room for players to create story arcs or sessions that are added to my game. I’m not saying that the player becomes the DM though that is certainly an option. What I mean is any particular player makes decisions left and right. Some of those decisions can blossom into full adventure side-quests comprising sessions or full story arcs. If your story is too rigid and prevents that from happening, your players won’t feel as much ownership of the story. This will limit their emotional involvement and therefore their engagement and their fun. When they can drive sessions and story arcs, but there are still sessions and story arcs where the world drives the conflict, the players will be engaged and immersed in the world because it will feel real and responsive.
Another example of this comes from my campaign. One of the party members wanted to go on a quest to find some long-lost friends. This arc eventually took the party through the Astral Sea. They ended up being slaves for a time and it was a fun and interesting story arc that only existed because the player’s character had the desire to go save his friends. I wasn’t planning it, but that player helped add something new and unique to the story. Thank goodness he did.
Sell the sizzle, not the steak. You gotta have the steak, but you can’t forget the sizzle either. In this metaphor, you need the substance of your game to be good, the steak. But it’s the sizzle that your players remember. It’s the sizzle where you take the game to the next level.
The world’s greatest dungeon masters have learned how to derive their main source of enjoyment from seeing their players enjoy the game. Therefore, the greatest DMs are always looking for ways to make the game more fun and memorable for their players, hence the sizzle!
A great example of this comes from our Cayden Ottley, who’s been on this show quite a bit. Last summer, Cayden ran our group through a small campaign of his own design. The campaign had us going through a very large and whimsical forest.
Cayden is a skilled artist and he paints really good miniatures. Our jaws literally dropped when he placed a massive snail on the table—its shell wasn’t just a shell; it was an intricately painted house, with tiny glowing windows and moss creeping up the sides. Suddenly, we weren’t just playing D&D; we were there, in the world.
Now obviously Cayden has a 3d Printer and can print some cool things, but it was the care and detail he put into the painting of the minis that made our jaws drop. It sizzled.
At the start of today’s episode, I mentioned that there’s a mistake I constantly make and it has hurt me time and time again. This is that mistake. I fail to make my sessions exciting and I fail to bring the sizzle. Because of this, I’ve often wondered how fun and engaging my sessions are. So here’s my challenge for you: What’s one thing you can do this week to add more sizzle to your game? A prop, a sound effect, a player-driven story arc? Try it out, and let me know how it goes. Message me on Instagram or drop a comment on our latest post—I’d love to hear your ideas!
Within the early campaign, it’s a great time to settle on a general theme for your overall campaign and to start trickling out signs of that theme. Foreshadowing has to come before whatever happens next, so in the early campaign that’s the best time to make that happen.
For new people, a campaign theme is a general idea or pattern of messages that seems to resonate with the campaign. For example, in your campaign you may have the theme of friendship and what that is. Then from your theme, you “ask” interesting questions about your theme in the form of putting the characters in situations where you don’t know what they would do.
An example of questions you could ask about the friendship theme is having one of the best friends of one of the characters show up as one of the party’s enemies. Throughout the campaign, you could have this frenemy do things to antagonize the party, but also do things to help their individual friend. The question would be, are the frenemy and the character who knows them still friends? When did they stop being friends if they did?
Pick a theme idea, and then start to let that seep into the very essence of the game.
One of my biggest critiques of Disney’s batch of Star Wars movies and shows is that often, Disney tries to shove their message down your throat, rather than trusting the audience to be intelligent enough to read between the lines and discover whatever message they are trying to sell you. Frankly, I’m a bit against most things Disney has done in the last couple of decades, but that’s a whole different podcast.
With your games, you should avoid the Disney treatment. Don’t force the theme down the throats of your players. Don’t make it obvious, especially in the early campaign, and don’t make it so every session has to do with the theme. It should be sprinkled about until large theme elements come up, for example, the BBEG might be heavily connected to the theme. That means when you foreshadow the BBEG it’s likely that you may need to also sprinkle theme elements about.
Often though, theme elements will come in the form of scenarios or questions that you essentially pose to the party and see how they react. But overall, let the theme color the story and not get in the way of it. If the party is having a hard time connecting to the story because the Theme is in the way, then just get rid of it. The theme should somewhat feel like the pacing of the story. The closer to the climax the more theme elements you can drizzle out. This is a nice tactic because when things get serious and the stakes are high, players can also look around and see a lot of familiar threads and then they’ll make a lot of connections to earlier parts of the game.
In your early campaign, find out what motivates each player and what gives the highest level of satisfaction and enjoyment from D&D. You do this by testing out different scenarios and observing the reactions of each player to each scenario.
Every player plays for different reasons and every player enjoys D&D for different reasons. I’ve seen this a little more lately since I started Dungeon Mastering professionally for clients. For example, in one of my groups, there is a player who is very much motivated by loot-crafting items and acquiring stuff. Because of that, I’ve tried to help him find cool ways to use a particular crafting ability that comes with his character. I’ve tried to open up the crafting so that he can craft a lot more and craft cooler stuff. Moving forward, I think I need to sprinkle in interesting and useful random magical components, or materials that could be used in crafting so that he can then go crazy trying to think up ways to use it.
Other players in that same group, however, are not so loot-focused, though they very much do like loot. For these players, I add in puzzles or combat or whatever else it is they are interested in.
You also need to figure out which of your players care more about hanging out with friends than they do about the story. And as a pro tip, the motivations of players can change, even from session to session. Sometimes the group gets together after a hard week in the real world and it takes a bit longer to get the game started and a bit longer to get things going seriously.
News flash!
That’s because that week the group is motivated by hanging out with their friends, so you don’t need to make things as interesting or serious. Instead, be relaxed and roll with the punches, possibly adding in some funny and low-stakes encounters for the party just to blow off some steam.
Additionally, find out what motivates each character. Matt Coleville of MCDM says that you need to chase your characters up a tree to get them engaged. You can’t chase them up a tree unless you know what they care about. Find out what the character cares about and twist it to your aims.
It can be a challenge for new DMs to know when and how to dole out loot, especially magic items. In the early campaign, do not give out too many magical items. This is for 2 reasons.
First, when figuring out encounter difficulty, the Challenge Rating of monsters is pitted against the average Party Level, at least how the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide has you do it. This method does not consider the magical items within the group very well. Adding magical items throws a whole new variable into the system that can be hard to deal with.
Second, the party may just want to sell the magical items because often magical items can be worth thousands of gold pieces. This can very quickly offset the economy of your adventuring party which can result in the acquisition of other, more powerful items, or the creation of lucrative situations that could quickly unbalance the game. If this happens you can just make things harder, but often the solution to giving the party so many toys up front is to take away the toys or to devalue them by making everything else harder. Often this solution is not so fun. Better to trickle out the sprinkles a little at a time.
Early on in any campaign, make sure to do homebrew adversaries often. Even if you are a very experienced DM, doing the practice of making a baddie that is correctly balanced to the skill level of the party is a great exercise. In the later campaign, you may probably want or need to homebrew a baddie because of player choice and improvised situations. You want to be able to already have the skills necessary to do homebrew them without a lot of stress. Hence the early campaign practice.
For example, if you have a group that is between levels 1 and 5, it’s easy to make a monster that balanced, well at least easier than making a monster balanced for a party between levels 15 and 20. The monster will have one or two abilities and that’s it. Not so many variables.
In one of my paid campaigns, the party is fighting some Goliath Gnoll Demon Hybrids. Homebrewing those was a lot easier than homebrewing the BBEG in my campaign where the party is level 16.
Do not flesh out the entire world while still in the early campaign. This goes for homebrew campaigns as well as prewritten modules. Worldbuild just enough to make problems and enough to make those problems interesting.
A great example of this is the old Dreamworks movie Robots. I love that movie. I used to have to watch that movie in Spanish for some Spanish homework. I was watching Robots the other day and I noticed one particular scene. It’s the scene where Madame Gasket climbs up the ventilation shaft to talk to Ratchet who is getting a back massage. If you look around that room he’s in during that, there’s nothing there. They are literally in a no-name room with nothing interesting going on around them. That’s because the storytellers at Dreamworks know that you match the details of the world to the problems of the story you’re telling.
Early on in your campaign, you will have written something down for your session, or you’ll be playing off of the pre-written module. Then a player will want to do something not in the “script” or even better, you’ll have a better idea of something to add to the game. Do it.
This is officially your permission to just go with it. Follow that instinct you have and go off script. It’s especially important to follow these feelings to go off script in the early campaign because 1) it sets the tone for the rest of the campaign, and 2) it allows you to follow the added story elements for longer (which will result in a much more fun campaign).
A great example of this comes from one of my paid campaigns. The party is in the Underdark and I had set up for them to find this temple. I’m running Out of the Abyss so this is the Temple of Ooze I’m talking about. In one of the central chambers, I had decided to add an Oracle to give the party the “Quest” to sort of speed things up for the party, giving them some crucial information.
While roleplaying this part, I feel like the Oracle felt sad for the party. So in a moment of Inspiration, I had the Oracle give the party a boon; Magical manacles that could transport the party to the surface, to a place where they’ve been before, for 24 hours, and then at the end of the 24 hours, the manacles would bring the party back to the Underdark to a place they know.
I loved this idea because it really follows one of the major themes I’m trying to get across and it also facilitates fast travel, which in this campaign we’ve done away with the tedious day-by-day travel, so it just makes sense overall.
Doing stuff like this is crucial in the early game because it will set the game up later to be fully driven by table interactions.
Early on in the campaign, you should sprinkle in foreshadowing elements. Foreshadowing, for those of you who don’t know, is where you drop elements that connect to later events. In Star Wars Episode 1, when Yoda says, “Much fear I sense in you” about Anakin, that’s an example of foreshadowing. It’s important to sprinkle in these foreshadowing elements early in the game, even in a somewhat vague form because it helps make the entire story feel cohesive. You do need to be careful though not to foreshadow too much. It can’t be too obvious nor can it be too ambiguous.
A simple example of Foreshadowing is found in Lord of the Rings when Frodo gets his sword and is told that the sword will blow blue whenever there are Orcs around. You’re just waiting for the moment when the party is somewhere and there’s tension and then Frodo notices the sword is glowing blue, which indeed does happen in the Mines of Moria.
While this example isn’t fully tied to the theme of the story, it’s still a great example. Drop connects to future events in the form of foreshadowing.
This is the tip that has really changed how I DM. When you’re able to plant things early in the game that connects to later events, the party feels like the entire thing is cohesive and tied together. Here’s the fun part: you can drop a lot of foreshadowed elements without having to make them all pay off. Oversaturate your Foreshadow elements (with variation) and then later on you can pick and choose which elements get fulfilled. It does take some subtlety but luckily, you don’t have to be as completely planned and put-together as your players will think you are.
A lot of foreshadowing will involve the BBEG and possible appearances or mentions. This is all fine and dandy if you are certain of the BBEG and the part they will play. Otherwise don’t get too specific with the foreshadowing or the mentioning of the BBEG early on in the campaign because you honestly don’t know what the BBEG will be for the party. They may want to do something completely different, or in my case, you could come up with a more interesting BBEG.
In my case, I was running my group through the Princes of the Apocalypse written module from Wizards of the Coast. I was inexperienced and the party leveled up too fast so that the Elemental cults were no longer a challenge. At the same time, I had tossed in a cursed magic item that I knew my wife wouldn’t resist. I began having her track how many things she killed with that magic item and at a certain point, the item was able to speak to her more and more. This sentient magic item morphed into the big bad, which has been way more interesting for us. So be careful with how much you mention the BBEG.
Overall, there are a lot of Dos and Don’ts. The biggest is that if these don’t work for you Don’t listen to them.
The early campaign can be quite instructive, especially if you get to the late campaign. The important thing is to keep going and to learn from what works and what doesn’t.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode. We want to hear from you – what’s the biggest mistake you made in your first campaign? Drop me a message on Instagram or in our Discord Server, and I might feature your story in a future episode.
As always, we are grateful to you for your support and the fact that you subscribe to us. We know that a lot of things have changed in the past couple of years. Honestly, with stuff like this, you try things and sometimes you need to pivot. If you’ve stuck with us the whole time, we thank you and wish you the very best. We’ll be back next week with another hand-crafted episode just for you, but until then, let’s go ahead and roll the initiative.
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