Whether it’s the first session of your campaign or the first session of your DMing career, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the big things you want to do and miss the little things that start your game off on the right foot.
In our 39 Tips for New DMs episode, I talked about 6 steps for prepping your first session. These are things I think about when we’re heading into the first session of any new campaign, too. Follow them, and you’ll have a nice, tight opening that brings the party together to kick some butt.
1. How Does the Party Meet?
Too many campaigns start with the characters awkwardly circling each other in a bar fumbling for a reason to go risk their lives with a bunch of strangers. Then the bard disappears to seduce an NPC and the rogue pickpockets a party member they haven’t met yet …
I’m all for letting the party work out their own issues, but in the first game, you can make it easier.
There’s nothing wrong with meeting up in a bar, but give them a reason to be there. I usually start the part off with a job. Someone’s hired them go do a thing. Sometimes, one of the PCs is the one doing the hiring. In Dave’s Curse of Strahd game, the character Little One came into the game with a vision and sent letters to the PCs to gather them to go check it out (it turned out to be The Death House, we still haven’t forgiven her).
Maybe they all have a grudge against an NPC, or goblins have been raiding the village and they came together to put a stop to it? The point is, give the party a reason to come together and get to know each other that makes sense with their character goals and back story. It’s your first win.
2. What Enemies Do You Want to Play With?
As characters level up, they get new powers to play with. As the DM, you get new monsters and villains!
The bad guys are always going to be your toys in this game. You have stories to tell, yeah, yeah … Work them in there. But the monsters and villains are really what you’re playing with. 90% of what players get when they level up are fun powers for beating bad guys. You play those bad guys, and they’re always going to be the main way you interact with those characters. This is a good place to start sketching out any adventure.
So, who’s gonna be fun for you to play with in the first adventure? Goblins? Orcs? Flumphs? Which NPCs do you want them to meet? Who will you need to do voices for?
Pick a handful of these elements that you’re going to play with and make sure you know how they work. Prep their stories and get to know their immunities, resistance, and key powers. Make sure you’re comfortable using them heading into the first game.
Showing that you know what you’re playing with in the first session will help establish trust and authority as the DM.
3. Sketch Out Your Adventure Flow
Think about your adventure flow: What steps will they need to go through to complete this quest? There are usually 6 stages, which can be as short or long as you want in the flavor of your game.
Stage 1: Getting the Quest
We talked about this a little in step one, but you need to know where they start so you can chart the rest of the path. The important thing is they have a clear goal and commit to going after it.
Stage 2: How Do They Learn What Has to be Done?
There’s usually going to be at least a little bit of investigation (which could run from “go ask that guy” to a full-on mystery session) before they know where the core adventure is going to happen. This is true of most wilderness and dungeon sessions, but also of things like RP-heavy court intrigues. Even in a courtly setting, the PCs likely have to ask a more experienced courtier/politician how to get what they want.
By going on a quest, the players are going into someone else’s world. You should know going into the game what they’ll have to do to figure out the next step. Have some hints or clues to lead them in the right direction if they don’t see it the same way you do and can’t figure this step out. (You’re different people experiencing the game in different ways; what seems like the obvious next step to you could be totally counter-intuitive for the players. Be ready to bridge that gap with clues and hints.)
Stage 3: Travel – Is It Dangerous or a Montage?
If there are Goblins to clear out, a dungeon to reach, or a monster to hunt, the next step is getting there. Do you want that to jet by or take some effort?
How you handle travel is going to set the tone for your game. You can montage past it and have them get to the location – that tells the players you’re focusing on the broad strokes and they won’t have to worry about things like provisioning and travel gear. Or you can make it a few travel challenges and random encounters, which tells players they need to focus on details and make sure they’re prepared for whatever might happen (but this might take a session in its own right, it is much slower).
Both of those are fine! But make it a conscious decision: Do you want to focus on details and have a careful, slower-moving party? Or do you want to skip forward to the important/fun parts?
Those game styles feel different to the players and will lead them to play differently, so think about the atmosphere you want to create.
Stage 4: The Dungeon!
Every adventure has a dungeon, even if that dungeon is the open-air wilderness or the whispering halls of the royal court. This is where the bulk of the adventure happens and most of the challenges are faced.
How does the party gain access to the dungeon? What does it feel like? What are a couple sensory details you can describe to make it feel alive?
In a typical goblin burrow type of adventure, the earthen walls are going to smell musty and feel muddy – it’s dirty. I’d have some guards outside the burrow, some guards inside the burrow, a couple paths through it the party can take, and different encounters they can have along those (a common room, some storage rooms, maybe a pets section with wargs or other monsters). Finally, they’d confront the goblin boss. He’s usually in his own chamber, but can come out in a common room battle.
Overall, your dungeon should have enough stuff to feel like the creatures there have a life and weren’t just waiting around for the party to kill them.
Stage 5: The Climactic Battle!
This is where the party squares off with their biggest challenge and succeed or fail. It should be special and unavoidable. Think about where they meet this challenge and what will make it memorable. If it’s the goblin boss, he probably has an elite guard with him and special abilities. If it’s something more role-play focused, this is where they make their case and get Jack Nicholson to say they can’t handle the truth.
Whatever the climax is, make sure the players can’t sneak around it. The important person they have to rescue should be in with the boss. The court case should go to trial. Other encounters may be circumvented, but set this one up so it has to happen. The party must at least interact with the big bad (even if they talk their way around an actual fight).
Stage 6: What Comes Next?
Once the big showdown happens, what do they do next? Your adventure should have some kind of denouement, a period where rewards are received, praise is given, and you leave the players wherever you want them to pick up the next session.
Often, this involves a quick trip back to a quest giver to get the reward. It probably at least brings them to somewhere safe for identifying treasure, leveling up and taking a well-deserved long rest.
4. How Many Encounters Should There Be?
There’s a lot of room in the adventure flow for encounters. They can happen when the quest is given, in finding out how to pursue it, on the road to the “dungeon,” and there needs to be at least a few in the dungeon, including the climax.
But how many encounters can you fit into one play session?
Ideally, you’d like your first adventure to fit into one session. I like the party to get together, figure out what they’re doing, hit the road, get in a few fights, and get a reward. They’re probably going to level up as well.
Our last episode talked about how we plan encounters and what we want them to accomplish.
At this level, encounters tend to be faster, so I might aim to get 3-5 into the first session. But some of them will have to be easier or bypassable. Maybe there’s a path around the guards, or the party can sneak up and take them out in a round or two? Avoiding these encounters or ending them quickly is fine. The climax is where you want to spend your time and energy.
5. Improvise organically
If you listen to the podcast, you know I’m the guy who doesn’t do any extra planning. I either improvise the whole session or sketch it out in broad strokes that I fill in as the players make decisions. I do it this way because players are unpredictable, and I want to give them the freedom to approach the adventure their way.
No matter how structured your adventure is, you need to be able to improvise when the party goes off-road. For me, the key to improvising well is understanding what the dungeon is and why the inhabitants are there.
Your dungeon existed for reasons other than the PC’s Pavlovian need to destroy it. Understanding that purpose and how the creatures there live will help you organically fill in gaps the players try to squeeze through.
In a goblin burrow, these goblins are living here, feeding their tribe, and likely raiding to trade or pay tribute to a higher power. The goblin boss probably keeps the peace through strength and bullying. Individual goblins may not feel a ton of loyalty to him, but they fear the boss and don’t have anywhere else to go. I think of my goblin burrows as places where lying, stealing and murder probably happen frequently, but the inhabitants know their way around and wouldn’t be welcome anywhere else.
That framework gives me the answers I need for almost anything the players try. If they want to bribe the guards, I know the guards might take that bribe and either come back later to repopulate or sneak around to warn their buddies to get out. I know most of the goblins aren’t going to fight to the death. I know they’re probably not paying careful attention, so sneak roles shouldn’t be too difficult, etc.
Whatever the party tries to do, let your improv grow organically from what you know about how this place works. Don’t try to plan for everything ahead of time, just get a sense of what they do and what they care about. That’s you’re touchstone for figuring out any unexpected party shenanigans.
6. If You’re Stuck, ATTACK!
Players can do a lot of surprising things. If you’re stuck and don’t know what to do next … ATTACK!
The reason it may feel uncomfortable to you when the players do something unexpected is that they’ve taken control. If you know what to do, fine, get on with it. If not and you’re feeling a freeze come on, an ambush is a good way for you to regain some control and get a minute to react.
Everyone’s here to have a good time, and the way D&D is built, fighting is fun. Having an ambush crash through the dungeon wall gives you time to get your feet under you while the players enjoy whacking on the bad guys. It doesn’t have to be a hard fight, just something to fill the space.
Have a monster or NPC in mind that can show up when you’re lost and get things back on track. If the party is going the wrong way, it can have a clue that sends them back in the right direction. If the party was going to right way too quickly, this will slow the pace down. If the party was about to buy a battle troll you didn’t intend to put up for sale, this lets you unleash the troll for the party to fight or flee from.
They say you can’t go wrong by going right, and when you’re the DM, right is to ATTACK!
What do you do to get ready for the first session?
We’re always looking for new tips ourselves. How do you prep for the first session? What advice would you give to other readers? Leave them in the comments, and you might make it into a future episode!
Fantastic episode, guys! Great tips for encounter building!