Whether you're new to Dungeons & Dragons or a veteran player who's taking the Dungeon Master's seat for the first time, you'll find that the first D&D session you run is often the most important of a campaign. It sets the tone and flow of the game and can convince players to keep coming back for months to come.
In this article, we not only recommend a good starter adventure, but we offer pointers to running your first D&D game as a new DM.
Need an Adventure? Try Intro to Stormwreck Isle
There’s no single right way to run your first D&D game, but we're going to offer a suggestion: Start with Intro to Stormwreck Isle. It is an introductory experience for new D&D players that is freely available to D&D Beyond users. It includes two short encounters, Voyage to Stormwreck Isle and Drowned Sailors, which lead into into the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle adventure.
Intro to Stormwreck Isle offers new Dungeon Masters straightforward scenarios to run, in addition to clear instructions for running players through the game. For new players, your D&D Beyond account includes premade characters, so you can quickly jump into the action.
Although you likely have your own ideas for running a homebrew campaign, it can be helpful to run a published adventure first. You'll have a clear direction for the action and have a wealth of materials to work with. Plus, it's easier to modify an existing work than build from scratch on your first run-through as a DM.
Running a Homebrew Campaign
If you do choose to run your own homebrew adventure, keep it simple. Focus your attention on the characters rather than building a huge epic storyline they might never be able to experience. As you work on your adventure, ask yourself such questions as:
- Where will the adventure start? Why?
- What choices can the characters make and what impact will those choices have?
- What will the characters see, hear, and interact with?
- What problems do the characters need to solve?
Put the characters in a spot, but not one so tough that they'll get wiped out. The first session likely isn't the best time to bring out that cool ancient red dragon you read about in the Monster Manual, especially if the party is starting out at a low level.
Tools and Supplies to Run the Game
With your first adventure selected, it's time to gather the tools you need to run your game. Players need character sheets, pencils, and dice. If everyone is new to D&D, it's best to start with 1st-level characters, so that you can ease into the rules of the game. Use D&D Beyond's free character builder tool to access premade characters or to create your own in minutes. The character sheet has digital dice and calculates dice rolls for you, making the game more accessible.
To run the game, you only need a piece of paper and a pencil to sketch out what is going on. However, you could purchase a battle mat and markers for your kitchen table or use D&D Beyond Maps with your subscription. It is a shared browser space to run your game. Alternatively, you could stick to theater of the mind. When you're first getting started, it's best to start small and work your way up. So, don't feel as though you need to purchase miniatures and other props to run D&D.
Buying Books to Run D&D
D&D Beyond offers the Basic Rules of D&D for free. If you and your players are just testing the waters, you don't need more than that to get started. But if you want to give your players more freedom to customize their characters and you want access to more tools to run the game, check out these books:
- Player's Handbook: Offers tons of subclass options, feats, spells, equipment, and more for your characters.
- Dungeon Master's Guide: Contains helpful tools for DMs, as well as a large assortment of magic items for characters.
- Monster Manual: Great for DMs who want to learn about and run combat encounters using iconic monsters from Dungeons & Dragons lore.
Sweating Over the Right Things
When running your first D&D game, don't feel pressured to do everything. The DM is responsible for a lot, but you can lean on your players for help. For example, you can ask a player to keep notes on the game and another to track combat initiative and turn order. This can help you focus on more important tasks, like keeping the story flowing and managing the monsters' actions in combat.
It's common for new players and DMs to get caught off-guard by all of the rules in D&D, too. But you'll find that veterans will often share a common lesson with newer DMs: You don't need to follow the rules to a tee. Of course, it's important to understand the basics of the game, such as rolling ability checks, attacks, saving throws, and the like. But getting wound up in the minutia can bring the game to a halt. That's why, if you're faced with a rules question you or your players can't quickly answer, it's often best for you to make a ruling and move on. You can later look up the rule and let your players know how the rule will be handled in the future.
Focus on the Characters
When you get caught up in the rules of the game, you risk overlooking the most important part of D&D: the characters and their journey. Spend time before and during the game learning about the characters. You should be able to answer questions such as:
- Who are they?
- What do they want?
- Where did they come from?
- What does the player like most about them?
- What are the player's hopes for the character?
The better you understand the characters, the more easily you can hook them into the story. That said, if you're running a published adventure, it helps to read the whole adventure through. The more you understand it, the more fluidly you can run it and find ways to tie the plot to the characters.
Bringing the Team Together
DMs are not the enemy of the players. Everyone is participating in collaborative storytelling. Although you should challenge the characters, you should always be on their side, rooting for them. On the flip side, your players should support you in whatever ways they can. That could include helping you look up rules or just keeping each other accountable at the table.
All that said, don't be hard on yourself or your players when you're just getting started. Focus on telling stories, sharing laughs, and just having a great time.
Mike Shea (@SlyFlourish) is a writer, technologist, dungeon master, and author for the website Sly Flourish. Mike has freelanced for Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, Pelgrane Press, and Sasquach Games and is the author of the Lazy Dungeon Master, Sly Flourish’s Fantastic Locations, and Sly Flourish’s Fantastic Adventures. Mike lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Michelle and their dire-warg Jebu.
Michael Galvis contributed to the reporting for this article.
Thank you for the advise! I am running Tomb of Annihilation soon as my first time being a dungeon master. Lol. Im basically searching the web for all the advice I can get.
Excellent article, Mike! I appreciate the focus on character stories and the suggestion to encourage players to participate in defining details. Looking forward to your next installment!
Cheers!
This is super helpful. I'm heading into an adventure today, and hoping it goes well. It'll be my first time as DM in about 20 years. Your advice reminded me what's really important: the characters!
Just finished Mine of Phandelver. It really is a good first time adventure. It was my first experience with D&D (short of dabbling very briefly 25 years ago) so I felt a bit overwhelmed to begin with as DM. I can't stress enough the importance of "Sweating the right details". Don't get bogged down. Logic is your friend. Keep the game moving. I had a Rogue who wanted to try to steal a Redbrand's sword out of his sheath. I thought why the hell not, gave it a ridiculously high DC and then prepared for the fireworks when they failed. Rolled a 20. Just go with it. It was hilarious, the players loved it, the Redbrand lost a turn due to confusion when combat eventually happened and he went for his weapon. Was it the right call? That's just not the point.
Only one criticism of Mines of Phandelver..... Zero info on Neverwinter. It's not far away, particularly if the characters want to go to the ruins on a side quest, and it's only logical to want to go to one of the biggest cities in the Spine of the World. Do yourself a favour and have some additional resources about what is available in Neverwinter, and you'll save yourself some from being caught unprepared.
I agree with almost everything you said—keep it simple, focus on the players, share the story, DM is not the enemy.
One part that I don't agree on is players running initiative. I think initiative can be used powerfully by the DM to engage players, putting a bit of action-narrative in front of each player's turn to set the scene and in order to get a response or reaction from them. For example, I might say, "Jemma, your friends are pinned down by arrow fire as the orc chieftain is rushing straight at you with rage in his eyes, greataxe held aloft to cleave you in two. What do you do?" And that generally gets a quick, and appropriate, in-character response.
Otherwise it invariably turns into something like,
Initiative-Keeping-Player: *looks at initiative tracking sheet* "Okay, Flatgranite just went, now it's Jemma's turn."
Jemma: *looks at character sheet* "Umm...what can I do? Who's the closest enemy to me?"
Random player: "It's the orc chieftain! You should cast your Ray of Enfeeblement on him!"
Other random player: "No way, heal my guy! You have a high enough AC, he won't hit you. Then use your bonus action to cast Magic Stone so I can throw one."
Jemma: "Oh...okay, I'll do that I guess."
The bossy player is just one example; other times it might just kind of grind combat to a halt, as the player considers their move. And I know there are ways to get around that, like the 6-second rule; but those measures just make everything feel more gamist and less narrative IMO. So...yeah, I prefer to not delegate initiative :) I feel like it can be used to its best effect when made into a narrative tool.
I found this very helpful. Although I've played many different types of rules set I'm about to DM my first game of 5e .
Thanks for the advice!
I agree, Lost mine of Phandelver is a great adventure that I ran for my players.
I ran my first-ever session as a DM last weekend, in preparation for the real thing at an RPG convention in 3 weeks (talk about diving in the deep end!), and I'm finding these articles really useful as I'd like to run a full campaign eventually. I've heard enough horror stories to know what I shouldn't be (neither a killer DM nor a munchkin master), but it's great to see some positive advice. Many thanks.
Thank you for these articles. They are a big help.
I played AD&D back in the 80's and even ran my first campaign for a while then. But then dropped out of playing for a while and then found D&D Online and other PC versions to play. Then I discovered Critical Role and various other realms of the D&D world on YouTube and then 5e. With that, I became interested again and now developing my own campaign again. Looking forward to it.
Here are some suggestions for new DMs who desire to run a platinum campaign on a copper piece budget...
1) Getting the Manuals:
2) What about Miniatures? Don't worry about purchasing a bunch of creature/NPC miniatures in the beginning.
I hope that helps new DMs not worry too much about how to afford the items for running a campaign. Remember, running a game is a creative process. So, why not get creative in saving money where you can.
This is good stuff. I had a very similar scenario, we all laughed and kept forging ahead. I’m doubtful I was right about the rule. Who knows, all I know was we all had fun.
Hello and thank you for these articles. The Dungeons and Dragons licence is older than me and my friends, we actually all started playing roleplaying games on PC/Consoles with games series like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc... like almost every RPG fans born in the 90s... To us DnD was a great but prehistoric and impractical game, until the recent edition and its digital evolution. Now we just gather with all the resources accessible on laptop, tablets, smartphones and a central squared table board and enjoy the content.
So thank you again for what you're doing with DnD Beyond. You're making a lot of new players enjoy DnD, hopefully for another 40 years ! Maybe someday our kids will be playing DnD with holograms and stuff :D
That being said, within my group we are 2 DM playing campaigns alternatively. Being able to experience both sides really strenghtens cooperation. As a DM, the hardest parts of the game for me is to find a balance between advancing the plot and combat. Some players prefer the tactical and thrilling combat experience, others prefer the intrigue and to discover the scenario. And then balancing the combat difficulty, it must not be too easy or the players might get bored but at the same time you have to be careful not to wipe the party. You have to make it difficult enough so the players have to use their special abilities, use their items, think about their positionning, etc... The DM role is pretty tough but also incredibly fun !
I actually have a whole article on miniatures coming out in the future! Your options are included!
@Awaypturwpn. One thing I forgot to mention is that initiative should be visible to everyone, not just to the person running initiative. I use 3x5 cards folded in half and numbered. The person doing initiative gets everyone's score and then throws the cards around the table in the order from lowest to highest. This way everyone sees the initiative order and knows when they are acting. Thanks for the comment!
I had a very bad experience as a player on my last table and this article has motivated once again to get back to DMing.
Going to be running Out of the Abyss as my first time out in probably 20 years. Thanks for the advice!
“We can even hand parts of the fiction to the players as well. If they go into a tavern, we might ask the players what interesting features they see.” Or NPCs…
Just let them know ahead of time!
Great advice! Thank you so much!