Prep Can Be Literally Easy and Actually Fun 

Here's some other Cartographers on Patreon I use! www.patreon.com/LostAcumen www.patreon.com/tehox www.patreon.com/EightfoldPaper www.patreon.com/bbsproductions www.patreon.com/themadcartographer

I'm a 61 yr old woman who will be DMing her first session in a week. Started playing at the beginning of Covid with our bubble. Your videos are always so helpful and this one was what I needed right now. I was way over thinking things :)

Also, love the no-chill in this video. "We do not hate our customers. No one's gonna show up at your door to break your legs." I can't stop laughing.

"You can't fight in here, this is the war room". Gets me everytime.

Dreading prep is ACTUALLY the number one nemesis of me running more DnD so whatever secrets this video will reveal to me, You are a River to Your People

matt shotgunned me with that coherent hole bit

That pause after "..coherent whole." and "--your mom has a coherent whole." had me weak 🤣

"The DM always overprepares" and "The players never make it as far as you think" rings double true for me, not just as a DM but as a teacher as well. Never do my lessons encompass all that I've prepped.

As someone who also always forgets the stairs, my safety blanket is "a lot of old-ass taverns started as only one floor, and nobody's got the money to rip out the kitchen or whatever to put in stairs. Slap those puppies on the exterior and stack the second story on top."

The real reason why Bombadil exists is such a good story that relates to D&D so well: Tolkien put Bombadil in LOTR because he wrote him for another set of stories and he just... liked him so much that he decided to stick him in LOTR. There is no explanation for him other than that. Put stuff in your game you like. You don't need a reason other than that.

Did anyone else notice the MCDM screen has inspirational quotes at the top of each panel? “Your ideas are neat” and “They’re already having a good time” is awesome stuff to remember in the middle of a session, and I need to get this now.

There are no forgotten drawn stairs mistakes only happy secret passage stairs accidents 😊 Thank you for the video!

"...because we do not hate our customers. We will not show up at your doorstep and threaten to break your legs." Long live MCDM!

Never before have I looked at a Running the Game title and felt IMMENSE relief. I've struggled with prep for so long! Thanks for the vid. Edit: Oh my god, he even predicted I'd say this exact thing. Matt's a warlock. LMAO

"you'd be surprised at how little progress the players make." This right here is the truth, and a good takeaway. Prep literally anything and they'll make it into a fun time!

19:30 "Maybe they *can* convince the cottage to get up and walk around! That is some proper D&D *bullshit.* " As a DM with about 5 real sessions under his belt now, this has proven much more relatable than I originally suspected it might

8:07 - Sick burn 11:08 - what are we doing for dinner? 25:56 - How do I know I'm a real DM? 27:49 - What's for dinner?

The editing on your videos is always fantastic. Really accentuates the humor without distracting too much from whatever is being talked about.

oh my. This is a call back to Matt's first video. Much more complex idea and yet all about "you are going to be a DM Tonight".

Inevitable pedantry: there is a vine monster in 5e, the Vine Blight in the MM. It does grapple people. I do recognize that showing people how to reflavor monsters is a more valuable skill than telling them there's gonna be something that suits their ideas if they look long enough every time though.

Hit the nail on the head with “the point is to get inspired”. I use music tracks instead of battle maps for inspiration, but the point is that what gets *you* inspired and excited will make prep fun

I have previously printed gorgeous online maps off on several sheets of A4 paper and then sellotaped them together. I've also used print shops and used an A0 plotter that we had in the office. You can definitely make those gorgeous online maps work in person!

My son decided to start DMing and he has been spending time world building and says how enjoyable it is. I played an adventure he made and it rocked!

I was not expecting matt colville to get me with a 'your mom' joke

I enjoy prepping for my D&D session so much, that I literally have a drawer full of campaigns and scenarios that I might never even play because when I run out of things to prep for my next current game I just go off the rails and start prepping other stuff. It's like this wonderful creative sandbox full of pure thought experiments and creativity

Thank god for the notification bell

The transposing stat blocks to other creatures is really a godsend. Ran my first session where the party had to fight a huge rat problem in the tavern’s basement, only to find it was just one big rat. Scrolled through the monster manual and found gnolls had a bite, were CR1/2 and seemed fine for a first encounter. All I did was remove the weapon attacks it did and went with it. The party demolished it and survived with two of the members losing half their health. Overall, a great strategy and the players were non the wiser!

I've DMed for 30 years, and that minion rule is AWESOME. I'll be incorporating it in my campaign this weekend.

Vine Blight crying in the corner right now

"Throwing a bunch of 'this sounds cool' at a wall and then taking my players coolest sounding explanation" is my entire DMing style. It sounds dumb described this way but my players love it more than anything I ever meticulously wrote. It ends up sounding cool, and they get a bonus of feeling smart for 'figuring it out'. Collaborative storytelling at its finest.

Dear Matt, (tldr: thank you so much) at the point i'm writing, this video is already seven days out but i'm hoping this still reaches you. Today i ran DnD for my group. I had to adjust because a player couldn't make it for personal reasons and in just about an hour i managed to create an interlude as you called it, that was still somewhat relevant to the story and gave my players some great opportunites to get more comfortable for roleplay and trying out things. I'm still a young DM and very certain I couldn't have done it without all the mental preparation that your videos provided for me. Many times my players saw me hesitating, thinking about what is the right answer for a question or the right answer in character from a kobold today, i was mostly thinking about what i learned from you. The game i'm running wouldn't be already as smooth as if i ran it without your guidance. Thank you.

PC druid: "We need information." Piranha school: "EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT!" 🤣

Absolute quality, Matt. The best quick start guide for GMs on RU-vid.

I _did not_ see that "your mom" joke coming, but I'm glad it's there.

Sometimes you can get your players to answer the questions for you. Example: 3 days ago, someone went missing on x road. Who is it, and why does your character want to find them? Or: you’re walking down the road looking for signs of your missing friend when you see something that tells you he left the road and went into the forest. What did you see? Obviously, this won’t work every time for every group, but sometimes it will, and sometimes it helps you get started.

I remember Matt saying a while back that the old video that started the Running the Game series had a lot of views and that there was "probably a better version of that video" that could exist. Seems like this is that video, it really drills down into the core of what the message of that video was. Anyone can DM, you just need to create a few encounters and the prep for those encounters doesn't take very long.

Vine Blights are a low level grappling plant that is already in the 5e monster manual.

One thing I’ve really loved about the Flee, Mortals! preview packets isn’t just how easy they are to snip, but also how printer-friendly they are. I’ve got a binder-full of basically all the monsters that have been released so far, in order of when I used them in my campaign. It’s really neat!

*The best video I've seen yet for Mastering Role-playing Games!* _Thank you!_ There is a real gem in this video: _Using the NPCs to auto-re-balance the encounter._ Let's say that the DM's plan is that the players are always going to encounter the Paladin and Witch as they flee the lair of the BBEG, carrying-off "the McGuffin" with them. Under no circumstances can the party survive the BBEG on their tail, so them _must_ flee as a group. Now, if the players are rockin' their encounters so-far (they keep rolling really lucky rolls), then they encounter the Paladin and the Witch fleeing in dire-straits. Perhaps the wounded Paladin is running away while carrying the unconscious witch, or the other way around. But if the players are getting their arses handed to them (they keep rolling really _un_ -lucky rolls), they then encounter the Paladin and the Witch fleeing at full strength. Or anything in-between the two extremes, as required to still allow the party to survive the desperate flight from the BBEG. In all cases they players still have to flee with the Paladin and the Witch, but their combined forces just needs to get everyone into the walking house, and the house does the rest of the fleeing for the party. Or perhaps it even flies away? The point being that the NPCs are adjusted _on-arrival_ to auto-complement the player-characters as the DM's ultimate method of adjusting the final encounter difficulty. And the final encounter is for this ssession always fleeing from the BBEG to save everyone's life.

“Encounter design doesn’t stop just because you rolled initiative.” Such great advice! You don’t need to be trying to be an “improv only” dm to be willing to adjust and bend on the fly.

24:43 is an underrated piece of GM advice! Become a friend to ambiguity.

Now, I am the DM for many groups, but I will say that what Matt suggests here is very good advice. Recently, I began a semi-one shot - or maybe more accurately a mini-campaign - for my two sons and their friend; the wife joined in so it would be a party of four instead of just three. Anyway, I finally set the date for the first session after our session 0 but quickly began running out of time to plan it as the week sped by with regular life getting in the way. So with a day or two left, I decided to build a sort of training arena to test the PCs. Since the players' characters were from a guild and going to be sent on a mission that would see their success result in admission into the guild as full-fledged members or their failure result in not becoming members, then it made sense that their guild would first want to test how well the group worked together. The thing was that I had some vague ideas of what I wanted. I knew I'd have three objectives; items they had to retrieve. I also compiled a list of creatures to potentially use and decided that I would want them to have to cross a bridge from the side where they entered and eventually have to make their way to a tower on the other side. Also, I wanted a crumbled wall on their end to be able to use as cover if needed. On the day of the game, I gave the basic speech that they were to retrieve three items and bring them back to their side, and the test was about teamwork, blah blah. I also have dwarven forge terrain so I had a lot of fun building the arena. The best part happened right at the beginning. As the players emerged from the giant double doors on one end, one of my sons quickly became interested in the rubble scattered around the half-round wall on their end and chose to pick up a brick. My wife and their friend both scoff at it, "Why are you wasting your time grabbing a brick? You have better weapons." Up to this point, I had put the rubble piles down to indicate the wall wasn't pristine and had seen better days, but the inkling of an idea began to percolate to the surface. As the players moved forward, it's discovered, by the friend whose PC reaches the archway onto the bridge first, that there was an invisible magical barrier separating their side from the other, crossing the entire width of the arena; this was made up on the spot as my idea is further refined by the players' actions. The other players take their turns and when it comes back around, my son comes up to the archway as well and declares that he's going to investigate it. He rolls high. PERFECT! He should really get this as he deserves it; I describe the results of his investigation, "As you investigate the archway for some mechanism by which to disable the magical barrier you realize that the craftsmanship of this archway is pristine; there's not a brick out of place or mortar missing between them... except for one spot where it seems a single brick is missing, and as you look at the brick in your hand you realize that it looks like the perfect fit!" And everyone goes nuts! Absolutely nuts with disbelief, but most of all, my now-vindicated son is over the moon saying, "I knew it! I knew there was something sus about the pile of bricks!" And none of that nor some of the stuff that happened after were explicitly planned but came about from player interaction driving the game. This was all last week.

This is exactly the topic for me. I love being a DM, but the prep always gets pushed to the last second, and it's stressful. I love the actual running of the game though, it's really not that hard but the prep is a bit of a hurdle sometimes. I will be taking notes during this video

“… some proper D&D bullshit.” I had to get off the floor and remember how to breathe again! I have a new T-shirt idea!! Also, those are the moments I live for as a player and a DM! I am running my own game and I always feel overwhelmed and out of control - regardless of prep - I just learn to live with it and enjoy the ride! Thanks for a great video. Now I want to just make a bunch of encounters just to have ready and stick them in a folder on my laptop!

Ah, just reminded of my early days of GMing and my players driving their hummer across the tundra towards the witch's hut at the edge of the forest and it getting up and running off. Best car chase ever.

I'm literally preparing for my session this afternoon and this pops up. I love you Matt🎉

"We love our costumers, none going to show up in your door to break your legs." I love you Matt, never change!

Wow. This is fitting my style of game I'm setting up perfectly. Time to steal a bunch of ideas :) Ty Matt!!! Edit 1: EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT XD That killed me. Amazing. I feel so inspired!!!! 🤩 Edit 2: Love the Pinkerton reference Matt xD

no the whole sitting back and watching your players argue and debate is my favorite part of being a dm. seeing them try to figure out whats going on and seeing all the things they think of.

Tons of grasping vine monsters for 5e actually: assassin vine, yellow musk creeper, gulthias tree, and more. The problem is that most of these are not in the core MM, but rather in various published adventures. Otherwise it's a great video and that's how I've been doing prep for a while now. :)

Been struggling with motivation for planning. Can’t wait to see the tips. Cze and Peku are amazing for maps.

Hearing piranhas yell "eat" on two times speed caught me way off guard. Love it.

"A River to his people" finally arrives to quench our parched palates!

HOW DO YOU ALWAYS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I NEED?!?!?!? It's like magic. Every time you upload its advice for the exact situation I'm in. Preparing a 1 shot for next week and really needed a video on prep.

Dr. Strangelove is such a classic, Matt truly is a man of taste

Just the sound of Matt's voice (and the quality of his mic) reminds me that prep is fun. It brings me back to when I was first DMing and binging all of the videos on this channel.

recently i was browsing /r/battlemaps and came across this great map that simply had a green field with a ravine and some rocks, with a GIANT sword stuck in the ravine, it inspired me, not to make a battle around a giant sword, but to shrink my players down so that giant sword would be a regular sword seen in their "honey i shrunk the kids" perspective, i agree with mat, looking at beautiful maps is a great way of thinking about cool stuff to throw at your players

I love the idea of adding something obvious and wild to the map that could be obscured as dangerous like giant chicken footprints and telling them to ignore that feature of the map, this activates the players to imagine their own version of the map in their head

There are so many lessons here that also appeared in other RTG videos: it's like a process of slow sedimentation throughout the years, a condensation of many great pearls of DM knowledge pressed together in this wonderfully complete video, a milestone of Matt's mastery on imparting knowledge effectively AND of the production value of the video with its perfect editing. Congrats, MCDM! Looking forward to the new TTRPG!

I just finished running a "Dungeon Masterclass" at my local game shop. We did a collaborative world building exercise to give us inspiration and create our adventure hook. I also gave some very general advice (like how to build encounters and find maps... seems like familiar advice that I just heard somewhere...). Anyways, I ran the first session with no screen so everyone could see what I did, ask questions, and I explained some of my thinking regarding design and in game decisions. I shared my adventure notes afterward... and then each person in the group organized, scheduled, created, and ran a session to advance the story. I ran the capstone boss fight this week... and this is a perfectly timed video to send to everyone as an epilogue! Thanks Uncle Matt. The "secret" to becoming a confident and practiced GM/DM truly is: run a game and then run another and then another and another... but to answer the call, you do need to summon some courage and audacity. And that leap is always made less nerve-wracking with some friendly encouragement. So, as always, thanks for the pep talk and all you do for the community! (But please, dear jeebus, keep your dry erase markers away from my vinyl battle map 😂)

I really love that you said (paraphrased) to tell players if there are irrelevant details on the map. Something I’ve struggled with is trying to find the perfect map, and you just stating the obvious is gonna take some stress off my shoulders. Thanks!

Your guidance has given me the confidence to start DMing. I’ve run three games so far, and while there are hiccups, everyone is having fun! I know it’s late but I’ve been watching Chain of Acheron and it’s so awesome! Thanks for everything!

You know Matt you were one of the first DM I Came across youtube when I was first learning to dm I watched a lot of videos learned even more but inevitably life got a little busy and I've had about almlst a two year Hiatus and recently I've been looking to get back in and here's one of your videos again. But I've realized something else. You are the reason I watch all my RU-vid videos (except yours) on x1.5. You and you're perfectly delivered tempo has corrupted me to from being able to listen to lessee regular tempo speaking ppl and for this I'm not sad. Thank you for all you do. 😂😂

This is the best 'get started dming' video I have ever seen. I immediately sent this to every new DM and potential DM I know. I know a good handful who thought about DMing but were overwhelmed with the thought of it or doubting their abilities even with me there to guide them and answer questions. I hope this gives them the mindset to give it a shot.

you are so inspiring man, i was sitting hear with so much stuff to do, and you really motivated me

I fucking love this video. It is such a great compliment to one of the very first videos about making the five room dungeon and I will recommend this video to any new DMs alongside that one. It is so validating to hear the mental walkthrough of how you come to your decisions on what we need to worry about, especially with that is something that I've done my entire time DMing. Easily one of my favorite videos from you!

Yes, just in time for Summer and a DM vacation. Sending this to my players now!

Thanks Matt. I love your running the game videos!

Thank you Matt. Your "running the game" series is the best.

I love streamlining the content creation process for myself. I build myself tools that I can use to easily generate details on the fly, like shops and services when the party enters a new town - building those tools is fun as hell and makes prepping for actual play a breeze.

I’m not going to lie. I will likely steal this entire set up for a session. This is fantastic.

I got way too into the small details of my campaigns after years, and this video was a nice refresher of keeping it simple. Thanks Matt!

8:07 I had to come back to be sure of what I just heard. You're a gem, Mr Colville

Your Running The Game videos have inspired me A LOT to get into the GM's seat with my group of 4 years. We're about to finish up Rime of the Frostmaiden, and I'm going to be running a game in my homebrew setting (also definitely set on putting Red Hand of Doom in there eventually). Thanks for all your work and advice!

I knew I wanted to dm for months after learning to play with a few online groups. I never thought I was ready until I joined a group one Saturday morning. The dm put up a video of themself and theyre were, like 9 years old. The session was rough. The kid used an adventure book and just read stuff out loud that we shouldn't hear and the descriptions of the suroundings were poor... but we had a blast. I was 32 years old watching a child just jump into it and I realized that's all I needed to do. So just jump in. Eat the elephant 1 bite at a time.

Amazing video. Thanks so much for that inspiration and an awesome approach that gives confidence!

I just love how practical all your advice is. I've been running D&D for ... well, a very long time. I can still learn new things, so I love these videos.

Thanks Matt. This is the hardest thing I do in a sandbox setting, Filling the tables with content. Once I’ve put this into practice and my neurons do magic then I’ll be having fun prepping too.

watching this and re-watching this lead me to message some of my people the age-old message: "Hey, wanna play D&D tonight?" Made a oneshot in one night, turned into a twoshot and now I'm DM'ing a full campaign. Thanks, Matthew, for the encouragement

This is the video I needed to see when I started dming for my group in 2016. Awesome video as usual Matt. Thanks! 💜💜💜

I have a friend who is DMing a campaign for his first time and I think this would be awesome for him, thanks Matt

I have been sitting behind the DM screen for years, and I still learn something valuable every time one of these videos comes out. What did I learn this time out? That there's a reason I have so much trouble finding the right maps: I write all the encounters first, and then hope some map artist has perfectly anticipated my needs. I'm usually not that lucky.

I have scoured the internet for tips and how to’s about DM’ing over the years. I can confidently say I’ve learned the most from Matt. So when I talk to potential new DM’s about getting started, you can guess where I direct them. All these years later and you are still a river to your people. Thank you Matt!!!

This is helpful. Classic running the game style and exactly the kind of video to put me in the prep headspace. Thank you

absolutely +1 for the Strangelove clip!! and a few more +1s for the semi-subtle digs at WotC. as always, thanks, Matt & Co.!

I love, "You have to be a friend of ambiguity." Definitely describes my style. 🙂

I love how this technique is exactly how I scramble-created a quick scenario I needed when the players went left instead of right, so to speak.

This is literally how Ive been doing it for half a decade, map or enemy first, build an encounter around it, contextualize it after I learn about the party and what would work well for them

Been running games for 3 and a half years now. Prepping is quite often easy and almost always a blast. I'm actually sad that I will just be a player again after my next 2 sessions, but life comes first and I won't have the time anymore for a bit.

Barn burner of an episode. The perfect epilogue to Running the Game

What an insightful video. Will be taking away a lot of tips and tricks from this. Thanks pal!

Been a DM for 10+ years, and I still learn something new every time I watch Matt, great idea for the snip tool. Thank you!

i recently tried out the Minion rules and i had such a blast it worked so easy for me as a DM was a real change of pace for me

I never use maps (for players at least) so its nice to hear the process for someone who does use them.

the thing i always find the best about your videos, you always look like your having fun just recording the video

You're doing some really great work, Matt. You are easily one of the *best* resources that a new DM could ask for.

Non-diegetic zombies? I love it please continue.

Just finished prepping the chained library for my game tommorow morning. Im intrigued to see what you have in store.

Tavern Staircase: It's outside, so anyone beefing with you won't ruin our lobby to get to you.

Another great video! I love doing game prep -- brainstorming ideas, fiddling with maps, finding (or creating) the stat blocks, it's all very creatively fulfilling. Actually running the game, even after doing it for many years, is pretty nerve-wracking and I kind of hate it, which is why I don't do it more often.