What Makes a Good D&D Session

You all reach the bottom of the ladder after climbing down it for an hour and a half. Halfway down, your wizard cast light to give you all the ability to see. You find yourselves in a roughcut chamber with a ladder that ascendes up towards where you came from. You also see a solitary door. After a few minutes, Herath is able to unlock the door and open it creakily. Beyond your group sees a sloping tunnel that dives deeper into the earth at a gentle decline. You group presses on and walks the path for another half hour. 

You and your group are used to the constant noises of the upper world. Down here you hear silence and the constant vibrations of the moving earth. 

Silently your group reaches the point where the tunnel branches. It diverges into 3 separate tunnels. Each tunnel looks natural. Your sight penetrates 30 feet into the darkness but you see no signs to indicate which tunnel to take. 

What would you like to do?

Welcome back to the 35th episode of How to Be a Better DM. I’m your host, Justin Lewis and together we will learn how to tell better stories as dungeon master a session of Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

We’ve all been a DM, we’ve all had good sessions and bad sessions. But how do you know what makes a good D&D session? 

It’s not always easy making a good D&D session, but it is always fulfilling. 

So here are some telltale signs of a good D&D session.

1. Players have fun

The most important thing for a D&D session is that your players have fun. That includes you since you are a player as well. So do whatever you need to make the game fun. If halfway through, you aren’t having fun, then you gotta change things up. Some ways try and make it more fun: 

• Simplify: make things easier to comprehend
• Energize: just add more energy to what you are doing
• Take a break
• Do something funny
• Add in a twist
• Skip over boring stuff.

1. Players are interested

Obviously this is an aspect of the the players having fun, but the story needs to be interesting. That’s why we play D&D rather than other table top or video games. It’s the stories. So are there moments where your players are interested in what happens next. Two of the best ways to do this are first, adding a cliffhanger, but more importantly, conflict. The best part of any story is its conflicts. If a story has no conflicts, it is not a story. So add conflicts. Conflicts between the characters and NPC’s and between the characters and time and all sort of conflict. That’s how you draw in your players. 

1. Something memorable happened

A session is great when you can look back with your friends and say, “You remember when…. That was so cool or crazy or weird.” A good example is in one of my one-shots, one of my players killed an enemy that ended up blowing up cause two of the other players’ characters to die. It was funny and unexpected. It’s something we’ll all remember for a long time. Good D&D session.

1. The session fits the mood of the players

Sometimes the players don’t want a rootin tootin shootem up session. Sometimes the players just want a shopping session. So dangle different flavors in front of your players and the ones that your players interact with the most is the one you should give them more of. Be aware that what they want during the session will likely change from hour to hour and being a good DM  means that you understand what your players want. 

The perfect D&D session is an illusive thing. A ghost, a phantom, a shadow, yet made of pure crystal, platinum and gold, it’s worth more than all the loot in the universe. Creating the perfect D&D session is impossible, yet the goal of every DM. I wish you luck on your quest to create the most amazing D&D session. But until you become the ultimate master of the universe, at least these tips can help you create good sessions that your players love.

Thanks for listening to today’s show. What do you think? Am I wrong? Did I miss anything? If so, then send me a message on Instagram. You can also share the show with someone else and talk about it with them. 

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Thanks again for listening to today’s show. We’ll be back next week for another episode but until then, let’s roll initiative.

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Always Have Your Sessions Prepared!

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