Reflecting on a year of being the family Dungeon Master

By EricMesa

September 13, 2024 - 4 minutes read - 804 words

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post about how my kids got themselves (and, by extension, me) into Dungeons and Dragons. I wanted to reflect on how far I’ve come since then and where I might go in the near future. Starting off with a quick recap of the linked blog post, my brother David had introduced the kids to D&D via Muk, a module for introducing your kids to D&D. Unfortunately, it was written for an experience adult D&D player or DM to DM for the kids, so we had a few fails with my first time as the DM. Then we moved on to DnD Adventure Club. That was, and continues to be, a huge hit with the kids.

After I wrote that blog post, I did what I often do when getting into a new hobby: I went for a deep dive. I bought the 2014 5e editions of the main source books: The Players Handbook, The Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master Guide. I also bought the Starter Kit. Wizards of the Coast is working on a new starter kit that will come out next year, but ours was based on the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle campaign. Although it was meant for new players, it was a disaster for us. The campaign wasn’t really that interesting for my kids. I didn’t know about the concept of the DM preparing for a session, I was reading along as we played. So I had to keep flipping back and forth to refer to things like monster stats. The kids didn’t have their spell information so every encounter took forever. I think if we would have played on DnDBeyond with the digital character sheet and encounter builder it might have gone a bit better. As a result we abandoned adult D&D for most of the rest of the next 12 months. We focused on DnD Adventure Club and the kids had a blast.

During that year my first move towards leveling up my DMing came from the tips and tricks mentioned in the DnD Adventure Club campaigns. This started to build up my knowledge of how the game worked so that I wouldn’t have to constantly reference the source books. Then, I started watching some D&D YouTube channels. My current favorites are Ginny Di and Point Hat. They gave me lots of information about being a better DM, including session prep.

Somehow I learned about the Humblewood campaign setting. Honestly, I think it was because of the marketing that DnDBeyond did when the book was released digitally on the site. When I took a look at the animal-based setting, I thought it might be something kids would enjoy. So I graduated from the hand-holding of DnD Adventure Club to an adventure book. I spent weeks getting the first session ready and, from then on, I would always be sure to prepare for different eventualities and characters they might meet. I added my own flavor to various scenes, based on what I knew the kids would enjoy. It’s now their favorite setting and we’ve started playing the extra modules.

We also started playing the 2024 year-long campaign from Dungeon in a Box. It’s kind of an adult version of DnD Adventure Club. It somewhat gives me what I was looking for from D&D that Pathfinder already provides. DM-wise, it requires a bit more work than Humblewood. For most locations or interactions it doesn’t provide me with very much prepared text. It just describes the outlines of what happens in the story and leaves the rest up to me. It’s been exciting to grow the creative side of my DM skills.

So what’s the next step for me? I think I’m starting to build up the confidence to work with a campaign setting book. The Eberron book I have, Wayfinder’s Guide to Eberron, doesn’t have any adventure within it at all. It just describes the setting and gives some campaign hook suggestions. I think the Citadel of Radiance (or whatever it’s called) is similar. I’m not sure I’m quite there yet, but I think by this point next year I should be ready if I haven’t already done something like this.

After that, perhaps full homebrew. I dont’ know if I’ll ever do a full homebrew. There are so many pre-created adventures that I haven’t yet played so I don’t know that with the limited time I have for myself that I would do a full homebrew. But maybe it would happen. We’ll have to see.

Tangential to my growth in requiring less hand-holding as the DM, some time next year when the Cosmere kickstarter is out, I may do my first session as a DM for people who aren’t in my family. The thought of doing that is both terrifying and exciting!