Steal from the Best | DM's tips & tricks #4

Steal Your Dungeons and Dragons Campaigns and Encounters from the Best

Creating and managing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign is hard work. Keeping up with character and NPC stats, managing the action at a table, keeping track of what the players know and don't know, and even keeping up with what enemies and NPC's are doing behind the scenes. A time comes for every DM when they just do not have the time or energy to prepare another epic couple of sessions. Or, even worse, sometimes you are just out of ideas.

Honestly, I suggest you start stealing ideas from anywhere you can as early as possible, so that the day you hit a dry spell, a creative block, happens much, much later in your career.

Stealing from Other DM's

The first, and easiest place to steal ideas from is the wide, massive group of other Dungeon Masters who are operating around the world. There are tons, oodles and oodles of resources out there with documents of other peoples' worlds, campaigns, dungeons, NPC's and any other thing you might need. Check on youtube for any of the Chris Perkins campaigns, and spend an hour watching his campaign layout, then Google the name of the campaign and see if anyone else has already drawn up a copy of his dungeon maps. Below, you'll see a video of the Tomb of the Orc Slayer, a fantastic dungeon he ran for the creators of Robot Chicken. Honestly, this is one of the most successful dungeons I've ever run, and my players applauded me for its use. From the get-go...it was all stolen.

What's an even more effective theft is when you can wrap another dungeon master's idea into a larger campaign of your own. For instance, I used the Orc Slayer's tomb as a much, much larger dungeon, and only used pieces of it, specifically the fantastic trap room he installed into this dungeon.

Another way to steal from another DM is just to google the details you need. Need a coastal city? Google "sample d&d hex maps" and grab one that works for you. Do you need a dungeon? Try "small dungeon maps" or something similar, and just fill in the monsters and encounters as you need.

Even better, steal ideas from your own DM's. Are you in another campaign, and you really like the way the dungeon master ran the carraige race?

Stealing from Literature, Movies & TV

Do you have a favorite fight scene from a movie? How about the entrance to the caves in the 13th Warrior? Replicate it in your game. Was there a mystery you read that had a fantastic twist? Take the antagonist, and replace it with your recurring villain, and run with it. This is probably the easiest place to find inspiration, but it might be more difficult to directly steal it, since it won't provide you with pre-made details. However, the sources are endless. Watch Master and Commander of the Far Side of the World, and plan out the layout of a boat. Read Ivanhoe to make a hierarchy of royalty in your new country. Whatever you need, it has probably already been created in some of your favorite modes of entertainment.

Re-purposing D&D Modules

One of my favorite ways to expand a campaign is to incorporate an old module. For instance, against the slave lords has a great "you've been captured" module where you have to find your way out of an about-to-erupt volcano. I used it twice now, as a way out of a TPK. It gave players their next best chance to keep their characters, and some who died got to keep playing for one, extremely exciting campaign. Also, when they escaped, it provided the chance for more role playing as they tried to make it back home.

I've also taken the 3rd edition module the Forge of Fury to provide a great, well made dungeon in order to get the characters to increase from 3rd to 5th level when needed. It also fits wonderfully into other campaigns, as the dueregar dwarves running the forge could easily be swapped out for any other bad guys, like a thieves' guild, or an opposing nation of humans.

Never be worried about moving elements in and out of a module. For instance, the same stats for a dueregar could easily be used for a particularly surly human, or a drow, or any other opponent. A magical sword exists for the characters, but you won't want them to become overpowered? Swap it out for some other treasure that better fits your campaign style.

Crowd Sourcing Dungeons and Dragons Campaign Ideas

There are a ton of forums out there where you can ask questions of more seasoned dungeon masters. From what I have seen, browsing the forums to steal ideas, they are usually more than happy to help you find solutions to your queries. Also, since the DM's asking questions usually offer plenty of detail about the campaign they are asking for help with, you can even grab ideas from them, and adapt them into your own campaign as necessary.

Choose from the Best

The final note is this: don't steal from people who do a bad job. If you, as a consumer, didn't appreciate it, then there is no reason for you to subject your players to it. It's that simple.