Dungeon Mastering, if you're good, is not a hobby.
It's a career.

T h e   c r e a t i o n   a n d
e x e c u t i o n   o f   a   c a m p a i g n   t h a t   w i l l   c o m p l e t e l y   e n g r o s s   p l a y e r s   a n d   k e e p   t h e m
h a p p y   a n d   e a g e r   t o   p l a y   m o r e   i s   a   t a s k   o n
p a r   w i t h   f i n d i n g   t h e   H o l y   G r a i l .   I t ' s   t o o
m u c h   w o r k .   B e s i d e s ,   i t ? s   n o t   e x c e e d i n g l y
p r o f i t a b l e .

S o   w h a t   c a n   w e   d o   a b o u t   i t ?
Q u i t   o u r j o b s ,   l e a v e   s c h o o l ,   a n d   m a k e   t h e   p l a y e r s s u p p o r t   u s ?
U n f o r t u n a t e l y ,   n o .

W h a t   w e   d o
i s   f i n d   a   w a y   t o   s k i m p   o n   t h e   l a b o r   w i t h o u t
c u t t i n g   d o w n   o n   t h e   e x c i t e m e n t   a n d   s u s p e n s e   w e   w o r k   s o   h a r d   t o   b u i l d   u p .   E v e r y
g o o d   c a m p a i g n   h a s   f i v e   b a s i c   e l e m e n t s :

continuity, character, competence, creativity  and  cooperation.

If you're able to maintain all five in your campaign then you're
way ahead of most of us -- and you're
probably spending a lot of time dungeoneering (or wishing you were). There
are shortcuts to achieving all five of the
basic campaign elements that take some of
the wear and tear off your overworked
graymatter. They are necessarily of a general nature -- specific suggestions are obviously impossible --
but astute application of these principles can save loads of time and lots of browbeating.

I. Continuity
Continuity in a campaign is a very complex thing. It is that in a campaign which
makes it more than just a series of dungeons, and that which ties all of the dungeons together into a cohesive whole. Many
DMs have trouble with continuity. It
requires more than a little preparation,
often mundane, that is not directly linked to
adventuring. A campaign consists of much
more than a group of bloodthirsty adventurers going out and killing things, stealing
their money and magic, then dropping by
the local village only to be off again in a few
days. There have to be solid reasons for
adventuring above and beyond the joys of
fighting and goldmongering. What about
revenge? Fear? Altruism? The trick here is
to make the characters? lives much more
than an episodic smattering of unrelated
activities, like some TV adventure series.
You need to give them the continuity and
uniformity of a good novel?s protagonists.
This is all easier said than done. The
most important thing to do is to plan in  sets
of actions rather than dungeon-by-dungeon.
Have your dungeons linked together, either
directly or indirectly. An excellent example
of this is  the Against the Giants/Descent
into the Depths  series of AD&D? modules
from TSR, Inc. Each dungeon logically
follows its predecessor; the transitions are

smooth and the challenges widely varied.
Many of TSR?s AD&D modules have been
published as sets, and this is not a bad
example to follow.
Serially ordered dungeons are not always
feasible, however, so there remains the
problem of overall continuity. There are
three tricks you can use here. The first is to
throw in some mundane personality, event,
or item that keeps cropping up when the
character makes it back home, such as a
wife, an ill mother, robberies in the character?s home, etc. Make the player realize that
his character has to live in a world where
life goes on even when he isn?t around;
even the above-all-the-little-things-in-life
heroes have little things going on in their
lives. There is also the ?old enemy,? that
scoundrel who pops in occasionally between
adventures to make life difficult for characters. Players love old grudges. One party
met up with a nasty fellow called Ollog
when everyone was at first level ? and they
were seventh level before Ollog finally
ceased to be a nuisance. Unlike the antihero,  which we?ll discuss a bit later, the old
enemy is not part of actual adventuring. He
is, rather, a byproduct of it who always
manages to escape at the last minute.

The third trick is especially tricky. I call it
?the hub of all activity.? You come up with
something, be it a magic item, prophecy, or
personage, that is the center and cause of a
party?s activity throughout most of their
adventures. The ?hub? of one campaign is
a mage called Amathar. The poor adventurers keep running into magic items of his
creation, agents in his pay, old acolytes of
his ? and even the Archmage himself on
occasion. They all hate him, but their most
powerful magic was created by Amathar for
Amathar: he is the hub of all activity. It is
very important to keep up a thick veil of
mystery about the hub. The interconnections between various adventures should be
vague at best, and the players may not
realize each piece of the puzzle is related to
the whole until several adventures later. Be
careful that the hub doesn?t escape your
control, because once you start it, it will
quickly develop a life of its own. The party
must be spiralled toward the hub gradually,
over a period of years, and you should let it
be known (if necessary) in no uncertain
terms that a more direct path to the answer
is one leading to sure destruction.
All three of these devices will spark continuity in the campaign; they let the characters know that their past really affects them
as ours does us, and gives the impression of
a whole to a life consisting only of fragments. Without that, players find it very

difficult to relate to and maintain their
characters, and the whole campaign falls
apart.

II. Character
Everybody has to be somebody. Good
players will usually freely develop and faithfully play a character?s personality in a roleplaying game, complete with idiotic
idiosyncracies and inexplicable personal
preferences. Even so, a good DM will give
every character a focal point for his life, or
something that will make him feel important or special.
There are several ways of doing this, but
in whichever method you choose, be
extremely careful not to force the player
into anything. If he feels you?re trying to
script the character?s life, the player will
lose interest in the game almost immediately. This is a major cause of character
demise or ?player dropout? in AD&D
gaming. Many players are perfectly content
to role-play a hero?s companion, and when
you try to make them become heroes, those
players get upset. Players have been known
to build their characters? personae around
the fact that the characters always tried to
be heroes but failed, and  then  the heroes
came gallantly to their rescue. That?s okay;
it?s the players? game. Let them play it as
they will.
For those fledgling heroes, though, it is a
great help to have something to grasp and
mold their personalities around. Four
options are immediately apparent: the
quest,  the  magic item,  the  anti-hero  and the
destiny;

The  quest  is by far the least desirable of
these options. There are several reasons for
this, not the least of which is a quest?s temporal nature. Quests should be accomplished fairly quickly; if not, they become
tedious and boring. There is also the question of free will. If a character is  quested,  he
loses much of his free will. His destiny is
dictated by the quest and he is powerless to
change it, which irritates the player to no
end.

The other options are much more attractive. The  magic item  is the best. It offers
the greatest variety of adventures that can
be built around it and at the same time
increases rather than restricts a player character?s freedom. One of Amathar?s creations
in the previously described campaign served
quite handily in this regard. An elven
magic-user character was in a party with
three paladins, and was getting something
of an inferiority complex. He didn?t fight
well, and by the time he got his spells off the
paladins had either destroyed or subdued

w h a t e v e r   i t   w a s   h e   w a s   m a g i c k i n g .   W e l l ,   h e
c a m e   i n t o   t h e   p o s s e s s i o n   o f   a n   i t e m   c a l l e d
the  Strange of Amathar,  which changed all
that. He is now the most powerful member
of the party (and, accordingly, the most
beset with problems) and has saved the
entire group on numerous occasions.
It is necessary that the item be an original
creation, with a background and potential
befitting an artifact, so be very wary of its
potential for upsetting the game balance.
The item might increase or decrease in
power as the character rises in level, or
make its usage nigh as costly to the wielder
as the victim. Charged items usually won?t
work for this purpose; they?re too temporary, making them very ineffective unless
they have absorption capabilities (e.g. staff
of the magi)  that recharge them.

The anti-hero is especially effective
against fighters, although in my campaign
two rival magic-users once destroyed half a
city. You can create an incredibly nasty
NPC that, without apparent provocation,
devotes his life to making a player character
miserable. The anti-hero torments, chides,
and humiliates the character with a constant
stream of affronts that may include assaulting and kidnapping family members and
retainers, laying traps for the PC, spreading
rumors about the PC, and so on. Unlike the
?old enemy? described above, this nemesis?
offenses are constant and precede any actual
adventuring to the land in which the antihero resides. It should be several game

years before the character can effectively
challenge his adversary, and the hatred
between characters should be very real and
very intense on both parts. Remember not
to get carried away, which it is very easy to
do. Make the character?s pride the primary
target, but don?t humiliate the PC to the
point where the player simply quits. Allow
the character some retribution occasionally
to keep him going.

The  destiny  is the hardest of all to DM,
the most complex to prepare for, and the
hardest to justify. But players love it. Basically, the DM creates a set of prophecies
surrounding a character or an item that
character possesses, and then administrates
its fulfillment. The prophecies must be
vague and leave plenty of room for error
because ? I guarantee it ? someone will
do something that threatens to invalidate
the entire thing. Once upon a time a PC in
my campaign was prophesied to slay a pit
fiend in an epic battle. He had to be a paladin, right? Wrong. He was a magic-user
with a measly 28 hit points who, suddenly
and with much bravado, leapt upon the
devil and magic jarred it, magic resistance
and saving throw notwithstanding. A good
variation on the destiny theme is the ?eternal champion? concept in which a great
hero is continually reborn in new bodies ?
one of them a PC. What player wouldn?t
love being compared with Elric,
Hawkmoon, Corum, and their ilk? You
need to be very careful with this kind of

character history manipulation. One slip
can take all the mystery out of the campaign, and players love finding that one
tiny hole in your plans.

I I I . C o m p e t e n c e



If you feel inclined to Dungeon Master,
there are only two things you really need to
be a pretty good one, aside from an active
imagination. The first, of infinite import, is
a working knowledge of the rules. You don?t
have to be a ?textpert? capable of rattling
off the stats of every single monster in both
the Monster Manual and the FIEND
FOLIO? Tome: just know enough so that
you know what you?re doing. A player at
OrcCon last year boasted of killing six
Tiamats and three Bahamuts. Anyone who
has read the books knows this is impossible.
The second requirement of a competent
DM is a sense of the dramatic. A Dungeon
Master has to know, often instinctively, how
to build suspense and climax it for maximum effect. He has  to  lend variety and
substance to as many as a hundred NPCs,
perhaps more, in every session. A DM is
basically a playright for characters in need
of a play. If the play is found lacking, the
players will take their characters elsewhere.
This is not to say that only good actors and
good writers can be good DMs. We?ve all
read enough and seen enough movies to
have developed some sense of drama, but it
takes time and practice to mature any talent. Simply keep the game moving at all

t i m e s   w h i l e   y o u ? r e   a t   t h e   p l a y i n g   t a b l e ;
d o n ? t   l e t   f r e q u e n t   d i g r e s s i o n s   o r   b r e a k s   t o
l o o k   u p   t h e   r u l e s   b o r e   y o u r   p l a y e r s .   I f
y o u ? r e   d e s p e r a t e l y   u n s u r e   o f   s o m e t h i n g ,
t h e n   l o o k   i t   u p ,   b u t   d o n ? t   b e   a f r a i d   t o   m a k e
some snap rulings. If you?re wrong, there?s
u s u a l l y   n o   h a r m   d o n e .   Y o u   s h o u l d   a l w a y s
h a v e   v i t a l   s t a t i s t i c s   ( i . e .   H P ,   A C ,   # A t ,   e t c . )
w r i t t e n   i n t o   t h e   k e y .   I f ,   a s   p l a y   c o n t i n u e s ,
y o u   f i n d   a n   ? o f f i c i a l ?   r u l e   i n c o n v e n i e n t   o r
a w k w a r d ,   t h e n   b y   a l l   m e a n s   d e v e l o p   y o u r
own  way of handling the situation. Remember that ?the play?s the thing.? No one
grades your adherence to the rule books ?
in fact, I know of one group that plays
AD&D adventures without  dice.

If anything at all helps to keep the game
moving and saves work, it is the efficient
and frequent use of playing aids. You?d be
surprised (or would you?) how many people
spend money on aids and then don?t use
them. If you?ve got it, use it. A DM designing a campaign needs all the help he can
get. Published modules are invaluable as
both time-savers and gap-fillers, but never
run a module straight off the shelf. Adapt it
to fit your party?s personality. Most modules can stand (and some need) great
amounts of revision. For example, TSR?s
module L1,  The Secret of Bone Hill,  has as
its primary mission the cleaning out of a
mansion infested with humanoids and
undead. The party I ran it on spent scant
minutes  in the mansion: their primary mission was to assassinate the Duke of Restenford. Although the module was excellently
written, it didn?t fit the personality of the
party. Never be afraid to alter anything if
you think it?ll work better than the original
presentation.

For those AD&D gamers just getting
started, some playing aids are indispensible.
Nothing will speed up a game more than a
set of DM screens, be they homemade or
storebought. You may want to make a supplemental screen for thief abilities, equipment cost, and spell charts, and
wandering-monster tables. If you need a
world to DM, there are many available at
gaming shops. You?ll also need a city.
Judges Guild has several on the market; for
general use  City State of the World
Emperor  is the best. If you operate out of a
particularly unruly campaign land, you
may opt for  City State of the Invincible
Overlord,  wherein trolls and rangers share
tables in taverns. Without these, or comparable works of your own design, your campaign will be a pale shadow of what it could
be.

IV. Creativity
Creativity is the cornerstone of AD&D
gaming. If a campaign is to survive, it can?t
be a repetitive series of hack-and-slay forays
into the underworld. There must be a wide
variety of settings, goals, and obstacles to
maintain player interest. A good hack-andslay dungeon is by far the most popular
type ? I know a ninth-level paladin who
endures his expeditions into the Nine Hells
only if he can go off fighting orcs back home

? but these dungeons can get very dull
very fast.
How can you make it easier to be creative? That?s simple: plagiarize. Plagiarism
is perhaps the Dungeon Master?s most
valuable tool next to his own imagination. I
do  not  mean you should take your favorite
fantasy book and convert it into a dungeon,
which is very easy and appallingly common.
All that will result is a lifeless rerun or an
unmitigated disaster. Players never do what
you expect them to do, and if you try to
force them into a plot of your own devising,
they?ll do everything they can to make life
for you unliveable. They won?t do it on
purpose, of course, but they?ll manage.
When you feel the need to plagiarize,
only glean a few of the best ideas from the
book or movie, and work them into an
original or modified setting or plot. This is
called ?creative plagiarism.? Your job is to
set up the general setting and plot, not
dictate all the action. A series of campaign
adventures can be a plagiarist?s paradise ?
one I know of took its basic plot and setting
from Stephen Donaldson?s first  Covenant
series with a few items from the movie The
Vikings  and Roger Zelazny?s  Dilvish the
Damned  to confuse things. Players love
romping in places and with people they?ve
read about, but you have to maintain
enough mystery and suspense to keep them
guessing about what is going to happen
next. Even though several players in the
above campaign were familiar with the
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,  they
never found an easy solution to their problems. Keeping the challenge alive is the key
to good plagiarism. Your own original creation will often be your best, and you should
never be content to let others do most of the
work. Keep the juices flowing, but when
you do run into dry spells, don?t worry
about tapping another?s imagination.

V. Cooperation
This is it, folks: the ultimate work-saver.
Share the chores with somebody else. You
can?t do it all alone, believe me. If your
players call every day to ask, ?Can we play
today?? and if you have as much trouble
saying ?no? as I do, then you?ll soon be
DMing completely off the top of your head,
trying to referee half-formed adventures,
and eventually spoiling the hard-won continuity of your campaign. Sharing the work
will take a lot of pressure off you, both as
creator and administrator. It?ll give you a
chance to play, and you do need to play to
evolve properly as a DM. When one of two
or more participants serves as Dungeon
Master for a certain session, it?ll give the
other(s) a little time to relax and prepare
what comes next.

There are two ways to accomplish this.
You and the other DMs can each run campaigns independent of one another that
occur in different time-space continuums,
or you can share the same campaign. The
first option allows unlimited freedom for all
DMs. They can alter the laws and features
of their respective universes at will without

endangering the other?s work. The problem
is in the human element. The players will
undoubtedly prefer one campaign to the
other and want to play it more and more
frequently. This may lead to a group split,
which is something no one wants.
The other option allows more interaction
and idea-swapping between the Dungeon
Masters, but it has problems of its own that
fit neatly under the heading of consistency.
It is imperative that consistency in the
obstacle/reward ratio be kept. If one of you
has a penchant for giving away megamagic
and other DMs prefer the judicious and
considered use of magic, then there will be a
few problems, to put it mildly, The two (or
more) of you should work to become acclimated to each others? gaming style and
preference, so that problems will eventually
work themselves out.
Another thing to watch for is rule uniformity. The most logical thing to do is stick
to the books: no new character classes, no
newly revised combat procedures, no new
weapon proficiency rules, however ?official? they may be, without the consent of
the other DM or DMs and your players. If
all of them fully understand the changes,
then go ahead and use them. Don?t make
any major changes in procedure without
consulting your comrades. If you keep up a
consistent approach to the game, you?ll find
the transitions between Dungeon Masters
perfectly natural.

Since cooperation is such a vital part of
any successful campaign, here?s a word of
advice. Only play in campaigns with people
you like. This does not mean people you
can  tolerate ? tolerance wears thin in the
heat of the game. If you genuinely like the
people you play with, everything will be
that much easier. Of course, playing with
new people is a great way to make friends
(especially at tournaments and conventions), but for day-to-day campaign play,
keep it close.

Cutting down on your work load does not
compromise your ability or your effectiveness as a Dungeon Master. The purpose of
AD&D gaming is enjoyment and escapist
entertainment. Let it stay that way. DMing
can easily slip from the realm of gaming to
the all-too-real world of work, and when
that happens it?s easier than not to forget
the whole thing. You obviously take pride in
what you do, or you wouldn?t do it. The
feeling you get when characters barely make
it out of your labyrinth alive, struggling to
haul up their just rewards, is unequalled in
all of gaming, and that feeling can only be
achieved if you practice these five principles
in your campaign. That is never easy to do.
The tricks of the trade offered here do not
free you from the responsibilities of creation. Used properly, they will make creation
much easier and emancipate you from
much of the tedium and needless drudgery
that accompanies creation. The success of
your campaign rests entirely on your shoulders; it just shouldn?t take so much work.
After all, playing games is supposed to be
fun,  right?