Because as every DM and player knows, getting to the table can be the biggest challenge of the game…

It’s tough. Apparently some people just aren’t prepared to drop everything else in their lives to make time for DnD. It can be a big challenge in a campaign, making sure all (or at least enough) of your players are around the table for each session, while also ensuring that you play regularly enough to maintain the momentum of the story.

I recently decided to try something new. Instead of running a traditional campaign, I’ve started a series of one-shots with the premise that the players are part of an adventuring guild, and each game (a one session one-shot) is played with whoever is available from the pool of my DnD friends and associates. As we play more games, they will get to level up, and they can carry over any gold they earn and magical items they find/steal to the next game. And when the party levels up, everyone levels up, regardless of how many games they’ve actually been involved in. This is partly not to penalise players who have to miss some sessions but mainly because the complication of a party who are all at different levels is not something I want to be dealing with. It’s a game; we’re there to have fun and that includes the DM.

We played the first game last week and I thought it went very well. I over-prepared of course, because the deep, goosebump-inducing terror of any DM who is running their own home-brewed one-shot is running out of material with half the session to go. I’ve played in a session that was almost entirely improv-ed and it was… not great. I always try and avoid that for myself as a DM.

I’m giving the party a geographical starting point for each one-shot. Yes, it’s a tavern and yes I know: tavern in DnD… how original! But the thing is, I love taverns – both as a DM and as an actual irl person. And practically speaking, I needed somewhere friendly and easy for the party to meet their guild leader and collect their mission. So I made a choice. Was it a good choice? I guess we’ll see…