One of the most important things I have learned while being a Dungeon master is to go with the unexpected when it happens. Some of the most interesting and lasting events in my campaigns where things that I didn’t plan for, but just happened straight out of the blue. This is an important thing for all dungeon masters to learn, not to plan every step of the journey in advance instead of letting moments play out freely allowing players to be a part of the creation process. By using their ideas, fears, and mistakes to build and enrich the world.

This has happened to me many times and some of the most interesting events have happened because of it. One such occasion happed under our first game session and it would define our game for months to come. During the game session, the players finished the adventure I had planned for them much faster than I had planned, so I needed to come up with more events. They had just arrived at I small town called Greenwall and It was at that time I decided to introduce a new nonplayer character for them, that would offer them a bounty contract. The nonplayer character was called Percy Greenwall the ruler of the town, but on top of that, he was also very annoying and condescending. I thought it would be very fitting for a spoiled rich kid to be acting this way and I also wanted to see if they would allow him to treat them like crap if he just paid them a lot of money to hunt down some rebels. Because when we played in the past, my players usually only cared about was getting money and experience points, but that was not what happened this time instead they went straight to the rebels that Percy wanted them to kill and joined them to take down Percy.

None of these things were part of my plan, because originally my plan was to use him only one or maybe two times. Instead, he became the main villain for the first months of the campaign, where they traveled around the area in search of allies to help them bring him down. Of course, they eventually defeated him in big showdown within Percy´s castle where everything started. But one thing that we all know is that in a magical world like dungeons and dragons nothing stays dead forever or you could say nothing never stays truly dead. This meant that the players had to once again travel to Greenwall and stop a resurrected Percy, which I think they enjoyed tremendously and who knows this might not have been the last time he shows up.



Once again, I will end with a few pieces of advice for other Dungeon masters out there. Firstly, don’t plan everything out in extreme detail because it might lead to the railroading of your players and this is something that no one likes. In my own opinion, there is more entertaining for a DM to not know everything in forehand and it will also improve your improvisation skills and that is something that you will need sooner or later. Secondly, listen to your players and use what they hate, like, fear, love in your game to create the perfect nonplayer characters. For example, maybe there is a righteous paladin who the players always have depended upon to help them I difficult situations and who knows maybe that same Paladin has made a pact with Orcus the demon lord of Undeath.

I hope you all found this first post entertaining and please leave questions and response.