Disagree With Me If U Want But I Think It Would Be So Hilarious If, After Jeremy Becomes One Of The First

Do you have any advice for someone about to dm for the first time? I'm less worried about running the session than how the hell do you plan one?

Btw Iove your art and it's inspired me to try out line work again

Thanks! And hey, that's a good question.

Here's the thing I've learned as a DM - you don't have to plan EVERYTHING.

In fact, the less you plan, the more prepared you'll be!*

*Some restrictions apply

How I like to think of when I DM is that me and my players sit in the middle of a WHEEL of possibilities. It looks something like this:

Every session you start with, you have a set amount of possible go-to points. These are limited. Usually, your party won't go from sipping drinks at a tavern to walking out the door and fighting cult members in ONE session.

The possibilities are endless, so what you need to prepare is just the next few steps. In the above image, what I mean is that they first two darker shades are representative of what you need to have prepared immediately, and the lighter shades are plans you can have on the back burner, but don't need to flesh out.

As your party makes choices and travels outside of the Starting Spot, you can prepare the NEXT steps based on the ones they chose.

So, say your party is in your tavern, and they decide to go to the Adventuring Guild to look for a job. You don't HAVE to prepare the Heist Mission in the Wizard's tower for that - you can know it's a possibility, but once they've made their first choice, you have a direction.

You can then kind of visualize what their next steps are.

Of course, this wheel isn't one way! Your players could always just... hop over to an adjacent topic! If they're solving a mystery, that could link up to a Cult involvement. And from there, they can discover a Secret Hideout for the Cult, which you already know was a possibility if they were to go into the forest.

And once that sort of adventure has started, you can go ahead and think about what other things you had planned out might link up to or evolve from where they are.

At that point, it's like playing a giant board-game. Which involves laying down track in front of an oncoming train.

My recommendation is that you keep a few things on hand which can be used anywhere:

a few maps that somewhat relate to multiple things on your map (for example, a dungeon-looking map that could be a Secret Hideout OR the Wizard's tower)

Some named NPCs - at least one per location that you can throw up immediately when they arrive

a few puzzles/plotpoints which can act as a placeholder while you think of details (for example, a Mystery can be hard to think of on the spot. Give them some random clues, such as a missing person, a few discarded items, etc and then take your time before the next session to link those items together!)

The rest is.. well... just making it up as you go along!

Of course, that's just MY personal way of doing things. Some people prepare way less, and some prepare way more. It's just all up to how quickly your players move/how comfortable you are with details.

MY TA SHOT SOMEONE IN THE FOOT AND THE PROFESSOR WAS SO FUCKING QUICK LMAOOO

Did I mention Robert Frost was an absolute babe back in the day?

The poet guy

all queer history on here is just US-American or maybe sometimes some UK history as well and it makes me sad that there’s so little information about other countries’ queer history on here :(

thank you casey

pynch moments from the dreamer trilogy that turned me into an insane person

to go with my very long raven cycle quote list here

Adam. Adam Parrish was the destination of this road trip. Is there any version of you that could come with me to Cambridge? 

Adam. Ronan missed him like a lung.

He could feel his pulse thudding in his jaw. He could hear it in his ears. It sounded like everyone else’s heartbeat, he thought. Just like Adam’s heart when it was resting on his chest. 

Ronan’s attention stuck on his hands. Lovely boyish hands with prominent knuckles, gaunt and long like his unfamiliar face. “Who’s that?” Gansey had asked, and Ronan hadn’t answered, just kept hanging out the window. As they passed, Adam’s expression was all contradictions: intense and wary, resigned and resilient, defeated and defiant. Ronan hadn’t known anything about who Adam was then, and, if possible, he’d known even less about who he himself was, but as they drove away from the boy with the bicycle, this was how it had begun: Ronan leaning back against his seat and closing his eyes and sending up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God: please. 

Keep reading

when mrs. marks says that her niece is in a play with your son

charlie removes cameron from their gc at least 10x a day and neil adds him back every time, its just a constant cycle and i stand by this

reblog and put in the tags your Tumblr History. How long have you been here? How many URLs have you gone through? Is this your OG blog? How many sides do you have? Etc…

Dorian: *shows Basil his corrupt portrait*

Basil: