If you’re in the OSR scene online or just in the D&D scene on YouTube, you’ve probably seen Questing Beast’s video “5e DnD has a DM crisis” where the point of the video was that in the current culture of the 5e community, being a DM is incredibly taxing, difficult and overall not fun to prep for various reasons; for the most part the expectation of the players have on the DM to cater to them and provide an epic story, multiple voices, be a life coach (yikes) and have the story constantly revolve around the characters almost at all times.

I started out playing D&D and getting into TTRPG I believe around 2019, or whenever Ghost of Saltmarsh was released. I bought the core books, and played through Lost Mines of Phandelver with friends. I also bought the pre-written adventures to have a better grasp of how a campaign plays and looks. This was because the DMG, at the time, does not hold new DM’s hands through the process. No example dungeon, nor example encounters. No direct method of building a scenario at a glance at least. Now having more experience I do see the value in the 5e DMG often still revisiting the Appendix A, Chapter 3, and Chapter 5 for inspiration when I need an overview idea of an adventure I want to create, however it doesn’t come down to the DM’s level and speak to them in a direct and personal manner. Not only this but the methodology to creating encounters in 5e tedious at best.

Looking at other rulebooks that speaks to the DM for example B/X it gives you the stepping stones, the direct instructions and procedure to creating an adventure. The Basic Book presents the reader with monsters and how many can show up in a room or lair, a procedure to and step by step guide onto how to go ahead and stock a dungeon, a random dice method to decide how to stock dungeon rooms, and an example dungeon that showcases how to use the procedures and gives you the dungeon ready for play.

It recent times, modern DM’s are overly concern with either their own magnum opus, inspired by large adventure modules such as Curse of Strahd or Storm King’s Thunder (Because what other examples do they have?) or are attempting to create this massive narrative intertwined with twists, foreshadowing, symbolism and complex novel-esque character background for NPCs that will only appear once or twice while also trying to challenge their players as they grow stronger and stronger with each book or worse yet, stronger with every homebrew idea the DM thought would be a good idea without considering the ramification and scale of the change. It’s no surprise that DMs of the modern edition are burnt out, they have no guidelines to follow and then branch off of.
But DMing does not have to be this hassle nor massive responsibility to the point you are no longer a player but rather an entertainer for your friends; it can be this creative outlet which can bring joy and happiness to you, dungeon master, and your players around you without compromising your own needs and wants and more importantly, time and real life responsibilities. For this reason, I will be creating a series of blog detailing my method of creating engaging adventures, scenarios and a whole campaign if need be. I will be sharing what I have learned in the past year and how I’ve come to enjoy writing adventures instead of dreading and procrastinating on the session that will be starting in the next 10 minutes.

Introduction
Part 1: The Concept
Part 2: Brainstorming
Part 3: Mapping and Stocking the Dungeon.