One Page Dungeons: how they can save any DM 100s of hours & vastly improve their campaign
Discovering One page Dungeons (OPD) changed everything for me.
The saying goes:
"Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal."
So "steal"! -> There are many dozens of free, amazing one-shots and especially One Page Dungeons where someone has created a very original premise, location and slaved for hours and hours over a beautiful map that will draw you and your players in.
Generally speaking they will be 3 to 8 rooms that are keyed (I find 6 about the sweet spot for a 3.5 hour session)-
Usually, if you read and are focused you can totally understand the premise, what is in each room and how to run the entire thing in about 25 minutes.
If you were to draw even an extremely basic map and key the rooms yourself you could easily be busy for an hour and half, if not far more.
A great picture and map does tell a 1000 words. And makes your prep many hours shorter and your session way more fun. Why re-invent the wheel or spend 4 o 12 hours preparing a session when you run a far better session by simply reading and slightly modifying one for 1 to 2.5 hours?!
The best thing you can do with an existing One Page Dungeon is iron out any kinks or add things you prefer. Drop in stuff that you know your players will love, embed it into your world or connect it with a recurring NPC, inside joke or storyline. Punch up the entire -already super cool- thing!
Every year there is the One Page Dungeon Contest:
https://www.dungeoncontest.com/
Each year brings at least 20 OPDs, more than a few of them very good to amazing. They have been doing it since 2009, the archive alone means that most groups could play weekly for years with these existing free OPDs alone.
Yet I would never suggest any DM limits themselves to only the entries in the OPDContest, there are scads of amazing similar creations floating around, for free, on some other sites like: social media, pinterest, forums and lots of places online. Some of my favourite one's:
But why?
Because:
*I am not great at drawing and certainly not at drawing an intriguing and very original, detailed map or location, fast.
*A few DMs not only love prep and they even have time to put in 4 to 12 hours before every single session. I do not mind prep, it is quite fun but in practice I have 1 to 3 hours, max. for each session.
I want to make that time count, optimize, to ensure I am not phoning it in and my players and myself will have an amazing time.
Even if DMs start out with tons of time and motivation, life happens. People get kids, responsibilities, have a busy period at work or get very into other hobbies and more.
(Forever) DM burn-out is very real and has ended many groups. If there is only one person that regularly wants to DM, unless they have amazing work-life balance or energy, expecting them to happily spend up to 12 hours on preparation every two weeks, much less every week,.. is not a fair expectation.
I am all about keeping groups going and that everyone has fun and is excited for the next time, that "everyone" very much includes the DM as well.
OPDs are one of the main tools in my toolbox to accomplish the best possible sessions with the most minimal prep time practically possible.
The other four are:
*Random tables
*D&D Ambience & Soundscapes
*Amazing Monster or Creature books and Manuals
*Great illustrations and pictures of anything fun, weird, intriguing or mysterious, that my players will encounter
But I will talk about those another day and in other blog posts.