Dungeons and Dragons games are filled with moments where the Dungeon Master is forced to improvise as events they had planned for and subverted by actions of the player characters. It can be one of the most fun and engaging moments in a good game, and is one of many fans biggest draw to Dungeons and Dragons. Naturally, those moments would extend to actual-play shows like Critical Role and the podcast Join the Party.
Eric Silver, DM and host for the Join the Party podcast, recently sat down with Game Rant to talk about DMing and podcasting in general. The conversation covered everything from the tools he prefers to use in running his games, creating interesting DnD character backgrounds, collective worldbuilding, amount of time to put in to prep, and improvisation. Even as a professional podcaster, Silver often finds his games running contrary to what he had expected for that session, and those moments are when improvisation and spontaneity really shine in DnD.
It’s very common for games of DnD to run off the rails as far as what the DM may have had planned, and no matter how much prep they’ve done or how many of the resources they’ve pulled from sourcebooks like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything or Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the DM will be forced to improvise. Many DMs enjoy those moments, as it lets them add a degree of life and spontaneity to their worlds. When asked about whether he’s had games run completely off track, Silver answered excitedly:
Oh, 100%. Absolutely. Usually the episodes in the middle of arcs, where it’s like, okay, I have no idea what’s going to happen. And then the guardrails are off, where I’m leading them into the next stage of the campaign, then I have no idea what they’re going to do next. And they routinely surprise me. They make choices that I don’t think they’re going to do. They’re bolder than me, they surprised me with things that I said, like three episodes ago, and then they’re on, they’re on top of it.
But, I mean, I love it. I really, really love it. Honestly, I’ve gone into episodes with like two sentences of prep, because I would rather throw myself into that than get surprised and have to throw out notes that I’ve already written down. You know, what I’m saying is like, it scares me more and keeps me more off balance. If I thought something was gonna happen, and they take a totally left turn, I’m like okay, this one’s going to be an improv heavy episode and I need to lean on the things I already know about the world.
Many newer DMs struggle with figuring out how much time they should devote to prepping their next DnD game. It’s a natural feeling to want to create the most fleshed-out version of a homebrew world or to spend the time to fully realize canon settings like that of the new Candlekeep Mysteries. But DnD is of course, a game, and many can’t spare hours upon hours to create every detailed note that they need in order to play. When asked about how much time he spends prepping versus improvising, Silver said:
Good question, there is a lot of work that I just kind of do ambiently in my brain, like I just love world building. And I love doing these things and keeping secrets from my players. And maybe when I’m at the beginning of an arc, like a few episode arc, I’m going to do a lot of world building. But I try to hew to this maxim that I heard on the internet somewhere…that you should never prep more than half of the time you’re going to play…
…I really try to give myself just bullet points, unless I’m doing something a little bit more specific, like setting up for a fight and that’s going to be a full episode. Yeah, then I go crazy. And I do like two, three hours of prep. But I really, really try not to do too much prep, because then you lose the spontaneity of the game itself. And then all of that world building that I did all that characterization, I did have NPCs then like, what did I do it for?
Delving into the world of DnD and TTRPGs in general can seem daunting to new players and DMs at first. The game draws on skills that not everyone has developed naturally, but knowing the right ways to plan and improvise can turn a so-so session into one that players will talk about years later. There’s a lot players and DMs need to know, but knowing to expect an amount of improvisation is something even professional podcasters like Eric Silver keep memorized.
Join the Party releases every other Tuesday wherever podcasts can be streamed.
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