Today we’re posting episode 6 of our Guardians of Indir Dungeons & Dragons 5e campaign, entitled “Old Gigner Ale.” This was the second half of recording session two; a session that was cut shorter than most sessions before or since (so we’re only getting two episodes from it). In this episode, the players consider magic and some new NPCs at the Dragon’s Blood tavern.
One thing that I encourage DMs – new and old alike – to do is to incorporate stuff from the players into the game. Starting with episode 1, I’ve been doing that by asking questions of the players: where are you? Is it a wilderness, a farm, a town, or a city? What are the challenges? What races are preeminent, if any? What is the money called? Who are your trainers?
I also encourage you DMs to take any passing comment from the players at the table – whether it is a joke or a reference to something else outside of the game – and see whether you can incorporate that in some way into the world or the narrative. This is a fun method for discovery, where the players may give you input and ideas without knowing that they’re doing it. I’ve already woven several such things into the Guardians of Indir campaign, though not all of them have surfaced yet by this episode.
Finally, I encourage DMs to consider incorporating references to stuff outside of the game session into the campaign. Not personal stuff, usually, but as a DM one can always be looking for ideas. Of course you can include pop culture references, but that’s not the main idea I’m suggesting here. Things like real-world street names, actual business names, setups for jokes…these are fun references to the real world that your players may get, too. Incorporating those ideas can be very entertaining, especially if there’s something that the players know as well.
Some of you may have read the episode title and shaken your heads at my typo. That’s cute. We bought some soda from our local supermarket the day before recording session 2, and the kids were tickled that the cash register rang up our purchase as “GIGNER ALE” instead of ginger ale. So naturally I brought that into the game, and our game benefits from the mistake some clerk made a long time ago when entering the product details in the store database. So the typo is an intentional reference. You can decide how much the kids enjoyed the reference as you listen to the episode.
Anything can be inspiration. Pay attention! Take notes! Bring in material from everywhere – your game will very likely be richer for it.