Hi, first post here. I've been DMing 5e for my friend group for going on 6 years now. In the last year I've been trying to use the principles of proactive roleplay, to highly mixed success. We play remotely, due to geography, which obviously introduces quirks and nuances not present at an in person table. Personally, I think it weakens the community element, but short of a significant lottery win I don't see how to change that. But getting people to send me their goals is unreasonably difficult. I've made it as low friction as I can, with a shared Google Sheet. They can punch in goals, things they want their character to buy, a wishlist of sorts for items, a column for little downtime activities. They've got a box each to tick when they're done. Doesn't mean I need a weekly update, so long as that box gets ticked each week and I know I can export that to a to-do list for prep. In the last 3 months I can only count 2 weeks where that tickbox has been done by the whole group. This week, none of them did so. We've had discussions, and people have said in the past that they're all in on the idea; they like it and think it makes for a better campaign. But they don't follow through on their part. 2 of the 4 have DMed, so they know that prep can be a slog. Something a player wants to do, that they came up with with a few minutes, can turn into hours of finding/making maps, picking enemies, writing NPCS etc etc. Right now, I'm in a bit of a hole of being angry and disappointed. I've written 3 different drafts of what I want to say, but I don't know if any really hit the core issue well enough. Part of me wants to just take "carry on and try to do better" off the table. We've been there before, and people did not do better. Some did worse. The other ideas I have are less satisfying, like dropping the approach entirely, or don't hit the real problem, like moving to a fortnightly game to give them more time. So how do people keep their groups on track?

I hope that this kind of post is allowed. If not, please accept my apologies, I just wanted to post a plug for a great resource that I just came back from. https://dndinacastle.com/products/dmu This last weekend was the first "Dungeon Master University" run by the DND in a Castle company. It was held in Atlanta and lasted 2 days, and it was an incredible experience and opportunity to learn from many of the best in the business. I got to take a Worldbuilding class from Keith Baker (creator of Eberron) and Monte Cook (lead director for 3rd edition D&D and worldbuilder of many many D&D worlds). It was an incredibly educational opportunity, and a hell of a lot of fun. Other classes included Skill Building, Campaign Design and Career Building. There were great seminars on how to run puzzles in great ways from the lead puzzle designer for many major adventures, and how to run games for high level characters from B Dave Walters (who is all over the internet for being generally great as a DM and storyteller) and Live Streaming by Chris Perkins (lead designer for much of 5th edition D&D who now works for Critical Role/Darrington Press). There were "Game Labs" where you could run a game for others including a faculty member and get great in depth real time feedback and advice on how to improve as a DM. I got to play in a game set in Eberron with Keith Baker, and it was really fun. But I think the best part of it was just wandering around and meeting dozens of other cool people who all had the same passionate interest in DMing as I do. I'm usually a really introverted person, but this weekend I had no problem just sitting down for dinner with a group of random strangers and immediatley starting up a conversation in a great welcoming community. It's not cheap, but if you can swing it, I highly recommend it as a resource for becoming a better DM.

Hello everyone! Excited to have found this community. I’m a new game master and loved the proactive campaign book when I read it a couple of years ago. So, when I found out a sequel was coming, I started googling and came to this site! Woohoo! I have a practical question that I’d love some collected wisdom on: how do you provide just enough information about your world to give players enough to build interesting and informed goals (as if they have been living in that world). Especially if you are using published settings like Midgard (Kobold Press) or Fearun/Forbidden Coast (D&D). Maybe this will be addressed in the upcoming book, or if this was explicitly handled in the first please let me know! Been a year or two since I last read it.

I’ve been working on a homebrew campaign setting and campaign for about 4-5 months now. The group is set to have its session 0 in late January. The campaign setting seems fine, just some short gazetteers on nations, cities, leader NPC’s, etc. As for the campaign I may be overdoing it, over planning, and frankly I think it’s set up for reactive gaming. I finished the book Collaborative Campaign Design a couple of weeks ago and I just started Proactive Roleplaying. I’m only one chapter in and I think I’ve gone way overboard on the campaign. I have created an entire outline for the campaign already. I started with the BBEG, made 4 lieutenants, one per tier-arc, and worked backwards to make this campaign outline. Now I haven’t planned every little detail. My plan was to give the players “missions” that they could choose from. However, I still think this is reactive gaming. The overall arc of the campaign is that a new leader took over a nation and has become a tyrant, attempting to control magic users, remove all influences of races other than human, etc. I based all this on the Earth Civil War from the 90’s Sci-fi show, Babylon 5. The players already know some of this as I gave them the following as the campaign pitch: The first campaign takes place in the Free Concord, a nation founded on liberty and open debate, now buckling under the rule of a new High Chancellor. You’ll begin the story as fugitives, pulled into a growing resistance as cities fracture, laws tighten, and magic itself comes under suspicion. This is a campaign focused on political intrigue, moral gray areas, and meaningful choices. It’s about deciding what freedom is worth as the costs continue to rise. So, they are expecting that. I already have the first two short adventures created. Should I just scrap all this work I’ve done and wait until session 0 to get the character’s goals? I’m sure I could probably work their goals into what I’ve already created somehow. As I read chapter 1 of Proactive Roleplaying, I thought to myself that I should just scrap it. Explain the campaign setting to the players at session 0, then let them decide where in the world they want to play, instead of forcing the Free Concord Civil War on them. What to do?

Is anyone a professional/paid DM? I'm hoping to write off all my D&D/TTRPG expenses and to do so I have to run enough paid games so that I can tell the IRS I'm serious about making money off this endeavor. I'd love to pick your brains about how you do it.