42
submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) by Blurntout@lemmy.ca to c/dnd@lemmy.world

Hello friends first time DM here who foolhardily decided to jump into world building rather than running a cookie cutter adventure.

I’m hoping some battle tested dungeon masters could throw me a couple pointers on how you introduce players to your worlds to help flesh out my pages of notes 😅

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] dumples@piefed.social 9 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I started DMing in my own custom world to begin with. Its kind of freeing because you can just make EVERYTHING up and not have to worry about existing lore or cannon. I few things I would suggest is do a session 0 where you talk about your campaign and place the characters into the world. You can finalize building characters in the day and talk about the world that you are all jumping into.

Before your sessions 0 communicate out what you inspiration might be including specific references to media if applicable. For my first campaign it was "generic forgetten realms / dnd lore with more planar holes". Some other campaign pitches I have done are "cowboys and aliens", "U.S revolutionary war as seen by Hamilton in Dnd", "The Seige" and "Young world with big monsters". I am currently playing in a dnd campaign that was pitch as "animals as characters in a is redwall meets, Princess Mononoke meeting breathe of the wild campaign".

So keep it simple, give specific references to inspiration or theme if appliciable.

For the first session have a single hook and a single winnable combat ready. That is all you really need.

this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
42 points (95.7% liked)

Dungeons and Dragons

13704 readers
83 users here now

A community for discussion of all things Dungeons and Dragons! This is the catch all community for anything relating to Dungeons and Dragons, though we encourage you to see out our Networked Communities listed below!

/c/DnD Network Communities

Other DnD and related Communities to follow*

DnD/RPG Podcasts

*Please Follow the rules of these individual communities, not all of them are strictly DnD related, but may be of interest to DnD Fans

Rules (Subject to Change)

Format: [Source Name] Article Title

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS