There aren’t many rock stars in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, but game director Jeremy Crawford might be as close as it gets. He was a lead rules designer for the tabletop RPG’s fourth and fifth editions, and he’s regularly gotten his hands dirty over the years by providing additional ‘Sage Advice’ judgement calls online. When a DM and a player reach a rules impasse, someone tends to say: “Let’s ask Jeremy Crawford”.
I received a rare invitation to join Crawford’s D&D table last week, and it wasn’t a surprise to see him signing copies of the new 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. What did surprise me is the main lesson I took away from our game – how to be a lazy Dungeon Master.
While setting up, Crawford explains that we’d be playing a pre-written adventure that was a mere half-page long. “I did all the prep I needed to do by running a mini adventure from the [2024] Dungeon Master’s Guide”, he adds. While Crawford tells me that the amount of pre-game prep he does “varies”, the point of this mini adventure is to show how much a DM can achieve with very little work.
“Even I, who have been DMing for decades, get strapped for time”, he says. “So we wanted to make this book full of pre-made things that make life easier for DMs.”
Crawford also says the DMG’s minimalist adventures are designed to leave enough space for creativity. “We have also done this to encourage DM improv”, he explains. As he does so, game designer James Wyatt is sitting at the table behind me, where he’ll apparently run the exact same adventure with a completely different style.
When I ask about his personal style of DMing, Crawford’s answer is player-focused. “As a DM, my mode is always to say yes. As long as the shenanigans entertain me, I’ll probably say yes.”
As the DnD one shot kicks off, the shenanigans come thick and fast. Our first attempt to use a new DnD magic item, the Hat of Many Spells, gives us swarms of butterflies rather than damage dice. Crawford rolls with the punches, giving us a generous chance to intimidate the enemy with our insect army.
“The DM’s role is to facilitate the fun of the players”, Crawford tells me. “I am always about listening to what the players want to do. D&D is basically improv, so I try to feed back on what the players are doing.”
It’s simple advice, yes. But it sends a clear message about the modern philosophy of Dungeons and Dragons. In the eyes of its top-level designers, this is not a game where you’re supposed to spend hours arguing about rules. It’s not a DM-versus-players setup. Instead, D&D in its current form is intended to be a loose, collaborative experience, where everyone can take part in shaping the fantasy world.
Crawford embodies this throughout our adventure. He creates space for players to invent backstory details on the fly, working these into the events of the game. He is accommodating when someone makes a rules mistake, allowing them to backtrack rather than face punishment.
He also makes being a lazy Dungeon Master look easy. There’s no battlemap or miniatures, no NPC backstories, and certainly no set outcome. Crawford brings fights to life by pairing rulings with constant narrative descriptions, and the encounters never feel unclear or confusing. A subtle voice here and there makes it easy to distinguish his Kobolds from his Gnomes, and he always knows how far away from a target you’re standing.
Crawford is by no means a Matt Mercer of DMing. He doesn’t have the polish you’d expect of a professional actor who knows they’re on camera. However, he juggles the multiple hats of a DM with an ease I know I’ve not reached yet. He can create fun with the barest levels of effort.
As my fellow party members convince a cult to kill each other in “the nastiest, bloodiest knife fight” that Crawford can summarize, I’m mulling on my own DMing skills. My current DnD campaign is a web of complex Google docs, painstakingly drawn maps, and custom miniatures. The recap document I keep for my players is currently 12,000 words long.
In the past, I would boast about how I’d prepared for every eventuality, but Crawford’s DMing makes me realize that, for me, a plan is a crutch. It protects me from having to truly improvise, to face a situation where I don’t have all the answers. Maybe after this game, I can learn to let go and be a little lazier.
If you’d like to try your hand at some lazy fifth edition, our guides to DnD classes and DnD races can help you get started fast. Or we can tell you some more fun facts from our time with Jeremy Crawford. For example, did you know we’ve been playing parts of his home campaign this entire time?
Source: Wargamer
