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How To Run A Dungeon - Fixing The Lost Mine of Phandelver
Here’s the problem, if you grew up in the 90’s or later, and have only ever played 5e - it’s likely that your only detailed point of reference for what a dungeon experience is like comes from video games - maybe something like Zelda (Ocarina of Time - best game ever made. Fight me!) The issue here is that they teach the player that a dungeon is this linear place, to be solved in a set way, with battles in predefined places.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap, who’s having to write this on his wife’s laptop because his broke :(
TL;DR:
Lost Mine of Phandelver gives you dungeons but no guidance on how to run them well. Good dungeon play needs urgency, resource pressure, meaningful time tracking, and dynamic encounters. This post breaks down classic and modern dungeon crawl procedures; from Justin Alexander’s traditional dungeon turns, to The Angry GM’s Tension Pool, Goblin Punch’s Underclock, and Dungeon Masterpiece’s encounter tables — and then shows how to use them to make Phandelver’s dungeons tense, reactive, and actually fun to run.
Introduction
Are you trying to run Lost Mine of Phandelver? I ran it recently. Have you noticed how (despite being a ‘starter set’) it does absolutely nothing to teach you how to run a dungeon? Bummer right?! Literally - there’s arguably five dungeons in this module, and it doesn’t show you how to run them at all. In fact, the closest it comes is the final dungeon where it even acknowledges how boring it’s going to be, and weakly suggests rolling for random encounters on a d20 table as and when you feel it’s appropriate.
Do better, Lizards-Ate-My-Toast.
You see, if you don’t know what you’re doing with dungeons, they can very easily turn into this very boring, very samey experience, with your players meticulously checking every tile for traps as they move from room to room, occasionally interrupting monsters that have apparently been sat there for an eternity - waiting to meet the PCs! Meanwhile the PCs have been long resting every couple of encounters to make sure they’re at maximum power all the time. And my God, I’m bored just thinking about it!
The chief cause of this dry experience is that there's no urgency or risk management. So how do you get that, I hear you ask? Damned fine question if I may say so myself, pat yourself on the back. You my friend, should read on, because unless you’re particularly looking for a simple linear gauntlet of pre-defined encounters, you probably need a “Dungeon Crawl Procedure”.
What In The Name Of Sweet baby Jeebus Is A Dungeon Crawl?
Here’s the problem, if you grew up in the 90’s or later, and have only ever played 5e - it’s likely that your only detailed point of reference for what a dungeon experience is like comes from video games - maybe something like Zelda (Ocarina of Time - best game ever made. Fight me!) The issue here is that they teach the player that a dungeon is this linear place, to be solved in a set way, with battles in predefined places. It works in a videogame because of the spectacle and hand eye skill involved.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate well to TTRPGs I’m afraid and these games bear little resemblance to what a D&D dungeon is supposed to be.
The fact that people try to emulate these video game experiences is why they fall flat at the table. It’s why your players probably don’t like dungeons, and it’s why you probably don’t like running them.
So, What’s missing?
To run a better dungeon, I advocate for the following components:
There should be no predefined method or route for ‘completing’ the dungeon. The player’s motivations and methods should be their own, and you should expect them to shift as they learn new things and as the situation inside the dungeon develops.
The dungeon should be punishing, and it should be a place that drains resources which cannot be easily replenished whilst the characters remain inside. This could be HP, or light, or spell slots, or rations, or more likely - some combination thereof.
The dungeon should be dynamic. It should move and breathe, and be both proactive and reactive in response the player character’s trespass. There should be opportunities within for all the major pillars of play - combat, social, and exploration.
Time should matter, it should be tracked carefully. Time affects your resources, and the position of dungeon inhabitants, and wasteful players should feel all these factors as keenly as a pin in their arm.
Which brings us nicely onto the “how” part of this post. Well my dudes, you have options. You see, it’s been a hot minute since the 1970’s and quite a few people have stepped up to the mark and developed processes for running dungeons. Here’s a handful of them:
Dungeon Crawl Processes
Justin Alexander - So You Want To Be A Game Master
In his book, Alexander explains a very traditional style. It’s a method that’s as old as the hobby itself, and it sets the fundamentals of most of the methods to follow - tracking time, resources, generating improvised encounters, and the concept of a Dungeon Crawl as a minigame within D&D as legitimate as combat.
Marching Order
Getting players to declare a set marching order for the party up front solves a lot of hassles later on. As GM, now you know which characters are likely to trigger/spot traps, and which are likely to be picked off from the rear.
Dungeon Actions
After Marching Order, the next thing to define are the Dungeon Actions, these are not dissimilar in concept to the actions you can take in combat. Don’t read these as an absolute list, but rather as some common actions, which you can improvise upon as required.
This list includes, but is not limited to the following:
Move carefully (a snail’s pace. default movement speed to reflect the extreme caution of PCs moving through this pitch black, dangerous, scary environment).
Move fast (for when the PCs throw caution to the wind out of absolute necessity, or if they’re backtracking over a recently explored space).
Unlock a door.
Disarm a trap.
Investigate an area (getting more detail about some room feature than has been vaguely called out in the room overview).
Look for secret architecture (hidden doors, traps, pits).
Keeping watch (reducing/removing chance of being taken by surprise).
Casting a ritual spell.
Something else (talking to an NPC, loading your pockets with treasure, helping another PC, lighting a torch etc).
The idea here is that each player does one of these things per Dungeon Turn. Sometimes your players might want to do something so insignificant that you rule that they can have another action. This is fine. Trust your gut.
Dungeon Turn
This is an intentionally loosely defined amount of time - usually ten minutes (this is because ten plays nicely with many timed effects in D&D which are usually roundly divisible by this figure). Don’t sweat the precise granularity of it vs the actions taken in the Dungeon Turn, it requires not overthinking it in order to be effective.
Once the Dungeon Turn ends, the GM performs a bit of bookkeeping on their Dungeon Running Sheet. Justin Alexander features one on his website for you to print out and use:
The idea is that you record each ongoing item or spell effects duration per row, and then for each Dungeon Turn mark a tick in each row (all rows should read the same number of ticks in Alexander’s version, other designs may vary). When a given duration is met, that effect ends.
Whilst Alexander advocates doing this behind the scenes and making it feel less clunky and mechanically like a boardgame, other D&D scholars disagree. Dadi on Mystic Arts describes this process, but instead leans into the idea that the players should be aware of what’s going on behind the scenes to better inform their decisions, and thus debates.
You do you.
Regardless - there is one final step the GM takes as part of their bookkeeping.
Random Encounters
These are so important, and so many GMs are terrified of them in case they “ruin their story”. I say; it’s time to cowboy the chuff up, get comfortable with improv, and embrace the dice my friend! Seriously, stop worrying so much about game balance, and just trust your players to make the right choices to get out of whatever peril the dice serve up for them :)
Random encounters are valuable because they make your dungeon feel alive and dynamic. Rather than the players feeling safe that they can only encounter creatures as they travel to a new area, now, the creatures can come to them. Alexander recommends the following method:
Once you’ve done all your Dungeon Turn bookkeeping, roll a d8. A result of one means that an encounter will occur.
Roll on your pre-prepared Dungeon Encounter table to decide which encounter it will be.
Determine how far away the encounter is by rolling 2d6 x 10 feet.
Unless it’s obvious, make a 2d6 reaction check to determine the attitude of the creatures you’ve encountered. Not all encounters have to be fights.
Determine if one group is surprised by the other, usually Stealth vs Perception checks. Any players taking the ‘keep watch’ Dungeon Action infer a better probability of success here.
The Angry GM - The Tension Pool
One problem with the traditional method described by Alexander is that the only sense of increasing dread comes from resource drain. The odds of an actual encounter remain static, and this effects the psychology of the group if you’re trying to foster a sense of ever creeping doom!
Responding to this shortfall, the Angry GM has a nifty little replacement for traditional random encounter checks called the Tension Pool and it all starts with a glass bowl.
Each Dungeon turn, toss a d6 into the glass bowl (AKA the Tension Pool). This should be visible to all the players. Then:
Each time during a dungeon turn that a PC does something risky or noisy, you roll any dice in the Tension Pool. Results of six prompt a roll on your pre-prepared encounter table.
Each time the Tension Pool fills up with 6d6, roll all the dice in the Pool as above to check for encounters, and then reset the pool to zero.
This is pretty cool, two things are happening:
We’re tracking the passage of time, with a dice in the pool representing a dungeon turn.
The likelihood of a random encounter is visibly impacted by the passage of time and the actions of your players.
That said, not everyone agrees that this is enough, I reckon that with a small modification, you could also use this to abstractly track effects using different colour dice of different denominations. For example, if someone lights a torch, toss in a d8 (or whatever seems right - I’ve not play tested this). The d8 will never trigger an encounter check like a d6 does, but each time the pool is rolled, that d8 might come up with an eight, and if it does - the torch is snuffed out (and the d8 is removed).
This way that’s less stuff to track on a piece of paper, and we’ve also now baked in variance on item and spell effect durations - if that torch goes out, maybe it was a gust of wind? If a spell effect ends, maybe the caster tripped on a flagstone and lost concentration?
Goblin Punch - The Underclock
Arnold K over at Goblin Punch has an entirely different method for using random encounters to build tension. He calls it the Underclock and it works like this:
Grab a d20, a nice big one. Or use a piece of paper, or a paper dial, or whatever you have that can track to 20. This is the Underclock, keep it out in the open so the players can see it.
Starting from 20, each Dungeon Turn the GM rolls a d6 and subtracts the result from the Underclock value.
Results of six on the d6 explode (this means you roll an additional d6).
When the Underclock hits less than zero it triggers an encounter on your random encounter table. At zero exactly, the clock resets to three instead.
If the Underclock ever reads three, a foreshadowing event occurs and the PCs learn a clue about the nature of the impending encounter (naturally, you’ll have to roll the random encounter at that point for your own reference).
The nice thing here is the players are more informed (but not perfectly so) about when an encounter is due. You can represent this as them hearing noises, or ‘spidey sense’, or whatever works for you.
This forewarning means that the players have another interesting decision to make - do they press on, do they try to hide, or do they prepare an ambush instead?
Dungeon Masterpiece - Random Encounter Tables
Baron de Ropp at Dungeon Masterpiece makes an excellent point regarding Random Encounter Tables.
Traditionally, they’re either single die table of possible encounters, or they’re a multi-dice table, which introduces a bell curve only the range of outcomes. Then on top of that you layer distance and reaction.
De Ropp highlights that this structure alone does not do anything to weave a larger narrative together, nor is it scalable, nor does it do much to help the GM to come up with a unique yarn to spin about the specific encounter.
To resolve this, he has a number of tricks:
If you have quests and rumours planned out - seed these into your random encounters. That pack of wolves you just defeated, maybe one of them had a golden arrow buried in its flank. Who made the arrow? Perhaps there’s someone in the woods that specialises in such trinkets?
If your table contains six entries, corresponding to a d6, why not add two more entries to it. Order the tables by difficulty, and then as your players advance in skill, add +1 or +2 to their dice result to weigh the results in the favour of more difficult encounters.
This one’s the real juice. De Ropp suggests adding two more columns to your random encounter table. Behaviour and Complication. You fill these in on a per row basis in a way that makes total sense for that given row. For example - Wolves. The behaviour might be “Hunting Prey” and their complication might be “Their pups are sick”. Here’s the clever bit - you roll three times on the random encounter table, generating a potentially different row per column. You might come up with “Goblins”, “Grifting for Cash”, “Their pups are sick”. This is your improv prompt for the scene, and by combining the elements from different rows, you’ll come up with some really unique encounters.
I’m a big fan of building Encounter Tables this way, and aside from the small amount of extra prep work they take - there’s not really much in the way of downside that I recognise.
Conclusion
So there you go. Whether it’s the Goblin Caves, Redbrand Hideout, or Wave Echo Cave - you’ve now got a detailed set of options for running these dungeons in a way that’s time tested and true. Let me know below the line if you have any other tips for people looking to improve the way that they run dungeons.
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?
Catch you laters, alligators.
GM Burnout - When You Just Can’t Anymore
GM Burnout is a unique form of creative burnout, where a lack of inspiration and joy from the creative aspects combines with the drain of the relational and performance demands of the role.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated, and ‘whelmed’ tabletop gaming chap
TL;DR:
GM burnout isn’t laziness or loss of passion, it’s a signal that something in how you’re running games is draining you. By identifying the real cause, whether it’s workload, values conflict, social pressure, or lack of reward, you can take focused steps like resting, changing systems or structure, sharing responsibility with players, and reconnecting with the parts of GMing you actually enjoy.
What Is GM Burnout?
Are you feeling a bit spent, old chum? Tired of running D&D? Can’t bring yourself to actually think about your upcoming game, or perhaps you’re simply filled with ‘meh’ about the prospect of running tonight’s session? Don’t judge yourself too harshly - this doesn’t mean you’re lazy, or that you’ve gone off TTRPGs. You might be suffering from GM burnout.
GM Burnout is a unique form of creative burnout, where a lack of inspiration and joy from the creative aspects combines with the drain of the relational and performance demands of the role. So where a visual artist might be blocked or not be feeling creatively inspired anymore, a GM has that too with their lore and maps etc, plus the weight of managing group dynamics, schedules, and the ‘always on’ energy of running sessions.
As above, it’s important to recognise that burnout isn’t laziness. It’s a vital communication from your brain, so listen to it. It simply means you’ve likely been burning the candle at both ends to the extent that you’re emotionally, socially and/or creatively depleted. It doesn’t mean that you’ve fallen out of love with the game. In fact the opposite is true, you’ve such strong love for what you do, that you’ve poured too much of yourself into it without stopping to refill your tank.
Let’s top you up shall we?
Where Does GM Burnout Come From?
You have to start this process logically. So step one is to identify the cause that fits with YOU. ‘The 5 Whys’ (Serrat (2009)) can be a useful tool of self discovery if you’re struggling to put your finger on it. Simply ask yourself “Why?” five times, starting with your answer to “Why am I burnt out?”, and then for each subsequent answer in turn. The idea is that through this interrogation, if you’ve been honest, you’ll start at some vague, surface level thing that you can easily identify, and you’ll end up at the creamy centre of your problem. The cream is good my friend.
Once you’ve done that check this out: Referencing Drs. Leiter and Maslach, Davies (2013) points to major occupational burnout causes below - several of these clearly resonate with game mastery, do any of these fit with your ‘5 Whys’ conclusions? (If not, tell me in the comments below, I promise I read every one).
Work Overload
This one is easy to spot. It might be too much prep, like trying to build an entire world with all its moving parts, or maybe tying yourself in knots trying to maintain a coherent ‘story’.
That said, it could also just as easily be that you’re struggling with heavy improvisations during sessions and maybe they’re too long, or you don’t get enough time between them to rest.
Values Conflict
If you’re only ever running a particular type of game and it no longer tickles your pickle, that can suck the life out of the hobby for you. With the amount of people that only ever play high fantasy D&D - this one doesn’t take too much effort to imagine.
To greater or lesser extents, it’s rare that we thrive on doing the same thing over and over again, and variety is the spice of life.
Lack of Control
When you’ve got an idea on the type of game you want to run and the direction it takes, but the players have taken it somewhere else entirely. Not specifically in terms of “plot direction”, but tonally. Maybe you wanted to build a sandbox filled with discovery and wonder, but now you're writing plot hooks for a moustache-twirling villain because your players demanded a classic BBEG.
Over time, this mismatch between your intentions and the game’s direction can leave you feeling disconnected from your own work.
Community Breakdown
In TTRPG terms, this is where we see problems with the social dynamics among all the players. If you’ve got a guy who always creates trouble for the group and he’s been allowed to continue, your enthusiasm for the game is going to be well and truly tainted by that. Especially if everyone just leaves it to you to be the adult in the room all the time.
Insufficient Reward
Do you feel unappreciated? Do your players turn up unprepared? All you ever hear from them is complaints about one thing or another? Do they take the effort to ever show their gratitude?
When you get the wrong answers to these questions, it’s easy to start asking yourself: “Why do I bother?”
Additionally, Tyler (2025) adds to our list the impacts of deadlines, pressure, and work-life balance:
Deadlines and Pressure
Constantly feeling like you’ve got to raise your game and provide increasingly ‘better’ experiences for your players, or that knowledge that every single week you’ve got to have another session up and ready to go. That makes your ideas forced, and leaves little room to enjoy the creative process.
How to make a hobby feel like ‘work’ 101.
Work-Life Balance
Quite simply, you may just have too many different obligations going on right now. When we feel this way, it’s easy to become paralysed and avoidant. Check your to-do list, do you have a bunch of things that other people are counting on you for, competing for your attention right now? If so, you’re overwhelmed.
(Side note, you hear about people being overwhelmed and underwhelmed all the time. Does that mean that the desirable state is simply to be ‘whelmed’? - Q) “How are you feeling today?” A) “Oh I’m fairly whelmed, thank you for asking”. Language is stupid.)
What To Do About GM Burnout
That’s a pretty good amount of potential causes up there by anyone’s reckoning, so if you identify with one or more of them, even though it might be obvious what the solution is, these are some additional areas where you can make changes to feel more like your old self again.
It’s important to note that these will not all be applicable, so use your noggin and cherry pick the ones that align best to the cause of your malaise!
Take an Intentional Break
It’s older advice sir, but it checks out: Luke Hart found that when he was burnt out, taking a time limited break helped him to reconnect with the game and come back to it with reengaged enthusiasm (Hart (2024)), and likewise Hill (2022) describes that ‘doing nothing’ and instead “tending to your physical needs for sleep, time off, time in nature, or time away from work demands can be the best medicine“ when it comes to repairing burnout.
In order to achieve this zen like mindset of chilling-the-fluff-out, Hill (2022) suggests 3 positive actions:
Practice some self forgiveness and self love - be as supportive to yourself as you would be toward a friend.
Commit to not trying to fix the issue - stop doing all the things you’re frantically trying.
In it’s place, be accepting - it is what it is, and it will pass.
Flip the Script
Sometimes you just need to satiate your desire for some new thing that’s taken your fancy. It doesn’t even have to be a permanent change, even a temporary side-quest can be enough to recover your mojo.
Ciechhanowski (2016) prefers to mix things up by shortening the length of his sessions. He does this engineering each game with a single objective in mind - maybe that objective came from his planning, or maybe it came from asking the players at the start what they wanted to do. The important thing is that it’s something short term achievable rather than some miniature tangled spiders web of elements to put together.
Simply put, once the players have accomplished this, he calls time for the evening and stops.
Alternatively, Arcadian (2008) makes no bones about simply advocating that you play something different when the current game no longer aligns with your values. This doesn’t have to be as drastic as putting something down, mid-campaign for good - rather a temporary palette cleanser game could be just the ticket.
Maybe think of it as an opportunity to try one of those TTRPGs you kickstarted last year!
However, if flipping the system isn’t an option, you might want to try running the next session to a different beat, if your games are normally combat heavy, why not run an investigation? If you normally deliver your players with a gripping political intrigue, maybe it’s about time that you unleashed some horror? Hart (2024)
Of course, what any one game can handle is limited, and if you are running D&D, I’d never suggest trying to squeeze a horror session out of it!
Finally, I wrote a piece a few months ago that advocates for running serialised episodic adventures. You know, like TV shows in the 90s. Every episode largely stands alone, sometimes with a central thread tying them all together. The beauty of this is that it makes your campaign very modular, and all the more easy to insert new modules in as you see fit.
Reconnect With What You Love
We’ve all got a favourite element of game mastering, that element that drew us aboard in the first place. Find it, dive back into it. Maybe it’s world building? Maybe it’s drawing maps, or designing a pantheon of Gods. Hell, maybe it’s the thrill of improvising everything up at the table, and living on the edge! Hart (2024) suggests spending some time in this zone and allowing it to reignite your enthusiasm.
When you’ve filled your cup again, you can step once more into the breach!
Let Players Ease The Pressure
If you’re simply finding it all a bit too much responsibility, talk to your players. Let that bunch of pirates shoulder some of the work! The most glaring example here could be to let one of them run a game whilst you play for a while, but we don’t have to go that far. Perhaps you could allocate Ian with the job of doing session write-ups, whilst Chris might be more suited to organising everyone’s availability for the next session.
Additionally, direct your players to up their game. Players shouldn’t be resting on their laurels, expecting you to spoon feed the entirety of the game to them at the table. Rather, let them do some imagining too, why not ask Shaun to describe the Goblins kitchen to everyone - it’ll be fine, just roll with whatever he comes up with, and don’t forget that you’ve got Paige on hand to keep the lore straight.
Whatever you do, just don’t put Alan in charge of the session recap though, that dude can’t even remember what he had for breakfast!
Stimulate Creativity Through Novelty
Davies (2025) highlights that the brain’s capacity for creativity does not happen in isolation from the body or environment. If you’re in a bit of a slump, you should consider the following:
Get off your butt, have a shower, and get some air outside! Studies show that at least 15 minutes of proper physical activity boosts creativity and can help you find novel solutions to problems.
Surprise yourself! Do something you wouldn’t normally do, maybe whack on ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls, learn the words and dance around the house like a teenager from 1996. Doing so can “stimulate curiosity and [give you] healthy dopamine doses“ improving your mood and putting you back into a creative mindset.
Conclusion
I know, burnout sucks, believe me - as a blog writer, I feel it acutely from time to time, but it’s not a permanent state, and these tips can help. If you want to offload, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below and I’ll get back to you. Until then, I hope you’re feeling better soon!
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?
Catch you laters, alligators.
References
Many thanks to the following sources for their work on the subject:
*FYI, full dates are written in dd-mm-yyyy because mm-dd-yyyy is bonkers :)
Six Sources of Burnout at Work (2013), by Davies, P. Published in Psychology Today. Accessed 12-01-2026
Move, Connect, and Create to Reverse Burnout (2025), by Davies, J. Published in Psychology Today. Accessed 12-01-2026
When You Aren’t Feeling It (2016), by Ciechanowski, W. Published in Gnome Stew. Accessed 12-01-2026
How to Overcome Dungeon Master Burnout (2024), by Hart, L. Published in The DM Lair. Accessed 12-01-2026
Gamer Burnout – Both GM and Player (2008), by Arcadian, J. Published in Gnome Stew. Accessed 12-01-2026
Doing Nothing Is Doing Something (2022), by Hill, D. Published in Psychology Today. Accessed 12-01-2026
Creative Burnout: Why It Happens and How to Beat It (2025), by Tyler, E . Published in Metricool. Accessed 12-01-2026
The Five Whys Technique (2009), by Serrat, O. Published in ABD Institute. Accessed 14-01-2026
Happy New Year! 2025 Is Over!
Post 52 baby!
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap who desperately needs to put out this 52nd post.
Well This is an unusual Format…
Ha, yes it is. Look, levelling with you here. I was planning on putting out something more substantial today but life got in the way, that said - I can’t let the year end on 51 posts - that’d be criminal!
So, this is what you’re getting - a stream of conscious from me. I was watching Breaking Bad downstairs with Mrs. WazEre and I told her I’d just be a few minutes. That’s not a lot of time to go into anything substantial really.
I guess I’ll give you a quick peep at ones coming up in January: I’ve got the final part in the dice mechanic series coming along nicely. I’ve also been working on a kinda academic piece on GM burnout. Outside of blogging, I’m going to be running Chariot of the Gods again for a new audience, and with the new Alien Evolved Edition rules. At the weekend I have a friend from Manchester coming over - We’re going to have a stab at designing a Pirate themed board game - looking forward to giving you more details on that later.
On top of that, I need to turn my attention to my hobby room. It’s a bit of a mess frankly, and I’ve got a woodworking project I need to finish. I’m building a set of wall mounted shelving which will also double up as a new desk. The overall effect is going to mean I’ll have significantly less stuff ‘out’ or on the floor, and more stuff put away up on display. That’s a pleasing thought indeed.
This’ll do I think, I’m definitely phoning it in on this one, but if you’ve bothered to read this far, and if you’ve followed DoMT this year, I want to sincerely thank you from the bottom of my salty heart. It’s been a journey!
Peace out.
JimmiWazEre 2025
I Posted A Blog Once A Week For A Year, Here’s What Happened - 2025
According to my Squarespace analytics, DoMT has had 35,000 visitors in all of 2025, which works out on average to be about 2,900 per month.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap
TL;DR:
I posted (approx) once a week for all of 2025 and Domain of Many Things pulled in 35,000 visitors. A handful of posts went big on Reddit, but the real long-term wins came from evergreen content that steadily attracts readers via Google. Search traffic is finally compounding, Reddit is increasingly not worth the stress, and affiliate links proved to be a small but real revenue source (£50 since May). The biggest personal gains were clearer thinking about TTRPG design, improved home games, and learning what kind of writing actually sustains me. 2026 is about writing ahead, being more deliberate with promotion, and figuring out whether monetisation like Patreon makes sense at all.
Introduction
That has got to be one of the most clickbaity sounding titles I’ve ever written, but it’s accurate I promise!
This is my 2025 roundup for Domain of Many Things covering what the numbers looked like, and what I learned from sticking to one post a week. At the end, I’ll do a short Q&A and if you’ve got extra questions, throw them in the comments and I’ll answer there too.
The Year in Numbers
Jumping right in at the beefy end then: According to my Squarespace analytics, DoMT has had 35,000 visitors in all of 2025, which works out on average to be about 2,900 per month. This is a bit misleading though, because when I started this blog in January 2025, I closed the month on a whopping 305 visits, whereas in July, when I turned out 3 of my most popular posts, I pulled in 6,237 views.
So it’s fairer to say that since May, I’ve been rocking roughly 4,000 visits per month on average. For a one-person hobby blog, I reckon that’s a real audience rather than a handful of mates being polite, and I’m supremely grateful to each of you for your patronage.
Speaking Of Popular Posts…
These are the 10 most popular posts that have brought in the most traffic since going live in 2025:
Views | Post Title
4454 | 11 TTRPG Ideas So Cool You’ll Want Them in Every Game
3348 | D&D’s Best Intro Campaign? I Ran Lost Mine of Phandelver For My Group
2344 | 6 Games That Nail What Rules-Lite TTRPGs Should Be
1971 | Very Belatedly, The Monster Overhaul Is The Best Damned ‘Monster Manual’ I’ve Read
1906 | Combat in Mothership rpg really doesn’t have to be complicated
1471 | The Rusted Colossus 03: | How To Prepare Room Descriptions in 4 Steps
1096 | Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG: Wot I Think After Running It
1088 | What Do You Think Happened? A Game Changing Plug and Play Mystery Mechanic From Brindlewood Bay
957 | The Seven Elements of West Marches Play
882 | The Easiest TTRPG Crafting System You’ll Ever Use (and Actually Enjoy)
One thing I’ve learned quickly: raw views can be misleading. Some posts spike hard (usually because Reddit notices them), then flatline. Others quietly bring in readers every day for months.
To get a better sense of “evergreen” performance, here’s the same list as views per day:
V/D | Post Title
23.9 | D&D’s Best Intro Campaign? I Ran Lost Mine of Phandelver For My Group
19.1 | 11 TTRPG Ideas So Cool You’ll Want Them in Every Game
13.5 | 6 Games That Nail What Rules-Lite TTRPGs Should Be
12.3 | Very Belatedly, The Monster Overhaul Is The Best Damned ‘Monster Manual’ I’ve Read
8.6 | The Seven Elements of West Marches Play
6.9 | The Rusted Colossus 03: | How To Prepare Room Descriptions in 4 Steps
6.1 | Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG: Wot I Think After Running It
5.3 | Combat in Mothership rpg really doesn’t have to be complicated
5.1 | What Do You Think Happened? A Game Changing Plug and Play Mystery Mechanic From Brindlewood Bay
3.3 | The Easiest TTRPG Crafting System You’ll Ever Use (and Actually Enjoy)
The key reshuffle is that Phandelver climbs to #1, Mothership combat drops from #5 to #8, and West Marches jumps from #9 to #5.
So what other insights do I have about this? Well, the Phandelver post was tricky to write, there was a lot to talk about and I was relying upon my memory of a campaign which had spanned many months. Not only that, but if the campaign itself was part of my prep work for this post then the work for this post was huge. That said - I think it paid off for two reasons: I had a real campaign to talk about, and it’s a well known module that people Google every day.
On the flip side, the post on TTRPG mechanics was a joy to write about. It was presented as a listicle, and basically gave me the opportunity to highlight my favourite thing from each of the games on my shelf (at the time). There was barely any prep work required and the post just flowed through me. I had absolutely no expectations that it would go viral on Reddit, and the response totally floored me. I’ve tried to catch that lightning again since, and I’m still not sure what the repeatable ingredients are, if you’ve got a theory, I’m all ears?
I also want to talk about some posts that I wrote in October and December which I really enjoyed and put a lot of effort into - They didn’t make the top 10 cut but I’m hoping they’ll have evergreen potential, let’s go and fish out their numbers:
What’s in a Core Dice Mechanic? This one pulled in 636 views, at 10.1 per day. Meanwhile, The Five Variables of a Core Dice Mechanic That Matter pulled in 878 absolute views, but at a rate of 19.5 per day.
That’s fantastic news - they didn’t make the top 10 posts because they’ve simply not been live long enough yet to pull in the absolute numbers, but looking at their daily averages as they stand today, they would take the number 2 and number 5 spots had they been old enough. I’m well happy with those, Also: yes, I still need to write the final post in that series.
Traffic Sources
Back in June I did a bit of a midway review of the year so far for the blog, and apart from Reddit, one of my key gripes at the time was that Google was basically pushing nothing my way. Things have changed a lot since then. It took until July, but from then on Google gave me month on month increases in visitors. Nothing to retire over ofcourse (That’ll be next year - I’m sure) but definitely great signs I’m heading the right way:
Month | Traffic From Search Engines
Jul | 165
Aug | 432
Sep | 654
Oct | 950
Nov | 1215
Dec | 1317
The big win here is that search traffic appears to be starting to compound, slow at first, then noticeably month by month. Long may this continue!
However, as Google was picking up, my appetite for Reddit was dropping. I’m genuinely grateful for the early boost, but it was anxiety inducing. Some posts did very well, but it felt like most sank - and then when the wrong kind of person showed up being an arse, then it could sour my whole association. The lesson for me there was that I can’t build motivation on a platform that rewards chaos and hostility. At least, not with my current level of Reddit-foo.
Anyway, thanks to Google (eugh that feels dirty to say), I’m not so reliant upon Reddit now for views, and I don’t really have to share much over there anymore. Never say never ofcourse, if I think one of my posts will truly do well then I might brave back into those murky waters again, but for now I’m happier without that toxicity and anxiety.
Moolah, or Rather - The Lack Of It!
As you all know, a guiding value for me with DoMT is that I’m very much against the enshittification of (everything) the internet. That means that this website will continue to operate (probably at a loss hohoho) without any banner ads, popups, paywalled content, or paid for reviews. That said, I’m not against money - I’m particularly fond of eating and being able to pay my bills after all!
Well, if obnoxious advertising and selling my integrity are out of the question, then that leaves me with only a few options for generating revenue: Affiliate sales, where if I talk about a game, I’ll generally chuck an affiliate link up to DTRPG, PayPal donations, and capitalising on my growing brand in order to develop and sell something.
Since I don’t have enough of a brand, or a big enough community behind me, or even anything to sell - that last one’s out. Additionally, no one has made any PayPal donations to me this year either. Times are clearly hard for everyone - but if you wanna buy me a New Year’s pint, you go right ahead, link’s in the footer!
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, affiliate links have been the only source of revenue so far. Since May I’ve made $71 (That’s about £50 in real money), which won’t pay for anything exciting, but it does prove that the mechanism works. Who knows - with better placement and better matching, it could become meaningful over time.
And that means it’s definitely going to be worthwhile putting more of an effort into finding affiliate partners, and their respective sales to highlight in posts and in my growing newsletter: the Mailer of Many Things.
Q&A Time!
As I said at the start, if you have other questions for me, I’d be delighted if you chucked them in the comments BTL, and I’ll answer them there. In the meantime though, here’s some of the things that my imaginary version of you wanted to know:
What surprised you most about running the blog this year - good or bad?
The viral Reddit hits. I’m not social-media-savvy enough to predict what will land, so when Phandelver, Monster Overhaul, and 11 TTRPG Ideas popped off it properly floored me.
If you’ve got a theory on why those did well while others vanished without a trace, please tell me because I’m genuinely curious.
Which post mattered most to you, regardless of traffic or engagement and why?
Hmm it’s a toss-up between my Emergent review and the core mechanics series - for totally different reasons.
With Emergent, that was the first time that I’d solicited an indie dev for them to send me their game in exchange for a fair review. That raised the stakes for me a lot - I owed them a deep dive and I really didn’t want to disappoint them but I still wasn’t going to pull punches. I was so happy to discover that I not only enjoyed reading the game, but that the devs were stoked with my review afterwards.
With my series on core mechanics, the popularity of them is nice, but really I’d have still codified my thoughts on the subject if it was only for me. I have such a passion for TTRPG mechanics and the different ways they all approach doing similar things, and the differences that those make that just simply getting it all down in writing was extremely cathartic. I’ll be referencing those posts for ages.
Where did the blog underperform, and what do you think the real reason was?
Definitely underperforming in terms of views generated by syndicating to social media. I’ve said it before but I’m not great at Reddit or Bluesky. They can feel like places where you either shout into the void or get dragged for sport. There are myriad others that I could be using too, but it seems like it’d be a full time job for someone with an incredibly thick skin to get the most out of all of them.
Maybe something for 2026 is for me to develop my social media manager skills, there’s definitely a lot of opportunity for growth in that direction that I’m not currently tapping into - If you’ve got a genuinely useful resource for learning social media without turning it into a second job, point me at it.
Also, I’m a little bit gutted that my series on “The Rusted Colossus” dried up. A combination of burning out and distractions lead to that particular project finding its way to my back burner. I hope I can pick it back up again in 2026 - GOZR is a nifty little system, and I feel like it’s criminally underrepresented by modules and online hype! I guess what I discovered there is that long-running personal projects require a different kind of energy than commentary, and I underestimated that.
How has writing regularly changed how you think about the hobby itself?
It’s made me constantly hungry for ideas. I’m forever jotting notes on my phone while I’m playing, reading, or just thinking. Everything is content.
That’s good and bad. It adds a layer of obligation to the hobby… but I’m also learning far more about design than I ever did before, and it’s improved my home games (especially house rules).
If you stopped the blog tomorrow, what would you feel you’d actually gained from it?
I’ve gained practical skills: building a site, sorting email/domain stuff, and just getting comfortable publishing in public.
Bigger than that, I’ve started to see rulesets differently. I’m hunting for elegance and concision now and if I ever write my own game, this year of reading and reviewing will be where I cut my teeth.
To 2026 and beyond!
One thing I’ll do more of: Writing a backlog so weekly posts don’t feel like last minute homework!
One thing I’ll stop: Being willfully ignorant of how social media works. I’m going to put a concerted effort into learning what I can about how to do it properly and then I’ll make a decision about how to take that forward.
One thing I’m unsure about: Patreon. Would you want one, and what would make it worth it for you?
Conclusion
Happy New Year truckers! There’s been ups and downs, but there’s no regrets from me about DoMT. I’m looking forward to its continued growth and expanding the community into 2026. See you on the other side.
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?
Catch you laters, alligators.
9 Meta TTRPG Bitter Pills to Swallow
The internet is full of advice on the nitty gritty of TTRPG play. I thought I’d leverage my experience slightly differently today and focus on some solid tips that are way more wide angle.
By JimmiWazEre
Opinionated tabletop gaming chap
TL;DR:
Most D&D problems aren’t rules problems. They’re social, organisational, or expectation issues. Talk to players directly, take responsibility for your own fun, accept D&D’s limits, plan for scheduling failure, and don’t let internet noise dictate how you enjoy the hobby.
Introduction
The internet is full of advice on the nitty gritty of TTRPG play. I thought I’d leverage my experience slightly differently today and focus on some solid tips that are way more wide angle. As an avid reader of this blog - you of course are a superior being, and do not need this advice! But feel free to pass it on to those less fortunate.
Seriously though - this post is geared more towards new folks to the hobby. If you’re comfortably settled in already, there’s probably not much for you here.
OK, so, I do a bit of Reddit scrolling every now and then, and the common questions and attitudes I see promoted there have prompted me to write this up. Ready? I’m starting anyway :)
1) Don’t solve real problems with fictional tools
If I had a pound for every time I saw someone online talking about ‘problem players’ and then weighing up ideas to leverage their power as Game Master over the game fiction to “punish” said player’s character - well, I’d definitely have enough for a night out. Anyway - don’t do it, it’s a crappy idea.
If you have an issue with a player, cowboy the chuff up and address it directly, preferably when it’s just you and them. When you use in-game consequences to punish out-of-game behaviour it just breeds resentment and escalation, making the problem worse.
2) Stop sneering at other playstyles
I try not to be guilty of this one to varying degrees of success. I’m only human after all. Maybe you can do better? It’s a sad fact of humanity that we’ve yet to shake off our tribal roots, and the moment something like a Dunbar Number is exceeded we get all feisty and start arranging ourselves into ‘us’ and ‘them’.
The TTRPG space is full of it: ‘Grognards’, ‘Theatre Kids’, the OSR, NSR, crunchy, rules-lite, simulationist, hand-wavey I’m sure you can imagine how the list goes on and on. Go to any online space dedicated to one of these sub-genres and you’ll find people slagging off the other side, often with Ad-homs and Strawman arguments, and often with the most minimal understanding of how their differences actually play out at the table.
It’s utterly pointless and self defeating. You grow more by understanding why different tables value different things than by declaring one way correct, so if you’re new to the hobby - try not to get sucked into all that negative crap.
3) You are responsible for your own fun
It’s a sad fact that TTRPGs tend to reward proactive players and quietly punish passive ones. If you’re sat, disengaged, waiting for the GM or the party to entertain you, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
That’s not to say I’m advocating for everyone to play without regard for other player’s enjoyment - certainly not. Rather I’m saying that even with a fantastic group with no problematic players - when it comes to how much YOU get out of playing a TTRPG - it’s largely down to how much YOU put in to it.
4) Scheduling Failures finish off more campaigns than Total-Party-Kills Ever Did
If you’re an adult with adult responsibilities then the chances are that you have a limited amount of free time available each week. Multiply this restriction by the number of players you have, and factor in that that limited free time is rarely going to align.
The sad result is that this doesn’t leave much time for getting everyone together for several hours at a time for some uninterrupted gaming, and even when you think you’ve got a rota sorted out, shit still happens. Someone’s dog gets ill, or they remember their kids school play.
Talk about this problem openly at the formation of your group. Use shared calendars, agree on quorum rules, and plan for absences. Simply hoping that it sorts itself out is how games die.
5) D&D is Bear complicated, don’t let that scare you off other games
Aside from D&D being huge, the brand recognition, and the vast marketing budget of Lizards-Ate-My-Toast, then the next principal reason that people never get to experience other games is that they don’t want to have to go through the trauma of having to learn a whole new system.
D&D was bad enough in this regard and in people’s heads it sets a precedent that all games’ character creation processes must also require the kind of zen like fastidiousness of a money laundering accountant working for the mob. No one has time for that.
Well, I’m here to tell you that D&D is an outlier. Yes, there are other games out there as complex, or more so, but there’s hundreds of others which are far far simpler (and maybe even better).
6) D&D is heroic fantasy combat, not a universal engine
Whilst we’re on the topic of D&D haha… So you know that saying: “If all you have is a hammer, then all problems start to look like nails”? That applies here. People who have only ever played D&D 5e often have the false idea that they do not need to consider other systems, as they can simply house rule D&D to fit whatever flavour of game that they have in mind.
This is far more trouble than it’s worth. D&D does super heroic fantasy combat very well, it does 1920’s cosmic horror terribly. Call of Cthulhu however…
Seriously, consider the type of game you’d like to run, and then tailor your choice of game system to that. Do not try to force a square peg into a round hole.
7) VTT play and table play are not interchangeable
Look, I don’t personally care much for online virtual tabletop (VTT) play. I tolerated it during COVID with my steady group (any port in a storm right?) but outside of that, I only ever use it as a way to get a feeling for new game systems before bringing them to my group, and the amount of horror stories I’ve seen in this limited exposure would be enough to turn me away from the hobby (Obviously I’m not talking about YOU, person with whom I have played and had a lovely time!)
If you’re new to TTRPGs, or if you’ve only ever tried VTT play (if nothing forces you to only play online) - I implore you to try to find an in-person game. In my experience, it’s a completely different beast.
Mainly it comes down to social dynamics, the communication and attitude barriers that being just a face behind a webcam brings, versus being there in person.
People just tend to be better at peopling when they’re out in the real world.
8) Most people don’t care about your lore
This applies to GMs and players in near equal measure: I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but only maybe 1% of the TTRPG playing population cares enough to pay attention to your characters backstory. Honestly, it’s like listening to people tell you about their dreams - no one is paying attention to it.
Now, this can be a problem to varying extents, but it’s not without a solution.
Make lore short, relevant, and play into an established trope if you really want people to remember it. Any fleshing out should happen at the table as a consequence of stuff that you improvise in the moment - this gets a pass because it turns it into ‘show, don’t tell’.
If you really enjoy writing up detailed world histories (and I do!) then that material is mainly for you. Accept that early and you’ll be happier.
9) Ignore internet gatekeepers
If you’re not actively harming the table’s enjoyment, no one online (including me!) gets to tell you you’re “doing it wrong.” Play the game you actually enjoy, the way you enjoy it.
Conclusion
Merry Christmas for tomorrow by the way, I hope Santa brings you all the TTRPGs you’ve been dreaming of!
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?
Catch you laters, alligators.