Dungeon MasterClass 102 – How to Run Your Best Adventure

102 – How to Run Your Best Adventure – How do you prep for your games? What’s the secret to having either a great one-shot or an epic campaign? How does adventure structure work? How can you ensure combat encounters will be fun and balanced? How do you create memorable non-player characters? How can you keep your players enticed and interested during a session?

Cast Party will offer three 90-minute classes over three consecutive Sundays for aspiring gamemasters, worldbuilders, and storytellers, or anyone who wants to up their role-playing skills. The classes are designed to allow students to choose the class that best suits them or to take two or three. All classes will include a short break and a 10-minute Q&A at the end.

Cast Party’s own gamemaster extraordinaire, Matt Gordon, is the instructor. Attendees can listen to his amazing GMing, character, and storytelling skills on the Dungeons and Dragons podcasts, Podcast Party: Descent into Avernus and Podcast Party: Memories of Holdenshire. Both shows can be heard on PodCast Party: A D&D Podcast wherever fine podcasts are heard. Matt has been involved with role-playing since he was six years old. Whether it be acting or Dungeon Mastering for friends, family, and others, Matt enjoys involving himself as an active participant in a good story. Working with Red Monkey Theater Group has granted him ample opportunities to do just that, being in six productions in the last seven years, and helping to bring Dungeons & Monkeys, RMTG’s annual D&D charity event, to life for the last four. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mbg98 and learn more at mattbgordon.com. Matt is the primary Dungeon Master of the Twitch streaming channel Slices & Dices, broadcasting every Friday on twitch.tv/slicesndices.

This class is appropriate for participants aged 16 and up.

Admission is $40 per class (or purchase all three classes for $100 and get a free Dungeon Master’s Screen.)
In person and Zoom participants welcome! Each student will receive a bag of RPG dice that is theirs to keep AND each class will give away a FREE prize to a lucky in-person attendee!

The class will take place in person at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, which is located at the Philipse Manor RR station, 300 Riverside Drive in Sleepy Hollow, NY.
IT WILL ALSO BE ZOOM LIVESTREAMED. If you want to participate via Zoom, please register for your ticket below then write to admin@writerscenter.org to receive the Zoom link to attend.

About Dungeons & Dragons:

“There is another kind of game that children have been playing for some time now and it seems to have a powerful fascination for them. These games are played in children’s heads and the players make up what happens as they go along. The games may be set in old-time dungeons and inhabited by mythological creatures, or they may be set in some far-off future. They do have rules, but these rules are guidelines that children can adapt and alter as they see fit. The games have to be played with other human beings. Children can learn how from one another. They don’t have to buy anything or spend any money to make the game work. A friend of mine told me that his son was on a long bus journey recently and found himself sitting next to an older child who was also familiar with this kind of game. That’s how they whiled away their time, but, more than making time pass, they made friends.

I found it interesting that there should be two such completely different kinds of game playing attracting children’s attention right now- almost as if one sought to make up for what the other lacked. In any event, the comparison pointed up for me the contrast between noncreative and creative play.”
— Fred Rogers, an excerpt from Mister Rogers Talks With Parents

“One of the beautiful things about D&D is that you go into this other world and you’re not you, and it’s super immersive. I thought that maybe that would work for the kids – that maybe for a few hours they
could not have to deal with what they were dealing with, and escape and play as a character. And it worked.”
— Joe Manganiello, Actor re: D&D at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh

“It’s hip to be a nerd now.”
— Stephen Colbert, The Late Show

“In the field of fantastic fiction, the question of world-building is not uncontroversial. But I grew up with ‘Dungeons and Dragons,’ so that whole world-building thing is very close to my heart.”
— China Mieville, Author

“Giving yourself permission to explore where the story goes is a real D&D thing. You could have an end game in mind at the beginning and then little improvisations will change part of it by the time you get there. Allowing even the endgame to change, allowing the story to tell itself, and then knowing that what’s right for the story–that’s always the best choice. A story doesn’t necessarily end up being what you thought it was going to be.”
— Matthew Robinson, Screenwriter