This is a wonderful time to be a Dungeon Master.

There’s a huge amount of material out there, interest in the game is at an all-time high, and there are all these creative Dungeon Masters out there who are sharing their techniques.

Which is just as well, because I’m horrible at coming up with new monsters, spells and magic items.

What makes a successful DM? Do you need to create new monsters every week to challenge the adventurers? Do you need to be enthralling the players with new magic?

No, what makes you a successful DM is when you and your players go home happy at the end of the session. If you do that, you’re doing it right.

My campaigns are full of material I take from other places. I write small adventures, but I sprinkle these with monsters and magic items created by other people.

When I see a published adventure that makes sense for the campaign, I adopt it. I may change a few details, so that it fits better. If there’s only part of an adventure that makes sense, but it’s tremendously exciting and cool, I’ll take that part of the adventure and use it – perhaps inserting it into the middle of another adventure.

During one of my campaigns, I found that somehow the storyline had evolved towards stopping Tharizdun returning to the world, based on elements of previous adventures that the players had enjoyed. We’d been playing for six years, and it was time to conclude the campaign. I could write my own adventure, but it was easier to use Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil as the basis for the final story. One problem: It was written for much lower characters. To solve this, I replaced the monsters with tougher ones. The basic structure of the adventure worked as written.

Then came the deck of many things. My players jumped at the chance to draw multiple cards from it, consequences be damned! The results? One drew the Donjon and was imprisoned beneath the earth. The other drew the Void and their soul was trapped on another plane. Two characters who were about 28^th level. Bringing in replacement characters at this level felt wrong. What to do? We had to get them back!

Inspiration came: What if I took two of the oldest adventures for AD&D and used them? The adventurer trapped beneath the earth could be in The Vault of the Drow, and the trapped soul could be held by Lolth in Queen of the Demonweb Pits! There’s a direct link between those two adventures, so I didn’t have to create extra linkages. And so, the adventurers took a detour into the realm of the drow and their spider queen, rescued their friends, and returned to defeat Tharizdun.

Every time you read a new adventure, a new monster, or a new magic item, you increase your store of things that you can introduce to the game when they seem right. A friend running Tomb of Annihilation saw a monster in Beasts of the Jungle Rot that he wanted to use. The next session, the party were attacked by a Gigantotosaurus Zombie, and the experience of Tomb was enriched just a little more.

If I have advice on this topic, it’s this: Discover the things you enjoy as a DM. Concentrate on them and then look to other sources to fill in the rest. Don’t want to design the nations of your world? Look to published campaign settings. Don’t want to design gods? There are many sets of fantasy gods you can use. Hate coming up with new monsters? Look to the many monster books and use those! Love making magic items? Go wild! See what you can do!

If something goes wrong – the monster was too dangerous, the magic too powerful – don’t be afraid to back up and fix things. Most players are forgiving.

You can be an excellent Dungeon Master without designing one new game element. It’s not a requirement of the role. Just go forth and have fun!