First and foremost I asked my players to specifically not come up with characters for the campaign until yesterday's session - I'm well aware that some of them have been rarin' to play certain things and that's fine, but I didn't want any characters built in a vacuum like they usually are.

The session started off with some pretty intense explanation and history of the Eberron setting, some of my players being completely unfamiliar with it. Doing this I was able to get something of a read as to what parts people got jazzed by and what they didn't. I laid out the map on the gaming table and using it to illustrate the different countries, the history of the continent, the culture of each, the disaster of the Mournland (Eberron's own Hiroshima), but mostly in general terms.

Then I pointed to the player's starting country (Aundair) and start getting more specific. With a stack of post-its handy, I started laying out some of the elements of the campaign that might be relevant to a character's story, I could quickly jot a name or description of it down, and then stick the post-it near it's "location" on the map, like so:

• "So down by this village are the floating towers of the Arcane University, and you can see them from miles around."

(thank you, Kirin, and welcome!)

I admit it. Most of my games are dungeon crawls. Session after session of exploration, exciting combat and working your way up (down?) to an entertaining cavalcade of cardboard villains. Now I would like to emphasize that I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that - I'm pretty sure I run a ridiculously fun game of exciting combat and cardboard villains, after all my players have kept coming back to the table for years and years of this stuff - so on one hand, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Yet I feel like we are sort of hacking ourselves into a bit of a rut - somehow I've lost some sort of enthusiasm for character drama that at one point came a lot easier, and I want it back.

Especially since lately I've been up late reading my copy of Burning Wheel. My reaction to it is similar to what I hear a lot of reactions to it are - I want to like it, it's full of all sorts of amazingly good stuff, but I'm worried that I'll have to work too hard to actually play it. But this post isn't about the Burning Wheel, I guess it's about discipline and gaming complacency. It's really me dreaming about broadening my DM skillsets to encompass a greater milieu than I'm used to.

Dungeon Mastering can be pretty challenging, and it certainly requires a variety of different skills. Not all of them are necessary, but I think they all help. Here's a run-down of all the skill-sets that come into play by a good Dungeon Master, in what I see as the order of importance:

1. Enthusiasm!
2. Improvisation (inspiration & creativity)
3. Reading player reaction (empathy)
4. Understanding of the rules (knowledge)
5. Game adjustment (versatility)
6. Social mediation (diplomacy)
7. Some discipline (organization)