What Dungeon Master University Actually Teaches

There is a version of D&D education that most Dungeon Masters know well already. It looks like this: a YouTube video, a blog post, a series of videos filled with generic advice that could apply to any table, a convention panel where someone talks for fifty minutes and takes five questions. The information is usually good. The problem is that all of this learning is passive and unstructured, and often difficult to put into practice. Watching someone explain how to pace a session is not the same as pacing a session, and the gap between knowing something and being able to do it well and consistently at a table full of players on a Friday night is where most DMs live permanently.

We created Dungeon Master University to close that gap… and because Dungeon Masters matter. 

Dungeon Master University Structure

Every scholar who attends Dungeon Master University selects a single course: this is their educational track for the weekend. It’s a specific area of focus, almost like choosing a major in college, and it becomes the foundation of their two days. 

The 2027 courses are Skill Building, Campaign Building, World Building, Career (Publishing) and Career (Media). You can read all about these courses in more depth here. Each course is led by two members of our professional DM faculty, and includes four hours each day of interactive workshops. The interactivity is important, nobody wants to sit quietly and listen to a four-hour lecture: involving their scholars in hands-on experiences is something we believe is necessary for this kind of structured learning to have value. So you’re doing something in these courses, not just watching someone else do it. 

Around this core, scholars build their own schedule from additional formats: seminars and open forums are the most common. 

Seminars are the closest thing to a traditional lecture that DMU offers: one faculty member, one hour, and one focused topic. They’re deliberately contained: you’re getting a framework, a technique, a specific piece of DM crafted examined from a professional’s perspective. You come in, take notes, ask questions, and leave with something concrete. 

Open forum exactly what it sounds like. Several faculty host a group discussion with several scholars to examine, discuss, and debate an aspect of DMing. The goal is to dive into the topic and really push, pull, and share ideas together. Forums go where the room takes, and because scholars can join any forum on any topic, regardless of your selected coursework, there is a lot of cross-pollination of ideas across the workshop tracks. Scholars from the Skill Building track can hop into a forum with scholars from Worldbuilding or Campaign Building, and these kinds of conversations produce great, unexpected collisions of ideas that a fixed curriculum really can’t plan for. 

The Game Lab

The Game Lab at Dungeon Master University is something that has no real equivalent elsewhere in D&D education. 

Here’s what it is. A Platinum Tier scholar runs a four-hour game of Dungeons & Dragons for their peers (fellow scholars), and one member of the faculty. The faculty member is a working professional Dungeon Master, someone who runs and often designs D&D experiences for a living, and who has spent years thinking about every aspect of the craft. And they’re at your table, right now, tonight, playing in your game, ready to offer their insight. 

If you’re the DM running a Game Lab, you decide what you want feedback on. Some run a straight-up four-hour adventure and ask for general feedback on overall technique: what’s working, what’s not, what got missed, what could be better, what was amazing. That’s already incredibly helpful, but you can refine that if you want and get very specific. 

Other DMs come to Game Lab with something particular they want help with: pacing the game, better improvisation, mastering high-level play, understanding the action economy more intimately, the handling of unexpected player decisions that threaten to derail a game. The faculty member isn’t there to grade your performance, but to respond to what they see, with the specificity that only someone who is playing at your table can provide. 

Gold and Silver scholars participate in Game Lab too, as players, and at the conclusion of the evening they can offer their own feedback to the DM. This matters a lot more than it might appear at first: the feedback of a fellow Dungeon Master, of someone who loves DMing as much as you do and has their own experiences to draw on, is a different and often more useful kind of input than anything another evaluator could offer. DM University scholars are, by definition, people who take their DMing seriously, who love the craft, and are eager to share ideas with other DMs. 

DMU Experiences

"DMU has been more than I could have ever imagined. Several lifetimes worth of knowledge passed through this university program in one single, glorious, unforgettable weekend." - Jon Hill

"With just two days of skill building classes and one-on-one faculty meetups I was able to host my first game as a DM “ever” like a pro. My confidence in my pacing and material was fine tuned and ready to play with fellow DM’s at the end of the event. 10/10 will be returning!" - DK Johnston

"I have grown so much as a storyteller and Dungeon Master in just one weekend, and I have joined a fellowship of educators who use D&D for so much more than just a game with their students." - Peter Elliott

Maybe the telling feedback came from several scholars who said that, as important as the coursework and Game Labs were, it was the camaraderie with fellow DMs and the free exchange of ideas that made the experience genuinely special for them. This gets to the heart of the DMU: it’s a concentrated gathering of people who care about this craft enough to spend a weekend studying it. The conversations at the table, over meals, in the hallways, walking across campus, are all part of the learning experience, too.

What DMU Cannot Do

It would be dishonest to say that two days in Atlanta will totally transform you DMing all by itself. The tools and frameworks you learn in your coursework need to be applied at your table. Feedback from Game Lab needs to be internalized and practiced. The inspiration you gained from a discussion with another scholar who is trying to solve a problem adjacent to what’s going on in your home game needs consideration, and maybe some follow up later. 

What DMU can do, and what it is specifically designed to do, is give you things that are genuinely hard (maybe impossible) to get anywhere else. Hours of focused attention on the craft of Worldbuilding with Monte Cook and Keith Baker is not an experience you can get at a convention. Real-time feedback on your improvisational skills from B. Dave Walters after he just played in your game, or the framework for a professional DM side gig from Beth the Bard who can offer deep insight on your specific situation, just isn’t obtainable elsewhere. Access to a campus full of DMs who are thinking about the same challenges you are and are eager to discuss them is something that ordinary life rarely allows. 

Scholars leave DMU knowing more precisely what they are working on, with better tools for working on it, and with a cohort of fellow DMs they met in the same room who will want to keep sharing ideas. 

This is what Dungeon Master University actually teaches. The rest is practice.  

Dungeon Master University runs March 12–13, 2027 at Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia. Three registration tiers are available: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Learn more and register here.