How to have fun preparing to play

Introducing the Dungeon Shuffle.

Apr 02, 2025

Does anyone actually enjoy session prep?

I'm not talking about making preparation quicker or easier. There's countless fantastic books, youtube videos and podcasts about how to do that. But none of them prevent preparing your game from being a chore.

Here's what everyone misses - preparing your game can be fun. Maybe even as fun as playing the game itself.

Like a lot of DMs, I have found ways to reduce the parts of my prep I find boring and focus on the parts I enjoy, but I don't think I've ever looked forward to sitting down to prep. Then, by accident, I found a new way of making Dungeons that changed that.

‘The Dungeon Shuffle’

This tool started as a thought an experiment - was it possible to build an entire Dungeon completely at random? With a little work I had created the tool and within an hour I had created a whole set of unique dungeons that I couldn't wait to show my players.

I asked a group of my subscribers to playtest the Dungeon Shuffle* and alongside some very useful feedback, the same theme kept recurring: this was fun. The Dungeon Shuffle doesn't do all the work for you, it's designed to spark creativity and get you thinking. It pushes you out of your comfort zone and offers a path to creating a completely unique adventure. It's also quick and easy - you can have a completed Dungeon, ready for play, in less than 30 minutes.

I'm giving away the pdf of this tool, for free, to all current and new subscribers until the end of April. It includes gorgeous artwork from the creative commons project by

The Basic Expert

, who you should also check out if you are creating your own products.

Speaking of which:

Your invite to take part in the Dungeon Shuffle Jam

Hosting my own mini-jam (a chutney?) seems like a terrible idea for someone who could fit all their subscribers on a double decker bus - but I really want to see what you can create with this method.

There are three rules:

You must use the Dungeon Shuffle tool.
Your Dungeon should fit on one page.
You must make it freely available.

Beyond that, it's up to you. Your Dungeon can be for any system, or completely agnostic. You can publish it here on Substack or any other platform. If you don't currently publish anywhere (or it won't fit with your other work), send it to me and I'll post it on my page (credited to you of course).

Either way I'll be sharing the hell out of everybody who takes part, as loudly as possible.

I'm planning to release a Dungeon every Friday for the whole month of April, to celebrate the Dungeon Shuffle Jam and hopefully get you inspired to take part yourself. It doesn't matter if you are an experienced DM or yet to get behind the screen, this is all about encouraging people to give adventure writing a go.

Most of all - have fun. That's what The Dungeon Shuffle was designed for.