I Know How To Fix Your Boring D&D Campaign

There are parts of any campaign that aren’t epic adventures or compelling roleplay but just procedural matters: shuffling around resources on character sheets and deciding what gear to buy or sell. These may be a necessary part of the game, but they never need to be part of your gaming sessions. Activities like leveling up characters, selecting spell scrolls to purchase and scribe for Wizards, and even crafting choices during downtime are all largely drama-free. The sort of things that, in a television show, might warrant a montage, at best, don’t belong at my table.

There are certainly times when bookkeeping activities are vital to the events of the session at hand, but an experienced DM can still plan ahead by having the party select items to buy and sell before reaching a settlement, as one example, or by having players bring two character sheets, one reflecting a mid-session level increase.

Some simpler builds are roleplay-focused, with characterization put first and foremost, but every character archetype can be roleplayed effectively, developing them as people instead of a collection of stats. Sometimes, that roleplay can happen in simple, slice-of-life moments, like having dinner at an inn or shopping in a marketplace. If the scene is intended to offer a roleplay opportunity, it might be worth playing out during sessions, but most often, shopping is purely procedural, not a chance to develop a character or discover plot hooks. Playing out commercial interactions in a city could, occasionally, aid the DM with world-building.

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There are tabletop RPGs all about world-building, and there may be instances where a DM uses a simple shopping excursion to illustrate the differences between Baldur’s Gate and Calimport in a Forgotten Realms campaign. Still, the actual mechanics of selling loot and buying new gear are