Since 2018, Tabletop Vacations has been organizing immersive events where professional dungeon masters run Dungeons & Dragons games in historic castles in England and the Landoll’s Mohican Castle resort in the United States. The all-inclusive trips are popular with forever DMs who have few opportunities to actually play the game, and they often want to ask the pros for advice on everything from improv to puzzle design to handling difficult situations at the table. So the organizers began thinking of a way to answer those questions and came up with the concept of Dungeon Master University, which will hold its first session Jan. 2-3, 2026 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.
“You can watch thousands of [YouTube] videos on any topic and learn quite a lot from it, but the idea was that there’s just no substitute for something that could be done in person, in the company of other dungeon masters, where there’s live engagement with faculty instructors and your fellow DMs, your peers at the table, who are probably in a similar position that you’re in and also want to level up their game,” World of Darkness Brand Marketing Manager Jason Carl, who serves as the dean of Dungeon Master University, told Polygon in a Zoom interview.
Dungeon Masters can pay between $995 and $2,500 for the all-inclusive experience, depending on the level of access they want to the pros. The starting package includes one of four courses: Skill Building teaches the basics of running D&D, Campaign Building is focused on crafting long-running games, Worldbuilding emphasizes setting design, and Career Building is for dungeon masters who want to learn more about the gaming industry. Each includes eight hours of classwork split over two days.
“The courses are designed so that you walk away with immediate practical outcomes, probably greater confidence, and a lot of usable tools,” Carl said. “They’re not just lectures and they’re not just static videos. These are sessions that you can attend, learn from, and then go right back home the next week and put into practice in your home campaign.”
Most of the classes are split between two professors – Monte Cook Games founder Monte Cook and Keith Baker, creator of D&D’s Eberron campaign setting, are both teaching worldbuilding. Career building has four different teachers, including Elisa Teague, who wrote the chapter on puzzles for the D&D book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, The Adventure Zone co-host Clint McElroy, and Hunter Fell, who was one of the first professional game masters on StartPlaying. The extra faculty is meant to provide information to students with specific goals.
“Some of them want to launch their own D&D actual play and share their stories with the world, some of them want to publish and write original content,” Carl said. “Some just want to ask, How do I get to be a DM at something like D&D in a Castle? What are the skills that I need? Can anyone do it?”
A $1,500 gold tier ticket includes access to a welcome reception on Jan. 1, a welcome gift pack, and a 30-minute office hour appointment with one of the faculty members. While this is the first Dungeon Master Academy, Tabletop Vacations has run “dungeon days” events in between sessions of D&D in a Castle where the professional DMs ran seminars and answered questions one-on-one.
“You could almost run an entire weekend just on office hours for professional dungeon masters,” Carl said. I don’t know if that’s the best use of everybody’s time – I think the coursework and the lab work is too valuable – but I think it’s going to be one of the most popular parts of the program.”
The $2,500 platinum tier provides an hour of one-on-one time and the chance to run a game for five players plus one of the faculty members, who will provide notes and coaching afterward.
“The purpose is for the faculty member to evaluate whatever the DM is interested in: Hey I don’t do well with improv or I feel stuck in this kind of combat situation. Can I run a scenario for you and get feedback on what my strengths and weaknesses are?” Carl said. “Or maybe they want to get feedback and information on a specific world that they’ve been building.”
Feedback on the first event will help shape future Dungeon Master University sessions. Carl said some possible changes could be adding more office hours, lengthening the event to three days, or experimenting with different seminar structures.
“I hope that we do this very often,” Carl said. “I would love to see multiple Dungeon Master Universities in a given year, in different cities, and in different countries. The response has been really terrific. We’re very happy with what we’re seeing so far and I think it would be wonderful to be able to do this in conjunction with big conventions.”
