Project: Dungeon Monitoring

Background

Throughout out time in the community, we've been fortunate to travel and experience many evens and engage in many dungeons across the USA. These include dungeons at events of many sizes, commercial dungeon facilities, and private dungeons. We have been fascinated with the variety of activity and approach to dungeon and event safety. We've also taken multiple roles in being participants, acting as DMs, DM Coordinators, and running our own events with dungeons.

From these perspectives, we noticed:

Dungeon Monitoring is not always done the same way (for good reasons and bad). This variation is not usually explained and understood.
As they should, each dungeon sets up its own specific rules. However, some dungeons have significant gaps in protocol or staff that are not well trained or coordinated.
There is a significant lack of comprehensive training about Dungeon Monitoring. Much of the material available online was created a long time ago by organizations and people such as Jay Wiseman, Black Rose, and Sir Bamm! We were able to talk to Jay Wiseman about why there was a lack of DM training information and became motivated to create this resource. Later efforts have somewhat expanded this, such as Dungeon Monitors Resource Group and Switch Jake; however, much of this material is dungeon-specific.
We found that most of the existing DM training is:
- (1) Focused upon a particular dungeon. While this is needed, it doesn't help a different event or venue know a broader set of options and tools available.
- (2) Intended to primarily train only DMs (not Dungeon Coordinators, Event Producers, or Attendees). Yet all these other "perspectives" training contribute to the safety of a dungeon, so should exist.
- (3) Lacks comprehensive information for simplicity. This limits availability of a particular dungeon to choose the elements they need for their space.
- (4) From a broader perspective, new ideas structures and summaries have emerged that don't exist in any other training.

New Training - Perspectives

Experience explained in the Background above lead to "Training from Different Perspectives." These perspectives are:

Big Picture
- In any role, understanding your place within it will make things better operate. Everyone should have a basis of understanding of how the while thing works - without having to know details.
Event Owner/Producer
- While they may not need to know details of dungeon activity, they need to know how to select Dungeon Coordinators, DMs, and how the dungeon will impact their event.
Dungeon Coordinator
- Management and coordination of DMs is different from knowing how to be a DM.
Dungeon Monitors (Overview & Detail)
- A more comprehensive set of training with new perspectives.
Attendees
- Some dungeons have optional or mandatory training for their guests. Some do not.

How This Class Can Be Taught

Practically, the course can be taught in multiple sessions. The course is the result of a few years of effort including research and travel to and experience in many dungeons across the country. It has been discussed with multiple experts in the community. The course can be broad or only certain sections can be taught in shorter periods or combinations. It builds on many historical resources, but adds breadth and overview, and new tools and structures to think about positive engagement with the community in dungeons.

In person
- Comprehensive, over multiple sessions.
- A 4-hour intensive.
- Focused 60-90 minute sections as needed.
Videos
- Free video recordings of the class are available.
- It is best to select the classes needed, having a local proctor show the video and have an in-person discussion about the video.

Disclaimer

This material must be applied with care and adapted to specific instances by practitioners of Dungeon Monitoring. Domum Corium Cordis, Leather Heart, its heads of house and members, accept no responsibility or liability for any accident, injury, damage, or incident that may occur to individuals, groups, or companies, that perform activities described in this training material delivered on video, in person, written, or other form.

Training Approach & Materials

Have Leather Heart Train You

Leather heart will travel to train this material based upon availability and negotiation of the activity. We can also train via teleconference to train by ourselves or team with you to join into your existing training to add different energy and ideas into your existing training.

Train Yourself - Free Videos

The videos are a bit sedate ;-) I'm energized in front of an audience. Recording hours of class talking to myself was interesting. I did get excited a few times! There are numerous places to pause for audience engagement, something I didn't want to do by conjuring alternate personalities. I will re-record these as new versions of the slides come to life. If you have ideas, input, corrections to these, let me know.

This is a comprehensive dungeon monitor training for Event Owners, Dungeon Coordinators, and Dungeon Monitors. We teach this in-person and there are also videos that are open captioned. Times listed below are for live classes, usually 1.5x to 2x longer than the video run-times.

(1) Overview, Big Picture – How does it all fit together? [45-60 min], VIDEO,
- High-level aspects for dungeon setup and operation
- Size of dungeons
- Public-Private versus dungeon size
- Timelines
- Attendee perspective
- Inclusion choices

(2) Event Owner – Options for Dungeons [90-120 min], VIDEO,
- Key items to resolve, plan, execute
- Optional spaces
- Dungeon layout
- Critical items
- Signage
- Hiring your crew (DCs & DMs)
- Equipment for the DMs
- Planning shift times for DMs & DCs.
- Setting Event Rules
- Safety/emergency equipment
- Mental health resources
- Cleaning equipment
- Supplies, Radios
- Law enforcement
- Allowing Play & Activity that is often disallowed
- Agreements with attendees
- Training your attendees

(3) Dungeon Coordinator/Lead – [45-60 min], VIDEO
- Considerations for the DC role
- Manager duties, clarity with the Event Coordinator, DMs
- Shifts - Organizing your team
- Hiring and training DMs, DM aftercare
- Safety/emergency equipment

(4) Dungeon Monitor Overview – High level DM perspective [60-90 min], VIDEO
- Value of DM, Reasons to DM
- Challenges DMs may face, Evaluate your motives to be a DM
- Becoming a better DM
- Terminology
- Basic roles and activity
- When and how to intervene
- Timelines
- Safety protocol acronyms and definitions
- Obscure acronyms
- Professionalism

(5) Dungeon Monitor Detailed Skills – Becoming a better DM (in three videos)
- 5a - The Scene & Familiarity with Play, [60-90 min], VIDEO
  - What is a scene and play? Top, Bottom, Fetish, Audience, Ambiance
  - Familiarity with play (many types)
  - Scenarios
- 5b - AM-HIS Intervention Approach, [60-90 min], VIDEO
  - Intervention approach (Advise, Monitor, Help, Intervene, Stop)
  - Details on AM-HIS for multiple types of play
  - Intervention indicators
  - When to intervene less
  - Scenarios
- 5c - Physical & Mental Health, [60-90 min], VIDEO
  - Physical Health
    - First Aid
    - Precautions
    - Pathogens
  - Mental Health
    - Mental Health handout
    - Urgent Mental Health
    - Psychological First Aid
  - Safety/emergency equipment
  - Scenarios

(6) Attendees - How to train your players & observers, [60-90 min], VIDEO
- Dungeon-specific training
- Training items for attendees
- Scenarios

(7) References, VIDEO
- Other related materials you may review

Video links will be available soon. Until then, contact us to download the MP4 files.

Other DM Training Materials

The following training materials are also available:

Mental Health handout for dungeons (that you can modify for your dungeon space)
- PDF of New Mexico handout
- Word document of handout you can modify for your dungeon