My Story Is Better Than Yours (Uh, No It Isn’t)

The best part about doing a playtest is that it provides me with an opportunity to create a new setting in order to properly test all that the rules have to offer in and out of combat.  This is just the case with my latest “campaign”, which has only had two sessions so far and therefore has yet to truly be named.  Either one of the gamers in my merry group will name a campaign or I will and that always helps us to easily refer to a specific game.  This usually defines the identity of the campaign but who really sets the identity of the game, the DM or the players?  The reason I say DM is because the question of the identity of the game seems to come up a lot more in my fantasy games than when I run other genres of games.  So assume we are talking about a new Dungeons & Dragons game and ask, “Who picks the direction the game will go in after it starts?”

From the onset of the campaign the DM is in firm control.   He can control what options are available to characters based on what he has established for the campaign.  This could be as simple as no half-orcs or no paladins.  In a Dungeons & Dragons game for example, I may not allow any Dragonmark feats as I might not be willing as a DM to build the necessary story elements in to balance those over-powered feats out.  The DM has control over the start of the game.  The options after the game starts can be considerable because of the resources, both material and otherwise, that are available to them.  This is where we have to question who controls the direction of the game from that point forward?  If you say the DM then why do we call it a role-playing game?  If you say the players than is the DM there to do nothing more than provide what the players need in order to accomplish their character goals and nothing more?

If you have picked out a mega adventure for your group to run like The Temple of Elemental Evil or Scales of War than that should carry the game in the direction the adventure was designed.  You probably don’t have too much to worry about.  If you are running your game in a sandbox style and you have things that you want to introduce into your game and the players don’t take the bait but perhaps go in an entirely different direction, what do you do?  For example, if you are running a game that is about exploration of the Ruins of Undermountain but one of your players wants to focus the attention of his character on building an army in the Dalelands you have an identity crisis in your campaign.  Now that we know it is there we can find out how it got there and figure out to keep it away for good in the future.

Even if you give your players the juiciest plot hooks there is no way to guarantee that they bite.  As the DM you have to allow your players to spread their creative wings and soar with their characters over the landscape of your world.  I ran a poll recently on the site about what players most wanted to see in DDNext or 5^th Edition and was surprised that so many had filled in “Having high level play matter on the campaign/world.”  This tells me that players have to be allowed to construct their own plot threads some and that the DM has to be willing to accommodate some of those threads.  Unfortunately the DM probably had some of his own ideas for what direction the campaign should move in.  If you choose not to heed any choices of your players, your game will probably stall or at least get a bit stale and your players may feel a bit like their characters live in a bubble.  As the DM you need to gust of wind that bubble  in a direction that all involved find fun and fascinating.

When I am running a game I want my players to be engaged in the game.  To make sure this happens if one of my players expresses interest in a certain path or choice with their character I immediately get interested as well.  It may not be what I had "planned" for my game but that doesn't mean I am not going to stoke those embers in the players imagination into a fiery blaze that would make Kossuth proud.  If you enjoy the story as much as I do then you will learn to concede that even though it isn't the story that you would have chosen, it is the story that will continue to progress the story line in your campaign, and that is the best you can hope for.  A Dungeon Master may be a bit more rare than players, but the players are just as necessary as the DM.  Keep this in mind, check your ego, express your ideas and listen to those of the other players in your group and you will all have a great time.  Until next time, Roll Hard!