Unpopular opinion maybe, but the take on being “I made a thing” narrator and a “I’ll break your thing” player feels like missing the point to me. I mean, you can build that dynamic and have fun if that’s what you’re into, but it is still collaborative, just that the narrator pretends to be challenged. In most ttrpgs, the narrator has almost complete control over the game. You can try to “compete” but it is never a real match, as the narrator can make your character/s disappear in an instant if she/he/they want. So this supposed pissing contest is really more like a dad playing pretend like he got bested by his kids in a fight. Which shows that this was never the point.
What to me really makes it work is setting up scenarios with a lot of input from the players and seeing the game unfold wherever they might take it. The narrator is given that power precisely because it should try to avoid controlling the story as much as it can, and instead interpret the world around the players (as if the world is the character the narrator controls) to develop surprising and captivating situations and events that play off of everyone at the table.
Also related, “Dungeon master” sounds outdated, as it points to a person that controls a 1 vs many boardgames like Descent, Mansions of Madness or Imperial Assault. Which is why the collaborative storytelling is, to me, what sets it apart from other games. One can definitely have competitive storytelling (Everyone is John), but lets not kid ourselves thinking that’s what goes on in most ttrpg games being played.
How can you say that about Emily? Ali Beardsley makes the GM cuss at least as often. :)
It’s not always bad when your GM says “Fuck you.” Sometimes we say it because you just skipped to the end of the mystery that was supposed to last a few more sessions, sometimes it’s because you use the spells I just gave you to kill my big-bad.
Mostly it’s beautiful, because you did something I wasn’t expecting and now I get to work around it in real time. It’s not truly a collaborative story until you are making my life as the narrator hard, otherwise I’m just telling you a story on rails.
I’ve been working my way through NADDPOD, and there was a great session where
NADDPOD
the party is in an airship being chased by Knights of Hell riding Nightmares. Axford polymorphed the Duke of Hell’s steed into a dolphin and they fall out of the sky.
The GM is laughing, but musing that this was supposed to be a big fight and Emily just dinked it.
Another player comforts him with, you forgot wizards are bullshit.
It was such a great session. It really emblemizes how I try to approach being a GM. Have a prepared roadmap, but have space around the road for the characters to take a roadrally off-road.
As someone that loves playing magic users, and especially wizards. Yeah, wizards are bullshit. I can generally be carrying around enough water to achieve any sort of necessary destruction by level 3 with a bag of holding and a damn cantrip.
Sure, throwing away 40+ hours of work because one player chose to go completely off rail is fun once or twice, but it gets old really really fast. Nowadays I run my games on a pretty rigid railroad. At the end of the session I ask my players what they would like to do and that’s what I’m preparing. Sure, there’s some wiggle room, but if you decide to do something completely different, there’s a pretty big chance it will result in character death.
I was with you in the first half. But shouldn’t there be some out of game communication between “This is not the direction we agreed upon beforehand” and “I will kill your character as punishment”?
Yeah, I think there’s a big difference between “I thought they were going to investigate the smith, but they’re really suspicious of the wizard now and want to check her out first” and “they decided to forget about the whole civil war for the throne thing and open a BBQ joint for the local goblins”
Nowadays I’d probably just explicitly be like “Hey, so, when we started this game we agreed on a certain tone and direction. Specifically, it was going to be about a power struggle for the throne. Running a restaurant business in D&D sounds wild, but that is really a different kind of story and a different game. If you want to do that, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, I’m asking you to stay more on theme.”
Though I say that and my best game had plenty of “beach episodes”. One time literally, after they saved some sahaugin from being subjugated by a siren.
Exactly! My prep is pretty robust towards different means of achieving an objective. Usually plan for two to three different courses of action and can improf everything in between. My comment was directed exclusively at the “Yeah, that dungeon looks interesting, but I’m gonna troll the king instead” type of shennanigans.
Yes, of course. I’m not Dr. Bibber, one wrong move and you’re dead. In fact I’ve only “killed” a character like this once. And even then I allowed the rest of the party to retrieve the corpse and resurrect them the next session. Usually my players are observant enough to notice the “Certain death this way” signs.
This is more of a problem with newer group constellations where people still need to proof how random and quirky they can be and where the player GM dynamic is not yet fully fleshed out.
have fun without me!
Don’t worry, we will
I once knew a munchkin who literally had the GM say to them exasperatedly something like “Fine, you win!”. The munchkin naturally replies with “But, you can’t win at D&D”, to which the GM just said “And congrats, you managed it anyway.”, at which point the GM ended the campaign.
I prefer to get the DM to laugh and/or this:
that’s the emily axford approach
Oceans 11 music starts playing
Por que no los tres?
I ran a cyberpunk red campaign as the GM. I set up a storyline where the group was captured by Arasaka using an experimental “flashbang” that would shut down anyone with neural implants (the whole group). The dumbest of my group attempted to escape that. He rolled a nat 20 and I had him literally commit ego death inside his mind to “wake up.” Inside the AV they were all trapped in was my version of the head of arasaka security. Basically an undefeatable t-1000.
He rolled a nat 20 again and woke everyone on the av up with advantage. Then the fucking rockerboy convinced the head of security to save him rolling his own nat 20 while the others worked to override/crash the AV before it could land at arasaka
So I ended up having the rockerboy being wrapped in a big hug by the head of security and jumping out as the av crashed (the tech lowered the speed). So the rockerboy survived with like no damage, the head of arasaka security was fucked up, the team survived, and never made it to the entire narrative I had planned.
10/10 would GM again
I did a one-shot once with a Bethesda start (locked in a prison with a bunch of stranger) pickpocketed the keys off the guard, got caught, convinced the guard to gift me the keys, then when the guard saw me giving the keys to another player I convinced the guard I was just passing on the kindness. I then snuck into the office of the warden (boss) stole some magical items (including an immovable rod). Later after the inevitable fight where the other players who actually had the stats to fight wasted a few guards, I did successfully convince a couple of guards to just go home for the day before I snuck out.
Later attempting to escape through the city, we’re stopped by some guards who’d heard about the prison escape and see a rag-tag group covered in blood and in a hurry so they assume we’re the escaped prisoners. I told them we were midwives leaving a very messy birth and heading to another emergency (advantage on that roll was all that caused it to land) then ultimately met up with the warden at the town gate who I simply trapped with my immovable rod
Virgin Silverhand: Sets off a nuke and barely anyone even remembers him or his band, gets soul killed.
Chad random rockerboy: Restarts his own brain with pure willpower and immediately talks a decades long Arasaka supersoldier into helping him.Lol it was the idiot solo who woke himself and everyone up. The rockerboy just always avoided conflict and made a wildly dramatic exit. But the events in motion had us all crying laughing while my brain scrambled to plot the continuation of the story as the group rolled to destroy my cool narrative
Got to play again the other night for the first time in like 15 years and there were several “I’ll allow it” statements made. Fun night.
last time I played I assassinated the main antag the DM spent weeks on. had maps, quests, characters, back story, etc.
the character was really rude and antagonizing towards me because I had the audacity to tell him to stop attacking the nearby village. just having a chat…pulled out my dagger and stabbed his bitch ass face without warning. before I rolled the DM asked, “are you sure? he’s pretty high level.” I rolled just high enough and dropped him inside his cottage door.
the DM just sighed, defeated and started calculating exp. We didn’t even know who he was until we saw how much exp we were getting.
I felt really bad for the DM. he was really good at it for being so new. I didn’t go back after because I felt I ruined the fun for everyone else.
I generally play chaotic good and absolutely lose my fucking shit to evil characters. I’m drawn to them like catnip. this wasn’t the first time I ruined a campaign like this.
one time I “accidentally” burned a village down that was home to the only living heir to the kingdom we were hired to find. well, we found him. extra crispy. long story on how the village was set ablaze…
Perhaps you should challenge yourself and try different, more… “morally fluid” characters. It will take you out of your comfort zone, but might be surprisingly enjoyable!
I like to be outright evil with one exception where I’m a paladin for.
Like utterly evil but I will go to the ends of the earth to ensure a child has a teddy bear.
There will be death to get that teddy bear.
Like utterly evil but I will go to the ends of the earth to ensure a child has a teddy bear.
Shit that gives me a great campaign idea whenever I get to DM again. Starts out as a silly fetch quest, important protagonist wants you to go get his kid"s teddy bear that was left in the market, then it turns into an epic power struggle as you learn that multiple factions are fighting over ownership of this powerful talisman then after all is said and done it turns out to just be a teddy bear that multiple factions have faught wars over and in the end you bring it back to the kid
We found it! The type of player I would never want to play a ttrpg with. 😐
The critical difference is whether the DM says it with a frown or a grin.
“Fuck you!” 🖕😠🖕 vs “Fuck you!” 🖕😄🖕
Or the ever coveted …
😶🤨😲🤔😓 “Fuck you…” 🖕😏🖕
“Sorry DM, I just want to say before we get started: thank you all for coming to my story-time one-man show. And now, if you’ll observe my PowerPoint, I will begin my character introduction…”
I became a much better player after I DM’d.
It taught me that it is possible to thread the needle and do both.
what does that even mean? both what? what is thread the needle
“Eat your dice, Brennan!”
I mean there’s the other approach, had the GM tell us that he didn’t do as much prep as he hoped but game was still on.
My response “I’ll do my best to be inefficient”
Then again the character I’m playing is with a group I’ve played with for years, and I sat down with them before it started with “I’m about to play possibly my most irritating character concept and I want everyone on board before I finalize.”
I like to imagine doing that but doing it is just shitty and unnecessary, and probably not fun …
Set wide goals, expect mayhem, have fun. Anything more than this is wishful thinking.
DnD is no more just dungeons and dragons. The moment it becomes an open world, the players roam around and do mischief.
If you want to play out your dream campaingn, write a book. It will never play as you expect or want. Unless you have the play fully scripted, with fixed roles and outcomes, it will derail.
You’re welcome to down vote to your content.
If everyone’s on the same page and wanting to play out a story, seeing how your characters and world changes in response to things not playing out as expected is part of the fun. It should never truly derail unless someone is trying intentionally to, in which case you need to talk about it. Or you got complacent and dangled a campaign altering thing too close for them to resist…
That is scripting.
Are we playing a campaign or renacting the Lord of the Rings?
Live for the chaos and mayhem. Expect it. Thrive from it. And tell the players that if their precious avatar dies, it’s on them, exclusively.
A campaign should be built around goals, capable of being moved around, delayed or put ahead of schedule as needed.
The players are walking in the campaign blind. It’s not their concern if a random action - that may be completely in line with their character - ampers, deviates or collapses the entire campaign.
Of course nothing should be inflexible, but I’m just saying there’s no reason for every campaign to be derailed completely. If your players are actively going against the scenario something’s gone wrong. And yeah, if you give them the opportunity to do something, be prepared for it to happen and roll with the consequences.
Unless you play low level John Does every time, characters should know stuff about the world they’ve lived in their whole lives. And if none of that ties into the scenario are you playing a campaign or in a sandbox?
Congratulations. Having high level characters and well rounded players does make everything smoother. If you’ve had those, I envy you. But not much.
I’ve managed a couple of games but I always made my plots to willfully accomodate chaos. I like to reward stupidity and recklessness. After a couple of disastrous events, the table tends to settle down and the mood tends to loosen up.
I’m fairly comfortable saying we have different approaches to playing and play directing. Which is good.
