This Dungeon Master strategy rewired my brain

Comments · 1.4K

• GI

  @GinnyDi · 2 years ago · pinned

  Just learned that the authors of this book have a free community for GMs to discuss and improve their craft! Could be a good resource if you plan to try out these techniques at your own table: <a href="https://gamemasterlaboratory.com/">https://gamemasterlaboratory.com</a>

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• GE

  @Geeves28 · 2 years ago

  This is similar to something Brennan once said. &quot;Railroad vs player agency is a false dichotomy. A good campaign is a railroad... made of rails and spikes that your players give you. &quot;

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• CA

  @carlfishy · 2 years ago (edited)

  Most of my players are people I know from work, so I&apos;m giggling a little at the idea of sitting them down and saying &quot;OK, I want each of you to set goals for your characters. Ideally they should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Every couple of months we&apos;ll check in to see how you&apos;re tracking on your goals and whether they need to be adjusted.&quot; <br><br>I suspect they would burn me at the stake.<br><br>&quot;Helen. I noticed that Xyrelle is only tracking at a 0.5 on her &apos;avenge my parents&apos; OKR. What can we do to bring this up to a 0.7?&quot;

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• WI

  @wibe1n · 2 years ago

  The more I delve into the world of DnD I realize just how different my first campaign was. This is basically how we played. The Gm presented us a world and just said &quot;What do we want to do?&quot; So we ended up building a castle for us and creating our own crime syndicate. There were all kinds of plots surrounding the creation of the crime syndicate and it was awesome. But I do give props that our gm was incredible at improvising and coming up with stuff on the spot. I must say I&apos;m really glad my first game was so unorthodox.

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• TO

  @TonySamedi · 2 years ago

  I remember ages ago, Wizard magazine did a special issue on villains of comics, and there was a whole ass essay on the issues about comics being the same villains act, heroes react thing.<br><br>It pointed out that it&apos;s actually the opposite in most old legends.<br>Gilgamesh wants immortality. Odysseus just wants to get home.Orpheus wants Eurydice to live again.<br><br>In the oldest tales, heroes were the ones with the goal, and villains were the ones who somehow prevented that goal.

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• ZE

  @zeedar412 · 2 years ago

  If there is one thing I know, it&apos;s that Ginny doesn&apos;t care if I buy this book.

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• TO

  @Togruta · 2 years ago (edited)

  Yesssssss! That is exactly why people always say &quot;D&amp;D doesn&apos;t feel like when we were 13-14yo anymore!&quot;, and I&apos;m convinced it&apos;s not just notalgia but because of big adventure modules setting the standard to reactive gaming for the players.<br><br>Several of the games I played in the 90s, the DM invented a reason why we were together, put us in a small town and ask &quot;So what do you guys want to do?&quot;. We rolled STR, then DEX, then CON, etc., not even choosing which goes where. Once, I rolled very bad stats! I played a wizard anyway. I died at level 1 (!), and I rolled another dude, but because we had so much fun with my bad wizard for a couple of sessions, they became the Company of the Dead Wizard. This was a very awesome and satisfying game.

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• TH

  @thisjust10 · 2 years ago (edited)

  The good is reactive evil is proactive line is something that was ingrained in me when I was younger, to the point that even when I ran an evil game I was like oh you guys are the driving force now not me and it was super fun. I eventually learned to include some of that stuff in my &quot;regular&quot; games too, And I love that you mentioned that too 🖤

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• BI

  @biofoot7874 · 2 years ago (edited)

  You&apos;ve been here the whole time! The only way to learn is by playing, &nbsp;only way to win is by learning and the only way to begin is by beginning

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• IK

  @ikemoritz1425 · 2 years ago

  This is really good advice to long-form campaigns! But for anyone interested in episodic campaigns or one shots, where PCs have less agency over their goals, consider giving your hero One Dramatic Question about their identity. Questions like “Will the hero’s faith in the aristocracy survive once they venture beyond the palace walls?” “Will the hero embrace or reject their complicated family legacy?” “Will the hero let go of their feelings of guilt and open their heart to a found family?” &quot;Will the hero stop being a self-interested hustler and help out the plucky rebels?&quot; are some common, tropey examples.<br><br>Using The One Dramatic Question gives you the following benefits:<br><br>-It is easy to demonstrate your character&apos;s answer to their One Dramatic Question changing over time, creating dynamic character arcs emergently.<br><br>-It is an effective roleplay lens, encouraging you to think about how you can &quot;eek out&quot; ways of demonstrating your PC&apos;s answer to their One Dramatic Question in various generic scenes without specifically needing to plan a scene about answering your One Dramatic Question.<br><br>-It is easy for other players to understand and pick up on. Deep psychological conflicts can be satisfying in books and films, but can be hard to roleplay in a way that other players can clock and meaningfully respond to. However, One Dramatic Question makes the most interesting part of your character extremely obvious and easy for other players to meaningfully interact with.<br><br>-Dramatic Questions are... well, dramatic. WILL the hero turn against the monarchy after seeing the plight of the commoner? WILL the hero take up the name of their evil father? WILL the hero break down and embrace their party members after a ferocious battle? WILL the hero sell out the resistance for a massive reward? The answer is <b>usually</b> that the PC will choose the heroic option, but the uncertainty as to what circumstances will prompt/inform their dramatic choice, alongside the vague possibility that they might <b>not</b> make the heroic choice is compelling drama.

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• CH

  @chuckcooley7395 · 2 years ago

  This is great advice, with one caveat: I was doing many of these things before I ended my campaign in frustration. Why? Because the players strongly resisted proactivity. It was like pulling teeth to get them to say what they wanted to do next, much less compose character goals. &quot;Actionable goals - that sounds like what my boss asks me to do at work.&quot;<br><br>Yeah guys, creating goals IS work. Imagine how much harder it is for me to guess what your goals are when you won&apos;t tell me, or don&apos;t even know. The point of my whining is: This strategy (like almost everything in adventure games) won&apos;t work without player buy-in.<br><br>Players, please help your GMs out in this easy way. You&apos;ll all have more fun.

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• JO

  @jordanvanness · 2 years ago (edited)

  I think this is an excellent approach to a certain way of running D&amp;D, so long as the group is set on running D&amp;D that way.<br><br>Players who approach D&amp;D because they want to be the protagonists of a heroic story may love being given the reigns of a table driven by proactive roleplaying and clearer guidelines on how to take part in it.<br>Players who approach D&amp;D because they want to explore the unknown and overcome diegetic challenges may feel less rewarded by overcoming an obstacle when they put it there themselves<br><br>DMs who approach D&amp;D because they want to enable their friends&apos; epic story may love the relief of proactive roleplaying causing no effort to go to waste and granting the confidence that they&apos;re doing what their players want.<br>DMs who approach D&amp;D because they want to engage in worldbuilding, storytelling, and challenge designing may feel underappreciated when their role is relegated to serving as the facilitator of the players&apos; ideas of worldbuilding, storytelling, and challenge designing rather than their own.<br><br>My theory of these differing approaches is that D&amp;D experiences exist on a spectrum between &quot;D&amp;D is improvising a heroic storytelling experience&quot; and &quot;D&amp;D is playing a game of simulated adventuring&quot;.<br><br>On the &quot;story&quot; side, players are more likely to use framings like &quot;the plot&quot;, &quot;the story&quot;, &quot;the main characters / protagonists&quot;, &quot;character motivations&quot;, &quot;the spotlight&quot;, &quot;scenes&quot;, &quot;narrative milestones&quot;, etc. From that perspective, it is highly beneficial to look to theatre, improv, literature, and live performance in general to seek ways to improve. Characters being able to proactively direct the game using their motivations makes sense. Improv isn&apos;t about following a script, it&apos;s about listening to each other and taking it upon yourself to introduce new ideas.<br><br>On the &quot;game&quot; side, players are more likely to use framings like &quot;the dungeon&quot;, &quot;exploration nodes&quot;, &quot;player roles&quot;, &quot;resource management&quot;, &quot;procedures&quot;, &quot;resolution mechanics&quot;, &quot;[hex/point/path/city/dungeon] crawl&quot;, &quot;random tables&quot;, &quot;experience point value&quot;, etc. From that perspective, it is highly beneficial to look to board games, video games, and game theory in general to seek ways to improve. Players being able to alter the direction of the game based on what their game token <i>wants</i> might not make sense from this perspective.<br><br>I would like to see more discussion and clearer distinction around the differences between these approaches to D&amp;D, as I think it would allow for better improvement on both ends. Having a better idea of what is/isn&apos;t important to the game based on how you play is what leads to great insights like the ones Ginny shares here for &quot;story&quot; games.

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