D&D General Do I Have To Have Players?

I appreciate your sharing. That's a very vulnerable thing to discuss on internet forums.

For whatever reason, I tend to compartmentalize the fun of preparing a game from the fun of writing a story. So when I'm in "campaign design" mode, I'm constantly pausing and asking "what might a player do here?" or "what would totally breaking this scene look like?" or "why do the players care?" And that process of self-interrogation IS part of my fun when I'm in that mode.

So while we all know that separating those two processes is important and healthy for gameplay, I DO sometimes try switching gears, typically once I've done some heavy design lifting / writing already. For example, if I'm writing a 4 hour adventure and I'm 4,000-5,000 words into it, very much in that "campaign design" mode, I might pause and give it the day, then return to it in the evening or next day looking at it from a "story" mode of thinking. Often that will make a difference in pacing, scene sequencing, and how I organize emotional beats. Then once I incorporate those revisions, I'll take another break, and dive back into the "campaign design" mode.

Not in a while. However, there was a time when I would come up with my campaigns and adventures, and have the sinking feeling that when it came time to play, the players would just rename NPCs stuff like "Dwarfy McDwarfface" and act as wrecking balls just because they thought it was funny. I don't want players to be serious all the time, but I at least want them to engage with the world rather than just make a joke of it. I eventually stopped gaming with those players.

These days, I know that whatever I come up with is only going to be made that much more exciting and interesting by my PCs. That they will take things in new and exciting directions I likely never would've explored without their input.

delericho said:

Any other DMs out there run into something like that?

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Nope, not really. I'll make up an adventure which I hope will go a certain way, but I learned a long time ago my best campaigns are 90% improv or off-of-the-cuff stuff. I would say the players drive 80% of the game really because of their decisions. 10% is my "plan" or hook and 10% is my reacting to the players 80%. Sometimes I will "get them back on track" and other times I'll abandon my plan completely; it just depends on what I feel will make for the best and most fun adventure for everyone.

Now, I don't get rid of stuff. If the players go with plan X instead of the A or B I thought, and that means they never encounter M or go to N, I keep M and N around because most of the time I can work them back into the story when the players do something else, even if it is several levels later (I might have to update M/N, but the story/concept is still there).

It is also why I never bother with the stuff in the middle. Just the beginning and the ultimate end I would like--even if they never get there.

iserith said:

I invite my players to try and wreck my games. It's the only way I'll learn.

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Wreck the game is kinda what players do.

As to the OP, it comes down to how you look at RPGs as a whole. If you don't want players to impact your setting, you're far better off writing a story than running an RPG. I don't mean that as a dig, but the nature of RPGs means that the players are going to mess with everything. This is why I view story design from a game viewpoint, designing story elements, seeing how it would play out without PC interference, preparing for certain assumed PC interference, then adjusting it based on the actions of the PCs.

iserith said:

I invite my players to try and wreck my games. It's the only way I'll learn.

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I also invite my players to try and wreck my games. It's the only way they'll learn.

My world is semi sandbox in that my players have a number of hooks they can pursue.. but not an endless amount.

They are free to visit the taverns, shopkeppers and other npc's, but they understand that there has to be a purpose to do so

I've personally have never had a player that wanted to ignore the hooks and go off and do their own thing.

Shiroiken said:

Wreck the game is kinda what players do.

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CleverNickName said:

I also invite my players to try and wreck my games. It's the only way they'll learn.

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I know a bad joke about wrecking them.

Wrecked em, Damm near killed them.

delericho said:

There's just one problem: now that I've done all this work, I find that I don't want to run it, because those crazy players will obviously wade in and promptly wreck it - they'll dash off in some random direction that I haven't thought of, or resolve the central conflict in one session, or something like that

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What you see as a problem I see as a help... the best things I have ever had happen in games happened when PCs ran amuck in my settings.

I admit, I don't have much experience starting campaigns--because I've only started two. And the first one folded after like, a month and a half (partially scheduling conflicts, partially one of the players deciding "yeah TTRPGs just don't do it for me," partially some of the players not getting along as well as hoped...it was a lot of things.)

But I poured a lot of love, a lot of myself, into my Jewel of the Desert game. Yet I've never once felt threatened by my players' participation in, and changes to, that world. If anything, I find it a strange combination of liberating, invigorating, and challenging. It's liberating because I know I'm not having to shoulder the "burden" (if it can be called that) of making an exciting game alone. My players are right there with me, adding, tweaking, changing the context, expanding, and I know they're doing it because it adds something they care about. It's invigorating because they have such great ideas! I can almost always instantly see how something they've brought into the story connects with other things, how it can grow and change, how their further actions could potentially push the world in new directions. That's terrifically exciting for me, it gets me pumped for both prep work and for playing to find out what happens. And, finally, it's challenging because it means I can't just rest on my laurels, I know I have to keep matching their contributions, that those things may change my understanding of the world we play in. I sometimes sweat bullets, worried my players seeing through my plots too quickly will ruin the experience, but thus far, everyone's pretty happy about it all.

So...perhaps I'm just still in the "honeymoon" or something. But four years in, I can't think of a single moment where I've felt any desire to "protect" this world and its contents.

Without players, you're just playing with yourself. Wouldn't that be considered masturbation?