D&D General Do I Have To Have Players?

[Wolfram stout]

Yes, and to the same extent as the Original Post. Specifically, it was The One Ring 2nd edition. A beautiful awesome looking game. And while my whole group likes Lord of the Rings, I am the big Tolkien fan-boy and lore enthusiast. I realized as I was writing up the campaign that it was heavily railroady, and my first reaction (to myself) was "Well it has to be or they will just mess it up". That made me realize that I should not run it. Instead,

I am about to start a Spelljammer campaign instead, and look forward to whatever craziness and off the wall stuff they can throw at the campaign.

 

[iserith]

Also, if you have no plot to ruin in the first place, your game is effectively bulletproof. There is no middle or end preplanned ahead of time. The players can do whatever they want and whatever they do is the story.

 

[payn]

Also, if you have no plot to ruin in the first place, your game is effectively bulletproof. There is no middle or end preplanned ahead of time. The players can do whatever they want and whatever they do is the story.

You can, but I find GMs often run boring games in this style. Its not something easily done.

 

[iserith]

You can, but I find GMs often run boring games in this style. Its not something easily done.

Plenty of DMs run boring games with or without plots. As long as there are things to do in the context of the setting and the players get after it, there's not a problem. I refer to what I believe you're saying as the "quicksand box." Where there's no obvious adventure to be found anywhere so most sessions are spent spinning one's wheels and/or shopping.

 

[aco175]

I try to view making a campaign like building blocks with a child and knowing they will knock it down as soon as they can. It is in their nature, so I try and not dissuade them.

Look at how much fun he is having.

 

[Umbran]

Any other DMs out there run into something like that?

Well, inside every fan is a frustrated novelist. Have you considered that if it you are too attached to it to allow outside input, maybe then you should just write the darned thing the way you feel it should go and be done with it?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Any other DMs out there run into something like that?

Not really. I'm kind of the opposite way. I get bored writing extremely elaborate campaigns because I want to know what the players will actually doing, rather than trying to either:

A) Write super-long-range detailed predictions of what they might do.

or

B) Write a mediocre-to-bad fantasy story that is pretending to be a campaign.

The latter has been consistently a huge issue in TT RPGs, I was reading some commentary from one of the White Wolf lead designers about it. They tried to get people to write like, actual campaigns, but they kept ending up getting what were essentially just stories where the players were basically onlookers whilst NPCs did cool stuff, and even if you avoid the NPCs doing the cool stuff - which even TSR/WotC fall into at times - you're still doing something kind of to the side of writing an actual campaign.

I'm running Spire at the moment, and the "campaign frames" it has are much more like what I tend to write, which is a like a large-scale, longer-term scenario, but where anything but the initial parts aren't really detailed and are pretty theoretical, and where it's more about creating interesting moving parts to play with than telling a specific story.

And if you're not telling a specific story, you don't get the "my precious campaign!" factor! But hey at least you get that it's an issue, rather than just clutching your specific story to your chest and weeping lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, inside every fan is a frustrated novelist. Have you considered that if it you are too attached to it to allow outside input, maybe then you should just write the darned thing the way you feel it should go and be done with it?

Not to be contrarian (though I know I can be, sorry!), but I think some of us just have no novelist inside us. Like, I can write a lot of words on the internet, but I couldn't envision myself writing a novel (cut to five years later where I have just finished the first 1200 page volume of my ludicrously overwrought purple-prose-filled fantasy epic lol but shut up!).

But anyway my point was rather that if you don't have the novelist inside you, maybe you're less interested in stories, and more interested in moving parts? I mean that's always what's fascinated me as a DM, for 30+ years now. Not the beginning-middle-end story campaign (which I enjoy as a player, if it's done well!), but placing some interesting pieces in front of the players, and giving them a goal or a mission, should they choose to accept it, and seeing what happens, which is almost never what I expect to happen.

I think this is kind of a lucky thing, because I've seen so much heartbreak from DMs over campaigns "gone wrong". Even my own brother, apparently we made some unfortunate decision in a WEG Star Wars campaign one time, which we all thought was going great, but like the chain reaction from whatever it was we did basically destroyed months of work/planning on his part, and he actually gave up on running it.

But I agree with your point that if you really have that novel inside you, write it! Like 75% or more of the better fantasy and SF writers of the last couple of decades got their start as DMs.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Kind of. I definitely used to get that feeling. When I was younger it was the bane of many of my campaigns. I'd set up this "great" campaign concept, but then when it came time the players would immediately run roughshod over it, like bulls in a china shop, which made me no longer want to run it.

Nowadays, I build my campaigns to be broken. I'll throw a weak beam here (the removal of which could bring down a section of the roof), and a false wall there with something game changing within. So on and so forth. That makes me want to continue running the campaign, because each week I tune in to see what they break and how.

IMO, if you have a campaign concept that's your darling, and you don't want to have to kill it, then don't run it. Maybe use it as a historical background for a campaign concept set in the future, one that you've designed to be broken. That way your darling will see use but (short of time travel) remains unbreakable.

 

[Oofta]

I'm in the process of kicking off a new campaign, and for once I've actually managed to get well-prepared for running it - there's a solid beginning and middle, and at least some notion of how it's going to end, lots of encounters that I think should be fun, groups to interact with, mysteries to explore... basically, I'm very happy with it.

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.

This is, of course, a case of "my precious campaign", but it's the first time I've been struck by it so strongly. And I fully intend to ignore it and get on with running the thing. But I thought it was amusing enough to post about.

Any other DMs out there run into something like that?

I remember reading an article long ago from an author who had played D&D when younger. When asked if they still DMed, they said that no they couldn't DM because the players never did what she wanted them to do. Seems like you're hitting the same issue.

I haven't run into this problem for a long time because I realize that I am merely setting things in motion and setting the stage. Yes, I control the secondary actors but I don't control the story. So if I ever find myself thinking "and then the PCs will..." I stop myself. Instead I think of the actors (which can be human, monster or organizations) what their motivations and goals are. Actors can be good, evil or indifferent. I think about how the setting has been affected by those actors and what, if any, impact previous campaign have had on the world. But then I let it go.

The actors respond to the actions of the PCs, but the PCs have a great deal of control over the scope and direction of the campaign. Figuring out what those actors think, how they're going to view the actions of the PCs, what kind of ripple effects there could be is a big part of the fun and just as engaging as trying to write out an entire campaign. I'll usually have a general outline in mind - what happens if the PCs don't interfere - but it's just an outline and one I'm more than willing to toss out the window if a new direction makes sense and sounds like more fun.