Do you Trust Your Players?

[Hussar]

So many of the issues that come up for DM's come down to trusting your players. I'm very lucky right now in that I know that the players will not abuse my trust, by and large, and will police each other more strictly than I ever could.

But, it didn't always used to be this way. Once upon a time I audited character sheets frequently, checking for discrepancies, viewed any attempt at introducing a new element with great suspicion and generally wore my viking hat with pride. But, I slowly (hey, I never pretended to be a quick thinker) realized something. Good players, like good DM's are not born, they're created. It takes time to become a good player. It takes time and experience to move beyond the crap that most of us have done in the past.

So, I shifted my priorities. I began giving a lot more responsibility for the campaign to the players. And, I think, I made it pretty clear at the outset. I made no secret about what I was doing. In hindsight, I probably should have actually just flat out said, "Look, enjoying the campaign, and having a good campaign, is more than just me sitting here orchestrating everything. You are responsibible for not only your own fun, but the fun of everyone else at the table." I didn't do that, but, I think I got the point across effectively anyway.

So, now, whenever someone puts something on the table, it gets examined, reexamined, folded, spindled and mauled by the players collectively, to a far greater degree than I would. A recent example was one player, playing a shifter fighter, wanted to take a PrC - warshaper. I looked at it, didn't see anything too bad and wasn't too worried about it. The other players though went through this thing with a much finer toothed comb and convinced the original player that it was not a good idea.

Hey, whatever makes them happy.

So, my advice to any DM, new or experienced, hand off responsibility to the players. Make it explicit. Tell them that they have very real authorial power in the campaign and that the campaign's success is a shared responsibility between everyone at the table.

My question to you is, in what ways can you share authority without making a total mishmash of your setting? I can certainly appreciate that DM's have a specific view of how their campaign should look and feel. How can you as a DM share responsibility, but not lose all authority?

 

[Croesus]

How can you as a DM share responsibility, but not lose all authority?

This one's easy - trust. Authority is not the same thing as power - think of it this way:

Power - Do X or I will do Y. Do X and I will do Y. (I control if Y happens)
Influence - If you do X, Y will (will not) happen. (Someone/something else controls if Y happens)
Authority - Do X.

When using Power, you attempt to have someone do what you want via punishments and rewards. When using Influence, you don't control the punishment or reward, but you use their existence to influence behavior. When using Authority, you simply command.

But why would anyone simply do as you say? If they're doing it out of fear, or to gain something, that's Power or, more rarely, Influence. If they do it just because you say so, it's because they trust you not to abuse the situation. And as contradictory as it may seem, the more you involve people in decisions, the more authority they are usually willing to give you. This happens in the workplace, in social groups, and at the game table.

My question to you is, in what ways can you share authority without making a total mishmash of your setting? I can certainly appreciate that DM's have a specific view of how their campaign should look and feel.

This one is trickier. For myself, what I've done is asked players to design elements of a campaign, but I have final say, and always change something about their design, if only cosmetically.

For example, one player had in her background that her father was a pirate. So I asked her to design a band of pirates - personalities, operating methods, rivalries, etc. I then used some of that as a plot hook for the character, but I changed enough that the player couldn't be certain what was happening. It actually added a nice bit of realism, as the character thought she "knew" certain facts, which turned out to be different.

Find something that a player is interested in, whether due to special knowledge (music, poetry, history) or because it's tied to their character. If they have a rough idea of the type of campaign you are running, they'll likely stay close enough to that idea to come up with useful material. If not, review it, discuss why it doesn't fit, and have another go at it.

Another less overt method is to listen the the players and steal their ideas. If they suspect the local thieves' guild is behind a series of disappearances, make it so. Who cares if your original idea was that it was the work of some wandering dopplegangers - the thieves' guild works just as well, and it allows the players to shape the world. Don't do this every time, of course - you still want to keep the players on their toes.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

I am a cheater and not to be trusted at the game table.

My character sheet always seems to be wrong although with the CB that may be over

 

[Aus_Snow]

Trust? My players?!

About the closest I get to this shared world-building hippie love-in BS (I kid, in case it isn't perfectly obvious) is that sometimes I'll ask players for suggestions, pre-campaign. But I'm still the one who filters said suggestions, and uses them (or not) in whatever ways I see fit.

And sometimes it's the other way round. I've made a few good suggestions for other DMs before. Some even got used!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Pretty much, I trust my players.

I just ask for a preliminary look-see over their initial PC- more to make sure the PC fits the campaign than anything else. When a PC levels, I also ask that they clear oddball stuff with me, but anything on my (lengthy) pre-approved list is fair game.

 

[S'mon]

I trust the 4 regular players in my current tabletop game. They've established trustworthiness. I don't trust everyone; it depends. The guy who rolled 2d8 for his greatsword attacks and said his PC was unkillable was someone I learned not to trust.

 

[Crothian]

If I didn't trust them they wouldn't be gaming with us.

 

[Carpe DM]

Trust, but verify.

 

[roguerouge]

A DM I have has a rule that anything we use, he can and will use on us. That does wonders for us policing ourselves.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

One thing I do as DM is never build the campaign world until the players make their characters. If they make Viking characters, we have a Norse world. If they make warforged and elves, we have a world with elven wizards and their created servant race. And then, as the campaign goes on, I don't build any more of the world than I have to in order to keep verisimilitude and be able to respond to character actions. Everything beyond that is filled in as I see where the characters are going. That's one example of trust, I suppose.