One of the youtubers I follow talks about in a war, you want to present your foes with dilemmas not problems.
A problem is something you can overcome. A dilemma, on the other hand, is a situation where you are forcing a choice on your foe, and both options suck.
I just realized this same quote applies to D&D. As a DM, give your players dilemmas instead of problems.
A problem is something to overcome - an encounter with monsters, a bad guy trying to blow up the continent, the crown prince running away with a spy, etc. The DM can dial up or down the difficulty, but either the players beat the problem or they don't.
Giving your players a dilemma means giving them a meaningful choice. Each of the options are going to have consequences - these consequences can even be clear and up-front, so your players know (at least the initial) stakes.
Chase after the missing prince, or stop the pirate raid. Save your home town, or the capital city. Prevent the BBEG from getting away, or rescue the NPC.
A side effect of this is that this maximizes surprise for the DM. Each dilemma you put out you should not know which way the PCs will go on - you should honestly make the dilemmas clear options with no "smart" and "dumb" choice - and the overall story could change direction drastically with each such dilemma.
Instead of "if the PCs try this, and lose, TPK" being a story-fork, we have PCs making meaningful, informed choices. Sometimes a choice will have surprising consequences, but with dilemmas instead of problems that isn't needed to drive drama. The information about the consequence can be right out in the open.
At a really, really basic level, in a dungeon, don't provide "pick left or right" with no information. The left can quite clearly be full of kobolds, and the right full of aberrations - telegraph as much as you can possibly telegraph! Now players get to choose if they go after the Kobolds or the Aberrations to proceed further in the dungeon. And if the players have encountered both before, they'll even have some idea of the consequences of their choice.
You can even place this behind DM slight of hand. When you offer a clear choice - turn and face the dark tendrils filling the city, or flee and jump into the freezing river - and the players pick one or the other, you can encourage future commitment-to-action by players by implying it turns out they made the best choice (even if the other one would have been equally interesting). And by always providing dilemmas not problems, you can also avoid "read DM's mind" - if the shadows are unbeatable, you provide/plan multiple ways to flee instead of the problem of "flee or TPK".
Now this won't be for everyone. Some will prefer "ok, there is the unbeatable shadow swallowing the city" as a problem, and then let the players come up with plausible solutions. And that is valid!
But a dilemma-not-problem adventure graph gives me something to plot out that isn't a bunch of encounters and isn't a linear railroad. And by focusing on assuming the PCs have the knowledge to describe both branches, I (as a DM or adventure builder) now want to make both choices both immediately interesting and have interesting consequences.
...
Suppose we have an initial adventure. The PCs are almost all childhood friends in a suspiciously cosmopolitan village. Some may have recently returned from schooling or the equivalent abroad.
A foe attacks the town. The foe will increase its threat on the town until it is overrun. The foe is after 1 or more of the PCs for reasons they do not understand.
The first dilemma will involve fleeing the town or defending it. An entire graph of defending the town can exist - who to you save? Do you prioritize defenders or civilians? Which NPCs?
Where do you flee? Plan a number of exits out of town. They should be distinct with clear advantages and disadvantages.
Who do you flee with? Larger vs smaller groups have advantages when being hunted.
Each crossroad can be a dilemma. Head towards a ford to cross the river, or further down the road to the bridge. Take the roads or the forests. Go over a mountain pass, or down the river.
Even at small levels -- abandon the mule carrying extra supplies to move faster? -- dilemmas not problems can be highlighted.
As you want each choice to be meaningful, graphing out all of them becomes impossible. With an adventure a mere 10 dilemmas deep that leads to 1024 possible leaf outcomes, each with a unique history. And most or many of those dilemmas shouldn't lead to the same follow-up dilemmas regardless of choice (that is a sign the dilemma didn't really matter) - which means you actually need 100s of dilemmas to plan a 10 deep dilemma adventure.
A 5 dilemma deep adventure, where each choice results in a fundamentally different rest of adventure, you need 31 dilemmas planned.
D is the initial dilemma.
D1 and D0 are the next dilemmas based on the first choice.
D00 through D11 are the next 4 based on the first two choices.
D000 through D111 are the next 8.
D0000 through D1111 are the next 16.
Then, with 5 meaningful dilemmas, you end up with 32 different paths and 31 dilemmas, of which your PCs will see 5 dilemmas and 1 path.
Now, we can reuse dilemmas sometimes. Your choice in saving the mayor's daughter or miller won't change every choice you ever make. To this extent, you can imagine intertwined dilemma networks, where your state in one of them is relatively independent of your state in another. So you can shave this down...
A problem is something you can overcome. A dilemma, on the other hand, is a situation where you are forcing a choice on your foe, and both options suck.
I just realized this same quote applies to D&D. As a DM, give your players dilemmas instead of problems.
A problem is something to overcome - an encounter with monsters, a bad guy trying to blow up the continent, the crown prince running away with a spy, etc. The DM can dial up or down the difficulty, but either the players beat the problem or they don't.
Giving your players a dilemma means giving them a meaningful choice. Each of the options are going to have consequences - these consequences can even be clear and up-front, so your players know (at least the initial) stakes.
Chase after the missing prince, or stop the pirate raid. Save your home town, or the capital city. Prevent the BBEG from getting away, or rescue the NPC.
A side effect of this is that this maximizes surprise for the DM. Each dilemma you put out you should not know which way the PCs will go on - you should honestly make the dilemmas clear options with no "smart" and "dumb" choice - and the overall story could change direction drastically with each such dilemma.
Instead of "if the PCs try this, and lose, TPK" being a story-fork, we have PCs making meaningful, informed choices. Sometimes a choice will have surprising consequences, but with dilemmas instead of problems that isn't needed to drive drama. The information about the consequence can be right out in the open.
At a really, really basic level, in a dungeon, don't provide "pick left or right" with no information. The left can quite clearly be full of kobolds, and the right full of aberrations - telegraph as much as you can possibly telegraph! Now players get to choose if they go after the Kobolds or the Aberrations to proceed further in the dungeon. And if the players have encountered both before, they'll even have some idea of the consequences of their choice.
You can even place this behind DM slight of hand. When you offer a clear choice - turn and face the dark tendrils filling the city, or flee and jump into the freezing river - and the players pick one or the other, you can encourage future commitment-to-action by players by implying it turns out they made the best choice (even if the other one would have been equally interesting). And by always providing dilemmas not problems, you can also avoid "read DM's mind" - if the shadows are unbeatable, you provide/plan multiple ways to flee instead of the problem of "flee or TPK".
Now this won't be for everyone. Some will prefer "ok, there is the unbeatable shadow swallowing the city" as a problem, and then let the players come up with plausible solutions. And that is valid!
But a dilemma-not-problem adventure graph gives me something to plot out that isn't a bunch of encounters and isn't a linear railroad. And by focusing on assuming the PCs have the knowledge to describe both branches, I (as a DM or adventure builder) now want to make both choices both immediately interesting and have interesting consequences.
...
Suppose we have an initial adventure. The PCs are almost all childhood friends in a suspiciously cosmopolitan village. Some may have recently returned from schooling or the equivalent abroad.
A foe attacks the town. The foe will increase its threat on the town until it is overrun. The foe is after 1 or more of the PCs for reasons they do not understand.
The first dilemma will involve fleeing the town or defending it. An entire graph of defending the town can exist - who to you save? Do you prioritize defenders or civilians? Which NPCs?
Where do you flee? Plan a number of exits out of town. They should be distinct with clear advantages and disadvantages.
Who do you flee with? Larger vs smaller groups have advantages when being hunted.
Each crossroad can be a dilemma. Head towards a ford to cross the river, or further down the road to the bridge. Take the roads or the forests. Go over a mountain pass, or down the river.
Even at small levels -- abandon the mule carrying extra supplies to move faster? -- dilemmas not problems can be highlighted.
As you want each choice to be meaningful, graphing out all of them becomes impossible. With an adventure a mere 10 dilemmas deep that leads to 1024 possible leaf outcomes, each with a unique history. And most or many of those dilemmas shouldn't lead to the same follow-up dilemmas regardless of choice (that is a sign the dilemma didn't really matter) - which means you actually need 100s of dilemmas to plan a 10 deep dilemma adventure.
A 5 dilemma deep adventure, where each choice results in a fundamentally different rest of adventure, you need 31 dilemmas planned.
D is the initial dilemma.
D1 and D0 are the next dilemmas based on the first choice.
D00 through D11 are the next 4 based on the first two choices.
D000 through D111 are the next 8.
D0000 through D1111 are the next 16.
Then, with 5 meaningful dilemmas, you end up with 32 different paths and 31 dilemmas, of which your PCs will see 5 dilemmas and 1 path.
Now, we can reuse dilemmas sometimes. Your choice in saving the mayor's daughter or miller won't change every choice you ever make. To this extent, you can imagine intertwined dilemma networks, where your state in one of them is relatively independent of your state in another. So you can shave this down...
