Giving Up Control

[the Jester]

So I was reflecting that a recent game I ran was really, really fun, and one of the reasons was that I didn't really know what was going to happen.

Totally stealing the idea from Piratecat, when my pcs got arrested I let a guest player play their judge and gave him total discretion as to how it would play out. I told him the legal and political situation, and told him he could find them guilty or innocent, and sentence them to pretty much anything he wanted. But when the trial started, it was out of my hands. I didn't know what would happen. And I loved it!

Do any of you other dms out there ever give up control of the game like that? Does it work well? Do you enjoy it? How do you do it?

 

[Crothian]

Never tried it but it sounds fun. It would take the right person to be involved in that and I'm not sure I have one around here that isn't playing in my game.

 

[the Jester]

Well, he made his regular character the next session.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I think that's an example of giving up control over a specific situation, rather than your game, but it's still worthwhile. In the past, when a ghost sorcerer took out a PC right at the beginning of the fight, I handed the ghost's sheet over to the player and said "Here, you try to kill these guys." He did a very credible job too before they waxed him. Didn't kill anyone, but it came close.

I have actually turned over my game to a Guest DM in the past. I gave him an idea of what was okay and not okay in world continuity, and he did the rest. Created a really cool mystery that we all got to solve. There were some interesting repercussions in the game world from things he introduced, but if anything it made the game richer to do something unexpected.