D&D General Professor DungeonMasters Advice on DMing

[Gnostic Goblin]

“How are the Players going to do that? Thats not my job. Thats their job. A lot of GamesMasters think of themselves as Story-Tellers but I prefer to consider myself a Conflict Designer. I create conflicts but I don’t need to know how the Players figure their way out of the conflicts. That is where the story emerges and that is their department. My job as I see it is to provide an objective, location, antagonists and time-limit. Players drive the action with their decisions. I never know what my players are going to do. Maybe they’ll kill the villain, maybe he escapes. Maybe they’ll live, maybe they’ll die. That’s up to them and the dice. So why plan further than the next session? If I did I might be tempted to steer the game toward my preferred conclusion. But I don’t want to do that. I want to be just as surprised as the Players.”

Professor DungeonMaster, Dungeon Craft, YouTube, The Reviled Society, Part 1 (Ep.291)

 

[reelo]

Yep, that's a great way to look at it.

 

[Reynard]

“How are the Players going to do that? Thats not my job. Thats their job. A lot of GamesMasters think of themselves as Story-Tellers but I prefer to consider myself a Conflict Designer. I create conflicts but I don’t need to know how the Players figure their way out of the conflicts. That is where the story emerges and that is their department. My job as I see it is to provide an objective, location, antagonists and time-limit. Players drive the action with their decisions. I never know what my players are going to do. Maybe they’ll kill the villain, maybe he escapes. Maybe they’ll live, maybe they’ll die. That’s up to them and the dice. So why plan further than the next session? If I did I might be tempted to steer the game toward my preferred conclusion. But I don’t want to do that. I want to be just as surprised as the Players.”

Professor DungeonMaster, Dungeon Craft, YouTube, The Reviled Society, Part 1 (Ep.291)

It is always amazing to me how much i agree with him while at the same time absolutely hating his videos.

 

[GMMichael]

“ . . . So why plan further than the next session? If I did I might be tempted to steer the game toward my preferred conclusion. But I don’t want to do that. I want to be just as surprised as the Players.”

Professor DungeonMaster, Dungeon Craft, YouTube, The Reviled Society, Part 1 (Ep.291)

Why plan further than the next session? How about: that's what your villains would do? I mean, it's called Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons must be planned before they're built, or else they're just caves. And the dragon that doesn't plan is dominated or eaten by the dragon that does.

Players like to be surprised, as long as the surprise isn't: "yeah, that was an underwhelming conclusion. I'm sorry. I didn't plan it."

 

[Mannahnin]

Why plan further than the next session? How about: that's what your villains would do? I mean, it's called Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons must be planned before they're built, or else they're just caves. And the dragon that doesn't plan is dominated or eaten by the dragon that does.

Players like to be surprised, as long as the surprise isn't: "yeah, that was an underwhelming conclusion. I'm sorry. I didn't plan it."

Expanding on that "next session" bit, part of his philosophy is not to save your cool ideas for an indeterminate future session - focus on making the next session the best and most exciting you can.

And another is not to pre-script or assume what's going to happen. Base it on what the players do and what they tell you they're doing next at the end of the current session.

Sure, you can take these maxims too far, and they're not applicable to certain game types. He doesn't do megadungeons, for example.

It is always amazing to me how much i agree with him while at the same time absolutely hating his videos.

I've always liked most of his videos, but his industry commentary stuff has jumped the shark for me lately. Still like his actual game content and crafting videos. The recent update to his production of The Tell-tale Heart was great too.

 

[overgeeked]

Professor DM has a lot of great videos and advice. That's great stuff.

My job as I see it is to provide an objective, location, antagonists and time-limit.

Though I would disagree with objective here. Hand that to the players, too. They get to set the objective. They decide where they go and why. And, importantly, what they'll do when they get there. Keep everything else the same. Just let the players set the course. So much easier running games that way than trying to force everything.

 

[Mannahnin]

Though I would disagree with objective here. Hand that to the players, too. They get to set the objective. They decide where they go and why. And, importantly, what they'll do when they get there. Keep everything else the same. Just let the players set the course. So much easier running games that way than trying to force everything.

I think that's more a matter of taste and whether you have particularly proactive players. IME most players prefer to have some sort of adventure immediately made obvious. Players who are motivated enough to force their will on the setting in the absence of clear hooks are an exceptional minority from my table experience.

Even in OSR sandbox discussions people often recommend having a megadungeon available so players have a default thing to do if they're not sure what else they want to do.

As Colville famously opined, it's not forcing/railroading unless you block their choices/options for solving problems for no good reason.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's certainly one way to play and run a game.

Thankfully there are many others too.

That way those of us who think that specific way is not very dramatic or compelling have other ways their games can run.

 

[Reynard]

One of the interesting things about being open and improvising and letting a story emerge is that one often does, and once it does the game generally benefits from gentle nudges to support that story as the players explore it. It doesn't happen all the time, but I find it happens more often than not, and I don't consider it a failure of "pure sandbox" when it does. Players end up caring about specific things and focusing their attentions on those things. They are telling you that they like that thing and want more of it.

 

[Mort]

I like this advice with the (somewhat big) caveat that the GM must be extremely open to the players ideas and proposed solutions. Too often, GMs will only allow things to work that they had thought of themselves and it devolves into guess what the DM is thinking:

DM: Ok, how do you propose to get out of this mess...
Players: We try A.
DM: Nope, because reasons.
Players: We try B.
DM: Nope, because different reasons.
All the way to - assuming the PCs are not dead or worse, the players get bored and give up:
Players: We try Z.
DM: That works. Great creative solution that I, in no way, was fully shooting for!