The Evolution of a DMing Style

[Tom Cashel]

I’ve been changing my DMing style lately.

Last year, when we first started playing 3E, I kept things fairly linear. The clues led from place to place, and although there were a few times when the party had to choose what to do first, mostly things were episodic and all the episodes were more or less required. It all culminated in a lost dwarven city and they were victorious (although a few PCs lost their lives fighting a black dragon).

Now that I’ve taken a break to be a player for a few sessions, I am back to DMing. I started by giving the PCs three choices as to what they’d like to do next (based on three books I bought...). One choice was to head off in search of the lost treasure hoard of the Devil Dragon slain two years before; a second choice involved grave robbers and mysterious strangers wearing flat-topped, wide-brimmed hats; the third choice was to escort a caravan of settlers and their families from Cormyr to the Silver Marches.

Since the world (we use FR) is not static, the choices they avoid will likely be investigated by someone else entirely. There’s no going back.

Now that they’ve decided to make the extremely long journey to the Silver Marches, I get to use my random encounter tables (although I tend to roll up a bunch of days before the session starts), my Side Treks from Dungeon, and basically improvise a lot, which I enjoy. The current PC debate revolves around whether they should take established trade routes (longer, safer) or strike out across the wilderness (shorter, more dangerous, but they do have a ranger and a druid).

I have plans to use a module or two in the forseeable future, but eventually I’d like to get to the point where all game sessions are directed by the desires and goals of the PCs. Linear, episodic campaigns were perfect for a group getting familiar with the rules, but now that we’ve learned them I’d like to make it more spontaneous.

Anyway, this isn’t really for any purpose but to start a conversation. I know there’s a big difference of opinion as to whether planning or improvising is the way to go...and in the end it’s a matter of personal preference. My own feeling is somewhat akin to the article in Dragon #298, Planning to Improvise—improvise, but have your notes in order!

How do you folks do it? How has your style evolved? Where are you headed, and where did you come from?

...And would you have chosen a different adventure than my PCs?

[note: the whole evolutionary arc of my campaign can be viewed at the link below, for those who have time on their hands.]

 

[Desdichado]

I do like that improvisational style, and having the game be totally in the control of the PCs. It's a fine theory, but sometimes hard to pull off. You probably don't need them, but as you said, you wanted to start a conversation, so here's a few tips I've learned.

• Some players don't want to be in control of their game. No matter what you do, you have to drop fairly obvious plot hooks in front of these guys or they end up standing around confused.
• Without really detailed backgrounds/characterisations this becomes very difficult. If the player hasn't given you a lot of background information to mine out, you (as DM) don't have much that's improvisational and unique to work with. If the players haven't thought about their character and his motivations, they can't use them as built in game hooks either.
• The preparing to improvise article is great advice. While I love this kind of game, it does take as much work as a well-planned game, because you have to have lots of stuff ready to go depending on what the PCs do. Then again, that's the only way I can play -- I can't "script" sessions as a DM, I can only think of things I want to have happen, and depending on what the PCs do, I work them into the session.
• I've also got a nasty tendency to be too episodic. If you've got big secrets or plots brewing, don't spill the beans too soon, or you have to start from scratch with a new villain of the week next time.

 

[Speaker]

Lessee...

I started DMing with a group of young players (myself included), and quickly found that my players needed a sense of direction to progress. Someone had to give them something to do. Quests were accepted and completed one after another. Occasionally there would be the slightest hint of a campaign--a persistent foe, an encircling darkness--that never came to fruitarian.

My next game was another tale entirely. We had become experienced enough that all of us could think on our feet, as it were. This led to a highly enjoyable tale of young heroes embarking on a quest of surprising twists and turns. Perhaps an outsider would find some of our furious leaps of fancy to be disorienting, but the group had fun, I had fun, and the imagination workout was far worth the effort.

That campaign finished a little while ago, under a burning sky.

The next campaign I play, with a half-new group, will take place using the Wheel of Time d20 system and world, and on an impulse I picked up the Prophecies of the Dragon campaign sourcebook. This tale will surely find use of the elements therein, but I hope that I will be able to maneuver some improvisation into the tale. Sort of a mixture between my old style DMing and the new.

Tell you how that works out in a year or so.

 

[Ruined]

I'm moving towards the same middle-ground that you are, Tom, but I'm moving from the opposite side. I tired of the linear adventures long ago, and gave a lot of freedom to my Planescape campaigns. Too much, I'll say in hindsight. We had great adventures, and many things were motivated by the little subplots and actions of the characters. But there were times where they just had no clue what to do or where to go. The only thing that saved us sometimes was that I had built such a detailed environment over the years that they had several places of interest to visit. Sooner or later, plot would surface and there they go.

I'm gearing up for a Scarred Lands campaign, and it will have definitive timelines and events. Travel will be a big feature of the early games, as I plan to chase the characters from the midst of the Hegemony up towards Mithril and the more liberated lands. But I'll always bow to players wanting to make their own choices. The trick is to properly convey how good and bad certain options are without GM Metagaming. I want them to be able to decide that 'this really isn't the course of action we want to take' without having to go: " Okay, your characters should realize that... ". I've seen this in another campaign I play in, and I don't like it.

Anyways, talking about changes to GM style, I've tried to take chances and do some non-conventional games every so often, just to mix things up. There was a great session where the characters had to go relive the actions of their employers (an aged adventuring company) through sensory stones. I handed them character sheets and backgrounds for the other characters, and we had a fast-paced narrative adventure with higher-powered characters. We made very few (if any) dice rolls, and all focused on telling an entertaining story. In the end it provided the group with enough information to go rescue one of the characters who didn't make it back from the Abyss. It was great.

I think it's healthy to mix up the overall theme every so often. Maybe not to the degree of the typical humor episodes of the X-files, but hopefully you get my point.

 

[Leopold]

i have a long term plot that overlays ontop of what is going on. I throw out hints of things to come and use repetitive clues to show that there is more out there than meets the eyes.


Beyond that, I allow the players to run around and do as they please and guide them along like dogs by throwing meat in front of them and watching them follow the bits..

 

[LostSoul]

If I'm going to improvise a campaign, I make a list of NPCs that I want the PCs to run into. Most of these NPCs have some kind of tie to a PC or two, so that the PCs care about what they do. Other NPCs have goals that run contrary to the PCs; they become the villains.

We get started and I try to let the players pick their paths. I start to introduce NPCs into the game. The players react, more game follows. Later on, the NPCs start to die (along with the PCs) and then everything wraps up.