D&D General The Virtues of Prioritizing What You Like, as a DM

[Clint_L]

Look, I know this is going to a somewhat controversial take. But hear me out, because it is not coming from a selfish place, and is rooted in decades of experience as a teacher. I get good results as a teacher. My kids do well in highly competitive IB classes, I get lots of thank you and little gifts and things, and I have a strong professional reputation. That's not to brag, but to establish a bit of credentials up front. And I, frankly, prioritize my own tastes when it comes to what I teach.

When I am planning a new unit to teach, I always start by asking "What would be super fun for me to teach? What I am into and excited about?" And that's because I know I will do a better job when I am really into the subject matter. I'll put the extra hours in, I'll be more creative in my planning, and I'll be more excited during the classes. I just did a new unit on Calvin and Hobbes (teaching non-literary texts is a required component of IB Language and Literature). Because I love C&H, and it fit well with our planning goals. And the kids loved it, picked up technical terminology quickly, wrote fantastic papers, and many used it in their Individual Oral exam at the end of the year to resounding results (it's a big deal, worth a ton of marks towards earning their first year university credit). If the teacher is passionate, the kids pick up on it. They get into it. Engagement is way up. They have fun. And they learn better.

In many current threads, we are discussing a sort of perception that there is a big tension between player needs and DM needs. But I don't think that's right. I think they are basically the same thing. In your initial planning, don't worry too much about what your players want. Worry about what will be fun for you. You're going to be doing a lot of work, way more than they will, and you need to be excited for it. Or the campaign will suck, you'll suck at running it, the players won't be engaged, and it'll fall apart.

But if you are super into what you are running, I pretty much guarantee that your players will be into it as well. They might not have chosen it to start with, but that doesn't matter - you'll never please everyone, anyway, so don't worry too much about that. Just worry about making your games awesome, and to do that, they need to feel awesome. To you.

Now, obviously the world is nuanced. There are different groups and personalities in the world. But the dynamics of running a campaign of 4-6 friends are, frankly, nothing compared to the dynamics of running a class full of hormonal teenagers. There are certainly different ways that every teacher modifies their plans to take into account each particular class, and we modify them very day to account for mood, context, etc. But you don't need to cater to every person. As a baseline, love what you are doing. For yourself. That's how you get engagement, and that's how they get success. Enthusiasm is infectious.

 

[Laurefindel]

Enthusiasm is infectious.

Yes, very much this!

I was reading the anti-fun D&D thread, and as I was reflecting on my game experience to reply, I came to realize that there is little I wouldn’t enjoy as a player if the DM is selling it in good faith.

There are things I prefer and I definitely have strong preferences when I’m GM-ing, but I feel like there would be little I would find un-fun with an enthusiastic GM, providing they treat their players with respect. In the end, the only practices I truely dislike is when the social contract is willingly or carelessly broken, and when people are being jerks to each other.

 

[aco175]

That is true for most things. I agree that if the players want you to run a pirate/dinosaur/ninja campaign, but you want undead and taking over the world you should run what you want.

There is always a push and pull though. Even more with friends and family you play with.

 

[saviirkad]

In many current threads, we are discussing a sort of perception that there is a big tension between player needs and DM needs. But I don't think that's right. I think they are basically the same thing. In your initial planning, don't worry too much about what your players want. Worry about what will be fun for you. You're going to be doing a lot of work, way more than they will, and you need to be excited for it. Or the campaign will suck, you'll suck at running it, the players won't be engaged, and it'll fall apart.

For myself, and my approach, this is an almost but not quite take.

I agree, they're basically the same thing. Calling one of the players a Dungeon Master does not mean they aren't also playing. Every player's needs matter.

And because of that, I do want to worry about what my players want even at the initial planning stage, with a similar emphasis on my own wants. I want to do both, I want to have all considerations included from the start.

How much work I put into it doesn't make me want to emphasize myself more. I want to do more of the work. No further bonus is needed, I already get the reward of having more work.

I think where I get a bit hung up by some of these conversations and arguments, is that there's so often an emphasis on the incompatibility of everyone's wants. And it just doesn't jive with my own experiences and approach to DMing and PCing.

 

[prabe]

The OP doesn't seem to me as though it is at all controversial, though it can obviously be taken past the range of its intent into some dictatorial-GM spaces. I mean, same as any creative activity, what tends to grab an audience isn't just skill, but taste. I think it's obvious that the GM should be enjoying the game, and the fiction that emerges from play, and I also think it's obvious that the GM should be taking into consideration as they make their choices, what the players have demonstrated an interest in (and of course whatever they've told the GM is off-limits in whatever safety-oriented way is in use). I have never played a TRPG with a GM where the GM's tastes were not reflected in play; even most of the examples I've seen of games I haven't even read have seemed so.

I think if there are vast differences in desired theme or premise--the difference mentioned above between, say, pirates and zombies--then there really needs to be a conversation about the game and those elements of it, and whether there can be some compromise/combination of things. Seems to me what you want is to have a Venn diagram where everyone's tastes and preferences overlap, and for play to happen at least mostly in that overlap; I see little real conflict between "GM what you want" and "GM what the players want."

 

[Remathilis]

That is true for most things. I agree that if the players want you to run a pirate/dinosaur/ninja campaign, but you want undead and taking over the world you should run what you want.

There is always a push and pull though. Even more with friends and family you play with.

I think it's also common for a DM to get married to their idea/world so much that the PCs become secondary to it. If you want undead hordes and your PCs want pirate/ninja/dinos, you can add elements of the latter to the former. A marooned martial arts pirate crew fighting zombie dinos sounds wonderful! But you gotta be flexible enough to look at the game for that and not decide your Game of Thrones Winter is Coming campaign is automatically superior to whatever the players want to do.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Now, obviously the world is nuanced. There are different groups and personalities in the world. But the dynamics of running a campaign of 4-6 friends are, frankly, nothing compared to the dynamics of running a class full of hormonal teenagers. There are certainly different ways that every teacher modifies their plans to take into account each particular class, and we modify them very day to account for mood, context, etc. But you don't need to cater to every person. As a baseline, love what you are doing. For yourself. That's how you get engagement, and that's how they get success. Enthusiasm is infectious.

One thing that's interesting in the discussions is the assumption about how a D&D (or RPG in general) group is formed and run. A lot of people assume that the game is always run with a very static group that carries over from campaign to campaign (or game to game if non-DND games are in the mix), the "4-6 friends" you reference above. In a case like that, someone saying "I'm going to run X" is dictating to people who have to choose to start a big group fight or leave the long-running group if they don't like it, and if they aren't dictatorial the DM is often going to pitch something to see if this particular set of players buy-in to it.

Meanwhile, most of what I run doesn't have a simple static group, and I find I like that organization style better. There's a West Marches style campaign and an Adventurer's League group, both of which have multiple people who DM and a large pool of players who come and go. In the WM group, each DM runs their own adventures when they feel like it and each has their own style, in the AL group the organizer picks mods for each month and people sign up to run or play them. The WM group tends to run 1-2 adventures per week, while the AL group runs 2-5 tables a week (usually 3-4) depending on turnout. People also occasionally do pickup games where they post about a game and have people RSVP. From what I see, this is the way a lot of WM, AL, and pickup games run both in person and online.

It leads to a completely different take on the 'prioritizing what you like' and 'getting player feedback' idea - generally the DM or organizer posts what's up and what rules are in play, and players decide on the fly if they're interested, both in terms of content and timing. Someone who only wants to play if MoTM species are allowed just isn't going to sign up for a game that uses says they use only 2024 and later books, while someone who doesn't like the kitchen sink of AL rules just won't sign up there.

 

[AlViking]

I think most people can be enthusiastic about many different ideas, it's a matter of directing that enthusiasm into something others will also be enthused about. A person can have a strong interest in gothic horror and gruesome depictions of innocents suffering* while also recognizing that it's not going to be appropriate for their table. @Clint_L used Calvin & Hobbes (one of my favorites as well), not some Japanese anime tentacle erotica (chosen as opposite C&H as I can think of) even if they are enthusiastic about it.

When I'm designing a campaign setting or potential plot lines my primary concern is not really about what my players want, it's about creating settings that I can really believe in. It's got to be something that I can sell as well as having fun running it. That means that I have a certain feel for the settings I use, certain styles of play, some basic assumptions and restrictions. On the other hand my campaigns are very open - after the initial session or three to establish who the PCs are and introduce the locale they start in it's up to the players to choose their direction. In theory I exercise veto control that has never been needed because for example I don't want a murder hobo campaign.

Much like when I get to play I'm not married to a specific character concept using a specific class and species, I have quite a bit of wiggle room in the game I run. But that wiggle room is limited. I know I wouldn't enjoy an old school dungeon crawl where tracking resources like how many torches the party has is central to the challenge. Meanwhile there's a lot of variation in my heroic campaigns that lean a bit of magi-tech and the PCs frequently being the vanguard protecting the world from descending into chaos once more. There may even be a tentacle or two involved, although it will never have anything to do with erotica.

*I'm not particularly into it, I have had DMs that were.

 

[CreamCloud0]

incredible discovery! people have more enthusiasm and motivation for working on things they personally enjoy and are invested in!*

*this does not mean it isn't still work.

 

[Umbran]

Look, I know this is going to a somewhat controversial take.

Yes, but you may not have yet realized the basic issue with it...

My kids do well in highly competitive IB classes...

And here it is. IB classes are rather different from what most teachers have to deal with. Most teachers don't have a whole lot of choice as to what they teach - the curriculum is controlled by outside forces. Their ability to inject their own tastes into their work is limited.

Worry about what will be fun for you. You're going to be doing a lot of work, way more than they will, and you need to be excited for it. Or the campaign will suck, you'll suck at running it, the players won't be engaged, and it'll fall apart.

...
Now, obviously the world is nuanced.

I am sorry, but after claiming that what I will do will suck and fall apart makes this claim of nuance look like a place to retreat when you get pushback. I am not persuaded that you have much grasp of the nuance, or desire to include it.

There are different groups and personalities in the world. But the dynamics of running a campaign of 4-6 friends are, frankly, nothing compared to the dynamics of running a class full of hormonal teenagers.

Yes. Shall we identify the major one? The students are most often more or less required to be there, and the teacher is getting paid.

The teacher-student dynamic has very little similarity to the GM-player dynamic.