D&D 5E Who Picks the Campaign? DMs, Players, and Choice

[soviet]

If I don't feel invested then any campaign will whither and die.

This has come up a couple of times, so just to clarify: I don't think a single person replying to this thread feels any differently. The issue is just that some of us can feel invested without necessarily having to have originated the idea.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This has come up a couple of times, so just to clarify: I don't think a single person replying to this thread feels any differently. The issue is just that some of us can feel invested without necessarily having to have originated the idea.

100%. While D&D has a strong tradition of prepped or prewritten settings that then are leveraged in play to effectively tour that prep, it's not the only approach that can be interesting. To do the dreaded thing and mention other games, some games have great tools to create collaborative settings both as part of the start of play (many FATE games do this, with collaborative setting creation) and during play. The tools for creating setting collaboratively can often be used in D&D with little or no adjustments. Then the main issue is how D&D pretty much requires prep due to the complexity of the rules (just look at how many threads/opinions there are on resting).

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

I ask the players for the "mood" of the world where we shall play. An apocalyptic world where dread and misery is everywhere, or a light-hearted world where you can easily find a pub and some music. Do they want religion(s) to be important or not. Do the players want magic everywhere (i.e. flying ships, floating cities) or more medieval with the occasional bit of magic.

I will also ask the players if they want hack-and-slash or roleplay (although they will always answer "a bit of both", so that's becoming a bit pointless).

And then I will start working on a location in the world, and come up with some stuff that's happening. And after a few weeks of prepping I am usually ready to let them loose in the world. They will inevitably do something chaotic so I never prepare much in advance... but I will have timelines of the major events in the world!

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I pick about three ideas I would be excited to run, and THEN poll my players. In theory, they pick the one that excites them the most, and their excitement increases mine.

Yeah this is what I do here. I have a few ideas I love, and I let the players narrow it down for me.

 

[Malmuria]

In a way, I would analogize this to eating out. You can go to a cruddy restaurant anytime. But if you want a great dining experience, you go to the absolute best restaurant with an amazing chef. And if you eat there, you eat what the chef prepares; you don't try and substitute everything on the menu. You want to experience that- and some times, you might find out that it isn't so great, and some times, you might have that transcendent experience. Now, this analogy isn't perfect, because eating food doesn't have the same interactive and emergent qualities as TTRPGs, and the restaurant table isn't part of the process of preparing the food, but you get the gist.

I thinking of dming like hosting a dinner party. Mostly I’ve thought of that in terms of what it means to be a host: welcome everyone, make sure conversation keeps going, keep people’s glass full, make sure everyone is comfortable, etc. But I guess we can also think of it in terms of the dinner part (which is usually literally a part of dnd night anyway). You can have a dinner part where the host prepares everything, and then people coming don’t need to bring anything except maybe something to drink. Or maybe it’s a potluck, with people brining things that might not mix with each other, but much less work overall. One thing I wouldn’t do is insist that someone else cook for me a particular set of dishes (obviously?). And if the host was an expert in a specific dish and cuisine, I would be excited to see what they offer. Of course, whoever is cooking needs to pay attention to dietary restrictions in the group; if you have a vegan friend, they need to have something to eat too!

On the other hand, rpg campaigns can go on for quite some time. I will say that even if I’m initially excited about a campaign premise, it can get boring after about 20 sessions or so. Partially because that may be a whole year in real time.

 

[Minigiant]

Most DMs I know come with multiple campaign pitches.

I usually let the players rank my campaign pitches.

You know what is almost as bad as running a campaign you don't care for...

...having players who don't care for your campaign after you've invested work in.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I'm definitely with you. If it were a heavily improvised one-shot game, I could definitely see letting the table deciding what the game's going to be about.

For one-shots we've even gone as far as everyone in the room rolling off to see who would DM it.

One of our current DMs got her start this way - having never DMed before in her life she was randomly picked to run one of these gonzo games, realized she could handle DMing, and started a real campaign a year or so later once she'd figured out what she wanted to run.

But I cannot imagine that working for anything approaching campaign length. The DM puts in 99.99% of the work...the vast majority of it up front. If the DM isn't heavily invested in running that specific game, then there's no chance it will last.

Agreed.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

When players start spending more time preparing for every session (not just showing up), buying the extra materials to enhance the experience for everyone, creating handouts, and catering to the wants and desires of everyone else who participates, then they can pick the campaign.

/jk

 

[aco175]

Yeah, I'm definitely with you. If it were a heavily improvised one-shot game, I could definitely see letting the table deciding what the game's going to be about. But I cannot imagine that working for anything approaching campaign length. The DM puts in 99.99% of the work...the vast majority of it up front. If the DM isn't heavily invested in running that specific game, then there's no chance it will last.

The flipside is that if the players are not invested there is only a slightly better chance it will last. If I spend time making a Dark Sun campaign and then spring it on the players in session 0 when they pick armor and weapons. I may be able to wrangle the players to try it and muddle through trying to get them to like it, only to end the campaign early or play a game where it is not fun for me anymore.

It would be easy to just say to get new players. I'm not sure how many DMs play is a situation where they do not have a normal group. I could see this in a game where the DM comes to the FLGS and announces his game and the players buy in early.

 

[Yaarel]

Welcome to the occasional in a series of posts, Snarf Presents Hawt Taek Thursdays. Today's edition is brought to you courtesy of the number 6 and the day Monday, for reasons.

I've sometimes seen people discuss how they choose to start a campaign in D&D- not to mention seen it many times in my own life. And while I've seen a lot of different ways to make this initial decision, I've seen one comment that stuck with me- it was the idea of a DM polling the players to determine what setting to run their campaign in. And I thought to myself, "That is precisely the opposite of what I would do. In fact, if a DM polled my table to determine the campaign setting I would run away faster than if the DM said, 'Hey guys, how would you feel about an all-Bard campaign with the goal of helping the elves take over the world?'"

I get the impulse. Tables are necessarily collaborative. This isn't an issue of DM fiat, or a DM saying, "My way or the highway." People can, and should, discuss the type of game they want to play as well as their expectations for the campaign in 5e. There should be reasonable tradeoffs - maybe try X this time, and agree to try Y next time.

That said, for my personal preference, give me a DM with a point of view any day of the week. At the majority of tables, the amount of work that the DM puts in to the game is greater than that put in by the players, which means that I want the DM to be invested in what she is doing, and to be knowledgeable about her campaign; is there anything worse than a DM who is uncaring about the campaign setting, and less knowledgeable about the lore of her campaign than the players? Having a player that isn't invested in the campaign can be a tragedy, but when the DM isn't invested, that's a campaign-killer.

When I play, I want the DM to take ownership of the setting. To be honest, it doesn't even matter what the DM is running; it could be Greyhawk, Ravnica, Exandria, Theros, Eberron, Dark Sun, or some random homebrew where a Mindflayer/Flumph alliance has enslaved humanity. Heck, even things that sound absolutely terrible ("All my vampires are sparkly!" or "Forgotten Realms, but with even more Elminster!") will probably work out okay if the DM cares about the game they are running.

Now, I understand the counterargument to this- what about the DM that sucks? What about the DM that is so invested with telling the DM's story that the DM doesn't allow the players to breathe? What about railroading? And these are all good points- sometimes, you will find that a DM who is heavily invested in her campaign is the same DM who demands that the campaign play out a certain way - and that's no fun. No one wants to be a token in the DM's boardgame, or a character in the DM's creepy fiction. But the thing is- that can be true of any DM, even the uncaring ones. Or, to put it more succinctly-

I've had terrible games with all sorts of Dungeon Masters. But the only great and transcendent campaigns of D&D I've played in had one thing in common- a DM that was truly invested in the game she was running.

In a way, I would analogize this to eating out. You can go to a cruddy restaurant anytime. But if you want a great dining experience, you go to the absolute best restaurant with an amazing chef. And if you eat there, you eat what the chef prepares; you don't try and substitute everything on the menu. You want to experience that- and some times, you might find out that it isn't so great, and some times, you might have that transcendent experience. Now, this analogy isn't perfect, because eating food doesn't have the same interactive and emergent qualities as TTRPGs, and the restaurant table isn't part of the process of preparing the food, but you get the gist.

So, in summation- the DM should pick the campaign setting that the DM wants to run. If the DM cannot be bothered to even decide on a campaign setting, that is not a DM I would like to play with. This has nothing to do with player input, or talking to the table, or player style, or even whether the DM and the players collaborate on choosing the campaign setting. I just want to make sure that my DM cares enough to at least decide on the world that we are playing in. Because if a DM can't even make that single decision, and farms it out to the table, that bodes poorly for the play experience. IMO. This doesn't guarantee a good DM, but I'd never play in a game where the DM can't be bothered to select a campaign world that she would like to run.

Otherwise, someone at the table (and it will probably be Brad) will demand that everyone gets a cannoli. And I am done considering those.

The DM plays the setting. The players play the heroes.

In this sense, the DM is the campaign setting.

It is vital that the DM likes the setting (or at least find it interesting and worthwhile), for the same reason it is vital for players to like their own characters (or at least find them interesting and worthwhile).