Value Them

Let's finish off this series about how to get a party launched into a campaign with a few rejoiners.  First and foremost, it must be understood that dungeon mastering is a technique that cannot be acquired through a few platitudes, however well-meaning and apparently encouraging those empty phrases are.  A DM must know his or her players, and be able to predict what they want and what will reach them as thinking people.  A good DM must be ready with a multitude of imaginative details that evoke the players' interest, which they will pursue towards answers and then actions.  A lot of things a DM tries are going to fail; they're going to blow past the players without arousing notice.  Players are sure to decline having curiosity about the one thing the DM cares about most.  We have to recognise this.  We have to expect it, knowing in advance that it's going to happen, so we can move easily into the next thing without a pause or show of disappointment.

Running the game requires exhuberance and skill in presenting ideas ... and although that skill isn't always reliable, cultivating the manner in which words are spoken — the order of words, the choice of words, the tone of speaking — is the fundamental power the DM possesses.  I hem in my players with rules; I motivate them with rewards; I empower them with abilities — but I master them with the way I speak.

Describing one untidy fellow carrying an injured mate along a road is not a simple matter.  The moment can be introduced into the game in a thousand ways ... and merely saying, "Have this moment happen" is not enough to teach you, the reader, how to draw your players into the situation.  You could do it and have the players mutter, "Meh," and keep walking, leaving you with an adventure amounting to an empty gesture.  And thus stupidly, frustrated, inwardly demanding of yourself that this "MUST WORK," you'll have one of the brothers shout at the party, forcing the moment, wrecking the intrigue as you display obviously that there's an adventure here.  You might just as well describe the moment as the brothers moving under a gawddamned Mario Bros. coin.

This weakness in DMing, the self-motivated insistence that, "I worked on it, damn it the players are going to experience it," cannot be gotten past however many posts I write on how to DM.  That is a problem that blinds many DMs to the treasure to be had in subtlety ... in the perception that the players found the adventure themselves, which they must have to feel important in the campaign.  There is no sense worse in being a player than that we are slaves to the DM's campaign.  I grant that soooooo many players accept this; but that's only because they've been trained to accept it; to see themselves as slaves ... just as all slaves inevitably accept their indenture once they've conceded the absence of options.

When the DM can offer the player something more — when the shackles are knocked away — the arrangement between DM and player is heightened.  The players cease to slog through the campaign.  They cease to grumble and derail; they will shout at their companions to stay on message, because it is THEIR message.  It's wonderful to see.

I keep using a phrase, which I assume is obvious but let's take it apart a moment.  I'll describe an artwork as ruined because of the writer's or director's "fingerprints."  I mean any situation where the maker has been so clumsy and self-involved that they've left evidence of their presence ... such as a story that's been contrived to come to a specific conclusion, or characters who act out of character because the author suddenly needs them to agree to a proposition or act in accordance with the story's theme or plotline.  There are many examples, nicely outlined by the webpage TV Tropes.

Obviously, the writer has written the book.  So why does it matter that there's evidence, in the book, that the writer chose to have the characters act thusly, or chose to have events unfold?  Why shouldn't the invented character suddenly, conveniently, have a change of mind or values?

Because it cheapens the book's construction.  There is a sense the author didn't value the characters over the message or theme; and that the author didn't care that we would see that ... and therefore, that the author doesn't value us.  That the author thinks we're stupid.

A lot of times, the author can get away with that.  There usually are enough blind, stupid, poor readers with little experience who won't notice the fingerprints; one can always be sure that a reasonable number of children ready and able to read the book ... and children are easily duped.  They're so ... young.  They don't know anything — and their money buys all the things an adult's money buys.

But children also grow up.  And look back at things they liked, and feel the pang of having been lied to.

Offering the game carefully and thoughtfully demonstrates how well the DM values the player ... but that relies on the player being able to see it.  If I have a player who approaches my game cynically, it's because they've come to resent the way other DMs have devalued them in the past.  There are, right now, hundreds of would-be pundits on the internet who are using next-to-no understanding of the game to sell bullshit that will end in tens of thousands of would-be players and DMs achieving that sense of cynicism.  There are hundreds of game commentors and bloggers who, right now, have made an industry of praising the garbage of the past, despite the long history D&D has of driving out millions of players who dropped the game a year or two after starting.  They have an easy message.  "Have this moment happen," they say ... and when that doesn't work, well, they're not in the business of offering guarantees.

I am.  But I don't guarantee that a particular adventure works, or that if the players help someone or find something new that the game will be an instant unmitigated success.  I guarantee that if the reader sets aside all the shortcuts and the cookie-cutter game play aside, and seeks to understand why a sequence of events works, or what the players feel, or where it goes next, then absolutely, your DMing will improve.

That's what this series has tried to do.  I'm not really giving a top five list of great things to do with a new party.  I'm explaining how a given situation hits the party in the breadbasket, or what makes them hungry for more, or why a dilemma fucks with them or who ought to feel in control of the ongoing campaign once it's started.  The how, what, why and who is what matters ... not the actual event.  Once the reader gets a firm grasp on those approaches, then the next event that ought to emerge will be obvious.  In fact, the reader will find themselves conceiving of so many possibilities that there won't be opportunity in a lifetime of getting to play them all.