At my last D&D running on Friday, we got slow starting because Tamara and I had purchased a treadmill ... and before we could start playing, I needed some of the younger bucks that run in the game to help me put it together. Unfortunately, I'm getting too tired to manage 135 lb. mechanisms by myself. The progress was slow; the screw holes were machined just slightly out of alignment and so it took pressure and patience to fit everything in it's place, before the machine could be put into its corner.
By then I was sweating and wearied a bit, so that we were late starting. Throughout the running I felt rundown, doing what I could to maintain the game's tempo. The party descended into some sort of huge forge built underground, the purpose of which is still uncertain. They've determined that the drow have been manipulating coal and gems somehow. All is deserted, and it seems to be evident that something's gone terribly wrong; there was certainly magic involved in the process.
While investigating, they were attacked by three flesh golems, who seemed to be functioning "guards," who became aware of the party and honed in on their position. The party dispatched them easily (it would have needed six or seven to make it a "good" fight), but these weren't all. There are grey ooze wandering about, who aren't eating the standing forges because these appear to be made not of metal, but some other kind of crystal. This was part of the clue structure has led the party to believe that the machines are here not to create heat, but to somehow magically create molten gem-crystal ... but this is as far as they've ascertained.
As the short running wrapped up, the usual after-game bull session took place and I remarked on my depleted energy level. Otherwise, I said, I'd have pushed the game further towards midnight. But I'm not the young DM that I used to be and then apologised if it wasn't the running wasn't so exciting.
The players confessed that they're not the energy buckets they used to be either. When they began in my game, most were in their early 20s; now they're in their mid-30s. They're feeling the stress of families and careers and extra issues to do with health, as they're in that period when we stop drinking and start thinking more about our diets, realising we can no longer live on hot pockets and pop tarts. Cheezies have largely disappeared from the game diet, to be replaced with deli meats, chickpea salads and veggie/fruit trays.
"Well," I said, "It's sometimes hard to admit that I'll never be the DM I used to be," thinking in my mind of those halcyon days when I'd comfortably play until 2 a.m. because some combat wasn't over yet, or even just because I wasn't working the next day. It was at this point that I got an unexpected reply.
The newest player in the game has been in it now about ten months. Kit's known the players for some five years and might have gotten around to playing earlier, but what with covid and some financial troubles I had up until 2021, when I didn't have the space to play, my running a game was out of the question.
Her comment went something like this, but obviously this isn't word for word: "I can tell you this," she said. "Playing in your game, and comparing it to how your game was described to me before I played, it lives up to the hype."
I've been given to believe over the years that my players do hype my game quite a bit. It's the reason why new players join, after all, and why I have eight players at present and not four. Kit is the latest. She's been hearing about my game, and about me, for literally years.
I know that for some DMs, the idea of having to live up to a reputation might be daunting. But to be honest, I never considered it. I've been running D&D a long time. I spent thousands of hours in "the chair." I'm not paying attention to how I am during a game — that comes after, when I can take my hand off the stick and I begin to feel that I didn't do as good a job as I might have. During the game I'm running; that's all. I haven't the time to self-assess, or to give a damn about self-assessment. I'm not in my own body, I'm elsewhere, in the room I'm describing, stacking one piece of information on top of another, parsing out every player's action and calculating the consequences.
I'll give an example of this last. The players entered the "forge" through the ceiling. The dead white dragon from our last running sat on top of an icy floor, and below that was a trap door, 4 ft. across. After melting the ice, the players pulled out the trap door to find themselves above a great big empty. With ultravision in place, they could clearly see 120 ft; but the walls and the floor were more than twice that far away.
Yet one character, Ivan the thief, has wings of flying (he's 10th level, after all). He popped down into the chamber and measured it's girth and depth, though he had to be careful of hundreds of chains that hung from the ceiling. Once he was done his reconnoitre, he was ready to go back.
"And where is the hole you came down from?" I asked.
He stopped, remembering that no one in the party has a lamp or a torch lit, because they're all using infravision. He can see 120 ft. but the chamber is 720 ft. in diameter. He shouted, but in the vastness of this space, it's all just echoes.
Thankfully, someone realised the shouting was for a light, so they lit one. Ivan found his way back. This is what I mean when I say, parsing the player's decision. You can't write a meaningful note in a game module for this instance, because you can never be sure the players will have the same abilities without you giving it to them as part of the module, and because you can't know the player will do something like this. As a DM, we have to think fast, and see the flaw, so they can see the solution.
The party decided that Ivan, who can carry 250 lbs., would lower each party member to the floor. The halfling, played by Kit, offered to go first, so he took her down. Then he went up to get the second character, leaving Kit on the bottom. And when Ivan started his second trip down, what do you think I had to point out?
"Where's Tavrobel?" I asked.
He'd taken the halfling down 350 ft. to the bottom of the chamber, but he couldn't see her now, could he? And wings of flying are not a helicopter; one has to swoop around. Tavrobel had no torch or lantern. The table whooped in laughter. They'd got caught twice by the same mistake.
So he took a pass over the floor with the second character and didn't see her. She is, after all, a halfling, and it's a big cluttered floor. But she heard Ivan fly by and realised, "He can't see me." Luckily, the halfling is a druid ... so she lit herself up with faerie fire. Problem solved.
My role as DM is to see this sort of issue, to pluck it out, to wave it in front of the players and then have them solve it. Constantly vigilant for this sort of observation, my head is absolutely invested in the game. It's part of what I like about DMing. All of my pistons have to be firing, all the time, until the game ends.
Whereupon I start to criticise myself. Why? No idea. It's a combination of the exhaustion and doubts, and certainties that I didn't give as good a game as I always want to give. Not through trickery or relying on someone else's info, but on being the smartest damn thinker I can be.
Kit's feedback is unquestionably the best that any players' ever given me. And I've heard some awfully nice things from a lot of players.
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