The last half hour before game night and I have nothing to do but wait. I feel the tension, and the pressure that accompanies it, rising. Wanting to do well; ordering my thoughts in mind; I've scratched out a few notes. Things to remember, things to say, things the party will encounter ... and the hope that I'll think of something in the last moment that better than what I've got planned for right now.
Yes, there are things planned. The party is in a dungeon, amidst some weird forge arrangement, not knowing themselves what to expect. Everything is black and dark despite the player's ultravision, since that only reaches to 120 ft. and the darkness reaches out far beyond that.
I can't understand the argument that the game must be set in stone at this point. The players are going to do and say things that I'm not expecting, that I'll have to adjust my plans for when the time comes. Do I know what's in the darkness? Of course. Do I know what the creatures in the darkness are wont to do, when they're motivated to do it? Yes, yes, obviously. The players will pick a direction and move, but a sound draws their attention; they hesitate; they argue a moment before going towards the sound. Then they see an awful sight, which I can't say yet. They'll find a tempting, mysterious glowing thing, just laying on a workbench. What does it mean, they'll ask themselves, and someone will make a joke about the last time someone in the party reached out and touched something weird at random (it blew up, knocking the intrepid person into the negatives). Then, probably, after some detect spells, they'll dare to pick it up.
Maybe. I don't know if they will. I don't know if they'll go towards the sound. Parties can be very predictable, but not always. Often they come up with something goofy. They activate some item I gave them in 2014, that I've long forgotten about. Who knows?
This is why it's tense. It's like knowing we're on deck, there are two allies on base and we need four runs to win. The one at bat looks confident; is he going to get us some of the way there, or is this going to be up to me?
It's sitting in the car in a line waiting for customs, knowing there's 8 lbs. of fruit in the car. Will customs care? Will they make us pull over so they can check the car? The fruit's just for us; we've been eating mostly fruit as snacks for ten days now.
It's that low-level non-crisis that nonetheless feels like this is going to be a crisis somehow. This is how I always feel at this time. And this may be why some people stop DMing, though they try it a few times. It might be why they don't just keep at it, week after week, long enough to trust themselves to just run the game. Inwardly, I know nothing's going to go wrong. I've built up so much credit with my players that I could totally fuck up a session and they wouldn't care.
No, this is the not worrying about what they're going to think, though a lot of DMs fall into that trap. This, in fact, is just worrying about what I'm going to think five or six hours from now. Am I going to be satisfied with myself, or will I get on my own-ass kicking boots?
Don't know.
Have to wait and see.
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