Letting Go of the Wheel

Our break with D&D's standard format arises as we become jaded with isolated adventures, which progressively provide less satisfaction year after year. For most participants, there seems nowhere to go except to continue the pattern. Like any other table game, it's assumed that this is all the game is, and that it would be no more rational to perceive a "higher" form of D&D than for Settlers of Catan or Battleship. A more comprehensive "campaign," in which adventures take place as a continual process of a larger narrative arc, would assume some kind of setting in which the players would be free to move about freely, obtaining a certain agency for themselves that would let them explore which adventure they'd like to play... and more to the point, if they'd like to investigate alternate forms of engagement with the game setting. Such forms would include interactions, investigations and the building or defence of things to which the characters were free to commit themselves.

This shifting of the players' relationship with the setting, however, calls for the dungeon master's comprehensive understanding of a game setting that traditional adventure building fails to offer. To allow the players to move about, there must be an established geography. For the players to feel secure and capable of interacting with the setting's people, there must be a clearly defined culture which the players can predict, so they can trust the word of non-player characters. There must be a political structure that permits freedom of movement and offers a believable reward system for players who aspire to power over the setting. Items of course must be available for purchase, but some rationale must also exist for where these things come from, how they are processed and sold, where they are available and how wealth is distributed. There must be some sort of deeper history filled with past grievances, the movements of people and standing treaties that explains where this setting has come from, and where it is going. All of these things are necessary for us to provide a real sense of place and time, which the players must have if they're going to reliably act and make decisions within this milieu.

Without this physical and moral context, players will continue to treat the setting like a game, an abstract object with which they won't allow themselves to engage. They will distrust every shred of evidence, assuming it exists, like in a one-off adventure, to expressly affect their actions. They won't commit to a project, expecting that for the sake of adventure that it'll be taken away from them at the DM's whim. They won't listen or invest in the political or historical framework for this same reason — perceiving that it's a ruse, a sham, intended to misdirect them and threaten. We may be interested in running such a world, but if our players don't understand it or aren't ready for it, then our efforts will be in vain.


Continued on The Higher Path