Conclusion, Post 39

We've come a long way through the complexities and challenges of dungeon mastering, moving from the foundational aspects of handling player behaviour and managing the social dynamics of the table, through self-improvement as a DM, to finally addressing the deeper elements of worldbuilding. Each layer we've examined has shown that running a D&D campaign isn't a set of techniques or shortcuts, but a disciplined approach that demands both introspection and practical growth.

Early on, we identified the importance of reading player behaviour: seeing the game as more than a set of mechanics and learning to recognise how bad elements of the game's design contribute to interpersonal tensions, motivations and anxieties that the players bring with them. From the pre-game socialising to the need to made adjustments mid-campaign, this awareness is essential. It's what allows a dungeon master to foster an environment where people don't just insert their individualism but engage in a shared experience with real emotional stakes. Through this lens, the game becomes a framework that players can rely on, where trust and camaraderie build naturally over time.

Self-improvement is a vital part of that progression. The DM's growth is defined by a willingness to learn and discover, to try new things, to face difficulties and to question the approach that frameworks like the rules and traditional adventure building prescribe. The DM is invited to constantly refine, to learn what works for the group at hand, and to appreciate how flexibility in oneself and others contributes towards making a good game. "Improvement" isn't about doing things "right" but about gaining the clarity and consistency necessary to facilitate a game that players want to come back to, session after session.

Continued on The Higher Path

Proficiency & Expertise

These worldbuilding elements aid in the creation of a structured approach, but the manner in which competent dungeon masters still often resembles a pre-written module. Though working within a self-created world, the actual events tend towards predetermined structures and expected outcomes, because this is what the DM knows. Breaking free from this perspective is by no means simple; the rigidity of the module is reassuring, as having the players upon a guided path narrows the creative decisions they're likely to make. Though we become more invested in the outcome as we become competent, and more willing to afford players greater agency, we shouldn't be surprised to find we'll yet return, again and again, to the scaffolded narrative of a module.

This is a question of the trust we have in our abilities. Most competent DMs haven't yet learned how to think beyond surface definitions for the game's rules and setting, nor how to really understand why things function as they do — how, for example, a river affects regional alliances or how cultural tensions persist even without a clear, rational origin.

For a long time, we must give ourselves considerable allowances on this point. Wanting the world to feel more natural and open does not mean that we can snap our fingers and suddenly see past the surface definitions of things. Grasping why things function as they do takes time and insight. Trusting ourselves to choose the right encounter at the right moment, or to roll comfortably with the party's choices even when those create problems with regards to the campaign's flow, takes time. Building the ability to create organic, moment-to-moment responses and to trust our flexibility requires experience.

Continued on The Higher Path

History

Of all the elements that contribute to a campaign's worthiness, the setting's history is perhaps the most elusive and least straightforward in terms of its value. Many dungeon masters attempt to create a history that meticulously contextualizes every town, landmark and social structure, only to find themselves overwhelmed by the impracticality of such an approach. Others, seeking simplicity, offer an "illusion" of history — fragmented, localized pieces introduced as players encounter specific peoples or places. Yet this fragmented history often reduces itself to a series of adventure prompts that lack continuity; these isolated snippets are easily discarded or forgotten, as they have no lasting significance within the campaign.

An attempt to convey history in broad strokes may reduce the workload, but ultimately, it often serves only as anecdotal support for the setting's geography, culture, governance or economy. While history may offer a nice aesthetic flavour, these other subjects, already discussed, stand fine on their own without history's window dressing. This isn't enough of a reason for history to be placed alongside these others; it must justify its presence in our efforts by providing a distinct, separate purpose for being... otherwise, we are wasting our time giving history any attention at all.

Before doing this, we must understand what history is. From our viewpoint after the passage of many technological changes, we tend to see history as cause-and-effect, as something that got us from there, four centuries ago, to now. But this is not the viewpoint that a medievalist fantasy character has. A farmer of upon the Loire in the time of the Merovingians is indistinguishable from one at the time of the Romans, once again separated by four centuries. Ordinary Chinese fisherfolk cast their nets over the same water, in the same way, for more than a dozen centuries. Likewise, a Hindu knelt upon the same steps, to the same gods, in the same way, for that time also, casting the same shadow upon the same stones. The pattern of a prayer carpet on the saddle of a Bedouin in the 15th century could be found on any prayer carpet of his people in the time of Fatima. The world did change, but marginally. Wars, when fought, were waged between the elite. Borders, when they changed, mattered only to a tiny part of the populace. For most, the world was the world, decade after decade, as we aged and died in the same clothes as our parents and their parents before them.

Continued on The Higher Path

Materialism & Trade

As with other aspects of the developed setting, trade and available resources play a significant role in defining the campaign's character and tone. Depending upon the civilisation we desire, a world's economy might be so backward as to make bartering the primary form of exchange, or it may be highly advanced, allowing for widespread excavation and cultivation of the world's resources, all of which must be transported and then processed in vast water-and-wind driven boroughs. How these things work in our setting defines what player characters can purchase and how much; it defines how much wealth presently exists in the form of property, warehoused goods and trafficked materials in motion. We must choose whether the players are almost certainly rich compared to their lesser, rustic peers or mere flotsam drifting in a sea of incomprehensible affluence. The scale between these two extremes represents how much labour we'll have to give to the setting we desire, as well as the players' sense of agency and place.

The first problem is always the equipment the players are free to purchase, specifically what kind and how much. In a setting with limited resource access, the players are incentivized to strategize, negotiate and make alliances with key figures who control local supplies. A good sword might be precious if the world lacks metal; players might have to make do with lesser tools much of the time, with a fighter being decimated by a weapon's breaking. On the other hand, in an advanced economy where resources are abundant, a player may buy twenty swords, each with special characteristics; some dungeon masters allow the purchase of magical items, so that players who want to become more powerful need not strive and strain to increase their personal power. This of course depends on the individual; personally, my feeling is that players should suffer for every gain, that nothing of real worth should ever be gotten easily and that loss is something that should be keenly felt, if anything the players buy is to have any value for them. This fosters the players' sense of investment in their characters and the world, making their victories feel earned and meaningful.

Nonetheless, we must always consider equipment to be at the forefront of the player's engagement with the world. Treasure loses its lustre if there is nothing to purchase after a few sessions of hard adventuring. Material wealth helps define the character for the player, who must be free to purchase garments, tools, special foods and all kinds of desirable things ranging from a puppy to the emblazing of a character's heraldry upon a suit of armour. Often, the more mundane the better; a player can become easily and irrationally attached to a simple clay mug, merely because it was purchased when that character started out in the campaign. When, later, the mug is crushed under a dragon's foot, the player might feel that more keenly than the loss of a magical sword, though the latter is obviously more useful. It doesn't matter that the mug is imaginary; everything about the game is. As such, when looking over an equipment list, players are apt to think about what they want to own for its own sake, as well as what they need for mere game purposes.

Continued on The Higher Path

Political Authority

With the standard adventure format, authority figures are often reduced to roles that either enable or obstruct the party's intentions. "Good" authorities are those who summon the party to undertake quests that serve the realm’s welfare, while "bad" authorities are those endangering it, whom the party must thwart to prevent disaster. Both characterisations are shallow, functioning as simple devices to drive the party in a certain direction; they have no motivations or complexities of their own. They have no other foreseeable purpose in the campaign. Little consideration is given to the actual duties these figures fulfil, from the monarch of the realm down to the humblest guard — all of whom, in fact, form the backbone of society's organized, rational governance.

This becomes a problem when the players themselves reach a stage where governance is something they have an interest in assuming. Up until then, however, no premise in the campaign has existed to explain what these figures do as functional agents, or how, exactly, a set of player characters become such persons. All we've seen are archetypes serving as narrative props... but in a living, sustainable campaign, what we need are multifaceted individuals who can become pivotal allies, mentors and equals with real, deeply personal stakes in the day-to-day stability of their society.

We must revise our perception of authorities within the campaign, recognising that they need not be eternally cast as that which we must defy. A land, a people, a collection of towns and villages, require people to manage and organise the vast and difficult demands of maintenance, defence, legality and order... and discard the juvenile notion that such people are inherently evil, selfish and vain. For the most part, they're not; they're simply persons who have risen in the hierarchy according to a mix of capability or inherited responsibility, doing the best they can, bearing up against impossible difficulties, without the resources necessary to automatically succeed in their thankless responsibilities.

Continued on The Higher Path

Culture

Culture is a wide scale concept that describes the customs, artworks, social institutions and evidence of a society's achievements — as well as the assembly of laws and expectations that define acceptable behaviour among a given people. Designing such from scratch would be an act of folly. We are products of our own culture; everything we do and say reacts to the culture we were raised in, not to mention the culture to which we're trying to adapt. Should we attempt to write a narrative that steps outside this norm, we might succeed because we control every action and every statement that the characters within take and say... but to expect players to collaborate on such a venture, given the restraints of their culture, is both unrealistic and a recipe for disaster.

Therefore our goal is not to design a culture, but to perceive how the culture of our game setting must function so that the players can engage with it intuitively. We must start by understanding how the setting has to reflect the players' core beliefs and values. These values aren't arbitrary — they have been imposed upon the actual human beings playing. Their fundamental truths about survival, morality and success, if discounted, will produce conflict and resistance, no matter how earnestly we want them to adhere to what the culture of our game setting stands for. We must discard any notion that the campaign stands apart in this regard, merely because it is fictional; the instincts of the players are what they are; if we as dungeon masters wish to have any understanding of player psychology, this immutable fact must be accepted.

This should be explained to the players... not in terms of what the players believe, but rather in what the non-players of our setting consider to be cultural norms. We should tell the players that persons of industry and property, outside of criminals and those with political power, are reliable, loyal and honourable, because it would not occur to them to be otherwise. We should explain that we're giving our word on this, because we want the players to perceive accurately the world they visit... that an ordinary grocer, farmer, teamster, boat pilot or even a soldier's word can be taken as an utterly authentic representation of what that person believes, in their heart.

Continued on The Higher Path

Geography

 An open, player-driven world requires a geography that goes beyond a simple map of the setting. There has long been debate about whether to create a large-scale map, which can be expanded over time, or a small-scale map representing an entire continent, with detailed sections added as needed. However, these choices place too much emphasis on the map itself, overlooking the larger challenge of building a consistent, reliable geography that shapes the world the players are meant to inhabit. A coherent geography is a setting where physical features — like mountains, rivers, cities, and climates — are arranged and considered in how they affect cultures, trade, politics and daily life, in a manner that feels natural and interconnected.

For example, a mountain source provides water an minerals, supporting mining towns; these represent resilient cultures who are used to isolation and are protective of their goods. Where the river reaches the plains, its water enables agriculture, creating prosperous farming towns whose culture was likely founded by migrants long ago; more friendly, these centres are interconnected by roads and seasonal festivals. Further along, the towns along the river course grow fat and rich upon trade, with historically rooted rivalries over control of river access. The port city at the mouth of the river is filled with foreigners, a considerably greater diversity of trade and evidence of past cultures stretching back a thousand years.

In fact, the nature of each settlement is predetermined by the existence of the river, which predates any form of culture. The river's size, course and surrounding soils are determined by the topography; if the land it traverses is mostly hard rock with sparse trees, few would settle there. If the river's slope is too shallow, it might form fetid swamps or braid into multiple channels. In a frigid climate, the river would freeze over with a shortened growing season affecting the agricultural potential. In hotter climates, the river could wind through deserts or dense jungles. Each adjustment in topography, vegetation, wind patterns or hydrology creates a distinct type of river and in turn a unique culture, trade system and history.

Continued on The Higher Path

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

Basic Reliable Habits

Running a session as an advanced beginner, we steadily amass a collection of procedures in which we begin to rely upon practiced responses; examples of these procedures include managing a combat, relaying a description of the player's surroundings for hour after hour without becoming tired, using exchanges with NPCs to relay exposition, awarding treasure, giving advice to players on game rules and so on. Massimiliano Cappuccio (Dreyfus is Right: Knowledge-That Limits Your Skill, 2023), describes our acquisition of these as "pre-reflective dispositions," in which we're predisposed "to intelligently perceive, interpret, decide and act in familiar 'ways or modes,' when facing familiar situations or tasks." With time, about 200 to 500 hours of in-session dungeon mastering, these procedures become ingrained, allowing us to handing these tasks reflexively, without needing to analyse each step. These emerge as automatic processing (Sweller); in essence, NPC-to-player speaking becomes so commonplace in our thoughts that we're able to engage in it without concern.

These, Cappuccio explains, enable us "to complete a task, produce some transformative effects, solicit certain reactions in the bystanders, or preserve an existing condition" as basic reliable habits, making us ready to cope with unfamiliar scenarios with a developed heightened awareness and preference for certain types of actions, cues or information relevant to the arisen problem. In essence, these form a toolkit that simplifies our decision-making, lifting us towards competency, even if we're unaware that this is what's going on.

As before, rather than explain what competency is, we're better off discussing how we get there. Basic reliable habits are merely a first step; they represent a break from what Cappuccio calls "instrumental" actions, which consist in bringing about a desired outcome regardless of the means employed to do it. To use Cappuccio's example, if I'm filling out governmental or medical forms, I'm supplying answers which have no skilful component, as the answers simply exist.

Continued on The Higher Path

Advanced Beginners

Steadily, as we've described, as a dungeon master we acquire familiarity with the metrics of D&D and shifts towards automatic processing when running the game. Within the adjusted canonical frames that we acquire, we come to a place where we better understand what the players are apt to do when presented with a description, a situation or a combat. We're better prepared regarding the rules we know, and have a better idea of where to seek for rules we don't know. We grow comfortable with the expectation that we'll be sitting in the DM's chair within a few hours, as evidence of our growing confidence. This assumes, of course, that we've been resilient in our efforts to maintain a group of players and to live up to their expectations.

We have arrived at a stage where we are an "advanced beginner." Some chafe at this appellation. There exists an assumption that once an individual becomes able to run a game with confidence, this stipulates that we have attained "master" status, as we are a dungeon or a game master. We've discussed this already, and the pitfalls that arise from it, but now we may elaborate further on this phenomenon. Being consistent in player engagement, and gaining the ability to run more easily, with less hiccups or rule-checking, does give a sense of mastery. We better understand player tendencies now, we can offer more nuanced responses when queried, our ability to craft a narrative is measurably improved and it would seem the players are engaged with the game we're running. All this would seem that we've arrived, and that we're certainly not a "beginner," even an advanced one.

Yet, while these accomplishments signal improvement, they don't necessarily signify mastery. Feeling certainty in our grasp of the game, we may settle into a style that works but lacks depth, especially in situations that deviate from familiar scenarios. In fact, we may use our adaptive understanding to gently manoeuvre the players away from everything and anything that's unfamiliar, simply because we wish to remain in our comfort zone. Understanding the power we possess, we can easily slip into habits of fudging dice or carefully rescinding the dangers that certain monsters possess — for example, having the monster hesitate or wait to use it's primary power, until it no longer can. And as we disincline to seek new challenges, largely because the players don't seem to mind, we drift into a comfortable, self-imposed stagnation that lasts until the arrival of some new disruptive player or a change in the lives of our players, who suddenly seem to have less interest in our game.

Continued on The Higher Path

Novice vs. Advanced Beginner

Posted this on my patreon, but what the heck.  It's an add-on.

I've been writing about the difference between a novice DM and an advanced beginner. I thought it might be interesting to present a short script between a novice DM and a player, to give an idea of the DM's uncertainty and fragmented approach.

DM: [flipping through notes] "Uh, okay, so... you’re in this room. It’s, um, dark. There’s, like, a... stone floor and some... barrels, maybe? And... a door on the other side.”

Player: “Alright, cool. I go check out the barrels.”

DM: [pauses, looking uncertain] “Oh, okay. Uh, the barrels... they look... wooden. Old, I think. Not sure what's inside. Do you... do you want to open one?”

Player: “Yeah, sure. I open the nearest one.”

DM: [fumbles through notes] “Uh, okay... let me check... I think... yeah, alright. You open it, and... I guess it’s empty? Or maybe it’s... dusty? Yeah, let’s say it’s... dusty.”

Player: “Okay. Well... I’ll check the door.”

DM: “The door? Right. Okay, so... it’s, uh, wood. Old, too. Um, I think... maybe you can try to open it?”

Player: “I’ll try the handle.”

DM: [relieved] “Alright, yeah. It opens... I think it opens... into another room.”

This might be overdone, but the goal here is to capture the DM's uncertainty, hesitation and lack of cohesion, to express the disjointed, step-by-step experience of the player. Each element feels isolated and the DM is clearly struggling to keep up with the flow.

Let's try the same scene using an advanced beginner DM:

DM: [confidently setting the scene] “Alright, you step into a dimly lit stone room. The floor is rough and scattered with old, wooden barrels along the walls. Across the room, there’s a heavy wooden door with iron bands—looks like it hasn’t been opened in years.”

Player: “I go over to the barrels to check them out.”

DM: “Sure. As you get closer, you notice a layer of dust on them. Most of them are sealed, but one is slightly cracked open, and you can see some kind of dried-out residue inside. It doesn’t look like anyone’s touched these in ages.”

Player: “Interesting. Alright, I’ll go check out the door.”

DM: [without hesitation] “You make your way to the door. The handle’s rusted, and it feels heavy in your hand, but you manage to turn it with a bit of effort. The door creaks open, and beyond it, you can see another room... shadows flickering along the walls.”

Not only does the DM more fluidly communicate the scene, but the overall moves faster, giving the player a stronger sense of the setting. The description flows, the player sees the space more easily and the scene feels more immersive.

Join my $3 Patreon tier to see why this is so. For DMs who are interested, gain insight on what to look for in yourself should you wish to improve your style.

Automatic Processing

 It falls upon us at this point to quantify the improvement of the novice to the second stage in Dreyfus's stage analysis, that of the "advanced beginner." We should note that the advancement spoken of here fails to denote either expertise of even competence... the adjustment is only from "novice" to "beginner." Therefore, we must assume a set of moderate but recognisable changes taking place between what a novice observe while playing the game and what a beginner's advancement allows. To explain that, we must explain how a novice sees the game. Understand here that the pattern of thinking described here is what defines the novice, NOT the amount of time the novice has spent playing. A particularly insightful DM who succeeds well out of the gate may, through other skill-sets and professional knowledge, intuitively leap past the novice stage and directly into that of the beginner. It's how the individual sees the game that defines a novice. This reinforces the idea that improvement is a matter of perspective and understanding, not just experience.

The novice's perception is rooted in the observation of "surface features". Largely due to the novelty of the novice dungeon master's perspective and the density of expectations that are thrust upon the position, novices rarely have enough time to do more than see elements of the game as distinct, isolated components, taking them at face value, in terms of their most visible and immediate details. Character abilities are mere numbers, as are hit points, while monster stats exist for the purpose of engaging in combat and little else. Surface descriptions are purely representational, therefore carrying a stigma of two-dimensionality. The approach to the game is much like a checklist to be followed without deviation, particularly in the case of a purchased game module, which is followed as written. It's not so much that the novice finds it difficult to see how these elements interact, it's more that the novice sees no particular reason to think that they do. Many elements of the game — like the description of a spell — are fragmented and challenging even to interpret, much less actually apply to the game, since the phrasing and assumptions used in the writing demand a complete grasp of many mechanics that take time to accumulate.

For example, when the novice reads about armour class, it's understood as a number, a stat to beat on a die roll: if the player rolls high enough, they "succeed" in hitting, and if they don't, they "fail." While there might be an understanding of the metric's importance regarding what's happening within the game's setting, the novice is still struggling to equate one to the other while managing the immediate complexities and unfamiliarity of the combat system.

Continued on The Higher Path

Measurable Improvement

This example of the novice highlights an inaccuracy in the designation, "dungeon master." As Danielle Osterman notes in the book, 2d6 Taoists, (Dungeon Apprentices: How Players become Dungeon Masters), the word "master" cannot apply to many who run the game, because the word implies a level of expertise or control that fails to match that of the person. This misnomer carries into the common alterative, "game master," or GM, which does not reconcile the problem as the wrong word is changed in the title.

From this, and from the description of the novice's shortcomings in the previous post, we can see that experience and ability are qualities that develop gradually through knowledge, learning and practice. The novice may nominally possess the authority of the DM, and the title, but this does not in itself ascribe that he or she has earned this position. Many have not. Many perceive that the mere act of adopting the title is sufficient — and as such tend not to accumulate expertise over time, through an inability to admit wrongdoing. Still others assume that the division between "novice" and "not-a-novice" is something that can be expressed in black-and-white terms, believing that having run the game for a few years, they're now an "expert," though there remains an entirely subjective measure.

Still others argue there can only BE subjective measures — that the game is so complex and, more importantly, personal, that distinctions of "good" and "bad" can be explained away by arguing, "I simply run differently," or "My priorities are different." These are convenient appellations, by necessity poorly defined and of course dismissive of any possibility that the speaker might yet have something to learn.

Continued on The Higher Path

Novices

Acting as a dungeon master is not something that we learn to do in a structured environment. As we've said, there are no instructors, no formal education for players who decide to run their own games — and certainly not for those who, lacking a model to go buy, purchase the books hoping that these works will provide enough insight to let an individual take control. Those who leap into DMing must nearly always do so out of passion and desire, for there is no one to hold their hand. As a result, those who succeed define a "trial by fire" model, often adopting an attitude the dungeon mastering OUGHT to be learned this way, and that those who would seek to learn it otherwise would not, in the end, make good DMs.

This point of pride among those who succeed damages the game's value. As an initiation, it's quite useless if ensuring that "good" can be applied to the result — that appellation is largely ascribed by the individuals themselves, NOT because it's accurate, but because there are so few around that can dispute it. The reason why there are so few DMs is this very reason — because there is no instructor to provide knowledge or guidance; because there is no standard by which a novice can readied for any part of the game. The rules, disastrous hodgepodge that they are, fail to provide the structure that "quality" requires. The would-be DM has no step-by-step path to follow, and therefore no way to judge well between the options of behaviour, speech, explanation or management of the players that potentially exist.

The manner in which self-created DMs crown themselves as "good" is accomplished with, at best, the external validation of the players, who must needs be sycophantic... since the players need to appease the DM, lest the DM quit running and thus leave the players without a game to play. This creates an unearned assuredness in DMs who survive their "trial by fire," who desperately cling to such appeasements, since any objective measure, from some observer NOT dependent upon the game, does not exist. The result is a mutual-admiration dynamic, where the players preen DMs for the sake of the game, and DMs preen themselves out of the desperate belief that all their preparation and session efforts have not been done in vain.


Continued on The Higher Path

Camaraderie

 Before every session, there's typically a natural, unstructured conversation where players and dungeon masters chat about the game. These informal discussions include a wide range of subjects, as participants find in this an opportunity to share recent events in their lives, be social and otherwise unload stress through the support group that a game-group provides. These moments are socially important, contributing to the process of setting aside the real world prior to immersing ourselves in an imaginary endeavour. By sharing personal experiences, we bond as a game group, which connects us together so that should some form of anxiety or resistance between participants arise during the game, the camaraderie established at the beginning sustains the group's desire to maintain our social circle.

This is important in fostering the same resilience and flexibility seein in children's friendships. Just as children can fight passionately and remain friends, the pre-game socialising helps players engage deeply, sometimes even fight or disagree, without jeapardising their relationships within the party or the game itself. By creating a supportive space, the interaction is more than a filler before the game starts; it helps in their ability to view in-game disputes as affairs within the game's play, and not as personal attacks upon one another.

However, this relies upon participants who have developed conflict resolution skills as children, through proper play and trust-building experiences. A dungeon master faced with such a person as an adult is liable to encounter an unnatural amount of defensiveness, aggression or avoidance from the participant. Such adults, struggling with unresolved childhood issues, may potentially view any conflict as a personal attack rather than as an opportunity for growth; this can result in game disruptions and campaign-ending incidents where one or more participants permanently withdraw from the campaign, through what appears to be a very minor slight or misunderstanding.

Continued on The Higher Path

Workbench

 Nearly all persons who have read to this point have spent many hours either playing or running... and no doubt, their engagement with the game has encouraged them to seek out things to read and perhaps to study, for their personal edification. Most have received some guidance from other dungeon masters; through formal education, they've experienced the process of learning. Many can see, easily, how education in one field can be directly applied to role-playing games. Yet while absorbing a collection of resources, and seeking out direction from others, there's yet another strategy we haven't employed, a thing we can do on our own, apart from running a campaign.

A fitting metaphor for this could be called a workbench. This is a place where craftsfolk and hobbyists tinker with materials and tools in an unpressured, exploratory way. Unlike preparing for a game, this isn't about building something specific to a purpose, but about familiarising ourselves the tools, experimenting with elements of the game and playing with ideas. It's a place for trial and error, where the actual game rules receive application to things we make for ourselves, that might fail, or might end in adding vitality to our campaign.

There are examples that nearly every long-term DM fiddles with at some point, usually without achieving our goal. Nonetheless, what's important here isn't success, but familiarity, which contributes to our deeper engagement with the game itself. In bumping up against the game's limitations, however we might strive to put a harness on things to make them work for us, we yet create a profound connection between ourselves and the game, which filters into every other game-related action we take.

Continued on The Higher Path

Instructors

The process of teaching, whether as formal as a classroom or as personable as a parent teaching a child, begins with a desire to instill confidence into the student... not only with the material at hand, but with the very idea of learning. If I teach my daughter the principles of chess, yes of course I wish her to grasp the movements of the pieces and the general idea of the game — but more importantly, I wish her to feel bold and trust in her ability to make moves without fear of losing. When we are taught our letters in school, we benefit greatly from tactile and hands-on learning, tracing the letters in sand or the air, even molding the letters out of playdough... because as we physically engage with the letters, we become more sure of ourselves when speaking the name of each letter and the sound it makes.

If we don't put the acquisition of confidence at the forefront of our teaching effort, then we risk creating students who may understand the material, but will become hesitant before repeating what they've learned. We must also take care not to cause students to second-guess themselves, or avoid taking the risk of speaking up in class — which, in my early 1970s education, was barely a concern to teachers who considered our "learning" the material as more important than our "relationship" with it. Thus we were educated "at" rather than "with"... and my fellow students, as a result, did not put up their hands nor give their opinions, for fear that they'd be humiliated in front of their peers for not "understanding" the material exactly as the teachers thought we should.

We'd like to believe that things have changed, but the very fact that we continue to test upon the cold, non-interactive nature of the taught material, and not the children's interaction with it, belies that assumption. We are concerned with absorption, not application, because no grade that appears on a report card speaks to the latter. A good teacher tries to make up for this shortcoming by writing on the report card, "Jennie responds positively in class and enjoys the material," but when these words are said to parents who have little understanding of what goes on in a classroom, this recognition of Jennie's confidence and willingness to plunge forward is lost. If "enjoys the material" is matched with an "A," all it well and good... but if it's matched with a "C," because Jennie is interested but has a less than perfect memory, the only thing anyone cares about is the grade.

Continued on The Higher Path.

Best Guess

In building emotional depth into the game's campaign, we are fascinated by the manner in which a single action we take reverberates through the responses and actions of others... and how this escalates conflict. Our first efforts to reproduce this effect are difficult, because we don't fully grasp the layering complexity of how this believably occurs; but after studying film, literature or history, we see constructed or real narratives unfold in a way that feels interconnected, complex and inevitable.

It's an educator's role to help us elucidate narratives in this manner, teaching us what to look for in the development of layered cause-and-effect structures. Hopefully, this helps us understand complex narratives in a way that isn't obvious at first glance. A useful example for this would be the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. For many, this seemed to be a spontaneous occurrence; the protests and public gatherings escalated quickly in the weeks leading up to that November. The media were caught with their pants down, focused largely on the immediate visual spectacle and weren't ready to explain in detail why it was happening. When the first stories emerged that tried to explain it, the influence of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms received tremendous attention, such that he ended up receiving a Nobel Peace Prize... but this was hype. The Soviet Union was broke; the war in Afghanistan had been a disaster and 30 years of intense cold war spending had emptied the nation's coffers. It could no longer maintain control over its satellite states, and as a result, the power vacuum was sensed by those in East Berlin who, not spontaneously, but because they were no longer being held back, acted as they were now able. The suddenness of the fall was more about the long-suppressed pressures finally finding release rather than an unplanned outburst.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification; hundreds of factors are at play which, if unraveled, lends insight to what happened. Through the investigation of these factors, particularly under the guidance of someone who may have been there while also deeply involved in the event's political background, can lead us to comprehending more fully what happened. Steadily, we acquire a certainty that things happen for a reason, even the most spontaneous of things. By reverse engineering these things, we gain understanding of how to set up the factors, and where they ought to lead a fictional narrative that we construct for our own purpose.

Continued on the Higher Path

Atmosphere

A common weakness in many dungeon masters is to focus on the immediate needs of their campaign, to find a module that can be quickly adapted before the next session, to produce an NPC's "backstory" in the hopes of producing a quick, short-term motivation for the party, or the ideal of a throw-it-at-them encounter that will distract the players long enough to give enough time to come up with something else. As a result, DMs often rush from instant solution to instant solution, always at the edge of feeling like if they don't come up with something in the last few hours before game time, they're sunk.

This mindset largely emerges from a failure to grasp the influence of artistic design, atmosphere and emotional depth... which in turn reflects the tendency to see these things as "non-applicable" precisely because they don't address the immediate problems of the DM. On the whole, these elements seem like luxuries when the DM's immediate concern is keeping the game running and the players engaged. They are intangible and difficult to quantify. A combat encounter or puzzle has clear, actionable components, whereas "atmosphere" is an elusive quality that defies definition.

This is largely because of the form of education we obtain; in general, our grade school teachers themselves were unable to explain exactly why we were directed to study Shakespearean plays or deconstruct poetry. Art, for most people, feels unproductive, useless and unnecessary; it expends time attempting to duplicate work that plainly others, who have spent more time at it, will always be more proficient than we are. The answer received, in turn, usually consists of a poorly-experienced teacher saying that art is a way of unwinding, relaxing, that it provides an escape and helps us forget about things, momentarily, that are actually important.

Continued on the Higher Path

Education

We come now to the most difficult part of this series, where we have to set aside what "resources" are and how to use them, and take up the unholy, unwanted subject of "education." This disaster of a field, that has induced nearly every conscious person to equate with their frustrating, provably irrelevant school experience. Where, as teenagers, we used to say to our teachers, "Why are we learning this? I'm never going to use it," only to be chastened to warned not to question the importance of school, we can look back now in our late adulthood and say with surety, "I was right. I never did use that crap I was taught."

For this reason, when most of us hear, "education," we equate it at once with the traditional system — hours of rote memorisation, irrelevant topics, boredom, long wasted hours and the absence of practical benefit. This is made worse in that most assume that if there's anything to be gained from education as a DM, it must come from a formally named subject-specific class, "How to be a Dungeon Master 201" — which, in fact, the reason why this collection of posts is called "RPG 201." The title mimics the academic naming convention because if we do not say what a thing is right on the tin, they won't trust what they're buying. This puts me the position of having to lift that boat out from the water and scraping the barnacles off it's bottom.

Education differs from research in that learning from others is part of the process, either because we undertake to teach a subject or learn one. As a student, we do not hold the teacher accountable with every statement made to prove that the knowledge being given is worth knowing. As a teacher, we don't waste the student's time, discarding conventions and assumptions about what education ought to include. The weak point in the education system was not us, the students, and it was not our teachers; it was the vast panoply of interveners who were not in the classroom with us, but yet forced us ALL to obey a ridiculous set of protocols that continue to get in the way of everything. Education can be meaningful when it's focused and practical, and free from unnecessary distractions. This has to be understood first before any good can come of what's written here next.


Continued on the Higher Path