My players are great.
So D&D – and other tabletop RPGs – are collaborative storytelling games. A group of people create a story together, through play. There are many ways to do this. Often, DMs/GMs (myself included) see their role as something like a computer game’s level designer. The GM creates a system (a world, and a plot thread or two), and then the players do what they want within those constraints.
This makes a lot of sense, and is a perfectly valid way to play the game. After all, it’s basically equivalent to buying a campaign book and running that, isn’t it?
Here’s a fact that I think many GMs often forget: your players want to tell a good story, too. So why not give them a bit more control? Well, I tried it. Here’s how it went.
First, here’s Barker from Be A Better Game Master on this idea:
I don’t have this problem in my current group, but the point about keeping your players invested is a really good one. If you can see that someone has zoned out a little bit, this is a really good way to bring them back into the game. Also, once a player has created something, they’re automatically going to have an interest in it – and, by extension, in your campaign.
So during the third session of my campaign, I tried this out a couple of times. Bear in mind that we are all fairly new to D&D: for most of my players, this was only their third or fourth session. Anyway, I started small, asking our half-orc about orc duels:
Excellent. So now we all have this fantastic image in our heads of the two facing off against each other (as well as the fantastic image on the video, which was drawn by that same player later on). And we also know more about the world and about orc culture.
That was all actually unplanned – I hadn’t expected the players to approach the orcs, and certainly hadn’t expected them to challenge one to a duel. But it led to one of the most tense and dramatic combat encounters I’ve experienced, and I think that even the players who weren’t involved enjoyed it immensely.
Later on, the players opened a stone door leading into the mountain. Throwing caution to the wind, I asked one of the players what was behind it. Naturally, this caught him off guard a little bit (remember, this is our third session) – but his response was fantastic:
The dwarf whom he described was from his character’s backstory. What followed was far more interesting (and emotional) than anything I could have planned. It has permanently changed that character, and has set him on a completely different path from anything I think either of us had imagined.
So in summary, the experiment was a great success! Fantastic. I will definitely be doing this again, and I would encourage you to try it with your group. It won’t suit all styles, of course, but I’m sure that for many, it would be a very useful and fun addition to the game.
As a final word of caution, don’t do this if you don’t know your players at all. Some players really don’t like to be put on the spot, especially in front of people they don’t know all that well. Know your group. Take Barker’s advice, and start small.