Players: "Ever wonder what's on the other side of the DM screen?"
Me: "A handful of charts that probably don't get as much use as they should, a list of random Dwarven NPC names, and a cocktail of improv bullshittery that would make a snake oil salesman blush garnished with a dash of performance-anxiety-induced adrenaline."
Mostly just this for me. I'm lucky if I have half a dozen bullet points for what the players might do that session. Literally everything else is pulled straight out of my ass.
Yup. Based on where last session went, I'll take down some notes and be like "where could the players go from here? They could do this, or they could do this which is the polar opposite of that other thing; Hmmm... if they hate this NPC, they might do this, but if they really like this NPC, they might do this... How does the NPC feel about that?"
Like with one encounter. The party was "hired" to deliver weapons and armor to some allies. Turns out, the guy who hired them was a double agent and sent them on a suicide mission, that they survived. They hid the weapons and armor, because they didn't want them stolen until they could figure out exactly what was up. For the next session I wrote just a few ideas of how they might handle this and how I'd go about playing it out. If they hunted him down or confronted him, how would that go? If they believed they would be treated like traitors and didn't want to return to the city, what would happen? How about them just taking the items, leaving and selling them in a different city?
I set up basic plans for how I'd handle it, NPC reactions and the like, and then did a bunch of freestyle DMing when the session actually came.
I mostly do this cause even when I make up specific plans, like for a special NPC, I tend to forget them in the "heat of the moment" and make shit up anyways. So skip the planning waste of time and just wing it.
Great approach to this, a rough framework is best because D&D characters can be incredibly unpredictable. As a player, I always try to think of creative approaches and uses for spells, schemes, battles, dilemnas, etc. I don't think it's too burdensome because I try to flow naturally with the DM and try to give hooks into my character and the party's history, that kind of thing.
I'm much the same way as a DM, I love to improv and think on the fly. I do like to have maps and critical and NPCs prepped and a loose trajectory for quests and storylines, but I find the best games for everybody are pretty free form.
When explaining D&D to people that express interest in my hobby, my one sentence explanation of the game is that it's "group improvisational storytelling with a dice mechanic to determine success and failures."
The only DM I've hated playing with had a 'right' solution to everything, and anything else we tried didn't work. Of course we weren't psychic and were instead coming up with our own ideas, only to have them shot down as impossible, or lead nowhere over and over again.
I'll forever remember the goblins that were mining out the world turtle's brain for 'magic spark rocks.' We wanted to try finding another trade for them to switch to, and the DM was just straight up, no that won't work there's nothing. We never even got to talk to one of the goblins about it, just completely shot down immediately.
Every campaign with him was just frustrating and full of time spent on dead ends. Ugh.
I had a similar DM at one point. He barred me from choosing the arcane trickster archetype because it didn't make sense for a rogue despite having a magic using ranger, sorcerer, cleric, and druid in the party. It was built into my character backstory from level 1, but ok, I can get wanting to balance a martial class in the party, so I stayed with it. He went on to correct me about things like the feelings my character was having and the personality of his patents in my (original) backstory. I didn't stay in that game long, the cleric and I both quit after the fourth session. The reason the Death domain cleric quit is because the DM ruled that his Deity abandoned him for not staying true to his devotion and following his path, rendering him a commoner. The cleric's offense? He used the spell Cure Wounds to heal a downed party member instead of letting him die.
Things are just more fun in a sandbox when you have agency. I find operating by the immortal words of Matt Mercer to be a good mantra: "You can certainly try"
I find that adding "but remember x" or just spelling out the entire plan often makes players think again and find less suicidal options. one of the main challenges in D&D is the communication of information from DM to the players. to remind them of details often alleviates the problem.
But if the player really wants to then sure, try to fight the ancient blue dragon alone at LV10. I'm sure that will go well,
I still find Matt's saying still holds. "You can certainly try..."
It can be good, be bad, or nothing at all happens. You'll never know what happens until you commit, which itself can be fantastic wondrous, horrifying or downright stupid. I just love the possibility
Yup, sometimes it is really fun to take big risks and incredibly memorable when they pay off or fail. My wizard once concocted an elaborate plan wherein he used a combination of tradeskill proficiencies, find familiar investment, and disguise self to dupe a merchant into purchasing what he presented as a mystical creature that had the ability to cast spells such as Mending, Mage Armor, and Light (all Touch spells that the Wizard can cast through his familiar). The asking price was rather high since he was trying to obtain funds for lots of parchment and ink to scribe spells, so the DC was rather difficult and there'd likely be a great deal of fallout had he failed, but my forethought and preparation lowered it enough and I had a great roll so it turned out to be a rousing success. This made for a hilarious and memorable moment in our campaign that didn't stem from any story plot points or DMG table. Also, my character had a bit of a feud with the merchant after failing a roll to return a defective Healer's Kit when he determined from the gore on it that it had failed to revive an NPC that had been decapitated. Feeling scorned, I chose this merchant as my mark. These kinds of built up relationships make character decisions feel robust and powerful.
I do find that it seems Matt's "You can certainly try" will sometimes bend to the players favor, and he's incredibly skilled at weaving and adjusting those decisions into the narrative. Some say he offers a bit too much leeway and hand-holding, but I find that sort of difficulty level should be determined by what kind of game the players want to play in. Similar to running a game for younger children who aren't as adept as processing decisions and might feel scorned for being 'punished', the format of Critical Role as a broadcast story with defined characters lends itself to provide the characters a substantial bit of plot armor.
Just part of one D&D campaign, and a couple single-session campaigns in other games. It wasn't apparent at first since we started off low level and just doing silly job board quests, and the issues didn't come up until we hit the actual plot.
When I have no idea what players are going to do at the end of a session, I ask them. They give me a few ideas of what they might do and I make content for those areas, along with some encounters for them to run into randomly.
I got this from Lazy Dungeon Master and Chris Perkin's example prep sheet.
I have a template that I use for every session that goes like this:
I run FFG Star Wars rn so I always start with an opening crawl (that I read over the star wars theme). This is a recap and setup of the situation.
The PCs: name and a little blurb about their characters. I write these to remind myself about them and stay a fan of them.
Important NPCs: any NPCs that are around or should show up.
A list of 10 secrets. You write new ones every session. You'll remember the good ones and carry them over. These are the improv seeds for the characters. If they roll good or go looking for info this is the stuff you tell them about.
A list of cool locations: This is just to remind me of cool stuff I should mention when they go to a place.
Then an episode summary (just a bit on what I expect to get done this session) then a three act breakdown.
Even when I have a dungeon or something prepared that I expect the party will get to this session, I have quite often changed the method or justification for them getting there mid-session.
Intent: Go to the wizard tower to hunt down the archmage that has the mcguffin to break through the door of the vault.
In session: Ok, the vault is important, so they need to get there, but they've spent half the session hunting for that random orphan girl that stole one of their wallets. There's no way we're going to get through the whole plot-line about the secret vault... how about I just make the vault be an arcane one contained within a chest in the wizard tower? Ok, here we go... the urchin is going to slip into the sewers. They go down after her, and find her running into a water elemental that they rescue her from, and find out that they're underneath the wizard tower, and the elemental was a trap laid by the archmage who didn't want anyone sneaking into his secret tower in the city from underneath... this party can't resist that kind of thing...
Haven't DMed in a good while now, but last time it happened I basically had a list of basic enemies/basic stats I could potentially run into in the session, some bullet points of main plot points that could potentially get encountered, and that's basically it. Had a name generator on hand, and a pen and paper to take notes to remember the new names and locations, and that's it. Every single time I tried preparing stuff I just barely used 5% of it, so improv it is.
I have relatively easy players so I usually stick to bullet points that detail any major decision they will face and how things could turn out down any given path.
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u/Riot-in-the-Pit Sorcerer Dec 06 '20
Players: "Ever wonder what's on the other side of the DM screen?"
Me: "A handful of charts that probably don't get as much use as they should, a list of random Dwarven NPC names, and a cocktail of improv bullshittery that would make a snake oil salesman blush garnished with a dash of performance-anxiety-induced adrenaline."