Triumphant Return

Ladies and Gentlemen! Madams and Monsieurs! Dukes and Ducessas!

After 3 years of dicking around I have found enough incentive and personal motivation to bore you to death with a witty and amazing continuation of the Dungeon Master blog you forgot you loved!

What what!

But seriously, folks, I apologize for the lengthy absence. Working as a middle school teacher, swordfighting, running 2-3 games, and sewing clothing takes a toll on a person.

That does mean that I have 3 years of new topics and insight to share with you wonderful people. Let me hit you with some pregame highlights of what to expect in the coming months:

1. In an effort to promote fitness my friends and I tried to play a Fantasy Tabletop RPG where we were ourselves. This meant that I had to create my own Tabletop system to accommodate the complexity of actual living people. Expect many posts about this game.

2. I played some new systems ranging from horror games (Dread, Ten Candles, The End of the World) to Savage Worlds: Deadlands to Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. I have many thoughts on different RPG systems and will be sharing them with you.

3. I ran many interesting games, have numerous interesting games planned, and am running a new game.

Today I want to focus on the topic I left off with last time: improvisation.

Running Tabletop RPG's is a time consuming process. To properly run a game a DM has to hold the entire cosmos of a world, universe, or multiverse in their head while making sure their players have fun robbing space mobsters or breaking into a library temple to the God of Knowledge.

Most DM's either generate their worlds on paper/computer and have a very clear and in-depth understanding of their world or they rely on pre-generated modules to help them creatively and give them a blueprint to follow so that their own ideas can built on the work of others.

Both of these are great! I've generated numerous, complex worlds that focus on cool themes and settings that I love exploring. A post-apocalyptic desert world of skyscraper mines and mechanical magic. A Dragon Age/Game of Thrones style high fantasy of knights and sorcerers at each others' throats. A Magicpunk Wild West world of gunslingers, sky pirates, and witches. I love my worlds. My players love my worlds.

I've also run published modules. I've purchased every single official 5th Edition D&D book so far and intend to purchase any that they keep  cranking out. I ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen for a random group at my local game store. I got to play in a Curse of Strahd game that my co-writer, Baby DM, ran for a small group of friends. I want to run the Out of the Abyss Underdark campaign that Wizards put out. The Temple of Elemental Evil sounds like so much fun.

One of my favorite games I have run, though, is one I am dipping my toes back into. Chris Perkins inspired me to be a writing DM with his Dungeon Master's Experience column and through his works I was exposed to the world of Iomandra. His waterworld of dragon empires and unending islands was inspiring to me. I ran a version of his world for a group of brand new players. I ran the game with next to zero planning.

It was a hoot. We played for a few months before I had to relocate for work but those months taught me exactly how much fun improvising could be. Here are the lessons I learned:

1. Random charts are incredible - I recently picked up a book full of randomization charts. Items, NPC details, scars, tattoos, magic items, strange potions. Anything and everything. I generated a few charts. One of my players decided to create entire d100 charts just for books.
Random charts make the job of an improvising DM easy. You don't have to plan treasure ahead of time. Just plan to give them treasure based on the chart. You don't have to plan a city ahead of time. The charts in the Dungeon Master's guide helped me to generate a city built around 7 unique temples to the 7 gods that city saw as the most important. I randomly rolled that. I randomly rolled the 7 gods. My players wanted to explore each of those 7 temples. We did that. It ruled.

2. The players get to control more of the world and the story - I ask my players for information at the start of every single game because I want them to own the world they play in. Important NPCs that connect to them, locations they want to visit, factions they think are interesting, secrets, fears, dreams, etc. The players get to contribute to the intricacy of the world by creating parts of it that are important to their characters. I as a Dungeon Master get to see exactly what they think is important. That way, when it comes time to make something up on the spot, I know what each player is looking forward to seeing. When they finally get to face off with their Bounty Hunter nemesis they created they'll be much happier than if I have to keep throwing NPCs at them that they might not care about.

3. The players remember the world for you - I let the players contribute to the descriptions of locations and NPCs. They get to help design the culture of the world. They get to own the world. It becomes a collaborative storytelling experience, one that I enjoy far more than if I were trying to enforce a strict and rigid world I had generated in my mind. My players think elves should use cube money instead of coins? They do now. My players think orcs greet one another by fist bumping? They do now. My players think necromancers are like frat boys? They do now.

You could call these headcanons but they become true statements and memories and ideas about our shared experience. I may be running the game but the game doesn't belong to me. It belongs to every person that sits down at the table and enjoys rolling dice.

Glad to be back, everybody.