When I started thinking about this blog, I sat down with a notebook and decided to brainstorm posts. And the very first post I thought of was this one. And this was also the first decision I made as a DM when I decided to come back to DnD and start running a game with my current group. And this has become the guiding principle of my approach to being a dungeon master. So I wanted to put this post together as a way of explaining the mission of this blog.
And the guiding principle ultimately is to “Find a way to say yes.”
So what do I mean by this statement? How does this directly impact my approaching to being a dungeon master? The answer is pretty simple. If you look in the dungeon master’s guide, and you read the material put out by Wizards, or any number of online DMs, you will see a fundamental division in “what it means to be a DM?”
For almost everyone, the dungeon master’s responsibility include the following:
- To craft an interesting story for your players.
- To adjudicate rules for everyone.
- To ensure fairness of play for everyone.
- To ensure a safe space for all to play.
And I 1000% agree with the principles above, as a dungeon master you need to do all of the mentioned items to support your players. But I would slightly change one of the items, and it’s the first I would swap the word “Craft” for “Facilitate”. The dungeon master’s job is “To facilitate an interesting story for your players.” And that probably sounds like I’m being a lawyer about this, but the distinction is important.
If a DnD campaign, is a story, and your players are the main characters…It’s their story. NOT YOURS.
So at the end of the day, it is not your responsibility to build and tell your story, but instead to build a great story with your players. If you look at streaming games like Critical Role, as an example, every amazing moment isn’t something Matt Mercer put his players through, but instead a character moment for the players.
You can’t build a story like that without two things, trust and collaboration. And you don’t get that if communication and decisions are completely one sided. So there has to be a give and a take, between you and your players.
I regularly talk to my players about where they see their characters going, and incorporate their ideas to help build a story. Now they don’t have a full view of everything I’m going to do, and that would ruin the game, but having them contribute ideas has always worked out.
Now up this point, it’s been abstract, but let’s make this principle more concrete, with examples. During character creation, I ask my players for what they want to do, and will challenge myself to “find a way to say yes.”
For example, I had a player tell me that they wanted to play a character who had this long history of being an elite soldier as part of an elite dwarves unit that had a major impact and turned the tides of a major battle in the biggest war in the history.
Now, they were starting at Level 1, and most DMs would say, “You can’t do that, your level 1…figure out something more humble.”
But instead, I told the player, “The only problem is that would describe a character that is high level, and your not, so how can we explain that your not.” And the answer I came up with was, have the character have that history but be much older and having given up the soldier life have been working as a blacksmith.
So we explained it as he’s “rusty” and essentially lowered levels over time. The benefit of this is my player is way more invested in this character and feels like there is a trust between them and us. And now the collaboration and direction of the story will be better.
Additionally, as a DM, this adds a new challenge, that is “before I can say no, I have to have tired every possible avenue to say yes.”
Like I had another player ask to be a Dragonborn with wings and a tail…sorry that’s a no. But I want to be Thor, we’ll let’s see how we can work towards that.