![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enemyofperfectI'm still not sure if I can be properly said to be DMing when I have exactly one player, which I'm sure must change the dynamic considerably, but I have been having an awful lot of fun running a D&D experience for amovingtarget over the last year and a half.
She's got her own post about it over here, but as for me, I've learned that...
Random chance can enhance storytelling.
I once turned down the opportunity to play a tabletop-style game on the grounds that the rules were too much for me to keep in my head, but my secret hidden objection was that it didn't make sense to me to make decisions about what happened next based on the whim of the dice instead of what fit the narrative so far.
With the benefit of having tried it, I can now say that the rules of D&D are definitely a lot for me to keep on my head -- I'm still working on that! -- but the part where the dice can decide success or failure, or whether a character lives or dies? That's actually kind of incredible.
I guess I've known for a while that constraints can be wonderful for art, and it's no coincidence that almost every fic I have on the AO3 was written for some kind of prompt. And that's how the luck of the roll turns out to feel, too -- instead of forcing the game down arbitrary paths, it inspires us to come up with reasons why this is the way things have gone. A very bad roll in combat? Well, that character's clearly still surprised by the new monster they're fighting, or busy worrying about a party member. A magic spell goes spectacularly well? Maybe the caster is remembering all the support they've received from their friends and channeling that into the process -- and maybe that even shapes the form of the spell's result.
In a completely freeform roleplay, where anything we said could be true, the entire weight of determining the best or truest path of the story would fall on us. But in reality, there are countless possibilities, all of them worthwhile in their own way, and by letting the dice help winnow them down, we're freed to concentrate on what makes this one so interesting. It's been really cool to work with that!
I improvise much better than I plan -- and I improvise pretty damn well.
Another thing I've discovered is that as much as I admire people who do lots of advance preparation, if I personally go to the trouble of writing ideas down, I end up feeling disproportionately beholden to them. Sometimes I've slowed the story down to give due consideration to NPCs and settings I painstakingly created, or suffered twinges of bizarre resentment when things didn't go as I'd anticipated. It has the effect of making the experience more stressful for me, not less so.
But when I go into a session with nothing more than a handful of possibilities in mind, I actively enjoy it whenamovingtarget surprises me, and any new locations and characters I come up with are much better suited to the flow of the game, for the simple reason that I invented them specifically in response to the exact situation in which we encounter them. It's so much better an experience for everyone involved!
I do wish I were better about keeping some maps up my sleeve for unexpected combat encounters, and that's something I hope to work on in the future, but in virtually every other area, I'm much better at adapting in the moment than I am with elaborate advance planning -- although admittedly it helps that playing online means I have a searchable transcript of every past session should I need to revisit something in a pinch.
Speaking of organizational aids, I have to pause for a moment and giveamovingtarget the most credit for supporting her hapless DM through the more finicky points of maintaining continuity. She has magic spreadsheets tracking hit points in battle, the combined weight of a character's inventory, and the ebb and flow of their finances, it's amazing. She makes me a much better DM than I would be otherwise, by letting me play to my strengths and shoring me up where I'm weakest.
And in terms of strengths, something I find incredibly interesting is the way my new confidence in my ability to figure things out seems to extend outside the world of the game. I've always been fairly anxious and cautious when it comes to travel, so when I recently took a train to a city I barely know and not only made it to my appointment with time to spare, but visited a restaurant and a bakery I'd found online, spent a while dog-watching in a park, and visited a craft store that looked interesting just for the hell of it, I was pretty surprised to realize how okay I felt about it all! Never content to leave a gift horse's mouth unexamined, I tried to figure out what had changed to leave me so relatively comfortable with the inevitable twists and turns of visiting an unfamiliar place, and I really think D&D is the answer.
I mean, navigating a new neighborhood is nothing like devising a battle map on the fly or coming up with a personality for an NPC who was never supposed to be anything special, but the awesome thing about D&D is that no two challenges it offers are ever quite like each other, either. I guess at some point my faith in my ability to sketch in the culture of hill orc raiders or the architecture of a classy brothel translated into an increased belief in my ability to figure out some of the other things I can't plan for. That's so weird and so badass at the same time.
Pacing is hard.
On a spectrum from purely reacting to your party's actions to railroading them, I'm pretty far on the lackadaisical end of things, give or take the help of a premade module in starting out. And that's not entirely a bad thing, particularly since the player I'm DMing for enjoys quieter activities like building a house and making friends with her new neighbors as well as the big dramatic stuff like facing off against a dragon.
But I really do feel like I'm still refining my sense of when to really delve into every detail of a purchase or an interaction, versus when to summarize and keep things moving, versus when to bring some plot barreling in and speed up the pace a bit. And sometimes things have dragged a little even byamovingtarget's standards -- if not by boring her, then at least by slowing down progress towards her in-game goals.
Interestingly, some of our most successful sessions have benefited from her sharing a list of things she hoped to get done, which helps me know what to make time for and when to keep things moving. Is there some reason I seem to deal better with other people's plans than I do my own? Well, maybe.
Feedback is golden, and other BDSM-inspired musings.
Yes, I know it isn't that kind of dungeon -- unless you and your group want it to be, of course, and maybe you do! But for all its flaws, the BDSM community has some really good ideas about communication, consent, and making sure everyone has a good time, and I think they can be relevant to a game in which most players want to struggle and face setbacks as well as eventually succeed. What limits do we want to observe while we're playing? And what sorts of activities do we most enjoy?
Obviously I always want to give my player a great experience, and I feel incredibly pleased and accomplished wheneveramovingtarget tells me that I have. But to deliver a game she enjoys, I have to know not just what she's looking to get out of it, but also when I haven't achieved in providing that, so asking what did or didn't work for her has been a huge part of that process for me. I think a big part of why we haven't had bigger problems in this game we're so emotionally invested in is because we do continually check in about how it's going for us, catching things that are starting to go wrong while they're still fixable.
I'm sure this whole player satisfaction balance would be a lot trickier to achieve if I had multiple players -- just thinking about what little Critical Role I've watched, it's clear that Travis is not a big fan of extended planning, Laura loves to haggle more than anyone else in the group, and Liam is going to do his damnedest to get himself killed no matter what anyone else thinks, so there are bound to be times when what appeals to one player isn't going to be another's cup of tea.
But even with a single player, asking what parts she liked least and best -- and for that matter, asking what questions she has -- has been incredibly important in letting me sort out what to do more of and what to maybe not spend more time on more than need be. I have a feeling that if the roles were reversed and a DM were asking me what I thought about the campaign so far, I might reluctant to give too much concrit lest I hurt their feelings, and for that matter, I'm sure that every DM is going to have a slightly different tolerance for criticism. But for me, it's just so, so useful to get honest reviews -- because it lets me know what to do going forward.
Which leads me back to the BDSM side of things, in that I find myself wondering sometimes if all DMs feel the way I do about the power dynamics of DMing. I don't think I expected to feel the way I do; somehow I'd always imagined DMing as requiring a certain comfort with in leadership roles -- or in other words, I pictured DMs as being pretty dommy. But that's not how it feels to me at all -- if anything, I imagine it's how a service top might feel trying to give someone an experience they asked for. I'm in charge of making things as fun as I can for my player, but I'm not really in charge, if that makes any sense.
If there are DMs who feel differently about that, I would assume that they still care about what their players like and dislike, the way a good dom should. But it would be interesting to know if some of us approach it from different angles than others, and if so, what the differences are. I'm always so interested in how people work!
Anyway, I guess that's enough rambling for today. But although being responsible for keeping a shared story running feels pretty high stakes sometimes, it's also a heckload of fun, and I hope I continue to improve as I keep playing!
amovingtarget over the last year and a half.She's got her own post about it over here, but as for me, I've learned that...
Random chance can enhance storytelling.
I once turned down the opportunity to play a tabletop-style game on the grounds that the rules were too much for me to keep in my head, but my secret hidden objection was that it didn't make sense to me to make decisions about what happened next based on the whim of the dice instead of what fit the narrative so far.
With the benefit of having tried it, I can now say that the rules of D&D are definitely a lot for me to keep on my head -- I'm still working on that! -- but the part where the dice can decide success or failure, or whether a character lives or dies? That's actually kind of incredible.
I guess I've known for a while that constraints can be wonderful for art, and it's no coincidence that almost every fic I have on the AO3 was written for some kind of prompt. And that's how the luck of the roll turns out to feel, too -- instead of forcing the game down arbitrary paths, it inspires us to come up with reasons why this is the way things have gone. A very bad roll in combat? Well, that character's clearly still surprised by the new monster they're fighting, or busy worrying about a party member. A magic spell goes spectacularly well? Maybe the caster is remembering all the support they've received from their friends and channeling that into the process -- and maybe that even shapes the form of the spell's result.
In a completely freeform roleplay, where anything we said could be true, the entire weight of determining the best or truest path of the story would fall on us. But in reality, there are countless possibilities, all of them worthwhile in their own way, and by letting the dice help winnow them down, we're freed to concentrate on what makes this one so interesting. It's been really cool to work with that!
I improvise much better than I plan -- and I improvise pretty damn well.
Another thing I've discovered is that as much as I admire people who do lots of advance preparation, if I personally go to the trouble of writing ideas down, I end up feeling disproportionately beholden to them. Sometimes I've slowed the story down to give due consideration to NPCs and settings I painstakingly created, or suffered twinges of bizarre resentment when things didn't go as I'd anticipated. It has the effect of making the experience more stressful for me, not less so.
But when I go into a session with nothing more than a handful of possibilities in mind, I actively enjoy it when
amovingtarget surprises me, and any new locations and characters I come up with are much better suited to the flow of the game, for the simple reason that I invented them specifically in response to the exact situation in which we encounter them. It's so much better an experience for everyone involved!I do wish I were better about keeping some maps up my sleeve for unexpected combat encounters, and that's something I hope to work on in the future, but in virtually every other area, I'm much better at adapting in the moment than I am with elaborate advance planning -- although admittedly it helps that playing online means I have a searchable transcript of every past session should I need to revisit something in a pinch.
Speaking of organizational aids, I have to pause for a moment and give
amovingtarget the most credit for supporting her hapless DM through the more finicky points of maintaining continuity. She has magic spreadsheets tracking hit points in battle, the combined weight of a character's inventory, and the ebb and flow of their finances, it's amazing. She makes me a much better DM than I would be otherwise, by letting me play to my strengths and shoring me up where I'm weakest.And in terms of strengths, something I find incredibly interesting is the way my new confidence in my ability to figure things out seems to extend outside the world of the game. I've always been fairly anxious and cautious when it comes to travel, so when I recently took a train to a city I barely know and not only made it to my appointment with time to spare, but visited a restaurant and a bakery I'd found online, spent a while dog-watching in a park, and visited a craft store that looked interesting just for the hell of it, I was pretty surprised to realize how okay I felt about it all! Never content to leave a gift horse's mouth unexamined, I tried to figure out what had changed to leave me so relatively comfortable with the inevitable twists and turns of visiting an unfamiliar place, and I really think D&D is the answer.
I mean, navigating a new neighborhood is nothing like devising a battle map on the fly or coming up with a personality for an NPC who was never supposed to be anything special, but the awesome thing about D&D is that no two challenges it offers are ever quite like each other, either. I guess at some point my faith in my ability to sketch in the culture of hill orc raiders or the architecture of a classy brothel translated into an increased belief in my ability to figure out some of the other things I can't plan for. That's so weird and so badass at the same time.
Pacing is hard.
On a spectrum from purely reacting to your party's actions to railroading them, I'm pretty far on the lackadaisical end of things, give or take the help of a premade module in starting out. And that's not entirely a bad thing, particularly since the player I'm DMing for enjoys quieter activities like building a house and making friends with her new neighbors as well as the big dramatic stuff like facing off against a dragon.
But I really do feel like I'm still refining my sense of when to really delve into every detail of a purchase or an interaction, versus when to summarize and keep things moving, versus when to bring some plot barreling in and speed up the pace a bit. And sometimes things have dragged a little even by
amovingtarget's standards -- if not by boring her, then at least by slowing down progress towards her in-game goals.Interestingly, some of our most successful sessions have benefited from her sharing a list of things she hoped to get done, which helps me know what to make time for and when to keep things moving. Is there some reason I seem to deal better with other people's plans than I do my own? Well, maybe.
Feedback is golden, and other BDSM-inspired musings.
Yes, I know it isn't that kind of dungeon -- unless you and your group want it to be, of course, and maybe you do! But for all its flaws, the BDSM community has some really good ideas about communication, consent, and making sure everyone has a good time, and I think they can be relevant to a game in which most players want to struggle and face setbacks as well as eventually succeed. What limits do we want to observe while we're playing? And what sorts of activities do we most enjoy?
Obviously I always want to give my player a great experience, and I feel incredibly pleased and accomplished whenever
amovingtarget tells me that I have. But to deliver a game she enjoys, I have to know not just what she's looking to get out of it, but also when I haven't achieved in providing that, so asking what did or didn't work for her has been a huge part of that process for me. I think a big part of why we haven't had bigger problems in this game we're so emotionally invested in is because we do continually check in about how it's going for us, catching things that are starting to go wrong while they're still fixable.I'm sure this whole player satisfaction balance would be a lot trickier to achieve if I had multiple players -- just thinking about what little Critical Role I've watched, it's clear that Travis is not a big fan of extended planning, Laura loves to haggle more than anyone else in the group, and Liam is going to do his damnedest to get himself killed no matter what anyone else thinks, so there are bound to be times when what appeals to one player isn't going to be another's cup of tea.
But even with a single player, asking what parts she liked least and best -- and for that matter, asking what questions she has -- has been incredibly important in letting me sort out what to do more of and what to maybe not spend more time on more than need be. I have a feeling that if the roles were reversed and a DM were asking me what I thought about the campaign so far, I might reluctant to give too much concrit lest I hurt their feelings, and for that matter, I'm sure that every DM is going to have a slightly different tolerance for criticism. But for me, it's just so, so useful to get honest reviews -- because it lets me know what to do going forward.
Which leads me back to the BDSM side of things, in that I find myself wondering sometimes if all DMs feel the way I do about the power dynamics of DMing. I don't think I expected to feel the way I do; somehow I'd always imagined DMing as requiring a certain comfort with in leadership roles -- or in other words, I pictured DMs as being pretty dommy. But that's not how it feels to me at all -- if anything, I imagine it's how a service top might feel trying to give someone an experience they asked for. I'm in charge of making things as fun as I can for my player, but I'm not really in charge, if that makes any sense.
If there are DMs who feel differently about that, I would assume that they still care about what their players like and dislike, the way a good dom should. But it would be interesting to know if some of us approach it from different angles than others, and if so, what the differences are. I'm always so interested in how people work!
Anyway, I guess that's enough rambling for today. But although being responsible for keeping a shared story running feels pretty high stakes sometimes, it's also a heckload of fun, and I hope I continue to improve as I keep playing!
no subject
Date: 2019-09-15 09:00 pm (UTC)I guess at some point my faith in my ability to sketch in the culture of hill orc raiders or the architecture of a classy brothel translated into an increased belief in my ability to figure out some of the other things I can't plan for.
^^
Some of my proudest moments as a DM were when I completely improvised a scene and my players couldn't tell. I got better at it with every session :)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-16 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-16 04:24 am (UTC)