what to do when a player critizes a dm

My good friend and fellow gamer David send me this link to a show called "How to exist a Great Gamemaster", at a specific indicate where the host is talking almost adapting your game to the players' deportment. He proposed the idea that this is de rigueur for modernistic gamers, that there is an expectation that the DM is there to serve the tastes of the player. What were my thoughts?

Well, I certainly concur with him that information technology'south a good topic for the Wandering DMs to cover, but I likewise wanted to think about it out loud a little here get-go. In fact, I found myself reacting to an awful lot in that video, and generally not in a very positive light. The software he's showing us makes me groan, which in plow makes me desire to talk most how we become virtually game prep in general, but permit's start with a grounding in the question David asks — what is the DM's role? Are they the managing director of a motion picture, a concierge / bout guide there to show the players a proficient time, or just one more than actor of a game with a slightly unlike role than the others?

I'd argue potent for the last option. In a video game metaphor – imagine that anybody at the tabular array is playing single multiplayer game together, merely the DM's game is more than similar an RTS, while the players are playing an FPS. The DM's view is a mile back, while the player's view is nose-in. The DM is thinking many turns, days, fifty-fifty game-weeks ahead, while the players are wondering what their character had for breakfast. Ultimately though, we're even so all playing a game together, and I think the DM should get as much enjoyment out of the experience as any other player. The DM is not at that place to directly the players or to entertain the players, but rather to take an active role in playing with game mechanics and building a shared world and story with anybody else.

Now certain, everyone, DM included, is performing for the rest of the table a footling bit. Every fourth dimension we make a funny phonation or crack a joke, we're performing to the rest of the table. And of class this totally gets amped up if you lot've got cameras and/or microphones at the tabular array. Just I'd argue this is just a particular, an attribute of play like rolling dice or making tactical gainsay choices, which while sometimes fun is non the core of anyone's purpose at the table.

In general, I think as DM betwixt games I should be acting more like a scientist than an author. I am there to brand sure the globe follows the natural laws governing it and that the NPCs behave in a way true to their character. If the players are tracking downwards where the orc raiders came from, and then I should think about the orcs' motivations and prior deportment, and create reasonable content – here is their cavern, here is how their leadership is structured, and here'southward how they'd react to certain world events such every bit a powerful party of humans invading their lair.

I should non be thinking things like "hither's a scene where they get ambushed on the road" and "here'southward the big climax scene where they find the orc boss is controlled past a demon overlord." Those details tin all be true — the orcs may raid the road and their deportment may ultimately exist directed by a demon, but I can create that content without necessarily dictating or assuming how the players volition interact with it. Likewise, I should be ready to chuck much of that out the window when the players decide instead to travel to the next town over and avert the orcs completely.

I'm non maxim you should chuck your difficult-created textile only because the players weren't interested in it, and you're the retainer of their entertainment. Just rather y'all should be ready to suit the world and the content you create to the actions of the players – because frankly that's the fun part! Seriously, as DM what I enjoy the about is watching the players do something unexpected and then being presented with the challenge of figuring out how that effects the word and the NPCs in it. Then I can take appropriate action and serve the brawl dorsum to the players, and thus we go back and forth playing the game.

For example, perhaps the players do avoid the orcs and move on to the adjacent town. Well then, I guess in that location's nobody to defend the trade along that road and the orcs grow rich raiding it. Maybe the demon then orchestrates an invasion on the town they left behind. "Oh no, Erstwhile Town has been completely raised past an orc horde! We're side by side!" weep the locals in New Town. What practice the players do now? Practice they go along to flee? Do they organize a raid on the now enemy occupied Old Town? The latter sounds like a really fun take a chance, and guess what, I've already prepped half of information technology when I made that orc lair terminal week. I know how many orcs in that location are, I know how they're organized, and I know where their commands are coming from. I even know the goals of that control, and can therefore first to imagine what would happen if a carefully orchestrated strike took out the orc boss. All I accept to do now is map out some city locations and reseat some encounters at these new interesting locations.

Possibly along the fashion I invent a new run across — a ring of resistance fighters hiding in the cellar of an one-time tavern. Maybe they players volition see them and perchance they won't, but either way I merely introduced a new interesting group of NPCs into my world. Next week I'll be thinking about what the players did in their raid on Sometime Boondocks, and how that affects the ring of resistance fighters, and what they may do virtually it. Just that's as far every bit I'chiliad going to let myself think about that, because once again I'm not trying to create "scenes" of content that rely on specific outcomes. I'm creating characters, documenting their goals and resources, and and so through play deciding what becomes of them.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on that. Does it audio like I have plot and strong story beats? I'd argue I love that stuff, but that I expect that to be the outcome of play, not the fix up. I want to play with my players to discover the exciting story of the globe we share equal parts in forming.

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Source: https://www.paulsgameblog.com/2019/08/16/the-dms-role-player-vs-performer/

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