DM 1: “We’re going to have a magical just-so adventure and everything will be on rails! I’ve got a bunch of art I’m going to show you and I expect everyone to do voices and play in whatever vague medieval fantasy pastiche passes for In Character. I want everyone to have a good time, but also cry when my NPC gives a twenty minute monologue. This game is my entire personality.”
DM 2: “Here’s a stack of character sheets. I found a dungeon in a magazine called The Infinite Rectal Immolator that looks cool as hell. You have a 25 point buy and three magic weapons of less than 15k gp each. Just ordered a stack of pizzas and a five gallon jug of Mountain Dew. Let’s see who makes it through. If we get bored, I’ve also got the new Halo game on XBox.”
The second one is definitely me. I’ve had so many players cry during games that I’ve lost track.
To be clear, always the good “This moment really emotionally resonated with me” kind of tears. I do very narrative heavy games, and I like to really crank the drama to 11.
Not gonna lie I kinda respect people who can do that. I, the forever-GM, am also always “the funny one” and didn’t really grow up with positive associations with expressing “deep, moving, dramatic, or sorrowful” emotions.
If I made people sniffly at my table I’m afraid I’d get concerned and everyone would feel awkward. Or maybe I’d feel the most awkward and feel forced to make something goofy happen like a Marvel movie writer lol.
If I got wrapped up in it and made myself emotional? Ahh! It’s like that “I showed up to school/work with no pants” nightmare!
But that’s like, human, right? Being moved by stories. I worry I won’t be able to tell impactful tales with depth beyond “beer, pretzels, and Monty Python jokes” unless I can get get past that personal block. =\
TL;DR: Anyway, not afraid to go dramatic and your players keep coming back. That’s really fascinating and I genuinely mean that. Power to you!
DungeonCast School vs Gygax School.
One comes from the influence of tabletop streams that focus on narrative building because it’s got a broader audience appeal and they’re usually close friends with the players at the table and want to hype up their characters.
The other comes from the generational trauma Gary Gygax inflicted on nerdom by insisting that the DM wins by killing all the PCs.
I’m not trying to kill my party, but I also won’t stop them from being stupid and getting themselves killed. I design my campaigns like an open world video game. Everything is going on and just reacts to the players. They can find bits of information about things and then act on it, doing whatever they want until they start finding clues about the big bad because I like to try and make it more natural with the characters just existing in the world and not the stereotypical call for adventure a lot of modules and stuff do. But this also means balancing out the world by having the encounter zones being somewhat static. Over here shit is low level, but over there stuff is high level. But like, they will have clues. If they hear the rumors of a Balrog at level 3 and want to go fight it, that’s on them.
I’m dming my first campaign soon wish me luck hope I’m number one
I wonder if DMs start as the first and slowly transition into the second one.
Just remember, and make sure to let your players know: you aren’t out to kill them, your monsters do.
