This Dungeon Master strategy rewired my brain

Just learned that the authors of this book have a free community for GMs to discuss and improve their craft! Could be a good resource if you plan to try out these techniques at your own table: gamemasterlaboratory.com/

Most of my players are people I know from work, so I'm giggling a little at the idea of sitting them down and saying "OK, I want each of you to set goals for your characters. Ideally they should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Every couple of months we'll check in to see how you're tracking on your goals and whether they need to be adjusted." I suspect they would burn me at the stake. "Helen. I noticed that Xyrelle is only tracking at a 0.5 on her 'avenge my parents' OKR. What can we do to bring this up to a 0.7?"

This is similar to something Brennan once said. "Railroad vs player agency is a false dichotomy. A good campaign is a railroad... made of rails and spikes that your players give you. "

Yesssssss! That is exactly why people always say "D&D doesn't feel like when we were 13-14yo anymore!", and I'm convinced it's not just notalgia but because of big adventure modules setting the standard to reactive gaming for the players. Several of the games I played in the 90s, the DM invented a reason why we were together, put us in a small town and ask "So what do you guys want to do?". We rolled STR, then DEX, then CON, etc., not even choosing which goes where. Once, I rolled very bad stats! I played a wizard anyway. I died at level 1 (!), and I rolled another dude, but because we had so much fun with my bad wizard for a couple of sessions, they became the Company of the Dead Wizard. This was a very awesome and satisfying game.

Thanks for the video! Some of what you are describing is the Old School sandbox play style that us old timers have been using since 1974 when we started. Gameplay begets story, story is a byproduct of gameplay, players decide what they will do, the DM let's them know the consequences (often with the random help of the dice), rinse and repeat. The following contradicts what you have said. NPCs do not exist in a vacuum, they have their plans and if the PCs do NOT intersect with them, their plans come to fruition. These plans can spur bigger plans. This is how a campaign can scale with the PCs as they level up. The DM doesn't need to play it all out in real time. The DM just needs to decide what is happening in other parts of the world and flesh things out as the PCs' goals and plans scale up. The DM doesn't need to populate the whole world but making sure there are some important NPCs in various places helps it feel like there are people everywhere with goals and desires and lives apart from the PCs.

The more I delve into the world of DnD I realize just how different my first campaign was. This is basically how we played. The Gm presented us a world and just said "What do we want to do?" So we ended up building a castle for us and creating our own crime syndicate. There were all kinds of plots surrounding the creation of the crime syndicate and it was awesome. But I do give props that our gm was incredible at improvising and coming up with stuff on the spot. I must say I'm really glad my first game was so unorthodox.

The good is reactive evil is proactive line is something that was ingrained in me when I was younger, to the point that even when I ran an evil game I was like oh you guys are the driving force now not me and it was super fun. I eventually learned to include some of that stuff in my "regular" games too, And I love that you mentioned that too 🖤

It's nice to see this style of GM'ing from PbtA games (Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, etc.) being imported into DnD, finally. It's very much about letting the players define the world and building up adventure fronts based on what players and player characters tell the GM.

I've been turned off of tabletop gaming because I've only ever had DMs who either wanted to run the campaign on rails, actually hijacking the players by kidnapping or putting them in places where there was literally no choice what we had to do. And provided no rewards because of their control freak nature - or who thought every second out of combat was wasted time. So we mindlessly encountered monsters every few feet. It was stupid.

This is really good advice to long-form campaigns! But for anyone interested in episodic campaigns or one shots, where PCs have less agency over their goals, consider giving your hero One Dramatic Question about their identity. Questions like “Will the hero’s faith in the aristocracy survive once they venture beyond the palace walls?” “Will the hero embrace or reject their complicated family legacy?” “Will the hero let go of their feelings of guilt and open their heart to a found family?” "Will the hero stop being a self-interested hustler and help out the plucky rebels?" are some common, tropey examples. Using The One Dramatic Question gives you the following benefits: -It is easy to demonstrate your character's answer to their One Dramatic Question changing over time, creating dynamic character arcs emergently. -It is an effective roleplay lens, encouraging you to think about how you can "eek out" ways of demonstrating your PC's answer to their One Dramatic Question in various generic scenes without specifically needing to plan a scene about answering your One Dramatic Question. -It is easy for other players to understand and pick up on. Deep psychological conflicts can be satisfying in books and films, but can be hard to roleplay in a way that other players can clock and meaningfully respond to. However, One Dramatic Question makes the most interesting part of your character extremely obvious and easy for other players to meaningfully interact with. -Dramatic Questions are... well, dramatic. WILL the hero turn against the monarchy after seeing the plight of the commoner? WILL the hero take up the name of their evil father? WILL the hero break down and embrace their party members after a ferocious battle? WILL the hero sell out the resistance for a massive reward? The answer is usually that the PC will choose the heroic option, but the uncertainty as to what circumstances will prompt/inform their dramatic choice, alongside the vague possibility that they might not make the heroic choice is compelling drama.

I remember ages ago, Wizard magazine did a special issue on villains of comics, and there was a whole ass essay on the issues about comics being the same villains act, heroes react thing. It pointed out that it's actually the opposite in most old legends. Gilgamesh wants immortality. Odysseus just wants to get home.Orpheus wants Eurydice to live again. In the oldest tales, heroes were the ones with the goal, and villains were the ones who somehow prevented that goal.

I like it best if goals emerge from gameplay interactions. My latest group was often worried they "messed up my plot", so I kept reassuring them that there is no plot. They are loving the story, though, which is great as most of it comes from where they take it.

Such a great and succinct distillation of the core concepts of the book. So glad people are getting the word out about it, I have been positively effusive since I first picked it up! I mean, so many GM advice columns say "Don't prep plots, make the game about the PCs!" But often don't go far enough in giving concrete advice on how to actually do that. But this book does. It's clear, concise and really represents how we can all have a better, more fulfilling time at the game table. Nice one, Ginny!

5:58 Player Character Goals: [1] Each player has multiple goals [2] Short, mid-, long term [3] Obviously measurable [4] Consequences of Failure [5] Should be Fun 7:39 Framework Player-goal centric Heirarchy (Factions) No faction matters unless it intersects player goals 10:05 Encounter Design Checklist: [1] Review Player goal [2] Identify which faction(s) have overlap for [3] ... and against [4] Location [5] Expected Conflicts [6] Choose rewards [7] Collect Materials

You might need to couple it with some mandatory inter-character connections otherwise players will wind up pulling in some different directions (everyone knows the trope of the adventuring party that just all coincidentally shows up at the same tavern, has exactly zero in common or to connect them, but still has to somehow be an adventuring party because that's who the players created). In the RPG Spire, every class has a set of "Bonds" that they start with - a connection to an NPC, and a connection to one other PC. For example the Bound (a rogue-type class) starts with a bond to an individual "member of the downtrodden underclass" in the city that the game is set - an NPC who the player has to give a name, and also name a thing that's most important to that NPC. Additionally they need to have a bond with another PC who rescued them from a dangerous situation, which the player also has to describe. A Knight (actually more of a sword-wielding tavern gang member, but who's legally allowed to carry a sword) starts with a squire NPC who they have to name, and identify whether they're idealistic or cynical about being a knight, and a PC they regularly go drinking with, and the player has to describe the wildest things they got up to on one of their legendary nights out. That kind of setup means that the character already exists in a context that is relevant to the game at hand, and the other characters in the group. So when they start articulating their goals, other PCs are likely to factor into those goals, and there are NPCs likely already involved in those goals too.

I actually bought this book about six months ago and discussed it with my DM. We play a one-player-one-DM campaign, so I (as a player) decided to use these ideas with him as the DM. We have played several sessions so far, and it is wonderful. At the end of each session, I outline my plans for the next session, and he only has to design the encounters for that session, not the entire city I am exploring. Of course, he uses his extra prep time to flesh out those parts of the city that I MAY explore down the line, but the burden is on ME, the player. We both seriously LOVE this system. It is a gamechanger for us as well. Thanks for your video.

A formula i like to use in my games; opening mini adventure establishes setti g and give players a chance to feel out their character. Half develop 5 to 9 plot hooks, see which ones the players grab. Discard all but one missed plot hook, have one of the discsrded plot hooks develop in fhe background until its nog ignorable, but let the players purue the other ones too. The main villain will either be one of the ones they seized immediately, or the one the persisted, but i wait and see which way they go.

My most memorable campaign was where the players started out with a "classic D&D" style (reactive players). And then one player saw they chose "brewing" as proficiency (AD&D2), and asked me if they could use that to create new beers. I said "yes". Then the campaign changed to where the party created new beers and tried to license them to breweries. Each session was encounters to ingratiate the party to stubborn breweries, to "handle" rivals, to keep their distribution network safe, etc. Instead of getting money from treasures the characters got money from the breweries, which sold their beers.

"Redistributing the creative load" I think is a great way to encapsulate this approach. I burnt out more than once running campaigns, and I subscribe to a "less is more" approach when it comes to game prep. Most recently, I've been running a World of Darkness game where my PCs keep finding these news articles that are actually summaries of one shots I've run over the last 20 years. Anytime they want to "follow up" on these articles, I just imagine what the place looks like 20 years later and run with it. It's super fun because it puts them in the driver's seat as to what leads they want to investigate and I inject the story regardless of what lead they end up following.

"This is not a sales pitch." ... and yet, I'm sold ... That other video referenced hit maybe a little close to home, so ...