One of my players in my Dungeons & Dragons game has told me that they want to do something bold, dangerous, and secret from the rest of the group and I am allowing it. They want to take a group magic item, walk into a hostile encampment of enemies, and try to negotiate a trade for a different magic item the party missed earlier in the campaign.
I have no idea what’s going to happen. Could go pear-shaped very quickly or could turn out to be an amazing move that makes or breaks the story. The only way we’re going to find out is through play and that is very exciting to me.
Sure, I’m the Dungeon Master and I run the game; at some tables that means I am in complete control over the past, present and future storylines that will happen. What a dumb and boring way to play a game though. I like being surprised during play as much as anyone else does. Why else would we use random chance in the form of dice rolls, if we did not want to introduce at least a small amount of chance?
No, I don’t prepare stories for my players. I prepare situations: People with motives, ways for them to get or lose power, locations with authentic furnishings in logical locations. I then put these things in the path of my players and let them react to them as they see fit. Story will naturally arise out of that interaction. Once we have a new status quo, I shake my box of people, things, and places again, and see what the new configuration is, and we do it all again.
The player in particular who is kicking off this new storyline is a warlock, of course. High charisma, so I think they’re confident in their ability to talk things through. And if the events turn against them, they have their powerful patron (a fiend, of course) to back them up. And the item they want to trade away is something that they know to be sacred to the enemy they’r meeting, which is also in their favor.
Things I know that the player does not, and which I will couch in vaguaries in case they’re reading my blog: the strength of the enemy NPC’s feelings about them and the object; the location and value of the item the warlock is trying to gain; how far they will go to gain this item; lastly, what the NPCs will do once they gain this item, their plans and the consequences that will fall out after this trade is concluded.
Things I do not entirely know: how the other players are going to react to this action, and what they might do once they find out. At least part of the play is going to be determining if the warlock can succeed in stealing this object without their notice; the plan might die on the vine, actually.
I am not in control of the outcomes, and neither is the player, and that is making for a pivotal session of play. Stay tuned.