Over on r/DMAcademy, a subreddit for Dungeons Masters to ask and give advice to each other, u/AstreiaTales asks the question “Do you, DMs, let your villains plots get foiled?” They give a number of elaborate examples, but ultimately state that their players want to feel like superheroes at the finale of a long arc, being outnumbered and outgunned because the villan powered up and is on the verge of completing their big, bad, evil plans.
But the user also understands that tabletop role playing games are about making reasonable choices, and are sprinkled with bits of chaos and randomness, and they’re unable to reconcile those two ideas. So they’re asking for advice in finding the balance.
Here’s my answer. I’ve given the short version of this to my players and I try (I hope I try) to reinforce that during every session.
I lean more towards choices and randomness, and I do that by abandoning the whole idea of being the sole storyteller. It’s not my story. The story is what happens at the table, when everyone is there, choosing and acting, influenced by the dice.
As a Dungeon Master, I don’t write stories. I don’t write plots, where this happens and this happens and then the big finale happens. If I tried to do that, the characters and dice would quickly intervene and send the whole “plot” crashing into unknown territory.
I write characters who live in a world and have goals. I write situations, and decide who and what would reasonably be involved, and what people would have to reasonably overcome in order to achieve those goals. Then I put those situations in the path of my players.
My players write characters who live in a world and have goals. When we’re all sitting at the table, we make choices for our characters, and then play out the results, including some randomness so that we can all be surprised how things advance.
I’m not a novelist. I’m not even a showrunner, dictating how this season is going to play out over the course of the campaign. If anything, I’m one writer with slightly more responsibility for filling the world with interesting things and people, in a writer’s room with the rest of the writers, bouncing ideas, breaking stories into beats, and shaping a story that we can then share with others once it’s all played out.
My play style is heavily influenced by the tradition of improvisational theater, short and long form, as documented by many but primarily Keith Johnstone and Clive Baker. Everyone on stage (or at the table) has responsibility to bring up the parts of the story they want, and to allow everyone else to interact with them. No offer of a beat or line or imagined element should be refused, but everything is incorporated into the evolving story.
If the players want a big flashy battle with a big bad evil guy, facing incredible odds and overcoming the challenges heroically, then they can, through their choices and actions and exploration and interaction, nudge the story in that direction themselves.
Do my villains get to achieve their ends, or are they foiled by the players’ characters? That’s what we’re playing to find out. Everyone gets to be surprised. My villains might end up frustrated by an anticlimactic fizzle; if so, it means the players played well and had luck on their side. That’s the story of that game.
This may not be everyone’s style, but this is my style and my players love it. They trust me, and I trust them, to help move the story toward whatever is going to happen next.
If your players truly want big epic high-stakes conclusions to stories, then encourage them to play that way. If they don’t want that level of trust, then you’ve answered your question for yourself: you write the plots, figure out what happens when, and lead the players through the story beats. If they complain, then maybe try it my way.