One of the recent recurring topics around here is my D&D game, which is a bright spot for me and my life right now. I love creating and writing settings, characters, and events/ my players are all great at playing games collaboratively and creatively, and are invested in their own stories and their place in the world; and the game sessions are one of the few times I get to hang out and chat with other people (living mostly alone and far away from my friends and family and being unemployed means I don’t get out much.)
So I spend a lot of time writing notes, thinking about what might happen next, creating characters and making maps, picking monsters and treasures, and all that comes under the umbrella of prep. Prepping for a game is one way that a Dungeon Master (DM) engages in play. Worldbuilding is all by itself a way to create.
I can get lost in my worldbuilding, much as anyone else who loves outlining fictional worlds. When I feel my imagination running away, though, I try to reign it in by focusing only on what would be important at the table. I try to only make notes about things the characters, and my players, care about. I try to focus on the characters, and treat them as the heroes of the story. I do sometimes get lost but I can nearly always pull myself back from the brink.
Where did I learn that? I learned it from other, more experienced, Dungeon Masters.
First, Matt Colville. He has a lot of excellent advice for Dungeon Masters, and in the years before I started this new campaign, I watched every single video in his Running The Game series, and many many more from his channel. And one of his philosophies about table top role-playing games is, the game should center around the players and their characters. “Be a fan of the characters” is one way to phrase it. I can’t find exactly where he said this, and linking to a video in a text post isn’t idea, but he does touch on it in this particular video, “The Sociology of D&D.” He says at the beginning of the video that he, the DM, had fun if the players had fun, regardless if they engaged in his plots and plans or not. I’ve internalized that idea.
I will mention Ginny Di, from whom I have also learned a lot about running a game. She has a hot take, though, on prep for DMs, specifically the common “don’t overprep” advice that seems ubiquitous. Her complaint boils down to two points: that trope doesn’t say how much prep is too much, and it doesn’t help a new DM decide what kinds of things to prep or even what counts as prep. And she’s right. It’s helpful to have some kind of advice on how to get ready for a game with your players.
Enter, Mike Shea, a.k.a. Sly Flourish. I’ve read so much of his work but I can point to the main idea I’m elaborating on, about focusing on the characters, because in his work he literally makes that starting point in his seven step Lazy DM’s Prep list: Step Zero, Review the Characters. His other steps flow from that initial act of prep. Once you know who the characters are and what they want, create events, fantastic places, and challenges for them specifically.
Also, Jason Alexander, a.k.a. The Alexandrian. The philosophy of including the characters and the people who play them in the flow of the game as it exists at the table infuses nearly everything he writes. When he says “Don’t prep plots, prep events” he means that you, the DM, only control the starting point, the first encounter, the hook that draws the characters into the world; the story is what they do with those hooks. By following his advice, I can be surprised by what happens next, once the other players have found out what’s going on. They react, and interfere, or push, or ignore, and we’re off into terra incognito for everyone, myself included. The campaign becomes a virtuous circle; I give a hook, the players do… something with that… and I have to take that and decide how my NPCs and the world changes and reacts. This automatically centers the players; they’re shaping the narrative by what they focus on. It’s led amazing places for me. I had no real idea when I started this whole thing that we would end up where we are now.
It’s good for the DM to be surprised, along with everyone else at the table. It’s fun, and games should be fun. And it’s because “I am a river to my people!”