Important Reminders from the Original Dungeon Masters Guide

Regular readers of this site know that I am wholly invested in homebrew materials. I have never once in my 16 years of running games in various systems used prepared material like a module--not because I don't believe they're useful, but because my joy in playing comes from creating my own materials. But I still care about the foundations that the game was built in, so years ago, I purchased a copy of the original Dungeon Masters Guide (yes, there is no apostrophe in "Masters" for whatever reason). 

I haven't really used very much of the information included in the book. The back cover boasts that it provides statistical information which had been collected for the first time in one bound volume, details like monster attacks and how to generate dungeons. But my favorite part of the book is barely a part of it at all--I especially love the foreword, which I think we might all benefit from reviewing. 

Below, I have reproduced the foreword to the original DMG in its entirety; after we have gone over it, we will inspect each of its main ideas in terms of how we run games. Here is the foreword: 

Is Dungeon Mastering an art or a science? An interesting question!

If you consider the pure creative aspect of starting from scratch, the "personal touch" of individual flair that goes into preparing and running a unique campaign, or the particular style of moderating a game adventure, then Dungeon Mastering may indeed be thought of as an art. 

If you consider the aspect of experimentation, the painstaking effort of preparation and attention to detail, and the continuing search for new ideas and approached, then Dungeon Mastering is perhaps more like a science -- not always exacting in a literal sense, but exacting in terms of what is required to do the job well. 

Esoteric questions aside, one thing is for certain -- Dungeon Mastering is, above all, a labor of love. It is demanding, time-consuming, and certainly not a task to be undertaken lightly (the sheer bulk of the book you hold in your hand will tell you that!). But, as all DM's know, the rewards are great -- an endless challenge to the imagination and intellect, an enjoyable pastime to fill many hours with fantastic and often unpredictable happenings, and an opportunity to watch a story unfold and a grand idea to grow and flourish. The imagination knows no bounds, and the possibilities of the game of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS are just as limitless. Who can say what awaits each player, except a cornucopia of fantasy and heroic adventure? So much is waiting, indeed!

This book holds much in store for you as a DM -- it is your primary tool in constructing your own "world", or milieu. It contains a wealth of material, and combined with the others works of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (the MONSTER MANUAL and PLAYERS HANDBOOK) gives you all the information you need to play AD&D. But, as always, one more thing is needed -- your imagination. Use the written material as your foundation and inspiration, then explore the creative possibilities you have in your own mind to make your game something special. 

Dungeon Mastering itself is no easy undertaking, to be sure. But Dungeon Mastering well is doubly difficult. There are few gamemasters around who are so superb in their conduct of play that they could disdain the opportunity to improve themselves in some way. Fortunately, this work addresses the matter at length, and give you plenty of suggestion on all aspects of Dungeon Mastering (as well as some of the finer points) in order to help you improve your own efforts. Take heed, and always endeavor to make the game the best it can be -- and all that it can be!

This lead-off to the DMG was written by Mike Carr in 1979, and yet it reads like sage advice for DMs even today. Many of the virtues of this foreword's mindset are obvious, but let's dig in and investigate each point of what makes this foreword special. 

We begin with asking a very philosophical question: is DMing an art or a science? We could pretty endlessly debate this question, and the DMG does not take a strong stance either way on the question. This is wise, because each DM brings something different to the game. As Carr points out in these opening paragraphs, DMing is both art and science. On this site, I have addressed how to handle the game from both perspectives--planning a campaign, creating a gameworld, and developing materials in response to what players want are all forms of intricate planning that makes DMing a science, but I have also addressed more artistic ideas, such as how to make the world respond to players, how to balance plot with exploration, and how to improvise to not get stuck in plans. As much as DMs may conceive of the art and science approaches as being in conflict, they are in fact simply opposite points on a spectrum on which most of us fall somewhere in the middle. 

This is an important idea that the foreword handles with aplomb. Carr shows that both extremities of approaches to DMing have validity. But quite subtly, Carr has also managed to unite all DMs by beginning with the merits of each approach. Improvising DMs begin the book feeling respected, as do careful planners. And this opens us to considering another important point: we can learn from the opposite approach to our own. As much as I trumpet the benefits of being an artistic DM who flies by the seat of their pants, I also acknowledge that without some foundation to start with, it's very challenging to get started. That's why I do some basic planning with something like the story beat method as a framework and try to improvise the rest--it's the sweet spot for me, where some planning allows me to focus on the moment, and some improvisation allows me to be present with the players rather than sticking to a script. Even back in 1979, when DMing was only a fledgling art/science, Carr recognized the breadth of DM experience and brought DMs together. That's a huge task that we still struggle with today. 

Our next section in the foreword is something of an inspirational message. Carr reminds the reading DM that the required effort and the rewards are both incredible. DMs who have dabbled in homebrew know this lesson firsthand: until you have acclimated to the level of mental energy required to DM well, it is likely to feel a little overwhelming. Carr does not address this idea beyond explaining that it is well worth the challenge for the remarkable payoff. I agree with Carr that DMing is a huge commitment, even when performed with modules and help, but I do want to address that overwhelming feeling. That feeling comes from the belief that you are not prepared to handle what the players throw at you, and we can fight that feeling.

When you feel, as a DM, that you are not up to matching your players' actions in the game, there are two things to remember. The first is that the players do not have any idea what you are doing. That means that when you make some kind of what you would consider a mistake, the players are almost certain to not know about it. Remember that they aren't the ones who read the module or created your homebrew materials, so they have no idea whether things are going according to plan. Allow yourself to breathe and carry on without panicking, because you are the only one who knows that there's a problem. 

The other thing to keep in mind is that one of the main things that draws players to D&D and other tabletop games is that they allow the player to feel simulated agency. This is a fancy way of saying that players enjoy feeling like they're really in control of what happens. When we plan and plan endlessly, we impair the players' ability to feel as though they have the ability to make meaningful actions (at least if the players intend to do something besides what you carefully planned for, which is highly likely). I mention this idea because oftentimes, DMs get caught up in worrying about how the execution of the plan will go, but players are more worried about whether or not they're really in control of their characters. It may sound like I'm advocating for a "art over science" approach here, but I'm not; it would be similarly underwhelming for players to experience complete freedom with no structure, which would rob them of feeling like there are narrative stakes. It's just that beginning DMs tend to want to overplan, and that can get them started on the wrong foot. So don't worry about picking the art or science approaches--you want to balance them. 

The next section of the foreword is partially a reason that the DM reading should delve into the book: it contains information that will help the DM to provide players with the necessary information with maximum convenience. But it also addresses the idea of imagination quite broadly. Carr says that we should "[u]se the written material as your foundation and inspiration, then explore the creative possibilities you have in your own mind to make your game something special." This should sound pretty consistent with what we've already discussed: Carr is saying that just as we use the written materials for the science of DMing, we also need the creativity to go beyond the written materials and create our own twists on the ideas. This is something I try to keep in mind as much as possible. Even when D&D was a fledgling hobby that barely resembled the elegant systems we have in modern editions, even when D&D was an idea that most observers could not wrap their minds around, Carr was calmly explaining to beginning DMs that we were all embarking on a wildly creative, imaginative journey that had no clear predecessor. This was, quite literally, a visionary statement which remains relevant today. 

But let me underscore this point as much as I can: Carr says that we need the sweet spot I have mentioned, some way to incorporate the best of both worlds (art and science) to give our players the best experience possible. I know we have discussed this already, but Carr brings this idea back a few times even in this brief foreword, so let's give it its due by paying close attention to word choice. First, the written material in the DMG was meant to be "foundation and inspiration." That is to say, we use the information presented in the DMG as a starting point. I have studied modules in the past, and I know as well as most any DM that module materials give fairly brief approaches to what's present in a game. Particularly at the time of the DMG's publication, we are mostly talking about short paragraphs describing locations and enemies. That is to say, in order to present a reasonably entertaining game, a DM would truly have to "explore the creative possibilities you have in your own mind to make your game something special." And that word choice strikes me as even more deliberate: for your game to be "special," you have to do some of the work yourself. Again, this is not siding with the "art" approach to DMing, but reminding players that both approaches would need to be balanced for success. 

The final section of the foreword is something of an inspirational message. Any DM can benefit from trying to improve, and Carr points to the DMG itself as the tool which can benefit those DMs. But even more than that, Carr acknowledges that DMing is difficult. And while I try to present my advice here on this site in a way that makes it easier (not easy, but easier) to tackle the game's challenges, I too must acknowledge that DMing is a terribly difficult thing to be good at. Even a seasoned DM like myself has bad ideas, experiences off sessions, and misreads what my players really want. This idea matters for two reasons; let's address them in detail. 

Firstly, the difficulty of DMing means that we need to be more gentle with ourselves as DMs. I cannot say how many times I have thought a session was terrible only for my players to insist it was great; the same is true of the times my DMs have voiced doubts about the quality of an experience and I have felt it was a tremendous time. Because the task is so difficult, we are bound to judge ourselves harshly, usually against our ideal picture of how a game could have gone. And this is a big problem. I have seen talented DMs avoid running games because of self-judgment and anxiety, and I have fiddled with things that were working perfectly well (or left alone things I needed to change) because I was too judgmental of myself to recognize the real situation. So let us all remember that we should be kind to ourselves as DMs. We are taking on great stress and responsibility to bring our friends joy, and that deserves some credit just for trying. 

The second point worth mentioning here is that any of us can improve as DMs, no matter how experienced. I have been DMing for over half my life now, and my players pretty uniformly agree that I am talented at it, and I still find exciting new ideas and plans when I listen to D&D podcasts or talk with other DMs. Even reading the brief foreword of the original DMG has given us a wealth of important reminders to keep in mind, and I think that Mike Carr's ideas back then are not only still relevant today, but will continue to be important for generations to come. So let's stay humble and continue to hone our crafts, even when we get comfortable with what we are doing. 

Let's wrap up by revisiting the final line of the foreword, to "always endeavor to make the game the best it can be -- and all that it can be!" I really like this way of phrasing this idea, because it allows us to make a fine distinction which matters a lot. Carr does not say that we should always make our gameworlds or our prepared materials the best they can be. He similarly does not say that we should give our players the best experience that we can. He says that the "game" should be the best it can be. That phrasing suggests something big to me: that the end goal of D&D is not to create materials or to focus on the players 100%. Rather, the end goal is for the entire game to be the best it can. That means that your players should be happy with the narrative and their ability to affect things and the identities of their characters, but also that you as DM should be content with your planning process, your narration, and your handling of in-game decisions. 

I forget this all the time. As a person, I always choose to focus on the experience of those around me. As a teacher, I try to make my students comfortable, even when other teachers might say I'm not being firm enough. As a friend, I like to do favors and show that I'm here for people. And in D&D and other tabletop games, I think almost entirely about my players and the experiences they will have. But this mindset does not always serve me. I have run campaigns where I didn't really enjoy DMing or being a part of the game because I was so focused on my players that I forgot myself. This leads to dissatisfaction, which leads to burnout. We need to remember that our experience as the DM matters to. Imagine that a team is making a film, and the director hates the script. Is that film going to come out okay? Likely not, so make sure that you're getting something out of the situation as well. Your players will benefit from it. 

So there you have it. We've looked back on the original DMG's foreword, a brief message to the first generation of aspiring DMs, and we've found that there is a wealth of messages that can still help us today. I hope that some of these ideas resonate with you and that you are able to take your game into your own hands more than ever now to make your game the best that it can be. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why I strive for breadth rather than uniqueness in my homebrew setting, how developing random details can help your worldbuilding, and a profile on conspiracy theories in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

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The Most Important Thing in Gaming: How to Create Fun

Every GM and every player has a different purpose for playing TRPGs. Some look for opportunities to roleplay personal growth, others look for the feeling of capability that comes with success, and still others look to simply spend time with their friends. Crucially, though, all of these types of players have something in common: they are pursuing their own definitions of fun. This is the most important thing in gaming: that your players have fun. 

Fun is a difficult thing to define. It's different for everybody, and it is more an art than a science. If it were possible to make everyone happy with one effort, then we would only need one strong one-shot or campaign to satisfy all players. But there are different factors in determining what is fun, and they grow more complicated than just one single issue allows us to understand. I aim to define these factors so that you can institute them in your game more easily. These factors are agency, novelty, and creativity--let's see how they each function in bringing your players fun. 

But first, the importance of fun. Let's think about what TRPGs would be without fun. Games involve a great deal of statistical understanding to grasp the rules of the game. They require a large commitment of time. They require you to work closely with other people to accomplish joint goals. They sound a lot like work, really--it takes real effort to achieve success in a TRPG. Without fun, the game is simply work, which is very few players' opinion of an enjoyable game. Further, games generally exist to create opportunities for fun; the work the player does to become proficient in the game is rewarded when they are able to have fun. So your game simply must provide opportunities for fun--it's why your players gathered in the first place. 

So how do you respect the formula for fun? The first step is in learning how to monitor whether your players are having fun. Laughter is a great indication; players who are obviously having a good time in this way are in the clear. But engagement looks different from different players. Generally, if your players are taking something seriously--the story, roleplaying, combat--they're engaged. You can notice players taking things seriously when they take care to describe their reaction to something. And players are sure to be having fun when they communicate out-of-game about in-game goals. I recently had a player contact me to ask whether they were taking too much of the game's focus; they didn't want to be stealing the show. This is an engaged player; they're invested in having fun and in respecting the fun of other players. 

If your players aren't engaged, it's time to use the tools for bringing fun. The first factor is agency. Your players should feel that they have the ability to make meaningful choices. This is hard to overstate. We as humans want and even need the ability to make choices when we're having fun. You can ensure that your players sense their agency by creating situations where their choices have consequences. Your overall story should accomplish this, but you can begin to portray this effect with smaller narrative moments. I like to start my games by providing a simple scenario with consequential choices. I might have a poor person ask for help with something trivial; the players then get to portray themselves either helping or not helping this person, and I bring that NPC back in a later session to reveal how the player character choices changed that person's situation. (If they helped, the person comes back to repay the party; if the party did not help, they have come back with a hired goon to antagonize the party.) In order to give the players real agency, you'll need to be willing to improvise--you cannot anticipate all player actions, so be ready to turn their actions into farther-reaching moments for your players.

Agency is especially important for a roleplaying campaign. The ability to make choices is central to defining a character for who they are, and if you don't let player characters act as themselves, you will be curtailing the fun of those players. In general, your philosophy as a GM should be this: if the player character could reasonably do what their player directs them to do, they are capable of accomplishing it. Use the outcomes of dice rolls to determine degrees of success, but err on the side of the player. If they can imagine doing something and it's not strictly impossible, what can it hurt to grant them agency? Players will remember inspired actions by other players far more than the details of your story, so lean into it. Grant your players the right to act according to their values, and your game will prosper. 

The next factor of fun is novelty. Your players should have something new to discover with each adventure. That doesn't mean that every detail must be unique to your campaign, but it has been illustrated by neuroscientists that novelty is a vital aspect of brain health. We are drawn toward what is new to us naturally, and that applies to your game as well. Novelty means that your game includes new ideas and information for your players to interact with. Mostly, this is an indication that your party might benefit from mixing things up from time to time, but within the area that your players will have fun (it's no use using a roleplaying campaign to shake up things for committed combat experts if it won't appeal to them). Instead, focusing your efforts for novelty on the way you express your story. 

To have a novel story, the best bet is to combine several ideas you like into a new format. Let's say you're into science fiction, and you want to tell a story about sci-fi that will be new to your players. But there's a lot of sci-fi out there--how are you going to have a unique idea? You don't have to! All you need is some ingredients from things you like. I'm a big fan of Samuel R. Delany's novel Nova, which depicts a ragtag crew trying to harvest energy from an exploding sun. I also really enjoy time travel movies, like Primer and Triangle. And although I'm not much of a Star Wars fan, I do like the game Knights of the Old Republic, with its sprawling quests and myriad settings. I can combine all of these ingredients into a new story by borrowing some ideas from each thing. So now my story is about a ragtag crew (the party) off to harness the magical energy of a heavenly body, in a race against someone who has access to time travel; in order to outrace the time traveler, the party must gather resources from the sites already visited by the time traveler, and each stop on the way creates problems for the party to deal with. This story doesn't really look anything like any of its component parts, and it's unique enough that your players will get their novelty fix. You can also always design your campaign from player suggestions, but either way, your attempt at novelty will be appreciated by the players. 

The last factor to consider when addressing fun is creativity. Creativity is the most elusive thing to address because it is not something you can do for your players; you must allow them to do it for themselves. Allowing your players to be creative means that you provide them the opportunities to be engaged in a thoughtful way. Creativity is open to all TRPG players. Combat experts devise unique ways to exploit the game's rules to come out ahead. Story-invested players find interesting ways to guide the narrative. Roleplayers use their creativity to express their characters and inhabit the world. Strictly speaking, all you need to do to allow creativity is leave room for players to engage. But more to the point, you should inspire creativity amongst your players. This is like the difference between loading the dishwasher and running the dishwasher; it's one thing to do your part, but another to set someone else up to succeed. 

When you want to inspire creativity, it's important that your players understand that they can be creative. My preferred method is to reward creativity. When my players come up with an outside-the-box plan for solving a problem (like starting a business in order to solve a murder), I definitely do not set limits on how they can solve the problem. I recognize their creativity and allow them a fair shot at success. In the case of the linked example, I allowed my players to relatively quickly and efficiently build a business and become involved in the social circle they were eyeing because their idea took creativity. It's important to note a certain distinction here: there are bad player ideas and good player ideas. A bad player idea ignores facts about the setting or plays on the fact that it's a game. Anything else is a good idea. Roll the dice if you must, but I generally recommend honoring the creativity of players. 

A quick example to make this point. I recently played in a session where the party's goal was to obtain a magical artifact from an ogre in a heavily fortified compound. We as the party looked over maps, considered options, and made plans. Our method was a little bonkers: we would arrive and declare ourselves traveling sheep masseurs (the ogres had a flock of sheep) and jewelry polishers. We used the spell "Grease" to free the sheep, distracting most of the ogres. We poisoned the ale keg the ogres drank out of. We started a massive distraction fire. In the end, we made it out unscathed, and our DM was flummoxed. Though he is relatively new to DMing, he understood that player fun relies on the agency to make choices (wild as they were), the novelty of a one-shot none of us were familiar with, and the room for creativity to develop our wild plans. It was a bizarre strategy, but our DM knew we were engaged and rewarded us for our efforts. This is how you create fun for your players: you use the tools and encourage them to play as they want to. 

So that's it. It's really so simple. The end goal of every TRPG is fun, and creating that fun is easily doable with the right attitude. Just keep your players' in mind first and foremost, and you'll never fail to provide your players with fun. Coming soon: how to design a campaign setting, rules for my custom magic system, and my expanded list of familiars for every class. Until next time, happy gaming!

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