Blog-It Llama!

By Nick - October 29, 2009

The first in a new series of articles

I’ve been playing D&D since I was just a wee tot. Back then, my father was DM and it was just me and my brother. After awhile we included some of our friends and my brother eventually took a whack at DMing for us. About the time I was hovering around the cusp of being a teenager, I decided to try the mantle of Dungeon Mastering and haven’t looked back since. As much as I enjoyed being a player, I really prefer the challenge of keeping all of my friends consistently entertained.

Even with as long as I’ve been a DM, I’ve never really used adventure modules. I’ve perused a few to borrow some concepts here and there, but I never followed them very closely at all. Since I’ve subscribed to Dungeon and Dragon magazines (now currently included in D&D Insider) I’ve kept track of some of the “Adventure Paths” they’ve detailed in their magazines. These are ongoing campaigns that take your characters from their meek origins to epic destinies. Age of Worms was one that I found especially cool. Since the release of 4th Edition, they’ve started Scales of War, an epic sequel to the adventure module Red Hand of Doom. Taking a look at these adventures and all the other supplemental adventure modules that were being released really made me want to try a level one adventure. This time, I would use one pre-made by Wizards of the Coast. In having so much work already done for me, I wanted to try something really ambitious. I wanted to create an open world where the players could choose the adventures they wanted to go on instead of me just picking the precise journey for them.

This is something like my seventh campaign to be a DM, my second with 4th Edition (though the previous one never got a finale). I’ve always felt a need for escalation. It’s been awhile since the previous campaign because the last campaign ended on such a strong note it’s hard to want to follow that up. The best way to do that isn’t necessarily starting with a bigger story being told but learning how to meet player’s expectations and entertainment needs faster than before. The fundamental trick to keeping a player happy is giving them choices. As long as the player feels that their actions are making an important impact on the adventure, they’ll be happy. If I could let them choose the exact adventures that they engage in, having entire sessions affected by what choices they make, gives them a feeling of immense control. DM’s should keep their ego out of it, to not harshly control their players so they’ll follow the story in just a certain way. Letting the players veer off the mark in unpredictable ways are generally where the best moments come from. A good DM lets the players have almost as much control over the adventure as they do. You just have to roll with the punches.

This open-world setting isn’t the first thing I started with. I might have been able to do that, but I wanted more time to polish it. What I did instead was drop the party in the middle of a dungeon with their memories erased, including how they even got their in the first place. This dungeon was based on Rivenroar Castle featured in the first Scales of War adventure. I took a lot of liberties with it because I wanted to be able to get through the whole adventure in a single sitting. Even at that, it took us about 7 hours not including breaks.

There’s a lot of potential here, but I’m afraid they might surprise me too much with their newfound freedom and I won’t be able to properly compensate them. It’ll require a lot of prep, but I think the rewards reaped can really show what D&D is capable of.

In the next entry of DM’s Curtain, I’m going to tell you exactly what it was like running a published adventure.

Categories: Dungeons and Dragons
Tags: Adventure, Age of Worms, D&D, DM, DnD, Dragon, Dungeon, Dungeons and Dragons, Greyhawk, Master, Mastering, Mystara, Pathfinder, Red Hand of Doom, Rivenroar, Roleplaying Game, RPG, Scales of War, Tabletop Gaming