I Wish My D&D Players Would Hurry Up

There are many ways to run a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons adventure. The first, and most obvious, is to follow a book. There are several dozen official D&D adventures, and several thousand unofficial ones online. Then there's writing your own campaign, but that's not a straightforward choice either. Some players write collaboratively with their players, piecing ideas together with improv and bubblegum. Others do what's sometimes known as the piano teacher method - you just have to stay one session ahead of the players, and you'll figure it out. You can forgo story and run 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a series of dungeons and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:combat encounters instead. Or, you can write the whole thing out before you start then run it as if it were an official adventure in a book. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:This is how I do it. It's the best way. I do not recommend it.

DMing in the first, official way is still a lot of work - the book is there to guide you, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:players are unpredictable and you will need to react to that. You're also expected to know the story well enough to discuss it off the cuff, and to plan for which other manuals you'll need for stat blocks - nobody wants to play with you reading it for the first time as you play, being as surprised as the rest of the table when there's a sudden twist. Collaboration and piano playing have their merits too; they’re great ways to keep things fresh, but if the table wants a boss rush challenge, introducing them to Lady Pippingstone Merriweather who has a rather glamorous party she needs your help at is no good - combat-heavy DMs face the biggest strain of keeping up the variety and maintaining tempo.

Dungeons & Dragons image showing a party of three players being surrounded by Gnolls — You Come to the Gnoll Camp by Billy Christian

But, as I said, I feel planning the whole, unique story out yourself first and then 'yes and'ing or 'no but'ing as you go is the best way to do it. However, as I put the finishing touches on an adventure, I'm finding that it's not only the best, it's also the worst. Right now, I am playing an adventure with two different groups. One is just about to embark on the fifth of the story's 11 chapters, and the other is about to start the second, so it will be a while before either finishes. And yet, while I planned this adventure, I had characters and ideas and locations that didn't fit, so I ended up writing a second adventure too, also 11 chapters long. It's this one that I'm about to finish writing.

These two groups I play with are the staff at TheGamer and my friends who regularly read the site, so I feel at this point I must say: it's not you, it's me.

There's nothing wrong with the pace either group is moving at. We're getting through things at the predicted pace of two to three sessions per chapter, and any slowing down has only ever been caused by exploring widely, which either means they get to see all of the niche side characters I had written or they force me🧸 to ex🧜pand and develop the world on the fly, making it a richer place to explore. I love the way both groups play, the similarities they share and the differences they showcase. One group brokered peace between three societies through careful negotiation, and the other chopped a queen's head off and paraded it through town. They thought it was a good idea at the time.

But I'm writing things for this second adventure, and find myself imagining what will happen when each group gets there. How they'll react, both collectively and individually, to the different characters, scenarios, and combat encounters they have in store. Then I think 'hang on, we're miles away from this'. We might all be dead by chapter seven of the second adventure, and where's the fun in that?

First, they need to finish the one they're on, which has some more stuff I'm looking forward to getting into, then they need to a) keep playing with me even as I write borderline slanderous articles like this, b) want me to remain as DM, and c) want to play my next extremely unofficial story rather than the real deal.

Like I said, it's not them, it's me. Our two adventures are moving at a fine pace and I wouldn't want them to go any faster. I know neither group will ever see everything with all the secrets lurking and the often obtuse characters they choose to grill (then blame me rather than, I don't know, a Persuasion roll?), so whenever they skip town before meeting someone cool I often feel the opposite - slow down and smell the daggerroots, guys.

The pace we're moving at is perfect. We're seeing pretty much everything there is to offer while still finding fresh corners of the world to colour in and keeping a brisk pace. I just have another 11 chapters after this 11, and as I put the finishing touches on them so I can finally expunge it from my mind for a year or so, I can't stop myself from thinking ahead. Maybe we can change it up to three sessions a week, just until we're through all the good bits, yeah?