Dungeons & Dragons DMs Say It Best When They Say Nothing

There are many different styles of DMing in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, but I aim for total control as much as possible. It's not to hog the limelight, but in order to cast a brighter spotlight on the players. Knowing every detail of the world I have built, the branching pathways, where it leads next, and who in town knows what about what gives me the confidence to improv, to let the party go wherever without railroading, and to make room for the outlandish decisions my party makes. I didn’t plan for them to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:adopt a fire demon, but if that’s what they decide to do, I’m prepared for it. And sometimeওs,☂ the best thing to say is nothing.

I'm a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:preparation-heavy DM. My party is currently just about to start the sixth chapter of an 11-chapter adventure, with each chapter taking us two to three sessions. Not only is the entire adventure written already, but so is the 11-chapter adventure that follows. And I don't mean just the main plot beats planned out - every potential stop along the way, every character they can possibly meet, every puzzle and (as much as is possible) every solution they may attempt is written. Every map and dungeon is designed. Every character is named and their knowledge known to me. It is done.

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I don't do voices, but every character they meet has a name, a portrait available, and I know both their backstory and their wealth of knowledge - whether this knowledge be relevant to the plot, setting up a side quest, a red herring, foreshadowing, or merely flavour text. I need to know everything about my world in order to let people into it. Once they're in, I trust that the lands they explore are robust enough to support footsteps off the beaten path and for the most part, let them do what they want. Recently, they showed me exactly what this means.

I play with two different groups, and between them, they have both found novel solutions to seemingly straightforward problems. One group, sent to kill an invading lair of merrow, instead brokered peace between three tribes. The other, faced with a difficult boss fight, combined Vicious Mockery, Reduce, Spider Walk, a Pyrite Plesiosaurus, and a recently acquired cursed shield to simply explode the boss. I'd like to think my DM style encourages these outside of the box solutions. It's a lesson my players have learned all too well.

The Hither Thither Staff from the Dungeons and Dragons film being held

Recently, the party happened across an injured citizen stumbling their way to an almshouse. They were impaled by a stick about six feet long, and were unlikely t🃏o make the short journey. The solution I had written was simple - remove the stick by pulling it (gently being more difficult but doing less damage), then pass a Medicine check to stablise. Another couple of checks would have been needed as they carried or escorted her to the almshouse, but it was a relatively easy task - or it should have been.

I didn't tell the party to remove the stick and perform a Medicine check; that would be telling them what to do. Instead, they merely get the scenario - injured person, stick, almshouse. First the discussion was sensible; with a paladin and a cleric present, they had healing spells that would stablise her (and make the Medicine check much easier), but she clearly had a mortal wound and could not live while impaled, so that would need to be removed. Quickly or gently? Before or after healing? These were the first questions. They didn't decide, so I didn't answer. More questions were suggested before answers were acquired.

Wh🀅at if they Reduced the stick, they pondered. Alas, it is for living things only. Ahh, then they could Enlarge her! But that would make the wound larger too, and then impossible to patch up. What if they broke the stick while it was inside her, one of the gang suggested before being derided for his foolishness by the rest of the group. Perhaps Fireball could cauterise the wound, they considered, then realised Fireball has a 30 ft reach and could not be targetted on such a small area, even if she were enlarged.

'Sick people need stretchers' was the next train of thought, as one of the group wandered off to fetch a door in the destroyed city, only to remember upon her return that laying down a person with a big stick poking out of them isn't the easiest feat in the world. Could the stick itself be lifted, one player to each end, and two more in the middle on the woman, to carry her to safety without needing to remove the stick at all?

In the end, they decided to pull the stick out gently, cast Lay on Hands, and stablise the woman with a high Medicine check - AKA the originally scripted solution. But it felt like so much more of an accomplishment having achieved it, and while a harsher DM would have punished them for taking too long with the character's demise (or a more hands-on one would have presented the scenario and asked for the rolls immediately), this was the best way to shepherd the story forward whilst letting the players have complete control. Despite taking the solution I had written for them, they were free to do anything else, and at several other times in the adventure, did so to great success.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3's openness and willingness to accept your solutions is a major reason it is beloved, and I try to use my heavy preparation to offer the same openness to my players. At times, I even try to offer more: BG3 in that scenario would give you multiple options to choose, rather than the vast emptiness of our own mind that a silent DM leaves a player with. We'll keep pushing through the adventure in 2024, and we'll see what else the silence brings.