The Dungeon Master's Manifesto

I've been playing role-playing games for a number of years now. I think it's safe to say that a majority of the difficulties I've encountered in the course of my RPG career have not been with the game systems themselves, but with the other people playing them. That pen and paper RPGs are a social activity is one of their primary draws, insofar as I am concerned, but it's also one of their primary drawbacks, because it's hard to deal with other people sometimes.

It is sufficiently difficult to gather a group of people to want the same thing--like, say, participation in a D&D campaign. It can be nearly impossible to get a group of people who all want the same thing at the same time and for the same reasons. One person wants to be the center of an elaborate interpersonal drama, another person wants to have the most powerful character he can possibly have, another person wants to crack jokes and pull pranks, another person wants the freedom to do whatever he wants, another person wants to feel important and responsible within the structures of the game world, and so on. It is possible to accommodate all of these desires within the medium of a D&D game. It's possible, but it's not always easy, and it's certainly not possible to accommodate all of the differing desires of each of the players at all times.

Let me take it out of the RPG ghetto. Gentle reader, have you ever seen a creative writing workshop? In one of these things, you'd think that all of the persons involved would have a similar frame of reference. Here are people who are spending time and money in the pursuit of an activity that the vast majority of humanity doesn't give half a shit about. Here are people who have taken time away from reality television and Twitter and Internet porn to write stories--how bizarre is that! You'd think, then, that these people would be very supportive and understanding, and would be in agreement as often as not. You'd think that, gentle reader, but then you'd be mistaken. Because creative writing workshops are fractious things. I won't say that friendliness and supportiveness and solidarity and encouragement are impossible in such a setting. Certainly not. But equally possible are rivalries, insoluble debates over subjective points of style, and competing and conflicting notions as to what "reality" or "realistic human behavior" are or are not. Ask twenty writers what "literature" is, and you're likely to get twenty different answers.

Okay, creative writing workshops are kind of a ghetto, too. So let's put this in an even better and broader context. You have a group of friends, right? These are people you like and with whom you get along, and you have already made the effort to befriend them out of all the other people in the world whom you could potentially befriend. How many of those friends are going to want to go and see a particular movie with you? And if you do find some other friends to see that movie, is it likely that you're all going to be in agreement as to whether the movie was good or not? And even if you do all like the movie, do you think that everybody is going to like the movie for the same reasons? Or is it more likely that one friend will focus on character and dialogue, while another concentrates on the hotness of the lead actress, and another friend comments on the special effects, and so on? The disparity of opinions doesn't mean that people can't enjoy the movie for different reasons, but I think it's unrealistic to expect a group of adults with distinct personalities and backgrounds to all want the same things in the same way, even if that group does share a core set of values.

All this is to say that coordinating a group effort towards the acheivement of a common goal isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. Especially if the group is composed of those persons possessed of legendarily poor social skills known as "gamers." Lord knows I don't prove the exception to that particular stereotype. I think gamers are often people who have difficulty expressing their desires and finding positive channels for fulfilling those desires--I think a goodly portion of the attractiveness of games is that they can provide these things. If the gentle reader has spent any time at all engaged in online gaming, though, he will know that even the best-intentioned and most friendly game can degrade into verbal abuse and acts of virtual corpse rape.

I think, in some ways, the nature of RPGs complicates this problem. RPGs offer empowerment and wish fulfillment. RPGs offer a person a chance to feel significant, to go above and beyond the normal restrictions of reality, to express his will upon the world in a meaningful way. RPGs can make people feel like heroes, or main characters, when all too often in life we feel like supporting cast or expendable extras. This encourages a mode of thinking that is very different from the kind of approach one would take to day-to-day tedium, bound up as it is by the presence of tradition and custom and law and expectation and very real and very serious consequences for violating these things in order to act in ways that would be consistent with our imagined fantasies. This freedom to pursue one's own desires in spite of consequences lends itself to a feeling of entitlement that can then conflict with the interests of the rest of the group. If everybody wants to pursue the same form of empowerment, or to find his own particular motivation for pursuing that collective goal of empowerment, all is well and good. But let me assure you, gentle reader, such synchronicity is not always the case.

I think, in some ways, the nature of RPGs as a fun activity complicates the problem, too. In the course of one's occupation, one most likely accepts that there are certain things one has to do and certain people one has to deal with, not all of which or whom are pleasant, and one puts one's head down and accepts the unpleasant necessities for the sake of the greater goal (personal fulfillment, a paycheck, whatever). If the unpleasantries become excessive, some people will leave their jobs and look for a better one; others never will. An activity for pleasure, on the other hand, comes with an attendantly lower threshhold for compromise or temporary unpleasantness in the pursuit of a long-term happiness. Assuming you didn't like that movie that you wound up going to with your friends, is it possible that you and your friends would walk out before the movie was finished? Would you do the same in a boring business meeting?
In a meeting room full of your co-workers, it's unlikely that a disagreement is going to make you so inflamed that you feel inclined to stand up and start shouting at people. It's a lot easier to get more dramatic when you're around friends and loved ones and the defenses are down and the discipline is off and you expect to have a good time be validated and will feel cheated if you don't.

Thinking about all of these things, I felt compelled to write out my feelings about my upcoming position as the DM of a newly-formed D&D group. The breakdown of my previous group and my relationship with Bonny have taught me that there are some things that are necessary for the health of any relationship, whether that relationship be between friends and activity partners or lovers. At the present time, I think these are the most essential elements of a successful relationship:

1. That the persons involved take responsibility for their own wants, and that they express their expectations as clearly as possible.
2. That the persons involved take responsibility for their own actions, and for the consequences of those actions.
3. That the persons involved be reasonably forgiving of mistakes, lapses in judgment, or moments of strong emotion.
4. That the persons involved make some compromises and small sacrifices for the sake of the continuation of the relationship, and also that these compromises be spread among the persons involved as equitably as possible. In tandem with this is that one person understand that other persons can't meet all of his wants at all times.
5. That the persons involved agree to handle disagreements in a productive manner, owning their own ideas and feelings rather than blaming others for not thinking or feeling the same way, and accepting that disagreements are inevitable in any relationship and that they don't necessarily need to devolve into rage and personal attacks. That the persons involved agree that there is rarely only one feasible approach to a problem, and that multiple methods might have merit, and that even absolute notions such as "right" and "wrong" or "realistic" and "unrealistic" vary from one person to the next and should not be closed to discussion.
6. That the persons involved agree that such behaviors as are manipulative, deceitful, obsessive, controlling, or physically or emotionally hostile are undesirable and unacceptable.
8. That while one of the persons involved is responsible for his own actions and wants and feelings, he is not responsible for the actions and wants and feelings of anybody else. That mature adults will desire neither to control others nor be controlled by them.
9. That no one person, even a person in a leadership position, is completely responsible for the the success or failure of a collaborative effort, such as a relationship.

I think that about sums it up. I wrote these expressions out in a document in the hope that I can clearly communicate my own expectations for my new group and to let them know what they can expect from me. My hope is to avoid the problem that occurred with the last group when, after being dissatisfied with the course of events for over a year, the players all decided to express all their dissatisfaction at once, and a group that had been cohesive for years fell to pieces. Do I think they should have expressed their likes and dislikes sooner and in less critical fashion? Yes, I do. Do I think I should have made a greater effort to be approachable and to be more clear about my own expectations and to be open to their ideas before things reached critical mass? Yes, I do. Do I think anybody is really at fault in this situation? No, I don't. But I would like to avoid, if at all possible, the kinds of communication failures that rent my last group with this new one, and I was hoping by being clear and explicit in the expression of my expectations that I might manage to do so.

Then again, it might seem weird to have a relative stranger hand you a seven page document at the game session, detailing all this stuff about relationships and communication, the discussion of which holds very little appeal for most men.

Then again, a lot of what I'm saying in this document is fairly close to the advice given by the Dungeon Master's guide with respect to group management. And I've already seen the potential for cohesion-sabotaging arguments just in our initial emails and forum posts, and I think it would be a good idea to provide some channels for argument resolution from the get-go. And I might save myself a lot of time and stress if I can identify my dealbreakers from the start, so that anybody who knows he can't accept my conditions for friendship and for collaboration in an interactive fiction project will move along presently.

Is this the right thing to do? Hell, I don't know. I know it's a bit extra-ordinary. But then, what I'm trying to do is deal with the problems that have ordinarily prevented me from deriving full enjoyment from a D&D group.

So, gentle reader, if you've been patient enough to read this far, I encourage you to read on to the end, and tell me what you think. D&D nerd or no, I expect that you will have some experience with human relationships, and will be able to give me some feedback as to whether it would be smart or suicidally stupid to give this list out next Monday. A lot of this might seem repetitive, given that the gentle reader has already read the condensed list, but perhaps not.

How I Roll: Some Things You Might Want to Understand About My Interpretation of What It Means to Be a DM

I do not design or run encounters out of malice. I don't punish characters in order to punish players. I will never design an encounter with the desire for or expectation of the failure of the party. I design encounters and challenges in the hopes that each will be overcome, and that the characters will show their worth in the overcoming of the challenge. Contrary to what you might believe about Dungeon Masters, I take little delight from frustrating, humiliating, or punishing PCs.

I do not see myself as being in a competition with the PCs, and I hope that the PCs don't see themselves as being in competition with me. If anything, I want to see your character succeed as much as you do. That's not to say that there won't be times that I won't be at least a little pleased if the monsters that I have selected are doing well in a combat. I might also be pleased if a villain should get away with some form of evil, if only to make the final reckoning between that villain and the party that much more satisfying. If the PCs should out-and-out lose an encounter, though, I don't count this as any kind of victory. If anything, I'll have wished that I toned down the difficulty. I enjoy giving the PCs a worthy challenge; I don't enjoy seeing them defeated. If I wanted to get involved in an arms race with the players, I'd just have four Demogorgons port in from out of nowhere and kick everybody's ass. But that'd be a stupid abuse of my authority and my responsibility, don't you think?

I believe that the challenge rating of D&D encounters isn't always 100% reliable. Some above-level encounters will end up being a breeze, while the goblin minions that were supposed to be easy can wind up wiping the party. Even the best-balanced encounter can get screwy based on a few rolls of the dice. I hope that we can all take this variability in stride.

While some of the characters in the game world might have telepathic powers, I do not. If you want something from me, you need to ask me. More likely than not, I'll be happy to give it to you, whatever it is. If you do not ask me for something, then I hope you won't be surprised or resentful if I don't anticipate your wishes.

I believe that people play RPGs for a number of different reasons. Even within such a outside-the-curve and self-selected group of people as D&D players, most likely there will be some individuals who prioritize combat mechanics, who prioritize the social experience of gaming, who prioritize roleplaying, who prefer to be passive participants, who prefer to be leaders, and so on. I don't feel that any one approach is necessarily superior to another. I will try to offer experiences that appeal to the variety of players in the group. This does not mean I can appeal to all of these varied interests at all times.

I will do my best to give each character a chance to shine. I will appreciate the patience of the other players when it is not their particular moment.

Charm spells aside (and those rarely used for this very reason), I will not force a character (or a player) to do something he does not want to do. I will respect your right to decide your own character's actions within reasonable limits.

While I respect your ability to choose your characters' actions, I hope you can respect my ability to decide the consequences of how those actions affect the game world. That is to say, if Jimmee the Halfling Rogue decides to cut the throat of a sleeping townsperson, then I hope that Jimmee's player won't be shocked or hold it against me if the town guards come after Jimmee. This also means that rolling a 20 doesn't automatically mean that a character gets what he wants; Gruumsh is not going to be persuaded to change his alignment to lawful good no matter what result you get on your diplomacy check.

I do want to give players what they want, so long as what a player wants doesn't conflict with my own wants or the wants of another player or the integrity of the game. I'd much rather empower than disempower a character or a player. I see my role as DM as being to help people have a good time, not to prevent them from doing so.

I will never inflict a permanent, incurable, disabling condition on your character (unless, for some weird reason, you want me to). I will never say that your fighter's sword arm has been disintegrated, or that your wizard has taken a blow to the head that has rendered him incapable of ever casting spells again. I won't cripple your character's capability to perform his primary function in the group.

I don't believe that rules discussions should derail a play session. If there is a rules dispute that can be resolved in a minute or less, we can resolve it on the spot. If there is a rules dispute that's going to take any longer than that to resolve, we can note it and come back to it later, preferably in email.

I don't feel that “griefing” (e.g., stealing from or killing another PC) can be justified by any assertion of the rules or role-playing or humorousness. If that's what your character would do, then you need to make a different character. Acts of comic mischief are fine. Disagreements and rivalries between characters are fine, and are even beneficial for the game on occasion, so long as the tone does not become hurtful to the players. Characters causing serious harm to one another is never good for anyone involved.

I will do my best to be approachable, and to give due consideration to any arguments you might have. I will do my best to be adaptable. This being said, I reserve the right to adhere to the rules as written (or, at least, my interpretation of them) if I feel that such an adherence is in everybody's best interests.

I view D&D as a cooperative and collaborative effort. I truly value players' input, and I do my best to give players what they want so that we can all pitch in to tell the most exciting, most entertaining, and most satisfying group story we can. I strive to be democratic and reasonable in my leadership of the group rather than dictatorial and arbitrary. The reverse of this is that if something goes wrong in the game, I will not very much enjoy if people go out of their way to dump blame on me. I view the relationship between the DM and the players as reciprocal. I very much believe that the players need to take responsibility for the fun of the game, too. I think that players need to take responsibility for improving a situation rather than resorting to bitterness, anger, or resentment. We're all adults here; let's try to work things out.

I believe there will be points in the campaign—in any campaign—where I will not be able to reach a mutually desirable agreement with one of the players. In such cases, if we cannot achieve a compromise, I hope that we will be able to accept the disagreement and move on for the sake of the flow of the game.

My first priority in being a DM is to be respectful and considerate, in language and in action, of the players. My second priority is to be fair and to maintain game balance. My third priority is the general good and cohesion of the group. My fourth priority is satisfying the requests of individual players. My fifth priority is adherence to notions of realism. All of these priorities descend from the first priority. If you come to me with a claim from a lower priority, don't be surprised if I reject it in favor of a higher priority. You say you want your level 1 character to have a level 30 magic item (#4), I'll most likely disagree on the bases of game integrity and unfairness to the other players (#2 and #3).

Claims about the “realisticness” of certain rules aren't going to carry a lot of weight with me; we are playing a fantasy role-playing game, not engaging in scientifically-accurate modeling of sociology, psychology, geology, biology, physics, or history. I believe that people's notions of what is realistic and unrealistic are highly variable.

I try to give considerations of realism credence within the game, but I'd rather not have the game overtaken by them.

I'm not going to accept disrespect or rudeness to or from another player under any circumstances, and I wouldn't expect you to accept it from me, either.

I view adventuring as a hazardous occupation. I think that a lot of the excitement in D&D comes from overcoming danger and peril (without ever actually being endangered or imperiled). While I bust my ass to ensure that the dangers and perils that the party has to face are appropriate for the party's abilities, there might be times when the party has to retreat. There might be times when a particular objective lies outside of the party's abilities. There might very well be times when the party is captured. There will be times when a character dies, maybe even the whole party (but hopefully not). I am not inclined to make the monsters pull their punches in order to ensure that nobody ever dies, and I don't think, in the long run, that such patronizing behavior would be very satisfying for anybody. I am more inclined to make monsters act in a way that makes good use of their abilities, and is consistent with their intelligence, their attitudes, and their desire for self-preservation. I will avoid last-second miraculous interventions in combat if I can help it; I respect the players enough that I'd rather have them solve their own problems than see them coddled by dei ex machinae. That being said, if a character does die, it is not necessarily the end for that character. Unless there are very obvious reasons otherwise, resurrection should always be an option, and if there are obvious reasons otherwise it's usually not anything that a little side-quest can't cure. Coming back from the dead in 4th Edition involves the payment of a relatively small amount of gold and a -1 penalty to a character's rolls for three milestones (which probably equates to six combats). This is a pretty mild penalty, and is significant without really being crippling (as opposed to, say, the old skool method of permanent level loss). I don't see it as unfair or cruel or even all that unusual that a PC should die from time to time. Consequently, I don't want to make character death unduly punishing. If the player decides that his old character is all-the-way dead and won't be returning—and the player should always be the one who has final say over this—the new replacement character will enter the group at the first possible convenience with gear and experience that are equivalent to that possessed by the rest of the group. I know character death can be stressful; people get attached to their characters, and character deaths can cause some anger or sadness. Character death shouldn't be deeply traumatic, causing rage or serious depression, and if it is traumatizing for you then maybe there are other, better games for you than D&D. I'd like to cultivate an attitude where death in the face of fantastic peril is a heroic thing to be admired rather than begrudged.

I am very willing to make aesthetical changes to the game for the sake of flavor. I reserve the right to say that the giant scorpion isn't a giant scorpion at all but is instead a giant cockroach with a nasty rancid bite instead of a poisonous sting. If you want to say that your scale armor is composed of the overlapping shoulder blades of werewolves instead of metal scales, that's fine, too, although it would be rather silly. I regard appearances as mutable. I regard actual game mechanics as far less so, and not really things to be modified or forsaken for the sake of flavor, but again I will try to be adaptable.

I reserve the right to say yes or no to any material that lies outside of the core books. You can make a case for including something found in a third-party supplement or an obscure splat book, but let's please be reasonable about this. Just because some fly-by-night publisher or fan-run website publishes a feat that gives a character +5 to hit and damage with all swords doesn't mean that including such a feat in the game is a good idea. If the new material is so awesome that every single character would want it, then chances are, it's over-powered and broken.

I think that rules exist in a game for a reason. I think that the rules provide a consistent mechanism by which imaginary characters can interact with impossible things and have it all make sense. However, if there's a good reason for changing or eliminating a rule, then I think that the rule should be changed or eliminated.

I come to a D&D session in order to play D&D, not to watch other people use their laptops to play World of Warcraft all night except for those few seconds when they are called upon to toss a d20. Laptops can be fine for finding a rule now and again. I don't think they belong at the game table for extended periods. D&D is a team effort, and I believe that the effort will be more successful if everyone involved makes the attempt to be as engaged as possible.

I am only human, and I will make mistakes. I will misremember rules. I may get impatient or irritable from time to time. I hope you will be able to forgive me when these things happen, even as I should forgive you.

As much as I think there are different playing styles, I think there are different DMing styles, too. I acknowledge that I am not the right DM for all possible players. If you acknowledge that I'm not the right DM for you, then I'll wish you luck in finding a new game and we'll both move on.