Jul05
on July 5, 2018
In Search of Non-Adventure
Adding forks in the road is a trap for Dungeon Masters.
It makes sense sometimes to give a choice for reasons of verisimilitude. A branching path in the road because the map shows one, or a second entrance into a house or business because back doors are common. But these can be false choices: distractions away from the story that attract the player’s attention while not actually being a path the Dungeon Master expected or wanted the players to take. They move the players away from the plot or cause them to waste time on a wall that is disguised as a door.
Well, the more freedom you leave to the players, the higher the risk of them taking an unsuspected direction. But I prefer that, by far, to being pushed in the way of the ineluctable path to the plot. I distinctly remember being a player in a Castle Whiterock game, and the DM did literally everything in his power to make us follow the preordered way to the bottom of the dungeon. As a result, we did not enjoy playing and started avoiding rolling new characters when we lost them in action, to the point there were no players around the table anymore.
In my last two campaigns as a DM there are almost no dungeons, and I let the players choose the path. Just letting them know what’s going on around them is often enough to have them take a logical decision… one you’ve already considered. Otherwise, I’m not afraid to tell them “Heh, you caught me this time. Let’s stop the session here, so I can devise a way to make the next one memorable!”.