Dungeons and Dragons: The Story Told by Many Voices

Before I begin, I feel obligated to give credit, for the title, to another author. I read a piece by Theresa Sylvester and she used the phase. Whether it was original to her or not, is of no consequence to me; as far as I'm concerned, she said it first and it inspired me to write this article.

Indeed, Dungeons and Dragons is a story told by many voices. As a fledgling DM I didn't know that and not knowing gave rise to many difficulties for me. It may even have cost me, and the game, some very good players. This is the kind of game that begs to have too many cooks tending the pot. The Dungeon Master, no matter how skilled he thinks he is, cannot imagine all of the possibilities inherent in the game and prepare for them. Whether he knows it or not, he needs the constant banter that goes on during a game, and he needs to be thinking about "What if?"

I'm one who started out by trying to bring published adventure modules to my players. It did help me in learning the mechanics of the game, but it almost invariably lead to one of a few regular questions. What if? What if I drink this horrible looking and smelling concoction that's brewing on this unidentified sorcerer's workbench? What if I go this way, instead of following the trail with everyone else? What if I try to break through the wall over here, instead of trying to disarm the trap and pick the lock on the door? What if I (a halfling) ask that half-ogre female in the chain-mail bikini for a date? Okay, that last one is really off the wall, but the point is that your players will always have a way of wanting to do something that you never in your wildest dreams thought they would want to do. Quite often, it will be some minor thing that you just threw in for flavor.

If you plan ahead, and tend to write out the things that will be encountered within your dungeon, pay attention to the window dressing you put in it. If you say that there is a beaker, with some green and brown mixture inside it, bubbling over a flame, have some idea what to say when your players try to figure out what it is. What will happen to the guy who takes a taste of this half-finished potion they've come upon. Be aware that it's still a potion, even though it still has certain steps to be completed before it turns into what it's meant to be. Is it currently a deadly poison? Maybe it will only make the person sick, or drunk; or maybe it has some beneficial affect that no one knows about because nobody ever stopped it at this stage of its processing. Maybe it has no effect at all, except to leave a bad taste in the mouth for the next twelve days. Be aware that there may be someone like me in your group. My character wouldn't care about the stuff in the beaker, as such; he would be looking around for the recipe. This unknown alchemist or mage is probably not doing this off the top of his head, so there should be something around to tell me what it is and how to make it.

The thing is that you can't plan for everything. To be a good DM you will have to learn to shoot from the hip. When that question comes up that you have no answer for, don't fumble through your books; make something up and run with it. Be prepared to see your adventure fall by the wayside while the party goes chasing the strange bird they saw. Later, you can bring them back to that point where they abandoned you and show them that the villain's castle is just around this next bend in the road. I have seen my players spend an entire session outside of the realms that I had planned for them. If they're having a good time, let them; your reputation will go up because they had a great time. I once told my group that there was a hole in the ground. Plain and simple, right? No, they wanted to know what was at the bottom of the hole. To me it was nothing, but they chose one guy to tie a rope around and lowered him into the hole. The simple thing was to say that it only goes about twenty feet and then he's standing ankle-deep in muddy water. That didn't occur to me at the time, and I said, "You get to the end of the rope and you haven't reached the bottom." That didn't discourage them in the least, and before the session was over, they had discovered the homeland of the Drow, fought and killed a few dozen of its residents, collected some treasure, and were trying to figure out how the hell were they going to get out of this place, now that the rope was on fire, with its bottom end fifty feet above their heads.

Don't give the players too many options. I developed about a dozen adventure ideas one time and was trying to set the stage for all of them. I let my players have a glimpse of certain things pertaining to each one, knowing that I would later turn each of these into a full-fledged adventure. I kind of had an idea about which one would be first, then what would come next and next after that, and so on. What happened? They went for the one that I was least prepared for. When I tried to steer them to something else, anything else, this one that they had picked suddenly became a mystery that they could not let go of until they had solved it.

In connection with this last one, don't draw your maps and then plan. First, make your plan and then draw your maps to fit the plan. If you draw a classic dungeon and then try to fill it, you will almost certainly have a number of "empty rooms", or you will have a lot of monsters with no function except to fill those empty rooms. Know who built this place and why. If it was a group of goblins then they were likely following their food source, or their best path to collect slaves or whatever. If it was built by dwarves, they were probably after minerals and gemstones, and it would have a more finished look. Was this an outpost, with places for sentries, weapon stores, cooking, sleeping quarters, and the like? Or was it just a place to rest after raids on the surface, before packing up captured treasure and slaves before returning home? Let there be method to your madness, instead of just drawing a bunch of rooms that serve no purpose. Keep in mind that this may have been built by one group who was later routed and the complex was expanded by the new group to better suit their own purposes. Some of the complex will show signs of the early culture while other parts will show the second. It might be that it was later abandoned and inhabited by a third or forth group later, each with its own additions and refinements. If this is a simple resting place then you only need a place to sleep and a place to hold any prisoners, but if this place is occupied constantly there are other factors. Where do these people cook and eat their meals? What do they do with trash and other waste products? Is there provision for repairs to weapons, armor or tools? Does the leader have an escape route that only he and his chosen few know about?

Listen to your players and jot down any ideas that they throw out as they talk to you and to each other, or any that occur to you because of their talk. Use them to create adventures to be played later in your campaign. To get back to the title, you (as the Dungeon Master) are not the story-teller. You provide the setting, the challenge, the tools, the mystery, and you let the players tell the story. What did they do here? How did they meet the challenge with these meager supplies and ill-fitted tools? What was their answer to the mystery? Let the players entertain you and each other and everyone will have fun.