Building Bhakashal - Riding the Horse versus Spinning the Plates

I see a lot of posts on Twitter that talk about tweaking the results to make a win or a loss, to create a “dramatic” session where the PCs are at risk, that sort of thing. 

There are some aspects of this that I have never really grokked.

The game sort of moves in its own direction based on player actions and game world responses, everyone kind of knows this, and that’s why you see all these posts asking, “if the PCs are having it too easy, what should I do?” Posts like this suggest that there can be times when the game is just “too easy”, and by contrast, there are times when it is “too hard”, e.g., there are recognizable times when the game’s “challenge level” swings far in one direction or the other.

The game has a momentum based on PC actions and the responses of the game world. And it seems that people are often asking about how to CHANGE that momentum. Changing that momentum requires a lot of thought and work, doing so without it being noticed is even harder, and I see a lot of people saying that they want to do it without being noticed.

Thing is, that momentum will swing towards the parting winning, and then at other times towards the party losing, over time. You can’t predict it for the most part, but you know that, sooner or later, they will have a big challenge or an easy run. So knowing it happens on its own, and knowing it’s so much work to change it, why not just let it happen when it happens? Why spend so much time and effort to change it? When I’m in the zone I’m not tweaking the results to make things “dramatic”, I’m interpreting the results from the dice and laying out the consequences of their actions. 

And why take responsibility for making it change? If the DM has to nudge the game all the time, then it’s THEIR RESPONSIBILITY if the game isn’t “fun”. I see this all the time, “I ran a session and we didn’t do X/ finish Y etc., they didn’t enjoy it, I messed up.”

Ugh. 

No, you didn’t mess up because it’s not your responsibility to make any particular result turn up, it’s your responsibility to make the game world respond in a fair and mostly consistent way. If that means the session was challenging, that’s on them, not you. 

Think about it, if the DM can save you when you are in trouble, then if they DON’T save you when you are in trouble, then it was THEIR decision to let you die. If they do intervene, then it was THEIR decision to keep you alive. If the DM saves one PC but lets the other one die, how will that go over? Why would anyone want that responsibility, with the potential for abuse, favoritism (explicit or subliminal), etc. 

Added to this stew of effort is the dreaded “a fight, a reversal, a rest and a fight in each session” sort of stuff. Having benchmarks that are expected for every session, that’s just more work for the ref. I don’t ever add things because “every session should have them”, I have no expectations about what sessions “should have”. They are what they are.

Factor in needing to ensure everyone gets a chance to shine, that backstory elements are incorporated, that sort of thing, the list of notes you have to hit every session gets ridiculous. I have a campaign running with 8 players, 2 PCs each. Try ensuring “everyone gets a chance to shine” there. You want to shine, get busy!

As my first DM put it to me, they are running 1, maybe 2 PCs, you are RUNNING THE WORLD.

Ensuring that every session has X, Y and Z, and being the one that has to make it happen, is exhausting and a recipe for burnout. I’ve played in campaigns where the ref felt the need to ensure that certain things happened so it would be a “dramatic” session. In one we managed to always end on a cliffhanger, in others there was always a death in the session (usually a henchman or NPC, but it got to the point where we started making fun of it). And I’ve played with the “high drama” DMs, who want to ensure that something EXCITING AND IMPORTANT happens on the regular. This most often took the form of an opponent being someone’s lost relative or revealed to have been “behind the scenes” for a time, that sort of nonsense.

Constant need to make things EXCITING made it feel manufactured and stiff. Or it led to constant upping the ante to keep it engaging. 

I don’t want the WORK that has to be done to make this happen, I don’t want the RESPONSIBILITY for successes or failures, and I don’t want to be stuck ensuring that EVERY SESSION has a predetermined dramatic arc and combat. I get the desire for dramatic sessions, but they will happen without your prompting, not EVERY session, but interestingly enough it's precisely BECAUSE they don’t happen every session that when they DO happen they feel dramatic.

I feel that people who are “storytellers” should know this already, but it bears repeating. If you have some “non-dramatic”, “low tension” bits between the high tension bits, the high tension bits are even sweeter. Contrast enhances both experiences. The “low tension” bits are appreciated for what they bring to the game, rather than been seen as “sessions without combat”. My players will gamble with henchmen and sailors, pray with pilgrims and trade with caravans, and spend time shopping. They will spend whole sessions doing these things and loving it. That’s D&D too. And it doesn’t require anything of me other than being the game world’s reaction to the PCs actions. 

I see ref’s posting about how they “hate” these shopping sessions or RP sessions as they are so slow and don’t have that exciting edge. But the immersion in the game world is it’s own thing, just as engaging and intricate as combat, but in a different way. Exploration of the fantastic, the game world is somewhat like our world but not, poking and prodding that is a lot of fun, and since you can adapt on the fly you effectively have a completely open world for them to explore. 

I’m not putting that on a schedule.

It seems to me that people do a lot of CURATING their D&D experience at the table, to make the session “high energy”, but they miss out on the subtle joy of slower sessions, and the regular sessions become an arms race to “moar exciting”. They lose the wonder of the game world.

And it’s all so much work. I say that both as someone who used to play that way, and someone that sees regular Tweets about how hard this is, looking for tips on how to do it better. Of course it is hard, trying to force a group of PCs into any course of action is hard. The game is too layered and complex, and requires too much tweaking to force it into any particular direction for an extended period. Too much work, too much responsibility, too predictable, no fun for me, and you have to work to make it feel natural.

I feel like this is working AGAINST THE GAME. I mean, feel free, but it is easier to let the dice and the players make these decisions, some sessions will be “easy”, some “hard”, but their victories and defeats are their own, and you are absolved of responsibility or praise. 

One last bit. 

The Warlock in my Wednesday group got a spell he really likes, it’s one I cribbed from Vance, my version is called Tinnemar’s Fantastic Flexion. It creates a sphere of force that pushes away enemies from the caster. He got it last year, randomly rolled.

I should add that I do all that random rolling in front of the players with the spell tables open, so the number of spells on the scroll then the spells themselves are rolled in front of the players. They KNOW that I didn’t pick these spells for them. Each warlock has to roll a “to know” to see if they can memorize the spell for regular use, this is also done in public and has been failed. He rolled the “to know” recently, and made it, and now he has the spell memorized for regular use. He waited almost a year to get this spell.

He had many chances to use it, but held out to save it for memorization. Last session he mentioned how jazzed he was to have the spell. I added, “And you EARNED it”, and he nodded, he knew, I didn’t GIVE it to him, he fought stuff to get it, kept it safe and rolled “to know” it, ALL WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM ME. Sure, I could have given the spell, or tweaked the rolls, but instead he has the spell AND the satisfaction of knowing he earned it through good play and good luck.

You can work to make the game go the way you want it to go, or you can let the game happen and enjoy the ride. The creative work necessary to take the prompts given by the PC’s actions and the dice rolls and spinning those out, that’s the heady wine of refereeing. It feels like you are riding a horse, not spinning multiple plates in the air and constantly adjusting to keep them there. 

Some people might like to spin plates, to have that kind of power and responsibility, and doing the work might feel good. But if you haven’t tried it, you might want to ride the horse and see how it feels.