this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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When I first started DMing, I focused a lot on maintaining a captivating pace at the table, and also had a few story beats that I wanted to hit, and kind of nudge the players towards. This meant I was able to pull off some gratifying one-shots, or short arcs, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but longer adventures started to become too stressful to properly maintain. Especially if there is a larger connecting world or lore in place beforehand, that felt more constricting as the campaign went on.
Practically it felt like being a filmmaker and making every session sensational. And when it worked, it felt awesome. If a session did not land properly however, I felt quite discouraged afterwards.
Then I discovered: hey, I want to be surprised as much myself by the events as the players at my table. I don’t want them to follow my pre-existing story beats. Rather, I want to be an impartial arbiter and just see how the players react, and especially interact.
Want to kill a key NPC? Sure, you can try, and if you manage to do it, the world will react accordingly.
Three things I employed to make every session much more enjoyable for myself:
tl;dr being surprised by the twists and turns in the narrative I did not expect myself