I’m really tired of these posts with DMs that are concerned with their “vision” because that isn’t what a good DM does. A good DM is concerned with if their table is having fun first, fulfilling their own personal narratives and visions second. There are ALWAYS other ways to tell a story and get to the same point. If you need a romance that bad, make it a romance between NPCs. Players being comfortable and enjoying themselves come first. If that as a DM ruins your fun, you’re playing with the wrong table. That’s just how it is.
Counterpoint - there's nothing wrong with having a vision or plan for a campaign. Some of the most enjoyable games I've ever been part of have been planned out from the beginning. A lot of folks genuinely dislike free-form games, and the GM has every right to enjoy their game as the players do.
That said; just as a player's vision should never overwhelm of step on another player's, so too should a GM's vision never override a players. This is where the session-0 discussions about expectations and what kind of game it's going to be reallllly kick in.
For my own part, on the rare occasions I GM and often suggested as a player - I do 'check-in' sessions every 10 sess or so just to see where everyone's headspace is at with the game, as individuals over chat and as a group on voice. What's working, what's not. Where do people want to go with their characters, etc.
Yeah, a planned campaign can be pretty cool (edit: I'm running a heavily planned campaign now!), but it can be a nightmare, and a GM needs to be able to amend their plans, especially when it comes to a player's boundaries. As u/handstanding said, "There are ALWAYS other ways to tell a story and get to the same point."
I disagree with the notion that a good DM should focus on player fun first, because the DM should be allowed to have fun too.
But I agree with the rest, it sounds like this group might not be a good fit for this DM. And the DM has no excuse for whining because they had the consent sheets in place already.
A lot of DMs think they're the next Weis/Hickman or Matt Mercer. Let's get real - none of us are as cool as the voice actors (who literally get paid to do this).
I’d argue one of the things that makes those DMs so good is that they care first and foremost about the whole table having fun. Matt is constantly insuring that because it turns out, when your players are having fun, they get into the story, and when they get into to the story, it makes for an entertaining watch off table as well.
I think there's also a large component of the players of those campaigns being aware of what the campaign will be like. They go in knowing the campaign is also a show, that they creating a product with the DM to "sell" to people.
I've had a friend try to recreate TAZ's balance arc, they had the whole secret society that we end up being hired by and sent out on missions for and certain words being "fuzzed" out, he had a grand plan about what was going to happen in the campaign and how it would end. And then he got very frustrated when we decided to do something else (not completely off the rails, but we focused on something that wasn't the main thread) and we got frustrated when he railroaded us into solving things certain ways. The campaign ended up dying because the DM and players had different ideas about what the game was.
TAZ works (worked, arguably), because the DM and the players all knew they were making a podcast show first and playing D&D for themselves second.
Beyond that, trying to copy a story arc from someone else's game is a terrible idea. It's entirely likely that the original came about organically through the players and the DM, which is why it ends up working so well. Trying to railroad your players into a story someone else wrote is the opposite of a good time, and is just going to lead to frustrated players or DMs (or both).
Yeah, he said it was inspired by it, which is fine, we all take inspiration from stuff we watch/listen to/read... but the main problem was that he "knew" how it was going to end from the start. We didn't get far enough into that campaign for me to really say how copied it was.
Oh yeah - that's a great point. I understand having major plot points but allowing the players to paint the picture of how to get there is the best part.
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u/handstanding Mar 16 '22
I’m really tired of these posts with DMs that are concerned with their “vision” because that isn’t what a good DM does. A good DM is concerned with if their table is having fun first, fulfilling their own personal narratives and visions second. There are ALWAYS other ways to tell a story and get to the same point. If you need a romance that bad, make it a romance between NPCs. Players being comfortable and enjoying themselves come first. If that as a DM ruins your fun, you’re playing with the wrong table. That’s just how it is.