How I Do

[kingtycoon]

So you want to be the dungeon master.  It’s a weird title, sure.  I remember, when I lived with Melchior – he
was watching some true-crime special on teevee about some kind of murderer that
they kept calling the dungeon master and we were all incensed.  “That’s our word!”  We shouted at the teevee.  And sure, it’s got weird, unwholesome connotations
(I guess, I apologize for nothing) but it’s just a job, an avocation – like any
other you might have.  I’m a dungeon
master, this means that I make up co-operative stories with my friends who
interact with settings that I contrive to amuse and challenge them.  It’s like writing the crossword puzzle – but so
much cooler.  Let’s say that you want to
be the dungeon master.  There’s a few
things you can do to be good at it, some things you can do to be great at
it.  Being good demands preparation,
writing and imagination.  Being great
demands that you completely disabuse yourself of notions of dignity and become
willing to do voices, act out romances with people you aren’t attracted to and
finally – be willing to murder your protagonist.  That last one is the hardest I think, that’s
the difference – ultimately, between good and great.  If the hero, and there’s always one at the
table – there might be 10 players but there’s only one hero, at a time anyway –
if he or she thinks that they’re invincible? 
The game is bullshit – everyone dies, pointlessly and badly – it’s up to
them to outwit you and stay alive despite your efforts.  Now –a shitty dungeon master is like a
murderer – they’ll just aim at killing people, players, they’ll amuse themselves
with it – but in my experience the more murderous the DM, the less they’ve
prepared, the less they’ve made out with a lady and the less desirable they are
for human companionship – bloodthirsty DMs are often misanthropes and shouldn’t
be regarded with any affection.  Now,
murder –that doesn’t imply bloodlust – the execution murders people, and it’s
cause they have it coming.  If you want
to be good -  just lay off murdering, if
you want to be great – think of it as execution.  Sometimes they just have it coming. 

Planning is the most important.  For me, a plan falls into a geographic scope –
you have to have a map.  Usually I put
together a map before I ever plot anything- 
geography is history after all, geography is destiny.  So I plan the area that I expect players to
spend their time in.  This is tricky
because wise players can shut you down – they’ll go off the map and try to do something
else.  You can always overcome this by
giving them what they want.  You can plan
ahead three steps like a chessmaster and know what goes on in the next map over
– or you can be sneaky.  You can just
reintroduce the same stuff with different names in a new location – give the
players agency, but don’t discard your plots just because they think they can
escape them.  Sure as you can’t steer a
train, you can’t change your fate – but if they players don’t want to be on
rails (and who can blame them) then let it seem like they can get off the train
whenever – just keep in mind what you’ve devised for each of the stops and
repurpose it for the next one.  Players
are always impressed by a lot of preparation, they’ve goddammed mystified by
capable improvisation.  Get good at
improvising. 

So the first thing I do is I make a map – and then I make up
a theme.  Recently my theme was the
zodiac – I had all kinds of different tribes and nations all based upon the Babylonian
zodiac.  Currently I’m planning a series
of adventures based on 4 of the Muses and Riddles and Sphinxes.  Sometimes your theme could be something
banal, like buried treasure or warfare, sometimes it can be something really
high-minded and esoteric – like engaging the lightning path of the tree of life
or some-such.  You can do straight up
Kabbalah if you want, and you can do straight up dragonslaying for profit if
you want – but you (as the DM) will have a better time, if you’ve got a theme
in mind.  It will center you and keep you
focused and help you to populate your map. 
You’ve got a big empty map with a lot to describe, and it’s hard to know
what to do with it.  In this map, I
decided that I would have the Grand Canyon – but with Sphinxes.  From there I came up with the Muses idea, and
settled on 4 of the 9 to use for my purposes. 
I decided that each of the sphinxes would be the incarnation of one of
the classical muses and that they’d be in service to a local divinity (Jupiter
Indiges) who would be the ultimate goal of the players.  Now- getting them to believe that is
important, and you have to have that angle. 

I like using Hexographer to create maps.  I like the old-school hexmaps because they imply danger and adventure - to me at least

This adventure – or ‘Module’ comes second out of what will
probably be 6-7 modules.  In the first – which
was the first Act, the players became acquainted with one another, the setting
and the expectations, and at the last moment they were confronted by the
villain of the story.  Because I decided
to pull out any stops and be a complete madman – I determined that the main
enemy would be Death itself – when it appeared it did so singing a crazy song
about death in a prog-rock falsetto – which I unashamedly replicated at the
table.  Afterwards they had to run away
and escape using the strange city of the undersea dwarfs that was built onto
the back of a colossal hermit crab that was later injured and finally died
after fighting an ancient mecha (or Dragon if you prefer).  If that sounds preposterous, then you’re not
understanding the role of the dungeon master. 
If that sounds like a game you’d like to learn more about – then you’re
getting it. 

So they’ve ended up stranded in unknown lands with the gross
carcass of a colossal hermit crab under them and a bunch of Dwarfs who speak in
Appalachian accents (I channel my grandparents for this, my Tennessee
grandparents – Dwarfs are mountain people and I…  don’t care about Scotland).  Now the players have to find some direction
in life.  It’s up to you to set a scene –
somehow make the image of the Grand Canyon (but with Sphinxes!)
compelling.  You have to introduce these
things slowly, give them a reason to abandon the stinking hermit-crab city,
maybe a few bits of material, some food and water to go on, the whole
thing.  You have to prod a little so they
don’t want to stay in one place or leave or do nothing.  The provocation here is that they may learn a
thing or two about beating their ultimate adversary – in this case Death, so I’ll
paint that picture-  there are wise
seeming monks, who mention that they’re mast has great wisdom over many matters
and certainly has overcome Death (immortal sphinxes) and so the players will
have a reason to be interested in them. 
Now you have to think about what’s between where they are and where they
want to be.  This is where you can really
shine if you’re good at improvising. 
First – look at your map.  Think
of the different terrains, the different scenes and vistas, think of some
phrases and descriptors you’d use as shorthand to describe them.  The Wine Dark Sea, The Endless Waves of Grain
– something evocative that as you repeat it, gets cornier and cornier – until it
becomes canonical.   Again – you have to
avoid shame here.  Don’t hesitate to come
up with something crazy, the craziest thing you can imagine, and then really
push it in, repeat it over and over – make it like a mantra.  The Wine Dark Sea is pretty, but I doubt that
people thought so the first few dozen times they heard it.  I bet there were jokes about white vs. red
and so on.  But now?  Literary canon.  Just… 
well don’t be shy, just try, hard. 

I imagine a Venom Oasis to be like a desert mirage- but real - but also - made of poison, like that episode of Star Trek.

Once you’ve got the evocative scene set you’ll have to
populate it.  Because it’s gaming, you’ll
want to do this interactively by making the players roll dice.  Look at the map and see all the terrain
features.  Now, look at the table – you have
to create some kind of encounter-  some
kind of scene for each of the features, and then you have to consider what kind
of nonsense you want to happen in those areas. 
I use a percentile table-  which
is a 1-100 roll created by rolling two ten-sided dice.  At the top of the chart you can see the rate
at which an encounter will occur.  3/8
means – that 3 out of 8 times an encounter will happen – generated by rolling
the percentile dice.  You can accelerate
this if you want  - say that every
hexagon that the players move through increases the chances so that, if they
walk through 8 consecutive hexes of the same type, well, they’re due an
encounter. 

Carpmen are probably goinng to be awful, I wonder what they'll sound like - I can tell you that Wastelanders have spoken in an Austrian accent and were uncannily fond of cuddling.

Pacing is the hardest thing to really master.  If you’re autistic.  Usually, if you’ve got some empathy you can
see when players are getting bored, getting tired, losing interest  - you have to make things happen when you
start to see this, and having the tables at hand will help you.  My preference is to keep the players wary of
encounters but eager for new revelations – so I like to hang out there that
there is secret knowledge that is available (you too can beat Death and live
forever) while putting obstacles in the way. 
If it seems that the players don’t have an interest in the reward,
change it up – offer treasures, different secrets, true love, whatever – figure
out what gets to them and offer it, and then – put it at the end of a long road
full of whatever the hell you can imagine.

You can see – if you follow the charts here, that I’ve come
up with a region full of apes-  gorillas
and sasquatches and yetis are all over the place -  I imagine there will be ocassional encounters
with them  that will place them in the
geography – the geography will react to the rolls made and the map will be
populated.  If the players roll well and
are lucky – they might wander the whole map and find it empty, if they roll
poorly – they might discover a map full of Gorilla cities and giant housecat
prides all furiously hunting for human flesh. 
But in either case I’m prepared to improvise and establish memorable
scenes – I’m eager for my players to get away with crazy nonsense, to survive
and fight and win – just as I’m eager to kill them by vigorous application of
Tarantula-Dragons. 

I’m not even sure what Tarantula-Dragons are, but I’m sure
they’re horrible beyond description.  I
bet they pop up from a trapdoor and spit webs and have a dozen furry legs and
eyes.  Furry eyes.  Maybe the players will befriend the sasquatch
warriors, will engage the services of the Gorilla-knight army.  Maybe they’ll tame the giant snakes with hard
stares and hearts tempered with love – I’m ready for anything they chose to
do.  And I’m ready to note the map,
populate the world according to their choices and set up the real, true
encounters for when they arrive at those points on the map that are labeled –
about which – more next time.