What the DM Isn't

The DM's job differs for each campaign and gaming group. That guy behind the screen may run a hack 'n slasher or a diceless, deep-immersion drama, but I'm sure we can all agree that his top priority is smiling faces by session's end.

So, great; we're all geniuses for realizing that. Why, then, are so many DMs bad at the craft? Not just inexperienced, or "improvement-needed," but simply poor. I spent years as a bad DM, and I think I know the reason. I thought it was my job to make everything very hard for the PCs.

That is not your job as the DM. You might be there to tell a story. You might be there to run wicked monsters. You're probably there to keep your players guessing by providing them with challenges that they can overcome, or challenges that they should run away from (but if that's the case, let them get away). You are not there to be antagonistic, which may seem like a contradiction considering that you do indeed run antagonists in the game world. Let me provide some examples to illustrate my point.

The players want to buy some mundane goods at the store. Unless there's a compelling reason the goods are unavailable, let them buy the goods. Not being able to buy mundane crap at the corner store is not fun.

The players want to buy superior-quality items at the corner store, but you know that the corner store doesn't have them. Explain that. Enable the players to earn those superior items by providing an adventure hook. Link it into an adventure site you had planned for anyway to save yourself time and effort. Don't just say no. Missing out on cool items is not fun.

Please don't feel the need to teach your players any artificial lessons with dragons polymorphed into bunnies, or kobolds bedecked with epic-level magic items. Unless, of course, you're meaning to teach them that bunnies and kobolds are powerful and should be feared, or that dragons have nothing better to do with their time than fiddle around with 'nubs'. Artifical lessons are not fun, and they seldom stick (as your players will not if you adhere to the me versus them attitude that was prevalent in my thought processes for the first years of my DMing career).

Say yes. Enable. Make the game as fun as you can, and remember that a TPK is generally a success for no one.

Comments

[Jason]

Good point Ike!
Managing encounter and campaign difficulty is always a difficult task. You need to strike that balance between feasibility and fun. I think a lot of the time "difficulty creep" is caused by a DM thinking that an encounter was too easy or didn't have the impact it should have and then compensating by making other tasks harder. It's usually not a conscious decision for me, but in reviewing the events of a session I have to ask myself: "Did it *really* need to be so time consuming to decypher that book?" Or "Did the police *really* need to grill the PC's so hard or pursue them as vehemently as they did?" All of these decisions are made in the context of striking a campaign appropriate balance between "fun" and "feasibility".