Sometimes, he does. More often, however, the DM is invested in the story being played out in the game world, and he doesn't want to see it all end on the pointy bits of angry monsters. If the DM's critters eat all the players then the story often ends, and that means no one is playing anymore.

DMing is a bit of a tricky job as you're trying to maintain a balance between challenge and reward. You need to maintain the challenge so the players feel like their characters are in danger, but there would be no point in playing if the DM simply stated that a giant thumb comes from the sky and squashes all the players to death (and if your DM ever does that, and he isn't joking, try to find a new game).

This may be a difficult concept to grasp, but even though the DM runs the monsters and villains in the game world, he isn't "against" the other players. He isn't "for" or "against" anyone, in fact. He's just running characters and creatures who are for themselves. He's for having fun.

As a DM, I really enjoy running all kinds of different creatures and characters, inside and out of combat situations, and I try to run them how they would act and react if they were real.

When designing encounters I keep the challenge level reasonably high (IMO), as I feel that PCs will have more fun overcoming more difficult challenges. This also means greater rewards when the players succeed. But there's no benefit to me in simply killing off all of the PCs with impossible odds.

Not-so-secretly, I want my players to succeed so I can see where they take the story and world I've crafted for them. There is the randomness of the dice, however, and even when those polyhedrons aren't sabotaging an encounter it's difficult to plan for when the players do things that I didn't prepare for. Easy encounters sometimes become very hard, and harder ones are occasionally pushovers for canny PCs. Sometimes, too, your players might do something stupid, and it could even be your job as DM to bail them out (in these cases I seldom feel the need, however, but that's just my DMing style).

The point is that even the DM is "playing" D&D, just like the other people at his table, and if he's having fun he probably doesn't want the game to end.

Last updated on October 20, 2008 by RPG Ike