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Dear Dungeon Masters, No Your Party Didn't Ruin Your Campaign

A message from an ex railroader

By C.E. TidswellPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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Hi, I’m C.E. Tidswell and I have a confession to make. When I first started running a dungeons and dragons group as a dungeon master I was a terrible rail roader. Well, I tried to be. Although I did manage to force my party to the ‘correct’ locations, I did ultimately lose control over them, but that is a different story.

The truth is that when I set up my first homebrew campaign for my flatmates and neighbours, I became overly attached to the idea of the perfect story. Maybe it was the writer in me, maybe it was the joy I felt from hearing stories of other campaigns, like the podcast The Adventure Zone or those recounted in the YouTube series Counter Monkey. Whatever it was, my image of the campaign, filled with many twists and turns, was fixed, and there was no way any pesky player was going to take the plot off course. After all, surely my insistence on them sticking to a narrow path would be worth it, right?

My first dungeons and dragons campaign was not good. In fact, it was pretty awful. I barely knew the rules, I couldn’t improvise realistically to save my life, and my precious story, the one I sacrificed pretty much everything else for, ended up being flimsy at best. Worst of all was the fact that we were barely even playing. I was telling a story where I occasionally let the listeners solve a puzzle or engage in some combat. No wonder combat so often became chaotic. The best memories I have of the campaign are of the times I essentially lost all power over the party and let them run feral. I’m not entirely sure my party remember this failed attempt at all.

My story is not uncommon, though maybe some dungeon masters are better at hiding it than I was. Ah, the temptation to become a rail roader. To defend your idea of how the campaign should unfold above all else. It’s why, even among the DMs who can adjust to their party’s antics, you’ll hear the complaint “my players completely ruined my campaign”.

Listen, if you want to tell a story that won’t be interfered with, write a book. You’ll have complete control and you’ll probably be much happier. But if you truly love d&d and want to stick with it, you’ve got to come to terms with this simple fact, you’re playing an interactive game. Your players are here to forge their own adventure by your side. They’re not eager listeners and they’re certainly not actors. They’re not interested in following your script.

Now, this isn’t to say you should let your players run riot or walk all over you. This game is supposed to be fun for you too, of course. Set your boundaries in a respectful session zero and reign them in when you need to. No is not a dirty word. Still, the best games are the ones that can adjust to their players actions and build the game’s events with them, not over them.

As for my dungeon master adventures, I was miraculously given a second chance. I had moved by this point, so the neighbours and one of my old flatmates didn’t join, but the two party members I’d moved with, along with two people they knew, joined for another multi-session campaign (which now included a slightly firmer, though not entirely solid understanding of the rules). Once again, I had a pretty clear idea of the story I wanted to tell, a mystery where a group of students from a magical university go looking for their kidnapped classmate and uncover a long hidden conspiracy along the way. As you might expect, it didn’t take long for my party to go against my plan. They despised NPCs they were supposed to ally with, they quickly lost interest in their missing classmate (citing that they didn’t know him well anyway, which looking back was fair enough), and for a while found themselves in league with the BBEG. Things were nothing like I imagined.

This time, however, I didn’t buck against them. When they wanted to explore new areas, I made them. If they wanted to antagonise certain NPCs, I let them (though not entirely without consequences). At one point, I even found myself coming up with a legal system on the fly, as a player insisted on attempting to sue a particularly rude NPC.

In the end, my campaign was far from perfect. It was still chaotic, and many NPCs had shaky at best characterisation (though in my defence, most of them didn’t exist until mere seconds before their debut). But ultimately, I had much more fun with this campaign than my first, and my players seemed into it as well. I still remember the favourite compliment I ever got after a session.

“Wow, we got so into this one that we forgot to eat the snacks.”

So, to all the DMs out there who find themselves tempted to railroad, it’s time to let go of your perfect campaign. You’ll have way more fun if you let yourself go with the flow of your party. And if you’ve already fallen into the trap of becoming the railroading DM, it’s not too late to roll saving throws.

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About the Creator

C.E. Tidswell

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