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https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/dec/13/first-time-as-a-d-and-d-dungeon-master-dungeons-and-dragons>
"Four bedraggled adventurers stand together on the shore of a desolate island,
shivering in the evening mist. They don’t know each other, and their motives
for being here are unclear. But as they make stilted conversation they see,
emerging from the briny waters, figures dressed in the rags of sailor outfits,
moaning and shuffling and horrible. The adventurers stand around, roll some
dice and chat some more, as the undead seamen lurch ever closer. Looking on at
this desperate scene, I think to myself, “What the hell? Why can’t anyone make
a decision? We’ve been here for half an hour! We’ve not even begun the proper
adventure yet!”
Dungeons and Dragons has always been there in the background of my life. When I
was a kid in the late 70s, my dad’s best friend got into it; he’d show me the
rule books and dice and tried to explain to me that this was a game about
imagination, about pretending to be elves and wizards and warriors on a
completely made up adventure. In the 1980s, as I got into video games, we saw
the first fantasy adventures based around D&D lore – games with lots of stats
on screen, and monsters inspired by Lord of the Rings. Then finally in the 90s
I played with a group of friends at university. We huddled in cold rooms with
rulebooks, character sheets and cheap supermarket cider and quested into the
night. But I was never the Dungeon Master.
For those who’ve never played, the Dungeon Master is basically a storyteller,
an umpire and a game designer rolled into one; they’re the person who invents
the quest that players experience. Rulebooks and world-building encyclopedias
give you the outline of a story, and an adventure book tells you what possible
enemies and treasures players will discover, but that’s it: everything else is
down to the DM. Exploration and combat are dictated by dice rolls and character
abilities, but it’s flexible – even though I hadn’t designed this adventure, I
felt I could be creative. It’s a form of collaborative story-making, and
because players can do what they want within the rule set and limits of their
characters, it is highly unpredictable.
Now my sons Zac and Albie are really into D&D and for Zac’s 17th birthday last
week, I promised to finally DM a game. I was definitely not prepared."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
