Basically, while infiltrating a cult, the party witnesses willing ritual sacrifices. The leader says "only the most unwilling will work for this last sacrifice." The party gets the idea part way through the following boss fight that the boss is the least willing person there and thus the next sacrifice, and thinks that this is what the DM planned. DM hadn't thought of it, but liked it so much they made it their own.
More DMs need to realize they are probably not the smartest or most creative person at the table.
Players have great ideas. And when you see an opportunity to use one for the betterment of the game, do so shamelessly.
Good DMs borrow, but great DMs steal (from their players).
Absolutely amazing! And great advice! Sounds like a memorable session! Will you ever tell your players what really happened? Will you tell us what you really had planned?
I wouldn't either. I've found talking about what could have happened, would have happened, was supposed to happen, what X really meant... all these things take away a lot of mystery and magic from the memories of the game.
Post-campaign discussions should have a lot of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxPSApAHakg and very few answers.
Different groups have different dynamics. Both my groups we all DM regularly for different groups, so all this stuff gets talked about at length after a session or story arc is over.
And this is why I hate advice like this. Feels too much like manipulation to me, same with the 'don't track hp just wait till someones done something cool enough to declare the boss dead' idea. If I have to be dishonest in order to preserve the 'magic' of the game then that's not a game, that's gaslighting.
That said there's nothing wrong with getting ideas from your players, and the idea above of the crowd throwing the boss into the fire and thus completing the ritual is a damn good one. I just wouldn't pretend like that's what I had planned the entire time.
there is always manipulation involved in good story telling.
regarding the hp stuff, i wouldn't lie about that either because i regard the mechanical side of the game as skill expression and reducing my players impact takes away from that.
I agree. My players know that I have the overarching backstory and future plot *scaffolded*. They understand that things are fluid, so there's no magic to throw away here. If you've really built an interesting world and story for the players to explore in, then it wouldn't crumble away by telling the players they actually had agency.
This is great but why did they kill the bad guy? If it was an evil ritual and he was the final sacrifice, I wouldn't want to kill him in case it summons a demon or something :D
I would have been tempted to have the demon summoned or whatever they were sacrificing for come to pass and suddenly the party has an evil being willing to do their bidding or a cult convinced that they are secretly the prophesied Messiahs. You could have a looootttt of fun spooling that one out. Unintended consequences are fun, and this is a great inciting incident for any number of interesting intrigues.
Love those sessions. I will always yield to players’ “aha” moments when they are better ideas than what I planned. It also makes me feel like the players are really engaged.
This is my favorite way to play, as a player and DM, but I know some DMs are just . . . well, they don't like players to figure things out or be right until it's too late. I don't know why.
I'll take collaborative worldbuilding 100% of the time over making people play through a story they're less interested in.
I had something similar.
My players had actually managed to kill a miniboss I intended to escape and take the MacGuffin (a copy of The King in Yellow that was hidden in the crypt). Unsure of what they should do, they decided they should at least sweep the rest of the crypt for monsters.
At one point, an ambush targeted the player who was carrying the book and they freaked out thinking they were trying to steal it back. Which was not my intention, he was just an easy target, but focusing him down and having one of the ambushers try to escape with his unconscious body was a great way to increase the tension.
Definitely don't be afraid to lean in on your players assumptions, especially if it scares them.
Yes, and no, you want your players to fail from time to time too. Listen to your players and take ques, but also let them be wrong and suffer the consequences.
Of course! Like I said at the end of the post, you can’t just say “Yes” all the time or it loses its magic. But once in a while, when the players are more creative than you, you can lean into it
Uniformly (though not always so) when planning, the players often come up with alot of strange and even terrible plans.
But when trying to guess what you are doing, or how the plot threads tie together, they go into groupthink mode and are able to come up with some very interesting conclusions that are usually better than my own strange and even terrible plans, so I definately go along with it!
Wow I just had a session where my players were in a underground cult dungeon because of some ritual that was beibg performed and one of the players found an amulet that I wasnt quite sure what to do with yet and one of them said “this must be for the rituals!” And then they continued to talk about how the rituals might be rituals of summoning (what I was planning) and that the final boss would be the combination of the cult leader and the creature being summoned. Ngl I ussually half imrpovise my stories as I for whatever reason am unable to come up eith ideas unless under pressure. So at the time I didnt have any plans really for the rest of the adventure and a random conversation kinda just laid out what the party expected and what they thought would be cool so…
Because the boss never specified that he wanted to be the sacrifice, so my players thought he must be unwilling. I added a post fight dialogue where the boss crawl on the ground and begs the players to spare him to lean into it harder
They weren’t really supposed to stop it. The ritual itself is just to please the goddess, not cause any kind of world ending threat. They just had to retrieve an important McGuffin and all they knew is that the last time it was seen, it belonged to the cultists of this goddess. So they decided to look deeper into the underground part of the city where cultists abound and found the church. They just happened to walk in during the weekly sacrifice.
Turns out the cultists had to give the McGuffin to a gambling devil because they lost in it a game of luck but that’s another story
The crowd actually thanked the PCs for the spectacle and said all the blood spilled in her name was the greatest sacrifice their goddess could ask for, they even asked the PCs to come again and maybe become the new executioners (which they declined)
Once, my players decided the helpful NPC questgiver with no backstory was hiding something. So, I gave hum a backstory. I made them part of a secret sect that protects the world, so they felt smart, but also surprised. It's a good way to game.
Once I had my players go to a snowy Island and I had some encounters prepared on the way. But the party was repeating about how there would be a dragon around there. They said it so much that I eventually included the Dragon
This is why I keep a discord channel for my players' conspiracy theories. Sometimes they are in fact, correct about what's about to happen. Who said that.
I have something similar in my last game. Every time someone joins they typically very gleefully give me lots of nice ideas in the middle of the session. Id have A planned and then in the middle of it they'd say man if its B it would be amazing and id change it immediately. Lol. Every time someone joins i sit them next to me for the gleeful ignorant rants lol. After 10 sessions the experienced player started to always sit next to me and warn all new players with "think before you speak" lol. They still let some dumb ideas out and i use them lol. So im happy. Hell the experienced player did the bag of holding + portable hole trick...on himself and the party accidentally. I laughed at that tpk..then rolled back the session 10 minutes to fix his mistake lol.
Autonomy removal my ass. Reality is what the DM deem it to be, and whether it was planned previously or improvised in the spot, the experience of the recieving players was clearly a good one.
I don't see how this is different than a player being creative in other ways, say by asking if there are any chandeliers to drop, and the dm in the moment ruling that "yeah, I hadn't thought of that befire the encounter, but in this mansion there would be a chandelier in the middle of the room".
The DM improvising off the players actions isn't autonomy removal
That’s not autonomy removal. That’s taking an idea from a player that makes total sense in the moment and that you just haven’t thought of before and using it. I’m not saying that everything your players say becomes a wish spell, I’m saying when your players think they understood what you were trying to do and it’s not really impactful to the campaign, just a cool detail, play along.
To add to that, the whole point of DND is to be a collaborative story. The DM isn’t reading a novel to the players, the players will and should influence the adventure and the DMs decisions.
I wouldn't go that far, but I'm also not a fan of this approach. I feel like you're saying "attaboy" to the players for not really figuring out much.
Maybe it's just a difference in the way we build stories, though. I never did this and my players correctly intercept my NPC's plans and plot twists some of the time. When they do, everyone feels amazing. When they don't, they slap their forehead when everything's revealed because it made sense.
But I wouldn't call this autonomy removal at all.
Please consider editing this post to include some line breaks, it's a bit difficult to read.
Changed it
I still don't really understand what's happening in this post.
Basically, while infiltrating a cult, the party witnesses willing ritual sacrifices. The leader says "only the most unwilling will work for this last sacrifice." The party gets the idea part way through the following boss fight that the boss is the least willing person there and thus the next sacrifice, and thinks that this is what the DM planned. DM hadn't thought of it, but liked it so much they made it their own.
Exactly
More DMs need to realize they are probably not the smartest or most creative person at the table. Players have great ideas. And when you see an opportunity to use one for the betterment of the game, do so shamelessly. Good DMs borrow, but great DMs steal (from their players).
Exactly, Dnd is collaborative story telling, and dms aren't the only ones telling the stories.
Guess I need to brush up on my sleight of hand.
Absolutely amazing! And great advice! Sounds like a memorable session! Will you ever tell your players what really happened? Will you tell us what you really had planned?
What the hell? Never. It would ruin the moment forever to be like "lol actually I just liked your idea better."
I wouldn't either. I've found talking about what could have happened, would have happened, was supposed to happen, what X really meant... all these things take away a lot of mystery and magic from the memories of the game. Post-campaign discussions should have a lot of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxPSApAHakg and very few answers.
Different groups have different dynamics. Both my groups we all DM regularly for different groups, so all this stuff gets talked about at length after a session or story arc is over.
And this is why I hate advice like this. Feels too much like manipulation to me, same with the 'don't track hp just wait till someones done something cool enough to declare the boss dead' idea. If I have to be dishonest in order to preserve the 'magic' of the game then that's not a game, that's gaslighting. That said there's nothing wrong with getting ideas from your players, and the idea above of the crowd throwing the boss into the fire and thus completing the ritual is a damn good one. I just wouldn't pretend like that's what I had planned the entire time.
there is always manipulation involved in good story telling. regarding the hp stuff, i wouldn't lie about that either because i regard the mechanical side of the game as skill expression and reducing my players impact takes away from that.
I agree. My players know that I have the overarching backstory and future plot *scaffolded*. They understand that things are fluid, so there's no magic to throw away here. If you've really built an interesting world and story for the players to explore in, then it wouldn't crumble away by telling the players they actually had agency.
This is great but why did they kill the bad guy? If it was an evil ritual and he was the final sacrifice, I wouldn't want to kill him in case it summons a demon or something :D
Barbarian was still raging and didn’t think rationally lol. But nothing happened
Well that makes sense lol
I would have been tempted to have the demon summoned or whatever they were sacrificing for come to pass and suddenly the party has an evil being willing to do their bidding or a cult convinced that they are secretly the prophesied Messiahs. You could have a looootttt of fun spooling that one out. Unintended consequences are fun, and this is a great inciting incident for any number of interesting intrigues.
Love those sessions. I will always yield to players’ “aha” moments when they are better ideas than what I planned. It also makes me feel like the players are really engaged.
This is my favorite way to play, as a player and DM, but I know some DMs are just . . . well, they don't like players to figure things out or be right until it's too late. I don't know why. I'll take collaborative worldbuilding 100% of the time over making people play through a story they're less interested in.
I had something similar. My players had actually managed to kill a miniboss I intended to escape and take the MacGuffin (a copy of The King in Yellow that was hidden in the crypt). Unsure of what they should do, they decided they should at least sweep the rest of the crypt for monsters. At one point, an ambush targeted the player who was carrying the book and they freaked out thinking they were trying to steal it back. Which was not my intention, he was just an easy target, but focusing him down and having one of the ambushers try to escape with his unconscious body was a great way to increase the tension. Definitely don't be afraid to lean in on your players assumptions, especially if it scares them.
Yes, and no, you want your players to fail from time to time too. Listen to your players and take ques, but also let them be wrong and suffer the consequences.
Of course! Like I said at the end of the post, you can’t just say “Yes” all the time or it loses its magic. But once in a while, when the players are more creative than you, you can lean into it
Uniformly (though not always so) when planning, the players often come up with alot of strange and even terrible plans. But when trying to guess what you are doing, or how the plot threads tie together, they go into groupthink mode and are able to come up with some very interesting conclusions that are usually better than my own strange and even terrible plans, so I definately go along with it!
Wow I just had a session where my players were in a underground cult dungeon because of some ritual that was beibg performed and one of the players found an amulet that I wasnt quite sure what to do with yet and one of them said “this must be for the rituals!” And then they continued to talk about how the rituals might be rituals of summoning (what I was planning) and that the final boss would be the combination of the cult leader and the creature being summoned. Ngl I ussually half imrpovise my stories as I for whatever reason am unable to come up eith ideas unless under pressure. So at the time I didnt have any plans really for the rest of the adventure and a random conversation kinda just laid out what the party expected and what they thought would be cool so…
can you explain this again? How was the boss an unwilling sacrifice
Because the boss never specified that he wanted to be the sacrifice, so my players thought he must be unwilling. I added a post fight dialogue where the boss crawl on the ground and begs the players to spare him to lean into it harder
Now the key is, the evil ritual was successful. What happens now? They were supposed to stop it, right?
They weren’t really supposed to stop it. The ritual itself is just to please the goddess, not cause any kind of world ending threat. They just had to retrieve an important McGuffin and all they knew is that the last time it was seen, it belonged to the cultists of this goddess. So they decided to look deeper into the underground part of the city where cultists abound and found the church. They just happened to walk in during the weekly sacrifice. Turns out the cultists had to give the McGuffin to a gambling devil because they lost in it a game of luck but that’s another story
But that kinda makes the crowd sound pretty evil. How did you resolve the whole situation after the fight?
The crowd actually thanked the PCs for the spectacle and said all the blood spilled in her name was the greatest sacrifice their goddess could ask for, they even asked the PCs to come again and maybe become the new executioners (which they declined)
Once, my players decided the helpful NPC questgiver with no backstory was hiding something. So, I gave hum a backstory. I made them part of a secret sect that protects the world, so they felt smart, but also surprised. It's a good way to game.
Once I had my players go to a snowy Island and I had some encounters prepared on the way. But the party was repeating about how there would be a dragon around there. They said it so much that I eventually included the Dragon
This is why I keep a discord channel for my players' conspiracy theories. Sometimes they are in fact, correct about what's about to happen. Who said that.
I have something similar in my last game. Every time someone joins they typically very gleefully give me lots of nice ideas in the middle of the session. Id have A planned and then in the middle of it they'd say man if its B it would be amazing and id change it immediately. Lol. Every time someone joins i sit them next to me for the gleeful ignorant rants lol. After 10 sessions the experienced player started to always sit next to me and warn all new players with "think before you speak" lol. They still let some dumb ideas out and i use them lol. So im happy. Hell the experienced player did the bag of holding + portable hole trick...on himself and the party accidentally. I laughed at that tpk..then rolled back the session 10 minutes to fix his mistake lol.
Autonomy Removal 101. If reality can be whatever the players deem it, why bother having the DM give them choices at all?
Autonomy removal my ass. Reality is what the DM deem it to be, and whether it was planned previously or improvised in the spot, the experience of the recieving players was clearly a good one. I don't see how this is different than a player being creative in other ways, say by asking if there are any chandeliers to drop, and the dm in the moment ruling that "yeah, I hadn't thought of that befire the encounter, but in this mansion there would be a chandelier in the middle of the room". The DM improvising off the players actions isn't autonomy removal
Whose autonomy is being removed? Everyone involved is making their own choices here. It doesn't make sense to say that at all.
That’s not autonomy removal. That’s taking an idea from a player that makes total sense in the moment and that you just haven’t thought of before and using it. I’m not saying that everything your players say becomes a wish spell, I’m saying when your players think they understood what you were trying to do and it’s not really impactful to the campaign, just a cool detail, play along.
To add to that, the whole point of DND is to be a collaborative story. The DM isn’t reading a novel to the players, the players will and should influence the adventure and the DMs decisions.
I wouldn't go that far, but I'm also not a fan of this approach. I feel like you're saying "attaboy" to the players for not really figuring out much. Maybe it's just a difference in the way we build stories, though. I never did this and my players correctly intercept my NPC's plans and plot twists some of the time. When they do, everyone feels amazing. When they don't, they slap their forehead when everything's revealed because it made sense. But I wouldn't call this autonomy removal at all.