Have you ever heard someone talk about a past gaming session and say “that was an awesome monologue the DM gave about his character in dnd”?

Um, neither have I.

I have already written an article about spicing up the initial session. Today I’m talking about the rest of the sessions.

As a player there are several things I don’t really remember very well, or that I remember as bad things.

* Monologues
* Pointless Puzzles
* Minions
* Room Descriptions
* Other player’s characters (most of them anyway).
* Names of useless NPC’s
* Things my character didn’t do.

Today I’m dealing with that time during the session where you want to share your new creative writing attempt with the party.  You’ve spent weeks (months? years? decades?) developing your cool campaign. You eschew all pre-made material. You have a child born of your thought and you finally have a chance to deliver it.

And all those stupid players can think about is phat lootz.

One of the hard parts about being a DM is that most of what you do nobody will ever see, hear, or care about. So try not to get frustrated when nobody wants to hear you tell a story.

The players aren’t there to hear a story. They are there to DO things. To act and be acted upon. The memorable moments come when they get to kill a particularly nasty foe or make a daring escape. When the party is being stalked through a dark forest and they manage to lure the enemy out and finally crush it, that is memorable. Hearing the DM’s history of that haunted forest and how it was once controlled by an irrelevant long dead noble who now has nothing to do with the campaign is not usually as much fun.

As a player I really don’t care, not unless it really does have to do with the campaign. If that noble is now a lich controlling a cabal of evil druids then yes, I want to know. However, I think I would rather find out in a meaningful way. A scrap of a history book rescued from a fire and handed to me as a nifty handout, or a bit of poem recited once.

If the players want more, they will ask for it. If they don’t ask, they probably don’t feel it is relevant, and that should be a pretty big hint about how you as a DM are doing. If they aren’t interested in what you think they should be interested in, then may it isn’t interesting after all.

Try shifting gears a bit. Don’t be afraid to sit quietly and let them decide where they want to go and drop the relevant hints along the way.

Above all, enjoy yourself!

Welcome back to Dungeons and Dragons Corner.

You can find Character Sheets Here.

Feel free to make a Paypal Donation to support Dungeons and Dragons Corner!

Did you like this post? Want More? Then subscribe to my RSS feed!