My DM Made Me Scroll Substack
When players feel like passengers, they stop playing.
I, Professor Dick (as my co-adventurers now call me… hmmph), go on adventures every other Saturday.
A few days ago, in the most recent session, a kraken splintered our ship, and we few who survived were thrown into the sea.
We awoke some time later on an island beach. Sir Tinly Smallwong, paladin and the group's foremost scholar of pop culture, immediately noted our dire situation: "Damn. No Brooke Shields."
The beach was hemmed in by towering rock cliffs farther up and down the shore. To our back was ocean, and in front of us was jungle.
A fair way beyond the jungle tree line, we could see the top of some sort of structure. So into the trees we went. I mean, it’s not like we had a choice; there was nowhere else to go.
Our group soon arrived at the structure we saw from the beach. It was a large dome with one entrance.
The interior was utterly bare save for three features:
Within the translucent stone flooring, a network of veins pulsed with bright colors.
In the center of the room, a large pool of inky black liquid shimmered beneath an orrery, which hovered above the pool.
Beyond the pool stood what looked like an altar, covered in rows of strange glyphs.
Learned scholar and wizard that I am, I eventually learned (1) the altar functioned as a control panel for the orrery and (2) the entire building served as a portal to — and more important to us as low-level adventurers, from — other planes of existence. Each button worked in concert with other buttons to access the assorted realms.
Now, we may only be Level 2 adventurers, but we are not entirely stupid. Well, okay, a couple are pretty stupid, but that's not important.
Anyway, on the whole, we're not a stupid lot, and we decided against pushing button combinations willy-nilly. We made a note and decided we'd return once we learned more about the area.
But, no...
The jungle beyond the structure was too dense to navigate. We were stuck. So, naturally, we did the only thing left to do: went back inside and started pressing buttons willy-nilly.
What happened? We glimpsed a dozen or so of what we later learned are hundreds of possible locations.
And that’s where Professor Crackfang’s memory ends… because that’s where I, the player, checked out and started scrolling Substack Notes on my phone.
The game kept going. I’d roll when I heard the DM say “perception check.” But I wasn’t really playing anymore. We weren’t choosing where to go, just watching where we got sent.
I told you all of that just to say this:
If you force-feed players your story, don’t be surprised if they stop caring.
When you design an adventure, yes, you want to know the broad current situation. And, yes, you want to know the looming urgent threat. And, yes, you want to create opportunities for the party to jump into that circumstance and perhaps save the day.
But how, when, and why the party enters the story has to be their choice — or at least, they need to believe it was.
If players feel like mere passengers in your story, they’ll check out. Give them real choices, or they’ll start scrolling their phones.
Remember, D&D is about creating a collaborative story. D&D isn’t about you telling your story and letting the players tag along. And it’s not about the players acting out their story while you just run the NPCs. It’s about everyone at the table creating a story together.
Until next time, stay on the right side of the dirt.