Tell Us A Story! Co-Creation & the DM Pressure Cooker

N.B.: while writing this article I realized that it really is a hard prerequisite to read my article on the Accessibility of 5th Edition D&D prior to reading this one. So, you know, if you haven't, either hop to it or continue at the peril of your own sanity.

The first post I wrote on this blog was a long-winded rant about how Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, while an incredible asset to the growth of the hobby of Pen and Paper, also acts as a barrier to players leaving its confines and exploring other systems in the space. In that article, I mentioned briefly that a side-effect of its segmentation of initial need for system understanding between the Dungeon Master (DM) and the Player leads to some unhealthy effects for both parties in this relationship.

Today, I want to talk about exactly this — how the implicit imbalance of expectations the system has on its players creates an experience that puts the weight of making the game run smoothly, and often at all, in the sole hands of the Dungeon Master.

Let's begin by setting a bit of basic abstraction. There are four fundamental ways a story at a roleplaying table can be told. In rough order of how much freedom they provide the players, these are:

• 'Flowcharted' DM-less: the storyline and in-universe events are given explicitly by the text or source, and the players interact along a series of clearly-marked paths, with the text providing the outcomes of their actions. This is found in board games more than 'true' RPGs.
• Theme Park: the DM provides the entirety of the world, events, NPCs, and storyline. The players interact with this world, but they have limited ability to act outside the box, because the box needs only expands as far as the DM's mind or preparation can.
• Co-Creative, Open World: the DM and the players collaboratively create the world as well as the events that happen inside it, with an open discussion about what is reasonable for the player characters and NPCs to do and what exists in the world.
• Player-Created Sandbox: the DM (if at all present) only acts as a rules facilitator, decision arbitrator and possibly NPC stand-in actor, while the players create all elements of the story.

There's caveats to these, and most tables will float in between most of these modes within a session or a campaign, but in general, every system and roleplaying group will tend towards one comfort zone as their "primary" home. You can like both fanta and sprite, after all, but we all know you're just going to go back to coke eventually. So, for the sake of simplicity, let's go off of the simplification that a given table lives only in its preferred mode.

Generally speaking, the further down that hierarchy of modes you go, the more player creativity is needed, while the higher up you go, the more the DM needs to carry that load. This makes sense - a world needs to be created and the world rules (in contrast to the system rules, but that's another article again) need to be built and enforced. Moving up or down the scale, you're just shifting where that's done.

There's a small exception here - in the Flowchart mode, this work is usually 'outsourced' to an external party. One person writes the Choose Your Own Adventure flowchart and then infinite groups can reuse it, often for financial recompense. Also of note, many Adventure Paths or Modules for D&D-like games are written like Flowchart adventures, and many DMs run them like this too -following precisely what it says on the page and giving players mechanical rather than organic world reactions to their actions. Personally, I find that to be unengaging; even if you run a preset module, which is completely legitimate, I think you're only really playing if you inject your own interpretation and creativity into it.

So, let's call this concept of "Work to build the world" the Creation Load - creation in distinction to creative, because purely player character driving is still a creative process, but the continuous building out of the world around the PCs is a continuous process of creation. What do you need to successfully carry Creation Load? That depends entirely on the system, of course, but in a model fantasy setting, you need:

1. A functional understanding of the setting and any existing worldbuilding.
2. A functional understanding of the complete rules of the system and what it allows.
3. A healthy, individual balance of preparation and improvisation.

Notice functional is a vague word. We'll get into that. Let's compare this to what you need to exclusively build and drive a player character if you carry none of the Creation Load for the world:

1. A mental picture of the kind of character you want to play.
2. Some idea of where that character fits into the existing setting.
3. A functional idea of the mechanics of the character up to the level you're at.

The scope is significantly less, you can already see. Add on top of this, the DM should have some level of this understanding, or the ability to model and improvise it, for every halfway important out character that they introduce to the game. But we knew this - DMing is a more demanding job than playing, and in almost every scenario, there's no avoiding this. We DM not because it's easy, but because the work is fulfilling and we love deep-diving these kinds of things.

But what you can also see is that shifting up and down the hierarchy from Sandbox to Theme Park redistributes the amount of work done across the table, with the Theme Park keeping the distribution exactly as it's described above, and the Sandbox moving many of the requirements to the players.

I know, this is vastly oversimplifying things, but trust me, we need to abstract this so that I can make my point. Or maybe it's just the ADHD talking. I guess you'll find out.

Anyway, it's time to talk about the definition of functional. See, this is the part of this that changes based on which system and setting you're playing in. If the system has no preset world, like Fiasco, functional means simply: I understand its vibe. Conversely, if you're working into something like Warhammer 40k and you want to stay orthodox (ha), functional can mean having to read and understand anywhere up to 338 books as of current counting.

The same applies for rules. If the system is rules-heavy, like Blades in the Dark or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, you need to read many, many more pages in order to fulfil the definition of functional. Otherwise, if it's very light, like Lasers and Feelings or Belly of the Beast, the definition of functional is I read 3 pages between meetings, we can probably just rule it on the fly.

This last thought is effectively called Rule 0; the players can override the rules of the system for their own enjoyment. I like the Magic the Gathering version more than its source in Dungeons and Dragons because it shifts the responsibility onto the entire table, not just onto the DM. The more rules-light the system is, the less copious use of Rule 0 breaks the internal consistency of its mechanics, because the design is more flexible out of the box.

So, we understand so far that the more players co-create the world, the more evenly distributed the Creation Load is across the table, but the more Creation Load the players need or want to carry, the more they need to understand the mechanics of the system and the world. We also understand that the Creation Load gets heavier as the world gets more established and the system more rules-heavy.

Let's look back at that uncomfortable corner that 5th Edition has been cowering and hissing in. In That Old Article I mentioned that 5th Edition is rules-heavy, but setting-agnostic. I want to point out that that doesn't mean it's settingless. 5th Edition inherits a vast, rich expanse of settings, the most prominent of which is the Forgotten Realms, home of Astarion the Divisive Vampire Twink and That Dark Urge Drow You Deny Having Played in Baldur's Gate 3. Many of its modules are written into this setting, which has, literally, half a real life century and millennia of in-game history to build on. 5th Edition also has no robust ruleset for generating settings on the fly, and expects you to come prepared with one.

So, while 5th Edition is setting agnostic in its design, it is setting heavy in practice. This means that the Creation Load is, under our framework, very heavy for running a 5th Edition Table.

Remember also what I mentioned in that original article that the 5th Edition Rulebooks do little to no priming of the players to co-create the world with the DM, instead continuously prompting them to rely on the DM to give them any framing or scoping, in what I think is an effort to improve the system's Onboarding Flow. This does two things:

1. It makes players believe that it's not their job to co-create the world, so they begin thinking that asking the DM to add things that they think is cool is somehow dirty, cheating or "being that guy," if they even get to the point where they think it's possible. Even I still have this afterthought, having DMed myself for years and personally loving when players want to add their own stuff to my games.
2. It sets up the expectation that "whatever the questions I have, I just need to ask my DM and they'll tell me." And most DMs - me included - reinforce this out of goodwill long enough that it becomes a given that the DM is the sole source of rules and game systems, and there's no need to read the book. (My table: if you're reading this, I still love you, but I'd love you more if you actually opened the rules PDFs I send you <3)

The second point is something we haven't really touched upon in depth, but what this basically means is that for your games to run smoothly and quickly past the first tutorial sessions, that means that the DM needs to be able to quickly and on-the-fly answer any rules questions or the game grinds to a halt while they look up the rulings.

So where are we at? 5th Edition has a high Creation Load for games run inside it, because of its heavy rules and its heavy setting reliance. It also pushes players actively away from both world creation and rules understanding by actively reminding them at every turn that the DM's got all the answers to their questions. And because it pushes players away from reading the rules in depth and doesn't provide an easy way of summarizing them, it raises the floor for the definition of "functional" when it comes to rules understanding.

We're not done.

We've been ignoring the good old Flowchart. Our saving grace in this scenario, where we can rely as DMs on a clear-cut set of rules for us to be able to read off of like a call center agent when we've exhausted our reserves of energy. That's because the popular expectation of D&D is, for good reason, that it's more of a sandbox game. Players and DMs alike come into it thinking they get completely free choice, so the idea of running a Flowchart game until they get their footing in running and playing the game is completely out of the question.

Instead, what 5th Edition games end up being is some kind of Decision-Tree Multiverse Simulation. The DM prepares for 5 eventualities where the players go, the players go to a 6th eventuality, and we repeat all of this. Or the DM tries to railroad in an attempt to regain control and go back to what they prepared for, if they're the kind whose comfort zone lies closer to the prep than the improv side of it.

Making this problem even worse is that a large portion of 5th Edition's newfound audience comes from people who watch Live-Plays like Critical Role or Dimension 20, tables that are run by extraordinarily experienced DMs that are top of their class in both preparation and improvisation. And while this doesn't mean every player comes into it expecting their DM to be some kind of local clone of Matthew Mercer, it does mean that some players come into it with this thought, and I would hazard (as was in my case) that it especially means that many new DMs come into it expecting themselves to have to perform to this standard to be considered a Good DM.

Let me interrupt the scheduled broadcast for a moment, because this is important: this is not true. All you need to be a good DM is to run the game and to have your players have fun at the table. How, what, where, why and to what extent does not matter. All roleplay is good roleplay as long as the table is enjoying it.

Now, back to the point. Here's where we've come to thus far:

1. 5th Edition is a High Creation Load system.
2. The 5th Edition Rulebooks actively push players away from fulfilling the requirements for sharing the Creation Load and from thinking they should.
3. 5th Edition is sold to many people as a Sandbox system.
4. 5th Edition is sold to many people in a way that sets very high expectations for the "production value" of the game by contact with professional roleplayers.

And all of this sits on the shoulders of the poor guy who just wanted to buy some goblin miniatures and have his players roll through a cave and bash their brains in. Seemingly, by design, if the rulebooks are anything to go by. All in the name of growing the Dungeons and Dragons Brand by making the onboarding funnel easier.

Ask a few people who picked up DMing during the Reign of Fifth Edition, and I guarantee you you'll get a lot of reactions about the Pressure and the Weight of the responsibility. Ask people who picked it up back in the Olden Days of ADND and I'd bet you'll get a very different reaction.

So what do we do about this?

Well, for one, players, read the damn manuals and world primers. That by itself will go a long way towards making your entire table's experience much better.

Second, don't be afraid to come up with plot points and world building tid bits yourselves and give them to your DM.

Third, let your DM know what you want to do in the world in the next few sessions so their prep is easier.

Fourth - keep telling them how much fun you had at every session. Don't lie, but focus on the good things. You're not a bunch of nerdy voice actors who get together to play D&D, you're just some people who play D&D. Unless you are a bunch of nerdy voice actors, in which case, I would really love some free merch and maybe some con VIP passes - DMs are open!

But honestly? I'm not the biggest fan of treating the symptoms over the causes. If this is a problem at your table, just change systems. Any of the ones I mentioned above work really well. So does Daggerheart, which Matthew Mercer of Critical Role co-created, I would guess, out of these very same considerations.

Christ, this is starting to sound like some kind of sponsored content. I promise I just really like this system and I'm not financially compromised. Though, again, Marisha & co, if you guys are reading this, I'm very open to having this change. Hit me up.

I think I've made my point, in any case. I'm going to cut off the rambling part of my brain here, at a smooth nearly-three-thousand words.

People, enjoy the systems you enjoy. But if you're a player reading this and notice your DM struggling, I hope this article helps making their life easier. And if you're a 5E DM reading this, you're not alone - it's not an easy system to DM into.

Above all, though, just be good to each other. This hobby should be a de-stress mechanism, not a stress creation mechanism, and we do it to be closer to people in ways that we can't in our own skins. It shouldn't hurt anyone to play it. Only you can make that the case, together.