So, in a recent post, I asked for more ideas for new "Takes". The response was good and there were a few ideas that really stood out to me. One of them was by my buddy Chris, who wanted me to touch on the idea of making a game FOR the players, making them feel like they're driving the game, instead of being in a story where it seems, for the players, that "any" hero could have been plugged into the spot and the adventure would have theoretically gone the same way.

I think this is a great idea so I'm going to tackle that right here, right now.

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A personal experience is one that really caters to the individual. You've got players, who are people, who all have their interests and preferences. You've also got a GM who has his own ideas and experiences he wants to create. With this comes some really great meshing of personalities, but also some conflicts.

When it comes to running a game, there are certain ways you can go about this. They usually fall under these two categories.

Using a published adventure / campaign arc - Wizards of the Coast constantly cranks out pre-made campaigns, dungeons, stories, etc that can be used for a game. A lot of these can be tweaked to suit whatever needs you may have. Some of the adventures may be sub par, some might be fantastic. Usually you can go to places online, such as Amazon, where you can purchase the products and read reviews.

Using a home-brewed setting / game - In this situation, the campaign, adventure or just the session is played within a setting that is made completely by the DM (usually); it's usually created by someone who will be playing in the game and it's usually not formally published. This tends to be an option that's widely used as it allows for adaptation and greater manipulation of the world and more custom stories (although using just a published campaign setting).

That said, how do we answer the question "How do I make this a personal experience?"?

Well, the question, really, is a matter of tailoring and cooperation. If the DM is the only one taking part in crafting the game then it would make sense that it wouldn't feel as much about the players, since they had no part in creating the game.

The Dungeon Master's Guide 2 touches on the idea of cooperative world building. This generally consists of the players being given homework, giving them some of part in creating the world. The players are encouraged to think of interesting things to put in the world, interesting encounters, etc. It's saying to the DMs "Don't take it all on yourself, delegate some of it!"

Secondly, I truly believe in character backstories. Like, very very strongly. Figure out who your characters are (at least you PCs. NPCs can be a bit more vague as the story doesn't focus on them). Know your character's strengths, weaknesses, foibles, faults, motivations, likes, dislikes, hatreds, sense of humor, past jobs, family history, etc. Know where the character comes from. This will give your character a firm foundation in reality and make him very believable.

Also, you want to have a specific goal. Have something that your character is aiming at; be it finding his father, becoming the worlds greatest archer or even just becoming the world's richest man. With a goal and a focus in mind, that gives you a line to roleplay from that stretches from the backstory to the goal. Your character treads that line and it gives you a large point of reference that you can then use to guide you in your role playing.

This factors into making a game just for the PC's in this way. No matter what you do, DM's, if you are the one to make the game, it will always be your game, the characters playing second fiddle to your creation. If the players engage, you know what they want.

A story will always be a story. A series of events in an order that describe events. The characters of the game are, generally, the main characters of the story (although I suppose that one could run a game where the players are secondary characters to major events going on and if done right it could be really interesting). What the players need to do is work WITH the DM in working their backstories into the game.

If I make a place and say "Ok, you're all here and this is where I want you to go" (like most games tend to be some form of), it won't feel as player focussed as if the players immediately choose what they want to do.

In the end, it comes down to planning and the level of involvement that the players want to have. It's kind of neat that, in this way, helping design the game will in turn be it's own reward because the DM will be running a game that has elements that have been tailored just for your (the player's) desires. It requires a lot of communication and involvement on both sides of the DM screen.

Another thought I had is that DM's (myself included); we gotta start thinking of stories differently. If we keep them as "I'm taking your from point a to point b" it's going to lead to a feeling of helplessness, as far as the character's level of influence goes. Instead, I've been trying to think like this:

I come up with a place, be it a city, be it a country, be it a world, and I populate it with options. Yes, you don't want to make the whole thing right away usually, as that will usually take an incredibly long time and there will always be more to do BUT; you can make a place with a few options, little hooks to see what the players tend to gravitate towards. Maybe there's a thief who's been knocking over local businesses, but there are also goblin raids hitting caravans on the road outside the city as well as an underground slave trading ring. Perhaps they run into a few NPCs that just happen to play very well and the interaction is memorable and you come up with a direction on the fly and let the story carry itself.

A thing I realized in playing and running games is that D&D is very much not like other mediums in that it's not so much about the end result. It's about the journey. It's about memorable moments. It's about comaradery. It's about getting there. Who cares if, at the beginning, "There" is a vague concept. The question is "Will you have fun today?" If the answer is "Yes", then you're doing it right.

To make a point, I was playing a role playing game way back in the day, when I was in high school, and it was the first game I'd played in. Due to some choices my buddy and I made, we ended up in jail for about 4 hours of the session, trying to find my way out. At the end of the game, the game master was like "Guys, I totally didn't expect you to do that stuff. I didn't plan to have you stuck in jail for so long but it just went that way." And you know what? We didn't feel bad one bit. It was fun! We got to get creative, there were some neat roleplay opportunities and things were interesting and we felt like things were going the way they were going because we made them go that way.

Giving the players power is ok. When a player asks about the deep gnome society in the world they're playing in and it's not defined, why not say "You tell me!" And let them design it. For all you know it'll come with hooks already laid in there, just purely by virture of the fact that a player made it and it has things in it that interest that player.

One of the biggest keys I find is using all your resources. Give everyone a job, let everyone give an idea for at least a few parts of the world they'll be playing in.

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Now, in an effort to be the first to practice what I preach, I'm going to do something interesting. I've created a world called Telain. It has a brief history. Not much to it, but some to go off of. In the next post, which will be called "Building Telain", I'm going to post links to my map and one with political boundaries on it. I'm going to be asking you, the players, to design some peoples for some of the regions on the map. Some cultures, if you will. Post them as comments to "Building Telain) and I will look at them (although I may alter them a bit to suit the world as I may need it to be) and integrate them into the world. This, in turn, will give me certain things to build off of. I hope this excites you guys as much as it does me and starts you all on the track to player involvement, deeper immersion and new heights of fun!

~Andrew

This post is dedicated to Chris. Thank you for a truely intriguing question!