A while back I was running a 5e D&D campaign for a group of adult players. I had an elaborately crafted campaign that I’d spent 10 hours or more preparing for every 1 hour of game play.
Yes, I was one of those over-preppers.
But, so far so good. The players knew I was spending a ton of time on the campaign and it showed. They thanked me for the intricate plot twists, well-enginered dungeons and encounters, and the crafty enemies they faced.
Then something happened.
I made the mistake of including a plot hook within my campaign that required the players to make a very particular choice.
That mistake was huge.
In this campaign, the party came across a magic item in the private treasure room of a powerful NPC that was essentially their benefactor. This NPC was part of a consortium of four, all of whom were on the party’s side.
The NPC found out the party kept the magic item and, and as you can imagine, that NPC requested they return it.
The party refused.
Outside of the game, I told the players that if they refused to return the artifact to the NPC, not only would that NPC become their sworn enemy but so would the rest of the consortium.
I also confessed that it would turn my carefully crafted campaign completely on its head, so much so that I would have to end the campaign.
The players discussed it, thanked me for letting them know what the consequences of their choice would be … and they decided to keep the artifact anyway.
At the time, I thought my players were jerks. I thought they were disrespectful. I thought they were idiots.
I wrote a rather direct and negative email to the group of players which was in effect my resignation as their dungeon master. Looking back, I see my email and my attitude about the whole situation as being very juvenile and petty.
And the whole situation was entirely, 100%, completely my fault.
I was still in the group, but I dropped my DM duties and reverted to to just being a player. The other DM, who arguably was much better at it than I was, did a great job. After several months, he needed a break and asked if I’d resume DM duties for a while. Things had settled down from my railroading debacle and the animosity was gone, so I agreed.
I mostly learned my lesson. I stopped over-planning to such an extreme degree, which wasn’t in itself the source of the problem. Instead, I learned my lesson not to hinge the entire campaign’s plot on a required action or choice of the players.
My designs and the way I ran the game thereafter recognized that players can make choices I may not agree with or want or plan on, but that is the players’ agency and prerogative. After that, I included flexibility to handle all possibilities, even those I couldn’t foresee.
I stopped designing key points in my campaign that required the players to make a specific choice.
I learned that railroading players is bad enough, but putting pivot points in your campaign that requires something — anything — to occur is a terrible idea.
I have spoken before about Dungeon Mastering being a largely subjective thing. The quality of how you design your campaigns and your adventures and your encounters is for the most part subjectively determined by one thing: enjoyment. If your players are having a good time and you are having a good time, that’s a good game of D&D.
But one thing I can say from personal experience is that if you require the players to make a specific choice in order for the campaign to continue, you are objectively getting your feet wet in the pool of failure as a Dungeon Master.
