ladytabletop:

waffle-neutral:

deliciouslycookingrpgideas:

Make D&D about having fun

I cannot stress this enough. If your party isnt having fun, ask why. If a character looks bummed during fights, ask why. If a player is constantly on their phone, break for snacks and ask em if everything is cool or if they need to go/talk to you or something. The players being engaged and having fun is the number one priority.

Dungeons and dragons is about having fun first, everything else last. Let your players have fun. Even if they want to derail the encounter. This can mean simply making friends with a bartender, or maybe sledding down a hill, perhaps even pulling a fastball special or two with some smaller melee characters. Having fun should be the number one priority. If they want to push the enemy off the ledge and kill them, let em. If it fucks up the campaign bc that was the king, maybe his son takes over and the party is now wanted. Make it work

After fun, then is the numbers, the storyline, setting, etc. What makes the game work. If something the players really want to do cannot work with the rules, then maybe the rules shouldnt be there.

Obviously if the party wants to insta kill the bbeg out of the blue thats not cool, but if they spend time and effort building a death ray to that end, then it might work. If you still need (for storyline purposes) a long battle, maybe reveal that the bbeg knew about the death ray and sabotaged it beforehand. If the players want to open a bakery to start rollin in that dough, but the game has no mechanics for that, maybe just work with it. Make them buy the place and get the ingredients, maybe have them save a grain mill from some kobolds, but ultimately cater to the party. As bakers, what kind of stuff can they do? Perhaps they cater to a party and solve a murder mystery. Maybe they serve a mob boss and he wants to buy their recipe. Maybe they get robbed and the police dont wanna help. Have fun with it, and make sure the players are too

If the party cleric knows about anatomy and wants to take out the knee of the enemy after a crit due to knowig how to do so but game rules dont allow that, house rule it in. Dungeons and dragons is fun first, mechanics second.

If the party starts almost dying every encounter, maybe tone down the monsters. There are ways to fix every problem except not wanting to play. Your players are there to have a good time, so let them. If it fucks up the session you had planned, set it aside for another day.

Dunegons and Dragons and all role playing games are fun first, mechanics second.

I love this, but I just wanna add something real quick on here.

If you’re a player, try to make sure the DM is having fun too? They’re a person just like you, and they’re doing the majority of the work both during a game and outside it. If they’re writing their own campaign there might be hours sunk into the development of what your characters are experiencing.

Try to talk to your DM about the atmosphere and setting for a game so your character makes sense in context. Talk to your DM about what they want to see the campaign become. Unless they’re being paid, they’re doing this all so that you can have fun. DMing is amazing and rewarding, but it can also be very intensive and exhausting.

So while derailing the campaign or doing completely random things seems fun, it often can stress a DM out and/or significantly increase their workload. Try to respect what their vision for the game is and make sure the person who’s putting on the show enjoys it too.

I agree wholeheartedly! The GM should be having fun, too. In fact, I wrote a whole post about this here.

It’s easy to fall back and say ‘the GM should adapt to meet the players’ needs’ but the reality is that if a player is making it hard or unenjoyable for them to adapt, that’s on them, not the GM.