It’s our regular Saturday pandemic session, kept to two hours to avoid Zoom burnout and a futile attempt to propel the game along. Our heroes are leaving the coastal City of Abundance to investigate some strange unbidden weather events happening a couple hours ride North (they just bought horses and a wagon) with two ways to go. One is the direct route, leading off the main road and through a navigable forest, especially since this is the ranger’s Favored Domain. The other route was longer but avoided the forest by going through a large trading outpost that I had placed on the map in its first incarnation but never needed to build out - until now. I thought I did a good job of explaining that the forest was the more sensible option but nooooo…..
They wanted to go to the trading settlement and go on a fact-finding mission. Of course, the party decided to split up in a place that has no details yet. Several simultaneous individual NPC/Character interactions over Zoom. Certainly, the most stretched I’ve even been as a Dungeon Master. I wove at least three different plot threads into talks one character at a time, while all the other players listened.
It was the challenge of the session that yielded the greatest reward. At one point I began to get anxious and in a flash, I lost track of which character was speaking to which one of the NPCs I just made, who was exploring which thread and if I’d been giving everyone equal time… I’d forgotten everything! One of the things that surprises me about being a DM that players enjoy gaming with is that I’ve always struggled with fear of failure and a healthy dose of imposter syndrome. Suddenly I’m twelve again, shy and nervous with an overwhelming feeling that all I wanted to do was to go and hide. Since my worries about the game going off the rails revealed deeper implications and my source of anxiety apparent in this session was for me alone...for keeping your cool is Rule #1 for Dungeon Masters.
Playing the game with incredible, invested players was exactly what I needed in that moment. An open-ended question such as, “What does your character think about what they’ve been hearing so far?” and I've got the time to center myself, check my notes and roll some dice to get back into a better place. I can always rely on this outstanding group of master-sleuth players to co-create this shared story in directions that keep the conversation going between sessions.
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