I don’t think anyone would contest me if I said that the hallmark of being good at something, but particularly DMing, is to always be seeking improvement. You could be at any skill level at all, but the real marker of quality, in any sort of position or profession, is the burning passion to constantly get better and improve your skills.
All that to say that when I’m lucky enough to play instead of DM, or when I get the chance to see some DnD actual play or read blogs/listen to podcasts about/watch videos about DMing good, I’m always on the lookout for the next cool thing to steal for my game. I think I’ve stumbled upon the next cool thing I want to bring into my DMing style, and I think I know how I’m going to do it.
There were a couple moments in some games I was playing in when the DM introduced something rather simple or mundane, and it caused my brain to go into a spiral of theories and possibilities and contingencies and paranoia. You know when the DM says “there’s a green mist pooling around your feet” and then leans back and steeples their fingers while you start panicking? As a player, I really get into that sort of stuff, and yet as a DM, I typically find myself writing adventures with a more bombastic and cinematic style, not putting in these quiet moments like this where I can introduce vague and non-pressing challenges (or non-challenges). As a derivative of that, I’m not terribly good at mysteries or horror- my sense of timing and the tools I use to build encounters and adventures often make things too rushed, linear, and not emotionally/intellectually charged enough to live up to my expectations.
So I’ve written up a short guide as to how to make players cautious and afraid. Perhaps there are other secrets, but these are the ones I’m going to focus on.
When you want players to slow down and think carefully, take away as many time restrictions as you can. As the time you have to make decisions decreases, the intensity of emotion increases, but the amount of careful thought decreases.
Be sure to actually punish the players for bad decisions. If there is no weight to a poor choice, the players will never really care about making the right one.
The best way I’ve found to introduce player paranoia, through my own player experience, is to introduce one very simple but malignant variable. Ones that I have fretted over are things like thick, heavy green mist (haven’t yet figured out what it does to this day), villagers who can’t remember their names, and a Groundhog Day-style time loop (the second and third days were trippy).
Quantity over quality. Instead of one very complicated problem, light many small fires the characters have to worry about. They can be related, but it’s a lot harder to worry about the crab worms and the fire with eyes and the mist and the rune-marked door and the man with rubies for eyes…
Often when you do that, the players start seeing connections and drawing lines you never would. Their theories, if they are invested in the game and creative/knowledgeable, can often be story gold you can mine then and there or down the line.
That said, convoluted is not necessarily best. Again, simplicity is a virtue in these sorts of… not traps, but tricks. The complexity should come from the combination of variables, not the variance of a single one.
To that end, I’ve written a “short” 7-room dungeon to try and utilize these points. EDIT: Here it is, knock yourself out.
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