Empower your players with interesting choices.
One of the most common and hardest challenges to overcome as a DM is knowing how much structure and choice to give your players. The problem is that leaning too far one way or the other leads to problems.
If you give too much structure and too little choice to your players, they’ll feel railroaded; they’ll become passive observers watching a story unfold rather than actively influencing the story.
Too little structure and you end up with players that don’t know how to proceed and an adventure that’s perhaps a little light on curated quality.
What this means is that DMs need to find a way to straddle the line between structure and choice. That’s a tough line to tread and one that’s a challenge for many tables, but hopefully this article will help.
Creating the right kinds of choices
To make it really clear how choices should look in D&D, let me give you some examples.
Railroading
Let’s say for instance that the party have been tasked with hunting down a cult. A DM might railroad the party by explaining that the cult and it’s leader have been identified, their lair found and schematics of the lair procured. The DM might then proceed to describe a plan that has been worked out (the only one that can possibly work) to enter the lair and assassinate the leader. It might even have cool moments of stealth and surprise attacks and amazingly balanced combats triggered at moments along the way; that were completely unavoidable.
The example above is railroading and while creating this story may feel exciting for the DM, it’s likely to feel underwhelming for the players. This is because their choices are inconsequential. They’ve been given the route to success so there’s little point investing in their own cunning plans and ideas. It’s also a long time for players to hear the DM tell a story and players not to be involved in the creation of that story as gameplay unfolds.
Too little structure
Ironically, the opposite can be just as bad. Sometimes players are given far too little structure.
Imagine the same scenario, but this time, when the players are tasked with finding this cult, they are just told that the cult exists and that they need to find it with no clues or threads to pull on at all.
This gives players an overload of choice. Who should they speak to about this cult? Where should they go? How should they investigate it? With no leads, making a decision on how to move forwards is near impossible.
This becomes even worse if the DM has a very specific solution in mind. Perhaps the DM is waiting for the players to think to speak to a priest of Lathander who has had members of their clergy disappear, but the party actually spoke to the city watch, the local harper group and a priest of Ohgma for information and just hit dead ends.
Not only will this quickly frustrate players, they’ll also find themselves doing the boring stuff for too long.
So how do you give players the right amount of choice?
Below are some ideas to help you structure your adventure to have the right amount of choice:
Giving players the right motivations
My first time DMing, I made a mistake. I created this dreadful dungeon full of magical experiments gone wrong. It was eery, had puzzles some interesting fights and social situations. But I forgot to ask why the players would go in there in the first place.
I thought gold would be enough motivation, but the players quickly suspected it was a bit of a trap (which it was), so they put up some resistance to going in. Fortunately, my players were good sports and went in anyway, but they nearly didn’t. And it was likely frustrating for them to go against the suspicions of their characters.
Every character is different so motivating each one might require different things. Simply being a hero might be enough for many, but rewards of gold, magic items, prestige or the promise of a personal goal fulfilled may need to be strings you pull on.
If you want to avoid pushing players towards a certain route, make sure you start by giving them the right motivations to follow the story.
Ensure player characters fit the adventure
On a related note, it’s very much possible for players to create characters that do not fit the narrative you’ve prepared. The problem here is you may look to motivate characters in one way, but a character that doesn’t fit that narrative may not work with that motivation. This will either leave them resisting the narrative route, or making compromises on their character to make the choices they feel they should to progress the story.
I’m not saying a DM should dictate what characters players create, but a session zero can help players understand the kind of adventure that they’re going to embark on.
For example, if you intend to run a heist campaign, a straight-laced, goody two shoes paladin may struggle to feel motivated to steal gold from that vault (in fact, their character will likely want to actively prevent it). Equally, if you intend to run a heroic adventure, a “murder hobo” is going to really get in the way of that (in fact I’d advocate that murder hobos are usually problematic).
A session zero is a great way to come to an understanding with players of what to expect and how to prepare to fit into the campaign.
Provide situations with variable solutions
There should always be multiple methods for solving a problem. And it should be up to the players to choose how to attempt this. Even if that means it goes horribly wrong. That’s up to the players.
Even better, be adaptable to the unique solutions that your players come up with. If it could work within the realms of possibility, then be open to it as a solution.
Use partial successes and partial failures
Absolute successes and failures tend to be problematic as an absolute failure can completely bar progress for the players if they make the wrong choice.
Let’s say for example they need to get a magical maguffin for their quest and the only way in is through a single door that requires a puzzle to complete. They get one chance or the item is incinerated. As realistic a setup as it might be to protect the item, this means that failure completely bars progress.
The same could be said of traps that can cause TPKs (total party kills), essential and fail-able social encounters and all sorts of things.
Consider more incremental failures instead. A failed puzzle might lead to noxious gas entering the room. A failed social encounters may only block one route to success and failed puzzles might lead to some form of damage, but still allow subsequent attempts.
There can be a place for total failure, but it should usually be reserved for optional things.
Adopt an attitude of yes
I’m not saying that you should let just anything go, but you should find ways for your players to progress the adventure, or at least let the dice decide if their approach is successful. This will allow your players to make choices and feel like they can be successful without necessarily having to hit the secret bullseye that only your mind can see.
The best moments in my campaigns, and the ones my players speak about over and over again, are the times when they’ve done something unexpected and I’ve said yes. Like the time they covered the bodaks eyes so it would stop using it’s deadly gaze. Or the time when they stimulated the secretion of a sleeping giant spider queen’s venom by gently squeezing her venom sacs (yes, my players really did do that)! There’s also the time that one player attempted to sneak past a contagious zombie, got killed, nearly became a zombie until the cleric got a NAT 20 randomly mixing medicines from a medicine cabinet and somehow staved off the zombification process.
These are their favourite moments, the times when they made a choice and it ended in incredible success, grim consequences or just absolute hilarity because I said yes.
Give clues, not solutions
If you’re telling your players how to solve their problems, you’ve taken a lot of the fun of discovery away from them. Let them make the decisions. At the same time, you should still give them clues that will help them.
If they want to sneak into that evil cultist’s lair, they might scout the area and discover an open window or they might spot members of the cult leaving a sewer grate. Perhaps they discover a cult member drunk on the floor. They might discover all these things and could choose to pull on any of these threads to gain entrance to the lair, but it’s a case of show, don’t tell.
Don’t be too subtle
You know your setting and adventure inside out; your players don’t. Whatever feels obvious to you, likely feels less obvious to your players. When supplying clues, you probably want to keep things more obvious than you think.
I’d also suggest having multiple hints that players can discover in case they’re struggling for answers.
For example, the party might enter a new city. If you just say to them, what would you like to do, they may feel lost for choices. Especially as they know little about this city.
A better approach might be to describe to them some things that stand out from their view of the city or on a map. You might point out the arcane looking wizards tower, a huge market district, great big tents for the circus that’s in town or the fortified prison that houses rebels of the abusive government.
Players can choose where to go, but you’ve highlighted points of interest and you’re prepared with encounters in those locations.
If the players need to investigate that cult, you might inform them of a cultist that was caught and has been interrogated in the prisons, the symbol this group has tattooed on their neck, their policies, the location that a sacrificial victim was found, the address of that victim’s family and the values this cult seems to uphold. Within that are a plethora of strings players could choose to pull that might help them find the cultist’s lair.
Have a backup plan
But if that all fails, have a backup plan to make the route forward more obvious. You don’t want to introduce this straight away as it can take away from the investigative aspects of the adventure. But if the session is losing momentum, bring in your backup plan to help get players back on track.
This could be an NPC that reveals an important clue, it could be something the players spot such as a rug turned up at the corner that reveals a trap door. It could be an event like a huge commotion when thugs from a gang burst out of a shop window and it just happens to be the gang your party are tracking. Now they can follow them to their secret lair.
Just make sure you don’t let your players wallow in endless and obscure choices for too long. If they’re struggling, bring in your backup.
Got any other great tips for presenting the right kinds of choices to players? Let me know in the comments below.
Spotlight on D&D 2024
All the latest updates on what’s changing with the 2024 rules revision.
