On the Psychology of DMing

DND, Roleplaying, et al. has a mantra:

"It [we] takes all kinds.

At least, such is the case of players. And perhaps, such is the case of DMs. But something unique happens. its the germ of an idea, a virus that spreads in your mind. In the lost moments between sleep and wakefulness, you muse upon what will happen next to the party of heroes...and what happenings they will next cause. When the campaign reaches a certain depth, its little microverse has all the truths of a waking dream: you both create and experience your reality at once. And it's a shared dream, not unlike something from a recent Major Motion Picture.

If you're like me, and you've broken though the fourth wall and realized that all stories are mechanical storytelling contraptions, you realize that the object is twofold:

• Fun. In a book, film, or any other creative medium, everyone there must both enjoy the moment at hand, and anticipate with excitement the next.
• Exposition. To be a good story, it has to awaken new ideas, or allow the participants to tell truths about what kinds of people they can be, and what sorts of things they think adventure really is. As the DM, it's your responsibility to create a world that, at the very least, gives reason for the players to think twice about who they are.

But here I want to change gears: I get tired. DND et al. forces a DM to create a million castles in the sand, all folded into his head. IRL dilemmas and delays can overwhelm the impetus of a game, and cause it to become the sort of Subconscious Hang-up that the protagonist of Inception so suffers.

Buried in my mind are the cities upon cities, decaying masterpieces of imagination, that so haunt the DiCaprio character. Every game that I've run, every time I've adopted a new setting, it's a dreamworld that gets tucked away in my subconscious. While it's only the year-long campaigns that literally have demons leaping about them, even the small games have poor lost souls inside.

Of course, I'm almost normal on the Autism-Asperger's-Etc. spectrum, and to me DND isn't nearly the obsession that consumes some folks. But don't you ever get weary of how unfulfilled most of your characters/plots/story arcs ultimately end?

Last year, I went to Pittsburgh, stood up for a few college kids getting shot at by police, and got the biggest legal shitbag imaginable thrown at me. That story arc is now about to conclude...and I've gotten a few EPs from it. It feels closed.

Now, I won't go into my IRL CG Wiz4 of Jesus character, his anarchist leanings, etc., as I find that the last thing people want from DND is something that resembles IRL. (speaking of which, where are the Gay NPCs guys? We've had female Everythings since 1e after all...)

...but do you ever think that you got into DND in the first place to feel like you were part of the big, important things that allegedly don't happen anymore? I know I did. I've met dozens of escapist players looking to pile up 100k of GP and learn 9th level spells...and as far as I'm concerned, they're not the sort of red blood cell that carries oxygen. It's the true dreamers, the ones that cry at the end (and the middle) of Les Miserables that made DND last 35 years. And to you types, I say,

Maybe, occasionally, we should wake up, not to the IRL world of Jobs, Kids, Girlfriend Aggro, etc., but to the world of an oppressed Palestine, of union busting at every Wal Mart, of the Taliban that exploded millenia-old masterpieces of Buddhist culture, of the still more fearsome hate-mongers that call themselves Terry Jones and Glenn Beck.

So here is my plea: For a gamers' delegation to something simple, something emblematic of the truth that there is good, evil, law, chaos, and neutral...and that we'd be better off with more of the neutral. What gathering could so epitomize a truth so complex, you ask? Why, look no further: