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Say Yes to the Chaos!


The tavern is crowded, with people jostling one another back and forth as they line up at the bar. The harried bartender, a young Half-Elf man with shoulder-length blonde hair, runs back and forth from patron to patron, occasionally shouting orders over his shoulder to the kitchen. The band playing at the back of the room is good, if a bit lazy. Nobody seems to be paying much attention to them, anyway. In the corner of the busy room, three people sit. You all have had night's rest after days of travel, and you are grateful for the brief respite from the battles you've encountered along the way. The city and day are yours. What would you like to do?

Thus began my recent session of Dungeons and Dragons. One of our regular party members couldn't make the session, so I ran a one-off set in a major port city of the world. I wanted to keep the feeling of the same world the players have been in, but didn't want their actions to really affect the overall story. This session was also designed to test both the players and myself; I made very minimal notes and gave no direction to the players as the session began. This was a true sandbox style game session. They could do whatever they wanted. Or they could at least try.

As soon as I finished my introduction, my Half-Orc player pipes up: "I want to start a tavern brawl." Of course he does. Shump lives to hit things-people especially-and he hadn't had a good fight in a hot minute. I had anticipated this, and began describing the patrons in the bar, giving him plenty of targets to choose from. Unsurprisingly, however, his Wood Elf friend, Claira, stopped him. Ever the peacemaker, Claira instead wanted to scan the room to see if anything looked interesting. She noticed a young Halfling boy pickpocketing patrons and making his way toward Shump. She watched as the boy put his hand into Shump's satchel and began rummaging around. Shump felt the attempted theft, and turned to confront the boy. He ran.

A series of conversations and mixed rolls later, the party caught the thief, who turned out to be a bit of a hopeless romantic, in addition to being a kleptomaniac. He was stealing love letters and stashing them to read later. A bit weird, but mostly harmless. Shump wanted to hit him. Claira intervened again. Eventually, they decided that they would take the boy to his father, who was playing in the band inside the tavern. As soon as they let go of him, though, the Halfling vanished, using an Invisibility spell; he was gone. Frustrated, Shump went to gamble at a table against the far wall while Claira began drinking. Heavily.

I won't go into the full session, because that's not the point here. The point is that this entire session came about because I, as the Dungeon Master, didn't say no to reasonable (and some unreasonable) actions. If it was within the realm of possibility of succeeding, I allowed it. This resulted in one of the best D&D sessions I've run so far. Open-ended storytelling is best when it is just that: Open. I had some NPC names written down, location names, and some interesting things happening around the town as the party was wandering around, but I didn't have an overarching story or bullet-point lists of plot hooks designed to railroad the players into something. Everything felt natural and organic, so when the party returned to the tavern from Shump's victorious pit fight against a Goliath named Sturgis, it made perfect sense for Wynn-frid to attempt to seduce the Tiefling woman Deziria who ran the gambling table. It made even more sense when she rolled really high to do so.

I spent a good bit of 3.5 hours narrating and pantomiming sex/seduction between characters, and not once did it feel uncomfortable or weird. It felt like that would actually happen if these characters were involved in these scenarios. Endorphins, adrenaline, wine, and lots of money won by gambling make for a sexy mix.

It feels odd to describe what happened that night as a game. It sincerely felt like we were just a group of friends telling a story and occasionally rolling some dice to see where the story went next. And that, I think, is what Dungeons and Dragons is missing from a lot of tables. The element of surprise-for everyone involved. Draconian Dungeon Masters and players who don't want to move outside of the comfortable box they've put themselves into make for a slow and often un-fun game. Let go of your rules for a session. Let go of your instincts to say, "No" when your players go off the rails. Players, let go of your need to have everything turn out okay. Sometimes bad things happen, and in D&D, those bad things can be just as fun, if not more so, as the good. It feels counter-intuitive, but it works. Trust me.

You, obviously, don't have to narrate sex for your players. You don't have to have an entirely open-ended world for them to explore. I do insist that you occasionally let your players off the leash, though. You'd be surprised how much fun you'll have as a DM and as a friend watching your friends/players do ludicrous things. Especially when those things have no bearing on the ongoing plot. This was simply a diversion I designed to get everyone more comfortable with roleplaying, NPC interaction, and also to give Shump the chance to hit things with no real repercussions. And you know what? It was a smashing success. It made for stories that we will tell long after this campaign is over. There were NPCs that the party and I found along the way that might (read: definitely) make it into the larger campaign-simply because they were just so dang fun.

I think I've made my point, so I'll leave this post at that. I will apologize, however, for being a bit lackadaisical with posting here. Starting a new job will change your schedule in very unpredictable ways, I found. No fear, though, as I am back in action, and will be updating regularly once again! The podcast has taken a bit of a backseat these past couple of weeks as well, but it will be coming back next week, and every week thereafter until who-knows-when.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have fun playing D&D together! Remember: Keep it friendly, folks!

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