DM'ing: What Constitutes a Failure

Apples and I got into a discussion about Tuesday's post, and I encouraged her to post her opinion in the comments. She did, and now I shall respond

This is a clarification on what it means to fail as a DM. Failure as a DM can mean different things. Sometimes it can be blatantly obvious and effect the entire session or even campaign. Sometimes it can be nothing but a personal failure that not another soul would necessarily know about. And sometimes it could be a hazy mixture of the two.

Ways to Fail

Nobody Has Fun: This is the absolute worst way to fail. The worst part about it is that it's not always in the DM's control. However, as the DM, you will often be the one expected to facilitate the game in such a way that everybody can find it enjoyable. If this is unattainable with certain players behaving unacceptably, that would be a good condition to ask the player not to return, or at least warn them a few times first.

Besides players behaving badly, the DM can have a lot to do with this as well. The game exists in a world that you describe, but that doesn't make it your playground. You do not have control over the players, and they are most certainly not your toys to manipulate as you see fit. DM's on power trips is a fast road to failure, while letting the players have an equal say in their destiny will bring you many successes in the fun factor. Make sure you listen to the players, and let them build onto your story, as opposed to succumbing to your puppetry.

Preparation: Don't come under prepared! If nothing else, have at least one random encounter that the players can triumph over during a session. If the players do nothing but fail, then this can also reflect very poorly on your DM'ing. If an encounter of supposed average difficulty ends up squishing the PC's, you should give them something easy by the end of the session if possible. Give them at least one victory no matter how they manage to come by it. If they have to talk their way out of something to survive, that could be an even greater success than bashing goblins to bit through brute force. Be prepared to improvise if necessary too.

Also, don't come over prepared! This can be very dangerous as you may find your players are completely disinterested in your storylines or quests. If you throw them a bone, and they don't take it, make sure to let them seek out something different. If you put your entire planning into that one quest and dungeon, and eventually end up forcing the players through it, they will feel forced through it, and will not enjoy it nearly as much. This method will work on rare occasions though, and I will go into that more in a later post.

The key point to all of this though, is that failing as a DM has nothing to do with how far the campaign went, or what the players accomplished, or whether the game ever got past the first session. Failure means nobody had fun, failure as a DM means nobody had fun, and there's something you can do about it. The same can be said about certain players though, so make sure to consider this from different angles. Find what you need in your world to give the players a good time, and give it to them. If it gets stale, switch it up a bit and experiment. You won't have your best successes until you've had your worst failures.