About Dylan
I am Dylan, a tabletop role-playing gamemaster and designer in central North Carolina. I focus on building immersive living worlds with reactive characters and open-ended stories.
As a dedicated role-playing game master rather than a novelist, I avoid “correct” resolutions, i.e., a narrative arc with pre-set mileposts and set-piece finales, and focus on creating situations where the choices made lead to new ones. I find the following techniques most helpful.
Deep Immersion. I focus on the world and the characters in it. Rather than developing intricate plots with preset checkpoints and climaxes, I design worlds with complex non-player characters with unique (and conflicting) motives.
No Set Resolutions. My apologies to Moltke for the appropriation; non-player characters have plans, but plans rarely survive contact with the player characters. A successful session does not follow a story arc, but follows the player characters and the consequences of their decisions.
Immersion over Meta-Tools. I prefer mechanics that live inside the world and focus on character rather than player agency. I enjoy games where the players make decisions on behalf of their characters rather than on behalf of a “story”.
Focus on the Characters. Characters should be the center of the session. A session is not about the world’s events; it is about the characters. This focus is most significant for settings with a deep canon or a historical setting.
Your World may Vary. Not everything needs to match the canon. Outside resources may be unreliable, characters change, and events happen; campaigns need to be flexible, and it is okay to ignore published material, especially if the player characters had a role in changing events.
Remember the Chosen Game. People choose game systems for a reason; make sure to play to the system’s strengths. No one plays Night Witches for the complex tactical combat (there is none), and rarely do people choose Dungeons and Dragons over Warlock or DCC for a grimdark meat-grinder.
My Favorite games include:
Dungeons and Dragons. I tend to prefer streamlined versions (like BECM) or those with low needs for system mastery (like 4E, oh the heresy!), and I avoid versions that reward system mastery, especially AD&D and 3. X. As most modern players do, I settle on 5E.
Traveller. Deceptively simple rules, and lots of love for open exploration. The first game I know of that used a roll-and-add skill to beat a target number as a unified system (two decades before D&D implemented it).
Night Witches. Talk about a game with set-piece events and frequent character deaths. But the game is about what the characters do in the interim.