In my article about keeping your villains alive, I mentioned that it’s a bad idea to rob your players of agency. But what the heck does “player agency” even mean? Well, it’s the heart and soul of roleplaying, for starters. It’s the fuel that drives your stories, and one of the chief reasons why anyone gets into this hobby in the first place. Player agency means only this: your players have choices to make, and those choices matter. And that means everything.
I often describe roleplaying as a form of storytelling, as any long-time readers of Telling Tales know. What I sometimes neglect to mention is that the DM is not the storyteller. The DM is a storyteller, to be sure; it’s our job to be the narrator, and to figure out the basics of the plot and setting. But when we think about someone telling tales, we imagine everyone else listening to the story unfold. Players do far more than that. Much of the time (perhaps most of the time), the players are doing the talking, and the DM had better listen.
If you’ve never run a game before, here’s the basic process. The DM starts by explaining where the story starts, which can be an elaborately acted scene or narration, or something as simple as “So you all meet at a tavern.” The player characters are introduced to the tale, their places set. And then comes the question upon which the whole affair hinges. The DM will turn to a player, or perhaps to the group as a whole, and say “What do you do?”
Everything said before that point is window dressing. Everything that comes after is shaped by the players’ answers, by the decisions they make based on the situations their characters face. The story bends and twists (and sometimes breaks) to fit the actions of its heroes, because it is their story. Not ours, as a DM. We get to choose the field and bring the dog, but then we have to let it run.
Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Can’t DMs do whatever they like, and change the world as they see fit? Yes, they can. But if the DM’s choices are the only ones that matter, why have players? Dungeons & Dragons, like any RPG, is an interactive story, a tale with many tellers. Each person at the table bears some of that responsibility. We all tell the story, and we all get to listen. And through some magical alchemy of united minds, we come up with something greater than any one of us could have managed alone.
If you’re starting out as a DM, be careful not to keep the story on too tight a leash; it’s not yours alone to tell. Ask your players that magic question, and listen to their answers. You’re the narrator, but they’re the protagonists, and it’s the heroes who drive the plot. And you might find that giving your players a stake in telling the story eases some of the burden of carrying your world. I often change my written adventure as I’m running it, just because a player suggests something that’s too awesome not to be true. Your players’ brains are a resource: use it! Learn to listen, and make your job easier in the bargain.
I know that I’m being preachy, but I feel like player agency is often overlooked in the RPG rulebooks I read. Just about every DM is familiar with “Rule Zero”: that the DM’s word is final. And it’s true; if you want to keep the story moving, you can’t have the arbiter of the game be subject to endless appeal. You have to let the DM be the DM. But it’s just as important to recognize the other side of the equation. Yes, run the game as you see fit.
But let the players play.
