Are You A Dungeon Master With A Player Mindset?

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If you’re currently running Lost Mine of Phandelver or that…other adventure that contains LMOP within its pages, I have a question for you:

Are you in a Dungeon Master mindset, or a player mindset?

If you’re a new Dungeon Master running an adventure that was initially designed for new DM’s and players, it’s totally understandable if, without realizing it, you’re running your game with a player mindset. Let me explain.

As players, we’re often looking for what are the optimal choices to make for our characters in order to survive a combat, rather than making sub-optimal choices that make the encounter more interesting. And that makes sense! Blades are drawn and arrows are loosed. Monsters are trying to stick you with the pointy end of something, right?

But you’re not a player. You’re the Dungeon Master. And it doesn’t matter if the tactics you deploy with your goblins are the most optimal choices for the goblins. They’re fucking goblins.

If a character squares off against two goblins in a melee, the optimal choice for the goblins is to use their weapons to attack, in order to prevent their foe from doing the same to them in a race to 0 hp. That’s the player mindset kicking in. These goblins must survive this encounter. Attack! You’re either the butcher or the meat!

But what if, emboldened by their numeric superiority, the goblins make sub-optimal choices instead? One goblin decides to grapple the character to make them an easier target for the other goblin attacking with a scimitar?

Player Mindset: OMG. That goblin wasted an attack!

What if the character fails their strength contest for the grapple, and on the next round, the grappling goblin makes the sub-optimal choice of biting the character to put some emphasis on the “maw” in cragmaw (they sharpen their teeth into craggy points).

Player Mindset: OMG. The goblin could have done 1d6+2 slashing damage, but instead chose to go with 1d4 piercing damage. Is he trying to lose?

I’ll go out on a limb and say the sub-optimal choices are the more interesting choices, and therefore the path to a memorable encounter for the player engaged in battle with these goblins.

Dungeons & Dragons is collaborative storytelling! Don’t let optimal choices get in the way of a good story! Bad decisions sometimes lead to great stories!

If you’re running the game, be the Dungeon Master, not the player.

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If you’d like to support my work, please consider checking out my supplements for Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak over on Dungeon Master’s Guild! All of my titles are Free/PWYW offerings.

5 responses to “Are You A Dungeon Master With A Player Mindset?”

  1. sopantooth Avatar
    sopantooth

    I’m not generally not an advice guy, but this is a good one, approaching D&D combat like a tactical simulation is fine sometimes, but when a giant frog bypasses the fighter right in front of them to go after the mage? I call shenanigans on that

    Reply
    1. Ticklecorn Avatar
      Ticklecorn

      Yes, that would be uncharacteristic for the frog, for sure. My thought is more along the lines of rather than going for the most optimal path (2 vs. 1 blades drawn), they could get overconfident and choose the less optimal path. Or, I don’t think it would be totally out of character for a goblin to do something like fail to join allies in finishing off an outnumbered foe in order to spend 2-3 rounds rifling through a fallen combatant’s pack, because the other goblins might get to it first. Sub-optimal, but also on-brand.

      Reply
  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Hi! I’m a beginner DM. I read elsewhere regarding tucker’s kobolds – where low leveled kobolds when played like they were sentient beings, could pose a real threat to even high level players. How can I reconcile the two?

    Reply
    1. Ticklecorn Avatar
      Ticklecorn

      My understanding of Tucker’s Kobolds is: for a DM to use low-level monsters (like a Kobold) in such a way that challenges high-level players who are so powerful they fall into a malaise and sleepwalk through high-level monsters. Basically, throwing them a change-up where the players are suddenly like, “wait, WTF is happening here. These are kobolds.”

      I watched a Dungeon Dudes video on it, and the article they were reading from was an 80’s Dragon Magazine where, basically, the DM was using kobolds to harry the party in great numbers from positions where the characters had a an extremely hard time dealing with them due to numbers or attacks from a distance (or both).

      To me, this seems like the DM was using this tactic to snap his table out of their malaise, and not bog standard tactics of how to use kobolds. He was using these tactics to stop his players from sleepwalking through his adventures. At least that was my take-away. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing in that instance. It’s situational.

      Personally, I run a story-driven game. Low-level monsters are challenging obstacles on the way to the villains, and not a minefield with the potential to blow up any character who rolls poorly or makes one false step. Which is why I will sometimes deploy sub-optimal choices with my monsters (within reason, and characteristic of the monster’s nature), rather than turn encounters into a turkey shoot (which is what the article the DD’s were reading from seemed to describe).

      There’s nothing really to reconcile, though. I just like playing with all of the possibilities in LMOP that aren’t described in the pages of the adventure. Basically, taking everything to logical extremes and celebrating the idea that just because the text tells you do one thing, doesn’t mean DMs can’t root around for other options more interesting to them. I am 100% a Matt Colville acolyte.

      So, if you wanted to run a Tucker’s Kobold scenario in your game, I certainly don’t see any problem with that, so long as the degree of difficulty isn’t so extreme that it becomes a Kobayashi Maru for the party, especially in a Tier I or Tier II adventure.

      Thanks for introducing me to Tucker’s Kobolds and the interesting question. And thanks for reading!

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Thank you very much for your reply! I will take your comments and advice and adjust my game accordingly!

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