I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since my freshman year of college. While I had read a wide (albeit random) selection of D&D material, I never pursued playing while in high school. I lucked out freshman year – I met a fellow freshman, Camilo, in the same boat as me with regards to the game. My recollection is that I mentioned wanting to give D&D a shot one day – and he mentioned owning the books to the then new 3E ruleset. The next step is pretty easy to guess – we found some other students willing to give it a shot, we read the rule books, and away we went!

Over the years, we played a lot of D&D, not too surprising given our geekiness overall. In every game we played, we found ourselves on opposite sides of the DM screen – the other players were more interested in staying on the player’s side of the table. Given our interest in the game, and our turns at being DM, we spent a lot of time providing feedback or ideas to each other. We fell into a habit of discussing the game the day after a session. Through these discussions and our ongoing friendship, we discovered we work well together. The majority of ideas coming out of our post-session conversations would find their way into the sessions. Some fraction, however, would be held back; an unfair advantage existing for the player or ruining the impact of surprise and novelty. We would joke about one day surprising each other with these ideas, although in practice most of them fell by the wayside.

We had our first shake up almost ten years later – we both lived in the same city, and a relative newcomer to our group took the DM’s seat. For the first time, we found ourselves in the same adventuring party – and we really enjoyed it. All of the teamwork built up from years of discussion clicked – we worked well together in combat, and we had a ton of fun role-playing outside of combat. Furthermore, we continued discussing ideas for the game, but were no longer putting them into play. We spent more time elaborating on our thoughts throughout the campaign, and got excited as ideas began to grow, intertwining with others, spawning offshoots. We enjoyed both sides of D&D – playing together in a fun campaign during sessions, and brainstorming new ideas and experiments outside of them. After about a year of this campaign, however, one brainstorming session turned to our history of wasting ideas due to one of us always playing through them – and we hit upon the obvious idea. Why not run with two DMs, and continue to work as well together? We started thinking about the idea, and quickly discovered an outlet for the years of ideas. We just had to figure out how to make it work.

Starting the Experiment

Now, we wanted to give it a shot, but with the number of ideas and possible approaches we could take, we decided to start with a simpler approach. We didn’t know how gameplay might change, or what complications we might encounter, so we came up with a plan for our first few forays into co-operative DMing. We pulled together a group of players, largely composed of friends from out of town, chose the module Cairn of the Winter King (from the Monster Vault), and ran our very first dual-DM session.

The first steps of the session felt fairly normal. There wasn’t any advance prep, so we set the players to  building characters – newer players having the DM guide them through the builder, and more experienced players having us available for answering questions. The building was sped up from having two DM’s on hand, but nothing out of the ordinary. The party assembled, we moved on to the actual meat, and we started to see the real impact. We started almost immediately with a group of guards interacting with the party. Having two DM’s means two NPC’s can be actively interacting with the party (and each other.) The conversations ended up more dynamic, with additional participants adding color to the role-playing. The interactions were further improved by the improv options opened up with two NPCs in play – we could suggest new twists to the situation, or play off each other as the story unfolded. There’s also the added benefit of being able to actually pull off bits of theater that are impossible with a single DM – NPC’s actually interrupting one another, or more realistically arguing. Both DMs and players reacted positively to these changes.

After some initial expository setup and role-playing, the party hit the first combat in the module. We had discussed possible approaches to using two DMs in combat, and for the first go around, we chose to stay as similar to a single DM approach as possible. Splitting the DM’s role in an informal and fluid fashion turned out to smooth the flow of play significantly. One DM could easily disengage from the combat momentarily to handle consulting the rules or discuss a power, and not leave the rest of the group waiting. The other DM could flesh out the combat with more flavor, or field questions about the monsters or possible strategies, and keep the party engaged. Resolving turns under DM control went much more quickly as well. Enemies were roughly split up give us equal workload, as well as introduce some parallelism to monster turns. Monsters played differently with different DMs controlling them. Furthermore, we could resolve multiple actions at once, returning play to the party more quickly. We also found ourselves able to catch missed conditions or minor subtleties of particular rules. Furthermore, with the cognitive load balanced between two people, we could devote additional effort to coming up with creative flourishes and additional color to add to the combat.

The final bit of the evening was a skill challenge. In previous 4E campaigns, neither of us has ever had much luck with skill challenges – for all that we appreciate the goals they aim to achieve, they’ve never felt quite right. This time, the skill challenge turned into a highlight of the session. Part of it, for us, was the well thought out skill challenge provided in the module. I think part of the difference is having more structure available for the players to work with – our normal skill challenges are much more open ended, and often ran slower as players tried to develop approaches to solving some aspect of the problem at hand. This skill challenge started with a concrete goal, and introduced fairly concrete obstacles and complications, which helped to paint a scene for the players to work within. This again earned a boost from an additional DM – both of us introduced obstacles, and reacted to players trying to solve them. The tone and pacing of the skill challenge took an added layer of drama – at the height of the skill challenge, the obstacles were stacking up almost faster than the players could handle them, and the tense atmosphere made the players react with much more satisfaction and relief as they figured a safe path through. It ended on a particular high note – one of the final challenges required everyone to make a check to make it through, and all but one player had made a roll. The last one, an Artificer, came up with a particularly clever ploy using his character’s powers to jury rig a device to provide an elemental shield against the elements. Given the atmosphere that had built up, the tension broke and the players began to celebrate their success. A great way to end the experiment.

Our first attempt at dual DMs came off better than we had expected. We were able to not only take advantage of having two DMs to give more attention to the players and the scene, but also work together to reduce errors and smooth play. Furthermore, there were several relatively simple things we could do that a single DM simply could not. But we were just getting started exploring these ideas, and we weren’t done with the idea yet . . .

The New York Times posted an article today, talking about the future of D&D. If you’ve been following D&D closely, two parts of the article are unsurprising – a Fifth Edition is being worked on at Wizards of the Coast, and that there’s been a big division over the future direction of the game. The other part – that Wizards of the Coast plans to involve the general public in the development and beta testing – is more surprising. WotC historically doesn’t spend much time consulting the player base for development direction. They simply produce a new edition and present it to the world, with whatever marketing or PR they can whip up to sell it.

Wizards of the Coast hired Monte Cook back to R&D for the game back in September 2011. Margaret Weiss confirmed that he was working on 5E. Monte Cook has taken over writing Legends & Lore, a weekly segment on thoughts on game design, with a pretty clear bent on developing the next version of the game. I’ve been following this, largely because my knowledge of Monte Cook was relatively limited – back when I played 3E, I knew Monte Cook had been involved in the development, and left Wizards over design differences. I had only seen a single design actually attributed to him – an alternate bard for 3E with an interesting design, which I really liked. I was excited to see him back to work on 5E, and eagerly went to read his first Legends & Lore, entitled Very Perceptive.

I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t like the approach, which felt overly clunky and ill fitting, when compared with how 4E handles skills. What’s worse, the article seems to be oblivious to the fact that 4E already has Passive Perception – it seems strange to be lamenting an issue with a rule set, and inventing a system to fix it – when a much more elegant and simple rule exists to cover that situation. I shrugged, and continued reading, and increasingly disagreed with his approach. I spoke about it with fellow players, and they held much the same sentiment. We started wondering about the future of D&D – particularly when Rich Baker and Steve Winter were both laid off from WotC in December. Both of them were developers I really liked – they produced great content, interacted with the community, and really helped drive 4E. It seemed as though WotC was reversing course, and trying to drive back to an earlier era of D&D. An era that I’m don’t hate, but I can’t claim to love either.

This reversal likely arises from a significant portion of the fan base disliking the direction 4E took. It came out as a significant change from previous editions, without input from the fan base in developing the new approach. They preferred the older editions of D&D, which tried to take a more simulationist approach. The rules were more complicated and varied in some areas, such as magic and combat. The rules were less involved in other areas, such as role-playing or dungeon exploration. But a large number of players decried the new edition, and there’s been rumors for years (which appear confirmed by today’s article) that 4E hasn’t sold as well as hoped, and this new direction seemed to support the rumors.

Then along comes the end of the year compilation of Legends & Lore, with a survey briefly mentioned. That survey was very brief – maybe a half dozen questions, which boiled down in the end, to a single thrust, summarized as “Do you agree with the direction these articles have been taking to designing D&D?” Having taken the major step towards the current 4E rules, then making all the motions to return to a style more like previous versions of the game, and then inviting criticism of that change, signals uncertainty in the future of D&D. And not simply uncertainty over which direction is “better” in some objective sense. I don’t think WotC is trying to figure out which direction works better for their audience; I think they’re trying to decide which audience to develop for. And, in the process, get players invested in the new edition, whichever direction it goes. If they are making a good faith effort to develop an invested audience, then I think it’s at least a decent approach to take. But I can’t help but feel like there’s a better approach to the system design.

To simplify significantly, one of 4E’s strengths derives from having a relatively simple set of core principles, and then using an exception based design to develop complexity in a manageable and interesting way. This allowed for a more easily understood and consistent application of rules – concepts such as rolling to beat a static DC applied to situations both in combat and out. Previous editions, again to simplify significantly, used whatever rules – or lack thereof – to match whatever level of fidelity the designers felt was interesting for a given aspect of the game. The upshot was being able to both add fidelity to interesting aspects (e.g. spells) without pushing structure into other aspects of the game (e.g. social interactions.) I would suggest that these two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

5E could have a fairly lightweight and elegant set of core rules, and utilize an exception based design, much like 4E. I personally think the core concepts in 4E function fairly well for these, although I admit to not having sat down and tried to come up with a better set. On top of that, build a default set of rules that handle how the game is played – in this case I’m thinking of what are more commonly considered rules – how to determine order of events in combat, how players interact with the world, etc. Once these default rules exist, develop modules which can replace aspects of the system. These could add or remove complexity, and provide more flexibility for gaming groups to match the system to their preferences. The divide in the audience becomes far more manageable at this point – modules can exist to satisfy either group, and people along the continuum of taste between these two camps can even mix-and-match to find their own sweet spot. A brief aside – the default rules are important in my opinion, simply to give new players an entry point to understanding the game. Handing them a million options and saying “Go craft your own game” could easily become overwhelming and drive away new players. A lot of players I’ve introduced or re-introduced to D&D have praised 4E for having a lower barrier to enjoyment than previous editions. Players who are invested enough in the game to dislike a simpler default rule system can more easily alter the rules.

I certainly admit to there being difficulties to this approach – determining how to balance modules, handling inter-dependencies between modules, and the additional complexity of play testing are not insignificant. But I think it can be done – taking inspiration design by contract and test driven development. This approach can also get the potential player base more heavily invested – developing and testing modules is an easy way to make the game development more parallelized. In addition, there’s the pitfall of relying too much on the player base to develop the rules – crowd-sourcing all of the development can lead to an incoherent mess, with a sea of amateur content or reinvented wheels drowning out any hopes of a good design. But with the right amount of involvement from the designers at WotC, I could see this working out well – much like the hub and spokes system I’ve heard exists in Burning Wheel.

Well, I await the official announcement of 5E, and see how they approach this topic. I don’t think my approach will be the one they take – but it’s an idea I’m curious about, and wish the official system would consider exploring. Given their approach so far, however, I feel like they’ll simply choose one audience or the other, and develop a system that they feel best fits them, and attempt to market it as palatable to the other. If that’s the case, I can’t help but hope they don’t abandon the approach 4E took. I just wish I didn’t have to choose a side and hope for the best.