China Mieville’s novel Perdido Street Station introduces a race of avian humanoids called garuda. The garuda organize their society around the concept of choice; the most grievous crimes for the garuda, we learn, are those which take away the personal choice of another. Such crimes are invariably punished with exile or death.

Dungeons and Dragons players are much the same way. Players who feel like their decision-making power has been taken away will, at best, disengage; at worst, they will openly rebel against the game and the dungeon master. A dungeon master who consistently backs their players into narrative corners is said to be “railroading.” On the opposite end of the spectrum is the dungeon master who practices radical freedom of choice with little to no structure. This is known as the “sandbox.”

Enough ink has been spilled over the railroad and the sandbox to drown a small island nation. The general consensus is that while you want to ensure that your players have significant control over the direction of the story, the dungeon master must still retain some power over the table as “first among equals.” The ideal game, therefore, lies somewhere in between the extremes of the sandbox and the railroad, where the dungeon master has a clear idea of where they want their players to go, but no idea how they are going to get there. The campaign has a defined arc, but what it is and how it bends is largely up to the players.

And there, most analysis ends. How to actually achieve this ideal state, this tertium quid, is left largely up to the poor dungeon master who now only knows what not to do. I aim to rectify this cruelty.

There isn’t really a good name for this middle ground. It’s sometimes referred to as being “on rails.” I’ve never cared for that name; it suggests an experience too close to railroading. What’s more, it gives no insight on how to plan or design effective adventures. I prefer to call this middle ground “The Maze.”

What is The Maze?

From the children’s menu at Outback Steakhouse to the Labyrinth of Crete, every maze has a specific end goal. Usually, this is to get to either the center or to the outside. But there are many different paths to take to that goal. Some are direct, some are not, and some are complete dead ends, but with enough perseverance, every maze is solvable. Your sessions, your adventures, and even your campaigns can adhere to this same structure.

Your players interact with your world like people walking through a hedge maze. The center of the maze is their end goal: defeating the ghosts that haunt a ruined fortress, rescuing the brewers daughter, or breaking a divine curse on a village. When the players come to “intersections”—quest hooks, key encounters, combat—they make a choice and proceed down one of the available paths. They make these decisions with incomplete information; they do not know which path is the most direct and which will lead them nowhere.

As the dungeon master, you are looking down on the maze from above. You track player progress and observe player choice. You know the decisions that are “optimal” and the ones that are not. At the same time, you are not a passive observer. You can adjust the pacing by adding or removing obstacles, and based on the choices that players make along the way, what happens when they reach the end may change as well. You can guide or suggest new paths when players get lost or frustrated, but you should never force them.

This can be a delicate balance to strike. Done well, however, I believe that this conceptualization can help you run a session that keeps everyone at the table happy, yourself included.

Organize Around Locus Points

Whether you’re designing an adventure or a single session, you’re going to have certain set pieces that you have to reach for story’s sake. If you’re running Curse of Strahd, your players are going to face Strahd at the end. If you want your players to investigate an abandoned wizard’s tower, they need to meet someone who’s going to send them on the path. These moments will drive the story forward so that you don’t have to force it.

I call these set pieces “locus points.” They are the parts of the story that your characters will interact with no matter their choices, the pieces through which all decisions flow. These locus points can come at any point in the story, but generally, they are used to help define the arc. They may be an initial conversation in a tavern to set your group off on a quest, a key discovery that they make on that quest, and a final climactic battle in which that discovery plays an important role.

That does not mean that locus points are static. They can and should morph in response the story that you and your players have built thus far. This is part of your job as the arbiter of The Maze. If your players start to wander away from the main thrust of the story, either find a way to guide them back organically, or decide how you can work the next locus point into where the players are now. If your players need to find a secret treasure room in the dungeon, but they’re stuck all the way on the opposite side, then that treasure room may have to move closer to them. Furthermore, what happens in those locus points is not set in stone. Players should always have some way to meaningfully influence the story, even in moments that you think are critical.

Locus points give you pieces around which you can organize your setting or campaign. My session notes usually contain one or two of these points surrounded by a long series of “if-then” statements. For example, I had a session in which I was planning a bank heist for the players. I didn’t know how they would go about said heist, though I had given them certain specific tools to carry it out.

My notes for the inside the bank largely started with “If the players break into the office…”, “If the players question the manager…”, and so on. The locus point for me was the immediate aftermath of their heist, in which they had a confrontation with a rich noble. The confrontation would happen either way, but it would change depending on how successful the players had been in the heist. The players’ actions still very much mattered—they wound up with several powerful magic items and an enormous amount of gold as a result of their success—but it was the attempt itself that led to the consequences that I considered to be a locus point in the story.

Give the Players What They Want (to a Point)

Your players are going to make choices that surprise you. They may also delight and frustrate you. In making these choices, the players are communicating to you where their own gameplaying priorities lie. As a dungeon master, you should respond to those unspoken messages and provide the most engaging adventure possible for your players. If your players are always trying to sneak around all of your meticulously-planned combat encounters, try planning more stealthy objectives for them instead. Conversely, if your players are kicking in every door and smashing as many skulls as possible, throw more bodies at them. No two playgroups—indeed, no two players—have the same playstyle, and it is up to you to figure out how to accommodate those playstyles into your overall story.

Diverging from this pattern can be a way of signaling to your players that something is important. In the campaign I run, my players’ least favorite activity is combat. When we first started, I had them fighting multiple combat encounters a session. Now, they have maybe one combat every second or third session. I compensate, however, but giving every combat that does happen great narrative weight. If my players are fighting, someone’s life is probably on the line.

Importantly, the overall goals of my story did not change in response to shifting player priorities. Instead, I had to be creative about the challenges I put in front of them. I realized early on that a long meat-grinder dungeon run wouldn’t be fun for them, but that they enjoy complex social encounters. Other groups would require a different strategy.

But while my methods may have changed in response to player actions, the story that I was telling—a party’s journey to Baldur’s Gate to lift a curse on their friend—remained the same. The arc of my overall story still hit the same thematic notes, but I adapted how I went about it to ensure that my players were still having fun.

Maintaining this precise level of control takes years of practice, and no one does it perfectly. The Maze is an aspirational goal, not a requirement. If you’re ever unsure of how to proceed, remind yourself that Dungeons and Dragons is a collaborative storytelling game at the end of the day. You and your players are working together. There will be times when you need to take control, and times when you need to cede it. Remember that it is not ultimately about the end point of the story; it is about the journey to that point.

As you watch your players run through the maze that you’ve designed, be like the garuda. Do not take their choices away.

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