After a few years of only DMing games, I had the wonderful opportunity to play in one as a PC and I was so relieved and excited. I built five different characters to choose from, talked with my party to help decide which made the most sense, and then got to work on a backstory. I sunk a lot of time and care into who this character was and how I would play them, and once the campaign started, it felt amazing to get this character to come to life. A couple of his many behaviors and quirks were to pick wildflowers everywhere he went, and almost always asked every NPC about their parents. Our DM handled the flowers pretty easily, these ones are blue, later others were yellow, and finding them varied in difficulty depending on where we were.
In addition to that, he stumbled over the first handful of NPCs when I asked about their parents and I could see he was vamping and it was uncomfortable for him. It finally dawned on me how much of a nuisance my character was for him because who in their right mind would prepare the information I was asking several times a session? The session after I realized that, I decided to stop asking about people’s parents and reduce the amount of flowers I was searching for, despite how important to my character I felt those behaviors were. But something amazing happened after that…
The next conversation we had with an NPC, I sat back, stayed focused on the main plotline, and did not prod into this character’s home life or childhood. The conversation ended and the DM looked at me and said “Aren’t you curious about this person’s parents? I have something written out!” And I smiled. Later, out of character, the DM talked about how he liked the behaviors but just wasn’t prepared for them in the past sessions, and now he wants to incorporate them more. In addition to that, he had a section of notes he had collected to name flowers and give more specific descriptions of them in the moment.
I felt elevated as a writer and a player by this DM and the character was given more opportunity to develop their experiences the way they wanted to.
I think there are a couple things we can abstract from this interaction and important things to note from both perspectives.
Not an Expectation
Just because this DM wanted to do this, and it had such positive effects on me as a player, this does not mean that a DM should feel pressured to prepare this much detail or that a player should expect a DM to prepare all of the information they want them to. There is a balance and a give-and-take here that can be harmful if misused.
Communication
I as a player neglected to speak up. (There is a separate post on how and when to do this as a player, too.) I did not want to burden the DM, and I took the blame for inherently expecting this information from my DM in character creation, so I just wrote it off and continued. But the DM took the onus on a later session and wanted to provide an environment in which my character could thrive. So he adapted and then provided the space for me and him to reconcile the disconnect between us. Now this was a very minor conflict and I use that word in its most loose meaning. The conflict was just the difference in preparation. In fact, this was the DM’s first campaign and he was running a module, so for him to even anticipate the need to prepare the information would have been divine intervention at least. Anyway, the good trait he showed was communicating that he adapted and now was prepared to answer such questions when he noticed I had ceased.
Implicit vs Explicit Expectations
Looking at my PC as an example, this character inherently expected the DM to have a lot of information ready to go at any moment. Especially in regard to the parents of just about every NPC in the game. Not just the ability to improvise maybe a dozen names a session which is a nightmare for just about any DM, but also what they do for a living, if they are alive or not, if not, how they died, etc. The information all has consequences to the story that a DM may not be comfortable improvising and keeping track of, yet without meaning to, I created a character that put a lot of pressure on my DM. However you work these things out depends heavily on you as a DM and also your players and their expectations. My advice is find out what you are comfortable improvising and what you would prefer to set out and prepare, and if anything is too much of a burden, try and talk with your player about that one-on-one. Also, try to sort out things like this in Session 0 and start a conversation before the campaign starts.
Adapting
I already said it isn’t a healthy to expect this from a DM all the time, but I do think that a rigid DM can do a disservice to their players if they only come prepared for what they want to run and do not extend any service or individualized experiences based on the players at the table. A clear example of this might be that a DM really hates running combat and enjoys an almost purely role-play and political intrigue type of campaign. This DM only provides combat once every three to four sessions while Gur’lek the Mighty a PC who was built by a player who really is excited by a good tavern brawl is left shrugging away session after session because Gur’lek has no business investigating the murder of Prince Hupperdink’s poodle. Should this PC and DM even be in a campaign together? Maybe not. But if the two are really wanting to work on this and reconcile their differences to produce a campaign that satisfies both of them, some adaptations need to be made.
I hope this weird dissecting journey of this example is useful!