Ruty Rutenberg's Player Advice, DM Tips and Storytelling

Ruty Rutenberg's Player Advice, DM Tips and Storytelling

Todd Kenreck: I spoke with Ruty Rutenberg about his advice for D&D players, Dungeon Masters, and how to craft a compelling story.

Ruty Rutenberg: As human beings, what makes us unique, what makes us our own people, are our flaws, and that's how we grow. And the world that we see the world in is through, not our accomplishments, but our flaws. So, I suppose that when I want a player to engage in a game with a bunch of other players, what I'm looking for is a player that doesn't need to be Superman, that is okay with failing, and is going to have a good time trying to boost the people around them up, regardless of what it does to their character 'cause we know we don't win at D&D. The only way you win at a group game is if the group has a good time. So, that's what I'm looking for is somebody who's going to be more thoughtful about the people around them without being needy in that aspect.

I would say that the number one thing that players should keep in mind when they're playing is that it's not about them, and that the DM is a player, too. We're all at the table to have fun. The DM is going to facilitate a story that helps, but he's only whatever that fraction is of your table, so in that nucleus of a family, you're just as much an important part of it as the DM is, and it's just as much your responsibility, if your group is a table, for you to serve the purpose of your leg. Let the DM be the table or the plane where you're playing, but each one of the people in the group needs to hold up their end of the bargain, and that means not talking over the DM, not screwing around with the things that are going to lessen the impact of the story, and to kind of abide by the social contract that is inherent to D&D when you sit down at the table for that group.

'Cause, video games, it's all about you. Maybe every now and then somebody else has got a controller sitting next to you, but when you thing about that in the grand scheme of things, it's all about how many things do you collect as a person. Whereas, in D&D, it should be about the good of the people around you, even if you're an evil party.

What makes a good story is having, kind of, something to say, and people are always like, they want to know what your process is, or what's your voice? How do you establish what your voice is on a page? And a lot of that comes down to your angle, like, the way that you see the world, and some people can be afraid to express that because somebody will judge them, or because they might miss out on a job or something like that. What makes you different, and what makes your stories different, is the way that you're going to perceive the world, and that doesn't necessarily mean that your creativity is the end-all-be-all of everything.

What it means is that you're able to stop and examine the world for what it is, so you take off the headphones, you stop playing games for a little bit, and you sit and you actually reflect on the day you had, on the event that just happened that was either great or traumatic in your life, and you think about what it was in that moment that made it so emotionally resonating within you. Because there's certain logics that you need to follow when you're doing that, but that's a thing that's almost like binary. Does this make sense in this world? Yes, no, maybe. Or what do you need to do to fix that?

But, the emotional resonance of something, it just comes from within you, so if you are in the place where you can connect with somebody else through that story, through that feeling, then that's where your stories are going to blossom into something that other people want to read, other people want to watch on TV, or in a theater, or something like that.

The reason that we do it is because we want to show people that they don't have to be afraid to be themselves, and a lot of people that have been playing D&D over the years have been in the basement, so to speak. Closet's already taken, and/or now evacuated, but there's even some closet basement-dwellers. The point is that we, as a group that want to express ourselves in a role-playing game, and have a good time with something like that that isn't the standard, normal thing that everybody thinks of, like, "Oh, I'll go to a baseball game," or, "Oh, I'll just go play video games," or something like that, and even for the longest time video games were in the same room, basically, downstairs, in the basement.

"Why don't you go out and play with some friends?" "Okay, Dad." But the point is, is that for us, it's all about embracing the people that need it, that want it, that are reaching out and want to have that interaction with other people because D&D, again, is a social game, and we're here to facilitate that. And there's a lot of people that want to learn how to stream, too, and Satine and I go to pretty much every con we're at, and we do a panel on how to stream. We talk about the bare minimum you need. We talk about what the next level of that is. We talk about how you can start to convert that into money.

We don't know how to convert that into millions, like Penny Arcade, or Critical Role, or whatever, but we do know what the baseline is, and we know how to help people get started there. And we want to help people because that impact on them, even just watching little girls or people that are new to Dungeons & Dragons, or even women that felt ostracized from the table for so long, having them come up and saying, "Oh, my god. Thank you for showing us it was all right to do this, to play, to run a game," whatever. People that look like me can play D&D. People that don't go out and do all these other normal things can play D&D, and I like the idea that D&D is being normalized.

Probably say the best advice about being a Dungeon Master is to listen because pretty much everything that you're going to do as a Dungeon Master, no matter how much you prep, how much you plan, it's going to be a lot of improv and a lot of going with the flow, so making sure that your players know that they're being heard, and that you're being consistent ... And the only way that you can be consistent with your game is to be listening to all of the little cues that people are giving you. Whether it's how they talk to an NPC, whether it's the way they try to approach a rule, or one of your previous rulings, or something like that, it really comes down to making sure that, not only are you being clear and concise, but that you are understanding them as best you can, and then asking for clarification if you don't.

 

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