And Then The Place Exploded...

Here's a lesson every Dungeon Master should learn. You know those long, epic adventures you always want to run? The ones with things like character development, recurring villains, a winding and convoluted storyline that ends with a cathartic pay-off?

They don't work. The only way they can work is if you play each and every week. Which is possible only for the very young or the very socially challenged. When I noticed my players becoming confused at the last session, not remembering exactly why they were deep in the Mines of Chaos, and wondering what it is they were supposed to do, I knew that I had run my last EPIC STORY!!

So today, I gave them what they wanted. I blew up the Mines of Chaos, with them in it. Turns out someone had kept an ancient blue dragon deep within the joint, and it got pissed. Half an hour of my players racing out of the Mines, with debris falling on them, being attacked by panicking hobgoblins, the floor itself splitting beneath them. Finally, they plumetted out into a dark, midnight valley just as the aforementioned blue dragon exploded out of the mountaintop above them. As it flew over them, the wind from its wings threw them all to the ground, eating more hit points as the dragon soared away.

Then, because I felt I hadn't done enough, it started to sleet.

So now they're back on a simple adventure in a small dungeon. Simple goal: rescue the slave women. No shades of grey. No backstory. Just fight, loot, and cast spells. And they haven't seemed so happy in months.

That's the hardest lesson a DM has to learn: you make the game for your players, not yourself.

Gary would be proud.