Game Gone off the rails? Time to Tapdance!

Sometimes, despite our best efforts and due diligence, we GM’s aren’t ready to run the game. Perhaps we succumbed to writer’s block, or thought we had something that would play out very well, but flopped in the first five minutes. Perhaps the characters turned right instead of left. Whatever the case may be, when these situations occur we have no choice left but to tapdance. Our job is to leap quickly and accurately in response to the characters actions, making no awkward silences or missteps which could indicate our lack of direction.

Sometimes this goes amazingly well. We deliver great content off the top of our head, delivering deep and involved roleplaying or epic combat that flows better than anything we have ever planned.

But, many times, we don’t. We stutter, stumble, mumble and digress. We lead the players on more distractions than any one of them, desperate to fill the time. We look at the clock every twenty minutes, wondering “how, how am I going to fill the next four hours?” The answer is, you can’t.

Instead, if you find yourself in this position, let your players run the game. Many times your players, with only slight prodding, can lead the group on merry adventures and diversions that require little adjudication on your part. Don’t take offense at this, this is your get-out-of-jail-free card! Maybe you will spend those four hours helping the players figure out how their characters can develop a transmission using only the science available in their fantasy game (so they can make a flying boat!), or how they will start a city spanning organization for good or evil. Perhaps you will spend it helping them design clothing for their characters with the help of in-game NPC’s. Whatever happens, the key is to give the players more control than when you are the one running the show. This gets you off the hook, and can lead to things that end up being  far more memorable than the boring dungeon crawl you were supposed to develop.