DM Stands for Diegesis Master

“I get all my best ideas from my players!” I’ve seen it many times as a success story or GMing tip. For example, a player asks if there is a secret door in the villain’s hideout. The DM thinks to themself “there wasn’t… but, that’s a great idea, there sure is now!”

Many games (for example, various PBtA systems) give players a specific ability to introduce fictional game elements. This can be anything from limited framing information, to facts at the very core of the fiction – in Brindlewood Bay, for example, the mechanics of the game allow the players to come up with the solution to the mystery (right or wrong).

Locked in the Dungeon 

But what about games where players have minimal or zero formal agency to shape the fictional environment, beyond their character’s ability to change the world in-fiction? This is where I wince when I see “use your players’ ideas” deployed as advice without qualification.

The danger of grabbing those great player ideas and immediately incorporating them in the game is that it interrupts the information exchange of the standard gameplay loop. The gameplay loop in D&D is as follows: the DM describes a scenario; players describe how their characters want to engage with that scenario; and the DM (plus the dice, as required) adjudicates and relates what happens next.

When a player asks what is in the treasure chest, and the DM says “I don’t know, why don’t YOU tell me what you think is in the treasure chest?” the loop has been disrupted. Many players (not all, but many) will immediately feel as if the shared investment in a consistent, understandable world has been broken. In a game where they are invited to posit that anything might happen, nothing that happens really matters.

There Are Two DMs Inside You

That sounds harsh. But this does not mean DMs should not use player ideas. I use them all the time. Players are a wonderful source of ideas. But I believe they should be saved for after the session, and used as fuel for the planning DM only. 

If players’ ideas are added to the game immediately, by fiat of the DM-as-adjudicator of the action, the DM is pulling back the curtain and spoiling the shared fiction. They are cheapening prep and erodeing verisimilitude.

Employing blorb principles or a similar information hierarchy is a good way of formalizing this approach and ensuring that you're scrupulous when it is time to patch, which is true even if you're best known for game systems that do formally incorporate player input.