There are two pieces of advice that I think about often, both in my life and in running a D&D campaign that continues to increase in scope. The first one I want to share came into my life more recently than the other.

Advice One - Brennan Lee Mulligan

From Dropout’s very own Adventuring Academy, Season 5, Episode 1, with Brennan Lee Mulligan and Sam Reich. A beautiful episode in itself, it features one of the best quotes from Brennan:

“Fundamentally, if you just tell a high fantasy story, and you commit with your whole heart, and do it as only you can do it, it will be better than an amazing premise executed heartlessly." —Brennan Lee Mulligan

This single sentence has been rattling around in my brain since this episode premiered, and now, two full months later, it has been reworded into advice that I keep needing to remind myself of:

“A poorly executed campaign with heart is infinitely better than a heartless campaign run flawlessly.” —Me, thinking about what Brennan said

I keep thinking about that because I have been in expertly run heartless campaigns, poorly run heartless campaigns, expertly run heartfelt campaigns, and poorly run heartfelt campaigns. Was that confusingly written? Sorry. Let’s keep going.

What I’m getting at is that the best campaigns I have been a player in are the ones with heart. They’re the campaigns where the DM cares about the players, the story, the game, and having fun.

So, how does this intersect with a far older piece of advice that’s not even slightly supposed to be about playing emotions with math rocks?

Advice Two - Michael Scott (No, Not That One)

One of my engineering teachers in college was a weird, old, ex-military, ex-broadcasting, ex-five-hundred-other-things, couldn’t-really-tell-if-he-actually-liked-his-wife-or-not kind of guy. (Was that last bit of flavor text necessary for me to add? Dude, I don’t know. Probably not, but like, I’ve been up too long. My brain is cooked, and I need to write the ideas out.) This man’s name was Michael Scott. And since The Office came out, he started going by Mike Scott. Interesting times 2013 was.

Out of the dozen or so things he said that I still remember, one of the things that stuck out the most was an otherwise throwaway line from the rantings of a madman at nine in the morning on any given Wednesday:

“People will excuse everything but bad audio." —Mike Scott

WHAT?!?!? I thought, under-caffeinated and half-assing my class…

He went on to explain, “When people go out to see a movie, what’s the biggest reason they’ll walk out? The audio. Think about it. There are a million terrible movies that people love. They can have bad storytelling, bad dialogue, bad visual effects, bad acting, bad camera work; hell, they can even be silent! But if the audio is bad and people can’t hear what’s going on, they’ll walk out!" —Mike Scott, rambling

Tumbling around in my brain for ten years, this has resonated into:

“Everyone has something they won’t excuse or tolerate." —Me, thinking about what Mike said

So where is it that the roads meet, and I want to operate as a DM?