What Kind of a Dungeon Master Are You?
Before you grab your copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide and start planning your epic adventure, this is a question you should ask yourself. It's a fundamental one, and it's one that many gamers (myself included) seem to overlook.
On the same lines of "I hate killer DMs", this is a high priority topic with me. Dungeon Masters tend to fall in to categories - which sometimes become traps - of behavior and rarely crawl out.
So the original question remains: What kind of Dungeon Master are you?
Ask yourself a few questions.
When you sit down and plan out your adventure do you:
Plan for every contingency and force the players to conform to your story line, no matter what they might be doing?
Create NPCs who's story arc is more important than the PCs, or NPCs who's actions constantly outshine and/or save the players at critical moments?
Along those lines, do you rob the players of victory at the last moment to suit your story line?
Do you constantly use "betrayal" scenarios - even in High Fantasy campaigns - where the player characters are set up to fail from the beginning?
If the player characters were freezing to death (e.g., loss of Constitution and Hit Points per turn) on a cold mountain pass ala Carhardras from The Fellowship of the Rings and one used a Wish spell or item imbued thus to ask for warmth would you:
Cause a 6d6 Fireball type detonation, with no save (since Wish gets no save) in the midst of the party.
Summon forth an Ancient Red Dragon who immediately uses his breath weapon on the party.
Send the party to the City of Brass, on the shores of it's flaming sea of oil.
Or would you have an errant gust of wind blow a scroll down the mountain with a one-shot spell to cause an object to emit a great deal of warmth - but ask the players to attempt to grab the scroll with a to-hit roll versus Armor Class 2?
These are just a few questions I can think of off the top of my head that I think every potential Dungeon Master - no matter if they're playing Basic, Basic+Expert, Original, or Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - should ask themselves before they consider penning their campaigns.
Nobody likes getting on board the Dungeon Master Train all the time. Certainly, players have to follow a story line to a degree - I've literally seen parties that did not stop at the Keep on the Borderlands (from the titular module), and just rode on down the causeway! So a road blocked by a band of Ogres exacting a terrible toll from passers-by or a band of marauding Orcs from the Caves of Chaos...
If that fails to pique the player's interest, there's a myriad of options a Dungeon Master has to choose from, some of them including setting up a new adventure altogether.
Do I suggest that the game is 100% malleable and that the Dungeon Master has no other responsibility than to do whatever the player's whim is? Far from it. Most competent DMs who wish to use a module or modules as the core of their camapign can find a compelling reason for the PCs to enter that dungeon or fortress or haunted forest or whatever, not the least of which is that they're being gainfully employed by a lord or other concern to do the job.
Ultimately, how you answer those questions is up to you, and how truthful you are with yourself is your own concern. Just some food for thought.