Know How To Challenge Your Players

Imagine that you've made up your own adventure and you're excited to get down to business. You have your players, and you let them make whatever kind of character they want to play. Often, in role playing, each character will have certain strengths. The best groups are ones where each person specializes in a particular set of skills, but when the party works together, each one makes up for what the others are lacking.

Because you let each player make their own characters, you may find yourself with an unbalanced party. If you have several characters who are smooth talkers, one character who is a wealthy merchant looking for thrills, and a couple characters who are brawny fighters, but nobody who can heal characters and nobody who can strike at a distance, then you may feel hesitant to have them try to hack and slash their way through a gauntlet of wizards and demons.

However, just because you didn't get the party you expected does not mean you have to throw away your adventure. What makes role playing games so exciting is that you have to think on your feet. Whatever your plans are, they often go awry, but you always deal with it and find a way to move on.

Present the adventure you planned and challenge them to find a way to make it work. If you have some smooth talkers, maybe they can persuade other characters to come along. Maybe the fighters can call in some favors for reinforcements. Maybe the merchant can hire some mercenaries.

There are all these ways for characters to find reinforcements, but even that's not the only way to solve the challenge. Maybe when the party finds danger, instead of trying to fight everything to death, a smooth talker tries to find a peaceful solution. Maybe a different one convinces enemies that there is more to life than fighting. Maybe the wealthy merchant purchases adventuring gear that is so exceptionally good that it makes up for not having a medic following them around.

As the GM, though, once you do know what your party is, be willing to modify your adventure. If you have a lot of characters who rely on the power of their words, then don't pit them against serpents, spiders, and other beasts that can't comprehend language. Give them a challenge they can face. Make it difficult. Make the risk high, but reachable, and the reward worth the effort. Pit them against other humans and see if they can get those humans to crack without swinging a hammer to do it. Not to mention, maybe the merchant ends up bribing those who care more about gold than honor.

What makes any game challenging and any story exciting is risk. It's about challenges that are great and consequences that are severe. It's about bravery in dire times and the fortitude to push forward because there is more that must be done. Keep those in mind and remember that if you want to GM a great game, you want to tell a great story.