What I Want As A DM

I've been thinking a bit lately about Gygaxian archaeology (read the article in the link, some rock solid DMing advice from the dawn of the game) and the line of thought followed to thinking about how cool it would be to have a massive sandbox campaign like the legends of Greyhawk. A legendary, sprawling dungeon. A huge pool of players with multiple characters and parties and solo sessions. DMing for a group of 12 players on a wild expedition for deep level treasure.

And that got me thinking about "What do I want as a DM?" Sure, we want to keep the momentum of the game going and we want enthusiastic players, but it may be a worthwhile exercise to detail one wants in the experience, so here goes:

• I want a world for weird D&D adventure. Multiple hexmaps full of crazy places, monsters and treasures. Dungeons. City maps. NPCs. Unique monsters. A world that is interesting and "cool" and has some sort of internal logic/faux-realism. I'm not interested in "World Building" at all, my campaign world is a Frankenstein's Monster of a pastiche...and I'm fine with that.
• I want to have occasional EPIC sessions. All-nighters, drinking soda and coffee by the gallon. Twelve-hour grinds.
• I want lots of players. They don't have to show up every game, and I don't really wanting to be DMing for 12 people at once. But I like the idea of a large pool of potential players with whomever show's up forming a party.
• I want a system where anyone can drop in a session and play without involving a bunch of explaining and handholding, also involving installing an invisible force field to keep out "problem" players without awkwardness.

Basically, when I write it down I want to be the "Legendary Greyhawk Gary," yeeesh...maybe I should scale back my dreams!

What I did learn from this exercise is that although I have traditionally run a "cloistered" group (no guests/no watchers/nobody I don't know/that guy can't come back/etc, basically I'm Larry David), perhaps I should "throw the gates open" and allow the "curiosity tourists"/out-of-town friend of a player's/friend-of-a-friend-of-a-player's /"this guy from work" access to the game? The old-school "Whoever shows up plays" principle.

As much as that appeals to my fantasies of being some master "People's DM," there are a couple of issues:

• The space I game at is small and it is at someone else's residence. Alternate games at a FLGS?
• Problem players. How to handle them with this sort of "semi-open" game?