Dungeon Master Tools – Players at the Table

Let’s actually start out by saying, this topic isn’t all bad. Yes, I am going to have a little section to kick it off on how to handle poor players at the table. But there are a lot of good topics and positive things that you can do. So I want to spend more time on those because cultivating the good behavior is as important as dealing with poor behavior.

Poor Behavior

So let’s talk about poor behavior to start. This can take a lot of different forms, and the next topic is going to let you handle some of it. If you have a group you know well, you probably know how people are going to act. If you need to add in new players from outside a group, everyone has a different dynamic. And there are some people who are not going to handle the game you run well.

This can be for a lot of reasons. It might be a min/max player who sulks if they miss an attack or someone else gets to do something that “they are better at”. Or it might be the alpha who tries to explain how everyone should run their character and what you as the Dungeon Master should be doing instead. Or it might be outside of game behavior that just makes people uncomfortable, like bringing politics to the table, saying inappropriate things, or general rude and disrespectful behavior.

For me, this is a three strike situation. The first time I see it or it is mentioned to me, I talk to the player. They maybe don’t realize what their behavior is doing or that it is causing issues at the table. Second time it happens, let them know that they’ll be gone if it continues. And then third time, they are gone. Now there are some things that are just completely inappropriate and it might be zero tolerance there. But know what that is for you and your players.

Setting Expectations

That nicely leads into this element of the game. And this can be done at a session zero, or before even. But let people know what the expectations are. A lot of them are simple, but let’s throw together a list.

• Show up to Sessions and let us know if you need to miss
• Pay attention in sessions, aka, don’t use your phone or laptop for anything beyond not taking
• Engage
• Be respectful of others
• Keep others engaged
• Don’t hog the spotlight
• If something is uncomfortable, speak up
• Play to the style of the campaign

So all but the top points are really about what The RPG Academy has as a golden rule. That is, “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.” It is something important for the whole table to know and understand. You want everyone to have a great time gaming.

The last one is probably a little bit different than you often see. And that is why I think it could be useful to talk about. Play to the style of the campaign. And we’ll talk some about what that means in more detail in the next section. For setting expectation this also refers to, know the setting. If I, as the Dungeon Master, send out an idea to get you hooked in and it’s a low magic, components are hard to find, grim setting, don’t come in with a wizard. Or if you do play a wizard know that it is going to be hard. Come with ideas and intentions to play into the setting.

The Right Mix

The right mix is a big one for the Dungeon Master. And I think it is something that people often don’t understand. I write about the three pillars of Dungeons and Dragons. And I think that they can be true for all RPG settings. But know your players and know how to mix them the right way.

Firstly, if you know that a campaign is going to be very heavy on combat, let the players know. You don’t want them to build the squishiest druid who doesn’t have a single attack of defensive spell. At the same time, if this is a low combat campaign, let them know as well so they don’t make a fighter with only combat skills.

But I think more importantly is to learn as you go at the table. See what your players gravitate towards. A group might prefer combat and exploration to social interactions. If that is the case, make those two elements the larger parts of the your campaign. On the flip side if they love to interact with NPC’s, give them chances to do so and put combat on the backburner.

I want to stress that there isn’t a perfect way to do this. There is no combination that is going to be ideal all the time. Some sessions might be all combat even for a group who prefers social interactions. General rule of thumb is make it lean into the players preferred style. And when you go towards what they like least, make it matter for the story.

Engaging Everybody

Finally, this one is about the group and players, but often times is about a specific player. And this is something that you can get help from players for, but as the Dungeon Master, it falls on you as well. In an RPG group you likely have the more and less talkative players. So don’t let the more talkative players steamroll the less talkative players. That goes back to keeping everyone engaged.

Tips

As the Dungeon Master a few simple tips. When the players are discussing options, ask the quieter player, “What do you think?”. Put the ball in their court for them to answer. Or if the players are in town shopping and everyone is talking about what they want, ask the quieter player what their character would want. It’s not singling them out, it’s bringing them into the events that are currently happening and getting their input.

What you want to avoid, though, is singling them out. Things like suggesting they be the one to decide on what the players do might feel like too much pressure. And it might cause them anxiety in which case they won’t be having fun. So the goal is always to bring them into what is happening.

This is where you can also recruit another player to help. Maybe not the most talkative player, but someone who can hold their own and is empathetic. Let them help you with this. That way the engagement is coming from beyond just the Dungeon Master. And a player can more easily suggest that another players character comes along with them.

Example

Let’s say the party is getting split (don’t do this too often) and two player characters go one way and two go another way. Instead of them just splitting up and whomever is by themselves gets the quieter person, let the other person ask them to come along with them. That is a positive interaction to get that player involved.

Final Thoughts

So that is it, for now, for Dungeon Master tools. I know I put a lot out there for it. I hope that a lot of it just stacks up nicely for you as a Dungeon Master. The goal from this whole series has been to make being a Dungeon Master seem less daunting.

The Steps

Now, I know that this all feels like a lot when I write it all down. But let’s break it down one last time into smaller chunks that you can do. And don’t start the next one until the previous one is done completely.

Step 1: Come up with your idea. Read up on the campaign tools. And reach out to some people for your group.

Step 2: Do a Session 0, and make an agreement about some standards and expectations for the game. The latter part is in this article, and then read up on Session 0 here. And you’ll help facilitate character creation.

Step 3: Break down your first arc and first session. But really focus on that first arc here. This is step one of your planning.

Step 4: Plan that first session and do the world building needed for it. This is a quick follow-on to what you did in step 3, but more in depth and focused. And this is also when you look at combat, social interactions, and exploration, depending on what is in that session.

Step 5: Play

Step 6: Repeat Steps 4 and 5 until you hit a new arc, then back up to 3.

Hopefully that is simple enough. And as I said, do each one separately, don’t do too much at once. I want to continue some and I want to talk to the players next. So look to start next week for Dungeon and Dragons and RPG’s for players.

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Dungeon Master Tools – Social Interations

The NPC

Let’s start out with the NPC. How do you create a good NPC as the Dungeon Master? We already talked about this in world building. You can read about that here. But let’s recap it for the basics. You want to create an NPC, add in these things: Name, Defining Feature(s), Brief Description. That’s what you want to start with for it. Maybe add in an occupation as well so you can keep track of who is a shopkeeper, a quest giver, or any other role.

Again, the mantra is keep it simple as you plan out the NPC. If you want to add more to the NPC, add it in the moment. Give the NPC an accent, jot it down where you created your NPC at. That way you remember for next time, though odds are your players won’t remember either. But the big thing is keep your NPC creation simple so that you aren’t over planning and over engineering them.

Social Interactions

This one is tough to give a ton of advice on. The biggest thing to create good and memorable social interactions is to have social interactions in your game. Why, because it just requires practice. There are things like “Yes and” that we’ll talk about with social interactions, but it really is true across the board for your RPG as well.

But let’s face it, as the Dungeon Master the hardest element is coming up with things on the fly. And while you can plan out some combats, and you might know the direction of a conversation with an NPC, you can’t know how the PCs are going to interact with the NPCs.

The player character is being aggressive with the king, what do you do? They are asking about the shopkeepers family, what do you do? They want hire a street urchin as an informant, what do you do?

You need to be able to react in the moment. And you get better at that the more you do it. It’s a skill for players to, what happens if the king becomes hostile to them? But as the dungeon master, you can plan for that, you can’t plan for the players interacting.

“Yes and”

So let’s talk about “Yes and”, it’s probably something you expected sooner. But this is an improv idea of going with the flow. If the players say, “I want to hire the street urchin as an informant” and that isn’t your plan, how do you go with the flow. “Yes and” is the answer. So let’s look at this example I’ve created.

Example – “Yes and”

Street Urchin: I saw the robber run down that alleyway.
Player: Thanks for the information. (pause) We think there is a group of thieves who just came into town, if you keep your eyes and ears open for anything suspicious we’ll pay you a silver a week for information.

As the Dungeon Master, this isn’t our plan, this is a one off NPC that we didn’t even plan ahead of time, now the players want to hire them. So we “yes and” it.

Street Urchin: Sure, I’ll help for a silver a week, but I’m not going to do anything dangerous, and I want a meal every time.

What We Did

So it threw us off our game, kind of. But we created some rules around it. The players now have an informant, it costs them a silver per week, it costs them a meal per week. And the Street Urchin has said that they won’t do anything dangerous. We created some guard rails around the character. And this being an unplanned NPC that matters now, it creates some of our world planning for the character.

Name: Street Urchin (until they ask for a name then have them name it)
Defining Feature(s): Always after a good meal and eager to chat, but is cautious if anything looks hard to do or dangerous since they can’t afford to get hurt.
Brief Description: They are a small, undersized human who is living on their own on the streets. They ran away from home after their village was attacked by goblins. As far as they know their family is dead. And they don’t have enough food or money to go back and find out. But they have been making it on the street by being careful and cautious around anyone who looks dangerous.

Other Social Tips

So what other things are worth noting about social interactions. Firstly, keep an eye on two things that the players do. Players will tend to find NPC’s that they like and NPC’s that they don’t like. Those are your key NPC’s for your game. When you need someone to give out a new quest, go with one of those, on either side. Because it is going to make it more interesting and gives you a framework for good interactions.

What do you do with them, let’s look at the different types.

NPC’s Players Like

So these are going to be the ones that you do a few different things with. The simplest is that the majority of them are just going to continue to be friends with the players. Let’s take the street urchin for example. They just want a friend, they are going to be nice to the players because the players feed them and give them money, they won’t turn on the players.

The next option is that you put them in harms ways. The players are going to want to protect them, so let’s again look at our informant street urchin. They try and be careful but these new thieves are good and realize that the street urchin is informing on them. So the group of thieves go and kidnap the street urchin to lure the players into a trap.

The final option is that you make them betray or always be evil. This is harder for the street urchin, in some ways, but the secret backstory could be that the street urchin is actually the head of the group of thieves and used them to get rid of a bad apple at the first meeting. And now they are feeding them just enough good information that the players trust them while they really are planning and executing a bigger and grander heist.

NPC’s Players Dislike

Now the flip can generally be true, in some ways. The NPC could just stay unlikeable and be a rival to the players. In fact, build them up as an adventurer who gets their own party and is beating the players to completing some things to really drive home that rival feeling. But that’s a rare case, mainly you just keep them antagonistic to the PCs.

It’s also fun, once in a while, to give them an interesting and truly heartfelt backstory. They are abrasive because they don’t trust adventurers. An adventuring party kidnapped their brother and made him work for them carrying around their packs and things like that. And they don’t know where their brother is, the adventuring party left and didn’t come back from an adventure so they fear the worst. But it comes across, until you get to know the NPC as just being mean to adventurers, which the players are.

Now, the final one is putting them in harms way. But why would the players care. Well, you need to tie that to more of the plot. They hire the adventurers to keep them safe, but the adventurers don’t like them, that’s some fun interactions. Or they get kidnapped, but they are important so there is a good reward for getting them back, can that tempt the players?

Final Thoughts on Social Interactions

The best advice that I can give is just do it. You are going to stumble, you are going to need a pause. I’ve ran a game where because of a social interaction we took a ten minute pause to use the bathroom, grab food, things like that. You don’t need to always figure it out on the fly, if you need to take the time to make it work, do that. And the more you have these social interactions the easier it will get. It might never be easy, but it will become easier.

Down to our final Dungeon Master Tools topics:

• Meta Game and Players at the Table

And let me know if there are other things to cover as well that you want to know more about, or help with. I think that there are a ton of different things that new Dungeon Masters are curious about or that feel intimidating. So I hope that I can help make them clearer and simpler for you.

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Dungeon Master Tools – Session 1

What Not To Do

Let’s start out with what you shouldn’t do as the Dungeon Master. And I know that some of these things that I’ll write about are much easier said than done.

Don’t stress about it. This is the one that is by far easier said than done. But your players are going to like your campaign because they are going to like playing Dungeons and Dragons, for example. So the opportunity to play the game is going to be the important part, not that the game is perfect. And I’ll talk more about what you should or maybe shouldn’t do to keep your stress lower.

Don’t over plan it. Now, I’m going to talk more about this in what to do or describe how I plan things. But don’t over plan the first session or really the campaign. You want to plan some for the session. That is going to help with stressing. But don’t build out your whole world. If you won’t go to a town this session, like the capitol of the land, don’t create the capitol and NPC’s who live there, unless they are key to some element that you know the players will get to.

What To Do

Let’s start by talking a bit about what you should plan for your first session of a campaign. My big thing is keep it simple. When I wrote about the campaign itself, I told you know your hook and have an idea of where you want to end. You can read that here.

So now it’s time to play out that hook. And you want to plan out a few things with that hook and for the first sessions.

• How the characters meet
• NPC Interactions
• A Combat

How The Characters Meet

Let’s start out with maybe the simplest but the hardest as well. How do the characters meet? The simplest way to do this is say, you are already in a party. If they are already a party, they come up with how they meet. If not, create some story hook for it.

Let’s say that they are going to get the quest from someone to kickoff the campaign. Like go deal with the goblins who are causing issues somewhere. Well, all the players grab the same notice off of the job board and then go meet at the house or location where the quest giver will give them some more details. That way you form the party.

Or maybe you want to do the classic, “you are all at a tavern when…”. That’s going to be your hook where you bring the quest giver to them, or whatever that jumping off point might be. Even if it’s the fight in the tavern and the players band together to stop the fight.

The big thing is keep this simple and let this hit the plot quickly. So this is an area where you can reduce your stress by not overthinking it. Go with the simple and/or classic option to get the game moving. Or, better yet, in session 0, let the players create a group that is already a party. Now you just need them to show up and get given a plot hook.

Social Interactions

Let’s talk about social interactions then as well. I think you want some social interactions in the first session. There is an obvious one that we already talked about. You talk with the quest giver to give them that first plot hook. But that might be a more one sided conversation. You talk with Tom Bombadil and he gives you the quest. When you do that, though, Tom tells them to go talk to another NPC to get more information.

Now with this second NPC, and you can even hint at it, they aren’t as talkative. You decide, do they just not want to share the information. Or are they traumatized because, in my previous example, the goblins took over their home or killed a party member or something like that? Give them a single simple reason for not being that talkative. Now the players get to use some rolls to try and get that player to talk more.

The big reason for this is to get the players talking more. And when the players do get the NPC to talk more, now they get a bunch of information, including information about maybe a small boss monster or something like that. And maybe some challenges that the players might face.

The reason for those little extra things, you want to players to talk about it. And they players are going to ask questions, to each other, about if they need to prepare, what their plan should be, and maybe if the person who gave the quest was lying or didn’t know there was a bigger monster out there.

Combat

Next up let’s talk about combat. I think that you want some combat. So you want to move the NPC interaction along pretty quickly. But your quest should be, here is what you need to know, here is where you need to go, and it is a quest where you need to fight something. Keep that moving.

And because you know you need to fight something, you can prepare. Now, I recommend that you keep combat to start pretty simple. I suspect what intimated some people about combat is watching Critical Role where there is always a big set piece combat that happens, or nearly always. You don’t need to do that. If you want to do a combat with minis, buy a few cheap minis or use tokens or something to represent the players and monsters and grid paper. Don’t spend a ton of money, this first combat is meant to be simple.

I personally use theater of the mind most of the time. Why, because that is even simpler. We all just need to imagine what the battlefield looks like. Now that is a bit to keep in your head. But it might be a simpler and lower barrier of entry than trying to map out a combat. If it feels like a lot, take notes of where everyone is, generally, in combat. The fighter went up next to the group of two goblins, that is all the note needs to say. But, let’s get to the next point.

Keep Planning Simple

Mainly I want to get to this next and last point of keep it simple. This is on a lot of levels. I’ve really drilled in that you want to keep it simple with the NPC interactions. You want to keep it simple with combat. But there is even more. Keep it simple, still with your world building.

Example

Let’s use the example again of the goblins taking over a dungeon and a previous group having gone in there and gotten beaten. If that’s the case what do I need for the first session as the Dungeon Master?

• Quest Giver NPC
• NPC who was with the adventuring party
• Name of dungeon
• First room for combat in the dungeon
• Goblin stat block

That is about all that you need. It is really a keep it simple. What is missing from my list? There is no world built yet. I think you might add in the name of the town and the name of the bar where you find the NPC who was part of the adventuring party. That is all that you need to kick off this campaign, it is that simple.

Avoid the temptation to build out a ton more. So don’t build out the kingdom, don’t set-up rulers, and other towns, make it only about what you absolutely need for that session. And if someone asks the name of the kingdom, crowdsource, ask the players what they think it should be called. You go with that, and you work it all together, you don’t need to build it alone.

But if that seems like too little for it. There is very little else that I’d add to your plate. At most, a shop, a shop keeper and what they have. Your adventurers should be about broke, so that makes it simpler. But that’s it, nothing more.

Final Thoughts

The whole point of this Dungeon Master Tools series is to keep things as simple as possible for you. And it’s a reminder for me to keep it as simple as possible as well. Because I know the desire to create more than I need or to plan more than I need. And the more you Dungeon Master and play your campaign the easier things will become to not over plan. Why, because you already know all of it, you build a town, the players come back to it. You don’t need to build it again.

But the temptation is that you need it all to be ready at the start. And let’s say that you are with a group of mean players. Those players go the wrong way, they leave town and don’t head in the direction of the dungeon, in your head or that was given to them. Well, make the drunk adventurer be wrong. Yes, it is okay to railroad them into what you’ve planned by just moving the dungeon, in this case. You don’t do that all the time, but always keep it simple for you because when you don’t feel stressed and overworked as the Dungeon Master, the game is more fun for everyone.

So what is next?

• Story Arcs
• World Building
• Combat
• Exploration
• NPCs/Social Interactions
• Meta Game and Players at the Table

And let me know if there are other things to cover as well that you want to know more about, or help with. I think that there are a ton of different things that new Dungeon Masters are curious about or that feel intimidating. So I hope that I can help make them clearer and simpler for you.

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