I always feel like my players are better at playing than I am at dming so I try to keep everything hidden unless I make a major mistake and need to roll something back or give them info I missed
Take notice that the GM in the story didn't run a session completely improvised. When you GM over the years you build up a repertoire of scenes, scenarios, encounters and NPCs, much like a musician builds up a repertoire of songs. With experience you can then pull off these from the shelf of your mind and compile a session seemingly out of thin air. In other words, that GM hadn't skipped prep work: he had done his prep work a long ago already.
With my in person games, we'd mostly keep talk to what happened that session with the characters. "Oh man, when Laxia stabbed it in it's EYE?! Incredible!" "What about Feyre and Jason teaming up!" Sometimes the DM would mention 'I didn't expect you to do X', but we didn't theorize about the future of the campaign, and the DM didn't reveal much.
This is maybe one of the most thought-provoking episodes around D&D I've heard yet. The nuances of psychology in expectations, authority, secrecy, separation of roles, confidence of narrative... there's so many layers and angles to the dynamics of DM to players, and I think it's critical to understand if you want to maintain that elusive, coveted _immersion_. Good video, Mike!
I'd argue that the plot-driven narrative is very much behind this. Players trying to figure out "what is the BBG plotting behind the scenes" is really fun, but that implies that the GM has a BBG plotting behind the scenes. It's much harder (or seems much harder) to deliver on the final moment when players finally figure it out if you didn't actually have the BBG plotting all along. Planning isn't strictly required, as you can attempt to improv it, but that surely going to end up having (more) plot holes, so you're going to have to be OK with that.
I have never used a DM Screen, but I've been told by my players that I do have a good "poker face", that I do have a great knowledge of the rules and, most importantly, that whenever I roll (always in the open btw) I tend to roll terrifyingly high. These factors combined have been enough for me to build that "DM atmosphere".
Early on, I was an opaque DM between my own perfectionism and the expectations of omniscience, but I swung to transparent DMing over the years and have only just been moving back in the other direction recently. This new period of opacity is motivated by player preference and satisfaction, as you touched upon; the players don't want to know how the sausage is made unless they ask. They don't expect omniscience but they prefer to focus on the experience they have at the table.
I became transparent over time because I realized I was decent and relatively strong in improvisation, I became more comfortable with errors and vulnerability, and I leaned more and more into sharing and collaboration in general. The thing is, most players prefer a more structured collaboration, and often they're not too comfortable with vulnerability.
As someone whos running a chronicle of Vampire: the Masquerade (first time GMing any game), your videos are super helpful and give me more confidence in my sessions! I know your channels geared more towards d&d (which i love as well!) but your tips, tricks, and discussing your experiences as a DM are invaluable to any TTRPG player in my opinion.
The biggest "stepping out from behind the screen" that our dm would do is occasionally mention after a session that something didn't go the way he had expected. He wouldn't elaborate on that, just kind of leave that hanging.
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No, not really. I get the impression that they all bounced off TTRPGs in their teens or twenties. I would love to play an RPG with my mother, but I think the power fantasies and misogyny she encountered early on really soured her on the concept.
I have played a "joke game" with my brother, my sister and two other players from an already existing group + the DM. The DM was also part of the group of players that were used to play together, and I had played some random games with them too. The thing was: Everybody in the group had a character and Everyone in the group could be the DM at anytime, taking back the story where we left off. So the DM wasn't prepared AT ALL and improvised something on the spot. My sister and brother created characters in like...10min max... (joke characters of course, the tone was already set up) and it was GLORIOUS. Everything was, at the same time, brilliantly well thought AND completely stupid. I think they had a good time. My sister was really happy to create a character for the new campaign I plan on running. Her new character is inspired from the one she played that first time. A Furbolg Monk whose entire village is cursed with : "everything tastes like banana". And now I have to deal with that...
Fantastic video. It took me far too long to realize that my obsession with knowing the entirety of detail from universal to local scale in the campaign world was counter productive. And I think, since I've recovered, that that kind of state of mind tricks the well meaning DM into thinking that the game is about them, and their world, their expectations, rather than the players'.
What I used to do, when I got out of the "Behind the Scenes" mindset, was ask my players THEIR thoughts. It gave me MUCH more useful information. If your players are your friends, then...they might sidetrack THEIR ideas for YOUR story. And I don't really want that, either. I want us BOTH to have fun. So I'd ask what they thought. And I could mine that for ideas for later sessions, even if Lore was all built out. You really liked the traps and puzzles? Cool, I'll be sure to mix more into dungeons in the future! You really liked how you had to hide around the corner to get a spell off because the enemy wizard kept Counterspelling? I know Wizard foes aren't a mistake now! But it also gives me the freedom to do what I want still. Maybe I didn't like the swinging axe traps so I'm gonna use more dart and gas traps. Maybe I want to try a Warlock because their flavor is more interesting, and they can still Counterspell, etc. It gives you an idea of what they liked, maybe what you felt was a weak point that they LOVED, and let's you play a game everyone loves!
I introduced a DM screen for the first time during a Halloween one-shot where I designed a boss fight against a monster my players had been hoping to see in my main campaign - I wanted the reveal to be a surprise, or at least make my friends feel clever for guessing correctly. I've only played one session with them since then. It was another big boss fight for our main campaign, and I found the screen pretty valuable for increasing tension, since now nobody can see what damage dice the monster uses or determine what its modifiers are. Guarding statblock info added stress to these big encounters, but that's not the vibe I'm always going for. But I don't wanna flip-flop between using the screen or not... I was really self conscious about introducing the screen! Anyway, very interesting topic, and thoughtful video as always
Most of the games I play are over the internet. Often with people in multiple different time zones. This year was the first time I got to play around a table with my own DM screen. It was..... literally a cardboard box. But man I have never loved a piece of kit at a table so much. It was just helpful to have something to pin reminders to, and roll behind and it made me feel at ease. I think it's just helped me feel more in control of what was going on. Even though I was very much still improving the majority of stuff and flying by the seat of my pants :'D (Did not expect that player to transmute a giant metal golem out of train in the first 10 minutes of the first session but really I should have known.)
Great video! I had a friend who was very open that 90% of what happened at the table was made up by him in the moment. He didn’t use a DM screen, he usually didn’t have notes, and when he needed an NPC, he had dice that had alignments and personalities and he’d just roll them on the table and go with whatever came up. It made for some occasionally chaotic sessions, but it was fun. I’ve always been a “listen to the director’s commentary” kinda guy so I love talking with DMs about what they thought would happen etc. But I get that for some people learning how they made the Blob in the 80s movie might ruin the magic.
In your defense about the adventures, I've found the organization of a lot of 5e adventures not very conducive for running the game. I thought I was just dumb too, but B/X adventures are fine, 2e adventures are fine, 3.5 adventures are fine. Third-party 5e adventures are fine. Many 5e adventures seem to be more structured to be read than for DMs to run them, and I'd say I struggle parsing and imagining how to run about half the big 5e adventure books I've read. [To be fair, this isn't *just* a 5e problem. T1-4 had a similar problem and that one's super old.]
I've never used a screen, and with newer groups I have always had a player question my lack of notes or anything in front of me aside from my dice. My go to response was "I am a DMing god, I do not need a screen like a mere moral GM!" I played with a laptop on the floor with a mouse in my pocket to scroll with.
Thanks for the info Mike! I’d love videos on some of these topics if you’re looking for any ideas. - Walking the line between railroading the players and giving them a good story - Planning good dungeons that aren’t a slog - Planning encounters that encourage other decisions other than combat Just some facets of the game I’ve had difficulty with!
Great questions! I’ve noted them down, I’ll have to ruminate on them and see if I have any useful advice - some of these are things I struggle with, too ☺️
I’m pretty open about dming. I hold a similar kind of Q&A session after every session. I use a dm screen but roll all attacks, saving throws and skill challenges out in the open.
For me, it depends on the situation. If a GM is building a city on the fly, that doesn't bother me. If a GM is waiting for me to point a finger and declare a person a murderer before deciding who the murderer is, I'm not cool with that whether it's in my favour or not. It's rewarding me for being clever/punishing me for not being clever without challenging my intelligence by having proper foreshadowing, clues etc. Waste of my time. If a GM is going to stick an ogre on the right or left path depending the route I take, I don't want to know. I mean, I already know, but don't confirm it. Allow me the illusion of choice.
"That's called murder" 😂 I was our notekeeper in a Curse of Strahd campaign and we decided to have a separate page dedicated to questions for the DM post-campaign. I've since decided to steal that for the campaigns I DM (results pending as I've never completed a campaign as DM)
I mostly agree with keeping secrets. I'm trying to get better at that actually and let players guess. I'm trying to get to the point where the only time I give "behind the scenes" is in cases of disagreement. A few times I was accused of "BSing" the monster. I explained why this monster was capable of doing this and offered to send over the stat block after the encounter just to prove I was playing fair.
One reason I like to cultivate the aura of authority and mystique that wasn't said here is because it lets me play around with expectations to reward my players. Now, realistically, I don't plan out hardly anything in specific; my DM style is very improv; I put out a scenerio, and it's up to my players to find out how to solve it; there's very rarely an actual set answer. That said, because I'm comfortable enough with the rules (and pf 2e has really handy DC charts), it's not hard for me to have a number ready to go for almost any idea, which gives the illusion that I really am just super well planned. Now, because I have this appearance, when my players come up with something really cool and they are all hyped for, I can act shocked and make more of a show to figure out what needs to be done, which in turn gives the players the satisfaction of outsmarting the normally all knowing DM. It's important not to do it too often, but sometimes, giving people that feeling is a really nice way to reward engagement. I also use this to help guide social interactions at the table; like if the quiet person finally speaks up, I can point at them and say "hey, they've got a good idea here" and because I've got authority, people listen, and it's not too long until the group starts making space for them intentionally in planning sessions.
Other game systems have a much more collaborative style. Tenra banshee zero is like a stage play with everyone swapping parts. Yazebas has no GM really. Chuubos is like a group improv with everyone helping each other hit their target story beats.
Wow. Emotional rollercoaster for me. At the beginning i felt relieved, when you mentioned your first DM not using the DM screen. I don't use it too, and feel defective in a sense that without a screen i'm not a true DM. And then i went down, after the words about 'authority', and that the screen is almost 100% needed amongst other things to make your players respect you. Mine players don't see me as the authority, i guess. Idk. I wanted to be completely honest with them, and even roll everything in front of them. Maybe that's why i'm exhausted after sessions. Yeah, sad
I think some of these come from the asymetrical structure of having one player play the world and the rest play individual characters within it, but a couple I think are down to some of the design assumptions in D&D - trad games generally, honestly - compared to some other game styles. When a game designed for one-shot play opens with the players being asked things like "Why did you come to this island?" and "Where are you right now?" I think it sets expectations in a very different place, and more towards this being a collaborative exercise that we're all going to need to think on our feet. And whether that's good or bad is going to depend on the group. Same with if a game straight up has section of character building for the one player making a Dwarf "OK, so... What are dwarves in this world?" and tying that into character abilities, but... Also defines what dwarves are in this world (Those two games being Escape from Dino Island, which I've run, and Fellowship, which I've only read, respectively)
I definitely err on the side of being open about everything the moment the game ends. My stance is mostly that characters have secrets, and players don't. That said, you're definitely right that the poker face and the screen and all those accoutrements can be super important for the experience while the game is happening. Both for the reasons you mention, and just to let the DM get into the ritual space of DMing the story. You cross the threshold to change the social schemata you're working off. On the other hand, I understand that feeling of wanting to sit with the experience after a game, but I think that the example of a tv show is a bit misleading. It's much more like a group of friends who sat down to watch a show together, in my opinion. In that case, the social contract is different, and usually includes some level of talking about the story and the characters and what's going on, I think. Whether its indepth explorations of character psychology or letting on how pressured you were when that fireball almost took out the BBEG before he escaped, I think its part of the transition out of the DM role and back into normal pal mode. It's an important element to me, at least, and imagine some other DMs feel the same.
as a long time gm (have run many different systems) I've found the authority involves showing a legitimate desire to make sure everyone has as much value from the game as possible. If I tell someone know its towards that goal, if I give someone who is a less efficient character creator a bonus its to keep that goal in mind. I've never really tried to pretend to know all the answers but make it clear I will always try to think of an answer that makes sense with the goals I named.
I super run into this. I like to run my games in a way where my players believe that there's an answer to every question, an entire world to interact with, a sense that I operate as the window into a very "real" place with rules and social structures. To do that I have to invest a lot of time and effort into making sure that my world is very well fleshed out within the range of how far the party will get in a given session, and also part of a bigger plan. And I do that because I love doing that. And I just want to talk to my friends about all the stuff I'm working on, but I can't because my friends are the players and that would be spoilers. On the flip side, I love that surprise of when everything pops into place and the characters go "Oh what?!". In my game there's a man who has a cat, and one time a druid was using speak with animals to speak with that cat and in doing so made the cat angry, and it lashed out angrily... in common. My players have been obsessed with that cat ever since, and without getting into details that obsession with the cat has slowly been leading them to clues along the main plot line. The moment I turned to the other payers after roleplaying the cat and said "you all understood that by the way, the cat said that in common" and they all flipped was maybe the highlight of the game so far, but if I just told them about the cat then that moment would have never happened.
Its interesting how different people "come down" after a game. Personally I love taking time to talk with players about the game and the DM. For me the DM's enjoyment is big so I love to hear things they enjoyed things they didn't enjoy and things that went right or wrong. I'm not looking for secrets or hidden lore but knowing "I was hopeful you guys would X or I had planned Y" is just a nice bit of insight.
I tend to think of GMing like performing a magic trick: while many audience members may wonder how it is done, they will almost always be disappointed if they know the secret. Like, if my players knew how much I change what I've planned in order to match their decisions it would detract so much of the meaningfulness of those decisions. You have to make your players believe the results of their action are determined by the fictional world you created, not just because you, the GM, decided so.
Two of my house rules: -If I make a mistake let me know. If we encounter something outside the rules a quick search online to see what others have done and will go with general consensus of the group -This is a group game if there is a rule problem or a call I make that is not liked bring it up and group consensus will result in how we go
Love this one. I often find myself wondering one of two things after a session. Either its, A) am I trying to tie to many strings together and instead just making a jumbled mess of a plot? or B) have I shared to much of what I am thinking with the players?
I'm a little late to this one... wow, two years - ok, quite a lot late, but I had some thoughts. I've been DM'ing regularly for six years now and I've never used a DM screen. I keep my notes secret but my rolls are out in the open. I can only speak for our table but it seems to reassure the players when I'm rolling where they can see because they know that I'm being impartial, and that if anything goes really badly for them - whether it's monsters critting and hurting the players badly, or social encounters not going their way - it's because the dice just rolled that way, and not because I'm being adverserial. It also means I can more genuinely sympathise with them when those massive damage rolls do come in, and they know I'm on their side even if the dice aren't!
I never used a dm screen for the longest time, and my friends never used a dm screen for an even longer time. I think a lot of it stemmed from trusting that the players won't look over at what we have written on our notebook, or catching how much hp the monster has left, or looking at our die rolls. We didn't need to hide anything from our players because we never cared too much about creating that mystery, and that our players were never looking for anything. Besides, without a dm's screen I found that we all had a much more casual time. When I'm the dm now and I have the dm screen I feel like I'm preforming for my players. But before I ever even considered using a dm's screen I felt like I was playing along with the players, not just playing FOR them. I dunno it's kinda hard to explain.
The joke about your players being unable to turn the DM Behind The Scenes off was a gut punch. Impeccably timed and masterfully done. (I think I've accidentally formed my brand by almost never commenting on the main meat of a video)
I had a situation where I was DMing my group for our second session (first time DM). They took it completely off the rails. A whole hour of content I had zero prep for. And it was great! I felt my improvisation went well, and the players had fun. When it was over I told them that the last chunk was totally improvised because they thought so far outside the box. Two of them were impressed, and the other (not rude in any way) said "Don't tell us, just let it happen!" And that really got me thinking about it. So now I'm pretty much at a place that I will give them information (pending potential spoilers) only if they ask. I realized it could ruin the immersion a little bit, so I'll let them make that choice!
pesronally i like a mix of both as a player! :D i like and would rather not know what's gonna really happen next sometimes cause i want my characer's reaction to feel more genuine, but i do like going back to ask about the "what-ifs" sometimes because thats' also fun to me
My players I think know to trust me but not to expect me to have it all figured out. I repeatedly add stuff to my game just to see if it works. I recently had my players in a wizards tower where they essentially played a game of blood bowl against some earth elementals, myrmidon, and mephits
My first DM would tell us everything right after a game. I did not enjoy that but I also did not say anything about that, and I eventually just stoped playing with him (for several reasons, not just this one). Now that I DM (or Storytell, lately), I do not share info, but I'm also not very into using a screen. I do like having a laptop, tho, to access info quickly.
When I feel the urge to talk to someone about how I THOUGHT a session would go vs how it did I call my best friend of 18 years. She is heavily invested in the story and has even been sending me ideas of things to add to catch my players off guard from time to time. I did reveal 3 months after one session to 4 out of my 5 players that I dropped my first hint that one of them was a lycanthrope and when they insisted that session to stay in town to hunt "the wolves" that killed some sheep I happened to roll for 6 wolves on an encounter table which covered the whole thing up. None of them suspected anything prior but it was after the player's reveal that we discussed it and a lot then clicked for them. I did end up sending a picture message of the dice results to the lycan player with a message saying "I can't believe this happened" which we both laughed about after the session.
Pathfinder 2e handles the "coherency" of the world that you were talking about really well. The rarity system is a natural way of making sure you all agree on certain options.
I think some people may be inexperienced and nervous and want their 'caretaker(dm)' to know what they're doing and to be able to guide them through their uneasiness. The outward appearance of being in control would help them chill out. In the same way as doing some exciting new activity in real life, they want someone to kinda hold their hand as they get comfortable and test the waters.
I do a bit of both. After a session, I'll tell them what might have happened if they chose one of the other options, but never what's coming ahead. When they ask questions about the game away from the table i just say "Maybe, I Don't Know"
For me, I tend to keep an air of secrecy across my DM'ing as much as possible, mostly because it makes it far less obvious when I have to improvise material and create it on the fly - it's not a power move to paint me as omniscient, but more to maintain an air of 'immersion' for the players so they don't have the breaks on the narrative moment of me cracking all the time when they do something wild. It gives them the confidence to make wild, big choices which I want them to do, and allows me to respond it to it with a wry curl of the eyebrow whilst my brain rationalises their chaos 🤣
Commenting before even watching the video but YES. This is the number one source of stress for me as a DM, along side coming up with names for places and NPC's.
Very interesting episode and topic! I don’t have much personal experience either way, but it does remind me about when they took the papers away from newscasters (when teleprompters became a thing) and the public hated it. Something about having a few papers on the desk in front of them made the newscaster seem more trustworthy. The human brain is weird lol
i'm running my first 5e game, and actually putting it up on RUclips more for the fun of it (no pretense of being a Critical Role clone), and I'm very open with the fact that I don't know everything. In fact, during the first few sessions, we make some pretty big mistakes. We just figure them out between sessions and fix them for next time. If it really matters at the time, we'll stop and dig into all the rules. But mostly we just go with it unless its easy to find on the online compendium. For example, I thought players got an OA when they stand up (3.5 rules did), but they don't. In session like 20, i used a reach creature and only later found out I was handle OA wrong with reach! Oh well, the game moved on and we all just laughed it off. Its still been a fun game. Don't sweat the small stuff.
One thing I really feel bears mentioning is that these multi-hundred page published adventure books were not any part of the original history of this hobby. Modules were short and sweet, staple-bound, and thin. This new style of hardbound adventure tome is equivalent to an entire series of even multiple chained series of modules, as we knew them back in the 1980s. If you feel you have to read the entire book before you even begin playing the first chapter, then that book is poorly designed. The DM is not a screenwriter, a novel writer, or the director of a film. The DM is a referee.
I don't think that most DMs feel like they need to have everything figured out because of rules. Maybe some rules and sometimes indicate the assuming of this, but I don't think it's *that* significant. I think reason for most DMs is anxiety and high standarts they put upon themselves. They don't want to break the immersion, to let the illusion of all-knowing disappear, so they are overwhelmed with campaign planning, worldbuiding and so on. What if players suddenly go visit this NPC at home? Do they live alone, what their parents' names are? What is backstory of that place or that place? What was the name of the first king, what are the gods? Players can ask anything, and DMs are afraid of failing, of being awkward and bad with improv, or coming up with cringey names and so on. Especially with examples of immensive worldbuilding and DM's confidance such as CR and so on. At least from my experiense, I think these impossible expectations and anxiety are the main reason of this DMing mindset and burnouts.
I have a problem with accidentally soft locking my party in adventures. We play later in the night because of schedules, I tend to over plan. But I want to open it up for more player choice, but when there’s a silence I keep moving the story. How would you go about fixing the issue of soft locking and letting them have more say in the story. (I talk to my players before hand and prep weekly to integrate their character to the story)
In the past, I've seen three different solutions: 1. DM encourages the players to select a lead character who is then responsible for picking up in silences. That character should have strong individual motives. 2. DM selects a player before each session, and gives them the responsibility of pushing things forward when silence hits. This player changes each session. 3. DM prepares mini-nudges, which are pieces of description, memories, or interactions to drop into silence to poke individual characters. Each of these is inducing player action, but guiding it as well, so it isn't as freeform as actual organic player choice, but they can help build the muscles to get players to do that.
I do some prep-work in advance about lore and the story for the players, but most of what's happening I wing it because, I don't know what the characters are going to do (and my friends can be a pain sometimes, in a fun way).
I don't like dm screens. At all. I am all for playing with open cards so to speak. I also see gms more as guides, rather than authority figures. I recently started a new group and all my players told me that it was a big draw for them that I offered a very base democratic approach to the game. Everyone is allowed to make suggestions for world building, rules and story. Off course during a sessios, I am the one to make a final call, but everything can be discussed inbetween. The way I see it, I am the one to set up the loom with the warp and my players hand me the weft threads for our campaign and than it is my responsebility to weave every thing together in the agreed upon pattern. During character creation I have already said a lot of times "I don't know that yet. What would you suggest?" And than I take what my players give me and make it make sense in our game world. It's a play style with a huge focus on the collaborative part of collaborative story telling. And it's actually quite dependend on the fact that the dm doesn't have it all figure out from the get go. A lot of my players are also former, or current dms, or are interested in dming themselves. And I have already announced that we will run the game in a way, that gives us the possibility to switch the dm position, which I have had great experiences with. This play style is probably best suited for players who enjoy, being both player and dm and are interested in being more involved, but not fully in charge of everything.
I think it's good to act you know what you're doing so that when you don't or you need to fudge a roll you can act like that was the plan the whole time. Brennan Lee Mulligan did not originally plan to plan Fantasy High a mystery detective story but because Murph made a character with a missing babysitter he made that the entire plot. For emersion sake I think it's better to act like that was the plan all along rather than breaking the fourth wall and saying you had a whole different section planned
Unfortunately it was much simpler and easier with oldschool D&D; luckily now we have a better OSR experience with D100 Dungeon books by Martin Knight. Brought back exploration and discovery the 5e usually lacks unless a real good gm is at the table.
Sometimes it's better to tell the players they're going off rails than to just improvise something that likely won't be as good as what you've planned.
I had to do this with the very first session I ran for my son and my brother. We were playing Lost Mines of Phandelver and my son wanted to go to Yatar that one of the NPCs mentioned. I had to explain to him out of character that I didn’t have any good information about Yatar. He could go if he wanted, but we might have to stop the game for the day so I could prepare.
![Yeat & Summrs - GO2WORK [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NEFEwfPcXRA/mqdefault.jpg)
“THAT’S called murder!”
This might be the funniest thing you said in any of your videos… I don’t know why, but it just tickle me to death
Noooo not to death that’s murder too nooooo
exactly this :D Mike's one of those people with a perfect deadpan delivery
I always feel like my players are better at playing than I am at dming so I try to keep everything hidden unless I make a major mistake and need to roll something back or give them info I missed
I definitely know that feeling!
Take notice that the GM in the story didn't run a session completely improvised. When you GM over the years you build up a repertoire of scenes, scenarios, encounters and NPCs, much like a musician builds up a repertoire of songs. With experience you can then pull off these from the shelf of your mind and compile a session seemingly out of thin air. In other words, that GM hadn't skipped prep work: he had done his prep work a long ago already.
With my in person games, we'd mostly keep talk to what happened that session with the characters. "Oh man, when Laxia stabbed it in it's EYE?! Incredible!" "What about Feyre and Jason teaming up!" Sometimes the DM would mention 'I didn't expect you to do X', but we didn't theorize about the future of the campaign, and the DM didn't reveal much.
This is maybe one of the most thought-provoking episodes around D&D I've heard yet. The nuances of psychology in expectations, authority, secrecy, separation of roles, confidence of narrative... there's so many layers and angles to the dynamics of DM to players, and I think it's critical to understand if you want to maintain that elusive, coveted _immersion_. Good video, Mike!
Thank you!! ☺️
I'd argue that the plot-driven narrative is very much behind this. Players trying to figure out "what is the BBG plotting behind the scenes" is really fun, but that implies that the GM has a BBG plotting behind the scenes. It's much harder (or seems much harder) to deliver on the final moment when players finally figure it out if you didn't actually have the BBG plotting all along.
Planning isn't strictly required, as you can attempt to improv it, but that surely going to end up having (more) plot holes, so you're going to have to be OK with that.
I have never used a DM Screen, but I've been told by my players that I do have a good "poker face", that I do have a great knowledge of the rules and, most importantly, that whenever I roll (always in the open btw) I tend to roll terrifyingly high. These factors combined have been enough for me to build that "DM atmosphere".
Hee hee hee that’s a vibe for sure
Early on, I was an opaque DM between my own perfectionism and the expectations of omniscience, but I swung to transparent DMing over the years and have only just been moving back in the other direction recently. This new period of opacity is motivated by player preference and satisfaction, as you touched upon; the players don't want to know how the sausage is made unless they ask. They don't expect omniscience but they prefer to focus on the experience they have at the table.
I became transparent over time because I realized I was decent and relatively strong in improvisation, I became more comfortable with errors and vulnerability, and I leaned more and more into sharing and collaboration in general. The thing is, most players prefer a more structured collaboration, and often they're not too comfortable with vulnerability.
As someone whos running a chronicle of Vampire: the Masquerade (first time GMing any game), your videos are super helpful and give me more confidence in my sessions! I know your channels geared more towards d&d (which i love as well!) but your tips, tricks, and discussing your experiences as a DM are invaluable to any TTRPG player in my opinion.
The biggest "stepping out from behind the screen" that our dm would do is occasionally mention after a session that something didn't go the way he had expected. He wouldn't elaborate on that, just kind of leave that hanging.
Ooh haha I like his style
Have you played an RPG with a family member? If not, do you have a family member you would play with?
Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership!
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No, not really. I get the impression that they all bounced off TTRPGs in their teens or twenties. I would love to play an RPG with my mother, but I think the power fantasies and misogyny she encountered early on really soured her on the concept.
Cousin, husband, and hopefully daughter as she has already made a character at 3 (a tabaxi eldritch knight named Pickles).
I met my wife through larping, and she and her brother play D&D with me, my brother, and our two kids
I have played a "joke game" with my brother, my sister and two other players from an already existing group + the DM.
The DM was also part of the group of players that were used to play together, and I had played some random games with them too.
The thing was: Everybody in the group had a character and Everyone in the group could be the DM at anytime, taking back the story where we left off. So the DM wasn't prepared AT ALL and improvised something on the spot. My sister and brother created characters in like...10min max... (joke characters of course, the tone was already set up) and it was GLORIOUS. Everything was, at the same time, brilliantly well thought AND completely stupid. I think they had a good time. My sister was really happy to create a character for the new campaign I plan on running. Her new character is inspired from the one she played that first time.
A Furbolg Monk whose entire village is cursed with : "everything tastes like banana". And now I have to deal with that...
I actually have three siblings I could play with. It’s just finding the time!
Fantastic video. It took me far too long to realize that my obsession with knowing the entirety of detail from universal to local scale in the campaign world was counter productive. And I think, since I've recovered, that that kind of state of mind tricks the well meaning DM into thinking that the game is about them, and their world, their expectations, rather than the players'.
What I used to do, when I got out of the "Behind the Scenes" mindset, was ask my players THEIR thoughts.
It gave me MUCH more useful information. If your players are your friends, then...they might sidetrack THEIR ideas for YOUR story. And I don't really want that, either. I want us BOTH to have fun. So I'd ask what they thought. And I could mine that for ideas for later sessions, even if Lore was all built out. You really liked the traps and puzzles? Cool, I'll be sure to mix more into dungeons in the future! You really liked how you had to hide around the corner to get a spell off because the enemy wizard kept Counterspelling? I know Wizard foes aren't a mistake now! But it also gives me the freedom to do what I want still. Maybe I didn't like the swinging axe traps so I'm gonna use more dart and gas traps. Maybe I want to try a Warlock because their flavor is more interesting, and they can still Counterspell, etc.
It gives you an idea of what they liked, maybe what you felt was a weak point that they LOVED, and let's you play a game everyone loves!
I introduced a DM screen for the first time during a Halloween one-shot where I designed a boss fight against a monster my players had been hoping to see in my main campaign - I wanted the reveal to be a surprise, or at least make my friends feel clever for guessing correctly. I've only played one session with them since then. It was another big boss fight for our main campaign, and I found the screen pretty valuable for increasing tension, since now nobody can see what damage dice the monster uses or determine what its modifiers are. Guarding statblock info added stress to these big encounters, but that's not the vibe I'm always going for. But I don't wanna flip-flop between using the screen or not... I was really self conscious about introducing the screen! Anyway, very interesting topic, and thoughtful video as always
Most of the games I play are over the internet. Often with people in multiple different time zones. This year was the first time I got to play around a table with my own DM screen. It was..... literally a cardboard box. But man I have never loved a piece of kit at a table so much. It was just helpful to have something to pin reminders to, and roll behind and it made me feel at ease.
I think it's just helped me feel more in control of what was going on. Even though I was very much still improving the majority of stuff and flying by the seat of my pants :'D (Did not expect that player to transmute a giant metal golem out of train in the first 10 minutes of the first session but really I should have known.)
Great video! I had a friend who was very open that 90% of what happened at the table was made up by him in the moment. He didn’t use a DM screen, he usually didn’t have notes, and when he needed an NPC, he had dice that had alignments and personalities and he’d just roll them on the table and go with whatever came up. It made for some occasionally chaotic sessions, but it was fun.
I’ve always been a “listen to the director’s commentary” kinda guy so I love talking with DMs about what they thought would happen etc. But I get that for some people learning how they made the Blob in the 80s movie might ruin the magic.
Man that seat-of-your-pants approach would stress me out so much!
In your defense about the adventures, I've found the organization of a lot of 5e adventures not very conducive for running the game. I thought I was just dumb too, but B/X adventures are fine, 2e adventures are fine, 3.5 adventures are fine. Third-party 5e adventures are fine. Many 5e adventures seem to be more structured to be read than for DMs to run them, and I'd say I struggle parsing and imagining how to run about half the big 5e adventure books I've read. [To be fair, this isn't *just* a 5e problem. T1-4 had a similar problem and that one's super old.]
I've never used a screen, and with newer groups I have always had a player question my lack of notes or anything in front of me aside from my dice. My go to response was "I am a DMing god, I do not need a screen like a mere moral GM!" I played with a laptop on the floor with a mouse in my pocket to scroll with.
Thanks for the info Mike! I’d love videos on some of these topics if you’re looking for any ideas.
- Walking the line between railroading the players and giving them a good story
- Planning good dungeons that aren’t a slog
- Planning encounters that encourage other decisions other than combat
Just some facets of the game I’ve had difficulty with!
Great questions! I’ve noted them down, I’ll have to ruminate on them and see if I have any useful advice - some of these are things I struggle with, too ☺️
I’m pretty open about dming. I hold a similar kind of Q&A session after every session. I use a dm screen but roll all attacks, saving throws and skill challenges out in the open.
For me, it depends on the situation. If a GM is building a city on the fly, that doesn't bother me. If a GM is waiting for me to point a finger and declare a person a murderer before deciding who the murderer is, I'm not cool with that whether it's in my favour or not. It's rewarding me for being clever/punishing me for not being clever without challenging my intelligence by having proper foreshadowing, clues etc. Waste of my time. If a GM is going to stick an ogre on the right or left path depending the route I take, I don't want to know. I mean, I already know, but don't confirm it. Allow me the illusion of choice.
"That's called murder" 😂
I was our notekeeper in a Curse of Strahd campaign and we decided to have a separate page dedicated to questions for the DM post-campaign. I've since decided to steal that for the campaigns I DM (results pending as I've never completed a campaign as DM)
That’s a great idea!
I mostly agree with keeping secrets. I'm trying to get better at that actually and let players guess. I'm trying to get to the point where the only time I give "behind the scenes" is in cases of disagreement. A few times I was accused of "BSing" the monster. I explained why this monster was capable of doing this and offered to send over the stat block after the encounter just to prove I was playing fair.
That’s exactly the right approach, I think. There are definitely still times when showing our hand helps the situation a lot.
@@SupergeekMike Oh! Thank you for responding! Love your stuff.
One reason I like to cultivate the aura of authority and mystique that wasn't said here is because it lets me play around with expectations to reward my players.
Now, realistically, I don't plan out hardly anything in specific; my DM style is very improv; I put out a scenerio, and it's up to my players to find out how to solve it; there's very rarely an actual set answer. That said, because I'm comfortable enough with the rules (and pf 2e has really handy DC charts), it's not hard for me to have a number ready to go for almost any idea, which gives the illusion that I really am just super well planned.
Now, because I have this appearance, when my players come up with something really cool and they are all hyped for, I can act shocked and make more of a show to figure out what needs to be done, which in turn gives the players the satisfaction of outsmarting the normally all knowing DM. It's important not to do it too often, but sometimes, giving people that feeling is a really nice way to reward engagement. I also use this to help guide social interactions at the table; like if the quiet person finally speaks up, I can point at them and say "hey, they've got a good idea here" and because I've got authority, people listen, and it's not too long until the group starts making space for them intentionally in planning sessions.
Other game systems have a much more collaborative style. Tenra banshee zero is like a stage play with everyone swapping parts. Yazebas has no GM really. Chuubos is like a group improv with everyone helping each other hit their target story beats.
Wow. Emotional rollercoaster for me. At the beginning i felt relieved, when you mentioned your first DM not using the DM screen. I don't use it too, and feel defective in a sense that without a screen i'm not a true DM. And then i went down, after the words about 'authority', and that the screen is almost 100% needed amongst other things to make your players respect you. Mine players don't see me as the authority, i guess. Idk. I wanted to be completely honest with them, and even roll everything in front of them. Maybe that's why i'm exhausted after sessions. Yeah, sad
I think some of these come from the asymetrical structure of having one player play the world and the rest play individual characters within it, but a couple I think are down to some of the design assumptions in D&D - trad games generally, honestly - compared to some other game styles. When a game designed for one-shot play opens with the players being asked things like "Why did you come to this island?" and "Where are you right now?" I think it sets expectations in a very different place, and more towards this being a collaborative exercise that we're all going to need to think on our feet. And whether that's good or bad is going to depend on the group. Same with if a game straight up has section of character building for the one player making a Dwarf "OK, so... What are dwarves in this world?" and tying that into character abilities, but... Also defines what dwarves are in this world (Those two games being Escape from Dino Island, which I've run, and Fellowship, which I've only read, respectively)
I definitely err on the side of being open about everything the moment the game ends. My stance is mostly that characters have secrets, and players don't. That said, you're definitely right that the poker face and the screen and all those accoutrements can be super important for the experience while the game is happening. Both for the reasons you mention, and just to let the DM get into the ritual space of DMing the story. You cross the threshold to change the social schemata you're working off.
On the other hand, I understand that feeling of wanting to sit with the experience after a game, but I think that the example of a tv show is a bit misleading. It's much more like a group of friends who sat down to watch a show together, in my opinion. In that case, the social contract is different, and usually includes some level of talking about the story and the characters and what's going on, I think. Whether its indepth explorations of character psychology or letting on how pressured you were when that fireball almost took out the BBEG before he escaped, I think its part of the transition out of the DM role and back into normal pal mode. It's an important element to me, at least, and imagine some other DMs feel the same.
as a long time gm (have run many different systems) I've found the authority involves showing a legitimate desire to make sure everyone has as much value from the game as possible. If I tell someone know its towards that goal, if I give someone who is a less efficient character creator a bonus its to keep that goal in mind. I've never really tried to pretend to know all the answers but make it clear I will always try to think of an answer that makes sense with the goals I named.
Excellent video. your analogies are on point.
Thank you!
I super run into this. I like to run my games in a way where my players believe that there's an answer to every question, an entire world to interact with, a sense that I operate as the window into a very "real" place with rules and social structures. To do that I have to invest a lot of time and effort into making sure that my world is very well fleshed out within the range of how far the party will get in a given session, and also part of a bigger plan. And I do that because I love doing that. And I just want to talk to my friends about all the stuff I'm working on, but I can't because my friends are the players and that would be spoilers.
On the flip side, I love that surprise of when everything pops into place and the characters go "Oh what?!". In my game there's a man who has a cat, and one time a druid was using speak with animals to speak with that cat and in doing so made the cat angry, and it lashed out angrily... in common. My players have been obsessed with that cat ever since, and without getting into details that obsession with the cat has slowly been leading them to clues along the main plot line. The moment I turned to the other payers after roleplaying the cat and said "you all understood that by the way, the cat said that in common" and they all flipped was maybe the highlight of the game so far, but if I just told them about the cat then that moment would have never happened.
Its interesting how different people "come down" after a game. Personally I love taking time to talk with players about the game and the DM. For me the DM's enjoyment is big so I love to hear things they enjoyed things they didn't enjoy and things that went right or wrong. I'm not looking for secrets or hidden lore but knowing "I was hopeful you guys would X or I had planned Y" is just a nice bit of insight.
I tend to think of GMing like performing a magic trick: while many audience members may wonder how it is done, they will almost always be disappointed if they know the secret. Like, if my players knew how much I change what I've planned in order to match their decisions it would detract so much of the meaningfulness of those decisions. You have to make your players believe the results of their action are determined by the fictional world you created, not just because you, the GM, decided so.
Two of my house rules:
-If I make a mistake let me know. If we encounter something outside the rules a quick search online to see what others have done and will go with general consensus of the group
-This is a group game if there is a rule problem or a call I make that is not liked bring it up and group consensus will result in how we go
Love this one. I often find myself wondering one of two things after a session. Either its, A) am I trying to tie to many strings together and instead just making a jumbled mess of a plot? or B) have I shared to much of what I am thinking with the players?
I'm a little late to this one... wow, two years - ok, quite a lot late, but I had some thoughts.
I've been DM'ing regularly for six years now and I've never used a DM screen. I keep my notes secret but my rolls are out in the open. I can only speak for our table but it seems to reassure the players when I'm rolling where they can see because they know that I'm being impartial, and that if anything goes really badly for them - whether it's monsters critting and hurting the players badly, or social encounters not going their way - it's because the dice just rolled that way, and not because I'm being adverserial.
It also means I can more genuinely sympathise with them when those massive damage rolls do come in, and they know I'm on their side even if the dice aren't!
"That's called mur-der."
This got me
😁
I never used a dm screen for the longest time, and my friends never used a dm screen for an even longer time. I think a lot of it stemmed from trusting that the players won't look over at what we have written on our notebook, or catching how much hp the monster has left, or looking at our die rolls. We didn't need to hide anything from our players because we never cared too much about creating that mystery, and that our players were never looking for anything. Besides, without a dm's screen I found that we all had a much more casual time.
When I'm the dm now and I have the dm screen I feel like I'm preforming for my players. But before I ever even considered using a dm's screen I felt like I was playing along with the players, not just playing FOR them. I dunno it's kinda hard to explain.
Great video, thank you for this insight! :)
The joke about your players being unable to turn the DM Behind The Scenes off was a gut punch. Impeccably timed and masterfully done.
(I think I've accidentally formed my brand by almost never commenting on the main meat of a video)
I usually mention how cool his adds are, you aren't alone in the offtopic branding hahahaha.
Haha thank you! ☺️
I had a situation where I was DMing my group for our second session (first time DM). They took it completely off the rails. A whole hour of content I had zero prep for. And it was great! I felt my improvisation went well, and the players had fun. When it was over I told them that the last chunk was totally improvised because they thought so far outside the box. Two of them were impressed, and the other (not rude in any way) said "Don't tell us, just let it happen!" And that really got me thinking about it. So now I'm pretty much at a place that I will give them information (pending potential spoilers) only if they ask. I realized it could ruin the immersion a little bit, so I'll let them make that choice!
pesronally i like a mix of both as a player! :D i like and would rather not know what's gonna really happen next sometimes cause i want my characer's reaction to feel more genuine, but i do like going back to ask about the "what-ifs" sometimes because thats' also fun to me
My players I think know to trust me but not to expect me to have it all figured out. I repeatedly add stuff to my game just to see if it works. I recently had my players in a wizards tower where they essentially played a game of blood bowl against some earth elementals, myrmidon, and mephits
My first DM would tell us everything right after a game. I did not enjoy that but I also did not say anything about that, and I eventually just stoped playing with him (for several reasons, not just this one). Now that I DM (or Storytell, lately), I do not share info, but I'm also not very into using a screen. I do like having a laptop, tho, to access info quickly.
When I feel the urge to talk to someone about how I THOUGHT a session would go vs how it did I call my best friend of 18 years. She is heavily invested in the story and has even been sending me ideas of things to add to catch my players off guard from time to time. I did reveal 3 months after one session to 4 out of my 5 players that I dropped my first hint that one of them was a lycanthrope and when they insisted that session to stay in town to hunt "the wolves" that killed some sheep I happened to roll for 6 wolves on an encounter table which covered the whole thing up. None of them suspected anything prior but it was after the player's reveal that we discussed it and a lot then clicked for them. I did end up sending a picture message of the dice results to the lycan player with a message saying "I can't believe this happened" which we both laughed about after the session.
Pathfinder 2e handles the "coherency" of the world that you were talking about really well. The rarity system is a natural way of making sure you all agree on certain options.
I think some people may be inexperienced and nervous and want their 'caretaker(dm)' to know what they're doing and to be able to guide them through their uneasiness. The outward appearance of being in control would help them chill out.
In the same way as doing some exciting new activity in real life, they want someone to kinda hold their hand as they get comfortable and test the waters.
I do a bit of both. After a session, I'll tell them what might have happened if they chose one of the other options, but never what's coming ahead. When they ask questions about the game away from the table i just say "Maybe, I Don't Know"
For me, I tend to keep an air of secrecy across my DM'ing as much as possible, mostly because it makes it far less obvious when I have to improvise material and create it on the fly - it's not a power move to paint me as omniscient, but more to maintain an air of 'immersion' for the players so they don't have the breaks on the narrative moment of me cracking all the time when they do something wild. It gives them the confidence to make wild, big choices which I want them to do, and allows me to respond it to it with a wry curl of the eyebrow whilst my brain rationalises their chaos 🤣
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
🔥🔥🔥
Commenting before even watching the video but YES. This is the number one source of stress for me as a DM, along side coming up with names for places and NPC's.
Very interesting episode and topic! I don’t have much personal experience either way, but it does remind me about when they took the papers away from newscasters (when teleprompters became a thing) and the public hated it. Something about having a few papers on the desk in front of them made the newscaster seem more trustworthy. The human brain is weird lol
Ooh I didn’t know that, that’s fascinating!
i'm running my first 5e game, and actually putting it up on RUclips more for the fun of it (no pretense of being a Critical Role clone), and I'm very open with the fact that I don't know everything. In fact, during the first few sessions, we make some pretty big mistakes. We just figure them out between sessions and fix them for next time. If it really matters at the time, we'll stop and dig into all the rules. But mostly we just go with it unless its easy to find on the online compendium. For example, I thought players got an OA when they stand up (3.5 rules did), but they don't. In session like 20, i used a reach creature and only later found out I was handle OA wrong with reach! Oh well, the game moved on and we all just laughed it off. Its still been a fun game. Don't sweat the small stuff.
Exactly!
"...or that the monster manual is organized--"
/BITTER LAUGHTER
One thing I really feel bears mentioning is that these multi-hundred page published adventure books were not any part of the original history of this hobby. Modules were short and sweet, staple-bound, and thin. This new style of hardbound adventure tome is equivalent to an entire series of even multiple chained series of modules, as we knew them back in the 1980s. If you feel you have to read the entire book before you even begin playing the first chapter, then that book is poorly designed. The DM is not a screenwriter, a novel writer, or the director of a film. The DM is a referee.
I only have my laptop as my GM screen because we usually play after school in an empty classroom or at a cafe. Sometimes very impromptu
I don't think that most DMs feel like they need to have everything figured out because of rules. Maybe some rules and sometimes indicate the assuming of this, but I don't think it's *that* significant. I think reason for most DMs is anxiety and high standarts they put upon themselves. They don't want to break the immersion, to let the illusion of all-knowing disappear, so they are overwhelmed with campaign planning, worldbuiding and so on. What if players suddenly go visit this NPC at home? Do they live alone, what their parents' names are? What is backstory of that place or that place? What was the name of the first king, what are the gods? Players can ask anything, and DMs are afraid of failing, of being awkward and bad with improv, or coming up with cringey names and so on. Especially with examples of immensive worldbuilding and DM's confidance such as CR and so on. At least from my experiense, I think these impossible expectations and anxiety are the main reason of this DMing mindset and burnouts.
Good video man!
Thank you!
I have a problem with accidentally soft locking my party in adventures. We play later in the night because of schedules, I tend to over plan. But I want to open it up for more player choice, but when there’s a silence I keep moving the story. How would you go about fixing the issue of soft locking and letting them have more say in the story. (I talk to my players before hand and prep weekly to integrate their character to the story)
In the past, I've seen three different solutions:
1. DM encourages the players to select a lead character who is then responsible for picking up in silences. That character should have strong individual motives.
2. DM selects a player before each session, and gives them the responsibility of pushing things forward when silence hits. This player changes each session.
3. DM prepares mini-nudges, which are pieces of description, memories, or interactions to drop into silence to poke individual characters.
Each of these is inducing player action, but guiding it as well, so it isn't as freeform as actual organic player choice, but they can help build the muscles to get players to do that.
I do some prep-work in advance about lore and the story for the players, but most of what's happening I wing it because, I don't know what the characters are going to do (and my friends can be a pain sometimes, in a fun way).
That’s a great balance!
I don't like dm screens. At all. I am all for playing with open cards so to speak. I also see gms more as guides, rather than authority figures. I recently started a new group and all my players told me that it was a big draw for them that I offered a very base democratic approach to the game. Everyone is allowed to make suggestions for world building, rules and story. Off course during a sessios, I am the one to make a final call, but everything can be discussed inbetween. The way I see it, I am the one to set up the loom with the warp and my players hand me the weft threads for our campaign and than it is my responsebility to weave every thing together in the agreed upon pattern. During character creation I have already said a lot of times "I don't know that yet. What would you suggest?" And than I take what my players give me and make it make sense in our game world. It's a play style with a huge focus on the collaborative part of collaborative story telling. And it's actually quite dependend on the fact that the dm doesn't have it all figure out from the get go.
A lot of my players are also former, or current dms, or are interested in dming themselves. And I have already announced that we will run the game in a way, that gives us the possibility to switch the dm position, which I have had great experiences with.
This play style is probably best suited for players who enjoy, being both player and dm and are interested in being more involved, but not fully in charge of everything.
I think it's good to act you know what you're doing so that when you don't or you need to fudge a roll you can act like that was the plan the whole time.
Brennan Lee Mulligan did not originally plan to plan Fantasy High a mystery detective story but because Murph made a character with a missing babysitter he made that the entire plot.
For emersion sake I think it's better to act like that was the plan all along rather than breaking the fourth wall and saying you had a whole different section planned
That’s definitely the direction I lean, as well
It's similar to world building too where I feel like I need to know all the things about every single part of the world.
Agreed, they’re very closely linked!
@@SupergeekMike currently trying to convince myself I don't need to know the names of every single humanoid that lives in my world 😅
Ah, in-person DnD, I miss you.
I feel ya
There’s a reason I don’t sit behind anything when I play. I do try to keep some sor
Unfortunately it was much simpler and easier with oldschool D&D; luckily now we have a better OSR experience with D100 Dungeon books by Martin Knight. Brought back exploration and discovery the 5e usually lacks unless a real good gm is at the table.
Sometimes it's better to tell the players they're going off rails than to just improvise something that likely won't be as good as what you've planned.
I had to do this with the very first session I ran for my son and my brother.
We were playing Lost Mines of Phandelver and my son wanted to go to Yatar that one of the NPCs mentioned. I had to explain to him out of character that I didn’t have any good information about Yatar. He could go if he wanted, but we might have to stop the game for the day so I could prepare.
"That's called murder!" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
How can you casually say "That's Called Murder" and just move on like nothing happened?
😉