Category: advice for DMs

The Importance of a Session Zero

If you as a DM don’t use a session zero in your campaign, I highly suggest you do. And if you’re a player, I recommend you ask for one. What is a session zero? It’s a time when the DM and players meet to accomplish two things: set some ground rules for the campaign, players, and group, as well as to potentially make characters together. For this article, I’m going to focus on the parts that are not character creation related.

The Purpose of a Session Zero

The session zero covers two points. One is character creation, which we won’t be discussing in this article. The second is more of a social contract: setting ground rules and expectations for all sorts of things that may or may not come up over the course of play in a campaign. As a general rule, session zero is important for campaign play, but often less important (and usually skipped) for convention play, one shots, and similar where the game is not long lasting.

So, what things should you cover in a session zero? If you’re an experienced player, think of things that have caused friction in past games, and of things that you experienced differently from one DM to another. Wouldn’t it have been nice if someone — probably the DM — had told you of those differences up front? That’s half the goal of a session zero.

It should cover things that might cause friction between players, of course. And also things that might cause friction between the DM (or the game in general) and players. If you intend to DM a game of Curse of Strahd (a gothic/horror game dealing with werewolves and vampires), and players are thinking of a light-hearted funny campaign, people are going to be disappointed — maybe even enough to leave the game. At its heart, a session zero is meant to avoid that disappointment in the first place.

What to Cover in a Session Zero

A good session zero is as broad as you are willing to make it, or as experience tells you that you need. Going a bit overboard with more details is probably better than having too few, but as with all D&D advice it depends on your specific group. Of course, thinking of your players — past and present — and using empathy can only enrich your session zero.

Typically, DMs run a session zero just like they would run any other session, except they aren’t roleplaying the part of NPCs and monsters or adjudicating rules. Instead, they are hosting a less formal session that’s essentially a meta-discussion about the game itself. In fact, session zeros often work better from a railroaded outline or document where the DM goes down a list and discusses things one by one, weaving in the natural ebb-and-flow of the players discussion.

Specific Session Zero Suggestions

Some things a DM should consider discussing, in no particular order:

  • Campaign Theme: Is this the type of game your players want to play? Will it be wilderness or urban? What levels of play do you expect?
  • Campaign Play Style: Do you use certain tools like Roll20 or Obsidian Portal? Do you prefer tactical combat with minis and terrain or theater of the mind? How strict are you in regards to playing by the rules? Will it be combat heavy or intrigue-laden?
  • Experience: How does experience and leveling up work in your games? Do you automatically level up, require a long rest, must find a new teacher to multi-class?
  • DM Expectations: What are you looking for in players?
  • Player Expectations: What should players expect with you as a DM?
  • Attendance: How do you handle missed sessions? What about tardiness? What is your low player threshold (how many players can miss before you cancel games, or play board games or something else instead)?
  • Rule Contention: How should players handle it if you make a potential bad ruling?
  • Meta Gaming: How much is too much for you? What do you as a DM even consider meta gaming to be?
  • Out of Character Talk: How much joking and goofing off is allowed? Are you a strict in-character DM, or do you take anything a player says as in-character gospel if not declared otherwise?

Examples of a Session Zero

I’ve been using a pretty consistent template for a session zero that I modify campaign to campaign to fit each one. The last one I placed online was for Curse of Strahd; you can see that “campaign play style” on Obsidian Portal, a tool that’s great for keeping all of a campaigns details organized for both players and the DM.

Another great example is a series of questions that lead you in creating your own template on this reddit thread.

Playing With Empathy in D&D

I tweeted some thoughts about D&D and playing with empathy a while back, and decided the concept merited a full blog post about it. First up, let’s define empathy for the sake of this article. I’m using empathy to not just mean the fairly standard “understand someone else’s emotions and experiences”, but also to imagine putting yourself in their shoes.

Playing with empathy means you understand experiences of others. But the usage of “others” in D&D isn’t limited to the other people playing the game, these others can also be the various NPCs in the game. And sometimes a DM or player will struggle to have empathy for a given situation (usually due to lack of exposure to that situation), but that shouldn’t stop us from trying.  Let’s look at some ways we can have empathy as both a player and as a DM.

Rolling and Playing With Empathy


Playing With Empathy As A Player

With players, your focus for your empathy is to your character and to the other players. Depending on your group’s chemistry and roleplaying style, one may be more important than the other. If you aren’t sure, a safe bet would be leaning towards being more empathetic to your fellow players.

Playing with empathy helps you understand your own character.

To be honest, you’ve probably already been doing this even if you didn’t realize it. You’re playing the slightly dumb and far-from-wise Garm the barbarian, who’s childhood of cages and abuse causes him to go into rage whenever someone hits a woman or makes use of slaves. When you’re thinking about what Garm would do, you’re trying to understand Garm’s situation, and then proceed in-game appropriately.

What would Garm say to an innkeeper who mistreats his barmaids? You decide Garm might go too far with threatening the innkeeper. Why did you, as a player, decide this? Maybe you thought that Garm would likely get angry at the mistreatment due to his childhood environment; further, his lower intelligence and wisdom scores often express themselves in ways that lead to bad social encounters. This is exactly what empathy in RPGs is all about; understanding the emotions and situations of others, trying to put yourself in those same situations, and then making decisions based on how you feel you might proceed if you were Garm. Good empathy and some nice outside-of-the-box thinking can lead to great moments of finding the yes.

One important exception to call out here is that your empathy-led actions should adhere to Wheaton’s Law. If you think your character would do some action that would cause grievance to others characters or players, come up with another idea. It’s okay to have tension in the party among the PCs (it can make for a great story!). But by using “It’s what my character would do” as you steal from fellow PCs, hinder them in combat, plan schemes to hamper their own fun, etc., is simply not cool.

Playing with empathy helps to form closer bonds with the other players (and their characters).

Of course, the main usage of empathy is to relate to real-world people. And who better than your fellow players? Understanding your fellow players is a great first step to potentially changing the relationship from fellow gamer toward being friends. And if you’re understanding the other player, you might be able to anticipate their needs and planned actions, and set up some awesome combos between your players. Lastly, it can make it so that when their character does something that prevents a plan you had from coming to fruition, you can understand why that player had their character do what they did.

If the whole group plays with empathy, fewer arguments happen.

D&D (and all other RPGs) are no stranger to problems between players. Whether it’s breaking Wheaton’s Law, players having different expectations of the game, dissatisfaction with the game, or conflicting personalities, most every player has played a game where something went wrong.

But playing with empathy can help reduce those problems! If John wants to play a narrative- and intrigue-based game and Mary wants to focus more on combat, a DM leaning toward either way might inadvertently cause friction. Having a session zero helps with this a lot, but even outside of it empathy can help. John and Mary understanding (and appreciating) that there’s more to the game than just what they want can lead to a compromise where neither gets exactly what they want, but understand that they both get a good amount of what they like and appreciate that when they aren’t having the most fun, others at the table are. It’s a team game, after all.

Also, empathy between players can go a long ways toward problems with players hogging the spotlight. If you care about what others think because you’ve been putting yourself in their shoes, then you know waiting a long long time for your turn isn’t very cool, and will be more willing to let others players take equal enjoyment from the spotlight.


Playing With Empathy As A DM

As a DM, playing with empathy will net you many more benefits than players. You’re going to be playing more characters than any player will. You’ll also always be interacting with all players much more often. Also, quite simply, often it’s the DM who has the mic, so to speak.

Empathy lets you understand what your players want.

This came up earlier when talking about our fictitious John and Mary, and the same points apply here except from the opposite point of view. Instead of Mary and John being happy with the compromise, it’s now up to you to realize a compromise is needed, and the only way of doing that is by understanding what your players want.

There’s two ways to do this. The first is simple: ask the the players what they want, preferably during a session zero. The second is where empathy — and perception — comes into play. When your players are actively playing the game, find out what makes them happy. Do they get deep into character? Have more moments to let them shine. Are they laughing lots and clapping their hands in excitement at funny scenes? Maybe they want more of them! This likely won’t present itself as obvious in the first few sessions, but as you get to know the players (and their characters) more, this should become more apparent over time.

Empathy helps to mediate disputes among players.

When two or more players argue, it’s the DM’s time to put on the referee hat. This can be a totally unfun time in the game, but empathy can mitigate it to a degree.

Just as with understanding your players, you can both ask why the players are upset and also watch them. Then go a step further and really think about it; pretend to be one upset player first, then the other, giving them each their own due.

If John is upset that Mary got two magic items in a row, find out what he’s really upset about. Is he actually upset that Mary got two magic items? Maybe he’s upset that he didn’t get any, or that he didn’t specifically get one of the two he got because either one would have helped his character out. Then find out if Mary really needs both her items; maybe it’s the random dice dealing a fickle hand, or maybe it’s just that the body Mary looted had the item on it and she happened to pocket it. Mary might not want the item, or may be unaware that John wanted it. Whatever the situation, understanding both players is the easiest way to resolve it.

Empathy helps get you into an NPC mindset.

Just as players can use empathy to figure out what makes their characters tick, a DM needs to run his NPCs the same way. This is something I often struggle with, because it so often happens in the spur of the moment. Still, playing with empathy as an NPC helps guide your choices even during an improv section.

Empathy for yourself helps you forgive mistakes you make.

Lastly, most DMs have made mistakes. Sometimes minor ones, sometimes pretty major ones. I’ve read stories on Facebook and Reddit about a DM’s poor judgement call or misunderstanding of the rules even resulting in character deaths!

One of the ways we learn, however, is from mistakes — both our own and those of others. And remembering that we all make errors is key to forgiveness. Understanding —  and empathy —  let us realize we weren’t being malicious and that we deserve forgiveness.

While different people will gain different amounts of benefits from empathy, everyone will likely gain some benefit. Along with so much other advice, it depends on the people involved.

As always, if you want to talk about the article hit me up on twitter.

DM vs Player Mentality — Negating The Character

This is the second post in a two-part series where I talk about a mindset often referred to as “DM vs Player”. This mentality is a false idea that a DM needs to oppose and compete with their party in order for the game to work. In this second part, I want to discuss a subset of the DM vs Player mindset I like to call “negating the character”. In part one I talked about another subset, “Punishing the Player“.

Because so many players and groups seek different parts of enjoyment from D&D, most advice depends on the play style to be effective. I don’t think that is the case with “negating the character”. Avoid this mentality at all costs. I have never seen a game where a “DM vs Player” mentality added benefits . This mindset won’t automatically transform a game into being bad, but its inclusion will hold the game back from being a better one.

Defining DM vs Player.

DM vs Player is described as any situation where the DM competes against the players. This may sound strange to newer players and DMs, “isn’t that the DM’s job”? The answer is yes … but not really. The DM’s job is to set up challenges for the player, whether they are narrative or combat. However, the DM should well and truly be on the same side as the players. When the players succeed, the DM should want to cheer! If the DM feels happier when monsters beat the PCs, even if only for one battle, it’s a good indicator this mindset is in play.

There are two broad patterns that fall into a DM vs Player mentality, as mentioned at the start. For now, let’s focus on “negating the character” and see some common examples.

Negating The Character

Negating the character is a concept where the DM neutralizes or otherwise takes away a character’s strengths. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the frequency and severity of this pattern matters in determining if it’s a DM vs Player mentality, as does the “how” and “why” of the negation.

Another way of “negating the character” is taking away player agency. Player agency is the ability for a player to decide and attempt to control what happens with their their character. Taking this away is essentially a DM railroading a character’s decisions.

Examples of Negating The Character.

Having NPCs and monsters be effectively immune to a character’s strengths.
Jasmine the bard has an incredibly silver tongue, able to persuade and deceive with ease. After using this to the party’s advantage a few times, suddenly no NPCs are willing to believe Jasmine’s lies anymore, even when she rolls high skill checks. The DM thought Jasmine made too much of an impact, and so he neutralized her strengths.

When Ender the Fighter gets a helm of telepathy, he’s able to detect the undercover guards in the city quite easily. But after using this a few times to great effect, and making a few plots too easy, suddenly none of the guards are thinking about being undercover anymore. No matter how often Ender tries, he just can’t glean any useful intel. Again, the DM thought Ender made too much of an impact with his new wondrous item, and so he neutralized its strengths.

Seeking the characters’ failures.
A DM who jokingly complains the characters keep successfully saving against monster effects probably falls into this camp. That same DM may not even realize they are doing so. This pattern is very easy to fall into, especially when it happens infrequently or when the failure sought after is small (such as a single failed saving throw).

A more extreme version of this is the DM seeking character death. This DM might even brag about a TPK as a successful notch in their DMing career.

This pattern arises because the DM sees the monsters and NPCs as their equivalent to the player. Therefore, the DM’s proxies need to succeed for the DM to succeed. The fallacy is that the DM has near ultimate power. They shouldn’t feel the need to flex their muscles, so to speak.

Adversaries know the characters weakness for no reason.
Two players are talking tactics at the table, and one says he’ll cast fireball at the pack of animals attacking them in a large cluster. Before that player can go, the animals disperse, almost as if they knew what the player intended. Here, the DM “metagamed” — that is, they used knowledge the monsters couldn’t have had to affect their course of action. Metagaming is not bad in and of itself (more on that in a future article), but in this context it was done in poor taste.

Removing Player Agency.
The DM, Susan, is laying out a scenario in which the party has walked into an ambush of goblins. The goblins attack and start hurting the players, but only after initiative is rolled. This example has two instances of negating player agency. The first was not allowing any characters who are good at perception a chance to spot the goblins. Let’s give Susan the benefit of the doubt and say she made use of passive perception; there’s still a second instance of agency being removed. The players should have rolled initiative, and then been told there was a surprise round. The difference is subtle, but still present. It’s the difference between players being unable to act to clear in-game defined effects, or because of DM purview.

These examples are not an exhaustive list. What they do accomplish is start to lay out the pattern and themes of negating the characters. So, what’re the solutions?

DM with the Players, Not Against Them.

Being logical and consistent will go a long way in creating balancing. As a DM, your NPCs and monsters have chances to affect the world. Don’t take those same chances away from the players’ characters. Pretend you were a character; how would you feel in any given scenario?

A lot of this happens when a DM has a set goal in mind that he or she wants to happen. As a DM, I might think “I want the undercover guards to catch the PCs” or “I want this encounter to be hard”.  But the DM should honestly be on the player’s side! We want to revel in their triumphs and cheer along with them. As tempting as could be to be frustrated when the players make an encounter easy, we should let them and cheer along with them as they do so.

Wanting to challenge the players, but yet still wanting them to achieve success is a bit of a contradiction. This method of thinking is often hard to achieve for newcomers.  As they say, it’s more of an art and less of a science.

DM vs Player Mentality — Punishing The Player

I’m part of a Facebook group called Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. It’s a big group with well over one hundred thousand members. A common theme I see on the group is a mindset of what is often referred to as “DM vs Player”, a false idea that the DM needs to oppose and compete with their party for the game to work. I’d like to discuss this mentality and why I feel it’s one of the more toxic mindsets, toxic enough to ruin games and groups. Specifically for this post, I want to discuss a subset of the DM vs Player mindset I like to call “Punishing the Player”. In part two I’ll talk about another subset, “Negating the Character“.

Because so many players and groups seek different parts of enjoyment from D&D, most advice depends on the play style to be effective. I don’t think that is the case with “punishing the player”. Avoid this mentality at all costs. I have never seen a game where a “DM vs Player” mentality added benefits . This mindset won’t automatically transform a game into being bad, but its inclusion will hold the game back from being a better one.

Defining DM vs Player.

DM vs Player is described as any situation where the DM competes against the players. This may sound strange to newer players and DMs; isn’t that the DM’s job? The answer is yes…but not really. The DM’s job is to set up challenges for the player, whether they are narrative or combat. However, the DM should well and truly be on the same side as the players. When the players succeed, the DM should want to cheer! If the DM feels happier when monsters beat the PCs, even if only for one battle, it’s a good indicator this mindset is in play.

There are two broad patterns that fall into a DM vs Player mentality, as mentioned at the start. For now, let’s focus on “punishing the player” and see some common examples.

Defining Punishing the Player.

If competing with the characters is one bad pattern, then it follows being an adversary to the players is the other. An easy way to spot this pattern is to notice when players are judged for their characters actions. The DM is failing to respect the boundaries between the two.

Reacting against the player.
John, a player, wants heavy combat from games. Neither the other players nor the DM have the same interests. The DM does his best to make John’s character fail often. More enemies target John’s character, NPCs insult him, and prices for goods cost more for him. The DM is hoping John will have too little fun to keep coming back to the games. The DM is punishing the player in hopes that they will leave the game.

Punishing out-of-game actions in-game.
Amy, a DM, has a house rule asking that players not pass notes around the table to each other. She wants to hear the player’s strategy, that is the part of play she enjoys most. One player gets caught passing notes anyways. That player’s character starts having bad things happen to them on purpose because the DM is upset. Amy took her annoyance out on the player’s character as a means of punishing the player for passing notes.

Making up for in-game changes with out-of-game punishments.
Samantha, a player, is not having fun with her character. Samantha asks the DM if she can change to a new character, and the DM grudgingly allows it. But because the DM didn’t really want this new character, he always singles Samantha out when monsters attack or NPCs are looking for someone to blame. It might even be unconscious, but the end result is the DM punishing the player for an in-game change.

These examples are not an exhaustive list. What they do accomplish is start to lay out the pattern and themes of punishing the players. So, what’re the solutions?

DM with the Players, Not Against Them.

So, what should you do when you feel tempted to punish a player? The solution are often simple, if not always easy. You need to have an adult conversation between you and the player, possibly between you and the group.

Is everyone having fun? If not, can compromises be reached? If compromises seem unattainable, someone will either need to accept that the game won’t be as fun for them, or someone will need to walk away from (or be asked to leave) the game.

A flowchart for having hard conversations

Avoiding Punishing the Player.

Let’s revisit our examples from above, but this time see what potential solutions could be without the use of a DM vs Player mentality.

Reacting against the player.
John, a player, wants heavy combat from games. The GM explains this isn’t really the type of game he wants to run, nor do the other players want to play in that kind of game. Would John prefer to run a different character instead of a barbarian, so he could get more enjoyment from a game less focused on combat? John agrees.

Punishing out-of-game actions in-game.
Amy, a DM, catches a player breaking some house rules by passing notes around. She waits until after the game and talks to the player. It turns out the note was something personal and not related to the game. Amy understands, but asks that the player refrain from discussing matters of a personal nature during the game.

Making up for in-game changes with out-of-game punishments.
Samantha, a player, re-rolls and changes her character. The DM starts to punish her by having bad things happen to the new character, but Samatha asks the DM if he is mad. The DM realizes he is; he then promises to stop punishing the player.

Avoid Competing with the Players

I read a perfect quote (I can’t currently find), but it was basically: “The DM should not compete with the party, even if the NPCs the DM is controlling do compete”. Just because the Big Bad Evil Guy wants to kill the entire party does not mean the DM should be rooting for that same event to happen.

Different groups will want different levels of challenge. Generally, however, the rule of thumb is to set up an event challenging to the players, but not so hard as to prevent them from succeeding. Succeeding after adversity is the hallmark of an adventurer, and what most players strive for.

If, as a DM, your monsters and NPCs overcome their party’s strengths, it should be for good reasons; they’re intelligent masterminds, they got lucky, they studied up on the party, or the players took on monsters too strong for them to reasonably overcome. All of those reasons are fine; the one you want to avoid is using hard encounters to punish players.

Wanting to challenge the players, but yet still wanting them to achieve success is a bit of a contradiction. This method of thinking is often hard to achieve for newcomers.  As they say, it’s more of an art and less of a science.

It Depends — The Best D&D Advice

People love to hold strong opinions, and perhaps even more so share them. We all want to validate the choices we make. If you go looking for advice about D&D, you’re sure to find it. Some of it will work, some of it won’t. There is one universal piece of advice, however, that will always work for all players and all DMs: “It Depends”. It’s the truest, best advice you’ll ever receive.

Arguments and opinions can be philosophical or practical, pro or con, but at the end of the day what works in one situation may not work in another. Different groups need different advice, as do different players. That’s why “It Depends” is so universal. Even Star Wars tells us dealing in absolutes is bad. The problem exists because recommending absolutes is much easier than giving generic, vague advice, no matter how sound.

It Depends - Socrates

It was on the Internet, it has to be true – also Socrates.

How does “It Depends” apply to D&D?

If you’ve got some experience under your belt, chances are you have had both good and bad sessions (or perhaps even entire games) of D&D. Why is that? What made the good sessions good, and the bad sessions bad? Some of those bad times, if not all, are going to be grounded in a simple truth: players gain enjoyment from D&D for different reasons.

What might players look for in D&D?

  • Some players might yearn for mechanics of previous editions or hybrid house rules from other game systems.
  • Others might prefer ultra tactical fights with optional rules like flanking, miniatures, grids, battle maps, and terrain.
  • Some players might prefer more political intrigue.
  • Others may want dungeon crawls with very little in the way of narrative.
  • Some players want to stay totally in character.
  • Others players want a very casual game, where it’s more about hanging out with friends than actually playing D&D.
  • Some players only want to play powerful characters in high fantasy with epic magic.
  • Others players want to play strictly by the rules (e.g., RAW).

Wanting to play differently than others is certainly not wrong; coercing others into playing a style of game they do not enjoy might be, however.

So why does this matter?

Giving heavy combat focused advice to a heavy political intrigue game probably doesn’t make much sense. It really depends, honestly, on the style of game being played as well as the preferences of players. And this brings us to the crux of the issue. How could I say with certainty that giving advice to any given player, group, or game will improve their experience if I’m unaware of what brings them joy while playing D&D?

I can’t. Even when I try to be generic, such as suggesting players might have more fun in finding the yes.

So, what’s the answer?

There’s a few things to consider when giving advice.

  1. Don’t speak in absolutes. Try to make suggestions, not mandates.
  2. If possible, have a dialogue to tailor your advice. Learn what the player or group to whom you are giving advice desires from their games.
  3. If all else fails, give your advice as you would normally, but make sure to mention this advice may not work for them. This is probably more true of a blog post than a one-on-one.

So, what improvements could you use in your next D&D game? It Depends. But I’m happy to share my thoughts or listen to yours, hit me up on Twitter.

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