A short one this time. I say “Not Very Applicable” because much of this advice presumes a particular GMing style or problem you may not have.
1. Ditch the Screen
If you run in-person games rolling behind a GM screen, roll in the open instead.
When every roll happens behind a screen, the temptation to fudge – for or against the party – becomes irresistible. Sometimes it’s convenience (ending combat early because session time is nearly up). Sometimes it’s to tell a better story. But over time, fudging becomes a crutch we reach for on autopilot, rather than something more considered. Hiding the dice enables us to do as we like with them, and we can’t always run the game with a full tank of energy and attentiveness.
So it is a helpful first question to ask: is hiding the dice productive for our goals as GMs?
The myth of every roll being accurate and fair matters. In the presence of a screen, it is natural for players to question the legitimacy of the GM. The only check on a roll behind a screen is the GM’s word. Players already suspect, accurately, that GMs throw challenges at them to vex them, that they roll sometimes for no reason except to produce tension. Even with open rolls, players rarely understand what every single roll is for, how each roll interacts with the GM-facing rules.
The myth also supports a different theory of fun – the “agency theory of fun”. Many people turn to tabletop role-playing games because they lack agency in modern society. Most of our capacity for meaningful choice is illusory; daily lives are routine, the status quo stifles our more ambitious or unhinged tendencies, and our choices are at any rate limited by lack of opportunity or resources. RPGs excel at creating a sense of agency: make choice X, impose result Y. However, one prerequisite for this is that we believe that consequences are not pre-determined. If they are, then the choices we make are not real. The contradiction between omniscience and free will has plagued religion for millenia, and it plagues RPGs, too. Imagine (this example is borrowed from Arbiter of Worlds):
Player: I attack the dragon.
GM: Based on your attack bonus and the dragon’s armor class, this attack is certain to miss.
Player: Uh…well I don’t attack, then.
The game isn’t more fun because results are determined before the player chooses. Agency requires that we can predict consequences – but not with certainty.
Admittedly, a suitably inscrutable GM might still generate uncertainty through fudging. But a never-ending string of sleight-of-hand to create the sense of meaningful choice – when it is actually a railroad – is a poor reward for agreeing to spend hours of your life playing a game adjudicated by dice.
So the second question to ask is, if we are sure that myth is at least impactful, is it the precise myth we wish to maintain? You could be honest with your players and say that sometimes you do in fact fudge dice and bend rules, and that is the social contract at your table. GMs use this excuse often, assuming players would be fine with it. Players might be fine or might not, but this “preference” is not very instructive. Players are predisposed to align with GM’s preferences due to the power imbalance between player and GM. They are also rarely experienced enough with both methodologies to know their own preferences.
Hence the trick: just ditch the screen. I’d say, do it for six hours.
For some, six hours is multiple short sessions. For others, it is one long one. Regardless, it is a good amount of time for players to really feel the difference and to experience multiple phases of the game (combat, social interaction, intrigue) run this new way.
Be present. Be explicit that you’re trying a new methodology. Note what feels different – are players more alert, tense, relaxed, distracted? Ask for feedback at the end, with specific questions rather than open-ended ones.
But the deeper point isn’t even whether you keep the screen or ditch it. Rigorously examining your values – and then testing them – is always revelatory. I’m an advocate against armchair sophistry in favor of experience; Kierkegaard was right and all that. Climbing the mountain gives you growth. Contemplating the climb does not. Whatever you conclude about the screen, you’ll finish the experiment a more mindful, more intentional GM.
2. Stand Up & Sometimes Even Leave
This applies primarily to in-person games still, though it has a little relevancy even to online games.
Standing up frees your body to move around. Walk over to the player having trouble with character creation, and speak to them directly. Look at their sheet at their side rather than asking them to hand it to you. It’s commonly observed both in boardroom and in-patient studies that standing, stepping, and walking improve reasoning scores compared to sitting, so you will be better at making decisions on the fly. So long as you don’t have issues with standing, doing so also tends to reduce fatigue. It is partially a performance of more engagement from the perspective of your players, but you are also factually more likely to be alert when your core and legs are not dawdling.
And sometimes, just stop “playing the game”, especially if you notice that your players are knee-deep in a plan and chattering excitedly to each other. Resist the urge to interject. Especially resist the urge if their plan is convoluted – the best D&D stories revolve around convoluted plans. Go make coffee. Take your dog out to relieve itself. Your players will appreciate being given a bit of personal time. More to the point, your players will notice your absence, and notice your return. The implied trust of giving them their space tends to produce reciprocal respect for your own time. Parenting advice and research supports this: showing trust in developing chidren and teens by stepping back can unintuitively build stronger relationships and mutual respect. It is a tacit statement that your players can be independent of you, and that you are comfortable allowing them to be so.
As a nice little bonus too – when you leave the table, you allow a lot of “behind the back” chatter to happen. Those GMs who started their journey in high school and college will remember a lot of this sort of chatter. Talk about the game, about the GM, about life updates, all outside of the session time itself, because as kids we just had more free time and free brain-space to expend on thinking about our hobbies. This chatter improves game texture, and creates a strong sense of community that is absent from the vibe of people just happening to gather together for game night. Walking away from the table essentially allows a little bit of such texture to return, mid-game, without being an explicit “break” for all players (which tends to result in everyone leaving for a bit), or requiring them to create a separate groupchat when not in session.
3. Annotate Your NPCs With Vowel Placement & Body Language, Rather than Accent Notes
For GMs who love doing accents but struggle to keep them consistent: instead of noting that Bibulous Brunhildr has a South London accent, write out a single vowel next to her name. /a/, or /o/, or something to that effect, plus a body language cue, like “hunched” or “twiddling thumbs”.
When you look up that note for the next time you run Brunhildr, adjust oral posture and vowel placement. This is much easier to do than reproducing an accent wholesale. Simultaneously, adjust your body language according to the cue, again an easy ask.
This comes straight from improv theater coaching. Memorable skit characters need to “stick the landing” without much “screentime” – improv characters may last for as little as 3-4 seconds before the game calls for a switch. Beginners are taught to think in vowels and body language rather than “motivation” or “full accents” (which is the more common advice for long-form actors), because those are much easier to attach to memory. Physical contortion and affectation can lock a character into our physicality, into our body. By substituting vowel placement for a full accent, you have an easy way to assert character differences, without needing to do a refresher on how all the consonants and vowels and stressed syllables shift, character-to-character.
So, for someone with /a/ as a note, they might say the sentence,
Pleasure to meet you. No, no, don’t be so humble. Come in, let’s have us a spot of tea.
As:
Plahsah tah mate ya. Nah, nah, dahn’t buh suh hahmble. Cahm ahn, lat’s have as a spaht ahf tah.
If you have actually worked in Speech Language Pathology (SLP) or are more familiar with IPA symbols for some other reason, you can be a lot more specific with which cardinal vowels you choose and how you annotate your NPCs. For the average Joe, the basic 5 vowels of /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ will work just fine. These notes may not be “correctly used” by most people, but since the goal is NPC consistency rather than academic linguistics, it isn’t necessary to get them right to that level of rigor.
4. Get in the Hole
Self-explanatory. If you’ve gone multiple sessions or even campaigns without a dungeon, what are you doing?
Run a game where you go in the hole. And by hole I don’t mean a 5-room dungeon, which is really more of a location-based adventure than a true dungeon-crawl. I mean at least 23 proper rooms to it, Jacquayed, ideally one with either the standard Basic/Expert distribution (33% empty rooms, 33% monster rooms, 16% special/unique rooms, 16% trap rooms) OR the Jewelbox distribution (10% empty rooms, 33% monster rooms, 23% special/unique rooms, 33% trap rooms).
It won’t be your best session ever, so much as like. It is nice to go back to the roots of our hobby. Plus, you’ll remember things you’ve forgotten about D&D if this is truly something you haven’t done in a while.
If B/X is too retro for you, you can also run a gauntlet dungeon in the 4e style. At least 11 rooms, no need to Jacquay the dungeon, with combat encounters designed/intended to be fought back-to-back.
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