10 Lessons from Running Games

Introduction

If you look up “how to be a better GM” on YouTube, you’ll get a smattering of high-performing videos mostly about running games. Your Algorithm May Vary (YAMV), but generally speaking, the advice comes in essentially two flavors:

1. This One Simple Trick. Functionally, this is the toolbox fallacy and assumes you can’t fully get started until you have all the necessary tools and have mastered them. You know precisely when to use them surgically and at the right time.

2. How to Be a Good Storyteller. This is what I like to call the authorial fallacy and it assumes that the GM / DM is the sole provider / creator of the story and that the players are there to make minor choices that don’t deviate from the DM’s authorial intent. In other words, the DM is the director and the players are the actors following their scripts.

Both of these are, frankly, terrible advice. So let’s figure out something better.

As an aside, unfortunately, this article dips its toes into the first pool by necessity. After all, I’m providing ten ideas that I think improved my game — the very thing I’m warning against in my first point.

That being said, I don’t want you to take these as the ten commandments of running RPGs or anything ridiculous.

Instead, think about them in the context of your game because that’s the only game that matters. For example, you may have a group that demands a high prep level — whether it be through props, music, ambience, lore, etc. That’s okay!

My hope is, however you approach the game, that you’ll glean something from the ideas below regardless.

Alright, enough preambling. Let’s get to it.

Don’t have time? Here’s the highlights:

1. Your prep will fail you.

2. Players can’t read your mind.

3. Momentum beats logic.

4. There isn’t a set story.

5. You’ll never know all the rules.

6. System matters (sometimes).

7. Fun isn’t always loud.

8. Get weird with it.

9. You can’t save every session.

10. You’re a player at the table too.

No plan survives contact with the players.

Unless you railroad (which is not the same as linear adventuring — more on that later) your players constantly, they will decide to do things you didn’t plan for or seem, at best, batshit insane.

As much as you might chafe against this, it is intentional and good.

Your prep should be crafting situations that are open-ended with consequences that are easy for you to manage. Here’s an example, consisting of how to do it wrong and how to do it better:

WRONG ❌

• The party enters a large city during a parade celebrating the king. What they don’t know is there is an assassin up on the rooftops who, once the timing is right, is going to assassinate the Captain of the Guard. They then will run past the players, pickpocket the weapon onto one of them, and escape into the city sewers. The guards will follow and eventually confront the PCs — finding both the weapon on their person and a very likely combative party who insist they’re being framed.

RIGHT ✅

• The party enters a large city during a parade celebrating the king. There is an assassin up on the rooftops who intends to assassinate the Captain of the Guard. There is an obnoxiously loud band playing in the parade. A guard nearby holds a large tarp full of balloons to be released when the parade nears. The Captain of the Guards horse seems relatively spooked, as though it knows something somewhere is wrong.

Notice how we list all the things that will happen in the first example. The word “will” is the antithesis of good prep and should be avoided at all costs. It’s prescriptive, puts bounds on the unfolding scenario, and highly depends on the party doing nothing to alter it. These are big no-nos.

Meanwhile, the second example provides a list of current events. These things could cascade into one another, creating a vibrant, exciting situation that causes chaos. None of it is prescriptive, as the players could bypass it without a care. That, though, is their choice—and those choices have consequences.

What you think is obvious often isn’t.

You may have crafted the perfect puzzle, but the players aren’t the perfect puzzle solvers. Not only are they having to mentally capture what you’re saying and convert it into an imaginary scene, but they’re also considering every other possible outcome.

You may know that this puzzle won’t suddenly kill them or rip their arm off, but they don’t know that.

You have to realize that each player is approaching the game from a different perspective, their characters have different goals, and not everyone may be into solving a mystery or figuring out traps.

What starts off as a general disinterest quickly spirals into missing details, requiring repeat instructions, tuning out, and eventually just letting the one nerd who enjoys this stuff solve it for them

Photo by Brendan Church on Unsplash

So, how do you solve this?

Give them way more information than you think they need.

No matter how much you think you’re giving away the solution, I can promise you’re not. I’ve literally been in situations where I’ve all but had the perpetrator of a murder mystery say, “It was literally me, I murdered him,” and the players still scratch their chins and mutter, “But… what if the GM is lying?”

So give them the information they need—sooner rather than later.

A slightly wrong but fast decision beats a perfect but slow one.

We’ve all been there:

1. A player asks a question we’re 90% sure we know the answer to.

2. You give a ruling.

3. The player frowns and says that’s not what the rules say.

4. You push back slightly, but offer to look it up just in case.

5. You look online but can’t find the right part of the SRD.

6. You then remember you have a print copy, so you head to your bookshelf.

7. Shoot, did you loan that out to someone?

8. Oh, wait, you bought it on DriveThru. That’s right.

9. So you head to DriveThruRPG and go to Library—

You see the problem.

What could have been a simple “Hm, maybe you’re right. That’s how I’m ruling it today, but we can roll it back later if it ends up being wrong” has now turned into 15 minutes of dead silence while you flip through books.

Nobody wants that.

Especially because these moments happen more often during times of stress, danger, or excitement, it’s important to reach a ruling as quickly as possible, stick to it, and be open to changing it later once you have more information.

Otherwise, your momentum will deflate like a sad, wacky, inflatable tube guy.

The story is what happens at the table, not what you prep for the table.

Or at least, there isn’t a set story from the GM.

Sometimes, an adventure is linear, which means that characters go from one place to another, fighting things and solving problems, until the adventure ends. Usually, this is because the impetus for the party existing in the first place has been resolved (examples include defeating the evil wizard, saving the prince, stopping the dark resurrection ritual, etc.).

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as the GM takes that adventure as a springboard for other ideas as the players zig when they’re “supposed” to zag.

If you’re not running a linear adventure, you should be coming up with ongoing situations, evolving threats, and hooks. These serve as prompts for your players to start improvising over, which allows you to respond in kind.

This kind of call and reponse allows for dynamic stories to spring forth from disparate pieces, creating a cohesive whole. It also makes for a much more exciting experience for the players at the table—including the GM!

Sometimes you mess up the rules, even after years of playing.

For all their pomp, ttRPG rulebooks are primarily technical manuals. Their main objective is to teach people how to do a thing, in this case, run the game.

The number of rules in these books can range from a single sheet of paper to over 400 pages of content. You’ll find that, regardless of page count, people will still forget the rules from time to time.

And by people, I mean you. And that’s okay.

As the GM, you’re in charge of many moving parts.

It’s okay to ask your players for rules interpretations or to look something up while you continue running the game.

It’s okay to make an incorrect ruling and fix it later.

The important thing is to keep the game moving and not get stuck on the minutiae.

Players do what they’re rewarded for, whether you want it or not.

This will probably be one of the spicier takes: system matters, people!

You could argue otherwise in some circumstances, such as the lack of mechanics around procedures like social interaction or general role-playing.

But to say that system doesn’t matter because you ran a game once that didn’t need the system is like saying tires are made out of rubber so therefore the entire car must be made out of rubber too.

Why? Because players do what rewards them, and systemic mechanics typically codify those rewards.

Photo by Oxana Melis on Unsplash

The truth is, players do things that give them what they want—sometimes, that’s a big orange button that says, “Try Me!” Other times, it’s the long-term reward for playing a certain way or accomplishing certain goals.

So, as a GM, you can hijack that by rewarding players for things you want your game to be based around.

Want a gritty, tense dungeon-crawler?
Have all the rewards be based in the dungeon.

Want players to engage in politicking?
Have higher XP rewards or special traits bestowed on engaging in those scenarios.

Players will, almost subconsciously, optimize their experience to the best of their abilities by doing things with strong, evocative rewards. So use that to your advantage!

Be wary, however, of the counterpoint: just because you can implement new rules to incentivize certain playstyles, doesn’t mean you should. Treat mechanics like spices—use them strategically and in places where they don’t hinder play.

Quiet players aren’t necessarily bored.

Players are unique in many ways, though perhaps the most misunderstood player is “the quiet one.”

You put them in the spotlight. Crickets.

You take them out of the spotlight. Not a word.

You give them a really cool magic sword that definitely doesn’t want to go killing again. A quiet utterance of “Cool, thanks.”

And of course (because you’re the type of GM who reads Top 10 lists to improve how you run games) you start to worry. Am I giving them enough?

Honestly? Probably.

You can certainly reach out to them and double-check, but don’t put them on the spot for being quiet. Frame it as a calibration meeting and be transparent: “Are we doing good? I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything by assuming you just like to play the game quieter than the others. You don’t need to do anything, but please let me know if there’s anything I can do instead.”

Odds are they’ll tell you everything is fine.

And if it isn’t for some reason, well, they’ve been given a platform to speak on it and you can go from there.

The best GMs know when to pull out the weirdo within.

You’ve heard the old tale before: how adventurers sprung into existence into a dim, hearth-lit tavern that had a tough-as-nails former adventurer for a bartender, a cloaked figure in the shrouded corner, and a group of ne’er-do-wells practically begging for someone to look at them the wrong way.

Instead, the party focuses on the goblin busboy named Boblin who has a Boston accent.

TTRPGs, unless they have extremely dire settings and tone, often fall into the tonal trap of Monty Python and the Holy Grail rather than Lord of the Rings. People are just people, so when they sit around to play pretend and roll dice, the urge to be silly can be overwhelming.

You can, and should, absolutely do the same (although in a slightly more controlled manner).

Don’t be afraid to let your inner weirdo sit in the GM seat for a while, whether it's silly voices, sweeping gesticulations, or general hijinks. When you and your players leave the gaming table laughing after a night of goofiness, that’s worth more than “how far you got” in the session.

Some sessions just suck—and that’s okay.

You’ve barely prepped. Your internet is being an asshole. Two players out of your five player group aren’t going to be there. You’ve had a terrible day at work and to top it all off, one of the remaining players asked if you can start an hour later than normal.

Then, when you finally do jump in, the players decide to go in a totally different direction than you thought. And you’ve got noooooothing for where they want to go.

After two hours of this you sit back and wonder what the hell happened. You keep replaying the random shit you did wrong, the rulings you mistakingly gave, the dead air, the awkward way you closed it out, etc.

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

Relax.

It happens.

And, honestly, there was probably nothing you could have done about it.

Some sessions, in my opinion, were meant to fail. You can’t win ‘em all. Knowing that’s just the law of averages and you’ll have a good session later to outweigh it is good, but knowing that some sessions you’ll run—even after learning lessons from past bad sessions—are going to be shit, is freeing.

All you can do is recuperate, dust yourself off, and get back in the saddle.

Don’t suffer through something you don’t enjoy.

Last, but certainly not least, is paying attention to what you actually need from the table.

Everyone has different needs — some are more needy than others. But knowing where your must-haves are to have a good time is an important skill most GMs are willing to trade to the first player they see.

But if you’re not getting out what you’re putting in, what are you doing it for other than suffering for someone else’s pleasure?

There’s a spectrum here of what you should tolerate, of course, and flexibility is a telltale sign of a good GM. But that only goes to a point; once you’re flexing to the point of breaking, you’re giving too much.

Remember: you’re a player too, just like everyone else at the table.

This GAME is supposed to be fun for all of you.

And when it starts to be less than that, talk to your players and see if they can agree on a few things. Maybe a deal can be struck.

If not? You know the old adage: no DND is better than bad DND. 🟦

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