Are You a Fan of Your Players?
How often do you celebrate your players successes?
How often do you delight in their failures?
I’ve done both. I’ve been excited when a plan they want to go off, goes off and everyone has a ton of fun. I’ve also watched with a bit of glee when they try to do something but because I know the rules of the game better, I can see the failures and immediately know how to counter it.
In one of those situations, I was being a fan of my group. In the other, I was being competitive. But I’ve gotten more uneasy, as time goes on, when I’m too competitive or antagonistic.
Players vs GM
When I first began Game Mastering, I leaned more into the Player vs GM style. I thought it was funny to challenge and come down on the players, to ‘try and kill’ them, to go out of my way to make the game harder because I thought that that was how you made the game fun.
That’s what Player vs GM mentality comes down to it. The players see the game as them against the GM, and the GM sees their role as the Big Bad who has to defeat the players.
But after years and years, I’ve realized that that is just not for me or for the table I want to cultivate. In my experience, it has led to a number of behaviors I just don’t like.
I don’t want my players to never talk to me about their plans, or to try and hide their spells or abilities from me, or to think I’m ‘the enemy’ even as a joke.
I want them to be excited to tell me their plans. To share with me how they want to fight the BBEG and what I think about it.
I know that’s a weird idea. For the players to tell the Game Master days before the next session what their plan for dealing with the BBEG (the NPC that the GM is controlling) how they plan to defeat them.
But I think there is something wonderful in that idea. I want my players to have fun and to succeed.
Being a Fan
As a fan, I want to use my knowledge, not to ruin their plans, but to elevate it and make it that much better. We can delight on how the dice might fall, what challenges they might face depending on what happens, and still go to the table, excited to see how the plan works and how the dice will roll.
There is still Challenge
I know when I thought more about my relationship to the table, I still want there to be challenge and the possibility of defeat. I’ve written recently about how you need to keep things risky or lose the fun, and nothing has changed there. You still need challenge, but the challenge isn’t what is fun, but how your players overcome the challenge.
Being a fan hasn’t stopped me from having a Total-Party Kill, it hasn’t stopped me from telling my players they failed a check or crit-failed an attack, but instead it has changed how I have fun.
I’m not ‘having fun’ when my players are feeling bad or frustrated at bad dice luck. I am having fun when my players are having fun too. I am frustrated when my players are frustrated too.
What Being a Fan Looks Like
Being a fan of your table goes beyond celebrating rolls or excitedly announcing they win the campaign. It comes down to how you run the game and how your players can help guide the story.
I often forget what skills there are in a game, but instead of looking at a character sheet, I ask the player what skill they think works for this situation. Even if I think the skill should be stealth, but they say intimidation - I let them explain why it should be that skill they are using and often let them roll it (so long as it makes sense). Sometimes I make the check harder, sometimes I make the check easier. But ultimately, I want them to work with me to tell the story.
When they roll a great skill check or defeat a monster, I throw the ball in their court and tell them to describe their success. And I get excited with their description, and I add to it in my world. If they crit-succeeded on smashing down a door where a bunch of enemies are hiding behind, I let them describe how they smash the door off their hinges-and then I pick up that thread and describe how the door sails into the room, smashing into a monster that deals a minor bit of damage.
I am taking what the players are already excited about, and amplify it the only way that a GM can - by having the world react to the success, by doing extra things that a player can’t do (like providing more information, deal extra damage, or some other mechanical effect), and by being the player’s biggest cheerleader.
Friend, Not Foe
It’s hard to describe my relationship with my players. Yes, they are my friends - but I don’t normally spend HOURS every week playing with my friends. I don’t normally spend HOURS every week planning out a session of playtime with my friends.
But we do that for our friends who we play TTRPGs with. I may not even know a player’s last name, their favorite color, how old they are, what hobbies they have, or anything else about them outside of our game table—but for some reason I am spending hours and hours on having a great time with them.
Players, including GMs, are a weird type of friend. We spend so much time with each other, that I’ve realized that I want to be a fan. I don’t want them seeing me as an adversary to their fun, as the person who determines whether they live or die, whether they are going to have fun that night or not.
I want them to be excited to play at my table, and no that I am fan of whatever insane idea they have, and how we can get that idea to succeed together. And even if it all ends in a TPK, I still want them to know that I had their back the entire time.
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