Game Masters Aren’t Always the Smartest Person at the Table

January 11, 2022

Dungeons & Dragons/ Game Master Tips/ Roleplaying Games

One of the benefits of working in the tabletop roleplaying game industry is exposure to lots of different perspectives when it comes to gaming. Whether my takeaway from these is good, bad or indifferent there’s always at least a nugget of insight and ideas upon which to chew. A conversation I frequently encounter deals with the concept of consequences and very often focuses on the notion of dumb decisions from players leading to their characters’ death or otherwise adverse results. Adopting the same parlance I’m coming at this from the perspective the whole debate is dumb. Let’s get into it.

Who’s really being dumb here?

The main point I’m setting out to explore is the dichotomy of a Game Master as a separate superior entity and as another player with different responsibilities. Right off the bat I’ll state my perspective that the former is rubbish. If you’re reading this and feel your ire raising then I suspect you may fall into the camp who holds onto a GM representing a role above the other players in the group. They’ve got to be, right? How else would the arbitration of whether character actions are dumb or not be determined?

Except this perspective comes across incredibly arrogant to me. A GM takes on a tremendous responsibility as representative of literally every single thing in the world/universe/multiverse. Every villager, monster and villain and all their thoughts and actions, every plant and animal, the weather and environment, gods and other supernatural entities, all of history plus the present and future too and countless other aspects all fall under a GM’s purview. Making judgement calls on the dumbness of players’ thoughts and actions sounds rather silly to me in this context.

The heart of my reasoning for this perspective lies in the matters of scale and to a lesser extent simply rational thinking. One of a GM’s responsibilities to the rest of the group is maintaining verisimilitude so when I come across conversations like this I cannot help but feel there’s a dose of disingenuous behavior taking place. Are the players’ words and actions truly dumb or is this a snap decision because they don’t jive with what these GMs had in mind? The former case assumes the GM is so proficient they’re able to adopt the mindset of the subject of the party’s behavior, extrapolate countless potentialities and determine their viability instantaneously. Seems pretty arrogant to me.

Another aspect of the Dumb Decision conundrum stems from what is known and unknown by the players, their characters or both. Imagine a party of adventurers takes up the quest from a plot hook presented by the GM. I’ll keep it simple and go with the blacksmith’s son was taken by goblin raiders. The party of 1st level characters makes the perilous journey through the wilderness to the goblin lair. They infiltrate the dungeon and overcome traps, puzzles and goblin opposition while doing so. Finally they reach the inner sanctum where they discover a night hag!

“Sly and subversive, night hags want to see the virtuous turn to villainy: love turned into obsession, kindness turned to hate, devotion to disregard, and generosity to selfishness. Night hags take perverse joy in corrupting mortals.” — from the 5E D&D Basic Rules

The night hag directs her goblin minions to kidnap virtuous young folk and bring them to her lair where she does her thing and attempts to corrupt them before returning them back into society. The party sees the kidnapped youth asleep on a bed with the night hag leering over him. And in classic adventurer fashion they attack!

And get slaughtered.

Was that a dumb decision? Maybe the GM assumed the party would spend time researching, scouting or otherwise preparing for a potentially greater threat. Maybe the GM assumed they’d attempt to parley with the fiend first, or take a sneakier approach. Maybe the night hag uses her Etherealness action to play the long game with these adventurers but instead of thanking their good fortune, grabbing the kidnapping victim and getting the heck out of there they stick around to try and destroy the hag. Are any of these decisions dumb? Perhaps dumb is simply being used as a catch-all for “the players didn’t do what I wanted them to do.”

The term I most frequently see incorporated into these discussions is consequences. But just as often I wonder why the result or effect of an action or condition seems to be terrible misfortune for the characters. And I totally get it — 5E D&D and similar games aim to present tense and dangerous scenarios for participating characters to overcome. A tremendous number of RPG players relish this dynamic of getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. But therein lies another important aspect of this situation.

In my experience both direct and as an observer the group dynamic shares a strong connection with an old school approach to RPG gameplay where the game is as much about the characters vs. the environment as it is the players vs. the GM. Essentially the characters become avatars through which the players directly confront the GM. Before going on I want to be clear there’s no judgement on this sort of gameplay (other than for me personally it’s not fun).

Even with the decades I’ve enjoyed playing and running a huge number of RPGs I still struggle with this. My particular brand of GM anxiety manifests as a feeling of pitting myself and my own quick cognitive thinking against however many other players participate in the game. Can I manage to stay one step ahead of let’s say four friends who all put as much effort into the game as me? How do I handle it when they throw me for a loop or do something I never expected? Incidentally this is so ubiquitous to RPG experiences that I consider it part and parcel of the hobby itself.

The easiest answer is deflecting the unexpected back onto the players and the easiest way to do this is put their characters in peril. This in itself is somewhat disturbing to me but delving deeply into player psychology is a whole other ball of wax. A monster attacks, a trap springs, a dangerous environmental hazard manifests or whatever. When you’re a GM the same challenge of managing an entire universe also provides a major benefit — you can do whatever you want whenever you want. Reacting to unexpected player behavior with constant danger for the characters starts to seem kinda like punishment, huh?

Sometime during the last few years since leaning into my hobby so deeply (it’s my freaking job now!) I turned a corner. Although my anxiety still flares up I began to view the unexpected not as a threat to my control of a game but rather as a wonderful asset. More and more I find the prep work I do for a game takes this into consideration in an active way. One of my first contributions to Nerdarchy explores this concept further if you’re interested. The basic idea is I go into an RPG as a GM knowing with certainly the players will do unexpected things, usually almost immediately. I make it work for me! Whether they know it or not players do the heavy lifting in most of the games I run.

This is my view on consequences of character actions in an RPG. The consequences are my GM duties get way easier and more fun for me and thereby the rest of the players too. It’s important to me to cultivate the idea I am not at all seeking to put players and their characters to the test constantly. This is one of the first things I explain to people when a new game comes together. I want to explore a setting together and help the players discover the emerging story of their characters. This certainly involves danger and consequences absolutely result from words and deeds but they’re just as likely wonderful as deadly.

I’ll be the first to tell you I’m pretty smart and decently creative. These are qualities I seek out and admire in my friends too. For me an RPG group represents a gathering of peers for a unique blending of those two components. Of course I hope the players do the unexpected! It’s why my game prep includes more things like bullet points than detailed maps and descriptions of every room. It’s why I thrust agency upon players. It’s why I encourage them to develop personal motivations for their characters. I do not enjoy or wish to pull players through a story or adventure I created. Instead my greatest desire is for the players to discover their own story.

I’ll throw plenty of obstacles, challenges and threats to success in their way but I never do so only to illustrate my view of their actions as dumb. If for nothing else a common component of those RPG horror stories is there’s no reasonable way for the players or their characters to get an inkling whatever they propose is dumb in the first place. Often these discussions include words like strategy, tactics and the like and again this feels disingenuous to me. What do I know about sound combat tactics or espionage strategies? Spoiler alert: absolutely nothing.

At the end of the day if I leave you with some ideas to chew on then I’m content. The journey of any RPG player over time includes contemplating such things and how they translate to your own experiences around the gaming table. At least I think it’s healthy to do so. When it comes to players and their dumb decisions leading to the demise of their characters in my own games I ask myself what am I seeking to get from the RPG experience? Do I crave inner validation for my own superior attitude? No. (And I’ve got one, believe it!)

Inaction and a lack of engagement are the things I view as dumb decisions from players. Behaving in a way that’s informed by immersion and seeing the world through the lens of your character is never a dumb decision — quite the opposite! What works for me is viewing a GM’s responsibility as a guide to help the other players discover the story of their characters. And I’m considered a World Class GM by some so you should totally heed my words.