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The DM Needs to Have Fun Too

There is a lot of D&D advice out there about making sure your players are having fun. And rightly so. As a Dungeon Master, you are responsible for creating the world, presenting the challenges, playing the monsters and NPCs, adjudicating the rules and keeping the adventure moving. You spend hours preparing encounters, designing maps, reading adventures and thinking about what your players might do next. So naturally, you want your players to enjoy themselves. But there is a question that doesn’t get asked quite as often:

Are you having fun?

Because the DM is playing D&D too. You just happen to have considerably more hit points, several hundred NPCs and an alarming number of voices to keep track of.

The DM isn’t the entertainment committee

There is sometimes an assumption that the DM’s job is to provide entertainment for everyone else. But that isn’t really how D&D works. Rather, D&D is collaborative storytelling, with a strong emphasis on collaborative. Everyone at the table contributes to creating the game, and the DM is one of those people.

Of course the DM should absolutely care about what the players enjoy. Their characters, choices and experiences are a huge part of what makes the game work. But the DM’s enjoyment matters too.

In fact, I would argue that it matters enormously. Because if the person running the game isn’t enjoying themselves, it becomes increasingly difficult to create a fun game for everyone else.

You are allowed to enjoy your own adventure

I get a huge amount of joy from being the DM, it might actually be the part of D&D that I enjoy the most. There’s nothing quite like creating situations and then watching the players completely misunderstand them, or introducing an NPC you’ve been waiting three sessions to reveal. It’s so satisfying to see your players pull together to overcome the terrifying monsters and obstacles that you’ve thrown in their path.

You get to play the villain and create the ridiculous shopkeeper with a completely unnecessary accent. And often, you get to sit there silently thinking:

“They have absolutely no idea what’s coming.”

That is fun, and we shouldn’t be afraid to admit it.

The DM is not a neutral game engine

There is also a temptation to think that a good DM should be completely neutral. The players decide what they do while the world reacts. Rolling the dice decides the outcome. The DM simply facilitates the process.

There is some truth in this. Players need genuine agency. Their decisions should matter, and the DM shouldn’t simply force the story toward a predetermined outcome. But being a DM isn’t the same as operating a complicated random-number generator.

You are allowed to have ideas, to be excited about an encounter and enjoy the villain you have created. Putting in an encounter because you think it will be cool is part of the job. The trick is making sure that your enjoyment doesn’t come at the expense of everyone else’s.

DM fun and player fun aren’t opposites

This is perhaps the most important point. The DM having fun doesn’t mean the players have less fun. Usually the opposite is true. A DM who is excited about the game is infectious. You can hear it in their voice and feel the energy when they introduce an NPC or reveal a monster. That enthusiasm spreads around the table.

I’ve played games where the DM is clearly having an absolute blast. They aren’t necessarily running a perfect adventure and the encounters might not be perfectly balanced. Even when the plot wandered off into a swamp somewhere everyone was having a blast and that’s what people remember.

Give yourself something to look forward to

One of the easiest ways to increase your DM fun is to deliberately include things that you enjoy. Love tactical combat? Create an interesting battlefield. Enjoy roleplaying? Introduce an NPC you can’t wait to play. Like creating puzzles? Put one in the adventure.

You don’t have to build the entire adventure around your personal interests. But there should be something in there that makes you think: “I really want to see how this goes.” That little spark can make preparation feel much less like homework.

Follow your curiosity

A simple way approach DMing is simply to ask: “What would be fun?” Not just for the players, but for you as well. Following your own curiosity can be an incredibly powerful DMing tool. Instead of trying to control the story, you become interested in discovering it alongside the players. You don’t need to know exactly what happens, instead be curious about what might happen.

The best tables have shared ownership

Ultimately, D&D works best when nobody feels solely responsible for making the game fun. The DM isn’t responsible for entertaining the players and the players aren’t responsible for entertaining the DM. Everyone contributes.

Players bring characters, ideas, jokes, decisions and unexpected solutions. The DM brings the world, the challenges, the characters, the consequences and the occasional gelatinous cube. Together, they create something none of them could have created individually. That’s the magic of the game and it means the DM deserves a seat at the table in more ways than one.

So, DM, are you having fun?

The next time you finish a session, don’t just ask your players: “Did you enjoy that?” Ask yourself the same question. If the answer is yes, fantastic. If the answer is no, don’t automatically assume you need to become a better DM. Instead think about what you didn’t enjoy. Maybe you need less preparation or a different type of adventure. Perhaps you need more combat, or less combat, or an NPC that you get a kick out of playing. It could even be time to hand the DM screen to someone else for a while and enjoy being a player.

Because D&D shouldn’t be a performance where one person works so everyone else can have fun. The DM is part of the game and your enjoyment matters.

So build the adventure you want to run. Create the villain you’re excited to play. Put the ridiculous monster on the table. Laugh when the players completely derail your carefully prepared plot. And when they do something you never expected, don’t think: “That’s not what was supposed to happen.” Instead think: “Oh, this could be fun.” Then roll the dice and see what happens.

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Games Masters Book Club Ep49

Episode 49 of the Games Masters Book Club has dropped. Our host Eric, Marty, Rich and myself discuss the Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb.

I love all of Robin Hobbs work and this book did not disappoint. We talk about elements of the books we’d use in our game as well as systems that would work well for the setting. A really fun discussion.

If you’d like to have a listen, you can check it out here:

GMBC ep49 – When Vivacia Wakes: How GMBC Turned Robin Hobb’s Ship of Magic into Tabletop Gold

If you’d like to listen to some of the other podcasts I’ve been involved in check out our link here.

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Why Face-to-Face D&D Really Matters

Some of you might already know that I am a huge fan of playing Dungeons & Dragons face to face around a table. The phones are away, everyone is present at the table and reacting to one another in real time. Somewhere between the terrible (but infectious) jokes, dramatic character moments and crazy in world hi-jinks something happens that is difficult to recreate online.

You become a group.

Don’t get me wrong online D&D is has its place. It allows people who live in different cities, countries or even continents to play together. As proved in the Covid pandemic it creates options for groups to keep gaming when meeting in person isn’t practical.

But when you can get everyone around the same table, there is a particular kind of magic that happens that cant be replicated online.

Having spent three years working from home, I fully understand how these face to face lessons apply to the workplace. Being fully remote loses the significant benefits of working with your teams in person.

There is more to communication than words

When you’re playing D&D face to face, communication isn’t just about what someone says. You see the beginnings of a grin when someone has an idea. Carol leans forward because they’re suddenly interested. Two players share a look when they realise they’ve had the same thought. Andrew hesitates before suggesting something. You hear the change in Marty’s voice when they’re getting excited. A huge amount of communication happens without anyone deliberately communicating it.

Online, much of that information gets lost. Cameras might be turned off or mics muted. Someone’s face might be reduced to a tiny square on a screen. If you’re playing through a virtual tabletop, there may be several windows competing for your attention.

Funnily enough the same things happen at work. Email is excellent for communicating information. Teams and Slack are great for quick questions. Video calls are incredibly useful and have their place. But none of them completely replace being in the same physical space.

Human beings communicate through much more than words. Cues created by body language are critical in gaining understanding the other person. Sometimes the most important part of a conversation is the five seconds before someone says anything.

The conversations between the conversations

One of the great things about playing D&D face to face is what happens when nobody is technically playing. When everyone arrives before the game and settles in the conversation starts flowing. Two players start discussing what happened last session. while the DM and another player have a quick conversation about a character. Someone tells a story. You end up talking about something completely unrelated to the game.

I can be guilty of thinking of these as wasted moments. I want to get on with the game. However, think of them instead as part of the social glue that holds the group together.

The same thing happens in workplaces. Think about the conversations that happen before a meeting starts. Or that quick chat while making coffee. While these interactions can seem insignificant. They aren’t. Each small interaction helps build relationships which ultimately makes collaboration easier.

A shared physical space creates shared experiences

There is something powerful about everyone experiencing the same thing at the same time. The Kraken rises from the depths. Everyone reacts. The dice clatter on the table, while the group hold their breath. A natural 20 and the table erupts. Moments like this become shared memories. And shared memories create relationships.

Workplaces have these moments too. The project that somehow came together at the last minute. That ridiculous client meeting. Celebrations after winning a major piece of work. The office Christmas party that probably shouldn’t be discussed in too much detail. These experiences become part of the team’s story. Eventually you get a group of people who don’t just work together. They have a history together and that’s a powerful thing.

Physical presence makes collaboration easier

D&D is fundamentally collaborative. Players need to listen to each other, understand what others are doing and coordinate their actions. Being physically present makes some of this easier. You can point at the map, move a miniature, describe a plan with hand movements and more easily react to what someone else is doing. There is less friction.

The same applies to some workplace activities. A complicated problem can sometimes be solved in ten minutes around a whiteboard when the same discussion might take an hour through a series of emails or Teams messages. People can build on each other’s ideas immediately. Someone draws something, another changes it, while the third person spots a problem. Suddenly the group has moved from spending hours discussing the problem to solving it. The physical environment becomes part of the collaboration.

Serendipity matters

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of being physically together is something that is very difficult to schedule. Serendipity. You bump into someone on the way to the lab. Perhaps you overhear a conversation and discover that someone else has been working on a problem similar to yours. Maybe you mention an idea while making coffee.

Someone says:

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that too.”

And a completely unexpected connection appears.

D&D has plenty of examples. Someone mentions a character idea while setting up. Another player has a suggestion. The DM suddenly gets an idea. An NPC becomes a central part of the campaign. A throwaway comment becomes an entire adventure. The physical table creates opportunities for those things to happen.

But this isn’t an argument against being online

There is an important caveat. Online D&D isn’t bad D&D and remote work isn’t bad work. Technology has given us extraordinary opportunities to connect with people who otherwise couldn’t participate.

For some people, remote work provides flexibility that is genuinely valuable. In a D&D group, online play might be the only reason the campaign can continue. The lesson isn’t that everything needs to happen face to face. Rather that physical interaction has unique benefits that are easy to underestimate. We should recognise those benefits rather than assuming technology can perfectly replicate them.

Bring people together for the things that benefit from being together

This is where I think the D&D analogy becomes particularly useful for workplaces. You don’t necessarily need everyone sitting in the office every day. But there are some activities where getting people together can create disproportionate value.

Of course you don’t always need an agenda. Sometimes the agenda can simply be “Let’s have lunch.” That’s not wasted time. It’s an investment in the relationships that make the rest of the work possible.

The face to face table creates belonging

There is something wonderfully democratic about a D&D table. Everyone has a seat and everyone’s character matters. The wizard might be opening a magical portal while the fighter is holding the doorway and the rogue is quietly investigating something nobody else noticed. Everyone contributes something different and yet are all part of the same story.

That sense of belonging matters in workplaces too. People don’t just want to know what their job is. They want to know where they fit and to feel connected to the people around them. Face-to-face interaction can help create that sense of belonging because relationships become more tangible.

Instead of being just a name in an email, you’re the person who sits across the table, who helped solve that problem. The person who laughed at the ridiculous thing that happened in the meeting.

The person you know.

Sometimes you just need to roll some dice

Perhaps this is why I keep coming back to the physical D&D table. It’s not because technology is incapable of delivering a good game. Rather, it’s because there is something about being physically present with other people that is difficult to replace.

You hear the dice hit the table, see their reaction before anyone says anything, laugh at the terrible plan, celebrate the natural 20. Eventually, after several hours, you pack everything away and realise you’ve spent an evening with a group of people creating something unique together.

That’s more than playing a game. It’s social connection.

And perhaps that’s the lesson D&D has for the workplace.

Technology can connect us. But connection isn’t the same thing as being connected.

Sometimes we need the video call, the email, or the flexibility of working from home. And sometimes we need to put the screens away, sit around the same table and spend some time together.

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Having Freedom to Choose: What D&D Teaches Us About Autonomy

Any long term readers (all three of you) of this blog know that I I love finding parallels between Dungeons & Dragons and teams in the workplace. This is not because adventuring parties are particularly effective organisations. Rather, a group of players all representing characters with different skills, goals and outlooks all come together to beat a common goal. Remarkably similar to teams in the real world. Something that drives both the players of the game and team mates at work is autonomy.

In game players have the freedom to decide what their characters do. Of course, those decisions should matter. It is not at all surprising that the same principle sits at the heart of creating a motivated and engaged workplace.

Autonomy is more than freedom

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink identifies three key elements that underpin motivation in modern workplaces: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is the desire to have some control over what we do, how we do it, and sometimes when we do it. It doesn’t mean everyone gets to do whatever they want. A workplace without structure would quickly descend into something resembling a badly managed D&D campaign. Everyone would have their own objectives, nobody would know what anyone else was doing, and the person responsible for payroll would probably be hiding in the woods.

Autonomy exists within boundaries.

A D&D game has rules, a setting, a Dungeon Master, a scenario and consequences. Players aren’t free to rewrite reality whenever they want. But within those boundaries, they should have enormous freedom.

The DM might tell the players:

“You have arrived at the gates of the marble city.”

What happens next is up to them. They might walk brazenly through the gate. Or perhaps they sneak in through the sewers at night. Of course, they might decide the city is clearly too dangerous and wander off in completely the opposite direction. The important thing isn’t that the players get everything they want. It’s that they get to choose.

Choices need consequences

I’ve gone into this in more detail in my previous article and I don’t want to cover the same ground. But there is an important distinction between giving people choices and giving people meaningful choices. Railroading is taken badly by the roleplaying community for a reason.

At work we can ask employees for their opinions, run surveys, hold meetings and invite suggestions. But if every decision has already been made, people quickly learn that their participation is decorative only. Autonomy requires more than asking people what they think.

People need to believe that their decisions can change something. That doesn’t mean every suggestion must be accepted. Just as the DM doesn’t have to allow every player plan to succeed, managers can’t accommodate every idea. But when someone makes a decision, we should be able to explain why it mattered.

The D&D player needs agency

Lets consider two different D&D games. In the first, the DM has written an elaborate story. The players are expected to follow the plot from A to B to C. They meet the NPC the DM has prepared, discover the clue the DM wants them to discover, travel to the location the DM has selected and fight the villain waiting there. While the adventure might be beautifully written the players can begin to feel like passengers.

In the second game, the DM establishes a world, creates problems and introduces characters with their own motivations. Then the players decide what they want to do. The DM responds to those decisions. The players might ignore the obvious villain and become obsessed with helping a farmer recover a stolen cow. They might make friends with the Sheriff who was supposed to be an antagonist. Instead of entering the carefully prepared dungeon they might go straight to the castle, because they found another way to deal with the evil necromancer.

For the DM, this can be terrifying. However, for the players, it can be fantastic. Because now the story belongs to them too. Their choices shape what happens next. That is agency. One of the great pleasures of roleplaying games.

The workplace needs agency too

Lets look at a workplace that gives people responsibility without giving them control.

  • “You’re responsible for delivering this project, but I’ll decide how you do it.”
  • “I want you to take ownership, but please run every decision past me.”
  • “I’d like you to develop professionally, but here’s exactly what you’re going to work on.”

These approaches can create accountability without autonomy which eventually leads to people feeling like they don’t own their work. Instead, they become characters following someone else’s adventure path.

A more autonomous approach might sound like:

“Here’s the outcome we need. Here’s the timeframe and the constraints. How would you approach it?”

Now the employee has something to solve. They can bring their expertise to the problem and make their own decisions. Of course, by doing so they can learn from the consequences.

That is much closer to playing a great game of D&D.

The DM doesn’t disappear

Now, beware, because there is a trap here. If autonomy is so good, it can be tempting to conclude that managers should simply get out of everyone’s way. But that’s not what autonomy means.

The DM still has a critical role. They establish the world, create challenges, introduce consequences and maintain the rules. On occasion they have to tell the players, “No, your wizard cannot summon an ancient dragon just because you rolled a natural 20.”

Good managers do much the same. They establish expectations and boundaries, while providing resources and support. Where possible they help remove obstacles and make sure people understand both the objective and the constraints.

Ultimately, they allow people to decide how to get there. The skill is knowing when to intervene and when to let the players play.

Autonomy creates ownership

One of the most interesting things about D&D is how quickly players become invested in decisions they have made themselves.

If the DM tells the party that they must defeat the corrupt town mayor, the players may care. But if the players decide that the mayor needs to be brought down because of the way he’s been bullying their characters families, the objective becomes personal. They are fully invested.

Of course, the same thing happens at work. People are more likely to feel ownership over an outcome when they have had a genuine role in determining how they will achieve it. Telling the team “We need to deliver this project by the end of the month, within this budget, while meeting these quality and safety requirements,” creates the playing field. the team then decide how to play the game. That’s autonomy.

Failure is part of autonomy

There is one final lesson that D&D offers us. If players are genuinely making decisions, sometimes they are going to make bad ones. They will open the trapped chest (there might be treasure inside…) or split the party (haven’t horror movies taught us anything?). Sometimes they will charge the ancient green dragon head on.

If we want to create autonomy for our teams at work, we have to accept the same reality. People will make mistakes. The answer isn’t to remove their ability to make decisions. Doing so creates a workplace where the safest strategy is to ask permission for everything.

Instead, we should distinguish between acceptable failure and unacceptable failure. A junior employee making a poor judgement call on a low-risk task can be an opportunity for learning. A decision that creates a serious safety risk is completely different.

Boundaries do matter. Within those boundaries, however, people need enough freedom to experiment and develop their judgement.

That’s how mastery develops too. And Pink’s three elements begin to connect.

  • Autonomy gives people the opportunity to choose.
  • Mastery gives them the opportunity to get better.
  • Purpose gives them a reason to care.

Let the players play

When thinking about autonomy, perhaps the biggest lesson D&D offers managers is surprisingly simple: Don’t write the players’ story for them. Give them the objective and resources. Explain the boundaries before letting them decide what to do.

The same is true at work. If we want people to take ownership, solve problems creatively and become more capable, we need to give them opportunities to exercise judgement.

We need to move from: “Here’s what I want you to do.” towards: “Here’s what we’re trying to achieve. How do you think we should do it?” That small change can transform the relationship between a manager and an employee. One makes someone a participant. The other makes them an owner.

Perhaps that is why D&D continues to be such a useful mirror for the workplace. The best games aren’t about the Dungeon Master telling everyone what happens. They’re about creating a world where people’s choices matter.

The best workplaces aren’t either.

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Exciting News: Unveiling the Book Cover!

A quick post today. Over the last year or so I’ve been working at turning some of the concepts of this blog into a book. Introducing:

Dungeons, Dice and Decision making: Leadership lessons from the worlds most popular roleplaying game.

My good friend and very talented Keith Turner has hand crafted this awesome cover and I had to share it with you all. Also, I should be expecting the physical proofs to arrive any day now.

The book cover! Drawn by the talented Keith Turner.

The basic premise of the book is: What if you could enhance your leadership skills by playing Dungeons & Dragons. (No surprise for any long term readers of this blog). the rest of the blurb reads as follows:

Running a game of Dungeons & Dragons has surprising parallels with leading a team in the workplace. Dungeon Masters must communicate clearly, adapt to the unexpected, resolve conflict, inspire diverse personalities, and guide a group towards a shared goal. Sound familiar?

This book explores the leadership lessons hidden within the world’s most popular roleplaying game and shows how they can be applied to real-world teams and organisations. Drawing on practical examples from both the gaming table and the workplace, it reveals how D&D can help develop communication, teamwork, decision-making, resilience, creativity, and leadership.

More than just a leadership book, it also includes a simple roleplaying game system along with practical guidance for running experiential learning sessions at work, allowing organisations to develop their people through engaging, memorable experiences.

I’m hopeful that this book will help gamers view the skills they gain playing at the table differently.

Watch this space, I will be sharing more information over the next few weeks.