Five Skills for Dungeon Masters

Your way to greatness

Photo by Lucas Santos on Unsplash

After even the most successful sessions, DMs will often self-reflect and think to themselves, “I should have described that scene better,” “I should have challenged my players more (or less),” “I feel like I shut down one of my player’s ideas too quickly,” or even “I was letting the player’s break too many rules.”

It’s okay to admit these shortcomings without beating yourself up. You can enjoy the game and still desire to improve. However, some DMs are not sure how to improve and may feel frustrated. They need some guidance.

This article is meant to provide a roadmap to improving your skills. It lists five key skills without attempting to be comprehensive. They are not skills that you just acquire overnight. They can be developed throughout a lifetime, or as long as DMs find themselves enjoying the process.

DMing should always be rewarding, either in the moment or in the development of the game. Use the skills that sound most useful for your game and forget the rest. If you find that you enjoy the strategic nature of the game but hate roleplaying NPCs, find a group that shares your interests and ignore the advice on creating different character voices. Keep it fun.

One typical piece of advice that you may find absent in the list of skills is “make the PCs the focus of the game.” While I agree with this bit of advice, I prefer to think of the game as an interaction among storytellers. It all matters — the PCs, the setting, the NPCs, the mood and tone of the game, every part of the game that is jointly experienced. The art of storytelling, improvisation, and interpersonal skills will help you to create a game where everyone has a voice.

So what are the skills and how do we develop them?

Knowledge of the Game and Gaming

You need not turn into a rules lawyer, but you should still have a confident command of the game. Confidence will help you create fun challenges for the players and their characters within the context of the game system, adjudicate rules when disagreements come up, and avoid slowing down the game to look up its mechanics.

How to Aquire this Skill

1. Play the game as often as you enjoy it. Without burning out, try to play as often as you can, as both a player and a DM. Playing the game with long-term characters that advance in level and providing a variety of obstacles will help you most gain familiarity with the game and its various components, particularly how the game changes at different levels of play. You can even play with one other person or by yourself. Go ahead and roll up a party of four characters and then pit them against various monsters or traps to figure out to run a particular challenge. If you enjoy it, keep doing it.
2. Read the rulebooks. At some point, you should read the entirety of the core rulebooks. Not all at once, or front to back, but over the course of time. Once you know how to play the game and have a basic grasp of the rules, make sure you have skimmed everything. Read various sections and monsters that capture your interest. Having a working knowledge of the most common powers, spell, magic items, and monsters helps you to keep the game flowing smoothly.
3. Create for the game. Designing magic items, monsters, spells, races, classes, encounters, maps, adventures, and settings enhances your game and challenges your creativity and knowledge of the game mechanics.
4. Read “The Monsters Know What They’re Doing” by Keith Ammann. This book will help you learn how to play the monsters in your game with personality and strategy. A fight will no longer be about hit points and Armor Class but will become a dynamic, story-building event.
5. Play strategic games, such as chess. I like to look at gaming awards like Origins, pick some games that sound interesting, and play. Any kind of game that requires some strategic thinking, whether a board game, a card game or any other configuration, will help your strategic thinking when it comes to the mechanical aspects of the game.

Knowledge of Fantasy

Most people who play the game have some knowledge of fantasy. If we didn't love fantasy, we wouldn’t be interested! However, we can always increase our store of knowledge and ideas. We should continually “stock the pond” with new ideas and imagery so that, when we go fishing for something new to present to our players, we have something to catch.

How to Aquire this Skill

1. Read the lore in the gamebooks. Have you ever read the descriptions of the elves, humans, and dwarves in the Player’s Handbook? Give it a read. Read the descriptions of the classes and the background lore of the monsters. Study the different planes of existence. All this will help you get an idea of the game’s default fantasy. It can inspire you and also help you determine what aspects of the game you may want to change.
2. Read the best in fantasy literature. Whatever that means to you. Read the best in modern fantasy like J.R.R Tolkien and George R.R. Martin, or maybe the best in young adult fantasy, such as J.K. Rowling or C.S. Lewis. If I’m honest, I do not like most fantasy books. Instead, I tend to focus on mythology, classic literature, fairy tales, and children’s books. But that’s me. Find out what inspires you and read it. A lot of it.
3. Read fantasy settings and adventures, whether for D&D or other games. People have designed countless worlds and countless adventures over the forty-or-so years of tabletop roleplaying. Find some that you like and devour them. Figure out what you like. You don’t have to limit yourself to D&D published materials either. Other games and publishers have amazing, brilliant work. Run them with your friends. Some of my favorite settings are Eberron and Ravnica from Wizards of the Coast, the Lost Omens campaign setting from Paizo, and Ptolus from Malhavoc Press. Some of my favorite adventures are “Shackled City” from Paizo, “Curse of Strahd” from Wizards of the Coast, and “The Dark of Hot Springs Island” from Swordfish Islands.
4. Read the recommended books at the back of the DMG. Appendix D has a great list of inspiring books that help detail the world of fantasy. If you can, get your hands on a copy of Gary Gygax’s Living Fantasy. It’s one of the best sources for fantasy I’ve ever seen.

Three: Storytelling

In my mind, storytelling is the heart and soul of DMing. I would always choose a good storyteller as DM even if they had limited knowledge of the game. I know not every gaming group and DM feels the same way. As humans, we thrive on story, whether that story comes in the form of a play, a novel, a movie, a TV show, or a roleplaying experience. The art and skill of storytelling helps in all aspects of life: there are books about using storytelling in business, personal relationships, influencing, and hosts of other areas of life. A great storyteller can make every game riveting.

How to Aquire this Skill

1. Write a lot. The best way to improve at something is to do it often. Consider writing stories or adventures for at least thirty minutes a day. DMs should work to be masters of plot, character, and description, as these are the tools for great DMs. A compelling plot with appropriate pacing; fascinating characters made real through description and dialogue; and living, breathing scenes with exciting prose will inspire your players.
2. Read books about writing fiction. Masters like Stephen King and Ray Bradbury have written books about writing. Perhaps even better are books about writing by editors and publishers, as writers often don’t know their own secret to great writing. Regardless, many great books have guided countless authors. Some of the best are listed in Appendix D of the DMG, such as King’s On Writing and Robert McKee’s Story. You may also want to try The Artist’s Way, which is not technically a writing guide, but it’s a book that can enhance your creativity.
3. Listen to great storytellers. You can listen to great storytellers on podcasts these days. Try “This American Life,” “The Moth,” and “Selected Shorts.” When listening to a story, ask yourself what makes it compelling. Is it the content, the structure, the voice, or the characters?
4. Develop an engaging voice. Acting teacher Uta Hagen recommends singing lessons and reading aloud for a half-hour every day to develop the voice. You can also hire voice coaches if you feel dedicated to this aspect of DMing.
5. Imitate and create different character voices. Find unique voices out in the world, particularly in movies and TV shows. Try imitating them. Even if you do a terrible imitation, you have created a unique voice. Try capturing as many unique voices as you can and use them for NPCs.

Four: Improvisation

Improvisation is the ability to create workable ideas on the fly. It can turn an otherwise poorly written adventure into something fun and memorable. Improvisation can keep the game feeling fresh. Most importantly, improvisation gives your players a feeling that they can make meaningful choices in the game. One thing that separates a tabletop game from a video game is the feeling that you can make any choice and anything might happen. You never know what players might do, and learning to build on their ideas and choices makes them feel like the center of the universe. Improvisation is also a lot of fun!

How to Aquire this Skill

1. Practice improvising and improvisational rules. You may want to consider taking improv classes or at least buying a book on improv and trying some of the techniques with your players. The book Play Unsafe focuses on tabletop RPGs, but I prefer the Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual. Probably the most important rule of improvisation is to accept and even appreciate the creative offerings of your fellow gamers. For example, a group that criticizes the character creations of their fellow roleplayers are not as fun as those who see opportunities to build on each other’s genius.
2. Have a “toolbox.” Great improvisers impress but also carry a toolbox — ways of dealing with particular circumstances of improv. In gaming terms, this could mean a list of fantasy names and places, a description of NPCs that could fit into any setting, and random encounters. A random encounter could be a group, a monster, a trap, a puzzle, or anything else that challenges the PCs in some way that could fit in several different settings. Feel free to steal ideas, encounters, maps, and so on from any and all sources while at the table.

Five: Interpersonal Skills

D&D is a social experience. We do not have to have great interpersonal skills to run a great game, but they sure can help. They help diminish conflicts and other challenges that come up, so we can focus on the fun. However, this particular set of skills often feels more personal. We might feel attacked when our emotional and social skills are called into question, and we often think of them as permanent aspects of our personality. But in fact, these skills can be developed just like any other.

How to Aquire this Skill

1. Develop a warm and confident personality. Today, you can actually find books, courses, and articles about developing these aspects of your personality, which is a lot more fluid than we may think. Start with a smile and a review of your past successes and go from there!
2. Adapt to different circumstances. You know best what you are looking for as a roleplayer, and some groups will not be the right “fit” for you. However, rarely do we find the perfect group of people, and we often need to adapt to other people’s playstyles and preferences. Keeping an open mind about other perspectives, learning about other gaming “customs,” and trying new groups can help you gain the ability to adapt to most people and see what new individuals bring to the table.
3. Learn to solve conflicts. Conflicts at the table — over rules, behaviors, or some other aspect of the game or relationships at the table — usually come up from time to time. It’s not necessarily up to the DM to resolve them unless adjudicating a game rule or adjusting an uncomfortable aspect of the game world. However, the skill of managing conflict can help create more cohesion. The more people at the table who practice good conflict resolution, the better. Again, there are many resources to learn this skill, but for starters, understanding the source of the conflict, listening openly to disagreements, and brainstorming solutions can help harmonize a situation that could have once destroyed the whole game.

To Conclude

Always prioritize fun for you and the players. When gaming starts to feel like a chore, it’s not fun anymore. The list of skills and the means of attaining them may seem overwhelming. Stick with the ones that sound enjoyable or meaningful and forget the rest.

Most of all, happy gaming!