Dungeons & Dragons | Game Design | Roleplaying Games
The Most Overlooked Rules in Dungeons & Dragons: Why the Dungeon Master Survives
Included in the introduction to the Player’s Handbook of Dungeons & Dragons is a set of rules so vital that they shape nearly every moment of play and yet so overlooked — so unconscious and assumed — that, unless you’re one of the rare players who’s consumed the book cover-to-cover, you’re unlikely even to have read them in full.
I’m referring to this passage, which defines the structure of play in terms of interactions between the players and Dungeon Master (DM):
The play of the Dungeons & Dragons game unfolds according to this basic pattern.
(1) The DM describes the environment. The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them, presenting the basic scope of options that present themselves. . . .
(2) The players describe what they want to do. Sometimes one player speaks for the whole party, saying, “We’ll take the east door,” for example. Other times, different adventurers do different things. . . . The players don’t need to take turns, but the DM listens to every player and decides how to resolve those actions.
Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But . . . [some circumstance] might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action.
(3) The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions. Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the flow of the game right back to step 1. (Player’s Handbook, “Introduction”)
At first, to a Dungeons & Dragons player, these rules seem unremarkable. After your first session, you just know them. You might not even think of these as rules — but rather guidelines, norms, or mere descriptions of play. (I disagree, but we’ll get to that.) This invisibility is precisely what makes the passage above remarkable.
In particular, the role of Dungeon Master introduces asymmetrical power dynamics at the gaming table that are at once (1) taken for granted, (2) peculiar to tabletop RPGs, and (3) not something most people would put up with in other recreational contexts.
What player hasn’t heard horror stories of a “tyrant” DM abusing their power? What player hasn’t also heard stories of, or experienced, a “benevolent dictator” DM elevating a roleplaying session to thrilling heights? This dynamic is equal parts weird and fascinating. Yet we barely question it.
Here, I’ll unpack the effects of the rules that define the “player” and “Dungeon Master” roles from the perspectives of game design, social dynamics, and the culture of Dungeons & Dragons and, by extension, RPGs in general. Along the way, I’ll propose and explore seven partial explanations for why — after a half-century of development — the role of Dungeon Master remains a ubiquitous, and often effective, element of tabletop RPG design.
Defining Roles: The Right to Describe
To understand how the passage above effects play — and why it constitutes a set of rules — let’s first consider the form “play” itself takes.
Tabletop roleplaying games — whether it’s Dungeons & Dragons, Gumshoe, or the Wendy’s fast-food chain’s inimitable Feast of Legends — take the form of a conversation. Specifically, a conversation in which a shared fiction — characters, settings, events — are established and accepted by the group. That is, at the start of an RPG session, a group of players sits down to talk. Each person chimes in. A fictional adventure emerges. Like all conversations, RPGs are governed by rules and norms that give them structure and set them apart from other sorts of conversations.
Within this frame, and following the definition of Elinor Ostrom and political scientist Sue Crawford, a “rule” in an RPG is anything that requires (MUST), disallows (MUST NOT), or allows (MAY, i.e., MUST NOT disallow) a contribution to the conversation in a particular context or by a particular person at the table with some consequence for violation (OR ELSE), usually the right for others to unambiguously strike down your contribution. By the same token, if something, written in a rulebook or otherwise, doesn’t specifically allow, disallow, or require contributions or doesn’t have a consequence for its violation, then it’s not a rule. (E.g., colorful descriptions of character types may inspire play, and may stipulate that certain characters ought to be roleplayed in particular ways, but usually no one can hold you to playing by them. So such descriptions aren’t rules.)
Let’s call the broadest of all rules, which hold unless contradicted by a more specific rule, the Right to Describe. In Dungeons & Dragons, the Right to Describe is specified in the passage quoted at the start of this article:
- “The DM describes the environment.”
- “The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them . . .”
- “The players describe what they want to do.”
- The DM describes the results of players’ actions, subject to other relevant rules.
While almost no one consciously applies these rules during play, we do notice when they’re violated and enforce them. If the DM or player unilaterally describes what another player’s character does or wants to do in the story, then that player has the right to set the record straight through an alternate description (“No, I don’t do that. I do this.”) — and might get annoyed — because it’s understood that a player has the exclusive right to describe the actions their character attempts (though not their outcomes) as well as their character’s internal life (thoughts, feelings, etc.). Likewise, if a player unilaterally describes something new about the world of the story or a non-player character (NPC) that has nothing to do with their own character, the DM or one of the other players may object, because the DM has the exclusive Right to Describe the world and NPCs. A player or the DM may opt not to enforce their Right. They may let others describe their character or an element of the world (e.g., when players create backstories for their characters, which may tie into the broader story world), but the point stands that they have the right to object.
All this matters because the roles of “Player” and “Dungeon Master” are largely defined in terms of these distinct Rights to Describe. The Right to Describe specifies what each is obligated and entitled to do, or forbidden from doing, during play. A player is someone who describes a main character’s thoughts and actions (including by directly portraying them); a Dungeon Master is someone who describes the game world.
A (Limited) Diversity
The Right to Describe and the roles defined in terms of it are not a given. Rather, they are a particular bundle of written and unwritten rules that has specific consequences for the form of the conversation of play. Games define the Right in diverse ways.
Part of this variation is made explicit in game rulebooks. For example, in some games, such as Hillfolk, players share the Right to Describe the game world. They take turns setting scenes, painting the environment, and introducing NPCs for the DM (here, called the “game master) to portray. A notable minority of games, such as Fiasco, have no DM or equivalent role, all players are created equal. Others, like Ironsworn, can be played with or without a DM. All these games have innovative rules to help players navigate sharing control of the collaborative fiction.
However, much of the variation in the Right to Describe is unwritten, coming not from game designers but from players, who’ve developed their own playstyles, group dynamics, and storytelling expectations — cultural traditions of play. For example, let’s take Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve played in groups where players required approval from the DM before establishing nearly anything beyond the numbers on the character sheet as well as in groups where players had the right to describe whatever they’d like about the game setting and are the authorities on everything related to what they invent there. Similarly, I’ve played in groups where the DM kept track of an extensive, secret “canon” of material players had not yet discovered (e.g., when running prewritten adventures) and in others where nothing was canon until described during a game session. I put part of this diversity of approaches to the Right to Describe down to players’ creativity and active experimentation and the rest down to the phenomenon we began this investigation with: Right to Describe, unlike the other game mechanics provided in rulebooks, being treated as not a rule but a norm, thus made freer to bend and mutate under lack of documentation.
But what’s more notable than the varied approaches of unusual games such as those mentioned above is the homogeneity of all the rest. The general D&D-like model is still clearly dominant: (1) two roles, with separate Rights to Describe, “player” and “Dungeon Master” (or game master, narrator, referee, or any near-synonym); (2) the number of occupants in each role, “one Dungeon Master and several players”; and (3) the broad consistency in what those roles entail, “each player plays one main character, and the DM plays everything else.” For example, this description from the Fate Core rulebook outlines player roles in terms of the Right to Describe in a way eerily similar to the description from Dungeons & Dragons with which we began:
If you’re a player, your primary job is to take responsibility for portraying one of the protagonists of the game. . . . You make decisions for your character and describe to everyone else what your character says and does. . . .
If you’re a gamemaster, your primary job is to take responsibility for the world the PCs inhabit. You make decisions and roll dice for every character in the game world who isn’t portrayed by a player. . . . You describe the environments and places the PCs go to during the game, and you create the scenarios and situations they interact with. You also act as a final arbiter of the rules, determining the outcome of the PCs’ decisions and how that impacts the story as it unfolds. (Fate Core, “Players & Gamemasters”)
And this comes from a game that is otherwise mechanically very little like D&D, serves to a different audience of players and makes minimal attempt to cater to the mainstream, and is intended to produce a distinct kind of play experience!
What we have is a puzzling situation. Game designers, and many players, are aware of and have developed a range of ways to structure the conversation of play, and thus define participants’ roles, yet the vast majority cleave to the familiar paradigm. Why?
The Dungeon Master Is Weird
Before exploring some answers, let’s pause to examine the deeper weirdness of the puzzle. Not only have most RPGs settled on a similar basic arrangement of roles, but it’s also not immediately obvious that that arrangement makes for a positive play experience.
Players enter a roleplaying session expecting to cede most of the storytelling power to a single person whose rulings and creative decisions may make or break the experience for everyone else. The Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook makes it crystal clear that the Dungeon Master (“the game’s lead storyteller and referee,” [Player’s Handbook, “Introduction”]) is the final and absolute authority, and the owner of most of the fiction:
Your DM might set the campaign on one of these [published] worlds or on one that he or she created. Because there is so much diversity among the worlds of D&D, you should check with your DM about any house rules that will affect your play of the game. Ultimately, the Dungeon Master is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if the setting is a published world. (Player’s Handbook, “Introduction”)
Moreover, the rules are ambiguous as to whether the DM is “above the law,” that is, whether it is required or up to their discretion to adhere to the rules as written:
Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But . . . some . . . circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action. (Player’s Handbook, “Introduction,” emphasis added)
Yes, the presence of detailed rules for handling a variety of specific situations gives players a solid basis for objecting to arbitrary description from the DM, and Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks provide further, more concrete instructions for the DM elsewhere. But in practice, it’s common for DMs to alter or ignore the written rules when (hopefully) they think doing so will make the game more fun. It’s also worth noting that many of the instructions for the DM in RPGs are contained in separate rulebooks and often not accessible to, and seldom read by, players. If no one at the table is aware of such an instruction but the person supposed to follow it, it’s hard to view that instruction as an enforceable rule.
Even more strikingly, it’s common for the DM to roll dice and track the hit points and other stats of NPCs and monsters in secret behind a “DM screen.” Few would deny that this gives DMs a strong incentive, and the ability, to fudge the numbers to steer the game in a desired direction. Yet the DM screen, and the potential for fudging, is a normal part of play. To be fair, many non-D&D games, especially in the Old-School Renaissance playstyle (e.g., Maze Rats), object to the use of secret rolls. But the fact that this objection needs raising is curious in itself.
This concentration of power in the DM produces negative results ranging from the comical — some players, with wry self-awareness, referring to the DM as “God” — to the annoying — players sucking up to the DM to secure desired outcomes for their characters — to the damaging — the DM favoring certain players for personal, out of game reasons — to the toxic — the DM subjecting the players to their power fantasies, potentially rising to the level of harassment. Of course, none of these problems occur in every game. Most DMs avoid the worst. Many prove themselves worthy of the trust placed in them, fostering environments for the players to shine and laying the groundwork for stories they’ll love to recall. But plenty of groups fall apart or get stuck playing mediocre campaigns because the person in charge isn’t a good fit for the role. This problem simply wouldn’t arise without such a peculiar placement of power and trust.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to think of other recreational contexts in which friends or acquaintances voluntarily subject themselves to the authority of one among them to such an extent or for such an extended time. As one comparison, most popular board games and card games are either symmetric (e.g., Catan or Hearts), all players sharing the same role, actions, and outcomes for those actions, or players rotate roles frequently (e.g., Sheriff of Nottingham). As another comparison, in improv theater, everyone on stage usually has the same Right to Describe, that is, to contribute to the scene being played out spontaneously on stage. If there is a narrator, director, or similar figure, that person generally plays a far smaller role than a Dungeon Master, interjecting to guide scenes but seldom overriding others’ contributions, except perhaps under conditions specified in advance by the show’s format.
Thus, from a perspective outside RPG culture, it’s strange to think that players don’t routinely demand more shared ownership of the fiction. It’s strange that they don’t demand the DM’s decisions be subordinate to a fixed set of rules — at least those rules agreed upon by the group beforehand. And it’s strange that they don’t demand the DM always roll dice and track numbers in the open. In short, the DM role is not only ubiquitous in RPGs but also weird in other contexts.
Why the Dungeon Master Survives
Now that we’ve established the weirdness of the DM role, let’s explore why most RPGs include one anyway. Here, I’ll propose seven partial, mutually compatible answers.
DM as Impartial Figure: A Problem of Incentives
Consider that roleplaying is a fundamentally open-ended, endlessly generative process. That is, no one can anticipate all that could happen during a session. This means that not everything in a tabletop RPG can be specified by situational rules. Hence the need for broad Rights to Describe to govern who may add what to the fiction.
In improv theater, which is equally open-ended, the Right to Describe is usually something like “Anyone may describe anything, and that thing is then true in the fiction, except if it contradicts something described earlier (subject to certain norms, as I explored in an article on damage mechanics in tabletop RPGs). However, RPGs typically tell stories that are longer, expect each player to portray a single character, and often involve more tactical and/or competitive problem-solving and advance planning than improv theater, and this leads players to become more invested in their characters and particular fictional outcomes. As such, it’s harder for players to remain impartial. Allowing players who want good things for their own characters to freely describe the opposition becomes problematic.
One solution to this incentive problem is to give one or more players a special role in which they portray none of the main characters and so have no special attachment to any, then give those players the exclusive Right to Describe the setting, including the main characters’ opposition. Then these players become (somewhat) impartial “players of the world.” When you have just one such special player, that player looks a lot like a Dungeon Master.
DM as Authority: Efficiencies of Dictatorship
But why have just one “player for the world?” Why not, for instance, have one or two players portray protagonists and the rest of the players portray everything else? The problem is that if multiple players have the Right to Describe the same part of the fiction, there needs to be some process for adjudicating whose description becomes canon.
One option is to “privatize” the fiction, dividing up the setting and characters into non-overlapping domains that each “player for the world” has the exclusive Right to Describe, with no input required from anyone else. But having “players for the world,” whose authority is limited to particular spheres of the setting, resembles giving DM-powers to players who are attached to a single main character, returning us to the problem of impartiality. That isn’t to say this approach can’t work — I’d be fascinated to hear about games that pull it off especially well — but just as giving people private rights over property in the real world gives them a special interest in that property, restricting players’ Right to Describe to particular areas of the fiction tends to create special interests in those areas, whether they encompass a single character or a larger swath of the world.
A second possibility is “whoever says it first.” As mentioned above, this is how improv theatre usually works, and it works well in that setting. There, skilled performers don’t need to verbally communicate or coordinate when adding to the fiction, because they know each other well, have practiced getting on the same page, and are good at sharing control over the fiction. Probably because these favorable conditions are seldom met to the same extent in tabletop RPG groups, I’m unaware of any games that fully adopt this approach. (Microscope comes close, but there, players take turns adding to the fiction in a structured manner.) Even in games where players do share ownership of the setting and NPCs, there’s almost always some sort of veto or deliberation mechanism for adding to the fiction (e.g., challenges in Hillfolk). Such rules help avoid a free-for-all.
This brings us to the fourth family of resolution procedures: requiring those with overlapping Rights to Describe to come to an agreement. This could involve a vote, discussion until reaching consensus, or any number of other procedures. The difficulty is that democracy is slow. Deciding what descriptions to accept takes valuable time away from the fun: roleplaying, moving the conversation forward.
If only one trusted individual, a benevolent dictator, could, with consistency and speed, make the hard calls on the group’s behalf . . . Again, we arrive at the solution of a single Dungeon Master.
DM as Worldbuilder: Opinionated Worlds
Another advantage of having a single mind in charge of the game world is that it tends to produce a setting that’s opinionated.
The clearest articulation of this topic comes from Ben Robbins’s Microscope worldbuilding RPG, in which a group of players collaboratively tell the history of a fictional world, taking turns, one at a time, adding scenes, events, and periods to a timeline:
Microscope is all about building on each other’s ideas. Every player has immense creative power and can invent whole chunk of history all by themselves . . . Nothing will kill your game faster than playing by committee. . . . If you collaborate and discuss ideas, you’ll get a very smooth and very boring history. But if you wait and let people come up with their own ideas, they may take the history in surprising and fascinating directions. (Microscope, “Playing the Game”)
Microscope tends to generate opinionated — that is, not-flat, not-boring — histories because any given part of the timeline is the invention of a single player. Having one Dungeon Master in charge of an RPG setting has a similar effect: delightfully eccentric game worlds tend to result.
This isn’t to say individuals produce more compelling fictional worlds than groups. To the contrary, I’m a strong proponent of collaborative worldbuilding (especially for use in education). I even spent a year developing a system to aid groups in producing fascinating, effective worlds for their creative projects (the result, WorldLab, is available here). Along these lines, many RPG players, including I, have had success using Microscope to create a setting collaboratively before a member of the group runs a gaming campaign there, as the sole DM. Nonetheless, often it’s individuals who have an initial vision for a fictional world or it’s more feasible for one dedicated person to undertake most of the worldbuilding (see “DM as MVP” below).
Moreover, in tabletop RPGs, worlds are never static. Rather, they’re created and expanded during play, as everyone present describes new parts of the fiction. So, the gaming table is where many of the most important creative decisions regarding the world happen. For these decisions, vesting disproportionate control in one person once again typically leads to more opinionated and coherent results, even as much the impetus and context for the worldbuilding is the result of the actions of the player characters.
DM as MVP: Concentrating the Work
RPG players, especially those who are adults with jobs and/or children, are busy. Most don’t have the time to devote hours preparing for a gaming session, or even thoroughly learning the rules to a new game. The chances are better, however, that someone in the group, especially someone highly invested in enjoying a particular game experience, is willing to devote that time.
Thus, in many groups, the DM does by far the most work outside game sessions — and might even consider such prep fun (I do) — or has already put in the work by reading and playing a variety of games such that they can teach them to others. In my experience, there’s even a social expectation here: “We, the players, will show up and engage with the adventure you’re crafting, if you, the DM, put in the work to make it a good experience.” Then, the DM becomes the MVP (most valuable player) of the gaming group, and everyone else benefits.
DM as Secret-Keeper: Mystery and Danger
In many RPGs, exploration and investigation are central. What deadly traps lie around this dark corner? What is the monster’s only weakness? What treasure is hidden in the vampire’s castle? What are our informant’s true motives? And so on.
These sorts of mysteries and secrets are only possible when the fictional canon extends beyond what’s been established openly at the table. Someone must own those hidden parts of the canon, that is, have the Right to Describe them and strike down descriptions that would contradict their hidden plans. In steps the Dungeon Master.
Beyond the actual keeping of secrets, the image of the Dungeon-Master-as-secret-keeper is powerful in its own right. It can create camaraderie and unity among the players to view the Dungeon Master in a mysterious, adversarial light. Can we outwit the DM, or defeat their schemes? Of course, the DM cannot actually be defeated, having near absolute power over the fiction, but the particular challenges they concoct for the players can be, and these feel all the more dangerous the more dramatic the mystery surrounding them grows.
DM as Coveted Position: Maintenance Through Aspiration
Being the Dungeon Master is fun. I wanted to try my hand at the role at the age of ten, soon after I first played in a friend’s campaign, and the joys of the role have not faded since. Sure, you get to be in charge. But on a deeper level, how often, in any other context, do you get to create something — writing, art, you name it — and then watch other people engage with what you’ve made for hours on end? Your creations become the sustained center of attention. It speaks to just how coveted a role the DM is that many groups rotate their members in and out of the position, ensuring everyone has a chance to occupy it. This leads me to two further hypotheses for why the DM role is so ubiquitous.
First, being the DM is coveted enough that players who might otherwise demand more control over the game experience don’t because it’s worth it to play in someone else’s campaign for a chance to someday run one all their own. To be clear, many, perhaps most, players, at least in the varied circles I’ve played in, prefer, or are at least content, to play (i.e., not DM) most or all of the time. But the allure of the role might nonetheless make the difference for an otherwise vocal minority of highly engaged players.
Second, even when you’re not in the role of DM, or even actively interested in assuming it, the dictatorial power of the DM generates a mystique that other players enjoy enough, vicariously or otherwise, that they’re willing to cede control of the fiction. Perhaps most of all with young players, a DM who gets deeply into the role — roleplaying charismatically, driving the story in unexpected directions, showcasing their creative worldbuilding, or revealing the cunning of the challenges they’re laid before the players — generates a cool, dark aura, a magnetism that others can enjoy, even as they find themselves in someone else’s world.
DM as a Failure of Imagination: Getting Stuck
Finally, perhaps tabletop RPGs have, to borrow a term from David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, “gotten stuck.” A plausible story goes as follows: Dungeons & Dragons pioneered one model, with particular roles and power dynamics built in. That model became dominant. Then game designers, who came to see the player and DM roles as normal and default, reproduced those rules in their own games. Meanwhile, players came to expect the dominant paradigm too, developed playstyles around those expectations, and came to feel more comfortable with games that aligned with those playstyles and less so with the minority of games that adopted a radically different model (e.g., DM-less games). In the end, most games incorporated a DM-player distinction, not because those roles served each and every game particularly well, but because of a general homogeneity in the experiences in the RPG community and culture and the consequent narrowing of the scope of imagination.
By “imagination” I actually mean a sort of political imagination, albeit in a small, limited context. That is, an ability to see alternate ways of structuring roles, defining the Right to Describe so foundational in RPGs, and thus sharing power over the fiction and at the table. Without this political imagination, RPGs, according to this story, got stuck with what’s familiar.
The Dungeon Master and Beyond
I’m not well-versed enough in the history of the tabletop RPGs, nor in game design, to evaluate the extent to which “getting stuck” versus the other, more satisfying reasons listed above are responsible for the continued prevalence of the role of Dungeon Master. Certainly, the DM role offers some clear design advantages. But, at the same time, DM-less systems, systems with multiple DMs or narrators, and systems with roles completely unlike “DM” and “players” deserve far more attention.
I’ve focused heavily on Dungeons & Dragons and systems with similar player-DM roles. But a huge wealth exists of alternatives that have experimented with rules that produce radically different social dynamics — and stories — at the table. If you’re particularly fond of, or have designed, one of these systems, I’d be curious to hear about your experience.
