How Players Make an Amazing Game of Dungeons & Dragons

It’s not all about the DM

Christopher Willson
6 min readJun 3, 2020
Photo by Marko Blažević on Unsplash

A lot of information exists about what players ought not to do to derail a game: don’t get into lengthy arguments, don’t hoard the table’s attention, don’t constantly act out against the party, don’t try to “win” D&D, don’t get distracted, and don’t take forever on your turn.

While these guidelines stop a D&D game from breaking down or players from killing each other, they don’t exactly inspire. A player’s contribution to a game is not just a set of manners, but players can also help create an exciting and dynamic game.

Too often, people think the DMs make the game great. DMs get the most attention in the actual-play world — Matthew Mercer, Christopher Perkins, Satine Phoenix, Matt Colville, and Deborah Ann Woll, to name a few. However, imagine these DMs with talentless, dull players.

Take Critical Role. Every one of the players acts professionally. They create complex characters and inhabit the characters’ skins. They feed off each other’s energy. They improvise long smart scenes and get emotionally invested in the events of the game. Matthew Mercer may inspire and thrill them with his stories and energy, but without good player characters to live in his world, we wouldn’t care as much.

The advice in the article assumes that you have already met the social contracts at your table. Instead, it focuses on what you can do to create those brilliant, memorable games and help the DM create an unforgettable story.

1. Know what makes your character tick.

It helps to have a short background for your character, particularly one that includes some open-ended issues that need resolution. However, even more importantly, you should think about what makes your character tick. What main force drives your character? What do they want to accomplish and why? How far are they willing to go to get it? What have been their biggest obstacles in the past? What internal issues keep them from getting what they want and finding fulfillment?

Answering these questions helps you find the backbone of your character, the thing that will drive your character to take action in a meaningful way. Try to find answers that you can use in a variety of circumstances. For example, if your main driving force is to “find the hand of Vecna,” the adventure may not incorporate such a specific goal, and the goal becomes meaningless. However, “gain enough treasure to buy back my ancestral home” makes for a playable goal. Treasure becomes personal, not just a numbers game. And the character’s issues with money invite opportunities for good roleplaying.

Be sure to tell your DM about your character’s desires and challenges, but don’t stop there. Keep finding those moments in the game that will help you explore your character’s drives.

2. Know what makes your character unique.

Beyond a character’s drive, you must include traits that make your character unique. What’s different or unexpected about your character? For example, if you’re playing an elf wizard, what makes you different from all the other elf wizards out there? Maybe you feel fascinated by nature and wish you could have chosen the druidic path, but instead followed your family’s wishes. Maybe you grew up in poverty and want to hide that aspect of your past. Maybe you stutter except when you speak in the arcanic language. Maybe a mind flayer attacked your family once, and while you survived, you occasionally feel pulled toward some dark destiny.

Players have focused on many tropes over the years that have basically grown stale. The grumpy dwarf with the heart of gold. The drow (or tiefling or half-elf or goblin) that doesn’t fit in with society, even their own kind. The hero with a humble background. You need not avoid these tropes — they’re compelling for a reason — , but you must also determine what makes them unique.

The humble farm boy secretly loves arson. The drow outcast has an invisible imaginary friend whom she talks to often. The grumpy dwarf with a heart of gold also exhibits a religious fervor that borders on mental illness. These differences freshen up the stereotypes and make them more compelling.

3. Act out your character.

I know. Not everyone is an actor. Not everyone values roleplaying. Some players just want to bash down doors and kill monsters and have no desire for complex character development.

That’s fine. But there’s a reason that the roleplay-heavy Critical Role has become the most popular actual-play broadcast in the world. Good roleplaying is compelling stuff.

Fantastical locations, devious traps, bizarre monsters. DMs make the game great with an imaginative world. You could leave it at that without the colorful characters. However, instead you could have characters who react to those locations, obstacles, and monsters in their own unique fashion.

And now the game takes on a life of its own, full of complexity, mystery, and humanity. That’s priceless.

4. Find connection with the other characters.

You may have a great character, but if that character has no connection with the rest of the party, no one will care.

Just as in life, relationships create joy and drama. Other characters will challenge your character, support them, change them, love them, hate them. Finding those connections will create the stuff of great stories. A character goes down in a fight and others connected with that character will care. Everyone at the table will care.

The game will have meaning and people will talk forever of that time when Rogrid fell, and Havitha, his sister, walked through a gauntlet of skeletons to heal him despite her hatred of him for accidentally killing their parents. It wasn’t just a battle, but a turning point in their relationship. It’s the stuff of great drama.

5. Maintain the suspension of disbelief.

You need not remain in character the entire session, but you should maintain a certain suspension of disbelief. Ask yourself if the characters and the story feel real to you. If so, you are on the right track. If not, you need to work on some consistency.

Does your character act out of character? Do their actions often make little sense? Do you metagame too much, or use knowledge that your character wouldn’t know? Does real life affect your character’s actions more than it should (Peter drank my last beer so now I’m stealing all his character’s gold pieces)?

Sometimes silliness and out-of-character actions bring fun to the game. However, too much of it can ruin the overall impact. Have you ever had a game that devolved into utter silliness? It may have been great fun for that session, but it might have ruined the desire to play again. People may have lost interest because the game went off the rails.

Try to stay in the story world. Try to remain consistent. In the long run, everyone will find more fulfillment because everyone loves a good story.

6. However, every once in a while, do something unexpected.

After getting to know your character and your style as a player, people may begin predicting your next move. “Of course Merik is walking straight up to the dragon. That’s such a Merik thing to do!”

In real life, however, people change and do unexpected things. On rare occasions, it’s good to shake things up a little. “What? Merik runs from the dragon like a coward? What’s he doing?” Little do they know that the dragon looks exactly like the dragon that burnt his hometown to the ground and represents a failure to overcome his worst nightmare even though he usually faces every fear. These occasional moments also make for a compelling story.

People grow and keep secrets. They occasionally act out of character. It’s what makes real people so fascinating. Allow your characters to be fascinating too.

7. Bring enthusiasm to the table.

A group of players with low energy makes for dull games. I have played with many groups, some of them young teenagers, who often create nonsensical characters and make bizarre choices. Yet I could still have a blast if everyone maintained their enthusiasm. Sure, I don’t know why Lisa’s character seems so obsessed with finding snails in the forest, but she’s having so much fun, I don’t care.

On the flip side, a group with realistic characters but no energy while playing zaps all the joy out of even the most passionate DMs. Sure, consistent characters help maintain the game for the long-term, but enthusiasm inspires the here-and-now. People will remember the fun they had the last session and will want to play again.

Enthusiasm may rank as the best quality you can bring to the game — enthusiasm for the game, the story, your character, the others’ characters, and the group of people all gathered together to have some fun.

Make enthusiasm your most sought after prize. Sometimes you can fake it ’til you make it. And sometimes, you just have to remember your love of the game.

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Christopher Willson

I write about living life to the fullest through arts, culture, mind, and spirit.