Five Things You Can Do to Be a Better Player!

DMing is very hard, but being a good player is challenging in its own way, too. There’s not only the considerations you must make to the other players and the DM, but to your own character. If playing your character is not satisfying to you, then there is no real point to playing the character at all. A player’s role in the game has a great deal of agency, and contributes arguably just as much if not more to the overall feel of a campaign than a GM. GMs will frequently take their cues from players, changing the tone based on what seems to be holding their crew’s attention, exploring characters the party finds interesting, and developing areas the players find exciting.

Being a happy and engaged player will also help keep enthusiasm and excitement for a campaign. If one player expresses boredom or disinterest, it can color another player’s experience, even if they disagree with one another. Conflict is meant for the game, not for the people playing it.

Tip One: Know Your Character

I think most GMs can relate to the very particular sense of frustration that is felt when a player suddenly remembers something critical about their character. Sometimes it can be really funny (“Wait, I could’ve been hitting at +5 this whole time!?”), and a few here and there are simply par for the course. Depending on the system your game uses, a player may have a lot of details to keep in mind, so it’s completely reasonable for them to forget things now and again. However, where the frustration comes in is multifaceted. On the one hand, your GM wants you to use your character to their fullest extent and does not want you to be limited. The game has rules and you took the time to learn them, and should be rewarded for your understanding. However, the game has flow, and it can be frustrating to backtrack or relitigate things that have already happened because a player has remembered a mechanic that they possess or one that another has been ignoring.

Now, naturally, in these instances, it is on the GM to make a quick judgment. I’m a huge fan of the old standby: “I’ll make a note and make sure this doesn’t get overlooked again, but we’re not going to backtrack things that have already happened”, both when I am running a game and when I am playing in one. It’s firm, but fair. Knowing your character ensures that your GM only needs to worry about their (admittedly high) side of things. Furthermore, you can serve as a role-model for the other players in the game; if you know what you can do, other players will want to have that same degree of confidence.

But this goes a little beyond just knowing your own mechanics. Knowing your character’s actions and personal details are also very critical for getting into your character, as well as alleviating the workload of the GM. When it is someone else’s turn in combat, consider your options while still paying attention to the fight unfolding. Fights are mechanically heavy and can drag on for a long time if not everyone knows what they’re going to do. Stay engaged and be prepared, so that way when the GM calls on you for your turn, you know what you’re going to do, or at least have narrowed it down to two options. This helps keep the energy of the fight. Nothing takes the wind out of a fight’s sails quite like a twenty minute pause while a player looks over a complicated mechanic they could have been looking over during someone else’s turn.

In roleplay, when the GM introduces an NPC or location that you know your character is going to want to interact with again, it is a good idea to make a note so you can quickly reference it. Keep in mind that your GM comes up with a million characters on the spot and will often develop a building or object on the fly and it is not a perfect system to rely on them for everything. Even remembering names can be all it takes, as they can quickly associate even a single detail to their grander plan (or at least pretend they are doing so).

Tip Two: Interact With Other Players

You and the DM have the most direct control over your character, but often times the most unique and genuine and memorable moments from any campaign come from characters interacting with eachother. Have a ten to fifteen minute long conversation in character with another player or with the whole group. Talk about things beyond what the party is going to do next, talk to eachother about your hopes and dreams. Ask eachother what your favorite food or color is in character. If you and the other player are aware that their characters have fundamentally different worldviews, it can be very rewarding to have that conversation in character. Conversations like this serve three practical functions.

The first is fairly straightforward. It buys the GM time to put together anything else that might be on their agenda, or just to take a break. GMing is a highly performative role that could require one person to be talking, cycling between a descriptive voice and dozens of character voices, sometimes for hours. In moments where my players roleplay with eachother, I gain a lot. Not just a quick sec to catch my breath and grab a drink of water (or booze), but I get insight into my players’ characters that I otherwise might not have gotten from just talking to them or prodding them.

And that is the second benefit: these kinds of conversations will develop the players’ characters so much. Does your character have a family? Hobbies? Do they spurn or idolize certain things or other characters in the game? Do you have a goal you’re working towards? If you’re planning to deceive the party, these moments are a great opportunity to lay false tracks or set red herring traps. In a game that is fundamentally concerned with roleplay, the GM is always looking for ways to keep it fresh, relevant, and interesting, and there’s no better way to signal this to them than by involving everyone else.

These conversations' third and perhaps most important element is fairly simple: it involves players beyond just the GM’s framework and game design. This is especially good for newer players, who may not fully understand how to roleplay in this way, or for shyer players that may not know where to start. By initiating a character conversation and engaging in the fantasy of playing someone entirely new, you’re bringing the play into role-play and making the whole experience that much more fun for everyone!

Tip Three: Have a Reason to Be Here

A bad player has no reason to be working with the party. A good player starts the game with a reason to work with the party. A great player works with the party and the GM to make a reason. The GM is responsible for making the world interesting and exciting, and it is also their responsibility to make sure that you, the player, are engaged, but with that said, you need to give them something. Having a backstory is not necessary, neither is having a goal, but a player should probably have one or the other. A race and class are not enough for the GM to make the game interesting!

It’s not always easy to find a moment in the game to assert these reasons for your character, especially if the session really heavily favors some other element or player over you. Remember: nine times out of ten your GM is willing to hop on a quick phone call, grab a bite to eat, or just text back and forth to discuss ways to incorporate your characters motivations into the story. If you’re struggling with finding your character interesting, or you don’t like a way that you’ve taken the character, but don’t like the idea of retconning, reach out and ask your GM for ideas. They’ll probably want to help you come up with something, and they might have just the way to make it happen, but you’ll never know until you ask!

Tip Four: Be Engaged

I think there is nothing that hurts a GM more than a player literally falling asleep, scrolling through social media, or straight up playing a video game at the table. Personally, I’ve got pretty high functioning ADHD, so I tend to have a mindless time-waster game open in a browser like Tetris or Solitaire while I GM or play, and I can totally understand other similar coping strategies. I’ve had players that knit, doodle, or even get up from the table when they’re not needed to walk around a bit. These are all perfectly fine, but pulling out a book is not.

When one player is less engaged or completely uninterested in the game going on, either because they are not having fun or because their character is not relevant at the time, they are robbing everyone else at the table from a fully immersed experience. Do your best not to have unrelated conversations at the table unless you’re on a short break or it’s important. Praise your fellow players for clever or interesting choices they’ve made with their characters in session to keep the energy up.

One thing I’ve picked up from other GMs and seen used more and more is a nomination system where, at the end of each session, we go around one at a time and nominate eachother for moments we thought were cool, funny, or interesting, and the GM offers an XP reward to people for those reasons. It provides a mechanical incentive for everyone at the table to keep paying attention to each other, and is a fun way to cap off a session.

Tip Five: Offer Feedback

This is the last tip and it is in many ways the hardest one of the bunch, as there’s a fine line between helpful and unhelpful criticism. A GM that does not want input on how to run their game probably has a bit of maturing to do, and offering your insight as to what you thought really worked and what didn’t can help improve the quality of the game immensely. As a player, you want the best game possible, and the quickest and easiest way to ensure that for yourself and everyone else at the table is to be open, frank, and honest with your GM.

If there are topics that make you or another player at the table uncomfortable, say something. If there are things that happened in the session that you loved and want to see more of, let the GM know. Pretty often you’ll see them change things up a bit to fit that desire. They want you to have fun as much as you want them to make it interesting.

Anyone who’s taken a college writing class could attest that the line between helpful and unhelpful criticism is a tough one to find, but generally speaking, I find it best to avoid prescriptive (“you should do this” or “you shouldn’t do this”) advice, and stick to descriptive (“I felt this way at this point”) advice. Some GMs like the direct input of discussing the nitty gritty of mechanics with players, while others can be uncomfortable with giving PCs that kind of access, so it never hurts to quickly confirm with your GM what would be most helpful for giving feedback. For example, in my case: a player who tells me they don’t like how I’ve homeruled something is less likely to get a satisfying response from me because all it tells me is that they don’t like what’s happening, however if a player says they’re confused about why I homeruled something the way I did it invites us both to share why it does or doesn’t make sense, and oftentimes when those conversations happen I end up changing the rules a bit to make sure everyone understands and is satisfied with how things are going, and I like to ask people how they feel about things after sessions, as a general and regular check in so people don’t feel called out.

No two people are the same, so every GM is going to react differently to receiving feedback, and every GM is going to want feedback given differently, but this is a game that everyone at the table is meant to be playing and having fun with, so if there’s something you don’t like, or that bugs you, it’s best to share that with the GM to let them know. The same is true of other players, and while calling out your friends’ behavior that bugs you can be nerve wracking, don’t forget that it’s all roleplay, and your game has a built-in peer mediator in your GM. Maybe they’ll change things, maybe they won’t, but at least you’ve advocated for yourself!