How to Find Your GM Style

Having a specific style when you run a tabletop game has a lot of advantages. It can help you to find your voice as a storyteller, figure out how to interact with your players, and guide your creative process. Each of these advantages will in turn allow you to be more confident in the game and have more fun. So how do you go about finding your style as a Game Master? This guide will help you to think about your style and how to capitalize on it. 

To get started, it's helpful to think about your history with tabletop games. Consider what you have played and especially what you have enjoyed the most. What moments were the most exciting to you? What ideas did you want to bring to the game? Which experiences brought you closest to your players/GM? Answering these questions will allow you to begin looking closer at what you really enjoy, and you can then use that information to guide you when you GM. 

The first issue worth delving into deals with the kind of game you're more interested in. I've discussed several times before the three types of game that a tabletop campaign tends to utilize. These types are combat, antics, and roleplaying. Let's discuss these types so we can better understand how we relate to them. 

A combat style means that your campaigns are largely based around fighting and the challenges that surround it. A combat-centric GM tends to think about how fights can move a story forward, how strategy impacts a fight, and how strategic choices like levelling up and working together can change the outcome of combat. This means that a combat style will largely deal with interesting enemies, intricate battlefields, and threatening abilities. If these ideas motivate you, you may be a combat GM. Knowing this will allow you to focus your energies on creating captivating fights and building a party which will appreciate those fights. 

An antics style means that your campaigns tend to revolve around creating ridiculous scenarios and funny story elements. An antics-centric GM tends to think about how parts of a story can make people laugh, how to make funny and endearing characters, and how player choices can add humor to the game. This means that an antics style will mostly revolve around outlandish and creative characters, bizarre plot twists, and lots of time goofing around. If these ideas drive you, you may be an antics GM. If you decide to focus your creative energy here, you will probably focus on creating likeable NPCs and making sure your players are having fun. 

A roleplaying style means that your campaigns are canvases on which the players tell their own stories along with yours. A roleplaying-centric GM tends to think about how the story will allow players their own opportunities to add to the campaign's saga, how to create complex stories, and how the players will build relationships with one another and NPCs. This means that a roleplaying style will mostly deal with complicated characters, intricate storytelling, and lots of time spent developing character personalities. If these ideas motivate you, you may be a roleplaying GM. This knowledge can allow you to focus on developing relationships between player characters and NPCs and generating story effects from player actions. 

Once you know the expression of your GM style, you'll be able to design a campaign that corresponds to that style. A campaign that matches your style means that you'll be able to use your natural tastes and strengths to make your best work. But it also means that you can design a campaign around what your players want, matching it to your style. This means more homebrew work, but it also means that you can give your players the best game for them while still sticking to the things you do well. It also means that you have complete control over your game; homebrewing is really the only way to have direct power to change things as you need to. This in turn means being able to cater to your GM style, feeding back into the process all over again. 

But knowing the type of game that you'll run is only part of the equation. It also matters how you choose to interact with the players. Again, there are different ways to approach this, and knowing your approach will give you a better shot at running a strong game. Interacting with the players tends to fall along a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is the GM who is removed from the party--someone who leads the game from something of a distance. This sort of GM can range from an antagonist to the party (especially common in combat-style games) to a guarded storyteller (common in very serious roleplaying-style games). A removed GM doesn't always share in the emotional journey of the players, and the strength of this approach is that it creates a clear problem-solving emphasis: the GM provides a problem, and the players are responsible for concocting a solution. Removed GMs tend to shy away from joking directly with the players, opting instead for a very reserved approach. 

On the other hand, there are GMs who are almost additional members of the party--someone who shares in the experience of the players even while being the voice of the complications. This sort of GM can range from someone who is there to root for the party against their own story (common in some roleplaying-style games) to someone who is there to share in the good times had by the party (very common in antics-style games). A GM who is practically a part of the party often matches their tone to the party's, and this allows these GMs to build a strong bond with the player group; this kind of GM is there more to empower the party and give them opportunities to create their own story moments. A GM of this sort tends to be on basically equal footing with the players in terms of sharing jokes and victories, often directly stating their preference for the players to succeed. 

In the middle of this spectrum is the more moderate approach--being someone who is removed enough to not be a real member of the party while still not being a direct antagonist either. This moderate approach to GMing results in a game where players are neither forbidden from nor expected to form a specific type of bond with the GM. And yet, the moderate GM and the players are not totally disconnected; a moderate GM will often play both sides of the spectrum, averaging out to somewhere in the middle over the course of a campaign. This means sometimes being reserved when the moment calls for it and sometimes being very connected to the players, again when the moment calls for it. This approach is common in all game types, but especially so with games that focus on a mixture of the game styles described above. A moderate GM leans into and away from the party's emotional states depending on the situation. This type of GM tends to want to provide a variety of experiences to the players, which is very powerful when the players want many different things. A moderate GM will sometimes share in jokes about the game's situation, but will also sometimes choose to stay in a more detached position for various reasons. 

Having a strong sense of how you'll choose to interact with the party helps in a variety of ways. Knowing whether you'll be like another member of the party or more of a removed storyteller can help you keep your tone (and the tone of the campaign) consistent. This matters more than some of us realize. I'm currently running a campaign that has wildly changed its tone from its inception to where we are now. It began as a combination of serious storytelling and some silly shenanigans, but that tone didn't work because the players weren't very into the serious storytelling. So I adjusted the balance of style to more antics and less serious story. This also didn't work. After a few more adjustments, I've settled on an entirely silly antics approach. It seems to be working better. And while I know there are good reasons for the changing tone, I think that variation has impacted the campaign negatively. This stems from not exactly deciding on how my style and the party's style would mesh together. It's a wise choice to change your tone to fit the party, but had I gone in with that style decided on from the start, I think the campaign would have been more successful. 

On this note: it's entirely acceptable (and even wise at times) to adjust your GM style to fit the group. Now, I say that with a few reservations. Going entirely against your style is not a good idea. I'm not very into the combat side of things in tabletop games, and when I play with a group of people who really only want combat, it puts me in a bad situation. For the party to have fun, I have to give up my own fun. I try to avoid running combat campaigns because I know I won't have much fun with it. But if I'm playing an antics campaign, which I have more of a stomach for, I can add some combat to that game to match the players' desires without being untrue to my own style. But the truth of the matter is that most groups really demand a certain style of game, often without realizing it. Modifying your approach to meet them halfway can result in some great times--I think back to the time I ran a National Treasure-inspired campaign and how I leaned further into antics than I ever really had before, and I found that my party loved that effort. I wouldn't have adjusted my style toward antics had I not recognized that my roleplaying-centric style would need some changes to match the party. 

The last thing to consider in determining your GM style is to ask yourself, "What do I like to make?" This site is largely dedicated to the creation of homebrew materials, and I recognize that not everyone takes the leap to create their own settings, characters, and stories, but even module-following GMs can think seriously about this question. When you play the tabletop games that you love, what sorts of details do you enjoy including in your game? Think about the moments you've been called upon to improvise; what ideas did you reach for? Maybe you like ideas that fit cleanly within the paradigm of the setting your game takes place in, and maybe you're more inclined to think about more divergent ideas. Or perhaps you're inclined to make NPCs an important focal point in your games; then again, you might enjoy adding bizarre details meant to inspire laughter. These also help you determine your GM style. 

Let's go further in depth on your additions to the game. I tend to enjoy including morally ambiguous stories because I think that they demand that the players get really invested in considering characterization of their PCs. Going back to some of my earliest work as a GM, I've included details like this in order to really get my players thinking (and feeling) in the game. If I consider this fact closely, I can see that I enjoy making my players truly engage with the world and the stories in it. This in turn allows me to see that roleplaying is my favored approach (considering a serious moral conundrum is most at home in a roleplaying-centric game), but it also helps me to generate new campaigns. If I can build my campaigns around these philosophical issues, I know that I will have something to enjoy (assuming my players really engage with the issues), and that means that I can guarantee I'll enjoy a big part of the campaign. So being familiar with your own GM style can also lead to your enjoying the game more. 

One last consideration of how you can focus on what you enjoy making is related to simply being aware of your strengths as a GM. Each of us is especially good at some elements of GMing, and others of us are talented with different things. Being able to bring your best skills to the game helps give the players a better game, but it also allows you go into the game with more confidence. Here's an example from my time as a GM: I developed and ran a mystery-based campaign a while back, and going in, I was fairly nervous. Keeping a satisfying mystery going for a whole campaign without letting the big reveal get discovered for months had me pretty anxious. After all, one miscalculation on my part, and the whole campaign would be ruined. However, in the first few sessions of the campaign, the players managed to think of clever ways to get around my clues and the complications around them, and I in turn managed to come up with clever ways to reward them without jeopardizing the mystery of it all. I recognized then that one of my strengths as a GM is in redirecting players' attention. Throughout the campaign, I was able to keep the biggest elements of the mystery undiscovered. And I don't know how that aim would have gone if I hadn't realized that I was actually pretty good at keeping details undiscovered. The confidence I had in my ability to preserve the mystery kept the campaign going; a lack of confidence about that could have seriously dragged down my ability to keep it going. 

So, as you try to figure out your style as a GM, consider these ideas. What type of game do you most enjoy--combat, antics, roleplay, or a combination thereof? How will you relate to the players--one of them, a detached referee, or somewhere in between? And what do you enjoy making in the game--do you like being ridiculously creative, thoughtfully analytical, or strategically practical? Each of these has its advantages and drawbacks, but what matters most is that they are the things you enjoy and excel at. Knowing your GM style can help you find a good group of people to play with, develop your own materials, adjust your campaign to player tastes, and help players have their own types of fun. And those many advantages are well worth becoming more familiar with who you are as a GM. So take some time to think about what you enjoy in the game and what serves your needs best, and start refining your style. 

One penultimate note: as I said above, it can be helpful to modify your style depending on the situation. As a for instance, I am a teacher who runs Dungeons & Dragons Club at my school; I run campaigns for middle and high school students once a week, and I have for the last two years. My preference for serious roleplaying is not compatible with what the students want--they're interested in combat and some shenanigans. So I adjust my style, but I don't abandon it. I provide them opportunities to fight and silly NPCs to goof around with, but I also subtly offer philosophical issues. Case in point: one group of my students requested an endless dungeon. I wasn't thrilled--running combat as a GM is not what I enjoy about tabletop games. So I added bizarre NPCs to the dungeon, almost all of whom had philosophical issues to resolve. One such NPC, who the students named Borg-Lorg despite his insistence that his name was Keith, Jr., was stuck in a room of the dungeon. He was remarkably powerful-looking and offered to help if the players freed him. At the same time, there was a magically locked treasure chest that would only open if Borg-Lorg died. They then had to decide whether a powerful ally or a load of treasure was more important. (They decided on freeing Borg-Lorg, but threw him down a bottomless pit later on.) My point here is, I could have catered entirely to the students' style (fighting and being ridiculous), but adding my own style to the game by including a complicated situation changed their experience. And they loved it! Borg-Lorg was their favorite NPC, they all agreed later on, and I brought him back for the finale to much excitement. This memorable episode came from me merging my style with what they wanted, and you can do the same in your games. 

And the final note: GM styles change. You may be able to identify your current style, but with more gaming, you're likely to refine or even shift between styles. I began my GM career focusing on antics primarily and combat secondarily--roleplaying was scarcely a part of my early campaigns. But over time, and as I played with new groups, I began to sense that I enjoyed other things. The way that roleplaying drew me in, both as a GM and a player, was powerful. Roleplaying moved from the bottom of my list to the top, and antics and combat moved down accordingly. This wasn't me abandoning my old style--it was me coming to a better understanding of tabletop games and how I interact with them. And that's a vital change that happens to many of us. When you notice your style changing, don't resist it; lean into it, and find out what you learn from experimenting. You'll be pleasantly surprised to discover a whole new way to enjoy tabletop games, and it will help your GM skills to improve too. 

There you have it--a guide to discovering and refining your style as a GM. With this awareness, your enjoyment of the game as well as your players' is bound to increase. Just keep in mind that it's not set in stone, and having a style doesn't mean you can't get creative outside the bounds of that style. So investigate your tastes, try something new, and get on the path to finding your unique voice as a GM. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: lessons from 15 years of my GM notebooks, why I originally wanted to become a GM, and why I think philosophical conundrums make the best inspiration for a campaign. Until next time, happy gaming!