When it comes to tabletop games, people tend to either be regular players or constant GMs. There certainly are exceptions, especially with groups whose GM slot rotates. I know that in my experience, I'm almost always the DM or GM--about 90% of the time. But I have gotten to be a player on important occasions, like my most recent character, Daisy, who I ended up writing four novels about. I've played seven tabletop roleplaying games as a player and GMed about five, and I've also created more tabletop games than I can count, including ones on this site like my time loop adventures or my movie adapted one-shots (but also a secret time travel project still being refined). I would say that my experience in tabletop games is pretty broad, and given this site's 245 articles as of this writing (not counting this one), I would say it's pretty deep too. So in all my gaming and developing and playing and creating, what has stuck out as the biggest lessons learned? For all that experience, what wisdom can I provide? In this guide, I'll seek to answer that.
In order to dig in, I'm going to recount some experiences I've had with tabletop games. My introduction was D&D 3.5 in a neighbor's basement, her dad as DM. I learned the ropes and how to do more than slay monsters--and I set my sights on DMing myself. In college, I taught more than 50 people to play D&D 3.5 and ran 7 campaigns over the course of a year. Then I refined my interest to serious storytelling, picked a party, and ran the first campaign set in my homebrew setting. It was glorious and gave me a hunger for DMing in my own style, not for what I thought others would like (and it turned out, people liked what I did in my style!). A player in that first real campaign was a talented GM who allowed me to play in several new systems, and I learned a great deal from watching him GM. At the same time, I was running the first D&D actual play podcast, Listen Check, while finishing my time in college. Having to be able to DM while running the soundboard and keeping the talk going was a challenge that taught me a lot about pacing. And then it was time for DMing in my homebrew setting, six campaigns as of this writing over years of adding to my setting. And twice in that span of a decade, I got to play D&D with talented DMs, creating characters who have stuck with me for life. That's the history we're working with; so what did it teach me?
First off, being a GM and a player are radically different experiences. Players are only participating for part of the time in most sessions, certainly while waiting turns in combat, while the GM is always participating. This could be learned from observation, but you don't really grasp it until you've done both. I once played a campaign with another player who would crochet for the entire session, only looking up from her stitching when her character came up, and a GM could never do that. Being tired, intoxicated, or distracted as a GM can bring a game to a halt in a very real way. What that means is that as a player, you have a responsibility to be ready on your turn without having to take 20 minutes to research abilities. As a GM, you need to make sure you're at your best and able to endure an hours-long session despite human limitations.
But it's not just that. A GM is the authority at the table. That means being able to confidently answer most questions that will come up. That doesn't necessarily mean knowledge of rules, either--a combat campaign means being familiar with tactical rules, character class abilities, and monster abilities to keep the combat flowing; a hijinks campaign needs knowledge of how to improvise, what makes the players laugh, and interesting ideas about how to surprise the party; a roleplaying campaign requires knowledge of the world, the ability to play-act a bit, and a compelling story hook to start things off. Without that knowledge, a GM will struggle. But a player only needs to know the basics of their character and some simple rules about interacting with the world--other players and the GM can fill in the other information. For a player, gaming is about discovery: the ability to find something in the game that means something. So while a GM needs to prepare, a player needs to come into things fresh.
One last key GM/player difference: there is a power differential. This is obvious, I know, but there's a layer that's less obvious. What is ultimately fun in tabletop games, I have argued, is having agency, the sense that you have some measure of control over your character and how they affect the world around them. Without agency, we're reading a book--it's a static story where the characters happen to be named by the players. With absolute agency, the players are unlikely to come up against dramatic tension, which would be boring. So what I'm driving it is this: the GM decides how much agency the players have. Finding the right balance for your story and your party is delicate, but I always advise stepping in only to respond for most of your GMing, letting the players have the agency to guide things to some meaningful degree. The player is responsible for using that agency to do something interesting, but the GM must allow them in the first place.
And another obvious idea: different systems are good at different things. D&D does great with an epic high fantasy feeling. Exalted is fantasy as well, but more interstellar in nature. Call of Cthulhu has a great take on eldritch horror, and Geist does a similar thing with the concept of a tethered ghost. Don't Rest Your Head is a beautiful system capable of a lot, but which focuses on dreamlike powers and horror. I even played the Firefly TTRPG just to see what it was like--predictably, fun western in space stuff. Those are the aesthetics; the rules all vary, though all are simpler than D&D, and each makes the smart choice of building the powers in the game to match the aesthetics--low-powered player characters for horror, higher-powered for more epic stories. But what really hit me is that each game decides the kinds of stories you can tell in them. As a storyteller, that's exciting and frustrating at once. A lot of TTRPG fans are shocked when I tell them that I've played many games and still stick with D&D--I've learned to use D&D to tell any kind of story I want, to build the world to be whatever I want, and to improvise in a way that gives the players whatever I want, so why leave a world that has so much player character history? My honest advice is to find a game you like and make it bend to do what you want it to. It will work out better than trying to match a game you don't mix with.
Let's get into more specific details. Let's say a player in a session uses a strategy you've never seen before. As a player, you're observing carefully, trying to decide how to implement the same strategy in your own way. As a GM, you're trying to figure out a way to make it so this new strategy doesn't foil your plans. This is one polarizing situation, but the rule applies generally. A good moment of roleplaying from one player--another player feels upstaged, the GM is overjoyed that there's a beautiful moment in the story. Something bad happens to a player's character--the character is frustrated and upset, but the GM is delighted to have a new story angle and knows that the inconvenience is temporary. These kinds of differing perspectives are common, and someone who's well-versed in both sides of the equation will be able to see both perspectives. This means that a savvy player will be able to take situations for what they are from a broader perspective, and a savvy GM will be able to anticipate the reactions of their players, which is almost always a benefit.
GMs can pick up strategies from each other, too. I know that when I was playing Daisy, I had the amazing opportunity to watch my best friend, who's played Carric and Beor and Brokk in my world, DM a really incredible campaign. I obviously connected with my character in a big way--writing four novels about your character is not the norm--but I also got to really take in good DMing in a different style. Daisy's campaign involved a number of different tribes of elf, which got me thinking about tribes in my world, and it resulted in an eight-part series on important clans. That series is probably the most important worldbuilding I've ever done, and I wouldn't have had it without watching my DM. I also learned about how much space to give players to roleplay outside of the confines of the main story--I was allowed enough space to do some real character work, but I was also cautious not to ask too much.
And that's perhaps the biggest change in any player-GM: courtesy. I've addressed previously how to run your game courteously, but the experience of both running and playing TTRPGs will teach courtesy in a whole different way. Before I had DMed, I saw and did some inconsiderate things toward my DM. I was fixated on a goal my DM wasn't interested in; he gave me what I wanted, but at the cost of his enthusiasm. When I started DMing a lot and looked back, I realized that my old DM had had an entire story prepared that he was excited to play with that I probably would have enjoyed. I don't make that mistake anymore. As a GM, I ask for player input on as much as I can, and I always listen to suggestions; as a player, I ask only for what I know is reasonable, and I try to help the GM by noticing when they are trying to do something and going in that direction. Something like this is courteous, but it goes beyond courtesy--it's about helping to make the game a better experience for everyone involved, and that's a good definition of a good player or GM.
I will add that if you want to be able to make your own games, playing as many games as you can, even just reading their rules, is incredibly helpful. You cannot look carefully at the Player's Handbook and spin out a new game. You need to see what other people have done, if only to borrow good ideas. I know that when my experience was limited to D&D, I didn't think much about making my own games. But once I'd played one-shots and campaigns in other systems, I realized that anything was possible. From there, creating a from-scratch game just became an exercise in asking what the game should be like for the player--another instance of benefitting from being able to play and GM alike.
As I reflect on all the hours spent playing TTRPGs, GMing TTRPGs, planning sessions, recording session notes here, writing advice and how-tos, creating games, worldbuilding, and writing about characters, I realize that all of it has been refined over time. When I focus my energies on TTRPGs, whatever the game, task, or role may be, I am thinking about other people. When I'm a player, I'm thinking about how to make the game fun for my party members and how to interact with the GM's world in a way that means something to them and to me. When I'm a GM, I'm thinking about how each individual player will respond to ideas, actions, people, and events so that I can give them an experience that's special and unique to them. At the end of the day, tabletop games are about people and what we share with them, and I think keeping that in mind always helps us to do our best as players, GMs, and game creators. When you play or GM, think about what you can do to enjoy yourself while also helping others to enjoy themselves--no getting caught up on "the story" or "my character arc" or railroading or any of the things that prevent everybody from having fun. Because at the end of the day, if we're not having fun, what's the point?
These more philosophical articles are always a kick for me. Worldbuilding means intensive detail generation. How-tos mean breaking down entire processes into easy steps. Session notes mean taking pages of notes and turning them into a sprawling narrative. But the philosophy lets me just be a cantankerous old lady, offering opinions as I wish. I like to think those opinions are worth something--you be the judge. But I am confident that you'll grow as a player or GM by trying the other role; you'll be surprised by just how different it is and how much it opens your eyes.
That's all for now. Coming soon: a profile on the warlock pact deities in my homebrew setting, the unspoken rules of communication in my homebrew setting, and how D&D ended up on my Master's thesis. Until next time, happy gaming!
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