I started taking on the role of Dungeon Master (DM) around 2018/2019. My first session was a one-shot that ended up being a long-shot and then I DM’d a homebrew campaign through covid.

I’ve had the most growth as a DM during my current campaign that I’m running, which I started in September 2024. One of the skills that I’ve worked on that I feel has had the most impact is the ability to engage the party (ﾉ>ω<)ﾉ :｡･::･ﾟ’★,｡･::･ﾟ’☆

You might only have two people at your table that seem to contribute, whether the others are tentative or not confident with roleplaying, but it’s so important to try and engage all of them equally. I often reward engaged players but need to make sure that I’m giving everyone an opportunity. Some players see that someone else is taking charge and so they backseat, thinking that’s the place for them. Giving them a turn in the front seat can really help build their confidence in taking initiative and their roleplaying connection to their character.

I work on engagement in three main ways:

Turn-Based Decision-Making

I ask everyone at the table individually what they want to do and give them time to answer. If they’re unsure, I try to prompt them to think about what they want to do rather than skipping to the next person. Just like how we have to practice being DMs, players have to practice being players.

Downtime

I ask a few character questions during rests or downtime. Simple things that everyone suggests you ask like:

• what are you doing?
  • are their any plot-driven things that they want to do?
  • are their any purely character driven activities they want to do?
  • sometimes they interact with each other on their own but mostly they go to best to skip the cut scene
• what are you wearing/have you changed clothes
  • I often forget this one because they’re treating it like a cartoon where everyone has the same outfit but it sometimes helps them re-visualise their characters and get into character

Understanding Player & Character

I do my best to understand who the player is and who their character is. It’s a great advantage to me that I’m close with everyone at my table. I know what their likes and dislikes are and those are usually projected onto their characters and so it’s easy to think of opportunities to pique their character’s interest or traits.

Designing situations for particular players helps in providing them these opportunities to try their hand at taking the proverbial wheel. There are a couple of ways you can do this but I either focus on something they’re interested in or how their character works mechanically (ensuring not all combats are close quarters if we have rangers etc.).

I watch Legends of Avantris and Dimension 20 and so I can quickly get into my own head about not being a good Dungeon Master. I don’t have great vocal control and so am pretty useless at doing voices and my roleplaying skills are limited by my slow brain processing and whether or not I can wrangle in my self-consciousness. Watching Legends of Avantris has helped more with my confidence as a DM though, as it really does feel like a group of friends sitting at the table and they often make pretty ordinary mistakes. It’s a great grounding DND table to watch after seeing the wild production quality of Dimension 20.