As much as DMs like to take responsibility for the success or failure of their games, you’re one person running a group that could be six or more players. Their personalities, attitudes, relationships, and a hundred other factors will have a big impact on the game. Some players are going to be very easy for you to work with and others may not be.

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about the struggles they’ve had with player-DM relationships, including:

• What makes “good” players for their games
• What kinds of players can be hard for them to DM
• The ways leveling and rewards impact player fun
• How they’ve dealt with the hardest challenge for any DM: When the players turn on each other.

1:00 What makes a “good” player?

4:00 Maybe drinking at the game IS a problem?

5:00 Attitude, enthusiasm and players being “game” for the game

12:00 What kind of players cause problems for us:

• 15:00 Adversarial player-DM relationships
• 16:00 A strategy for handling power gamers
• 17:00 Players who don’t want to adventure
• 20:00 Players who don’t know what their characters do

22:00 Ways players help make it a good game

28:00 Guiding players to character classes they’ll enjoy (beware the casual player who comes to play a wizard).

36:00 When players become secretly disgruntled

42:00 Does faster leveling make better games and happier players?

46:00 How non-D&D RPGs handle leveling and character rewards differently (story rewards)

51:00 Grinding games: When the rewards are too low and slow

58:00 When players turn on each other — the hardest thing to DM

1:05:00 Figuring out what is true to you as a DM

1:12:00 D&D brings out everyone’s vulnerable side, be gentle with them

1:16:00 Final thoughts