I was wondering how many of you do player surveys after a session or campaign is done? Like a survey to see what the players thought about you as a DM and recommendations they have to improve yourself in future games.
I might hold a quick and dirty AAR-style improve-sustain-change conversation at the end of a plot-arc or a milestone. Gives everyone a chance to voice where they might want to go next, or see something that I haven't put in yet. Otherwise, I trust in my players to tell me about things that need touch-ups or included/excluded as they happen, especially during a campaign. I prefer to address things of this nature as soon as possible to attempt to proactively prevent issues, and provide positive feedback to the players that bring things up, when it's warranted.
Relying too heavily on formal surveys might have the undesired effect of looking like your preferred method to gain information. Using a survey or questionnaire as an exit survey at the end of a long campaign might be useful, but deciphering responses and being able to interpret critiques is a skill that some people don't practice very often.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
When I am getting a feel for players or I am trying something new in a game I'll do regular (every 2-3 sessions) brief follow ups with my players that I call "2 likes and a want".
Unsurprisingly, it is exactly that: two things that they have liked in the session / group of sessions, and one thing they would like to see/have/experience. I know I stole this from some content creator but I can't for the life of me remember who.
Regardless this allows you to get the idea of what your players enjoy (which sometimes might be the part of your game you feel you have been failing at) and what direction you as a DM might want to move in. By doing it every few sessions it allows you to see where your player's mindsets are when they feel the most strongly about it. I feel an "exit survey" might lose some usefulness if they had a session that gave them a "big feel" halfway through the campaign and they've since forgot about it.
Though I will say talking with your players is NEVER a bad idea. You all work collaboratively to tell amazing stories, and communication helps with collaboration.
I tried this but, well, players are notoriously lazy and won't regularly answer a survey.
Checking in with individual players regularly to see what they are enjoying/what they would like to see more of is more helpful but.. players also notoriously don't know what they want.
I'm sorry this is not very helpful! The only way I have found that works with my players is to REALLY pay attention to how engaged they are, record what seemed to light them up, and if they are disengaged a lot to check in with them outside of game and ask how the game is going for them. If you are really lucky, they will tell you if they have a problem.
And if they do, for gods sake - act on it. If you don't you will lose them as a player. You may not be able to give them what they ask for, but you should be able to find a compromise.
I don't do the sort of quantitative survey you're talking about; but when I'm at a point in my campaign where I'm not quite sure what I should build out or otherwise feel we're hitting a lull I use Mentimeter (I'm sure other providers may do something similar) with my players to create a word cloud of NPCs, monsters, themes, locations the players want to see. Seeing the players' desires sort of "weighted" in a word cloud helps me from a inspirational standpoint, even when a player tries to break it by putting all their entries (each player gets ten entries and can use multi entries on the same thing if they want to double or tenfold down on something) on "A Duck named Phillip". If only the party new what a tragic bad ass Phillip Jeffries is....
All that is saying I prefer "fuzzy focus" data when getting a read on my table. I could see other DMs doing harder more quantitative polling but for me the word cloud has a more inspirational/brainstorm quality to it.
I'll also sometimes do a "loose debrief" asking players what they think of how things are going, or if we tried something new. But as the DM of games whose players I think generally appreciate what I'm doing and wouldn't want to discourage me, I know that can only get so much insight.
Maybe someone more versed in surveys and polling can correct this feeling, but I also think "surveying" 4-6 people is waste of time and obfuscating actual knowledge you could get about your game from doing an actual discussion, you can do it "focus group" style if you want but a focus group discussion is very different from a survey.
I think that there is a growing modern mentality about this kind of need to provide players with their perfect game. It's an unachievable goal, and puts undue pressure on the DM to be all things to everyone all of the time. You'll never get it perfect, and the problem with asking for this kind of feedback on your DM'ing is that it puts the players into an unwinnable position. They either:
Tell you that you are doing things they don't like, which might be unfixable or impossible to change
Tell you that you're doing everything really well
When setting this up, really the Dm is hoping for the second option. And it can be really hurtful - considering all the time you spent prepping - if players aren't enjoying an aspect of the game, especially one that's really important to you.
Instead I think you just have to gauge it at the table. It's obvious if someone doesn't enjoy the combats, for instance.
Perhaps the worst thing is the phrase the OP uses: asking for "recommendations they have to improve yourself in future games." You are the DM, the players are lucky to have you. You don't need to "improve yourself" to meet their standards/needs/desires. You run the game, they play the game, and it's just a game.
I'm often trying new houserules or mechanics in my campaigns, and I'll just informally ask the players what they thought of a thing in the few minutes that we hang out after the game. We're all sometimes-DMs so we're pretty open with each other about trying things out and giving feedback. We also have longer-form discussions in Slack, and a few times have had a shared google doc of proposed houserules or whatever that we can all add comments to. But we've never done a formal survey.
We do session 0, I do a mid campaign survey checkin, and then we have a post mortem after the campaign where we talked about our favorite moments/least favorite moments, and things we want to keep or change for next campaign.
At the end of a session, I might ask "Anything you guys really liked?" or "Anything we want to see done differently?" and jot down quick notes, but generally if you get the general response of "It was great, I had fun!" take that for what it is, satisfied players that are afraid of rocking the boat by speaking out, and that's totally fine.
One of the current parties I am DMing all work in the tech industry where we are used to 2 weekly meetings to review process and consider what has gone well, badly and actions to improve. This has fed through to our roleplay sessions (regardless of system) and whoever is DMing at that time will do a check in every 2 months to review the past 8 or so sessions, elect feedback and food it into the next set of sessions.
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I was wondering how many of you do player surveys after a session or campaign is done? Like a survey to see what the players thought about you as a DM and recommendations they have to improve yourself in future games.
1 shot dungeon master
I might hold a quick and dirty AAR-style improve-sustain-change conversation at the end of a plot-arc or a milestone. Gives everyone a chance to voice where they might want to go next, or see something that I haven't put in yet. Otherwise, I trust in my players to tell me about things that need touch-ups or included/excluded as they happen, especially during a campaign. I prefer to address things of this nature as soon as possible to attempt to proactively prevent issues, and provide positive feedback to the players that bring things up, when it's warranted.
Relying too heavily on formal surveys might have the undesired effect of looking like your preferred method to gain information. Using a survey or questionnaire as an exit survey at the end of a long campaign might be useful, but deciphering responses and being able to interpret critiques is a skill that some people don't practice very often.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
When I am getting a feel for players or I am trying something new in a game I'll do regular (every 2-3 sessions) brief follow ups with my players that I call "2 likes and a want".
Unsurprisingly, it is exactly that: two things that they have liked in the session / group of sessions, and one thing they would like to see/have/experience. I know I stole this from some content creator but I can't for the life of me remember who.
Regardless this allows you to get the idea of what your players enjoy (which sometimes might be the part of your game you feel you have been failing at) and what direction you as a DM might want to move in. By doing it every few sessions it allows you to see where your player's mindsets are when they feel the most strongly about it. I feel an "exit survey" might lose some usefulness if they had a session that gave them a "big feel" halfway through the campaign and they've since forgot about it.
Though I will say talking with your players is NEVER a bad idea. You all work collaboratively to tell amazing stories, and communication helps with collaboration.
I tried this but, well, players are notoriously lazy and won't regularly answer a survey.
Checking in with individual players regularly to see what they are enjoying/what they would like to see more of is more helpful but.. players also notoriously don't know what they want.
I'm sorry this is not very helpful! The only way I have found that works with my players is to REALLY pay attention to how engaged they are, record what seemed to light them up, and if they are disengaged a lot to check in with them outside of game and ask how the game is going for them. If you are really lucky, they will tell you if they have a problem.
And if they do, for gods sake - act on it. If you don't you will lose them as a player. You may not be able to give them what they ask for, but you should be able to find a compromise.
I don't do the sort of quantitative survey you're talking about; but when I'm at a point in my campaign where I'm not quite sure what I should build out or otherwise feel we're hitting a lull I use Mentimeter (I'm sure other providers may do something similar) with my players to create a word cloud of NPCs, monsters, themes, locations the players want to see. Seeing the players' desires sort of "weighted" in a word cloud helps me from a inspirational standpoint, even when a player tries to break it by putting all their entries (each player gets ten entries and can use multi entries on the same thing if they want to double or tenfold down on something) on "A Duck named Phillip". If only the party new what a tragic bad ass Phillip Jeffries is....
All that is saying I prefer "fuzzy focus" data when getting a read on my table. I could see other DMs doing harder more quantitative polling but for me the word cloud has a more inspirational/brainstorm quality to it.
I'll also sometimes do a "loose debrief" asking players what they think of how things are going, or if we tried something new. But as the DM of games whose players I think generally appreciate what I'm doing and wouldn't want to discourage me, I know that can only get so much insight.
Maybe someone more versed in surveys and polling can correct this feeling, but I also think "surveying" 4-6 people is waste of time and obfuscating actual knowledge you could get about your game from doing an actual discussion, you can do it "focus group" style if you want but a focus group discussion is very different from a survey.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think that there is a growing modern mentality about this kind of need to provide players with their perfect game. It's an unachievable goal, and puts undue pressure on the DM to be all things to everyone all of the time. You'll never get it perfect, and the problem with asking for this kind of feedback on your DM'ing is that it puts the players into an unwinnable position. They either:
When setting this up, really the Dm is hoping for the second option. And it can be really hurtful - considering all the time you spent prepping - if players aren't enjoying an aspect of the game, especially one that's really important to you.
Instead I think you just have to gauge it at the table. It's obvious if someone doesn't enjoy the combats, for instance.
Perhaps the worst thing is the phrase the OP uses: asking for "recommendations they have to improve yourself in future games." You are the DM, the players are lucky to have you. You don't need to "improve yourself" to meet their standards/needs/desires. You run the game, they play the game, and it's just a game.
I'm often trying new houserules or mechanics in my campaigns, and I'll just informally ask the players what they thought of a thing in the few minutes that we hang out after the game. We're all sometimes-DMs so we're pretty open with each other about trying things out and giving feedback. We also have longer-form discussions in Slack, and a few times have had a shared google doc of proposed houserules or whatever that we can all add comments to. But we've never done a formal survey.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
We do session 0, I do a mid campaign survey checkin, and then we have a post mortem after the campaign where we talked about our favorite moments/least favorite moments, and things we want to keep or change for next campaign.
At the end of a session, I might ask "Anything you guys really liked?" or "Anything we want to see done differently?" and jot down quick notes, but generally if you get the general response of "It was great, I had fun!" take that for what it is, satisfied players that are afraid of rocking the boat by speaking out, and that's totally fine.
One of the current parties I am DMing all work in the tech industry where we are used to 2 weekly meetings to review process and consider what has gone well, badly and actions to improve. This has fed through to our roleplay sessions (regardless of system) and whoever is DMing at that time will do a check in every 2 months to review the past 8 or so sessions, elect feedback and food it into the next set of sessions.