What's Your Dungeon Master Style?

Tags Dungeon Master Tips author-riley-silverman

There’s nothing more important to keeping a Dungeons & Dragons game together than a solid Dungeon Master. But with D&D being so much more visible these days, there’s a lot of pressure to compare how you run your games to more recognizable DMs from podcasts, livestreams, and even YouTube tutorials. With so much attention on other DMs, it can be hard to see and appreciate your uniqueness.

In fact, as I interviewed several DMs in preparation for this article, I quickly learned that even some skilled DMs whose tables I’ve enjoyed playing at mostly spoke about their personal style in the broadest of terms. My theory for this phenomenon is that, once you’ve settled into your own DM style, you’re likely running mostly on intuition and instinct based on what has and hasn’t worked before. Putting that into words can be difficult.

With that in mind, I've attempted to codify what I see as some of the most common tropes one can find in Dungeon Mastering, in hopes that it could be a useful tool for you to figure out your own style, or to find a DM that best suits you. It’s important to note that the following guide is not intended as a quality judgment on any of the listed styles.

Choose your Dungeon Master class

Let’s start with some extremes, shall we? Even though most DMs are likely on a spectrum between these two polar ends, here are the broadest strokes on the two major types of DMs. And yes, I borrowed two terms you might see tossed around during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the Plotter and the Pantser. 

  • Plotter: Similar in nature to the prose writing style of the same name, you have things planned to the number well in advance of the players joining you at the table. Your brain, or perhaps your notebook, is full of countless tree branches anticipating everything the players might do. Their characters won't catch you unaware. You've prepared for their every mood, given a name to every NPC, and pruned the hedges of many fantasy villages. True, the players may not see most of that work play out in-game, but their appreciation for what they do see is still a result of your attention to detail. 
  • Pantser: The spiritual opposite of the Plotter, the Pantser is named for the way they fly by the seat of their pants. As a Pantser, you have a pretty good idea of what is going on in your game, but for the most part, you’re kind of winging it in reaction to what the players do. You have either mastered the ability to pull a plot out of your pocket or are just good at steering players toward material you've prepared.

Overhead view of a town

Level up with a Dungeon Master subclass

As I said, most DMs will fall somewhere on a spectrum between the Plotter and the Pantser. Someone might be Plotter-heavy when preparing for combats, perhaps stockpiling encounters for future use, but more of a Pantser when the characters are roaming a town. With that in mind, I’ve categorized various types of approaches to gameplay. I believe that each of these styles has its merits and can pair well with particular kinds of players, which I've detailed below:

Number Cruncher

For you, the rules as written may as well be chiseled into marble, only to be modified or adjusted when the powers that be deem that a new sourcebook should usher in a new era. This is your creed because you believe that if you fudge something here or there or go too soft on the players despite their simple soul-crushing rolls, it’ll soften or dim that "wow" factor when things finally come together in full glory. It’s a hard, often thankless road that you walk, but with the table that appreciates it, you're a legend.

Ideal Players: The Number Cruncher could appeal to players who want a dungeon grind type of game or players who enjoy optimizing numbers on their sheet. That’s not to say roleplay-heavy players can’t enjoy this DM style. Some people find a story resolution more satisfying if they know their DM stuck strictly to rules as written.

Rules Sage

While the infamous and often reviled “rules lawyer” is a frequent D&D punchline, their benevolent sibling is the Rules Sage. As a Rules Sage, you've studied your books closely in order to avail yourself to calls on every nuance of spellcasting, every form of cover, every trigger for a rogue’s Sneak Attack, and more. You do this not to debate rules, but to settle debates. No one will spend precious game time searching through books at your table if you have anything to say about it. You’re ready with your bookmarks so that when your players have a question, you're ready with the answer.

Ideal Players: Players who care about getting the details right but who also struggle to keep track of things on their own will find having an expert at the table comforting. 

Vibe Checker

It’s possible that you know as many rules as the Rules Sage, but it’s equally possible that you only scanned your books long enough to learn about the rule of cool before calling it a day. It’s not that the rules don’t matter to you, it’s that you’ve decided at your table that they’re better served as loose guidelines. Rather than stop the gameplay to look up the exact wording of an ability or class feature, you go with what sounds right in the moment. You’ll look up rules when the situation is important and calls for it, but otherwise, you’re usually just going by the vibe of the table to make a call.

Ideal Players: The Vibe Checker will work best for players who care more about story momentum than the nitty-gritty details of the game text. 

Barkeep with a mug in front of himBeer Holder

There comes a time in every D&D game when the players will collectively come up with the most ridiculous and foolhardy plan possible to get through a situation. Rather than try to protect them, you're thrilled to hold their metaphorical beer to see what chaos unfolds.

Ideal Players: The Beer Holder is well-suited for almost any table since most players will get the itch for antics at some point. The exceptions are those who might get upset if their characters meet an untimely death because they messed around and found out.

Novelist

You've crafted a dense, intricate narrative and you’re excited to lay it out over the course of a campaign. There's less room in your stories for wild player diversions because you have so much story to get to. You may create smaller, more malleable stories within a larger arc, which allows for players to get that sandbox style feel in a game, but overall there’s a big story unfolding and you'll get your players there, dangit.

Ideal Players: This DM style is ideal for players who enjoy the feeling of living inside of a fantasy novel. They love piecing together story puzzles as they move through the narrative. 

Taxi Driver

Imagine the game as a series of city streets—the buildings, the road, the layout. The Taxi Driver invites the players to jump in and say where they want to go.

As the Taxi Driver, you might take some diversions down back alleys and side streets, but ultimately, the players set the destination. Full disclosure: This is how I tend to roll as a DM personally. I plan out a story and try to figure out exactly how it might play out if nobody ever intervened, but then I invite the players along for the ride and adapt my story based on their choices, on their character arcs, and on what they seem to most want to do.

Ideal Players: Players who feel particularly invested in their characters and their role as heroes in the world they inhabit will appreciate the Taxi Driver. If you spend a lot of time on your backstory or figuring out the momentum of a character arc, you likely want a DM who will invest time with you into paying that off in interesting and unexpected ways. 

What's your DM style?

The above examples are an extensive yet still limited look at how different DMs approach the game. I intentionally left out nuances like doing character voices or including pop culture references in-game because I feel those are more aspects of the culture of the table. While the DM certainly has a voice in those matters, they’re best discussed during session zero and similar conversations.

Perhaps you recognize your own DM style in the above examples, or perhaps this silly list has inspired you to think about your unique style. Either way, it’s always good to know what it is you bring to the table.

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Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

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