Know Your Players

While your players’ role is to create characters (the protagonists of the campaign), breathe life into them, and steer the campaign through their actions, your role as Dungeon Master is to keep the players immersed in the world you’ve created and to give the characters the opportunity to do awesome things.

Knowing what your players enjoy most about the D&D game helps you create and run adventures that they will enjoy and remember. Once you know which of the following activities each player in your group enjoys, you can tailor adventures to your players’ preferences.

It’s rare to gather a table of players who all enjoy the same aspects of the game. The trick is to find a balance so everyone can get some enjoyment out of each game session, even if certain encounters don’t match their preferences. At best, a group of players is a lot like their characters, in that having different interests and capabilities enables them to handle a broad range of challenges.

Acting

Players who enjoy acting like to embody their characters’ personalities, perspectives, and attitudes. They might like dressing up or using their characters’ voices while playing. They enjoy social interactions with NPCs, monsters, and their fellow party members.

Engage players who like acting by …

Giving them opportunities to develop their characters’ personalities and backgrounds.
Allowing them to interact regularly with NPCs.
Highlighting the roleplaying elements of combat encounters.
Incorporating elements from their characters’ backstories into your adventures.

Exploring

Players who desire exploration want to experience the wonders that a fantasy world has to offer. They want to know what’s around the next corner or hill and like to find hidden clues and treasure.

Engage players who like exploration by …

Dropping clues that hint at things yet to come.
Letting them find things when they take the time to explore.
Providing evocative descriptions of exciting environments and using interesting maps and props.
Giving monsters secrets for the players to uncover or cultural details for them to learn.

Fighting

Players who enjoy fantasy combat like the excitement of battling villains and monsters. They thrive in situations that can best be resolved in combat, favoring bold action over negotiation or investigation.

Engage players who like fighting by …

Springing unexpected combat encounters.
Vividly describing the havoc their characters wreak with their attacks and spells.
Including combat encounters with large numbers of less powerful monsters.

Instigating

Players who like to instigate action are eager to make things happen, even if that means taking perilous risks. They would rather rush headlong into danger and face the consequences than cautiously plan their actions.

Engage players who like to instigate by …

Allowing their actions to affect the environment.
Including things in your adventures to tempt them.
Letting their actions put the characters in a tight spot.
Including encounters with NPCs who are as feisty and unpredictable as the players are.

Optimizing

Players who enjoy optimizing their characters’ capabilities like to fine-tune their characters for peak performance by gaining levels, new features, and magic items. They welcome any opportunity to demonstrate their characters’ excellence.

Engage players who like optimization by …

Using desired magic items as adventure hooks and rewards.
Including encounters that let them leverage their characters’ most potent abilities.
Providing quantifiable rewards, like Experience Points, for noncombat encounters.

Problem-Solving

Players who want to solve problems like to scrutinize NPC motivations, untangle a villain’s machinations, solve puzzles, and come up with plans.

Engage players who like to solve problems by …

Including puzzles and tricky situations that require thinking.
Rewarding planning and tactics with in-game benefits.
Creating NPCs with complex motives.

Socializing

Many groups include players who come to the game primarily because they enjoy the social event and want to spend time with their friends, not because they’re especially invested in any part of the actual game. These players want to participate, but they tend not to care whether they’re deeply immersed in the adventure, and they don’t tend to be assertive or very involved in the details of the game, rules, or story. As a rule, don’t try to force these players to be more involved than they want to be.

Storytelling

Players who love storytelling want to contribute to a narrative. They like it when their characters are heavily involved in an unfolding story, and they enjoy encounters that are tied to and expand an overarching plot.

Engage players who like storytelling by …

Using their characters’ backstories to shape the stories of the campaign.
Making sure encounters advance the story.
Making their characters’ actions steer future events.
Giving NPCs characteristics and connections that the adventurers can explore to uncover new adventure opportunities.
Including plot elements that call back to decisions the adventurers made earlier.

Different players enjoy different aspects of playing D&D.

Rules