Time for a little classic Angry Game Mastering Tippage. Today’s just gonna be a simple little, “Here’s a thing all you Game Masters should do to run the least worst games possible.” I hope that’s cool. If it’s not, you’re shit out of luck. This is what I wrote, so it’s all there is to read.
Like a lot of Angry Game Mastering Tippage, today’s started as a discussion in my supporter Discord community. The discussion, though, wasn’t about the advice I’m gonna give. Instead, it just revealed that lots of you are doing sucky jobs as Game Masters and you need me to help you stop it.
The discussion was about pacing combat in Dungeons & Dragons, which is a topic that comes up about seventeen times a day in every Game Mastering forum everywhere. I said, “If it’s taking you more than an hour to run a combat in D&D, you’re doing something seriously wrong and I can’t even fathom what it is,” and that rustled more than a few jimmies. See, I admit that modern D&D battles run a little on the slow side, but if it’s taking you an hour or more of game time to get through an average combat at any level, that ain’t on the system anymore. You’re effing something up. Stop it.
I get that people don’t like being blamed for things. Why take accountability when you can blame someone or something else? Sure, accountability empowers you to actually fix things, but accountability hurts, and fixing things takes effort, so it’s much better to claim victim status. Why can’t we just agree that D&D’s combats are badly paced, and so the only one to blame for you taking ninety minutes to get through a fight is Jeremy Crawford or whoever? It’s better to just wallow in shit, yelling about who pushed you, than it is to stand up and take a shower.
As you can imagine, I was not winning friends that day. But it got worse. See, someone — who I won’t name because I don’t pay attention to who says what; you’re all just part of the noise to me — someone said that their big issue was all the Reactions and Bonus Actions in D&D. They lead to a terrible, herky-jerky pace.
For one thing — said the complainer — D&D’s Reactions and Bonus Actions force you to pause at the end of every turn or action so everyone has a chance to yell, “Reaction,” or “Bonus Action.” It’s kind of like how, in Magic: The Gathering, you’ve got to play your Galvanic’s Ministration real slow and look around and wait so someone has a chance to throw Discontinuous Foreseeing on the stack to cancel it or some shit like that.
For another — continued the complainer — there’s the whole retroactive continuity reaction thing. That’s the name I’m giving the problem, by the way. The supposed problem. Basically, Ret-Con Reactions are Reactions that change the outcomes of actions whose outcomes you’ve already started describing. The classic example is the shield that lets a wizard retroactively change their Armor Class after an attack has already hit to make it a miss. So, the Game Master is saying, “The hobgoblin’s arrow punches into your shoulder. At first, you feel only an impact that nearly drives you off your feet, but then the pain…” and suddenly, the dumbass player interrupts with, “Wait! I shield spell the attack. What was the attack roll again?”
At that point in the discussion, I totally lost my shit.
D&D loves its Bonus Actions and Reactions. I get that. It’s a pain in the ass. I don’t disagree. But it’s also one of those things that’s massively overstated and totally manageable by any reasonable Game Master. While it’s true there are lots of Bonus Actions and Reactions available in the rules, the number of them that can actually appear on a character sheet is pretty small.
Take spells, for example. A quick survey of the Player’s Handbook — I’m still mostly using the 2014 PHB but the 2024 PHB is pretty much the same on this front — a quick survey of the Player’s Handbook reveals there’s only ten or so each of Bonus Action and Reaction spells in the core game. The entire core game. Those spells aren’t even all available to the same classes. Given that the spellcaster classes with the most number of readily available spells can’t prepare more spells than they have levels — plus spellcasting modifier — the odds are very slim that a given spellcaster is ready to fling more than one or two Bonus Action or Reaction spells at any gameplay moment.
The same’s true for class abilities. Lots of classes get signature abilities that let them take Bonus Actions, but most only get one or two, and they’re all pretty straightforward. Even classes that have a lot of them make it hard to have more than one or two. Lots, like Channel Divinity abilities, are exclusive to each other. That’s all true even if you include all the you can attack multiple times that are just part of the game’s core damage progression and don’t often require Bonus Actions. Hell, it’s true even if you include all the weird triggered abilities that aren’t Reactions, like many of the battle master fighter’s Maneuvers.
So, while lots of D&D characters end up with ways to screw up the action economy, pacing, and turn order, most don’t have more than one or two little surprise pacing bombshells to drop in the game. Therefore, it’s totally inexcusable for any of that shit to catch a Game Master by surprise.
If you have a wizard at your table and that wizard has the shield spell in his book — and especially if he has it prepared — you, the Game Master, have no excuse not to expect it to interrupt any attack or magic missile spell directed at the wizard. Hell, you have no excuse not to say, “The attack is a 12. Does that hit your Armor Class, and do you want to throw up your shield to change your AC?” Likewise, there’s never an excuse for you not to say, “You didn’t use your Cunning Action. Did you mean to skip it?” Even if you’re one of those asshole Game Masters who would never prompt your players like that because it’s not your job to help them actually play and win and enjoy your game, you dumbass, you still shouldn’t be surprised when the wizard does cast shield. How did you not know that was something that wizard was ready to throw?
And that’s how I discovered that I’m the only Game Master who considers it my job to know the characters the players bring to the table.
And if you’ve been wondering why I’ve been a little quiet the last two weeks, it’s because I was recovering from a fucking stroke.
It’s Your Job to Know Your Players’ Characters
So, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Game Master, how well do you know the player characters you’re running a game around? If your answer isn’t, “Pretty damned well because I know that’s part of the job,” you’re a bad Game Master and you should feel bad. Because it is part of the job to know the players’ characters at least as well as the players know them, if not more so. Probably more so. Probably a lot more so.
Now, I ain’t talking about personalities and backstories and motivations and other narrative bullshit like that. None of that crap matters. Don’t waste brain space on any of that nonsense. That’s for the players to worry about. They need it, you don’t.
I also ain’t talking solely to adventure builders here. This whole thing ain’t about knowing the characters you’re building adventures for. This isn’t me talking to homebrewers and Mere Adventure Builders and True Scenario Designers. I’m talking to all y’all. This is for every True Game Master and Mere Game Executor and even all y’all just running the latest crap reboot of a reboot of something that used to be a classic D&D adventure. Which is, by the way, totally fine.
As a Game Master of any stripe, it is your job to know the characters the players are playing. Mechanically.
The Long, Rambling Introduction™ revealed one of the important reasons why you should take this job seriously. It’s not just about action economy and combat pacing, though. It’s about the fact that modern roleplaying games of all kinds focus on specialized characters with a lot of the gameplay depth built into the character sheets rather than into the core game. Even fairly simple games like Blades in the Dark and the various Powered by the Apocalypse games differentiate characters by moveset and those movesets are spelled out on the character sheet. Modern tabletop roleplaying games are built more like Smash Brothers than Dark Souls or The Elder Scrolls. That’s how it be.
Now, I could rant about how screwed up that approach actually is and how it makes it so much harder to run — and play — modern roleplaying games. Even the easy ones. It’s a pain in the ass when the players’ characters all have different moveset and minigames and there’s no core moveset at the heart of everything. But that rant won’t change anything, and the fact that games are how they are doesn’t stop it from being your job to run the game you’re running. You’re the Game Master; you’ve got to pace your game, adjudicate the actions, and empower the players to play and win the adventure. That’s your job. Find a way to do it.
“It’s a Player’s Job to Know The Character”
Several folks have said to me — whined at me, really — that it’s each player’s job to know how to play their own character. Usually, it’s said in response to me saying, “A player has only two jobs. Players must show up, and they must stop acting like assholes when you tell them to stop acting like assholes. That’s the beginning and the end of what you can demand from players.”
You might disagree. You might think it’s totally reasonable to demand that players know how all their spells and abilities and feats and shit all work. I don’t care. I consider this a wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which fills up first kind of thing. Demand what you want; best of luck to you.
Whether or not you think each player must know their own character and the rules inside, frontways, and upsideback, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also your job. Screaming about player responsibilities doesn’t absolve you of your duties. You still have to run the game. You still have to be fully prepared for surprise action economy landmines. You have to be prepared to catch errors when the players make them. And when your players inevitably fail to fulfill your irrational, ill-conceived, dumbass demands, someone has to know the rules. That someone is you. It always is.
Look, character sheets are, effectively, the players’ game controllers. They’re the things the players use to interact with the game. Imagine if you were playing a video game and you pressed the right thumbstick and your PlayStation was suddenly all like. “What the hell was that? What did you just press? R3? What the hell is R3? You can press the thumbsticks? Well, I’ll be damned.”
Does that mean you have to know the rules for every spell and ability? Of course not. That’s what character sheets and spell cards are for. To record important information that you need to reference quickly at the table. I can’t tell you exactly how much damage incendiary cloud does off the top of my head. But I can tell you it’s a movable cloud of continuous fire damage that allows a Dexterity save for half damage. I don’t know all the things guards and wards does, but I know it creates a bunch of different effects on a protected building, and it takes a while to cast. I can look up the details when I need them, but I know the players might cast it to protect a building.
That said, you can bet your fat, hairy ass that I know shield is a Reaction spell the caster can use when hit by an attack or magic missile to get a retroactive +5 bonus to Armor Class for one round, possibly changing the attack outcome, and also block magic missile spells.
Now, I don’t know that shit because I study the rulebook and memorize all the spells and abilities. I don’t expect you to memorize the book either. Honestly, most of the shit in my brain is the result of years and years of osmosis. I’ve been running games for a lot of years, and the spells stay mostly conceptually the same across the editions. I also have a sponge-like brain that sucks in information and keeps it there. But that’s an anomaly. I’m weird. Though it did take me a long time to recognize that most people don’t memorize every game they play automatically and accidentally.
The reason I know the shit I know — apart from the osmosis and years of experience and brain sponge thing — is because there’s a character at one of my current or recent tables that had the ability in question. Because knowing the characters at my table is part of my job as a Game Master, and studying those characters is part of my game prep.
Learning the Player Characters is Part of the Prep
Let me say this as clearly and plainly as I can…
It is your job to review your players’ characters before you start running a game for them and to re-review them every time those characters change.
When you start a campaign — before you actually run a single session — you must collect your players’ character sheets — or get copies — and fully, completely review each and every one. When those characters level up, you need to do the same. Or, at least, you need to review whatever new feats, spells, and abilities got added to the sheet.
Now, I know that some of you are thinking that I’m telling you to just skim over the character sheet and look at what’s there. I know some of y’all already do that. That ain’t reviewing a character sheet. Reviewing a character sheet means sitting down with it, with the rulebooks, and with some way to take notes. Me? I use a piece of scratch paper to jot quick notes that I then type them up or compile them onto a master reference later. You take notes however you want, but remembering shit isn’t taking notes. Taking notes is taking notes.
The rulebooks are there so you can review every ability, feat, and spell on the sheet. Every single last one of them. No matter how well you think you know the system and no matter how many times you’ve seen or even used a given spell or ability or whatever, assume you’ve forgotten something and review it. Do you know how many frigging times I’ve read the three paragraphs about Sneak Attack on PHB (2014) 96? Enough to know it’s three paragraphs without having to check, for one thing. If there’s a rogue at my table, I’m reading it again. Why? Because I know I’m human and I know things fall out of my head and I know I don’t know what I don’t remember because I don’t remember it. Also, I read it again because I’d like to memorize it. It comes up enough. Now, reading it is just me nodding as I mutter, “Right, once per turn, finesse or ranged weapon, with advantage or with an active ally within five feet of the target and no disadvantage, I sure do know this through and through. Good for me.” Because I can do that without saying, “Oh, right, I always forget that having disadvantage cancels a sneak attack triggered by an ally within five feet of the target,” I don’t need to do anything more than just reread it. If something did stand out, though, as something I need to remember…
Fixing Bad Character Sheets
For reasons I absolutely cannot fathom, some of y’all seem to think that the players’ character sheets are their exclusive property and you’ve got no right to tell them what to record. From this, I can only conclude that some of you are missing key brain lobes. What the actual hell is wrong with your stupid brains?
When you’re doing this whole character-sheet-review thing as I’ve described it, it absolutely is not just your right, but your duty to add any information you want the player to bring to the table. Or, alternatively, to tell your players to add it. “Chris, note on your character sheet that your Sneak Attack damage is +1d6, and Danielle, write down that sacred flame deals 1d8 radiant damage and allows a Dexterity saving throw.” The whole point of a character sheet is to have the character stats at the table. No one’s going to remember numerical and mechanical stats, and neither are you. If there’s a number or stat you’re going to need every damned time an ability is used, you get to tell the player to write it down. If Chris says, “Actually, I have it here on my sheet of notes,” that’s a good answer. If Danielle says, “I have spell cards I intend to bring for my prepared spells,” that’s also okay. But if someone says, “Nah, I’ll remember,” you smack them with your Player’s Handbook and then write it on the character sheet for them.
I can’t believe I have to explain this shit.
The notebook or whatever is there for taking notes. You take notes partly so you can bring a quick reference sheet to the table to help you remember things and partly so you have something to review during your pre-session warm-up ritual — I assume all of you have pre-session warm-up rituals you always do in the thirty minutes before you run a game, right? — and partly so that you don’t actually need notes and references. Human brains are infinitely more likely to remember stuff they’ve written down. That’s how they’re wired. Note-taking is one of several related tricks you can use to enhance your memory that have to do with engaging multiple brain pathways simultaneously while taking in information. Another example is figuring out what a Sneak Attack smells like. Mine smells like leather and peppermint.
Now, you don’t have to know everything and you don’t have to memorize every rule, but you must be able to adjudicate any action the players are likely to take without cracking a rulebook and without relying on the player to know anything you don’t. If you’ve got a rogue at the table, that rogue’s player is going to ask, “Is this a Sneak Attack,” eventually. You have to be able to answer. Sure, you might end up needing to check the book for some weird corner case, but there ain’t a lot of corner cases in Sneak Attacks apart from the “your ally is not a threat to your target” and “you have disadvantage on the attack,” which really aren’t that hard to understand and remember conceptually.
You have to know the characters well enough to run a game for them. You have to know how their class and racial abilities work. You have to know how spellcasting works and how many spells a Wizard or Cleric can prepare every day. You have to know how Action Surge and Sneak Attack and Rage and Wild Shape work. Including the weird exceptions. If it ain’t something you can rattle off, you need to write down whatever you need to write down to adjudicate the actions the players can take.
Make sure you do that.
You also need to be ready for anything that throws off the game. If there’s anything conditional on a character sheet — anything the player has to look out for; anything that says, “When you hit,” or “If a die shows a one,” or whatever — you need to be on alert for that shit too. Got a halfling? Got a great-weapon fighter? List those things. Part of adjudicating the action is saying, “You rolled a 2 on that die; as a great-weapon fighter, you get to reroll it.”
Yes, it is. Shut up.
Likewise, if anyone’s got Bonus Actions or Reactions available, you need to know about them too. That affects how you run and pace the game. You also need to be able to prompt your players, and I ain’t gonna pretend anymore that that’s not part of your job. If someone has the shield spell, you need to know that. You can’t forget it.
In the end, what you want is a list of anything conditional, any optional extra actions, or any triggered reactions. Even if you know how they work, you still want them on the list. You can just write down “Lucky” if, on reviewing, it turns out you remember exactly how it works, including the rule that you absolutely must use the new result. You must make a list.
Really, you should have a list of every ability each character has with notes for the abilities you can’t rattle off and adjudicate from memory — including every spell, even if there are spell cards at the table — and another, separate list — or a separate column — of every conditional rule, Bonus Action, and Reaction the players might trigger or take. And that list needs to be updated every time the characters level up.
And that’s actually it. That’s the whole article. That’s all my advice. It’s that simple. A disciplined review of every character sheet is part of your pre-campaign prep. A list of the shit you need to know to adjudicate every character’s actions — including conditional rules, Bonus Actions, and Reactions — is part of game notes. Reviewing that list is part of your pre-session warm-up. That’s it.
Except…
This isn’t really advice. This is instruction. This is me telling you how to do your basic-ass job as a Game Master. This isn’t optional. Either you’re reviewing character sheets as part of your prep and making the notes you need to run the game you’re running, or you’re running games wrong, and maybe that’s why you can’t pace combats for shit.
Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance
This article is super helpful. I keep a sheet with info about my players’ characters, and I keep it up to date. But it’s mostly baby steps: proficiencies, modifiers, senses. Then a little table that tells me which offensive spells are attack rolls and which are saving throws. And another little table that gives the durations of all the durable spells. Thanks to this article I will be adding all of their bonus actions and reactions and special class features.
I need to figure out how to summarize the spells in some compact way. Especially for the new player.
I really didn’t like hearing the last bit about how I, as the GM, am the only one responsible for knowing how the characters work. That’s how I know it’s good advice.
“Hell, you have no excuse not to say, ‘The attack is a 12. Does that hit your Armor Class, and do you want to throw up your shield to change your AC?’ Likewise, there’s never an excuse for you not to say, ‘You didn’t use your Cunning Action. Did you mean to skip it?'”
This is really good advice. It’s the popup “Tutorial: You can Press B to Dodge” in many video games. There’s a reason devs have shifted from only relying on tutorial sections to perpetual, periodic, and contextual reminders on screen.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to build player skill (tripped by reading some old Angry articles about the Murky Mirror and metagaming, and some situations at our game table). TTRPGs provide almost no time to develop skill for players compared to other skills or hobbies. If you tried woodworking, playing a video game or going to the gym 3 hours every 2 weeks, you’ll see little to no improvement. There’s just not that much opportunity for a player to practice their skills and get better at being a player. So anything that we can do as a GM to encourage that learning process builds player skills faster.
“New player combat skill development” is exacerbated because there’s no immediate feedback loop built into the D&D system to ascertain whether your tactical play is “better” or “worse”. The resource management over multiple encounters being a core feature of 5E delays full understanding of the long-term consequences of spell/ability use. And save or suck spells mean that even “good” plays may result in no effect on the battlefield. It’s hard for new or new-ish players to grok without someone (GM) providing some hand-holding.
I’m definitely a better player because my first DM did those things – prompting me on abilities I didn’t realize I had or didn’t think to apply or didn’t fully understand.
I also have come to appreciate ‘minor’ combats – ones that aren’t pushing the party to the limits – in between the major ones, and especially after a level-up. These give me a chance to experiment a bit with different ways to play the character and learn the new features with slightly lower stakes.
My contrarian take is that I don’t mind combats that go more than an hour if they’re fun and exhilarating – I love being in initiative and using all my features. And I love the weird and surprising enemies that the party has to change up its strategy and learn from the combat in order to be successful.
I inadvertently learned this when I was teaching kids to play; as a GM, be confident with what players can do make a huge change in pacing, not only for speeding shit up. it changes meaning, expectation, reaction and enhance tactical play making it for a richer experience.
It’s one thing to know how to resolve a sneak attack, but it’s another to internalize the details and decide to push the ally of an not hidden rogue to deny him an easy sneak attack.
Regarding recording those notes: If you have 4 (or fewer) PCs, you can squeeze PC character sheets (with all the ability-specific annotations you’ve suggested) onto a single reference sheet, like this: https://www.legendarytalesofadventure.com/GreyhawkCampaignPCs.pdf
you’ll notice the quick summaries for each character of their respective special abilities – Rage, Sneak Attack (although mine lacks the ally notes), Divine Spark, Lay on Hands, etc etc.), although there’s room for improvement (I notice I didn’t outline Fast Hands for the Rogue character).
I created this with a utility I built. It essentially records Monsters and Characters on virtual ‘cards’ (2.5″x3.5″ or 4″x5″), that can be printed out onto pages of 3×3 or 2×2 (for the big ‘cards’)
There’s version here that includes every 2024 SRD Monster: https://www.legendarytalesofadventure.com/SRDCheatsheetCreator.html
(SRD because I can’t include the proprietary ones – but my plan is to eventually upload it on DMsGuild)
And a video demo/explanation of it here: https://youtu.be/D3f0utvJ3Z0?si=BL1pcdyqnI1lOLHv
I’ve done the same thing for PCs in a game I ran for my nephews; I had a business sized card cheat sheet for standard player actions / reactions and a brief rundown of proficient skills. Then I had a larger 3×5 card with class/subclass based resources where they could mark off with dry-erase marker.
I’ve done the same thing recently for some of my co-players in our Curse of Strahd campaign. It’s been extremely helpful; our past few combat encounters have had some really clever plays from people just having all the buttons they can press in front of them (5e 2014, our Grave Cleric held her action to use Path to the Grave until our Paladin’s turn to set him up with a massive smite; it’s the first time she remembered that she had the ability and it was an awesome example of teamwork betweend characters).
I love this.
While I typically play more Tabletop Wargames, one of the things that takes newer people out of the game is them trying to figure out their rules in the middle of the battle. When I know their rules as well as mine, it allows me to help my opponent if they do miss something with their rules, and also allows us to have a good time playing and learning the game’s fundamentals. It’s good to know that this philosophy keeps in TTRPGs.
First of all, s**t, man… a stroke? I hope you’re feeling better and taking care of yourself.
This article hit me in a couple of ways (puts my hand up for running a crap reboot of a classic D&D adventure). I always struggle with the question of how far to go in reminding players of their characters’ abilities. I’ll ask the barbarian’s player if he wants to enter a rage at the start of combat. Or I’ll remind the rogue’s player that she can attack and move away without provoking an opportunity attack. Because players legitimately forget these things, especially if it’s an ability that the character just acquired.
But I don’t always remind players of this stuff, because sometimes I forget to, or the player already declared an action that works as well, or almost as well as the forgotten ability. Or because the player is the type who knows their PC’s abilities inside and out and doesn’t need reminding. But what I don’t want the players to think “DM is reminding me, so I should do that.” Like I’m trying to play their characters for them, or railroading.
If my PCs are trying to figure out how to sneak past the gnolls and the druid can cast pass without trace, do I remind the druid’s player of that? If the players need a favour from a cleric of St Dogsbreath, do I remind them that the fighter converted to St Dogsbreath a dozen sessions ago and received a silver holy symbol that she can present? If the rogue’s player fails to unlock the door, do I need to remind the barbarian’s player that he can try to break it down? Or do I just say “the door is locked, and it’s made of thin pine boards – looks flimsy”? It seems like I do, and I understand why… but I feel like problem solving is part of the game and if I say these things, I’m taking part of the game away from the players. How do you strike a balance?
I’m not Angry, but I can take a stab at it…
First off, it’s fine to forget to remind on occasion, don’t sweat it. Secondly though, it’s vital that the GM understand what a character is trying to do whenever their character declares an action… small clarifying questions and statements should be fairly common unless you have exceptional players. Thinks like “with your axe?” and “upcast to what level?” should be fairly common. The reminders should feel the same way to them.
As for reminding of stuff that happened in the game, I treat it as a judgement call. If I think it’s something the character would absolutely remember and it’s clear the player doesn’t, I *always* remind (so St. Dogsbreath conversion is no question unless he did it while drunk or something). If I think the player would have forgotten, I would likely remind as part of the bit they realize the cleric is of St. Dogsbreath… “The cleric is wearing the same symbol as Bonkbonk, he must be a cleric of St. Dogsbreath” or whatever.
As for reminding the barbarian he can break down the flimsy door… if you didn’t already say the door looked flimsy, there’s no reason for the barbarian to assume it is. There’s no “break down door” ability on the barbarian character sheet to remind them of. If it *does* already look flimsy, and the players seem lost, there’s no harm in passing Bonkbonk a note they he thinks he could smash down the door… or saying “Even if there’s someone in there, unless they’re wearing their weapons, you might catch them off-guard by just smashing in”.
I apologize for the joke. It was in poor taste. I did not have a stroke.
I was trying to suggest that people frustrated so much with their stupidity that it gave me a stroke.
I create custom sheets for each of my players’ characters (because I find I can make things easier to find at a glance that way and make summaries for complicated spells and abilities that accurately detail the effects and limitations in a consistent way) and update them with each level up. I find doing that helps me stay very familiar with what they’re capable of and it’s very strange to me to hear that other DMs aren’t doing any of that at all.
When prompting, do you think it’s better to ask “The attack hit your AC, do you want to use your Shield spell?” or tell the player outright “The attack hit but if you use your Shield spell it’ll miss.” I’m leaning towards the latter, because “use resource now when you know it’s useful vs save for a later that may not come” feels more interesting of a game-play decision than the gamble of wasting a limited use power to no effect. Would love to hear your thoughts/clarifications about this, but otherwise thank you for another great article!