5 Questions I Ask My Players
As a referee and game master (GM), I don’t have a lot of data to work off of, much in contrast to previous jobs of mine. In teaching, you have the benefit of exams, benchmarks, and direct metrics you can analyze to see how students are doing. During my time as a laboratory assistant, collecting good data was the only concern.
In GMing, you have two quantitative metrics: whether and how frequently players show up or not to your game (attendance), and how many players you go through in a given period of time (turnover). This deficit in data makes it hard to improve as a referee. You might hit all the boxes on the checklist but still perform poorly. Worse yet, you don’t know why.
Even if there is an element of game sense, you literally can’t have the same point of view as your players and thus you have a biased perspective.
As such, I tend to ask my players for negative feedback. Even though there might be issues regarding the fact that not everyone has a great awareness of what the do and do enjoy in a game (that’s a story another time), it is the only way to steadily improve your game in the eyes of your players.
Just the impression of improvement is often enough to get people thinking about leaving to join the next session. There is also a danger in positive feedback in that if you are GMing recreationally, tailoring the game for others can sometimes jeopardize how much you enjoy the game yourself (which is often the most important factor for getting you to show up consistently for a long period of time without burnout).
I’ve used these questions of variations of them as long-term gauges of my campaigns, normally I bring them out every 6 or 12 months. I hope you can get some good feedback out them too:
What are the strongest and weakest points of the game? of the GM?
How does this game compare to your general expectations of a D&D game before you signed up? What conforms or distinguishes this game to or from others?
What is missing from the game?
How would you rate the following aspects of the game on a scale of 1 to 10?
Reliability
Socialization at the Table
Challenge
Goal Completion
Character Progression
Story Progression
Combat
Exploration
Intrigue and Social
Props and Maps
Lore and Content
Among other GMs you’ve interacted with, would you say I am below average, average, or above average? Would you consider me to be an excellent GM? If so, why? If not, what steps would I have to take to give you that impression of excellence?
Have you had difficulty finding a campaign to join in the past? How would you describe the experience of finding and joining this game? Were your expectations not met, or were they exceeded?
Remember that the #1 factor in whether a game continues is whether you as a GM decide and put the energy into continuing it. Question #6 may not seem very relevant, but it is extremely important if you want to continue to recruit players into your game. If it takes months and dozens of tries to find a ‘good fit’ maybe you’re doing something wrong (games tend to get less welcoming the longer they run, but the promise of a long term game generally attracts more prospects).
Questions 2 and 4 tell you what your ‘identity’ as a GM is. No matter what you think of yourself, it’s important to know whether people consider your style to be particularly challenging and deadly or great emergent storytelling.
Question 3 is especially vital if you are running a homebrew game as it tells you if you have missed something important. You don’t know what you don’t know. I’ve seen GMs that failed to give the player characters enough money to pay for food even when they were making steady progress in their quests, only to get frustrated that players spent so much of their sessions pawning their belongings and trying to make a quick buck.
Questions 1 and 5 should generally conform to each other (if they don’t, then something is very odd). If you are a poor planner and run combat slowly, then its very likely that players say that combat is a weak point in the game. That doesn’t mean you necessarily need to run your game like other GMs, only that you need to find a way to make combat enjoyable for yourself and compensate your weaknesses with your strengths.
None of this is a replacement for good, regular, and consistent communication with your players. If a player comes to me with the intention to leave the game, and it’s the first time I’m hearing about it, it signifies a breakdown in communication. While it’s easy enough to say “you didn’t even come to me with your concerns, how am I supposed to address them if I don’t know about them” and convince that player to show up for a few more sessions, you really should not be surprised like that often.
After a session, there are one of two outcomes: that a player is more likely to show up for the next session, and that a player is less likely to show up for the next session. Your goal as a GM is to encourage the former.
Let me know how you get feedback and what questions you think I should add to my questionnaire in the comments!