Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 277 - GM Expectations of Players

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

Game night being derailed by players poor attitudes, unsure actions, and unreliability?  Don’t be that player.  In this episode I talk about the social contract of tabletop RPGs and what YOU can do to support your DM and not be a distraction.   #rpg #ttrpg #dnd #pathfinder #gmtips #playertips Resources: Buy Me a Coffee! - ko-fi.com/taking20podcast www.taking20podcast.com  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/taking20podcast  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/taking20podcast 

This week on the Taking 20 podcast. When combat breaks out on the battle map, know where you are in the turn order and be ready to take your turn when it's time. There are some groups I've DM4 in the past where I've toyed with the idea of a shot clock for combat. When your turn for combat comes around, you have one minute to declare your actions or your character spins that round paralyzed with indecision. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 277, talking about reasonable expectations. for GMs to have on their players. I want to thank this week's sponsor, crows. I love crows.

I mean, all corvids, actually, but I read recently that a group of them lost the ability to communicate. I hope they find the cause. If you like this podcast, please mention it to the other gaming friends you may have or share the episodes on social media. Feel free to send me a message, by the way,

on social media or my coffee. Links are in the description or email me. Feedback at taking20podcast.com. One quick bit of news for you, though, June 27th is Free RPG Day. A lot of your friendly local game stores will have events and giveaways that day, and I've gotten some good adventures and game supplements through the years on Free RPG Day. So head over to FreeRPG Day.com to find a participating store near you. Picture this. It's 6.50 p.m. Gaming starts at 7.

You've spent the last three days prepping Level 1 of the Abomination Vol. Or you have the letter ready from Collian that will bring the party to Barovia, or you have the initial bounty set to bring the players to the forbidden planet. Whatever it is, you are ready. You've drawn the maps. You've found the NPC voices you're going to use. You've perfectly balanced a deadly ambush in the swamps. And you've curated a three-hour, spooky ambiance playlist. The problem?

Only three-fourths of your adventuring party is here. 7.15 comes. The rest of your party is sitting at the table. Dice ready. Waiting. Where the hell is Thomas? I guess he's not coming. So, okay, fine. Let's go ahead and get the session started. Party gets to meet the enigmatic Rens Sivinxie and they kick off the adventure. At 728, the door finally swings open. In walks Thomas. They don't apologize for being late. Instead, they just juggle a bag of fast food and a milkshake they brought, and they proceed to loudly unpack it all at the table, leaving grease stains all over your map. Fine. Ten minutes later, you're in the middle of delivering a crucial, atmospheric monologue about

the creepiness of the gaunt light. Just as a vital clue is about to be revealed, that's Thomas's phone on the other end of the table. Thomas is looking at it, chuckling and saying, oh man, you guys got to see this. Mood is dead, tension is gone, and you take a deep breath to keep a keep calm. But wait, it gets better. 20 minutes later, combat breaks out. The party's being ambushed in the swamp. It's Thomas's turn. They look up from their phone, blink at the combat grid, and ask those dreaded words. Wait, wait, wait, wait, whose turn is it? Followed immediately by, um, what does my character do? Can I cast fireball? No, Thomas, you're playing a first-level cleric. You don't have fireball. You don't get fireball.

If your blood pressure just went up a little bit hearing that, well, welcome, you are not alone. There are expectations that GMs have of players in their game. It's not one way their expectations players should have of their GMs as well, but that's next episode. Today I want to focus on what I believe players should provide to their beloved DM and what DMs should expect of their players. Now, to open, I'd like my beloved players out there to think about expectations this way. for every one hour of actual gameplay, your DM has probably spent two, three, maybe four or more hours behind the scenes planning it. So when we're talking about what players, I hate to use the term O, but O the table, we're not talking about homework or some Herculean requirement above and beyond what normal human beings are capable of. We're talking about basic equity.

We're talking about matching a fraction of the energy that's been poured into this, world for you by that wonderful person behind the screen. The first thing that GMs expect, reliability. If you say you're going to make a game every week or every other week or once per month, the expectation is that you're going to make it more often than not. But Jeremy, you often say that life happens and gaming should be a release of stress, not a cause of it. That's true.

But there's also the expectation that you're committed enough to the game to make it when you can. When you either don't show up or cancel at the very last minute, you're forcing the DM to adjust every encounter in a very short time, or worse yet, on the fly during the encounter. We work to balance the encounters based on the party being fully there. If all of a sudden there are four characters, not five, and you're missing your frontline fighter,

combat that's designed to be challenging but fun can become deadly, if not rescaled properly. Imagine if your soccer team, sorry, football to my international listeners, goalkeeper just didn't show up on your weekend match. Now the coach or the team has to scramble to find somebody else to play the position. And it just starts everything off on the wrong foot. So my first assertion for player expectation is that just fucking show up when you say you're going to. Have your butt in the chair at 7 or 2.30 in the afternoon or whatever the start time is.

Hell, I played a game a few weeks ago that started at 5 a.m. because that's when everybody was available. We gained for three hours until we had to break up for work. I said I would be there, so I set my alarm early enough to make it. Secondly, while you are there, please be respectful of everyone's time. The primary purpose of being there should be to have fun with your friends or acquaintances or workmates or whatever while you are playing the game. Don't get me wrong. One of my groups is very, I'll just say socially focused. And the first 30 minutes of all of us hopping onto Discord is everybody catching up on everyone else's lives. I expect this, and I set my game to start time 30 minutes after I open up the Discord channel. But you are there to play D&D or Delta Green or Pathfinder or whatever. So pay attention to the game.

Focus on the game as much as you are able to. Yes, make jokes if that's your table's attitude. Yes, smile and laugh with each other. Yes, go grab that bowl of pretzels and bring it over for everyone to enjoy. But when the DM is talking, listen. Don't interrupt everyone to show pictures of your dog or your niece or some funny dog-niece video. So dog-neesh, would that be a niece that's a dog or a dog that is somehow your niece? I'm confused and I want to know more.

When combat breaks out on the battle map, know where you are in the turn order and be ready to take your turn when it's time. There are some groups I've DM4 in the past where I've toyed with the idea of a shot clock for combat. When your turn for combat terms around, you have one minute to declare your actions or your character spins that round paralyzed with indecision. There are a subset of players out there, and to my beloved listeners that are out there, please don't be like this. there's a subset who don't even think about what they're going to do on their turn until the GM says, oh, it's your turn, what do you want to do? It's like all of a sudden they realize, oh, I need to decide, don't I? Well, I could stride forward and flank or maybe step back and protect the wizard.

Wait a second, I've got that potion that I could use. The silence you hear around the table is your GM glaring at you, even if they're only doing that in their mind. While you only now think about your options, your DM is thinking, Motherfucker, you've had 10 minutes to make this decision. Why did you wait until now? By the way, it's like when you're in a line behind somebody at the local shop and the person in front of you who's been standing in queue for 10 minutes,

suddenly gets surprised when they see the price and only then realize, oh, I better get my cash or card out. Yeah, the hell you've been thinking about the past 15 minutes there, chucklehead. Sorry. Anyway, when it's not your turn in combat, don't tune out. Don't check your phone. Don't start up a conversation about the results of the latest football match. Make your plans and decide what you want your character to do.

But, Jeremy, I might make a plan and the situation changes where I have to do something else. Yeah, it's called being a spellcaster. Get used to it. I apologize. My wife told me that I was being, and let me quote this right, Pissy, so let me restate the previous in a slightly more polite manner. Yes, the situation may change, and you may end. have to take a different action than cast a different spell, do a different thing when your turn does finally come around. But that time you spent planning can be used later, maybe later in

this combat, maybe in another combat where you've thought about what spell your character would cast before the front-line fighter closes with the baddies. Plans may become useless, but planning is invaluable. By making your plans while it's not your turn, you are being respectful of the other players and the DMs time. They're not waiting for five minutes while you fumble through your abilities or spells and only just now make the decision of what you might want to do. To that end, the third expectation that DMs have for players is that you understand your characters at least to the best of your ability.

Sometimes, yes, you're learning a new system. You've never played Starfinder before. And you're playing a skittermander scout. So maybe you're new and don't know what a skittermander or what a skittermander or what a scout is, or you're brand new in learning, everyone's going to give you grace and the time to learn. This third expectation doesn't apply to you as strongly, so relax and don't worry yourself too much if you're just learning the system. But as you play your character, learn the system. As you experience adventures in this new game, the expectation that your understanding of the

character will increase over time. You'll get more knowledgeable about your options and abilities and capabilities. The sixth time you cast that spell blessed, you probably don't need to go look up how many actions it is and what it does and that kind of thing. I mentioned equity early in the episode, that your DM has put in multiple hours of prep work

for every hour that the players have. That's almost certainly the case, even for DMs like me who can improv probably with some of the best of them. We still think of the important NPCs, the quest givers, the locations that the party most likely will interact with and how we're going to introduce them to the players.

On top of that, the GM's responsible for the adventure itself, the maps, the lore, the history, the monsters, the decision points, well, the hell, everything else. Maybe even scheduling and logistics. They shouldn't, by the way, players should be able to handle that shit, but more on that later. I'm not expecting you to memorize every single aspect of your character that could ever come up. But for example, if you're playing a bard for the first time, make a cheat sheet of what spells you know,

what bardic inspiration does, maybe what skills you're good at so you have that information right at your fingertips. As you level up and gain more abilities and spells that you may not be familiar with, add them to the cheat sheet so you can find what you need quickly. And hopefully as you start memorizing the mechanics of your character, some stuff can drop off your cheat sheet as well. I'm not immune to the cheat sheet. I'm playing a character

in an adventure called Spore War and we started at level 10. As you know, by level 10, your character has a ton of feats, combat and non-combat options, that type of thing. And I had to make a cheat sheet for my character. This is a Pathfinder 2E campaign,

so at level 10, she already had 15 feet before I rolled a single die in the game. Yeah, I needed a cheat sheet. We're now level 14. That's six more feats plus spells and everything else. I actually noticed before last session that I had interpreted a feat incorrectly the other night,

talked to the GM, and realized I was missing a cantrip from my list. It wasn't game-breaking by any stretch of a minute. Hell, it probably didn't, wasn't even game-affecting error, but it was a mistake that I made, and it wasn't on my cheat sheet. I'm not immune from this advice either. Do your best to know your character and how to play them whenever you sit down to play. The more complicated your character, the better idea it is to make a cheat sheet for it. Next I'm going to ask all players to engage with the story and buy into the game.

Part of the unwritten set of rules is that players should engage with the story that the GM sets up for them. The crux of tabletop gaming is that you are cooperatively building a story. DM and players are working together. That requires you, my players, to buy into the story to progress it and see where it goes and what your character will do along the way. In very broad terms, there's a social contract between players and DM, DM and players. The DM will run the game as defined in session zero, doing their level best to keep the game fun and accessible for the players. More on that in next episode, by the way.

But players, that means that you have to bite the hooks that are dangled, at least one of them, because the GM is trying to start or continue the story, maybe even giving you a huge hint that this is what your group should do next. It's the fourth hint you heard about the ruined church on the edge of town. Maybe you should check it. Hint, damn hint. If you're in the tavern and Farmer Bond's son comes bursting in saying that there's ogres attacking the farmlands, that's a pretty big damn hint that your group probably needs to go help drive the ogres off. One of the worst things players can do is say something like,

eh, my character doesn't care. He'd rather stay in the tavern and keep drinking. Really? Your character can't be arched enough to help somebody out in need when that's the game that was decided on in session zero. Okay, that's the decision you make. You are welcome to make that decision. That's fine. Your sociopathic asshole character just became an NPC.

Now pick a different character that will actually play the fucking game. Don't make the DM come up with four more ways to get your characters out to the village food stores to drive off the ogres or anything. You ignored Farmer Bond's son. Okay. Travelers reported here. screams coming from the Green Hills Farming Hamlet. On your way home, you look towards Green Hills and see flames off in the distance. Lorana was kidnapped by a big ugly humanoid and carried off to the woods.

Her husband says, ogres robbed the caravan and made off with a big heavy chest. Take the fucking hat, guys. The DM probably prepped the ogre fight for tonight. And if so, the least you can do is engage with the story. Don't make the GM stop the game session and say out of character, hey, so this is the next step of the story, and I need you all to go fight ogres. That takes everyone out of the moment and can make the game feel contentious from behind the screen. So bite one of the hooks the DM is dangling out there and engage with the story.

It shouldn't be the DM's job to drag your character's asses kicking and screaming out of the tavern, or in or meeting place, or brothel, or space apple bees, or wherever the hell your characters are meeting up. Your character should want to go on the adventure and do your part to help keep the story moving, contributing to the fun, and buying into the story. The best games I have ever played, by the way, or ran, were co-built by GMs and players working together. But for your players to contribute, they have to buy in. Game masters generally have reasonable expectations for the players, asking them to pour in some energy to the game like their DM already has. be reliable, be punctual, respect everyone's time by paying attention while you're at the table, understand your character's abilities to minimize delays and actively engage with the story.

Doing all of this allows you and the other players and the GM to most effectively, cooperatively build a narrative. And if you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening. I'd like to get your feedback either via social media or email. Feedback at taking20podcast.com. Please send me a message and let me know your thoughts on the episode. Tune in next time, by the way, when I'm going to flip the script

and give the players a list of things that they can reasonably expect from their DMs. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Crows. Did you know that they can mate for life, by the way? And when they find their one mate, they will begin to change color. You can tell they found their right. one because of the Redding Wing. This has been episode 277, all about setting player expectations. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.

The Taking 20 podcast is Copyright 2026 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers.