Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 278 - Player Expectations of their GMs

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

Please accept my apologies that this episode sounds a bit hollow.  I am having problems with Hindenburg, my audio processing software and their support has been very unsupportive.  I’m working to get the audio issue fixed.   In this episode, we’re flipping the script to explore the reasonable expectations players should have of their GMs. We’re breaking down why the DM screen is an honor, not a crown, and discussing the three essential pillars of a great game.  Give this episode a listen!   #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. You're not a king or some petty tyrant ruling over the table with an iron fist. You hold the flashlight while the players explore the haunted house. You set the stage, direct the spotlight on players so they can shine. Not you. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 278, talking about reasonable expectations for players to have of their DMs. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Couches.

My couch does a great job of giving me bad news. It really does know how to soften the blow. I forgot to mention it last episode, but happy Pride Month to my LGBTQ at listeners and anyone else who celebrates. June is all about celebrating diversity and love and community. Be proud and know that you are amazing and loved just the way you are. If you happen to enjoy this podcast, please mention it to your other gaming friends or share the episodes on social media.

feel free to send me a message on social media at any time or on my coffee. Links are in the description or email me. Feedback at taking20 podcast.com. Some unfortunate news over the past couple of weeks, Paiso is laying off about a dozen employees due to being almost $2 million in the red in 2025. Paiso explained that the losses were largely due to the collapse and bankruptcy of Diamond comic distributors, which distributed Paiso's hard copy products, all the books that they make. The really crappy part is that according to information from court filings,

either $500,000 or maybe multi-millions of dollars of Paiso books are in Diamond's warehouses, but the warehouses were seized in Diamond's major bank lenders seized all the assets that were in them. I think they're hoping to sell the inventory themselves. There's other publishers affected, not just Paiso, and they're all fighting the bank in court. Paiso has since signed with the independent publishers group IPG for book channel distribution, so the problem should write itself over time. But boy, the damage was done last year. Also, evidently, Diamond has appealed the move to IPG, citing an exclusivity in the distribution contract.

I can't confirm, but someone with knowledge of the situation said that because Paiso's workers are unionized, per terms of the contract, the laid-off workers have 18-month recall rights. For those of you not into labor deals, that means that if Paiso re-hires for their former positions, the laid-off employees will have a guaranteed opportunity to return to their previous jobs. I am not going to, and I never do, mask my love for Pathfinder and Starfinder, having played both first and second editions of both and the remastered Pathfinder 2E rules. Hell, Pathfinder 2E is probably the game I play most often with my local gaming groups. This is an unfortunate situation, and my heart goes out to all the affected workers,

their families, and of course the people still at Paiso, who have to try to keep the company headed in the right direction during a really tough stretch. It's a reminder of how fragile the RPG game world really is, and the hard work of many people can be held hostage by just a few. Whether it's a big publisher like Paiso, a big third-party rules provider, or small content creator for your game, no matter what your game of choice is,

if you have the opportunity, please support them whenever you can. Thank you for listening. Now on to the episode. I'm going to flip the script from the beginning of episode 277 where I told a story about a bad DM experience with their players. But what if it's the DM that's the problem? Picture this. Oh, God, he's starting it the same way. What a cheap hack. Either this is really good writing or really lazy-ass writing, one of the two. Well, you're right, and I'll let you be the judge. Picture this. It's 6.50 p.m. The game starts at 7.

You've prepared your character. your backstory, bought all your starting gear, you're ready to head to level one of the Abomination Bolt, or you're in NeverWinter, about to meet with Gundren Rock Seeker before heading to the Lost Mines. You skipped an after-hours get-together at work to make sure you were ready for gaming night tonight. You've got your dice, your drinks, and your snacks ready,

and you are ready to cook. Okay, at 7.15. DM is frantically printing out stat blocks for monsters and NPCs they're going to use tonight. The players are sitting around the table, making small talk, and trying to pass the time, waiting for the DM to be ready. At 722, the DM finally sits down at the head of the table.

No explanation, no apologies for being late. They just look up and ask, um, okay, where did we live off last time? Not as a prompt for the players to engage. It's very obvious. They have no idea where the adventure is, what's next, or how tonight will begin. 20 minutes later,

first combat kicks off. You finally get to use that specific feat you had been reading about and planning to use all week. You declare your strike, roll a natural 20, and look up excitedly because you get to do damage to a creature

and get a free trip attempt or shove or whatever. The DM looks up from the crudely drawn map and says, yeah, I didn't read that feat before we sat down and I don't like the way it works, so I'm going to change it.

The monster gets a, gets a reaction to negate your action. Mood's dead, fun's gone, looks like it's going to be a long gaming night. Last episode was the version that drives GM blood pressures up, but GMs can also do the same.

They can drive player blood pressures up as well. As discussed last time, yes, DMs have expectations of their players and players should do their level best to meet them. However, players do and should have certain expectations of their GMs in the games that they play. And frankly, they expect DMs to do the same,

do their level best to rise to the occasion. I want to hit you with the hard truth that my beloved GMs out there need to hear. If you remember one sentence about this entire episode of DM expectations, it's this. The DM screen is an honor, not a crown. The screen is there to hide your notes

and secrets and upcoming encounters, not inflate your ego. You may be the direct, of the story, but it's in a collaboration between you and the players. The players should feel like their choices matter, and that they can contribute to the world and adventure as it unfolds. I have seen and read and heard far too many DMs talk about their players like the DM is the most important part of the story,

that the table would fall apart without them, and these damn players should be grateful by God and defer to everything I want to do. After all, the word master is in my title. They're not your slaves, man. You're the referee. You're the rules adjudicator. You're the person who probably drew or downloaded the maps.

You're not a king or some petty tyrant ruling over the table with an iron fist. You hold the flashlight while the players explore the haunted house. You set the stage, direct the spotlight on players so they can shine. Not you. No one goes to a soccer match to watch the referee. Editor Jeremy. here. I originally had an Anthony Taylor joke here. He's a ref in the Premier League, by the way. I'll acknowledge that most of you don't know who the hell he is. But in my opinion,

kind of a shit referee. Editor Jeremy Part 2 here again, I'm sure Anthony Taylor's a nice person, hugs his kids, donates time to a local nunnery, adopts local homeless puppies and nurses them back to health, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But every time I see his name associated with my Premier League team, I know it's going to be a shit day. Keeping with the referee theme, you don't watch the NBA or NFL or NHL to see your favorite referee when you go to the stadium. I've refereed, by the way, numerous sports in my younger days when my joints didn't feel like rusty hinges. And believe me, as a ref, you're doing your job best when you blend into the hardwood or the pitch or the field, only calling attention to yourself when you have to make a call and do so consistently.

So my beloved DMs out there, players expect you to facilitate the fun for everyone, not try to show the players how great you are. If you disagree with me, do me a favor. Go back and watch some of the critical role seasons where Matthew Mercer was DM, or now with Brennan Lee Mulligan, or go back to watch Deborah Ann Wall on relics and rarities. All three of them would probably demure if they heard me say this,

but they're the best in the business. Not because they grab the spotlight, but because they let the players play and act and celebrate and suffer together as they experience the story. They just facilitate that story to happening. It is your role to do your best to make sure everyone has a good time. You give them the spotlight to make decisions, speak their characters, mind, not get lost in the background. Some players, not characters, by the way, players are quieter than others and may not feel as comfortable speaking up.

Make sure you give them the opportunity to do so. Shine that spotlight on them and give them a chance to be big damn heroes too. In my gaming groups, I have some extroverts and introverts, and if they left to their own devices, the extroverts will completely roll over all of the introverts and hardly ever give them a chance to speak. It's my job to make sure the introverts feel seen and can speak their mind at the table. Also, part of facilitating the fun for everyone is making sure that you limit the game elements that would cause discomfort for any of your players. No matter how you do so, make sure you know what lines and bales your players. players want and try to steer the game away from them as much as possible.

For example, if one of your players, like one of mine, has a hard line at harm to children, even off-screen, if that's depicted in the adventure or it's pre-written, I change it or omit it, because I know that is something she finds uncomfortable. Finally, in regard to facilitating the fun, part of the game is, for lack of a better way of saying it, reading the room, identifying when problems are present or brewing and doing your best to steer away from them. For example, your party's in a room and the only way forward is a single shut door, you know, the most dangerous thing in the universe if some players are to be believed. The party's been in this room for 30 real-time minutes with only the one door as the path forward.

They have checked for traps, cast detect monster, detect thoughts, detect magic, detect evil, detect good. They've thrown a pebble at the door, followed by a rock. They've tapped it with a 10-foot pole, They summoned a goat to charge the door to hit it. They've used telekinesis. They've shot it with a crossbow. They've hit it with magic missile. And the door is completely nonplussed. Because it's a damn door.

The party's still paranoid, and there doesn't appear to be any end in sight. The fighter is so bored that the player is starting to check his phone. And if you see that happening, it's time for the tried and true solution called orcs attack, or goblins attack, or ogres attack, or trolls attack, or giants attack. Something shows up to get the damn game going again. I had a party paranoid about a gate once,

staring at it, scared they're going to set off some horrific trap, while they were wringing their hands about what to do. By the way, the gate wasn't even locked. I had an ogre open the gate from the other side, see the party and go, dumb humans don't even know how door works, and started to attack the party. The game was languishing.

So I threw an ogre in to break the game loose and get it moving again. If you read the room and everyone is getting frustrated or bored, have orcs attack or the door suddenly open or do something to get the game dislodged from this current stuck state and starting to move forward. Okay, by the way, there's a variant of this where the party genuinely doesn't know what to do. You dropped three what you believe are very obvious hints earlier in the campaign or even session, and still the party's confused. Maybe they forgot or they're not thinking of the hints you gave them, thinking they apply somewhere else.

Hell, my game this past Saturday night, had that very thing happen. The GM gave us hints about what was coming, and we grizzled veteran players and most of us of gray hair, we blew right through the hints, ignored them, never once thought they would apply to this particular encounter.

Finally, Tom, my GM, was merciful and reminded us what the queen had said just a few sessions ago. There were a lot of, by the way, oh, duh, feeling around the table. Yeah, okay, we felt stupid. But Tom took the emotional temperature of the room, saw that we needed a nudge,

and gave us one so that the game wouldn't languish with us not remembering the important thing needed at this point of the story. Second major tip, just as DMs expect reliability from their players, players expect reliability from their GM. What does that mean for a DM to be reliable, by the way? First off, it means that you are prepared for game night just like you expect your players to be.

Show up on time. Heck, if you're like me, show up a little early so you can get the GM screen, the maps, the miniatures, everything set up that you need to to run the game at the table, whether physical or virtual. If gaming is supposed to start at 8, maybe get there at 745 or a little bit earlier if you need the extra time to get ready. My general rule of thumb is I get there 30 minutes early to get everything set up and ready for the players. Part of that reliability is being prepared to run the game. Yes, this means that you may have to do some work in between game sessions. right, designing encounters determining the expected direction of the adventure will go, having social and combat encounters and traps and challenges, etc., ready to present to the players.

Reliability means understanding and fairly adjudicating the rules, or that one sentence could be an episode all its own. But I'll briefly say that players should trust that the game rules around the table, the mechanics of the game, and for the lack of better term, physics of the game world aren't going to change because the DM had a bad day, or wants to challenge the players more. Imagine you're a player and the GM decides that your healing spells suddenly don't work at camp. Why not? They worked here last night.

What's different? Oh, you know, they just don't work, okay? Or the kineticist impulse now only works at a range of 15 feet instead of 30, even though it says 30 feet in the book. Why? You suspect it's because you're playing that character smartly and out of melee combat range from most of the baddies and the GM's having problems, challenging you. That's just a garbage decision, okay? And it sounds like the DM is

making shit up arbitrarily to try to make the game harder. Yes, home ruling is a thing. So is wholesale disregard for some of the rules of the game around various tables. But once the rules are set for a certain situation, don't change them without a good reason. And if you do decide to change them or home brew a rule, discuss it with the players beforehand. I mean, ideally in session zero, but definitely before you roll that out. If all else fails, let the ability or spell or character feature work as the player believes it to, and then maybe have a discussion with them between sessions if you need to change it. Okay, so you declare that magical healing doesn't work because the parties moved camp into the mana wastes.

That makes sense. Magic just is straight busted there because of a war between wizard armies that lasted centuries. But having it not work in the same place just because you're trying to drive character hit point totals lower is kind of a shitty thing to do as a DM. Being a good DM means reliably and consistently applying the game and house rules to the game that you're playing. Will you make

mistakes? Absolutely. I've been DMing a long time. I screw up all the time. Every DM does. Even great ones, Matthew Mercer and so forth. However, players expect GMs to do their best to be consistent moment-to-moment, combat to session-to-combat session.

The third thing I think players can reasonably expect to the GM is that they're going to honor the choices the characters make. What do I mean by this? honoring the choices? Quite a bit, actually. First off, it means the DM will bend and sometimes even fully reshape a plot

to honor player agency. The DM won't just invent a BS reason for the player's ship to land on a particular island or planet. Uh, uh, uh, navigation malfunctions and takes you to the planet, um, EOS 4 instead of Dorlo 3. What? Why? What the hell?

wrong with the ship navigation. It takes us one planet, not even in the same damn solar system. The players decided they wanted to go to Dorlo 3, but the DM maybe had prepped for an adventure on Eos 4, and Diem invents this nonsensical reason why they don't go to Doorlo 3. You've just invalidated the character's choice for the campaign. Assuming the players are acting in good faith and not actively trying to derail the plot, do your best to honor their decision, even if it means making some adjustments on the fly. But Jeremy, Eos 4 is a dry desert planet where Dorlo 3 is a swamp. Okay, first off, George Lucas, very rarely does any planet with an atmosphere have one

biome type all over the planet? Pluto? Yeah, it's probably fucking cold all over, but I know it's not technically a planet anymore, but it explains my point. Contrast that with Mercury. Closest to the sun, you would think it's a burning hellscape. And it is on the half of the planet that's tidily locked facing the sun. That side gets at like 800 degrees Fahrenheit, 430 degrees Celsius, but the other side that never sees the sun sits about negative 290 Fahrenheit or minus 180 Celsius, two very different climates on the same planet.

Much less something like Earth with an atmosphere that has parts of the planet as cold as minus 100 Celsius, minus 145 Fahrenheit, and as hot as 57 degrees Celsius, 134 Fahrenheit. Lots of variety and climate and flora and fauna, etc. So what I'm saying is, you have options. You prepped an adventure on Sandy EOS 4, but they go to Doorlo 3. Congratulations, there's now a desert on Doorlo 3, and you can run the same adventure you prepped for EOS 4 on DoorLo 3. Change the place names and the leaders and the ancestors that are present, and voila, you didn't waste your prep time,

and you honored the choice made by the players. Win, freaking, win. Next, when it comes to honoring choices, player characters may come up with a creative solution to problems, challenges, traps that you put in front of them. And if so, you reward that shit. You don't invalidate it. Oh, they want to use a Medusa head to turn the crack into stone?

Sure, why not? You may have flanned a big city-destroying fight. This solution? It's got a plausible chance to work. So give it a chance to work. One of my favorite I remember is one of my players asking me if they could pour mayonnaise from their alchemy jug over the eyes of a creature with a gaze. attack. I paused. Thought about getting mayonnaise in my eyes for a minute, recoiled, then absolutely

give that plan a chance to work. It wound up being a combination of grapple and I gave them the choice of an attack roll or deck save to try to pour the jug into the eyes. They made it. The petrification attack was nullified and the players won the combat. Was that what I had planned for that fight? No. Oh, hell no. But it's all kinds of fun. Players felt really smart for coming up with that solution and they still talk about that night that they beat a basilisk with mayonnaise. Players can reasonably expect some things from their dungeon masters. Generally, if the DM remembers that the screen is an opportunity to serve, not rule, they'll enter the game with the right mindset.

Do your best to facilitate the fun for everyone, be just as, if not more unreliable than your players, adjudicate rules fairly and consistently, and then honor creative solutions by your PCs and let your players shine. If you do that, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening to my little podcast. I thrive on feedback via social media or send it via email, Feedback at Taking20 Podcast.com. Send me a message.

Let me know your thoughts on the episode. Tune in next time, by the way, when I'm going to give some DMs, some tips for handling your players that want to change characters mid-adventure. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor Couches. My couch used to be in Vegas helping others relax. It was a Chey's lounge singer. This has been episode 278 about player expectations that they can have of their DMs. 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. Thank you.