I have learned a lot from watching other DMs at work, whether they are folks I’ve gotten to play with at home, or Actual Play DMs on streams or podcasts. Among the latter, I’m most familiar with three: Matt Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Aabria Iyengar. They are all very different DMs—though they’ve clearly influenced each other and sure seem to be friends—and run games with very different contextual structures: on Critical Role, Matt runs ~4 hour sessions of very long-form, sandbox campaigns with a table that loves intra-party roleplay; Brennan, on Dimension 20, runs much shorter, sessions of much shorter campaigns where there is a deliberate pace to combat vs roleplay and the set pieces get built ahead of time; Aabria, as a guest DM on these shows, has to be flexible to conform to the production requirements.
TwoThreeFour things that I think are worth noting.
First, when learning from these folks, the “streaming” and “production” contexts are paramount to keep in mind and apply as a lens. Many things they do are applicable in a home game, but not everything.
Second, while CR’s format makes the world feel more open, I don’t think that either Brennan or Aabria are “railroading” their players, at least not any more than someone running a module might. I think this is part of the social contract of play—and one reason why collaborative character creation is so critical—that the players will play characters who are interested in the kind of story hooks the GM will put down. (Which is also a good reason to follow Colville’s advice to start in media res sometimes.)
Third, I’ve only recently come to appreciate the artfulness with which they—but especially Aabria—roll the party’s actions and rolls forward into the story structure and “modularize” the set pieces. During Exandria: Unlimited the Crown Keepers had a nasty habit of rolling like shit on important information, and I thought she was somewhat railroaded by the short format into having to more or less ignore those bad rolls. Watching her run Burrow’s End, however, with the Adventuring Party talkbacks right after each episode, I’m now starting to see beneath her unbelievable GM poker face. To a certain extent, some things are preordained by the production needs. But I am in absolute awe of the way she makes everything feel as if it was the only possible outcome, and bad rolls feel like successes even when they may completely change the story. They’re all good at the three-card monte trick of putting the story in front of wherever the players end up, but while Matt and Brennan tend to make the connection between the roll and the consequence blatant, Aabria can be so much subtler. In awe of the skill.
Finally, nothing is applicable to every table. The D20 crew is almost always open to “so you all go home and sleep and the next day…” while the CR folks like to post watches and have nighttime conversations. Is the former more railroady? In some cases, yes it would be. For that table, though, it’s moving the story along to the next bit that they find fun. (This should be a universal caveat.)
All three of them have certain verbal leitmotifs they rely on. Not the big “how do you want to do this?” moments, and not exactly tics. They’re more like blocks in the foundation of how they run games. Here are a few that I particularly like.
“You can certainly try”
Matt’s favorite response to a hair-brained scheme or shenanigan. This communicates to the players that what they want to do is possible but unlikely to work. It helps set expectations and softly aligns the table that “yes, and”ing this will probably be consequences for the attempt, rather than success. Most of the time, at his table, they try it anyway, and play with whatever happens next.
“For the purposes of this…”
One thing CR has that ExU and D20 don’t is the luxury of playing out goofs that don’t move the story forward—though sometimes they can be powerful character moments. When the players are in a low-pressure scene, or lingering in a goof, they often try to bend the rules. “For the purposes of this” is Matt’s way of letting the players know that he’s making a ruling, almost always to allow something, that shouldn’t be considered as precedent. In a low stakes, fun moment, letting the game get a little goofy by playing loose with the rules can be great. Matt’s table is on board with that and—mostly—seems fine with the inconsistency.
“You see…”
D20, and the longer form Worlds Beyond Number, has the benefit of editing that CR and home games lack. Over time, I think they’ve gotten better at clipping out audible pauses or silence, so it’s less obvious now, but in early D20 seasons, Brennan would often use “you see” as his filler words. “You see,” instead of “um,” not only starts a sentence, but also works almost like a mantra to focus on the PC’s experience. In improv 101, they teach you to just start talking and let your brain catch up. Starting with “you see” prompts the next word: what they see.
“Rad” / “Hell yeah”
Running a game means managing a lot of inputs, especially during combat or other high-paced moments. Your attention can’t be on every player at once—and sometimes you have to take a moment to read your notes or make an adjustment. Brennan will often respond to players with “rad” or “hell yeah,” sometimes automatically, sometimes after what seems to be a very quick evaluation of what they’ve proposed. He’s not bringing his attention back yet, he hasn’t made a ruling—and very occasionally he has had to say “no” once they explain (ahem Emily). In the meantime, he’s encouraging the player to pursue whatever direction they’re talking about.
“I’m going to narrate what happens”
While I think this is mostly applicable for the sort of production-constrained games on D20, it is an effective way to let players know that what’s happening now is out of their control. Players sometimes try to keep taking more and more actions to change some outcome, when that outcome is already the result of their actions. If the result is a bigger story beat or takes a little while to describe, this can gently but explicitly tell the players, in the words of a friend, “let the cutscene happen.”
“What you don’t see”
One of Aabria’s trademark ways of heightening the dramatic tension is very deliberately giving players knowledge that the PCs don’t have. I think this is particularly applicable to home games where our audience is limited to each other. In ExU, she put caps at the end of episodes, presumably without the players, for the audience. When no one else is watching, the only people who can experience dramatic irony are the players—why keep that from them?
For example, I recall one session of a campaign where another PC had taken on a “bad person” persona (it’s complicated and honestly I never fully learned what was up). The player paused at the top of the session to warn us and talk briefly about safety. That meant that I, as the player, knew things about this persona that my PC didn’t. Later, there was a scene with just the two of us. Let me tell you: if you’ve ever yelled at someone in a movie not to open a door, it is so much more intense when you’re also the person opening the door. Here is a trusting, low-Wisdom Wizard and a dangerous, bad person who hasn’t given off bad vibes yet. The way my heart was in my throat while maintaining nonchalant, almost distracted responses: incredible. So, for multiple reasons, I support letting players know things that PCs don’t—at least with the right players.
James DM 