Constructive Criticism
Being open to feedback is a good thing. Whether it’s GMing, fiction writing, underwater basket-weaving, or any other craft, striving to improve yourself is a mark of humility and maturity. However, asking for feedback is easier said than done.
Way back in “Boredom” we talked about the fine art of constructive criticism. There our advice was all about compliment sandwiches, tact, and preserving the feelings of your hardworking GM. If you happen to be that hardworking GM, however, you might be surprised to learn that fishing for feedback is every bit as hard. That’s because GMs risk turning their fun game into a fraught seminar when they overemphasize critique.
I ran into this problem myself a few years back. It was a homebrew campaign, and it was going through a rough patch. There’d been a bit of railroading the previous session, and I knew that my players had some valid complaints to make. I decided to drop the following message into the group forum:
I’m not the best GM in the world. I’m not sure I’m even a terribly good one. But I do want to get better. I already know there are some things last session that I would have liked to do differently, but I want to make sure I’m addressing your concerns as well.
Hit the link for the “Campaign Suggestion Box.” There you can leave anonymous feedback about what you liked, what you didn’t, and what you’d like to see change.
I recall feeling very proud of myself when I posted that message. I’d taken the bull by the horns, and we would come out the other end a stronger party. The link pointed to a little app called Suggestion Ox, but I’m sure any anonymizing service could have worked as well. Which is to say, not at all.
You see, by setting up an anonymous suggestion box, I was telling my players that any reasoned discussion would descend into argument. By waiting until a poor session to implement the thing, I was tainting it with bad vibes from the outset. And by making the process so formal and impersonal, I’d managed to transform high adventure into Human Resources.
So when it’s time for feedback, I hope you’ll be slightly less forceful than me (or Miss Gestalt). Keep things light and conversational. Make sure that your players are ready to have the conversation. And above all, make sure that you’re not dragging a confession from your otherwise contented players. Because focusing on the negative isn’t exactly the fastest way to fun and happiness.
Question of the day then! When you’re GMing, how do you go about soliciting feedback? Do you ask for it after every session? Wait until you can have a one-on-one with each player? Or do you create an anonymous forum where your players feel awkwardly compelled to list out all your least attractive qualities? Let’s hear all about the right (and wrong) ways to do feedback down in the comments!
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My gm usually asks this stuff after we finish a major fight or event, or after sessions where people seem like they got really frustrated. He and I also often just message each other back and forth about feedback stuff, as well as game balance stuff, homebrew rules and similar, but I think that mainly just me he does it with since we both have a lot of interest in how games are run and how they function mechanically.
I think that having multiple people in the group interested in “the craft of GMing” helps. Being able to message back-and-forth as a regular thing sounds like a healthy relationship to me.
Let me just start out by saying one reason I feel most players don’t voice Their complaints is because how universally sacred everyone holds rule zero: whatever the GM says goes. By that very factor, any complaint a player has is already an uphill battle. Any criticism or concern can simply be dismissed with a “I am the DM and this is my final ruling”, which kills any actual opportunity to discuss or debate a questionable or otherwise unsatisfactory action on the DM’s part.
Of course there’s a reason why there is a rule zero. No one wants to get bogged down with different interpretations of the rules, or chained to a specific set of lore or strictly using only what is given to us by developers. Ideally rule zero is meant to be used as a tool to create new opportunities with the materials given to us via source books, official lore, and ones own imagination. But just as well rule zero is a weapon designed destroy anything and anyone as desired by the DM.
Using this experience as a Player, as a GM I am simply open and willing to discuss questionable rulings and even openly debate on the table as long as it is in good faith. I make it clear to my players that I will do my damnest to be open and honest, for better or for worse. I don’t fudge rolls because I roll where everyone can see. If something seems off or homebrewed I often warn my players in advance or simply admit to the fact it is, and depending on the circumstances I’ll even explain the nature of the homebrew so they can understand that no, I’m not just making up shit in the spot just to make things harder for them.
This is a controversial opinion, but secrecy tends to make players distrust you. It means they can’t believe anything at face value and thus must operate with the expectation that you may actively try and screw them over with something they have absolutely no reason to suspect. This might sound fun on paper, but in my experience this is also the breeding ground for munchkins and power gamers. “I can’t trust the DM to play by the rules so I need to get stronger to deal with his shenanigans”. And again, if it really comes down to that, you options are to either adapt or leave. Because by then the damage is done. You trick the party once with an enemy that’s overtuned to be tough on the party and in turn they focus less about their story and more about being more powerful. Which in turn often leads to DM making enemies more powerful in order to give those players sufficient challenge, which shows they still aren’t strong enough, rinse and repeat.
Worse part is that I see this a lot in games that advertise themselves as “RP friendly”. When you see that you might think “oh, I’ can make a somewhat suboptimal character that I still think is fun”. What it really means is “I’m going to throw enemies out that are far more powerful than you can reasonably deal with for plot reasons”.
I gather that these DMs are not open to the resulting feedback.
I always ask the group if they had a good time, then one player “playfully” shouts No! and no one else says anything.
Then I die a little inside.
Well then. I see I’m not the only player who’s found their own “how not to do it” on this issue. Much empathy, my dude.
Our DM asking for feedback:
That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough
Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I’m choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool, fool
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I set it up 😛
Well in reality he don’t sing Losing my religion while asking for feedback. If he would we would throw something at him, something big and heavy. He sings horrible. But the good thing is we are very frontal, honest if not blunt people. When we hate something we made you know that. Same if we like something. And so our DM accepts our criticism, he welcomes it about the game, he listen to it about his tastes, ancestry, vocabulary, politics, girlfriends, ideas, ideals, and why not, the weather. He makes us now about he own feedback on us by TPK. That i why we left the inquiries for when we finish the game and everybody is just hanging out and eating 😀
I think you guys have a healthy relationship. GJ.
Yes, in spite of many things, or because of that many things, we do. We have got confidence on one another and we have learn to have fun together no matter how much we like to screw on each other with pranks, the occasional friendly insult and that kind of things. We are friends, not “Friends”like but more like “How i meet your mother” like. That works for us and we are happy with that 😀
On another topic, how is Laurel doing with Cleric new design?
Eagerly waiting for me to write another Cleric comic. Dude’s gotta show off those new threads:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/self-perception
Well, in that case i suppose it’s okay. When you do a good Fashionframe you wanna show it 😀
My problems as a DM are already well known to me: I’m not very descriptive with environments, and since I can’t draw we did theater of mind combat.
I was very clear with directions and distance, so we still had a good sense of where everything was though.
You could always switch over to a VTT. Uploading a map to one of those sweet TV-in-the-table setups could save a lot of hassle:
https://i1.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/gamingTable_5.jpg?resize=1200%2C670&strip=all&ssl=1
Hmmm, well I certainly don’t do anything particularly formal or consistently the same as far as that goes.
Most of the time, more recently anyway, I try to be up front and let people know to tell me if they’ve got something they think needs improving on. Especially scene description since I already know that’s a weakness of mine and if I get lazy it’s the first thing I backslide on if nobody is letting me know they care if I am or not.
Otherwise I just use my best judgement (or maybe more often it’d be accurate to say reading too much into very little) and trying to ask if there’s any particular issues with whatever thing or in general. Either to the whole group or just a specific individual, whichever seems to make the most sense.
Playing Exalted helped a bunch with my scene description. When the environment is such a big part of setting up impressive stunts, you have to remember to include it in your thinking.
Can’t add anything to the discussion. But I just noticed that the were-pyre is called Miss Gestalt, which means “Monstrosity/Deformity” in German (Missgestalt)
Believe it or not, that was a happy accident. We knew we wanted to name her Gestalt…
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm
…Then Laurel referred to her as Miss Gestalt in a comment over on the Patreon. We only realized what we’d done after a Patron picked up on it. Friggin’ kismet right there.
What ended up happening with the anonymous suggestion box? How did you figure out that it was a bad idea?
When my players wrote in saying, “Hi. This is [name]. I don’t feel like I need to do the anonymous thing. Anyway, here’s the feedback I gave to you in person last time we talked.”
I believe that was the only feedback I got. I discontinued it shortly thereafter.
I once gave out a form to fill in to my players,engendering several half-hearted efforts and one outright refusal. Thankfully, my players have become far more open to sharing in the years since, and I’ve become far less, ahem, formal about it.
This was more or less my experience with the suggestion box.
I feel a lot of this kind of thing is best considered ‘table culture,’ but also a simple bit of understanding your fellow nerds helps out immensely.
Like, proud or not, we as a specific subset are kinda’ passive aggressive and shy. My specialty for years has been conflict resolution as the group mediator, which helps a lot because everybody trusts me and isn’t afraid that I’m going to jump down their throats. They also know that I’ll stand my ground.
We all think of ourselves at the table as good friends, but building those deeper, more trusting connections takes time and effort. It doesn’t happen just because you and the others gather around the same table every week, online or IRL. Gotta work at it.
The chance to hang out apart from the table helps a lot. Some of my favorite gaming memories are just about sitting around the table at a hookah lounge or bar after hours, telling war stories and picking apart old campaigns. I feel like that’s the best place to get a handle on what your buddies liked and didn’t like about ye olde session.
Yeah. I am trying some things help my players understand how I’m doing balancing too. A major concern for me is ‘fairness’, but also perceived fairness; which is to say the players being able to understand how decisions are made about balance. So, I’m trying a transparent approach. I made a Sheet in Google which everyone has put in a few of the key stats which I have to actively balance around to keep the game interesting, and I’ve captured and compared that data to create the deltas of stat values in the party (like the difference between PC AC scores), and explained how I intend to balance enemies around both the deltas and the outliers.
The intent is to get them talking internally about building up the weakest players and providing them additional context for how balancing is done in encounters. If they narrow the deltas without boosting the high scores too much, everyone benefits overall. If they want a more tank/dps/healer experience, they can ignore the deltas and they have a tool for them as much as for me to see if their DPS are falling behind.
This offloads some of the responsibility from me as the GM, but it also breeds at least consideration and likely cooperation from their fellow players. I’m sure this isn’t revolutionary, but my players have responded well so far.
So here is a tip straight from a public speaking class: Don’t ask “how did you like the smoothie?”. Instead, ask “so what did you think, did you like the apple juice added or was that too much sweetness?”
Same with rpgs. People aren’t just bad at taking feedback, we are also bad at giving it as a rule. So instead of the incredibly open ended “did you have fun” try something more pointed each session.
For example, if trying a new system, “what did you guys think about the dice pool instead of a d20?”
If you just fought a boss, “so did you guys think that combat was too long, or if not, what held your interest?”
If you are delving a dungeon, “how do you guys feel about the dungeon crawl? Too many doors and hallways?”
To which you’ll get such feedback as:
The juice watered it down too much.
I like that we do the math before the roll, instead of after.
It was long, but I liked how the villain delivered their monologue a bit more each turn rather than all at the start.
I’m kinda bored of it already. I hope there aren’t any more floors after this one.
Last session, we had a very-hard-to-find secret door. The rest of the dungeon was more or less gated behind that door. I wound up giving the answer to the party in the form of a couple of much easier Arcana checks rather than letting them struggle and find it on their own.
I feel like that’s the sort of moment where it’s appropriate to ask, “What did you think of that specific decision?” It’s a load easier to talk about specific strategies than the broad “did you have fun?” question.
After I finished my first adventure as a GM introducing a group to D&D 3.5, I wrote up a Word doc (2-pager I think) asking for feedback about many different elements of the adventure. Only 1 of about 5-6 regular players filled it out and sent it back.
I haven’t really tried to canvas the group for feedback since, but this experience contributed to my personal rule not to require “homework” from players (which includes reading rulebooks and working on character sheets). Anything that my players would need to do to play the game, I’ll make room for it during the actual session.
I can only think of one session in my current 5e campaign where the general consensus was PLEASE NEVER AGAIN. We were getting some heading towards some magical Macguffin to stop a dude from unleashing elemental chaos and had just gotten off our extremely expensive rented airship (seriously, renting this thing cost us most of our money that we’d earned to this point at LEVEL 9 and no I’m not salty at all). Upon disembarking, we stumbled across a tree with a number of corpses hanging from its branches. Surprise, it’s a goddamn MURDER TREE with massive amounts of burst psychic damage that we barely managed to squeak by a win against. Then we made the mistake of letting our kenku warlock hold onto the significant amount of treasure from the bodies (we never got a single gold piece from him).
5e has a… variable relationship with economics. You guys could always try one of the homebrew catalog lists if you want more control over your spending:
https://www.kassoon.com/dnd/5e/magic-item-prices/
There’s a lot that I love and hate about 5e. It’s a WAY easier system to get into and keep track of shit than Pathfinder if you want to play generic fantasy, but it lacks a lot of the variety and customization that I crave. Most of the feats are crap and making it so you have to choose to either increase an ability score or get a feat is incredibly frustrating, particularly sense there are so few opportunities for it. My 5e DM isn’t great about getting us treasure, partially because we’re already too powerful from being a 7 person party (I don’t envy that for him) and partly because a lot of the recommended prices in 5e make no goddamn sense.
I think I’ve spotted the problem. Try not to think about economics in RPGs. It causes brain explosion.
“If something is bothering you, tell me. I wont compromise artistic vision or campaign function to make any changes to the things already in play, but likewise, I don’t take offense just because you didn’t like a decision I made.
However I will try to keep whatever you bring up in mind as we move forward. I view it as my responsibility as a ‘Good DM’ to create a session that my players ACTUALLY find both challenging and enjoyable, and to create opportunities for your characters to shine, as well as opportunities for you to shine as players.”
Honestly?
I don’t. If you’ve gotta ask – heh.
Rather, I try to make it so that the people I’m running for feel comfortable talking about anything. When people feel comfortable talking about anything, they’ll slip out more candid thoughts. Instead of jumping on them, just listen. I have pretty thick skin, and even if it’s not something I’ll change, knowing /why/ it didn’t work for them is often the most important thing.
As a GM, you have to be confident at all times, even if you’re having a rough day and are feeling like shite inside. You’re a parent, a mentor, just one of the group, and a friend all at once. It’s a lot to ask for an unpaid role, but I think that’s why I do it. That and I’m a tin-pot dictator who loves being in command, bahahaha! Hrmn, more seriously…
I notice a lot of the answers here talk about considering people at the table good friends, table culture – I don’t know if I believe in those things, even though I try to /act/ like a good friend. I always hope that’s how things’ll be, but – again, I’ve had plenty of experiences where someone would come, and use those to rebuff any claims of bad behaviour. ‘That just happens at the table! We’re all friends here!’ etc.
When I mentioned being confident, I think criticism is something that – can be important, but it can also be important to not /need/ or /take/ criticism. To be able to say, without any hesitation ‘hey, since Geoff is feeling uncertain about some peprsonal stuff and Lucy couldn’t make it, we’re gonna cancel today. I’ll run one-shots for the rest of you, and Geoff, Lucy, if you wanna just stay and relax today…’
That’s not true for every group, for every session, for every GM. I think a ‘universal solution’ for these can’t exist because those are all different. Like my take on tropes, maths, measuring things – I think a lot of the time you have to put aside the quest for perfect knowledge or the best response, and settle for setting a good example. I know that’s often frustrating to a lot of people who are drawn to GMing, but it’s what I do, and what I recommend.
It’s not bad training for public speaking either. Getting up in front of a classroom or a conference is a lot easier after you’ve sat behind the screen for a while.
That’s the hardest part of talking gaming in a forum like this. Weirdly though, it makes actual play series invaluable. Suddenly we have common ground to talk about GMing techniques (assuming everyone has spent 500 hours watching the same show.)