Melody [00:00]
Welcome to the Game Master Certification Organization’s interview excerpt podcast series! Hi, I’m your host, Melody Rainelle. In the current episode, we are interviewing an artist named Benton Dinsmore. He is also a Game Master. We will be chatting with him about leadership in tabletop role-playing games. So Benton, to start us off, what do you think about verisimilitude?

Benton [00:28]
Verisimilitude? Yeah, I think verisimilitude is crucial. I cannot put enough emphasis on verisimilitude. It’s probably one of my biggest pet peeves when my players like interject modern jokes into the game, but, like, I kinda just stamp that down inside, cause I know, you know, it's supposed to be fun for them. But, yeah, for me that breaks that verisimilitude. So, I’m always trying to keep that, and make sure that the players feel like the world itself is real. And the reason I want to do that is because I want my players to actually emotionally invest in their characters, and the story I’m providing for their character. I feel like if you break that verisimilitude too much, it becomes a very slap-stick kind of game with no real stakes. You know, like, “Oh, my character died. Okay I’m gonna make a new one, no big deal.” Whereas if the players get emotionally involved with their own character, then when you start putting them into difficult situations, and you start giving them challenges to overcome, it may not actually be a difficult challenge, but if that verisimilitude is there, that simple task now becomes a huge hurdle for that player. Because they’re like, “My character knows that the princess’s daughter is gonna get married away if I don’t do this one thing, and I can’t do that if I save these other people…” So, like, you can really use that verisimilitude and use that emotional connection to make your players make really difficult choices out of the simplest actions.

Melody [02:17]
How do you handle your group?

Benton [02:20]
It is very difficult, I’m not gonna lie. You’ll probably notice like the phrase I say the most is: “Are you actually saying that?” Because I’ll let guys joke around for a while, but then it’s like: “Okay, I need to know if your character is actually saying this stuff.” Because I’m of the opinion that to maintain that verisimilitude, if you’re talking out loud, and you haven’t told me, the DM, that you want to like sidebar this conversation with your friends. You’re then talking out loud in front of an NPC. And they are going to react to what you say in real time. That gets a little challenging sometimes when guys are goofing around, cause you’ll, like, say things and then I’ll be like, “Okay, well this is how that guy reacts,” and you’re like, “No, I wouldn’t really say that.” And I think guys have been a lot better about understanding that that’s how I’m going to react. Just subconsciously guys have started being like “I’m just- I’m joking around.” Before I even have to ask. But, I mean I think it's always an evolving process like the group was very murder hobo-y, as we’re really focused on just fighting monsters which is what D&D is all about. And I think I’ve slowly started manipulating guys into: “Yes, you’re still fighting monsters but you’re fighting monsters towards a narrative goal at the same time.” Does that make sense?

Melody [03:46]
Sure! Thanks for sharing! What do you think about player agency in your games?

Benton [03:53]
I think player agency is important, I mean player agency is what the game is all about, and there are sometimes- So, I’m gonna come at this from the other direction, right? So there have been a few times where I have taken away a player’s agency, and I have felt absolutely sick for doing so. It is never my intention to rob a player of their agency because D&D or tabletop RPGs in general are a collaborative storytelling. Right, so I may have sat down and wrote down the notes of the story I want to tell, but the players are the ones that have to choose that they want to hear that story, and that story might change at any time. And I don’t think before my current concept of the persistent Dungeons and Dragons world. I don’t think that before that I was able to shift gears or handle it very well when my players would decide they wanted to hear a different story midstory, you know. I always had to finish- I had to finish the story I wrote and it's because I was world building too much in the beginning. I was writing- “This is a cool story and I want to tell this story.” But it's not really my story to tell, it's your story to listen to. And at any point as a player, you should have the agency to take your character and say, “You know what? This is cool, but I don’t care anything about this king or the princess, or the prince, or the kingdom at all. I want to go hear about that dragon racing they’re doing over there.” And, as a Dungeon Master, or as a Game Master, I should not feel personally attacked because you guys think something else might be cooler. That is the poisoning of the well of a DM. When you feel like: “The players hate my story so I failed.” It’s not the case, it's just there’s something else that came up, and that sounds cooler. If I was the DM that said: “Hey! Over the hill they’re doing dragon racing.” And the players all immediately went, “Wait, wait, wait, what? They’re racing dragons? We want to do that instead of whatever this is.” I’m the one that laid that seed. It’s on me to be like, “Okay, well, I mean, this story is now done. You guys aren’t gonna be able to complete the story I wrote for you, but now I’m gonna shift gears and now the story is going to all be about dragon racing. You know, now you guys are going to get into the competitive dragon racing scene. And you’re gonna have to travel around the world and compete in these races; but now different areas have different regulations and you gotta deal with the problem of the other teams that are trying to sabotage you, and stuff like that.” And, like, I had not thought of dragon racing before this interview so like this is now all on the fly, and I am now going, “I have to add dragon racing to my campaigns cause that sounds really freaking fun.” I think that that kind of excitement and that kind of off-the-cuff idea only comes if you give your players that player agency. To say, “Hey we’d rather go see what’s over behind that hill. What's behind that mountain? What's behind that curtain?” It’s why I don’t like the term “railroad”. You know, if you put  your players on tracks and you punish them if they go off the tracks, that's robbing them of that player agency, but it's also cheapening your story because your players don’t emotionally connect to it. If we were running a game and you guys all of a sudden decided you wanted to abandon the quest for the cup or whatever, and go dragon racing instead, I would let you, now. As the DM I am today, I would let you guys go dragon racing. And I would write a bunch of cool adventures, it would be a bunch of cool challenges, you’d do a couple of races. But then I would- I wouldn’t punish you, but if you guys tried to come back to the original quest that you were given, there would be consequences. Maybe somebody else completed the quest, maybe the bad guy completed that quest instead. And so now that kingdom is under a new rule. And, you know, there are gonna be consequences for your choices. But I think that too is only able if you give the player the agency to make “the wrong choices” even though there’s no wrong choice but like make the “other choice”.

Melody [08:41]
Okay! What do you do to help new players start playing?

Benton [08:45]
Well, I mean, so we had a new player join our game. Like that was his first D&D game. I also run a game on Sundays that has three new players. I think first and foremost, the key to new players is try not to treat them overly like a new player. I know some people always want to like jump in and like take their turns for them or tell them the best option for their turns. Or, you know, really handhold them and baby them through the process. I take personally a little bit more hands-off approach to the new players. I will take a real strong mentor role when they’re trying to create their character. When I explain the early rules of the game. And it's important to not like overload them with rules. I usually will say, you know, “Okay there’s a couple of different types of gameplay we’re going to do here. There’s gonna be, you know, the overland travel where you guys are gonna move around. There’s probably gonna be some combat sit pop up. We’ll go over that when that happens. And then there’s gonna be, you know, a lot of political intrigue where you can like talk to people, or really do anything you want dialogue-wise. You can talk to people in the party, and you can talk to people in towns. You just tell me who you want to try to find, or what you wanna do, and we’ll try to work out how that can be done. And I know that that for a lot of new players is really overwhelming early on because there’s nothing like Dungeons and Dragons or other tabletop RPGs. There really is never that much freedom in a game that most modern people play; board games, or video games - there’s not that much player agency. There’s not that much, like, just freedom to do anything. And, you know, sometimes you have to let your players make some bad choices. For instance, a new player, you know it was his first time playing D&D, and one of the players recommended that he light an arrow on fire and he shoot it into the tall dry grass to try to see the bad guys that were lurking there. And you know I asked him, I was like: “Are you sure that you wanna do this? You’re a nature guy and you know this probably isn’t the best idea.” And he was like, “Yeah, no I think I’m gonna do it.” And I was like, “Okay!” And he started a big wildfire. And I think that made him realize, “Okay, I have to really, like, think about my actions.” And so, like, I didn’t stop him from doing it and go: “Oh, no, no. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do that. That’s not a smart move, you’re gonna start a big fire, it’s gonna be bad for everybody.” I let him do that action because it's a teaching moment. You can use these things as teaching moments, like: “Okay, well you shot a fire arrow in the grass, grass lights on fire, this is now a big wildfire.” And, you know, he’s gonna remember that a lot more than me, you know, slapping him down every time he comes up with an idea. And he’s not necessarily gonna stop coming with ideas because I’m slapping him down, he’s gonna be hesitant to say ideas he’s afraid of the consequences to them. But then it's a matter of when you get into situations if you see that new player is clamming up. If you haven’t slapped him down a bunch, you can still coach what they wanna do out of them because it's not out of fear of, you know, retribution from the GM; it's fear of making the wrong choice. And so that's a lot easier to overcome than the player being afraid of you telling them to “sit down and shut up”. And so then you can start asking them like, “What do you want to do? What would your character want to do?” And, you know it can be as broad as they want, and then you just help them find the best way to do that. And so you’re slowly guiding them into learning how to play. If he wanted to find special arrows, he’s like, “I really want to find special arrows but I don’t know where to go.” And I was like, “Okay, well you can start looking around town for shops that might sell that or people that might sell that but that's “this” kind of chat because that's a “gather information” kind of chat. So, all you need to do is tell me, “I wanna look for this,” and I’ll tell you to make this kind of roll and he’s like, “Okay. Yeah, I can do that. I can roll that way.” Combat’s a little trickier. Combat’s a complex beast and I think the key thing is letting those new players have the same player agency as everybody else. One of the biggest things- one of the biggest problems I’ve seen for new players is more experienced players trying to take over the turn of the new player because they’re new and they don’t know what they’re doing. And that is a guaranteed way to get your new player to mentally check out any time you have a combat or anytime you do anything. And it doesn’t breed a good gaming environment for the players. We had somebody in our group and I’m not gonna namedrop but he was definitely doing that and the second he left, the second he was no longer in the group, our new player started making his own personal choices because he wasn’t being- his choices weren’t being dictated to him by that other player. And, in our last combat, he made hands-down some of the best player decisions I’ve seen with like his powers and his abilities, and his choices tactically. He was like, “Wait a minute, I have this power, does that stack with this other power I have? And if so can I use them both on this boss?” I was like: “Actually, yes. Those do stack. Yes, you can.” And, I think that if it were not for him being able to make that choice on his own… like if the other player had been around and was dictating his rolls, he would’ve already used those abilities three fights ago, three or four fights ago. And would not have had them ready to go in that clutch moment.


Melody [14:39]
Interesting! Do you use safety tools for any of your games?


Benton [14:45]
I haven’t. I’ve recently started adding in Session Zeros where we can talk about, “Okay, where are players’ limits?” Right. My wife ran a game and one of her players went a little dark. And she- like, it was a evil campaign to begin with, so it was already gonna be a little dark already, but like the player was making actions that made her as the DM uncomfortable. That’s really strange. That’s a really unique situation in my opinion. But, I do understand the purpose of them and I do see the value of them. Because there are definitely, you know, there are some things that do trigger people. I think it is important if you’re not gonna use a safety tool. Like if you’re not gonna have safety cards or something like that in your game, you definitely need to have a conversation with the players beforehand. You gotta sit down and be like “Okay, this is the kind of game I like to run. These are the types of situations that we might run into. If you’re not okay with this, or any- like, if there’s something you’re not okay with, please let me know!” Because you can get into some weird situations in games. One person might think it's funny, and it might really be unfunny for other- it might be really uncomfortable for some people. I find that that's- hmm… I feel like that happened a lot more when I was younger, when I was a younger DM, when I was a younger player. As I’ve gotten older, I like more realistic games. I like dark gritty stories, and so that's usually what I run. And I like putting my players in uncomfortable situations like I tell my players at the beginning: “I want to put you in an uncomfortable situation and that's supposed to be where you live. You’re supposed to overcome those uncomfortable situations.” But, at the same time, I’m not trying to have somebody, you know… like this is supposed to be fun. This is supposed to be a game. You’re not supposed to like traumatize your players with, you know, horrible topics. And I think it’s, it's hard to answer that question cause I think that safety tools are necessary for some games, but only if you don’t know the people. If you know the people, you know their limitations and you know I mean there’s obviously things that you would never do to a player. I would never have an NPC rape one of my characters. That's unacceptable as a DM. That’s not something you can do. That robs that player of agency, that you know, is a deeply traumatizing situation to begin with that’s exceptionally dark. I cannot, as a DM, foresee that situation ever happening in one of my games. Unless that player came to me and said, “I want this as part of my fantasy.” And even then, that would be a little uncomfortable for me but I, you know, I’d have to sit down and have a conversation with them and be like “Why? Why do you want this to happen? What’s leading you down this path?” And then I would really take it on a case by case basis but it would more likely be a default no. Unless it was like, “Look, this actually happened to me and I need to work through this kind of thing.” Then I might be like, “Okay, maybe...” But, I mean it's still like, there’s some hard no’s. Hard no’s. Rape, pedophilia, you know, that kind of stuff is hard no. Don’t do it. Just don’t do it. And aside from that, like, there’s not a whole lot of, like, deep cut triggers that you’re gonna run into. And the DMs that want to put that stuff in their game… I don’t if I’d recommend playing in their games, honestly. That doesn’t sound fun, this is supposed to be fun at the end of the day.

Melody [18:53]
Okay. How do you handle players that aren’t happy with their character?

Benton [18:58]
It- It depends on what they’re not happy about. I had a player… he was super unhappy with his character. He was telling me his character was unplayable. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t use it at all. And, I spent like three days talking with him, and I finally came to find out that he was just unhappy that he didn’t have high enough stat in one stat. And I was like- he was one shy. And I was like, “Is that all you want? That’s all you want is- Just take it; have one more point than that.” I don’t care. Like that doesn’t break my game terribly to give you one little thing, or if an item will fix it, give him the item. Like this should be fun for everybody at the table. That being said, don’t give them the whole world, you know, you don’t want to make it unfun for everybody else cause you made this guy uber powerful. But find the lowest benchmark for them to be happy with their character, and just give it to them. Sometimes that’s not possible. Sometimes they’re just not happy with the character. And if you can work it into your stories, just get them a new character. Like, “What kind of character do you want to run? What would you be happy with? Let’s find what works for you.” And then, make a really freaking cool way to have them to switch out. I had- my buddy he started up one character and he’s like- after week one, he was like “You know what, I’m not digging this character. This is the same character I always play, and I kind of wanted to play something different.” And I was like, “Oh, okay! Like what-” You know, he was like a fighter with a defense specialization and he’s like, “I really kind of wanted to play a rogue. I don’t think I’ve ever played a rogue, and I kind of want to.” And I was like “Okay, Cool! Let’s get you a new character made up, I think I can work you in. By the way, are you cool with me killing your current character?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t want to play him anymore.” And I was like, “Okay. You cool with an epic moment?” And he’s like, “Heck, yeah!” And I was like, “Okay so, we’re going to not tell everybody else at the table, but at the next boss fight I’m gonna kill your character.” And he was like, “Okay, cool.” And I just let him in on the gag. And so, when that boss fight came around, you know, he ran up to do his tanking thing, and, I rolled behind the screen, and I was like, “What’s your AC?” And he told me and I was like, “Yeah, no I hit you.” And I rolled damage, and I told him the damage and he’s like, “Yeah, I’m still up.” And I was like, “Well he’s got a second attack.” And that one, I rolled the dice and I completely fudged it. You know, I rolled it, I didn’t even look at it because I didn’t care. I was like, “Aww, man, he critted you.” And he’s like, “What?” And I was like, “Yeah, he critted you.” And so we rolled crit damage for this big ol’ boss, and it was enough to kill him outright. And I just took his character sheet straight away from him, and everybody at the table just like got super quiet. And they’re like, “What just happened?” And he played it up a little bit like he was upset with it and frustrated with it, cause he didn’t want to, like, make it unfun for everybody else, but he really hated that character. And then, everybody got really gung-ho about killing this bad guy and I made that bad guy run away. Like, “He’s out of here! Bye!” And they were then hellbent on avenging my buddy and he was able to bring in his new rogue to the party as the brother of this guy that had been killed and was able to fit right back into the story. And, you know everybody had a great time.

Melody [22:41]
That’s pretty cool! Sounds like it was quite the session. Are there any practices you think should be standard for Game Masters?

Benton [22:50]
For all GMs? Hmm. I don’t think there should- like, I think there’s universal rules. Don’t, you know, don’t delve into the dark topics we talked about earlier tonight. Like, don’t do that. But other than that, like, I think part of what makes this game so unique is every DM comes at the task of being a DM, with their own perspective, their own personal experiences, and their own goals. Like, you might have a different goal than me in how you want to tell a story or why you want to tell a story. And, putting restrictions on a DM by saying, “Okay this is the standard list of everything that a DM should do.” Like, that takes away your agency as a storyteller to do the best job you can. Sure, we’re gonna have a couple of bad GMs. You know, we’re gonna have the GMs that just want to kill the players. But honestly, without them, we wouldn’t appreciate the good GMs as much as we do. So, I don’t think there should be any.

Melody [24:03]
Alright! Thank you so much. We look forward to chatting with you in our next podcast episode. To our listeners, please see at the podcast description for details on how you can connect with Benton Dinsmore. In our next podcast episode, we will be talking about the categories of judiciary, guidance, and analysis. Including the handling of challenges and mistakes, and improving as a Game Master. So, stay tuned! Follow us to receive notifications when new podcasts are released. For more podcasts and information check out our website: https://www.gamemastercertification.org/. If you liked what you’ve heard in this episode, please share it! Thank you for listening.