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Asking for Player Feedback, Splitting the Party Doesn't Have to Ruin Fun - Interviewed by Shrike DND
33K views
Oct 3, 2022
This is a clip from my appearance on Shrike DND's Ask a DM series. Subscribe to Shrike's channel! Watch or listen to the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GB0hmKsA2o --------- 🎈 Shop our loot on Redbubble: flutesloot.redbubble.com 🎈 Cast Friendship on Flutes Loot: 👔Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/flutesloot 📱Twitter: https://twitter.com/Flutes_Loot 📘Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flutesloot 📸Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flutesloot 📌Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/flutesloot 👀Read more articles: https://www.flutesloot.com?utm_source=youtube Affiliate Links (a portion of sales provide gold to our coffers)! 💰 • 📔Players Handbook (D&D 5e): https://amzn.to/2PAeJW7 • 😈Monster Manual (D&D 5e): https://amzn.to/2PWuLJI • 👑Dungeon Master's Guide (D&D 5e): https://amzn.to/3fFnIzY • 🎁D&D 5e Rules Expansion Gift Set: https://amzn.to/3zPWQ6P
View Video Transcript
0:00
What questions should I ask my players so I can get feedback
0:03
And I think the premise for this question was, and what I've had before as well
0:08
if you just ask your players, oh, how did you find that session? You usually don't get much good feedback
0:15
It's usually like, yeah, it was good. And that's it. So what sort of questions could you ask your players to get the correct answers you want, I guess
0:26
Yeah, there's a two-parter to this. One is there's questions you ask the group as a group, and then there's questions you ask individuals
0:35
So if you were just looking for general feedback, which the question makes me think you are, and you're not looking to see if a specific player was zoning out for a reason that you can control or if it's their life or something like that, that's another thing
0:50
And so based on the question, I'm going to say you're just saying to the group, got any feedback
0:54
You could send it as an email or you could do it in the session or whatever
0:58
but I recommend premising your question and say something like hey so we've been doing this for a while
1:07
and I really want to put in the effort to make this game as fun
1:10
for you as possible and I'm willing to be a little bit vulnerable
1:14
and take some criticism or think of it as feedback whatever you want to call it and you say that to the group
1:20
first so you say I'm really wanting to make this game better for you
1:24
so anything that comes to mind And then you say, are there any things that I've been doing that you think I could streamline or that you'd like to see more of
1:33
That's kind of the thing is like have them latch on to something that happened in your game that they can say just more of that or less of that
1:41
But then you might also get players who say, I want less shopping. And people say, wait, no, but I love shopping
1:47
And so there's like a conflict. And then you're like, but then you identify it, right? You see that there's a tension in different play styles
1:54
And that's good feedback, too. right? Because then maybe you can help someone with shopping off the group game, maybe, or
2:02
something, you know, you can find different solutions. But I recommend premising your
2:06
question to let them know what kind of feedback you're looking for. And I just give an example
2:10
you could say it a lot of different ways based on what you need And then just ask them something that they don have to like don ask me open ended i guess i what is what i saying like if you say what something in our sessions that you
2:23
really liked and you want to see more of or what's like a plot hook that you're like really latched
2:28
on to and you're eager to see how that goes because then it's like oh there's like an answer
2:32
that they can give that is it's still open-ended yes it's not like yes or no but they can latch
2:37
on to something specific they don't you don't say oh what sort of dm style do you want me to adapt
2:41
because then it requires them to like have studied DMing styles and they're like, what? No
2:46
And if they're new players, they don't even know what to ask for. They're just like, oh, I enjoyed that combat against that giant
2:53
That really was scary and we really came together. There's a lot of different ways you could go about it
3:01
That's how I like to get feedback. If I'm asking the group, a whole different question
3:05
if you're going like individually or whatever. yeah I think that I think they meant the group just so they can improve um and you pretty much
3:16
explained what my main point was going to be but better than I would have um so I I usually will
3:22
ask um for each player to tell me say the last five sessions what's been one thing that's happened
3:29
that has been your favorite and then one thing that happened that has been your least favorite
3:34
part of playing in the games um and i i learned this because i used to do the open-ended thing
3:40
and it sort of took me a while to realize that players generally aren't as into dnd as dms
3:46
i think i'm maybe getting some hate backlash on saying that but because there's going to be players
3:54
out there that love dnd but i even before i did any youtube stuff as a dm i was consuming loads
4:01
of YouTube content to try and become a better DM, to learn a lot about this, to do this and that
4:06
I don't think players do that very often. I think they generally just want to turn up, have fun
4:11
They might look at some, you know, how to play Vogue type of videos
4:17
So if you ask them, what do you like about the session
4:22
What do you like about my DMing as a whole? They might not really understand the fact
4:28
that you have to do pacing and spotlight and stuff like that So they not going to be like oh I really like the way that you put the spotlight on in each of us they they won understand that so you really need to put it down to what actually happens in the session like you said so i really like this part
4:45
when this happens and then you as the dm with more knowledge you can then be like oh okay so
4:52
what they're actually meaning there is they like to be challenged or what they're actually saying
4:57
there is they they like role play that has consequences and so then you can extrapolate
5:04
that and then make yourself a better dm i hope i explained that better i felt felt like i sort of
5:08
started waffling there i think there's one other thing i want to say that's uh a twist on the
5:17
question you don't always have to ask a question you could put something in your session where you
5:23
say i'm gonna just put this npc in front of them and see and start a timer and see how long they
5:28
role play with them and based on how much they role play that might be very telling to you or
5:33
how much they try to role play that might be very telling to you what kind of style they have or what
5:39
they enjoy or you could try doing a random encounter if you haven't tried that to see if
5:43
they even care if it's not based on the story and if they don't care because they're like it's just
5:48
some random encounter there's nothing to do with stories just some wolves and they're just like can
5:52
we just hurry through this and they don't really care they kind of start looking at their phones then you know probably only do story-based stuff or stuff that hooks them in and they don't just
5:59
want like combat puzzles you know there's a lot of different things you can do to kind of farm feedback from how they behave as well that can also be part of it if you're very deliberate
6:08
about it yeah i think that's a really good point actually not even asking questions i think uh if
6:14
you pay attention to body language and what players are doing when it's when the spotlight's not on
6:19
them that can also be be a park so i've tried it in the past i think there's actually a question
6:25
related to this later on um but i've tried it late uh in the past where when the party splits
6:31
actually splitting the players i.e so some be like okay don't you're not coming next week you're
6:39
coming a week after and you're coming next week and i found that actually if you do get your
6:44
pacing right you do get your spotlight right it still interesting for the people that aren there because they now watching a story that hopefully is interesting if you if you made it correct um and i think that another lesson i learned so
6:59
just watch the table and watch the body language and if say the spotlight is on one of your
7:03
characters on one of your players and three of the other ones are all on their phone then this
7:09
probably isn't a very interesting scene so maybe change it up a bit maybe do something else and
7:15
you can tell quite a lot just by how other people at the table are reacting to to bits and bobs so
7:20
that's a point as well along with that i know i'm getting a little off topic now but um when you
7:25
split the party some players actually enjoy having other players kind of like lead let's say so i'm
7:32
usually like a big talker in my groups and some people don't want to talk as much and they appreciate
7:36
that i kind of handle some of like the role play until there's like a role play that they really
7:41
like and they can jump into and so that's another thing is sometimes it's almost like you've split
7:47
the party even when you haven't because some players are just kind of like observing what
7:50
the other players are doing and they enjoy it and I've asked those players all the time like hey
7:54
you're pretty quiet tonight and they're like oh I had a blast and I'm like okay but you were just
7:58
observing most of the time so it's almost like you did split the party and so there's different
8:03
play styles and some people really don't mind watching and they're enjoying what other people are doing what other people only enjoy if they like have something to do with what's happening
8:10
it's kind of interesting yeah definitely i think that's a really good point actually because that
8:15
i think that happens more than you'd think that people are just happy to be there for the ride
8:19
and not be center of attention all the time um there's quite a few players i've had in fact i'd
8:26
say it's probably around about 50 50 for people that like to be in the spotlight and people that
8:30
like to be for the ride or um lift others up that's another thing as well there's some players
8:36
at what they actually enjoy and get the most satisfaction from is teeing up another character, another player's character
8:44
to do something awesome, which they're the best players because they're helping your story without you having to do as much
8:53
So, yeah, there's lots of different types of players. And just, yeah, keep that in mind and watch them
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