You’ve built a character that has interesting party interactions. You spend your gaming sessions actively engaged and supporting your friends’ goals. The only piece missing from your arsenal of fundamental player skills is what to do between sessions.
This is part 3 in my series about the fundamental skills every D&D player can focus on improving. You can read the rest of the series here:
These posts are targeted at players rather than DMs, but I think the concepts are useful to anyone.
The tips are meant for regular players who want to improve their game. None of these ideas or recommendations require innate skills, methodical practice, or particular styles of play. It’s just a collection of things I wish someone would have told me when I was new to the game.
Amplify the little things
We’re all amazed by the depth of the characters in shows like Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, Broadswords, or any of the amazing actual play D&D content available right now. But identifying character beats and promising story directions on the fly is an advanced improv skill that requires lots of deliberate practice.
The good news is that we don’t need this to have awesome characters.
Instead, when you finish a session, review all of the little interactions and story beats that came up. Since you’re not identifying and amplifying these moments in real time, they’ll probably be small and seemingly insignificant. But that’s OK, we’re going to fix that. Press yourself to list at least one story seed you had with each member in the party. Here’s an example of what you might write down:
In the moment, each of these probably came off as pragmatic, tactical decisions that you – as players – made to increase your chance of winning. But these player decisions can be expanded into character bonds if we don’t let them fall through the cracks.
Once you’ve written down all the seeds you can think of, pick a few that seem promising. Then, jot down some quick notes about how you’re going to build on them in the future.
These notes don’t need to be specific. You’re not entirely sure when they might come up. It’s better to make them applicable to many situations. Maybe you can mention something when you’re on watch together. Or maybe in the next fight you make a point of guarding Mory.
Whatever you end up doing, make sure you explicitly reference the story seed that you’re building off of. That’s what transforms a string of tactical decisions into character building arcs. It adds consequences to the decisions people make. And the more you call things out explicitly, the more other players will start to do the same.
This might not be quite as fluid as what expert actors can pull off in real time, but building on things with 1 session of lag is still going to create deep relationships. And the more you do it, the faster you’ll get at identifying and amplifying these seeds.
As I mentioned in the post about what to do at the table, players are just as responsible as the DM for building a great game. So immediately after a session, take a moment to check in on how things went.
Did you enjoy the session? Did everyone else? If anyone seemed frustrated, or bored, can you figure out why? Ask yourself these questions. Maybe even ask the other players directly if it seems like something went wrong and you’re not sure why.
After asking these questions, think about what you can do to improve on the next game. Maybe you decided to rush into battle at a crucial moment of planning and the it didn’t play as funny as you expected it to. Next time you can give some warning before you rush in. Or maybe a party member spent a long time negotiating with an NPC and didn’t get much out of it. Next time you’ll back them up to give advantage and try to crack a few jokes to make it more exciting for everyone watching.
When you built your character, you tried to match the tone and play style of the campaign. You focused on adding details that would support fun party interactions. But all that prep work you did was just a guess of what would work. Between sessions is your chance to fiddle with the details and refine your character concept to maximize everyone’s fun.
When you do this reflection and refinement, it’s best to come up with adjustments that work in character. But if some aspect of your character is clearly rubbing others the wrong way and hurting the fun of the table, don’t be afraid to just let it drop.
As a DM, I can tell you that no scene kills forward momentum as reliably as the 30 minute planning-in-circles session that players do before a big conflict. So if you know one of these kinds of scenes is incoming, head it off at the pass.
Start a group chat with your party and do some planning in the time between sessions. You may not be able to figure out every detail, but you should at least identify:
Understanding these pieces of information ahead of time will help focus your interactions at the table.
As a bonus, when you do your planning in the group chat, the DM gets to watch. They have a sense for what you want to try and where the party is confused. This lets them prepare some extra material to help propel you forwards.
We talk a lot about how amazing campaigns are personalized to the players. But it shouldn’t be a one way street. Great characters evolve as a result of events within the campaign. This evolution makes your character deep and nuanced.
We’re all able to recognize big, formative events. A party member dies. We fail a mission and the town is destroyed. We know they should have some impact on our character’s personality.
The key is figuring out what the right evolution is. Just like player interactions, identifying the right character growth and acting on it in real time is an advanced skill. But we can get most of the value by sitting down after the session and thinking for a bit.
Our goal is to create interesting interactions with other party members and connect our character more deeply to the campaign setting. To achieve both of these goals, the growth will probably need to be positive. If you’re like me and you like dark, gritty characters with tragic world views, this can be tough to hear. But the truth is you need to be playing with pretty experienced role players to pull off a character that keeps pulling away and getting sulky. Otherwise, you’re just going to find yourself feeling detached, wondering why your character is even sticking with this party.
So we want positive growth that creates interesting interactions and connects you more deeply to the world. This could look like a lot of things, but there are a few concrete options you can take.
Adopt the goal of another party member, but for different reasons. This is a great trick for interesting interactions. Because you have the same goal, you’ll have reasons to work together and support each other. But because you have different reasons, there’s lots of potential for interesting dialogue or conflicting methodology. Your paladin wants to find the Philosopher’s Stone to save her dying teacher. You want to find it to get rich. Looking for the stone together will bring you closer, giving you chances to evolve your relationship. But the different motivations will create misaligned priorities and values that spark off each other without requiring direct conflict.
Adopt a goal about another party member. These kinds of goals basically force you to have more interactions with your party. Trying to change another party member, or protect them, or whatever other goal you set will create a dynamic between you two that you can play off of.
As a caveat, these goals require a bit of care. You don’t want to pick something that has your character bearing own on the other party member all the time. The easiest way to avoid this is to pick a goal that doesn’t have to be acted on all the time. Run it by the other player to make sure they like it. And for whatever reason, if it’s not fun at the table, just let it go.
Start caring about something that others dismiss. What’s something that doesn’t have a champion in the world? Maybe it’s a town that’s down on its luck and forgotten by the government. Or a young street urchin who gets on everyone’s nerves but is trying to be better. Or maybe no one realizes how awesome squirrels are. When you pick something that no one else in the world is fighting for, you’ll naturally start to become protective and invested in it. If you don’t, no one will!
Make the campaign goal your personal goal. Perhaps this one is obvious, but if you feel like something has happened that should cause your character to change, it’s always a safe bet to think of a way it makes you care more about the campaign mission. Sure, you’ve already done some work to justify how the campaign is helping your character achieve their goals. But if they care about it on a personal level, things are much more engaging.
Most sessions start with a quick recap of relevant details from the last session. It’s a great way to get everyone warmed up and thinking about the world again. But we want these sessions to be brief. The best way to do this is to make sure you already have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. Then the recaps can be a highlight reel to get everyone on the same page, rather than a 30 minute exposition to fill in all your questions. Spend 10-15 minutes right before a session looking over your notes from last time to make sure you have the major events in your mind.
You should also have been taking some notes on the other players. Did they have any big exciting moments? Any major let downs? You’re much more likely to forget these details than the factual events, so make sure to review them as well. Your fellow players will appreciate when you take a moment in the recap to remind them of that awesome thing they did. And if they had a bad time last session, now you know to give them a little extra spotlight this time around.
In addition to a quick review of your notes before each session, every month or so you should take some time to read through your notes in more detail, going further back in time. You want to be proactive at the table. If you have a good sense of past NPCs, locations, and plot points, you’ll be much better at making connections and forming your own plans.
During the game, our focus is on supporting our friends and making sure the story keeps a fun, exciting pace. As you become more skilled, you can do more real-time character and relationship development. But in the meantime, you don’t have to be an expert role player to have deep, emotionally resonant campaigns.
Use your time in between sessions to identify moments with other characters that you missed in the heat of the moment. Make a plan for expanding on those moments in the next session. Try to list at least one moment that you could expand on for each character.
Take a moment to check in on how the campaign is going. Is there anything you could do to improve everyone’s fun?
Think about the direction your character is growing. Are they moving in a direction that will create more interesting interactions or connect them more to the campaign?
Make sure you’re reviewing your notes and coming to each session ready to hit the ground running.
Overall, your time between games is when you check in on the assumptions you made during character building and at the table. Tweak them. Throw them out. Build on them. Like a startup in Sillicon Valley, keep responding to the feedback you get while playing the game. Always try to take at least one step to make things a little better the next week.
