Everyone around the table playing Dungeons & Dragons wants to have fun! But, we’re all aware that “fun” is different for different players. The good thing is that one session (and one campaign) has multiple encounters that can play to those interests.

D&D and other TTRPGs have been around long enough for people to discuss these different players, breaking them down into types.

Why analyze your players?

But, as Dungeon Masters, why would we analyze players to begin with? Isn’t it strange to pigeonhole the people around our table, sometimes friends but sometimes strangers? Why do we need to assign types to these people?

Well, the good news is that you don’t have to use this tool. The idea of “types” of players is an optional Dungeon Mastering tool that some find helpful! For me, this tool helps me organize the information I already know about my player group in a way that I can prepare engaging challenges for them.

It’s always helpful to pay attention to what your players like to play outside of Dungeons & Dragons. What sort of video games, board games, movies, books, et cetera do your players like? What stories do they enjoy, what parts of those stories do they end up talking about? (All your players might love Final Fantasy XV, but for very different reasons!)

Just asking your players these things is a nice direct way to do this, especially if they’re experienced D&D players. They might tell you what kind of campaigns or scenarios they’ve enjoyed before (or ones they’ve disliked, which is also helpful information). This is great conversation material for a session zero situation!

Taking note of your players, how they react during your game, what makes them light up and lean forward… all that gives you a lot of information you can use to inform your campaign design.

I’ve only played with a couple different groups, so I don’t have wide pool of experience in this regard. But, I’ve found some of these resources helpful starting out as a Dungeon Master and moving forward.

Sources that I’ve found helpful:

“DM Notes: Profiling”

The user behind meditation-of-my-fists.tumblr.com wrote up their system for engaging their players. In a “Players Binder,” “everyone has a page (or sometimes two) about what interests them, what captures their attention and other insights about them. Each aspect is gathered as you play with them, and requires you to take notice WHEN they engage and WHEN THEY DO NOT engage.” They have sections that are called Desire, Questions, Needs, Notices, Faults, Fixes, and Twists. As you work to fill out these sections, you can put into words the player’s unique perspective on the game, and how you can engage them in different situations during a session.

This system seems particularly helpful when you’re running a long campaign or have a consistent player group, since that gives you ample material to fill in the player profile.

“Player Types (from Robin D. Laws)”

This site pulls a section from Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering that describes six types of players (and throws a seventh in there for coverage). You’ll probably see these types thrown around in other TTRPG conversation, they’ve been used to describe players fairly frequently: the Power Gamer, the Butt-Kicker, the Tactician, the Specialist, the Method Actor, the Storyteller, and the Casual Gamer.

Each of these types have their own preferences and potential for causing friction in a group. I think it’s helpful to think of most players as a combination of two types, especially since their playstyle might change as they become more experienced or play in different groups.

I think it’s at least useful to carry this information around in your head and investigate how your players adhere to (or challenge) these different archetypes. People are complicated, so you might have trouble pinning a player down to just one type, hence my recommendation that you try to find the two types that fit best.

One of the most helpful parts of this source is parts at the end of each type description, as they give general advice on engaging the type of player described.

“Different Kinds of Players, Running the Game #11”

This video is part of Matt Colville’s Running the Game series. Part of it addresses the types of players from the previous source, part of the video is Matt’s two player types, and part is advice about engaging your players.

One of the important points of this source is that sometimes a group just isn’t going to work out, and that’s okay, and it’s not your fault as a DM. “Sometimes the book you want to write isn’t the book they want to read,” and that’s not anyone’s fault. Some groups just aren’t compatible.

Matt Colville separates players into two different types: Players and Audience Members. Players are the ones who talk about and think about the campaign outside of sessions, they have goals and work to accomplish them during sessions. Audience Members are the ones who will take their turn but otherwise enjoy sitting back and watching events play out around them. As long as everyone’s having fun (and you have at least some Players in your group), you’ll be fine—you don’t have to worry about getting the Audience Members to engage at a higher level than they’re comfortable with.

As long as everyone is having fun, you’re in the clear.

What do you think? Do you have your own list of player types? Other sources you’ve found helpful?