Last month, I had the chance to be on an episode of the Gnomecast with Phil and Ang, where we talked about why players might “turtle up” during a game and what you, as a GM, can do about it. During the discussion, I came to the conclusion that most, if not all, of the reasons someone might turtle comes down to a lack of trust – either in themselves and their abilities or (just as likely, if not more so) in the person running the game.

The memes of the megalomaniacal dungeon master viciously plotting ways to torture their players are real and funny, but they’re not really the norm when it comes to actual game tables. The players versus GM mindset is an older play style that’s fallen out of fashion, and instead, we all work together to build our campaigns.

And trust is a major component of that play style, too. So how do we – as GMs – earn our players’ trust, and more importantly, how can we make sure we keep it? Trust, after all, is a valuable commodity (and yes, I realize the problems implicit in referring to it as a “commodity”…money is the root of all evil, late-stage capitalistic hellscape, yada yada). It’s probably our most precious resource, not just in roleplaying games but also in all of our relationships.

It’s so important, that I thought it deserved a series of articles on Gnome Stew where we could dig deeper into what it takes to earn the trust of your table and what you should do with it once you have it.

Now, I’m not a therapist, and this series (probably) won’t help you fix that fight you just had with your significant other (if it does, though, let me know), but I do know a thing or two about learning how to vibe with the people at my game table, and I hope some of those lessons can be helpful to you too, so let’s dive in.

IT’S ALL ABOUT SOUL LISTENING

With all due respect, to the great profit Billy Joel, when it comes to building trust at your table, the first step is always learning how to listen.

Your players are going to tell you a lot of things – about their characters, about their day at work, about their kids or their pets, about how they’re feeling today – and not all of those things are going to be told to you directly or even spoken out loud. So, for those of us out there who (like me) must sometimes be beaten over the head before we notice subtle cues, what are the things we need to look for in order to improve our table listening skills?

BACKSTORIES

First, start with their character’s backstories. These are often wishlists full of clues as to the kind of stories they want to tell with you.

• Orphaned rogue who vowed vengeance? They’re probably looking for a story with a little grit and maybe (just maybe) a chance to unharden their heart and learn to forgive.
• A noble knight on a quest to save the king’s daughter? They’re looking to tell a traditional adventure with a hint of fairy tale whimsy seasoned to taste and maybe a dash of temptation to fall to the dark side for flavor.
• Archeologist wizard in search of ancient magics? They want to uncover deep history and learn ALL about the lore of your world. (Treasure this player, and do not let them leave your group.)

Even the lack of a backstory or a backstory that’s just a few tags cobbled together in a loose sort of list will give you an insight into what your player wants. Maybe their lack of backstory means they’re unsure of their character’s place in the world, or maybe it means they want a game that’s not so tied down to the past, and they’re looking to build their story as they go.

OR it could just mean they’re a busy person with other things going on in their life, and they didn’t have time to do any more than a short list of character tropes. That doesn’t mean they’re not eager to play – but it is something you need to listen to and incorporate into how you run your game.

And while we’re on the subject of that busy player? Maybe offer to hang onto their character sheet so they don’t have to keep track of it between sessions. Maybe make contingencies for the fact that they’ll probably miss more sessions than they’ll attend. Maybe talk to them about joining you for one-off board games instead of an on-going campaign. Your mileage will vary based on the situation, but a little effort on your part could go a long way towards making not just the busy player but everyone else at your table feel seen and heard.

CHARACTER BUILDS

Next on the list is how they build their character. If backstories tell you what kind of stories they want to play in, their builds tell you how they want to play out those stories.

What skills do they pick? What powers and spells? These are more than just mechanics you have to account for when prepping your encounters. These are signposts, pointing you at the kinds of problems they want to solve in the course of your game.

Skill lists are easy wins here – high diplomacy? They wanna talk their way out of or into situations. High stealth? Plan for at least one heist. But if you’re running a crunchy system like Pathfinder 2E, look at their class feature choices and feat selections. The monk that’s taken the power to slip out of a flanked position when attacked? They’re begging you to flank them because they’ll feel cool as hell when that mechanic triggers.

Are your players meticulously plotting out their level-up choices three or four levels in advance? They’re hungry to engage with that granola-like system crunch.

On the other hand, some players couldn’t care less about planning ahead. They’d rather just pick the powers that sound cool or the ones with the most flavor (as opposed to the ones that tip the math in their favor). Don’t ignore these blissful buckaroos blindly bounding toward that cliff like the Tarot’s own fool.

If you’re non-planners are stoked about a certain mechanic choice, reward their excitement by making sure it appears in the game. It’ll be a fun challenge for you to work it in, and it’ll be the highlight of their session when their narrative flavor choice pays off big.

BODY LANGUAGE

This is likely the trickiest listening skill to learn, because the nuances of body language can be so varied and hard for a layman like myself to describe, but also because so many games are online now-a-days. That doesn’t mean, however, that learning to read your players body language isn’t an important skill to at least practice, even if we don’t master it.

Obviously, there are the big moves like crossed arms, frowns, and downcast eyes. These can mean your players are disengaging with the current story for one reason or another.

Dice-stacking, phone-checking, and general fidgeting are other classic signs of boredom, but they could just as likely be the mild stimulation a person needs to engage. (Personally, I have two modes when I’m in the player seat – meticulous note taking or incessant doodling. If my hands aren’t working, my ears aren’t listening.)

Of course, there are the subtle clues, too – nodding along with descriptions, leaning in when the action gets intense, lots of eye contact, or even anxious nail biting. These smaller gestures can mean a lot of different things, and I can’t tell you exactly what because I don’t know the folks at your table.

You do, though, and if you pay attention, you’ll start to get it.

As for the online arena, you’re limited by your technology, but if you start paying attention, you’ll begin to pick up on things like vocal inflection, tone of voice, and even the speed at which they reply to comments. If all else fails, you can check in every hour or so to take the table’s temperature.

WHEN THEY KNOW YOU HEAR THEM

When you start listening to your players, they’re going to take notice. They’ll know that when they speak up, you hear them, because you hear them even when they don’t speak up.

That will give them the confidence they need to engage with your story in new and exciting ways. Ways you might not have anticipated but ways that I promise will be rewarding AF.

But listening is just the first step. Once you’ve earned their trust, you’ve got to keep it, and in the next article in this series, we’ll look at ways you can maintain the trustworthy relationship you’ve created by sticking to your promises as a GM (the explicit ones you’ve stated and the implicit ones you didn’t say out loud).

Until then, hit us up in the comments and let us know about a time when you realized you really trusted your GM (or if you’re a forever GM, a time when you knew your players really trusted you).

The fates are conspiring against me, working in the background to tempt my inner dice goblin to indulge his baser instincts. How else would you explain the plethora of shiny math rock kickstarters, fundraisers, videos, and freakin’ cool STL files that have made their way across my feeds as of late? Surely it can’t be some cold, unfeeling computer algorithm. No, it must be fate, and it must be my destiny to find a way to master all of these funky weird dice.

Seriously, though, the last few months, I’ve been thinking about dice a lot. Specifically weird dice. It all started back at the end of 2023, when my husband gave me this awesome dice spinner for Christmas.

It’s beautiful. It’s fun. But most important – it’s weird, and I love weird. So I started thinking about how I could use this weird artifact for more than simply generating a random number. A die (or dice depending on how you’re counting it) so unique deserves a special place at the table, in my opinion. Using it for every random guard’s sword swing or royal vizier’s bluff check would lessen the impact.

This train of thought took me to a lot of offbeat places I didn’t expect – like spending a week musing over the act of building a Cortex system dice pool and how just choosing the stats you’re going to roll with in that game becomes a kind of role play experience on it’s own – but ultimately it coalesced into philosophizing about the purpose of dice.

Because if we really dig into the raison d’etre of the math rocks it becomes clear that they’re not just randomizers. They are tension-makers. Suspense-creators. Engines of uncertainty.

That’s how all the systems tell us to use dice, isn’t it? When you don’t know what will happen, when you’re playing to find out, when success is uncertain – roll the dice.

Dice are the unknown. They’re luck. They’re – dare I tempt it by saying – fate.

Incarnate.

And fate can be fickle.

When we’re rolling dice, we’re taking a chance, and chances are dramatic. Chance creates tension, and when I understood this, I knew how to best use not just my dice spinner, but a bunch of different kinds of dice in weird and unique ways.

Below, you’ll find five weird ways to up the tension at your table using dice. I’ve collected these ideas and arranged from least to most weird. I’ve also tried to include links to the inspiration for the methods when I could provide them.

HIGH – LOW – EVEN – ODD

Credit for this one goes to my old college roommate (thanks, Jeremy!). I don’t know if he came up with it first, but he’s the first GM I’d ever seen use it.

The process is simple, take a D20 (or whatever die your system uses) and point at a player (preferably the one attempting to do the risky action that required a die roll) and say, “High, low, even, or odd.”

Let them call it. Roll the die. If they managed to call the roll, the action goes in their favor.

Essentially, it’s a coin flip and it works well in situations where pure luck determines the outcome of an action. But this works better than a coin flip because the player feels like they have more agency. Not much, but four options are better than two even if the math works out the same. Plus, it plays into dice superstitions such as “I never roll high” or “I really don’t want to ‘waste’ a twenty on this.”

If you really want to play with their emotions, grab a D20 from their dice jail and call for a high-low-even-odd roll. (This is the most evil version of this roll, and is only recommended for GMs who are willing to tempt every god of fortune at one time.)

ROLL UNDER A CUP

Inspired by Liar’s Dice, Yahtzee, but mostly this video on the Quinns Quest Patreon. (It’s a fun video and I highly recommend watching it if you can.)

Imagine this: the rogue has split off from the party to scout the villain’s keep. They’re sneaking through darkened hallways and creeping around corners, when they run into a guard patrol. You call for a stealth roll, BUT you tell them to roll under a cup (an opaque cup. Otherwise this doesn’t work) and tell them not to look at it until you say so.

Then you cut back to the rest of the party. You run a scene. Maybe even an encounter. All the while, the rogue’s player is staring at the cup. Wondering if they’ve been spotted.

When I heard Quinn describe this method, I immediately ran out and bought a set of special little bowls for my home game. I can not wait to watch my players squirm under the tension of not knowing if they succeeded or not.

And yes, you could just roll in secret, but then the answer is an ephemeral result in your brain, not a tangible die sitting just out of reach.   

ADD SOME DESPAIR (Dice)

Adapted from Edge of the Empire/Genesys.

Lots of games have their own custom dice – like Edge of the Empire’s Task dice or Fate’s Fudge dice. You can easily steal the special dice and import them into your game to add a little spice along with some nuance.

When a character goes to hack a computer system, toss them an Edge of the Empire difficulty die to roll along with their D20 and interpret the resulting narrative complications as you would if you were running that system. Or have them roll a Fudge die. On a minus they set off the alarms, on a blank they succeed with a “yes but,” on a plus they get extra information.

Sure, you can bake these gradients of success into a normal D20 roll based on how far below or above the target number they roll, but adding a special die points a huge ass spotlight on the action. It adds another layer of importance to the action and dials up the tension along the way.

ROULETTE DICE COUNTDOWN

Inspired by my Christmas present.

I timed it, and with a really good flick my roulette die will spin for about one and a half minutes, but that’s just an estimate. I’m not certain exactly how long it will spin. And what does uncertainty create? That’s right. Tension.

So, imagine this: you set up a scenario where your players have a limited amount of time to make decisions. Let’s say the jackbooted troops of the evil empire are hunting them through back alleys, trying to catch them before they reach their hideout. The group has to either act together or separately, but they only have until the spinner stops to tell you their actions. You set the stakes and give them the parameters of the situation, and then you start the spinner spinning.

“You have until this stops spinning to make your actions. The result on the die will represent the evil empire’s perception check to find you. Go!”

Will the empire succeed? Who knows! You don’t. Your players definitely don’t! All you know is that there is a limited amount of time to choose.

Now THAT’S dramatic.

SKILL-BASED DICE TOYS

Inspired by these incredibly awesome 3D prints.

These 3D prints turn standard dice rolls into actual real-life skill checks. They take the nail-biting challenge of those old tilt and spin puzzles where you try to navigate a ball bearing through a labyrinth without dropping it through a hole and combine them with either a D20 or a D6. The more dexterous you are at guiding the ball bearing through the maze, the higher your roll result.

Tons of fun on it’s own. Especially if you use it for something like disarming a trap or activating a complicated magical puzzle. But what if you added in a push your luck mechanic?

“The room’s ceiling is coming down and will crush you in three (real time) minutes. If you can ‘roll’ a 13 on this skill-based die, you can unlock the door and escape. But if you get a 17 you can stall out the mechanism completely and find the secret passage that will let you bypass the rest of the dungeon’s traps. If you get a 20…well something extra special will happen.”

These weird dice rolls can add spice to your sessions, drawing attention to pivotal rolls and heightening the tension to astronomical levels of excitement, but do remember to use them in moderation. After all, if every roll you call for has its own gimmick, they’ll lose their specialness real fast.     

I’m also still trying to find ways of adopting these methods for online play. The “roll under a cup” method can be replicated in the Foundry VTT by having your players make blind GM rolls and then you can reveal them in the UI when the timing is appropriate. Including Genesys or Fudge dice into the system could probably be done with a moderate amount of coding, depending on the VTT. Mailing your players care packages with the 3D printed skill dice could be an interesting way to add mystery to the session as well, but it of course has its own limitations.

Would you use weird dice like these in your games? How? Let us know in the comments.