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My Dad used to be a DM. Later on when he had me, as many parents do he would tell me bedtime stories. But these weren't out of a book - these were 'Possumcat stories', set in a world where me, my little sister, and a creature named Sam the Possumcat were the main characters improvising our way through a series of oneshots that wove a greater canon over the years. Each 'Possumcat story', Dad would set up an adventure premise, tell part of the story, then prompt me at points to choose what the characters do next. Whatever I chose would influence the direction of the story, whether it be tempting fate and opening the crypt or playing it safe, whether or not we try to steal some dragon gold, whether we investigate the gurgling bunyip sounds, etc. He totally ran my very own D&D-lite experience my whole early childhood! Best Dad ever. ❤

A tip for The Conductor DM's. At the end of your sessions or story blocks ask your players what want to do next and be prepared for that. That way they get to choose what to do and you got to build awesome adventures, enjoy!

As a worldbuilder, here’s a tip: it’s often better to make one, really fleshed out halfling village for the players to get invested in than an expansive world. And if you can isolate them in an abundant setting, even better.

I am a minimalist, and I have mastered the art of: “Yes I predicted that of course”

My current DM is 100% a worldbuilder. He literally congratulated and praised me for taking notes 💀

My DM is a world builder with a bit of architect. It's incredible. The best DnD I've ever had.

I love a good minimalist. My friends and I would play like that when I first started playing D&D. We would just sit around and one of us would DM and the rest of us would talk about what we were doing. No dice. No books. No character sheets. We just had a good group that could create a narrative out of the blue. I wish I could find another group like that.

I always tried to be a conductor (because I foolishly thought that was what all DMs were supposed to be) until I finally realized that I’m in fact a minimalist (or maybe more cool cousin) but once I stopped forcing myself to be what I thought a DM was and just followed my gut, I found my true type and honestly it makes all the difference!

I have another archetype for you: Apocalypse Prepper As a DM I like to prepare all the rollable tables, all the items the world has, easy ways to access less-used rules on the fly, creating important NPCs, creating maps, etc, so basically everything I'm going to need over the course of a campaign, before the campaign starts, except for the story itself (other than a premise and starting point). I like to call this my campaign skeleton. The rest is left up to the players and their interactions with the world, and I improvise a story depending on how they interact with the premise. So, much like an apocalypse prepper, I prepare for (nearly) every mechanical eventuality, but improvise to survive when chaos hit the fan.

Intro 0:00 Nick Fury 0:06 The World Builder 1:28 The Cool Cousin 3:10 Baldurs Gate Sponser 4:18 The Boxer 5:48 The Minimalist 7:06 The Conductor 8:32 The Architect 9:32 Outro 10:55

I myself, am a Props DM. Whether I'm running a one shot, homebrew, or module, I try and have a prop for just about anything the party might come across, but for things like actual gear and such. For instance I'll have printed magic scrolls, small bags of coins, potion bottles of all types, a few backdrops of a medieval tavern to help set the mood, color changing lights. I once ran a one shot for a friends birthday, with one of the players bringing her 5 year old kid, as she couldn't get a sitter, and since he would be playing his switch in the other room all evening, I went and asked if he wanted to play a ghost. I told him I'd let him know when it was almost time, then when he heard the bell, to put a long black wig on his head, backwards, and to stand in the doorway. I told him after everyone turns to look at him, to just leave. (the players were inspecting a clients family home as he had not heard from them in years after he had left to do his own thing away from his parents) I ring the bell as I tell them that they see the what looks like a little girl walking from one room to another at the end of the hall. he comes into the doorway with the wig on over his face, one person notices, then everyone else looks and freaks out, everyone turns back to me to try and figure out wth is going on, he then leaves as they are looking at me, they all look back (not seeing him anymore) they look back to me, and I just simple ask them "What?". It was amazing. I also had changed all of the lights in the room to blue and green, including in the bathroom. I heard one of my players as they had to go from down the hall say "god dammit" as he turned on the lights in there. It was great.

A tip for minimalist GMs; a decent way to do a percentage 'roll' is to just use a clock with a stopwatch feature; have the player start and stop the clock while not looking at it, and use the tenths and hundredths of a second as the tens and ones digits. You have a d% in your hands probably right now.

I'm definitely a Nick Fury, Architect, and World Building DM. I just love running huge open world games where my players fight armies and literal gods. Using existing rules and homebrew together to make powerful players and enemies that clash against each other like world ending tsunamis is just so rewarding. Balancing the narrative and mechanics together is always so fun for me to give to my players to interact and play with.

I go for a minimalist/cool cousin style in the game I run. I made it extremely clear when we started the game that this was going to be a mostly improvised game because we're all busy adults with very little spare time and we'd rather spend it together rolling dice and slaying monsters than prepping for weeks just for plans to blow up immediately after starting the session. I also told my players that they can do basically anything if the situation warrants it and in return for making them feel like heroes I pull out bigger enemies. Picking good encounter tables are the name of the game if you try this.

My DM for our 1-20 campaign was definitely an architect. Ended up as a war cleric / tempest sorcerer with a greatsword that could be loaded with a gemstone like a gun, the damage going up the more expensive the gem was.

I'm a mix of World builder, Conductor, and Architect. My games are heavily story driven with me usually leading my players through the story while also allowing them to have creative freedom, almost all my games are homebrew as well so my story can fit in with the rules of the world and there can be more epic moments without rules hindering it.

"Cool Cousins usually run funnier games" *Shows the most harrowing adventure ever put to screen*

You know the day is gonna be great when a dnd shorts notification appears

Worldbuilders are also the most likely to use gritty realism resting rules. It stops players from just throwing fireballs at any problem and actually lets time pass in the world. My DM is definitely one. He is quite "restrictive", but any spell, class or race he bans is usually tweaked and then added back. We can go many sessions without combat and just filled with dialogue and lore. And we are all super into that!

I think a good GM has elements of several of these types. I used to be a minimalist but as I got older I became more of a worldbuilder, but I do some of all this.

I think I'm a cross between a Conductor and Cool Cousin DM. I dont really care what the party does as long as their having fun and I make loose notes and maps so I dont worry too much on detail and wing it. Although I always try and have a strong cohesive natrative tying it all together and make sure that all the beats get hit whether the party know it or not

You can bang a bear, I laughed so hard I cried... well played

There is an eighth type of DM. The "Lazy" DM. They are not minimalists, but rather they have done so much prep in advance creating tables and other helpful tools that anything you throw at them, they can improv just like a minimalist and give you something in response. They straddle the gap between a minimalist with their theatre of the mind antics, and the cool cousin who plays it loose, yet has a firmer commitment to rules as written and rules as intended rather than rule of cool or rule of improv, and is more likely to have lots of minis already available, or ready to go on a virtual tabletop. In my experience, they're also more likely to be greybeards, as being the "Lazy" DM requires a high prerequisite level of personal system mastery and DMing experience within that system. Not to mention this style is immensely compatible with all sorts of supplements, which the "Lazy" DM will have probably all of them for reference, even though they went through them ages ago and made all their reference charts, tables, and the like well in advance.

I love that you called one a Conductor! I got so much flak from my first DM campaign for railroading my group. I soon learned to be more Rule of Cool than One Track Only. 😁

The two tables ive been at the longest and enjoyed the most are essentially polar opposites. One is pure minimalist and the other is an architect/world builder(currently on our second reset to get everything "just right" lol)

I've never felt more seen by a DnD video, lol. Definitely a bit of a "Nick Fury"-DM. I think it was Matt Colvile who said something along the lines of "If you give your players a ton of magic items, you're going to break the game. On the other hand, if you have books full of monsters and loot, you might as well use all of it". Can a party of four level 10 characters take on a flying Godzilla with regeneration? If you deck them up with holy avangers, staffs of power and +3 adamntium armor, they might!

I have an archetype for you. The Sadist. A DM where everything is a trap and every encounter leads to party surprise. They don't describe anything or clue the party in on what's going on in the world prior to throwing a dart trap at you for (their) fun, or ambushing you on the road. They even laugh when your team is hit with an unexpected trap or an enemy deals a critical hit, taking glee in the torment of others.

World-builder over here! I really enjoy creating locations and NPCs, creating a scene of place and experience. But I'm also something of the Cool Cousin, because the players are part of the world-building. What they tell me about their character's backstory informs the world building. I love it when my players are invested in their characters and act creatively. Minimal prep Maximum player agency Improvise!

I ve started running a DnD campaign with my siblings right before I go off to college and I was so happy when they told me that I was letting them have a good time. I love being a part of the cool cousin archetype. Like having them fight an evil swordsman in a mountain is cool and I want their cool plans to work like sheathing his sword as an attack ( I fudged that roll so they could succeed ) It just is really fun to make a villian of the week for them to battle that I have to make interesting. Have a great day and great video as per usual.

I think I would call myself a 'Navigator' DM. I do a lot of the World Building stuff, but I also have the storyline and setpeices from the Conductor. How the players get from setpeice to setpeice however, I leave that mostly up to improve, fun, and what makes sense for where they are. And if the players throw me some curveballs when the setpeices come along, I love seeing the crazy results.

This video was really eye opening and helped me narrow down why I have enjoyed some DnD sessions a lot more than others. I think the way I approach the game meshes better with certain DM archtypes than others. This is also making me realize I must be really annoying to more rules-heavy DMing styles.

You are 1 of the only creators whose adds I don't just skip automatically. Great stuff!

I'm a bit of an Architect, Nick Fury, World Building (when time allows), and Conductor. I'm definitely not a Boxer or Minimalist. I have Cool Cousin maybe sprinkled in, but I really think I'm more just about rewarding player creativity or granting players a healthy dose of narrative influence to shape how they approach a problem.

If anyone is looking to get started on DMing, I've compiled a list of things that I feel contribute to a good experience, and leans more towards Cool Cousin/Nick Fury type DM: First of all, don't be afraid to modify the rules of the TTRPG you're using. For example if you're using DND 5th edition, some of the subclasses are on the weaker side. If one of your players comes up with a character that they really wanna play and they have a weaker subclass don't be afraid to give them a bit of a nudge to make them more on par. Example is in my current campaign I play a monk. At low levels monks can do 1d4 dmg with unarmed strikes. Monks are meant to use a simple weapon like a staff or shortsword to give them more damage. But if your player is like me and wants to only use fists for thematics they're gonna feel weaker. So my DM bumped my damage up a bit to match the other characters which use firearms. My DM also lets us take both feats (powerful unique passive traits) and stat increases at level ups instead of forcing you to pick one or the other as per the actual rules. Hold a session 0 with your friends that are gonna play. Help them set up their character sheets and gear and familiarize them with the table top system you're using if its online (I use Roll20, so teach 'em how it works). Set everything straight, work with everyone to make sure there's no issues or problems so by the time the real first session starts you're all good to go. Plus its a good way to get every one excited to actually play next time you all gather. When crafting your story, start with some big outlines or plot points. Then ask how will you guide or nudge your players in that direction? Its good to have an overarching plan, but a lot of DMing is playing it by ear cause you never know how your players will approach a situation. Be prepared for them to do things that might sidetrack the story. The best way to do this is I've found is to have say, your first or second session take place in a hub area with some NPCs. Get a feel for how your players approach situations. Do they go around and question townsfolk? Do they try to sneak into bedrooms to look for documents? Do they jump to conclusions and immediately think a suspicious looking guy MUST be the the villain? Etc. The biggest thing is to give your players options. Don't force them to do one thing or it'll feel restrictive and linear. Do they go ask the local sheriff for why someone was murdered, or do they go see the victim's family? Let them decide if they go to the raided military convoy or the burned down church first? Also instead of a typical "everyone meets in a bar", be unorthodox. Mu party members met on a train heading out into the wild west and had to work together when it got robbed. You are the DM. Your job first and foremost is to make a fun experience for the players. Your job is to craft a fun and memorable experience. You DO NOT try to fight the players. You DO NOT try to put your players in situations that'll get them slaughtered. Nobody likes seeing their character they put so much love into die 3 sessions in. Take it easy with enemies and combat early on. Start off with easy encounters and ramp it up when you start to get a feel for how strong they are and how they play. Don't be afraid to nerf HP behind the scenes or fudge a roll to swing combat in the players favor if they're getting their butts kicked. Like one of the party members cast a spell that made the ground slippery. This spell can make enemies fall down if they fail to roll high enough on a dice on their turn. Our DM said that a powerful enemy that was at 1 HP slipped and hit his head and he died upon failing his roll. This isn't supposed to happen, but its your campaign. Do whatever you want to make it enjoyable, funny, and engaging. You can even have say an NPC that can revive dead players in town if you have people unfamiliar with DND so they don't need to make lots of backup characters. I personally think a milestone level up system is better than EXP. EXP is a pain to keep track of for each character and means your characters can all be varied levels depending on how many things they kill. Milestone means you level characters up upon hitting certain points of the story or after a big fight. Its easier to keep everyone on the same playing field and helps make big victories feel more rewarding since you deem when they happen. Reward your players when they do something memorable, very funny, or impressive or after a big fight or successful investigation. DND has rules for generating powerful loot items but you as the DM decide when to reward inspiration, a special dice that can be used whenever the player wants to boost their roll on a dice once. Try to aim to give out one piece of inspiration per session. It provides a good incentive for your players to think outside the box instead of just taking the direct approach. Heroforge is an excellent free browser program that lets you design 3D models of characters for tabletops using a simple "select which piece of clothing/weapon/species you'd like" sort of system. It's a great way for your players to make a character they connect with and really want to play due to how many options there are. For reference for DND 5e, I use the site 5etools which has everything you need to know. Again IDK what system works good for star wars but I'm sure you could find a way to make star wars work in DND with some thinking. There's also good places that have free maps to use for your TTRPGs. Lastly some people can be shy at the table. If you're doing a campaign like mine online feel free to let them role play through chat instead of saying aloud all their actions. And make sure to iron out things before they become big problems like if you have a very creepy or aggressive player that causes drama outside of the actual game. Its happened before, you can read the horror stories online. That's all I have off the top of my head for now, I might add more and reply to this comment later. I hope this helps

Conductor style is necessary for new players. D&D is pretty abstract, and it takes time for them to understand how to live in it. The flexibility of a conductor creates a space to explore without analysis paralysis.

As a D&D and DM expert I'd love to hear you run down the list of dragons. Just a comprehensive quick guide on the actual dragons of the game. The types, ages, what the do and how they each work within the game. Dragons are part of the titles of the game and yet they both appear rarely in the games and often times seem mishandled when they appear. Now there is a very substantial list it'd be cool to hear your opinions on each and how you handle dragons as characters and enemies in your games.

I'm definitely the Boxer type. I run things as written and am thrown when the players want to diverge from the scenario entirely. Was thinking that we were missing a couple of types of DMs, but when you mentioned "toxic" ones at the end being their own video some day, I was okay with them not being in this video. I can think of five toxic types of DMs just off the top of my head. I've had all five.

I'm a new DM. I'm a mix between Boxer and World builder. Running Lmop and I've already done some changes to it. Minor ones, but you know burning down the Stonehill Inn cuz the party left half of the RB hideout alive so they enacted some payback when the party resumed their exploration of the now more trapped and ambush prepared place 😅

Definitely a Worldbuilder, Architect, and a Conductor when I absolutely must be. My Homebrew world, Cacophony, is designed to allow for any kind of character without having to rework the system. My personal rule is anything goes as flavor so long as it works within the mechanics. And if it doesn't, we can work something out. Had a player reskin an Aarakocra as a griffin, and it worked out just fine. Was so willing to work with me on it a good chunk of worldbuilding holes got filled in with his help. Also, why does everyone hate fly? It was super easy to compensate for. Bolos and bolo-arrows plus gravity. He was okay with this because I didn't surprise him with it. His character would know to look out for it. Also, he gave me a more than legit reason to have griffons be enemy combatants. Darn I wish I could dm that game more.

Another great example of Conductor type story telling is literally the sponsor, Baldur's Gate 3. It gives you the agency to choose things, but the big big points you'll always end up at unless you just stop playing the game.

I'm probably the Cool Cousin, Architect, Minimalist or at least a mix of them. I always like whenever my players are having fun and do like feedback on what was a rough spot or what was really fun. I really don't prep too much but I do have a general idea of where the game is going. Like the types of players I don't think a GM/DM is just one type but usually a mix of different type. I honestly do want a video on the negative types of GM/DMs. This is mostly as a guide to help people identify problematic traits some GM/DMs have so they can either address and correct the problems or you can leave for less negative one. I've had only one bad GM but it was for so long I didn't realize how bad they truly were, it was also the first one I had so I didn't have other references.

I mostly like to mix the first three you spoke of for my DMing style. I want the PCs to be able to face the more interesting monsters and challenges I come up with, but I also have the world do what it does independently of the PCs (and it's highly effected by the PCs actions). I also remove elements that are more confusing (like that Bonus Action spells rule) or slow the game down (like keeping track of exact coinage, ammo, or encumbrance) and tend to lean into the players' creativity when they come up with fun ideas. But I never plan more than a few sessions in advance because player actions could change everything. I'll occasionally dip into a little bit of the Architect as well, but usually only if I think of something fun that doesn't have a way to do it within the ruleset... Like adapting the Laraken from 3.5e to 5e, or needing a system to keep track of how close to death a nymph outside her terel is while the party escorts her home, racing against the clock of her eventual demise. This has backfired once before... When I had a sort of "Tower Defense" styled game session that one time...

I'm so hype for your Kickstarter!

Being a world builder and having your plans subverted is the most terrifying and exciting thing as a dm. It’s like having all the neurological pathways just fall out from under your feet. We’ll the party it’s let the secret rebel leader they were protecting die, the one keeping all these disparate rebel factions together…

Great video. I think every DM/GM is a little different and may often be a combination of the above archetypes. I also feel that as you get more experienced and confident with running games your own preferences develop. Personally, I am a very PC-focused gm who is a combination of conductor-worldbuilder-architect in that order. I tend to run my campaigns in Acts that usually go to level 20 (pazio style) with a clear campaign to follow set in an otherwise sandbox world (with lots of NPC, places to go and side quests to do) that is affected by the outcome of each act. I make my pics the centre of the conflict and not side characters and make an effort to weave the backgrounds (specifically the npc they know) into the plot. In session zero and every time I have a new player, I work to develop PC into a plot and more specifically their friends, family, mentors, rivals and enemies in an effort to give them personal dilemmas and make their choices more meaningful. This is easier to do than it may seem as you simply give your PC a series of questions to complete and before they know they will create enough background info to work with. Also, I always give my PCs a home early on (usually in a large hub full of NPC and stuff to do) and have good law enforcement to avoid them being homeless or murderers.

I’m an architect/minimalist with a dash of world builder. It’s great fun for me, and my players seem to love it too

I get the impression for some reason that SOMEONE is a bear chasing power bottom...

I feel like this would be a long video, or even multiple videos, but I'd love to see content on how to play to the strengths of and improve the weaknesses of these different DMs; I'm a worldbuilder for sure, I love developing everything and making intricate countries that play into each other, but I know that improv is hard for me and often I feel like I forget to bring up important stuff in the right moment because I'm scrambling to react to my players. These feel like the most accurate categories I've seen so far, great video!

I've become a DM for the first time for two separate campaigns; one digital and one physical. I learned I am a Minimalist DM so far, but am always trying to improve for everyone.

I discovered you today. You have already provided me more information than everyone else, and I thank you for it.

The best way to be a conductor is to give your players control over the levers. You built the train, and you know where all paths lead, but it’s the players that pull the levers to decide which path they go down. If you do this perfectly most players won’t even think your game is railroaded, they’ll think it’s a really dense sandbox.

If those are my options i'd say i'm a bizarre combination of nick fury and the cool cousin. I give out magic items and levels like candy because i love for all my quests and encounters to be epic, but at the same time I prefer more laid-back storytelling and usually throw in random silliness just for a laugh and encourage the use of the rule of cool.

You missed the type that just wants to talk on and on for 4 hours. Not a lot of those but man we players hate them.

I am very much a fluid conductor DM. I'm leading my own home brew where one of the unchanging events was a mass prison escape. My intention was that a secret rebellion was going to cause an explosion to distract the guards, but turns out my players created their own explosion which ended up killing an NPC they loved. They left that day saying it was their favorite session they've played so far.

Brilliant video, scratches an itch not any other mainstream youtubers have really explored

I definitely lean heavy into the "Cool Cousin" one. I'm all about story and players having fun, and fudge dice to aid players. When I started I was way too Conductory... then I swung way too Minimalist, but that was tough. "You want to go to...a forest? Ok, there's a house...what do you expect to be there? Oh...you're not going to tell me?" Quick Google search... Hansel and Gretel...ok... it was tough.... I've found a fun middle, of "Prepare, but be ready to throw it all out when player stray from the path...." I also have someone in my group who is the Architect type...and then keeps trying to interject that into this campaign, even though he's a player. "My character would give this to all the other characters!" Uh....whatever, fine.... They're virtually gods at this point, at level 15, they took down a Tarrasque...in one round.

"you can bang a bear" in one of the best matt berry impressions ive heard in a while

I think you skimmed over the most important element of the veteran Boxer: "experience the adventure as designed".

ive seen the parallel in a reddit post; the conductor says: the setting is a bankrobbing. however, the party gets to decide if the music is misssion impossible, or the pink panther theme

Great video, and the best ad I have seen from your channel.

I love World Builder DM, and man Baldur's Gate 3 is so much fun

I love how you showed the discworld from Terry Pratchett

Bro got sponsored by Balders Gate, my boy finally hitting it big 😭

My students sort of coaxed me into DMing a campaign for them. I just started pen&paper, and I had NOTHING prepared. But I can already see myself as a mix between minimalist, cool cousin and the world builder.

I swear my DM completely changes his playstyle every camapign. I'm not complaining though, the variety is fun

Been playing D&D since the late 70s. While raising my kids, I taught them a VERY modified version. I DM'd a campaign for more than 20 years, and as they grew up and friends joined and left, I simply adapted. I've been every kind of DM except the Boxer. So I guess I'm an Architect? Handed over the reigns a couple years ago to one of the party who is also a science teacher. He runs a great game. It's fun to be "just" a player again.

I feel like I’m a mixture of a conductor, world builder, and a teeny bit of the architect

I have a world builder/conductor Dm, and a world builder minimalist!! The first has a whole story, world, history, and detailed major npcs, The second has but a pencil drawn map, a story and a d20, *_both are amazing stories/games that are so full of life fun and levity I am so blessed._*

I lean heavily to the cool cousin style of DMing, with a fair bit of the world builder mixed in. Just make sure everyone has a good time, don't stop them doing what they want, and make sure everyone at the table communicates their expectations. You can build the world around their choices and make new races and classes if they want to play something unique. You're all there to have fun!

I am definitely a world builder/minimalist type of DM. I like making huge sprawling worlds where each NPC and monsters has a reason for being but once that is set, give me a pair of dice and go wild!

Love your show! Would really like to see you cover Pathfinder 2e also.

Hey, you have the best ads. Your bear joke made me laugh 😅. Just started the full release tonight 😄

A clip from the original DnD cartoon followed up by the intro to Terry Pratchett's Discworld? Nostalgia is hitting hard rn

I resonate with the Nik Fury and Cool Cousin DM style. I'm still very new as a DM and I'm excited to keep getting.more experience as time goes on. Great video.

Proud Minimalist/World Builder/Architect DM here! No maps, no tokens, no plan per session... But a timeline for the world and lots of fresh and interesting ideas for sure! I've actually homebrewed the "multiclassing into the same class's subarchetype" thing before! I had an NPC Archdruid (lvl 20) who was a blended 14 Circle of Dreams and 6 Circle of the Moon. He quickly became a party favorite because of his gentle nature and fatherly guidance, especially making all of them traumatized when he was turned into stone in the form of a Giant Constrictor Snake whilst helping them escape an incoming horde of baddies [the party was only level 2 at the time]. It was the first time they and ever seen him enraged and now they're trying to get their hands on someone (or something) that can Greater Restoration him. Story is everything, and imo even combat can be greatly roleplay-oriented with just a few rolls here and there to determine the tide of combat. I've had the party win victories and suffer crushing defeats alike, but the world keeps turning whether they like it or not... Time is an element and it stops for none of them.

I feel matt mercer and fit all the archtypes and put the one that fits the story at the right time.

_The _*_Conductor_* sounds like a good concept for a DnD villain. A nigh-immortal godlike being that sends the party into a dimension of his design and has an exact plan for how everything in that world is going to go, with unlimited power. If the players find a loaded gun and try to use it on anyone _The Conductor_ doesn't intend, the bullet jams or outright disappears or the gun falls apart. Like Straad, The Conductor will appear to the party and talks to them as though he is the DM of a great campaign. The entire time, the party have to discover how to defeat him without him knowing and railroading them away. Once he's finally defeated, the adventure ends and they go back to the real world, as though it never happened.

I like that none of these were labeled as negative as any style of DM can be good if done right.

Gotta say I flow between a Cool-Fury-Boxer style of DMing.

I feel like I'm half of these. I've done minimal prep, I've planned campaigns years into the future. I've played adventures straight out of the box. A nice example is my current Shadowrun game. I'm mostly running adventures from their organised play system (SRM season 4), alternated with a few detailed adventures from their own books, and loosely defined adventure seeds from books that contain a bunch of such adventure seeds. At first, I stuck pretty close to the material because we were just learning about the world (not to mention the rules), but as the players get more invested and develop their own ideas about what's going on and what's important, they set more of their own goals and go more off the beaten path. I also started out around Seattle and focused on some local events to flesh out the city a bit more and make the place feel real, but as the game progresses, we occasionally leave the city and visit some other places, including an extended visit to Tir Tairngire (until they were banned from the country). I want the world to feel like a real place where stuff happens regardless of whether they do anything or not, so that's definitely World Builder. But I'm using a lot of published adventures to do that, so that's a Boxer. And there's definitely a place we're going with this, so I might also be a bit of a Conductor. And I'm definitely rooting for the players, but probably not enough to make me a Nick fury or Cool Cousin. Anyway, there's value and risk in all of these types of GM. I think it's best to find a balance between them that works for you and your group. Certainly don't try to stick to one of them; try to learn from all of them. But knowing which one you are may help you grow.

Fun! Nice to see how each of these fit in my DM style. I can see all of these at least a little in my work. We all have a scale if each of these.

Great stuff 👍

I think there's a sweet spot between the world builder and the minimalist that I aspire to, one that I would lable the gardener. Like the world builder, I like to prepare locations, characters, factions, cool details. Details I can use to navigate the world and make something if the players are not in a proactive mood. However nothing is set in stone until it happens at the table, and a world is never complete until the group is done with it. The players still get to control the direction if they want to and I get to discover what the story is going to be at the same time as everybody else.

I just recently found bg2 and am hooked. Going in almost blind. Took some getting used to but getting better.

I seem to be all over the place with my DM'ing style (I'm still new, running my first campaing since a few months having sessions avery week or two). I have build my own world, put in my own homebrew rules and stuff here and there, let the players do what they want but keep them on track by insentive and let my homie Antoine have his rule-defying homebrew treeant-made-on-the-base-of-a-dragonborn with a unique intoxicating/faint instilling breath attack he calls 'the weed breath', his giant boomerang and his unique monk abilitys. And I fumble myself through some rules and stuff I don't really understand, but as long as everyone has fun it's aight. I learn on the go.

So much fun to watch.... going I'm a bit of this, a bit of that... assigning percentile values & trying to not wind up at more than 100% xD Thanks for the cackles & giggles

Im definitely a mix of conductor, cool dm, Nick Fury and minimalist. I can improvise a huge villain's monologue, but only to set up encounter when my players will feel like a superheroes on a mission to save the world. Their story is a huge railroad, but a railroad that is building right before the train just to connect two stations. Also, I can create a very big plot in munutes on a party or something like that to continue it as a campaign later

Idea for a player class: Boat anchor. Every catastrophe movie has a character that essentially offers nothing except an extra burden to consume resources and be protected from harm. The character would rely on the good graces of their teammates for survival, and will they need to level up charisma to charm teammates and NPCs. They could be a newborn baby found in the arms of a dead parent or a soldier who's had both legs amputated after a battle. It would be a fascinating challenge, and an interesting dynamic to add to a party, I believe.

Really nice descriptions! Could be cool to make a quiz to see which ratio of levels we are, as I'm sure DM's are at least a mix of 2 😁

I love that I'm a mix of them all, mostly a Cool Cousin and a Nick Fury mixed with a World Builder. Every DM has his way of doing things, same as every player has his own and unique way of playing their character. That's why DnD is so fascinating and awesome !

I'm absolutely Nick Fury, with around 25% of conductor and 25% architect, I love making homebrew for my players and with most of that homebrew making them feel epic. and I love making worldbuilding and other things. my current campaign being an epic grandiose narrative set in the extraplanar. lots of Lovecraftian horror mixed with bombastic epic avengers level action. 99% of my monsters and magic items are homebrew, and I make a new set of rules, races, subraces, subclasses, magic items etc. like every week

I'm a minimalist for two reasons. One, I have a wild imagination and own so many TTRPG systems and fantasy books I have a lot to draw from. Two, more importantly, I have extreme executive disfunction. For example, sometimes starve even though I have food in the fridge, less than ten steps from where I'm sitting. I'll make some loose plans in my head, maybe take a few notes and then just wing it like there's no tomorrow on the few occasions I have been GM.

This was great! I'd love to see tip videos for each dm type and also system recommendations. I think I'm a conductor DM with some minimalist tendencies, depending on which system I'm running

You are missing the best type, our DM who combines the traits of all the types into absolute Epic and fun games

I hoping this would tie in to the players video, and then you went above and beyond! Thank you!

A couple of weeks ago I "minimalist"d so hard I drew up an encounter map on the fly. The party went to find a suspicious merchant and ended up finding them in cahoots with gang members. I decided to create a quick sewer map with towering, rail-less platforms and metal hatched walkways with random valves you could turn to flood said walkways, making tjem impossible to cross without a high skill check. Took me about 10-15mins with a ruler and 2 pieces of A4 paper while everyone got snacks and stuff. Funny enough, they didn't even use a quarter of the thing since they just tackled the gang member with the most important looking item, punched out the one guy who'd turned a valve to block their escape route, tripped everyone else by scattering the stolen goods on the floor and ran away. And here I was worried about stupid things like "balance". Pfft...

Systems to try for each style of DM: 1. Mutants and Masterminds. A very open and not too complicated system for exactly the kind of crazy stories you can expect from the MCU. Actually works with a number of genres featuring larger than life heroes. 2. FATE is a very story heavy game with integral features of players being part of a large world and a dynamic personality. 3. Lasers & Feelings is very much about just making stuff up on the go and not sweat mechanics. Many indie RPGs with a ridiculous premise such as Criminal Bears are in the same boat. 4. Actually D&D is more or less the go-to for running premade oneshots as most other systems tend not to have many pre-written scenarios. Pathfinder Adventure Paths are much bigger than D&D's modules, if you're particularly ambitious. 5. Powered by the Apocalypse is tailored to minimalist play as you use the same resolution mechanic with the same numbers every time and character sheets are likewise very simple. Comes in many different forms, too. 6. For a system focused on linear setpieces with tons of different approaches, I'd probably recommend Index Card RPG. 7. A DM who wants to spend hours and days tinkering with mechanics and using novel, interestingly built characters will very much enjoy the point building of GURPS.

I feel like a mix of many of these

I'm like a mix between world builder, cool cousin, and a bit of conductor