Here's a topic I've been wanting to bridge for a long time - getting player feedback in D&D and RPGs. Paying more attention to my players and treating our sessions like a working-relationship has brought my game to a different level. Not everyone will care for this, but since you're reading this, I'm guessing you might.

To get quality feedback on your role-playing games, you need to establish psychological safety at your gaming table. Before asking for feedback, set a precedent of being vulnerable and open to it. Once you've established the right environment for feedback, your players will share the same comfort and vulnerability, and they'll provide more meaningful feedback than "yes", "no", or "it was fun."

There's a lot to unpack, here. Each of the coming sections are valuable on their own, but if you can implement them as a whole, you will see greater results more often. Read on if you want to unlock the secrets to getting player feedback.

Build psychological safety at your table

You might not have heard of psychological safety, but I think you will understand what it means when we discuss it.

From Wikipedia:

"Psychological safety is being able to show and employ one's self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career"

You should build psychological safety at your gaming table because, by definition, it is required for your players to provide constructive feedback. Without psychological safety, your players will not be comfortable sharing things out of fear that they're not welcome or that their feedback is not welcome.

Being micro-managed at work is an example of an environment with poor psychological safety. Whatever you say gets questioned by your boss, even though you're a qualified employee. In this environment, you are not inclined to provide feedback, because it always gets shot-down. You might feel like your contribution at work is useless and that you're a dispensable employee.

Being among your closest friends might be an example of an environment with good psychological safety. You're comfortable and confident of your place in the group. In this environment, you aren't afraid to speak-up. With especially strong psychological safety, you might even call-out or confront your friends if they aren't being themselves or aren't acting with integrity.

Your table will have a varying degree of psychological safety. If it's on the low-end of the scale, shy players won't be comfortable expressing themselves and "loud" players will provide non-constructive feedback when they do. If the table has a higher level of psychological safety, even shy players will speak up and "loud" players will be more cooperative.

Psychological safety is a popular topic of research in leadership and management, nowadays. It is one of the most studied conditions for enabling positive group dynamics. You can't have a high-performing team without psychological safety - at least, not a happy one.

I've dealt with micro-management and poor psychological safety at my day-job, so identifying this came naturally to me.

So, with all this exploration on the topic of psychological safety: how do we promote it? Easy. Lead by example. Set a precedent of vulnerability by being humble. Openly admit to your mistakes.

Set a precedent of openness and vulnerability

You want to have a group of players that are comfortable sharing their concerns and that are comfortable providing feedback, even if they think the feedback will upset you. You need to set a precedent that will enable that.

To establish psychological safety with your group, you need to set a precedent that promotes vulnerability and acceptance. Lead by example. Every time you get together, try to ask questions that put you in a vulnerable position. Admit to mistakes that you've made. Apologize honestly for recent mistakes, and discuss how you plan on addressing them to prevent future occurrences. Discuss how you've taken specific pieces of feedback into consideration, and reveal your thought-process.

This won't be easy. Doing this is the equivalent of initiating a serious conversation with someone. Let me show you how I do this with some examples.

Admitting to your mistakes

In this example, I ran a session where the combat took too long. The combat started getting boring for me and the players, and I noticed it during the session. I brought it up after the session, and admitted that it was a mistake.

"That was a good session, guys. I'd like to ask for feedback, but more specifically, I'm concerned about how I ran the combat, today. I feel like things really dragged on, and got pretty boring. I've got some ideas on how to improve it for next session, but I'm just wondering what you guys thought about it. I think that any combat going for longer than 20-30 minutes seems to drag on."

Notice how I asked for feedback, but don't really need it or care for it. I already know that the combat could have been better, and I already have some ideas on how to improve it.

This technique is great to start building psychological safety and to maintain it. Admitting to mistakes that you've made shows your group that you're prone to error like them, and that you're willing to work on it. If you put your mistake up for discussion, that's even better. If you can get the players to share their view on your mistake, it communicates that this kind of discussion is accepted at the table. It shows them that if they invest themselves and participate at the table, they won't be laughed at, and the discussions can be reasonable.

Be honest and truthful! Embody the type of person you want your players to be. Show them that there's no shame in making mistakes!

Show that you're taking initiative

Show to your players that you're actually following-up on feedback.

In this example, I open a session by discussing feedback from the previous session. I repeat the feedback in my own words, and confirm my understanding of it with the players. I then step the group through the thought-process I took, and explain what I'm doing about it.

"Hey, guys. Thanks for all making it to today's game. I just want to touch on some of the feedback you guys gave me last time. Nick: you brought up how you didn't like how the game slowed to a halt last time when you guys had all these doors to presented to you. Am I correct in saying that that's related to not really enjoying a slow, boring, dungeon crawl?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I gave it some thought, and I didn't really like it, either. That's actually like a "Chekhov's gun", but I'm doing it all wrong! I'm presenting you guys with all these doors and set pieces, but so many of them are pointless! I mean, I can't believe I presented a door to you guys that you argued about entering for like 10 minutes - and in the end it was a closet! Yeah, I can see why that's annoying! I've got some ideas on how I'm going to change that in the coming sessions. I don't have it yet, so I'll do the best I can to make today's game better, but the main changes are yet to come."

I started by discussing feedback from the previous session. When you do this, you show your players that you follow-through on your commitments. It assures your players that whatever they bring-up will be dealt with. Or at the very least, considered. You want your players to know that you always give careful consideration to their feedback.

You should make sure your understanding of a piece of feedback matches the players' understanding of it. Repeat the feedback in your own words, and ask if you understood it correctly. Doing this shows your players that you're making an effort to resolve the same thing they've brought-up, rather than resolving something different. If you don't make a habit of getting on the same page with your players, you risk damaging trust at the table. Players need to know that you are competent at addressing issues.

Once you've got everyone's attention on the same topic, you can tell them what you're doing about it. It can help to step through the thought-process you followed to reach your decision. This shows your group that you're honest (or trying to be) by being transparent. Follow this up by showing them what steps you've already taken towards solving the problem. Your players will trust you more when you present yourself as a confident, competent, and proactive Game Master.

Act. Have some accountability to your players. Show that you're taking the lead.

Open yourself to receiving feedback anytime

Remind your players that you can take feedback over text, and openly invite it. Players will appreciate knowing that you're willing to listen to their concerns and work with them at any time.

In this example, I solicit feedback at the end of a session, but I invite the players to do it over text, rather than in-person.

"That was a good session, guys. This may be weird for me to say, but I just want to say that I'm always trying improve my game. I'd like to ask for feedback on this game, but since this is the first time I bring this up, I don't actually want to take any right now, at the table. However, I am asking that if you guys have any feedback, you can text me later, or any other time. I love talking about running RPGs and how to make them better, and I want to make sure you guys are having as much fun as I am.

This technique is great for when you don't have a precedent of asking for feedback after sessions. Try this out when you're not sure where your table's psychological safety is at, and you want to kick-start the process of building it.

The introductory statement ("This may be weird for me to say, but[...]") can be absolutely polarizing. If you can preface a conversation with this and genuinely mean it, the rest of the conversation will have a serious tone to it. It immediately puts you in a vulnerable position that will stun your players. They will be listening attentively.

If a session runs long, and I don't have time to discuss any feedback in depth, this is the technique I use - I remind everyone that I'm always open to feedback over text. I do this to maintain the psychological safety that I've worked hard to establish while still closing the session at a reasonable time.

Be a true friend of your players. Be there to listen to them and support them.

Effective ways of asking for feedback

When your group is comfortable sharing at the table, you can start asking for feedback. I've shown a few techniques in the above examples, but let me point them out more clearly.

When you ask for feedback, ask open questions (non-polar questions), which incite elaboration. If you ask polar-questions ("yes/no" questions), you'll receive "yes/no" responses. Asking questions that start with 'how', 'what', 'when', or 'where', are a good way to receive meaningful answers and don't make as many assumptions.

One technique is to ask for feedback about something specific. Instead of asking for feedback in general, ask for feedback on a specific thing that happened at the table. Even asking "What did you guys think of the combat?" could be too broad. Be specific: "What did you guys think of the combat with the boss?"

From one of the earlier examples, if you admit to something you did wrong at the same time that you request feedback, you can get critical feedback rather than just compliments. "What did you guys think of the combat? I'm asking because I don't feel like I ran it that great. Everything felt flat and uninteresting."

My favorite technique is to ask for feedback, but only taking it over text. I get my most meaningful feedback when I ask players for feedback privately.

Remember that asking for feedback publicly gets a public response, while asking for feedback privately gets a private response. If you ask for feedback in front of the whole group, they'll feel inclined to answer in front of the whole group. If you ask for feedback over direct messages to individual players, they'll feel inclined to answer privately.

What do you think about all of this? Send me an email! I'm interested in hearing what other people have to say about this. Psychological safety, and managing conflict and expectations holds a special place at my table. I want to hear from people like you, because I've never seen this discussed elsewhere...at all!