East York Game Camp: Location – The Teaching Space, 2205 Danforth Ave. Toronto, Ontario (Main Floor)

The role of the Dungeon Master is often equated with an all-powerful being, which drives me crazy. Putting too much power in the DM’s hands can have the unintentional consequence of making players feel powerless. There are easy fixes to this that you can use at your table. Here’s one of them: The “Token”.

The DM can provide players with a pile of tokens (poker chips, coins, or anything else that’s easy to access but also easy to keep out of the way). When a player wants to hint to the DM that they want to do some role playing (that is, they want to speak up and get other players involved in character development through dialogue) the player can pay a token by placing it in the centre of the table.

The DM can acknowledge this and give that player the floor. Other players can subtly join the role play by paying a token, or (if they don’t want to join, but want to show their support for this vignette) can pay a token as well.

This non-verbal signal is not disruptive to the DMs storytelling and can allow for a seamless transition from a DM centred narrative to a shared narrative with ease. And if other players don’t pay tokens, it’s also a subtle and harmless way of hinting that they want to get back to the main story.

No system is perfect, but if this one is understood and supported by all players and DMs at the table, it can be an easy way to share the spotlight and empower players in cooperative storytelling.