This post is going to be seem somewhat contradictory when compared to many of the posts on this blog. Most of the posts are advice to make your games better. This post is to tell you that an average session (or even campaign) is not something to feel bad about.

Game masters are rightly irritated when players expect you to be their little monkey. Some players expect to be greatly entertained with amazing “story”, engaging and immersive “role-playing”, and challenging tactical problems at each and every game session. Anyone who has ever been a game master for just one session knows that isn’t going to happen. Some GMs have publicly rage quit their campaigns or a particular game (5E…cough cough) because of players with unreasonable expectations.

Many game masters also have unreasonably high expectations for themselves. Some of us (me…cough cough) can start doubting themselves after a not so great session. Sometimes when the ideas that come to mind for the next one don’t feel inspired we can start wondering if we’re really just a hack and our friends are too nice to tell us that we suck.

Not Everything Can be AWESOME

Ideally, a referee will have complete command of the rules, a thought out and well designed scenario or campaign ready for play, the ability to improvise when players do something unexpected, and show up enthusiastically ready to facilitate a great play experience every session. None of us are able to do that 100% of the time.

There are going to be sessions that don’t work out. Sometimes you misjudge an adventure and players won’t be into it. You misunderstand a situation and make a bad ruling. Sometimes you won’t feel like running the game that week because of life issues but you do it anyway because you said you would and it goes poorly. If you are running a long open ended sandbox campaign this will happen, more than once. We try not to have bad sessions but they do happen.

What will also happen (and far more frequently) is a reasonably fun but not truly amazing play experience. It will be average or maybe merely adequate. You played and everyone enjoyed themselves. There wasn’t anything wrong but it also didn’t have any moments when everyone at the table erupts into celebration and delight.

I dislike the adequate average session more than the bad one

When I have a session like that, I come away thinking, “I know I can do better than that. I have done better than that many times.” Having a string of average adequate sessions can get in my head and cause me to starting to doubt myself.

Usually, when I have a bad session I can quickly identify what happened. I can see where I didn’t prepare properly, didn’t think through the implications of a particular magic item or encounter, got lazy about something, or hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. There is a clear error and solution.

Why a particular session is merely adequate is harder to identify and may not be an error at all. It might be the players chose a method of handling a problem that was smart, reduced the difficulty of the adventure, and lowered the tension since it was not so tough. Maybe the players need some novelty in the next session, something strange. Maybe the weather or some other uncontrollable circumstance was the factor that made the session just OK. I’ve run and played games at conventions where the room was too crowded, or too loud, or the players weren’t a good fit for each other. There wasn’t anything I could do about any of that and it was a mediocre experience.

Not every meal is a prime grade ribeye steak

A medium rare prime grade ribeye is what I’d ask for as my last meal before being executed.

My means do not allow me to eat a medium rare prime grade ribeye on a regular basis. Maybe I should have a tip jar widget in the side bar labelled “Buy Me a Steak”…

This is a good thing. People get used to experiences they have often. If I ate a prime grade ribeye every day it would quickly become no more exciting than a plain hamburger.

Not every game session can or should be as engaging as the best session of a campaign. We need the peaks and troughs.

Average Is OK

I’m not advocating for lazy game mastering or ignoring the issue if your campaign has become perennially average. Developing and improving skills as a game master will make your gaming better and I encourage it. This blog is mostly about that. I am also not saying that players should have low expectations or not say something if their game master is phoning it in.

If you aren’t doing the work then your game is not going to be good. It may be bad and you might want to stop what you are doing until you can sort out the issue. No game is better than a bad game.

If your campaign has been amazing and you have a session or two that is just average, that is not something to worry about necessarily. It happens and might not have anything to do you with you at all. If it seems like you are having a long string of average adequate sessions then you might talk to your players to figure out if there’s something your missing.

Average adequate gaming with the occasional great moment works in right circumstances and for the right groups. If the best you can do is stitch together a half dozen modules for a once a month game because you and everyone in your group have a a lot of commitments and stress in their lives, an average game session will feel like a vacation and you are doing fine.

Game masters will enjoy their games more if they have expectations that are aligned with the available situation, time, and resources at their disposal.

An average game can be better than no game.

Being with people you like, doing something you like, and having a good time is nice. If you are miserable by expecting every session to be a triumph, maybe the problem isn’t your game mastering skills.

Maybe you’re putting unreasonable expectations on yourself.