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Assign Player Roles

by Mike on 17 March 2025

Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that our book for building and running awesome monsters, Forge of Foes, is now available as an audiobook narrated by Colby Elliot! Colby has narrated other Sly Flourish books and each recording is outstanding. Pick up the Audible version of Forge of Foes today!

Games that harken back to the old days of D&D – often called "OSR" games or "Old School Revival" or "Old School Renaissance" games bring up an idea from these hallowed times – player roles. The idea being that players take specific roles for the game outside of just playing their character.

These assigned roles – scribe, cartographer, quartermaster, and caller – offer great benefits to GMs, players, and the whole game. Old-school games embraced these roles once again – best articulated to me in the fantasy RPG Dolmenwood.

Like the best Lazy DM tools, assigning roles serves multiple purposes – they help players better connect to the in-game world, they keep players engaged in the game, they help GMs and players track events from session to session, and they build artifacts for the campaign that can be held onto long after the campaign has ended.

Here are some examples of roles we can ask players to pick up:

Scribe

The scribe is the official notetaker for the game with an intention of sharing these notes with other players and the GM. These game notes keep the notetaker engaged in the game (as do the rest of these roles and activities) and also bring solidity to the game overall. Events really feel like they happened when they're captured in notes. These notes also help the GM remember where things are headed and what stuff the players paid attention to. These notes also serve as a lasting record for the whole campaign at the end.

Scribes can share their notes in a shared file like a Notion notebook or a Google Doc or email them around to everyone. Even hand-written notes can be sent as images to the group. Ideally every player and the GM should have a copy and keep them together so they can have a full chronicle of the campaign.

Cartographer

Traversing a dungeon and drawing how it connects helps keep the group grounded in the events of the game. It lets players really explore the dungeon, knowing where they've been and what they've missed. Drawing maps helps them discover how the dungeon works. Drawing maps can be tricky, because often the player's version of a map doesn't match the GM's version but that's ok. One need not be an expert cartographer either. A stick and box chart works just fine. Drawing maps isn't as necessary if you're using a virtual tabletop but for in-person games or games where screenshots of rooms are shared, a player-drawn map can help everyone keep the layout of a dungeon in mind.

Quartermaster

Who's keeping track of the loot? Who's telling everyone the split of gold? Where's that all-important magic item again? The quartermaster keeps a full list, maybe even using double-entry bookkeeping to note what loot was picked up and who it was distributed to. Without a quartermaster, stuff gets lost. Even with a quartermaster, players should still keep track of their own loot and inventory – that's the second part of the double-entry bookkeeping.

Like the other artifacts of this job, a loot list is best if it's shared with the group. A spreadsheet in Google drive is a great way to share it but even a digital or handwritten list will do. Keep track of the date, the item, and who it went to. Ask the quartermaster to periodically remind everyone of unclaimed loot which their character might want to claim.

The Caller

The caller is a new role for me. The caller's job is to adjudicate choices of a group and give the GM a final determination. They are a facilitator for the group, asking people's opinions, taking votes, working through disagreements, and coming to an answer they can give to the GM.

This role, more than the others, requires a player who's able to facilitate choices – keeping in mind the players feelings as well as an in-world understanding of what's happening to the characters in the game. It's worth a conversation with the caller to understand the delicate nature of this skill. It's definitely a people-focused role to take but a powerful one when assigned.

Jobs with Multiple Benefits

Assigning these roles to your players serves many benefits. Each role helps solidify what's going on in the game. They keep players involved with the game and the world we're all sharing. They keep players busy and assigning roles gives them a responsibility to their fellow players. In a world filled with distractions, assigning player roles is a fantastic way to keep players engaged in the game we're playing.

Have a mid-campaign session zero and talk about these roles and how they can help all of you enjoy your games even more.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Two Bandits Talking About the Characters and The Sunless Stream – Dragon Empire Prep Session 16.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Increase combat difficulty by adding more monsters.
Speed up combat by increasing damage and lowering hit points.
Let boss monsters spread damage to minions or suck out their souls for temporary hit points.
Expect and prepare for characters to focus on the boss in any boss encounter.
Limit long rests when needed through nightmares, premonitions, and unholy auras. “You won't find a long rest until..."
Build dynamic dungeons where multiple factions battle each other while the characters explore it. Let them hear the chaos and witness the aftermath in other chambers.
Flavor chambers with murals, frescoes, and bas reliefs revealing secrets and clues.

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