Most players agree that playing tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs) should be fun. But at the table, and away from the table, people are subject to the false consensus effect. This is a cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances.” In the case of D&D, a player will tend to think that everyone agrees with their view of fun. For example, a player who enjoys spending hours in deep role-playing encounters will assume everyone else is enjoying these encounters. But fun, at the table and away, is subjective. For example, I ran a 15k race yesterday and it was fun. Or, more accurately, it was fun for me. Football games are being televised today, but being forced to endure watching football is not fun. Or, as I should say, not fun for me.
Over the years, people have told me I am wrong about running being fun and watching football being awful. They are right and wrong: running is fun for me, not for them. Watching football is fun for them, awful for me. This is because fun, like food preferences, is subjective. What is fun is fun to you, but probably not everyone. What is fun for other people might not be fun for you. As with whether you like plantains or not, there is no right or wrong. There is only like or dislike.
While this might seem too obvious to be worth mentioning, the false consensus effect means that while we know that people enjoy different things, we still tend to assume that everyone at our table will share our view of what is fun in the game. For example, if you like minimal role-playing and maximum combat, you will tend to assume that is what everyone enjoys, and you probably wonder why other players sometimes won’t stop talking to the non-player characters (NPCs) when they should be killing them. This is why we need to remind ourselves that the other people at the table might have a different idea of what is fun, and we should make some effort to find out what that is. It is also worth mentioning that while there are selfish players who are at the table solely for their own fun, a person can appear selfish because they honestly think that everyone else is also enjoying their way of playing. For example, if a player loves going off on lengthy solo role-playing encounters in the game, they might think everyone else is enjoying this as an audience to their role playing. But the other players are probably bored and spend that time on their phones looking at memes. So, it is good to check in with the other people at the table and see if they are also having fun.
It seems reasonable to accept that players have a right to have fun at the table, and this is the approach I try to take a Dungeon Master (DM) and as a player. One should also remember that, just as with other rights, other people have the right to have fun as well. So, it is not that only I have the right to have fun, we all have that right. And, as with other rights, such as the right to free expression, this means that I should and must accept limits on my right so that other people can enjoy their right. For example, if I really enjoy combat, but I know that other players enjoy role-playing encounters in which they talk to the monsters, I should curb by murderous inclinations from time to time, so they won’t have to rely on speak with dead to talk to the monsters.
While, as noted above, fun is subjective, there are some things that are not fun for anyone. One example of this is being unable to act on your turn in D&D. At most tables, a player can spend minutes of time trying to sort out what they will do in seconds of combat. This might be because the situation is dire and complex, and the wrong choice could be the doom of the party. Or it could be because they do not know their character very well, they haven’t read up on their spells, or they were watching football when it wasn’t their turn. This means that if a player is unable to act on their turn, they might have to wait fifteen minutes or longer before they can do anything. While it can be fun to observe the combat, many players tend to check out when they cannot act. Phones, of course, have made this easy to do.
Since I know this, in my role as DM I try to ensure that a player is always able to take their turn. One key part of this involves being very restrained when deciding whether the monsters use spells or abilities that can “steal” a player’s turn (or turns). Spells like Sleep, Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, and Banish can take a player character (PC) out of the action, leaving the player with nothing to do. Abilities that stun, paralyze, petrify or control a PC can also steal a player’s turn. And, obviously enough, knocking a PC to zero (or killing them) can steal a turn.
When judging whether to use such abilities, I make a quick estimate of how likely it is that it will steal a player’s turn. This involves some obvious things, like checking how likely it is the PC will be affected but also less obvious things, like how likely it is that another player will do something to save the PC if they are affected. If you, as a DM, know your party works together well, then you can use such things more often. For example, if you know that if the fighter gets held, the party will try to rescue them, then you can have the enemy cleric hit the fight with Hold Person, since they’ll probably not miss their turn, and the other players will have fun rescuing them. As with running the game in general, it is a balancing act in which the DM tries to present a meaningful, but fun, challenge. If you know the party can deal with “lose a turn” abilities and spells, then they can be safely used without risking killing a player’s fun. But if the party cannot or will not counter them, then it is best to avoid them. After all, the point of playing is to have fun and someone who is not playing is probably not having fun.