My Wife, the Slayer

In D&D, there are a number of different players personality types that show themselves over and over again.  The folks at Wizards of the Coast have put labels to most of these, such as Spotlight Gamer, Power Gamer and Explorer, to help DMs and players understand these tendencies and motivations better so that they can run better games and keep their players involved and committed.

When my wife first joined my D&D games, she gravitated toward an Observer role.  She was a new player with several experienced gamers, and was more comfortable providing quiet support while enjoying the clash of the other personalities at the table.

After we moved down to Louisiana, however, I noticed her tendencies had shifted in a direction I hadn't expected.  And it led to me letting her down as a DM on several occasions.


My new group of players were almost all brand-new to D&D, or hadn't played with a group regularly before.  Our leader left us at the beginning of summer, so my wife joined in as Quills, a tiefling bard who had left her library to actually see history happening instead of just reading about it second-hand.  It was a typical Observer-type character, and because of that I focused on the other players at the table:  the hyperactive 15-year-old paladin, the lore-loving warlock and the spotlight-loving wizard.

After a session or two I noticed my wife was visibly irritated on the drive home while we talked about the game.  She was also on her phone more often at the game table, quietly taking her turn before fading back into the background.  Whenever I asked her what was wrong, she said "I just want to kill some orcs, that's all."  Being the thick-headed, easily-distracted person I am, it took me a few weeks of this to realize what she was saying:

She had become a Slayer.

Looking back over the last several games I realized just how little action she was seeing.  I had thrown minion-heavy encounters them for three weeks in a row because they were in a city filled with rioters, which was fun for the wizard and the dragonborn paladin, but no encounters where a leader's abilities could really shine.  The other personalities at the table also made it hard for her to actually get a full turn to herself:  the other players were always interrupting with suggestions or informing her of what they planned to do on their turn.  The paladin had also developed a taste for calling out targets and taking them down by himself, which left my wife constantly healing him but hardly ever getting a turn to deal out the hurt.

The next week I shuffled encounters a bit to hopefully showcase her abilities more.  A perilous bridge crossing let her use skill-boosting powers and her abilities to let people shift into better positions further down the narrow, rickety bridge.  Then a big solo encounter against a warforged titan let her use her show-stopping daily abilities to help the other players hit harder and more often.  She also rolled crits twice in one combat, which really brought a smile to her face.

As a DM, and as a husband, it was an important lesson:  player neglect can happen to anyone, so it's important to watch for the signs.  You never know when your Observers or Storytellers could suddenly develop a taste for Slaying, Story-telling or.... (shudder)... Min-Maxing...