Matthew Mercer is likely one of the world’s hottest Dungeon Masters. Alongside different unimaginable DMs like Deborah Ann Woll, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Aabria Iyengar, Mercer has undeniably formed how gamers worldwide strategy tabletop role-playing video games. As Essential Function, the multimedia leisure firm Mercer co-founded, has grown and advanced over time, one factor has remained fixed: Mercer’s willingness to assist different tabletop gamers. He’s particularly wanting to help aspiring Dungeon Masters who hope to develop their expertise and grow to be as completed as he’s, even showing on the official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube web page to offer help.
Mercer’s knowledge is properly documented throughout a number of interviews, however solely just lately, as a fellow DM, did I discover essentially the most inspiring quote that everybody (no matter whether or not you are a Dungeon Grasp or a participant) ought to internalize as quickly as humanly potential.
What’s Matthew Mercer’s finest D&D quote?
In an interview with Selection printed in January 2026, Mercer and Mulligan sat down for a honest dialog about every thing and something D&D. They mirrored on their respective work as Dungeon Masters on Essential Function and Dimension 20, discussing the experiences and paths that formed their careers.
One matter that got here up was making ready a tabletop session. Mulligan requested Mercer what his philosophy is for making ready a tabletop session, and Mercer’s reply completely defines one of many core beliefs that we expect ought to encourage gamers on both aspect of the desk of their future video games.
“Like many issues, it comes with expertise, and typically you need to fail to be taught higher.”
After a long time of taking part in tabletop video games and constructing a profitable profession from them, Mercer’s phrases seize the spirit of what makes role-playing tabletop video games, notably D&D, so partaking — our need to excellent how we inform tales by way of interactive play.
Why failure in D&D is so essential
We’ve all heard comparable sayings about the advantages of failure, equivalent to Henry Ford’s “Failure is barely the chance to start once more, this time extra intelligently,” or Chris Bradford’s “There isn’t a failure besides in now not making an attempt.”
Giving your self permission to fail in D&D, nevertheless, is likely one of the most important classes a participant must be taught. With out it, the striving for perfection places large stress on not simply you, however everybody on the desk with you.
For instance: in the event you’re the DM, you’ll continuously be assessing whether or not your gamers are having enjoyable, or feeling like you need to nudge them in a selected course, and getting increasingly alarmed when that doesn’t become the case. In case you’re a participant, you’ll be so busy overthinking whether or not your choices will work out that you’re going to convey the sport to a halt.
After I first began DMing, I scripted situations that I assumed would fully derail the marketing campaign and the story I wished to inform if the gamers didn’t comply with them to the letter. However that mindset was egocentric: this wasn’t simply my story, and I wasn’t the one participant on the desk. It led me to make horrible, typically unfair calls as I attempted to get every thing again on monitor. Half the time, it didn’t work and solely made issues more durable. Why didn’t I cease and pause to inform my gamers they’d thrown me a curveball as soon as once more — and that I, a Brit with solely a passing data of American sports activities, had fumbled it so badly?
The reality was that my nervousness about not doing issues precisely as I’d deliberate in my head was making video games really feel much more terrifying than they wanted to. I didn’t wish to be incorrect, however being incorrect, and having folks settle for that about you and nonetheless wish to sit at your desk as a result of they wish to be a part of the story you’re telling collectively, is one among life’s biggest pleasures.
No matter which aspect of the desk you’re on, the concern of failure and the pursuit of perfection can progressively take over and distract from what issues most. While you strive so onerous to make each resolution, encounter, or second excellent, it’s simple to lose sight of the explanation everybody gathered to play within the first place: to have enjoyable.
That’s why it’s value holding Mercer’s recommendation in thoughts. In any case, failure is a present that retains on giving.