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We Dungeon Masters often describe our roleplaying game worlds like neutral, all-seeing narrator robots, and that means we’re wasting a lot of potential. Fantasy authors use this trick of picking viewpoint characters to provide sharper, more useful, more flavorful narration filtered through their characters’ expert lenses. Of course, that would never work at a Dungeons & Dragons table. We couldn’t possibly use viewpoint characters to punch up our scene-setting narration. Or could we?

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The Tale Tinkerer made this great video about how fantasy authors totally waste the potential benefits of having point of view characters. It starts by describing the Tetris Effect, which, to be honest, is only tenuously related to the rest of the video. The Tetris Effect is an illustration of something called cognitive afterimage, while The Tale Tinkerer is talking about perceptual learning or expert perception. They are both related in that they demonstrate how people’s perceptions of the world change depending on the lenses their brains put over their eyes, which is part of the point, though, and it’s not like I have the high ground here. I always come to totally different, but related points after starting with fun facts I think are neat.

So, fun fact, I think the Tale Tinkerer’s video, What the Tetris Effect Means for Fantasy Writers, is neat. You should check it out.

So, as Tinkerer said, fantasy authors often waste the potential benefits of using point-of-view characters by not considering expert perception and other perceptive filters. But we ain’t authors, are we? We’re Dungeon Masters. Game Masters. Whatever. That doesn’t apply to us.

Or does it?

I already pointed out that we Game Masters have the same jobs as our favorite fantasy authors. We use the same narrative skills to communicate about and describe our game worlds. It’s weird for us because our stories are interactive and our audiences are also our protagonists, but the skills are mostly the same, and we can learn a lot from our favorite authors.

Or the authors we hate, but I promise to take no potshots today.

This point-of-view character thing especially seems useful because we Game Masters are always dealing with ensemble casts from diverse backgrounds with varied skills. Might we also be wasting the possibilities as Tinkles suggests?

See what I mean about my not having the high ground? I’m circling my point like a hyena trying to pick off the smallest, sickest gazelle in the herd, and I’m not explaining anything. So let’s pretend you didn’t watch the video and you don’t know what hell I’m babbling. Also, let’s not sweat the difference between expert perception and cognitive afterimages. I just think that stuff is neat.

So what is this all about?

Viewpoint Characters and Focalization

A few weeks ago, I did this thing about narrative viewpoint, remember? At the time, it was about how you Game Masters should address your players at the table. It was this whole thing about first- and third-person narration. Or, really, second- and third-person narration. But I did warn you to pay attention because we’d be coming at this particular gazelle from another side, like the hyena’s clever velociraptor friend.

Well, it’s time for that other angle.

Fiction stories can be told by some all-knowing, all-seeing narrator who describes everything as objective fact, or else they can be told from the limited viewpoint of a single, specific character. Or several characters who pass the narrative hot potato around throughout the story. We call such a character a viewpoint character because we’re experiencing the story from that character’s particular point of view. We’re like a passenger in the character’s head. We see through their eyes, hear through their ears, and maybe even read their thoughts.

Now, there is a spectrum here, and this is also technically separate from the whole first- or third-person voice thing, but I don’t want to get bogged down in unrelated terminology. You can have a viewpoint character without having to shove a camera so far up their ass you can see out their eyes. You can mount a GoPro brand action camera on their helmet or follow them around with a camera crew. That part doesn’t matter.

But none of this matters because we Game Masters ignore the whole viewpoint character thing anyway. We always speak as neutral, objective narratives. All of our protagonists are equals, and each has as much right to a camera up their ass as any other. How can we ever have a viewpoint character? Why would we want to?

Well, the why is because viewpoint characters unlock a very powerful narrative level-up called focalization. Well, it’s what some really pretentious auteurs call focalization. I’m pretty sure it’s a French thing.

Everyone sees the world a little differently, right? A suspicious person who’s suffered more than their share of betrayals will tend to see strangers as untrustworthy. Maybe even dangerous. Meanwhile, a generous person who has always benefited from the kindness of strangers will see people as kind and giving. They’re seeing the same world and the same facts, but they’re noticing different details and interpreting things differently. They’ve each got colored contact lenses on.

Focalization is just an author leaning into that. It’s when an author says, “I’ve already decided to go with a skull-mounted viewpoint camera to tell my story, so maybe I should describe things the way my character would interpret them rather than as purely objective fact.” Smart, right? Not only does it change the emotional flavor of the story, but it also allows every line of narration to help characterize the main character. Or characters.

I see you wrinkling your nose. I get it. We Game Masters don’t want to provide interpretation. Our job is to tell the players what their characters see, hear, perceive, and know, but not to tell them what their characters should think or feel. Unless a dragon casts cause fear, of course, but dragons should never cast spells anyway. That’s horseshit.

But Tinkles the Tale-Teller brought up a whole other kind of focalization in his video. And, also, it’s actually totally okay to do some interpreting and editorializing, but I’ll come back to that later.

The Expert Lens

Personal experiences aren’t the only things that color people’s perceptive lenses. There are actually a lot of different kinds of perceptive lenses that keep you from seeing the Matrix for what it really is. For example, your perception is also shaped by your skills, perceptions, and expertises.

I know you can’t technically pluralize expertise because it’s not technically countable, but I care more about how things read than whether they’re correct. That’s because I’m more of a speaker than a writer, which just makes my point.

Anyway…

An architect, a security consultant, and a feng shui guru walk into a bar. Or rather, they walk into the lobby of a classy hotel and casino. But there’s a bar in the lobby, so it counts. Now, all three see the same space, but do they see it the same way? Of course not. The architect notes how well the lobby lets human traffic branch and flow to guide people to the registration desk, the casino, the elevators, and the bar. The security consultant notes the hidden cameras and how cleverly the lobby’s open design prevents blind spots in the security. The feng shui guru, meanwhile, starts spouting bullshit about south-facing chakras and chi blockages until the security consultant and the architect ditch him and head for the bar.

That sort of thing is not only something you can do at your game table, but it’s also something lots of us do occasionally kinda do. In fact, I caught myself doing it weeks ago. Rather, after watching Tally Tinkletale’s video above, I realized I’m better at this shit than most of the authors he was lambasting. Which isn’t surprising because I’m a sexy gaming genius.

Darus Truitt: Viewpoint Character

I’m running this modern-day campaign in which the characters, professionals from diverse backgrounds, were recruited by a clandestine agency to investigate paranormal and supernatural events. Since joining the Hoffmann Institute, the investigators have been running around recovering UFO wreckage and trying to find the Point Pleasant Mothman to get some help synthesizing a cure to a biological agent made from an extraterrestrial specimen by a pharmaceutical company on a government grant for biological warfare purposes. Standard crap, really.

At the start of the campaign, the investigators arrived at the Hoffmann Institute’s Chicago Branch Office to interview. They were strangers at the time, so I had to pick one of the characters to arrive first. They’d get the full description of the building’s exterior and lobby that would set the stage for everyone else to arrive.

The cast comprises a former medical doctor, a former state police trooper, a former professor of anthropology and linguistics, and a former infiltration and espionage expert.

This scene was basically going to be the Hoffman Institute’s first impression. The players didn’t know quite what they were getting into yet, and they couldn’t even be sure if the Hoffmann Institute was a friend or a foe. I wanted the opening scene-setting to do two things. First, because it’s a game about conspiracies and hidden worlds, I wanted to keep the players off balance. Second, because the Hoffmann Institute pretends to be a modestly successful research institute a little too interested in kooky fringe topics like zero-point energy and quantum consciousness, but is actually a very powerful player in the hidden world, I wanted the players to see through the front and realize the Institute was not an agency you refuse or betray.

So I chose to lead with the espionage operative, Darius Truitt. First, I described the Institute’s front, and I made it clear from my tone that Truitt knew it was a front. The lobby was spartan and generic with lots of unused space and a few bland science-and-technology posters hung almost as an afterthought. You know, the kind with pictures of scientists in white coats looking at a flask while behind them a wheat thresher, for some reason, mows through a vibrant, green field of corn, with a caption that says, “Feeding the Future.” The only aesthetic indulgence was a large water feature in the back corner of the lobby, away from the traffic and seating area, apparently doing nothing for anyone.

Then, I told the player that his experience with security systems and procedures helped him spot the hidden dome cameras and recognize that the one elderly, unarmed security guard was standing next to a very secure, very nondescript door that could probably disgorge an entire tactical response team in an instant. I pointed out that the refraction on the lobby glass windows suggested they were thick and clearly made of bullet-resistant materials. The decorative water feature was filling the echoing space with white noise that would thwart surveillance devices inside the lobby and on the street outside.

So, yeah, clearly you’ve got a two-faced organization. The nondescript, innocent front is actually a basic security-through-obscurity veil, and the real Institute is ready to defend itself and knows how to keep its secrets. Cross it at your peril.

Viewpoints for Information Delivery

My example demonstrates the most obvious benefit of using a viewpoint character when setting your scenes: you get to deliver skill-based information and connect it to a player’s skill choices.

I’ve mentioned before that I use passive knowledge and other skill checks when I start a scene to decide what information to impart, and then I just weave that right into my narration. If a character might recognize a monster or a symbol or a phenomenon, I don’t wait for the player to ask for skill checks and I don’t waste time tossing dice. You see, I like my game’s pacing to not suck. It’s just this crazy personal preference. Besides, that’s not how eyeballs and brains work.

But, while that approach jives really well with all that crap I said above about focalization and expert perception, most of the time, weaving information into the narration is just doing neutral scene setting as an omniscient narrator and then tacking an afterthought like, “Oh, by the way, Danae recognizes those flowers. You can make potions of life-saving from them.”

Except…

Scene-Setting With a Purpose

My setting that lobby scene above wasn’t just about imparting information, was it? No. I clearly had a deliberate purpose beyond just describing a lobby and pointing out the security features. That was actually really clear from my delivery at the table. I was kind of snarky about the Institute’s obvious cardboard-cutout corporate commitment to STEM and its wasted space. Darius has a very anti-institutional background. He hates corps, and he hates Big Brother, so I described a space that had the veil of corporatism over a Big Brother reality, and I added a little bit of contempt.

Throughout the scene, everyone was a little on edge. Everyone at the Institute was friendly, and by any objective standard, it was a very pleasant interview and orientation process from genuine people who really like their jobs and think they’re doing good in the world. There was even a catered lunch. But it all hit as vacuous and insincere, and the players were waiting for the veil to drop. They knew something sinister was coming.

As Game Masters, we should know that scene-setting is also tone-setting. We’re not just describing a scene; we’re trying to impart a feeling. Normally, we try to create the right mood by giving just the right mix of sensory details to lead the players’ brains to the feeling. Basically, we try to find the right color filter to lay over our word-picture to get the feeling we want.

But there are four-to-six ready-made color filters already sitting at the table. Every character has a professional lens, but they also have background lenses. Fighters are always ready for a fight, so they always see the potential for a fight to break out. Rangers walk the line between the bounty and the cruelty of the natural world, so they see natural spaces as providential but dangerous. Every paladin and cleric has a worldview shaped by which domain of spells and powers they wanted to optimize their build around.

And that’s before you even add in actual characterization.

Stronger Characterization is Good for Everyone

This ain’t the first time I’ve suggested you can — and absolutely should — use your narrative powers to strengthen the characterization of your game’s main characters.

In case you don’t know the word, by the way, characterization just refers to how brightly a character’s unique traits and qualities shine in a work of fiction. Such a work might include a book, a movie, a show, a video game, or your awesome tabletop roleplaying game campaign. We Game Masters worry a lot about how well we characterize the world’s non-player characters, but we don’t think much about the players’ characters, do we? And isn’t that kind of incredibly stupid of us? The players’ characters are protagonists of the story, and players are no good at everything. You can’t trust them with important narrative jobs like characterizing the story’s main characters. They won’t do it right.

Stop typing that comment, asshat. You know full well that I’m not talking about dictating how the players must play their characters or what choices they have to make. Don’t ignore the context.

Most players don’t really get that deep into their own characters. In fact, the players who think they do are usually the worst at it. The fanfic Mary Sue and Marty Stu thespians usually fall more into performance than actual roleplaying. Those are different things, and it’s okay for a player to enjoy putting on a show, but it’s your job as a Game Master to nudge the game and its players in better directions. You can help the players get deeper into their own characters.

Most players only think as far as, “What would I do if I were my character in this situation?” Which, to be clear, is the right question for roleplaying, but that’s an argument for another time. One I’m pretty sure I’ve already had. But rarely do players ask, “If I were my character, how would I see this situation differently than I do?”

Isn’t that exactly what we’re talking about here?

But there’s a whole other aspect to this characterization thing we Game Masters always forget about. Characterization is about how well the audience gets a character, right? Who’s the audience here? It’s all the players, right? Even if Adam really, truly gets his character, Ardrick, we need to make sure that Beth and Chris and Danielle get Ardrick too. Isn’t that part of the job?

Viewpoint narration works here because, if you do it well and make it all focalized and shit, you let everyone at the table see the world as the viewpoint character does. My lobby scene above didn’t just impart information, and it didn’t just invite Dave deeper into Darius brain; it infected all the players with a little bit of Darius paranoia for a bit. Not enough to override their own characters or anything like that, and not through crappy telepathy where the player simply says aloud what their character is thinking, which is a slap-worthy offense every damned time, but just through normal tone-setting like I’d do for any scene anyway.

Paranoia was the right mood for the scene. As a Game Master, I pick moods, and I try to instill them. It doesn’t override each player’s right to decide how their character thinks or what they do; it just gives a little context. It’s a color filter. It just so happened that I already had a character at the table with the filter I needed pre-installed. Darius’ perceptive lens was just lying there, so I grabbed it and used it. And in so doing, I imparted the necessary information about the scene, I set the tone, and I also provided some strong characterization about Darius for the game’s entire audience.

I call that a major win.

The Viewpoint Character Trick

I want to be very clear now about the trick I’m telling you to use. It’s both more radical than it might seem, but it’s also way less batshit crazy than it probably sounds.

Whenever you, as a Game Master, have to do the scene-setting thing, pick a single character from the party and describe the scene to that character’s player through their character’s eyes. Not just once in a while. Not just when you have a big, important scene. Every time. Whenever the characters reach a new place or an encounter breaks out or the party wakes up after a night’s sleep at camp or whatever, decide who the viewpoint character is for that scene and speak like an author who’s good at using viewpoint characters.

Remember when I told you that there is always a principal character and you always want to invite the principal character to act? Well, there is always a viewpoint character, and you want to set the scene for the viewpoint character.

Oh, this part’s really important too: you need to be deliberate about it.

How do you decide who the viewpoint character is? Well, whenever you’re setting a scene, you should already know if there’s important information you need to impart and you should already know what tone you’re aiming for. If you don’t, you need a remedial lesson in scene-setting and today ain’t the day for it. All else being equal, information is more important than tone, so pick the characters whose skills and background let you impart the right information. But if there’s no important information to impart or multiple characters fit the bill, then pick the character with the right tonal lens.

In the lobby scene above, I wanted to provide practical information about the security measures in the building. The cop would have worked just as well as the espionage specialist, but Darius was a better tonal fit, so he won the viewpoint character prize.

Once you’ve picked your viewpoint character, imagine that they’re the only character in the scene. You’re speaking right to them, and you want the player to see the world as their character sees it. This is gonna take some practice, but it’ll also make you a better narrator in general because it’ll make you consider how perception shapes the world.

Of course, you still have to do your job as a Game Master. You have to deliver all the details that a Game Master has to deliver clearly and concisely. You have to make sure everyone knows what their characters see, hear, perceive, and know. But the knowledge part? That’s defined now by the viewpoint character. So is your word choice. Your voice. How you deliver the information.

Now, I said that you have to do this explicitly? What does that mean? It means you have to name the viewpoint character in a way that activates that player and tells everyone else who has the camera strapped to them.

Imagine the party is entering the dark forest of Darkforst. I don’t need to impart any particular information, but I want Darkforst to feel hostile. It’s one of those forests that even people who are at home in the frontier try to avoid. Danea grew up in a cloistered abbey in the heart of a big city, and her recent adventures are the first time she’s ever gone out into the wider world. She’s the perfect viewpoint character here because it’s natural for her to feel like the natural world is a hostile, alien place. She serves my purpose. But Adam’s character, Ardrick, is taking point because he’s the brave fighter. Adam just declared that he’s going to lead the party down the path.

So, to make it explicit that Danae is the viewpoint character, I might do a sort of verbal camera pan, right?

As Ardrick leads the party along the narrow path, Danae follows in the middle rank. The underbrush is close and thick. The canopy closes out all the light; she can’t even see the sun overhead, and with all the brush growing so close together, Danae realizes anything could be stalking just a few feet away, and she’d never see it coming. Roots keep tripping her up, and she stumbles against her allies. Thorns and vines keep snaring her chausible and tearing free.

Ardrick slows to a stop as a space opens up, barely wide enough to be called a clearing. It’s just as dark and overgrown as the path itself. Danae hears the same movement that brought Ardrick to a stop. Something is moving in the brush across the clearing, but she can’t see what it is and no one else seems to either.

And that is how you use a viewpoint character.

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Thanks to all my supporters for making this work possible. Thanks especially to Darius’ player, who isn’t named Dave, and to the other members of my online group. In addition to your ongoing support, I appreciate how you constantly provide me with fodder for these articles and never take them personally.