This here’s another lesson in my year-long True Game Mastery series. You don’t have to read these in order, but you probably should. So, if you’re new here, maybe check out the series outline and start at the beginning.
Click here for the The True Game Mastery Series index.
Welcome back, Initiate of the Way of the True Game Master. I didn’t expect you back. Not after last time when I told you your imagination sucks, your lifestyle sucks, and fixing it’s going to suck too. But let’s pretend you listened and now your Scene-Setting Narration is buttery smooth. Unfortunately, the game does not run on Narration alone. Eventually, you have to let the players talk. And those idiots never clean the breadcrumbs off the knife before going for the butter dish.
Inviting the Players to Play
At its core, a TTRPG is a conversation. You — the Game Master — Set the Scene and then you ask your players what they do about it. The players respond by describing their characters’ actions. And you respond by telling the players how that works out for their characters. And round and round it goes.
The part where you ask the players what their characters do? That’s called Inviting the Players to Act.
True Game Masters are masters of Pacing. They keep their TTRPG sessions moving. But players; they’re not masters of anything. Think of your game’s pace like a Fabergé Egg, exquisitely beautiful and tragically delicate. You — the True Game Master — are a museum curator. You know how to handle priceless, delicate artifacts. The players, though, are like ferrets. They’re hyperactive, destructive, and lack opposable thumbs.
If you’ve managed to run at least one game, you’ve managed to Invite the Players to Act. But if you’re new at this crap, you probably did it by ending every bit of Scene-Setting Narration with, “so, uh, what do you do?” Or worse, “… so, yeah… that’s what there is… so…?” And I’m sorry to say that True Game Masters have to do better than just trailing off and hoping someone will say something that sounds like an action.
Especially when they run online games. Online games are where pacing goes to die. And every online Game Master knows the interminable silence that follows every “so, what do you do?” A silence you can only break by saying, “am I still connected? Is anyone talking? Are you muted?”
Talking to Your Players About Their Characters
If you don’t want your game’s pace to die, you need your players to respond quickly and clearly to every Invitation to Act. Getting the players to respondey voo? It’s all about how you address the Invitation. Fortunately, it’s easy to learn how to properly address your players. You just have to build a new habit.
From now on and forever hereafter, you are to talk to players and talk about characters. And when you’re Inviting a Player to act, you’re to do both in the same breath.
Don’t say, “Adam, what do you do?”
Don’t say, “What does Ardrick do?”
Don’t say, “Ardrick, what do you do?”
Say, “Adam, what does Ardrick do?”
Every. Freaking. Time. That is how you speak to your players.
The habit’s important — and I’ll tell you why in a minute — but the mindset behind it is more important. It’s not okay to say, “Adam, you take 10 points of damage.” Ardrick, the fictional imaginary fighter, took that damage. So you say, “Ardrick takes 10 points of damage.” And if you want Adam to actually mark that down like he’s supposed to, you can get Adam’s attention by saying, “Adam, Ardrick took 10 points of damage; I should see you scribbling on your character sheet.”
I know some GMs like to be coy and clever and think it’s more immersive if they only use character names. And I know some GMs just can’t be assed to care and just address whoever by whatever appellation falls out of their noise holes. But True Game Masters speak to players and they speak about characters.
The only time it’s okay for you to directly address a character is when you’re speaking Ex Charactera. That is, when you, yourself, are speaking as a character. “’Hold Ardrick,’ shouts the guard, ‘I cannot let your party pass!’”
Now, this ain’t a statement on the line between player and character. This isn’t some trick to help people avoid personalizing the totally pretend crap that happens at the table. It’s a pacing tool and a memory aid. And, as a side benefit, it also helps maintain an immersive TTRPG experience even though it looks like it doesn’t.
If you run TTRPG campaigns at real-life tables with actual humans, you know players spend the first session of every campaign making The List. You know the one I mean. The cheat sheet of party members’ names. And as a result, every character’s introduction gets interrupted with, “wait, what was your name” and “hold on, how do you spell that?” And you know every in-character conversation thereafter is going to start with someone shuffling through their notes looking for The List. And you know they’re going to give up and say, “I can’t remember your character’s name, Beth, but my character shows you the runed parchment he pulled from the scroll case. ‘Can you make anything of this?'”
Meanwhile, if you run TTRPG campaigns online, you’re used to The Silence. You know, the dead air that comes after you refer to a character by name as everyone tries to remember who the hell is playing Beryllia. And even Beth won’t speak up because she can’t remember her own freaking character’s name.
It takes people — not players, people — a long time to internalize fake names and aliases. Their own and their friends. And online, even if you’re using a camera, you can’t use pointed looks to cue Beth that you’re talking to her.
The List and The Silence? They’re small things. Small pacing killers. Individually, each eats up a fraction of a second. But they happen every time you pass the action to your players. And that happens a lot at every TTRPG session. And those pacing killers come when the pacing’s most delicate because they happen at the moment when description ends and action must begin.
Once you’ve described the menacing ogre, everything’s tense and everyone’s on edge. They all want to get to fighting. The last thing you need is for the game to stall out while you try to grind the game’s transmission into gear. It’s a real pace killer.
Pairing player and character names solves a bunch of problems at once. Players don’t forget their own names; they know you’re talking to them. And when you pair their name with their character’s name, it reminds them who they are in the fiction. And it reminds everyone else too. Moreover, it reminds the players — psychologically — that they’re roleplaying. That they’re acting through an avatar in a fantasy world. It grounds them in the activity.
Yes, I know that’s counterintuitive. But it’s still true. Talking to your players about their characters is an immersion aid in addition to being a pacing tool and a mnemonic trick. And it’s another great example of the power of repetition.
Silence Equals Death
Great gameplay experiences and great narrative experiences require great pacing. And while pacing is actually a very complicated concept and refers to the ebb and flow of tension throughout an experience, there’s one aspect of pacing that’s so simple, anyone can understand it. When an experience comes to a dead stop, the experience is dead.
Silence is your archnemesis. Nothing will kill your great game deader than silence. And players are great at silence. And this is why, as a True Game Master, you don’t just have a right to demand your players’ attention, you have a duty to demand it.
When it’s a player’s turn to speak, if they don’t speak immediately, they’re killing your game. They’re ruining your art and ruining everyone else’s experience. So ban cell phones. Turn off the WiFi. Humiliate distracted players mercilessly. And separate Food Time from Game Time. Do whatever you must.
But no amount of banning and humiliation is as effective as just making it impossible to play the game without paying attention. If you want to demand your players’ attention — and force them to think between turns about their next action — make that the only way to play. When you Invite a Player to Act, if that player doesn’t immediately start talking — if they start consulting their character sheet or if emit a noise like, “uhhhhhhhhhhh….” — say, “okay, I’ll come back to you when you’re ready. Until then, you’re on hold.” Then move on to someone else.
Every time. Without mercy. If a player responds to your Invitation with anything other than an action or an intelligent, non-stalling question, skip ‘em.
After an inattentive player loses a few turns, they’ll do whatever they have to do to make sure they’re ready for their turn. Or they’ll quit your game. Either way, you’ve solved the pacing problem.
Addressing by ShortDesc
By talking to your players about their characters — habitually and consistently — you’ll maintain a good, solid pace. But if you want to raise your pacing powers over 9000, you need to master a trick I call ShortDescing. It’s short for Short-Describing but I ain’t going to explain where the name came from.
ShortDescing is the habit of occasionally replacing a character’s name with a short, descriptive phrase. Let me demonstrate with an example.
GM: Three hulking orcs bar your bath, each a head over six-foot tall. They’re dressed in mismatched hide armor and armed with massive, stone-headed mauls.
GM: Adam, what does Ardrick do?
Adam: I charge directly at the orc in the middle of the group and attack with my longsword.
GM: Ardrick charges. Attack at plus two.
Adam: I hit AC 15 for seven slashing damage.
GM: The knight charges the group, catching the brutes off guard. Clearly, they expected the party to hesitate. The orc tries to backpedal but to no avail. Ardrick’s sword opens a gash along the green-skinned barbarian’s ribs. Before the orcs can lay into the human swordsman, though…
GM: Beth, what does Beryllia do?
Beth: She takes cover behind that tree and casts Shroud of Frost at the orc to Adam’s left. It gets a Fortitude save. DC 12.
GM: The orc fails.
Beth: That’s 10 frost damage and the orc is slowed for one round.
GM: The amber-eyed elf darts for safety behind the tree, then clutches a fist as she speaks her words of power. As the savage orc raises his maul to strike, icy mist coalesces around him, hardening into a patina of frost. He struggles to breathe, but he’s already begun to attack the swordsman in front of him. Ardrick takes 15 crushing damage.
Adam: I’m bloodied.
GM: The knight staggers back, his breastplate dented and a rib beneath cracked painfully. He turns aside a second attack with his shield. The third orc, though, spies the mage hiding behind the tree. “Ba’kren witch,” he snarls and dashes at her…
That’s a True Game Master right there. Of course he is; he’s me. And he’s a handsome devil, too. And he changes up how he refers to the characters frequently. He uses character names often enough that they don’t get forgotten, but he also uses descriptive phrases like “the knight” or “the amber-eyed elf” or “the savage.”
That’s ShortDescing.
The Benefits of SortDescing
ShortDescing helps you mitigate the fact that TTRPG players can’t actually see what’s going on in the game’s world. Instead, they see a table and dice and papers. Sure, they can see minis and pictures too, if you’ve got them, but that’s still a sucky substitute for the visuals in a movie or video game. See, the problem is that players — and their imaginations and yours — are flighty things. They forget anything they’re not reminded of constantly. Even the terrible in-game monsters fade into abstract clouds of game stats if you let them.
ShortDescs are constant reminders that there are actual creatures doing actual things in an actual fantasy world. And that the players are wearing different skins in the fantasy world. That’s helpful because players frequently forget their unshaven, hairy-armed buddy is playing a graceful, ageless elven minstrel with a lilting, singsong voice. Hell, in the heat of the game’s most mechanical moments, players tend to forget that they, themselves are playing stalwart and humorless bearded dwarf clerics or half-demons or whatever.
This skin-forgetting is a huge pain in the ass if you’re trying to establish a strong sense of actual fantasy. Because actual fantasy relies heavily upon — among many other things — very strong, very consistent non-human racial identities. Without them, the world is just a comic-book world of funny-looking, super-powered dudes and dudettes, no two of which are alike. You need to make elves feel like elves and orcs feel like orcs and all the rest. This means never letting anyone forget that there are elves and orcs in a scene and not just people with superpowers on a character sheet.
ShortDescing also encourages you to respond to the characters the way the world should. By reminding yourself Adam’s fighter is a hereditary knight and Beth’s mage is a haughty, aloof elf, you’re also reminding yourself that innocent peasants should defer to Ardrick and the dwarven clansmen should sneer at Beryllia over millennia-old racial disputes.
And beyond all that, ShortDescing makes for more interesting, more evocative Narration. It just sounds better.
Generating ShortDescs
ShortDescing is at its best when it sounds natural. And that naturalness comes from knowing your PCs and NPCs well enough to describe them. Good ShortDescing starts the moment players introduce their characters. Take notes. Keep a list of features for each PC. Note not just their class, but their apparent place in the world. Some fighters are knights, some are soldiers, and some are thugs. Note their race and physical appearance, their arms and armor and equipment. And as the game plays out, note the skills they reveal at the table. Don’t default to or rely on game terms. Don’t call a fighter-wizard a wizard or a mage unless the PC really is a spellcaster who sometimes pulls a sword. Call them a swordmage or a spellsword instead. Treat coming up with evocative ways to describe the PCs as a game. A fun challenge for a True Master of the Game.
And when you create NPCs — even if they’re total mooks — name them descriptively. Never put a goblin or a spider in your game. Use goblin skulks — who are different from goblin skirmishers — or bristling cave spiders. And never say halfling, when you can say Engo, Halfling Merrymaker instead.
Never Ever Speak to Everyone
Let’s put ShortDescing aside and talk about pacing. To keep your game running at a good pace, always speak to the players about their characters. Especially when you’re handing off the action.
Let me add another rule though: whenever you’re handing off the action to a player, you must hand it to a specific player. You are never, ever to say, “what do you all do?” You are never to sweep your gaze across the table, taking in all your players, and say, “what now?”
Your game’s pace is like a Faberge Egg. No, I’m not dropping that analogy, I’m gonna extend it.
Whoever is talking is in control of the game’s pace. They’re holding the Faberge Egg. And when you’re handing off that Egg, you don’t toss it to the ground in the party’s midst. That’s a great way to break a priceless piece of art. And even if the Egg doesn’t break, there are only ways for things to play out. Either several players all grab for the Egg and you’re stuck waiting for the dust to settle or everyone stares at the Egg waiting for someone else to make a grab for it.
Those are bad outcomes at any table, but online, they’re both nightmares. When people talk over each other on a voice-over-internet platform, you can’t hear anything. And when everyone hangs back and waits for someone else to talk first, the silence stretches forever because there are no visible signs of deference or overtures toward speaking that signal permission to talk.
The point is that you never, ever toss a Faberge Egg at a group of players hoping someone will catch it. You hand it to a specific person.
In the days of yore, TTRPG groups got around this crap by designating one player as the Caller. The Caller was like the Oracle at Delphi. He received the Game Master’s holy words, passed them to his fellows to discuss, reached a consensus, and offered up that consensus to the Game Master for approval and resolution. And like the Oracle at Delphi, that idea is so last millennium. It’s a sucky solution. And it doesn’t solve the problems inherent in online communication.
Enter…
The Principal Character
In every scene and every encounter and every situation, you must shine a spotlight on a single player’s character. That character — whose identity changes from scene to scene and even from one moment to the next — is the Principal Character. And when you must Invite the Players to Act, you always and only ever invite the Principal Character’s Player to Act.
How do you determine which character is the Principal Character? Well, sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes there are initiative rules. Sometimes there’s only one character in a scene. But it’s not always so clear. The Principal Character is the one in the best position to act given the situation. When the party comes to an intersection and must choose a direction, the Principal Character is the one in the lead. When the party notices signs of an ambush, the Principal Character is whoever made their Awareness check. When one of the characters is suddenly and mysteriously struck down by a magical trap, the Principal Character is whoever happens to be closest to the smoking boots.
The point isn’t to put one character in control of the party — and often, the Caller ended up a de facto party leader — but just to designate who gets to speak next. Often, the Principal Character won’t take unilateral action. Instead, they’ll say something like, “which way should we go” or “we should follow the stream to the left; what do you all think?” They’ll start a conversation. That’s fine. Perfect. And sometimes, the player will freeze up. That’s okay. You can always take back the Faberge Egg and hand it to someone else by saying something like, “okay, seeing her ally reduced to a fine pink mist has left Beryllia in shock; Chris, what does Cabe do?”
And that’s good because it means you literally can’t screw this up. It doesn’t actually matter who you designate as the Principal Character. The point is just to put the Faberge Egg carefully into a specific player’s hands. Anyone will do. So don’t sweat it. Just trust your gut and pick whoever makes the most sense to you.
Players are Still Ferrets
However carefully you hand off the delicate, priceless treasure that is your TTRPG adventure’s pace, you’re still handing it to a thumbless, hyperactive rodent. And no, you cannot teach the players how to handle the pacing. No True Game Master would ever suggest such a thing. Instead, you have to be ready to catch the Pacing Egg when it falls.
Unlike you, players will just dump that Egg on the ground. When Ardrick says, “which way should we go guys,” he’s tossing that Faberge Egg on the ground and hoping someone else will pick it up. And you’ve got to dive in there, catch it, and carefully it hand to the next Principal Character. Fortunately, it’s as easy as saying, “Ardrick asks you all which way to go. Chris, how does Cabe respond?”
I know that seems weird and awkward and stilted and unnatural, but it’s basically just a bunch of Resolution Narration followed by an Invitation to Act. Technically, when Adam says, “which way should we go,” he’s actually declaring an action. He’s actually saying, “Ardrick asks the party aloud, ‘which way should we go?’” Or maybe, “Ardrick asks his allies which way to go.” As the Game Master, it’s your job to resolve that action — “Ardrick succeeds in asking the party for their navigation opinions” — and then Invite the Principal Character’s Player to act — “Chris, what action does Cabe take as a result.”
This crap won’t always be necessary. Often, when one player dumps the Egg, another will catch it. Especially if the party has had some time to build some real-life camaraderie. So you can safely wait for a half-beat after a dumbass player drops the Egg to see if someone catches it. But if no one does, dive in there and get it before it hits the ground.
And this trick — Catching the Egg and Handing it Off — works whenever an awkward silence settles over the game. Just describe whatever just happened as if you’re resolving an action and then Invite the Principal Character’s Player to act.
Beth: Does my character know anything about these creatures? I’m trained in Monsterology.
GM: Yes Beth, Beryllia recognizes the creatures as crimson death slugs. They secrete a deadly poison that causes near-instant paralysis. Those who succumb start to suffocate immediately because they can’t breathe. Even a single drop of careless spatter that lands on the skin is deadly, such as might happen in melee combat. Fortunately, they’re vulnerable to fire damage.
Beth: Oh…
GM: Beth, Beryllia recognized the creatures from her studies. Does she share that information with her allies?
Beth: Uh… yes…
GM: Beryllia quickly warns you all the slugs are deadly to touch or even to engage in close combat but are vulnerable to fire. Adam, Ardrick is at the head of the party, what does he do?
Adam: … shit.
GM: Ardrick is clearly terrified of the slugs; fortunately he is wearing his brown pants. Chris, what does Cabe do? The slugs are creeping toward the party.
Chris: …
Now Practice
You’ve got plenty to practice now. And practice you must. That’s how to build True Game Mastering habits. Practice speaking to your players about their characters and practice addressing the Principal Characters’ player directly at all times. Practice replacing character names with short, descriptive phrases in your narration. And, if you catch yourself screwing up, correct yourself mentally. Think, “no, I only talk to players, I talk about characters” or “that was wrong, I should always hand my pacing Egg to a specific player.”
It’ll take time and deliberate effort to get this crap right.
And given you’re also probably working on your imaginary lifestyle, I’m going to give you two weeks before the next lesson in this course. Fill that time with gaming practice.
Absolutely love it. Great value. Great advice. Practical and can’t wait for tomorrow’s session to practice. You have reignited something in me with this course. I really feel empowered to act and even though I knlw there are many lessons ahead and thing i probably don’t do right, i know i just have to focus on those two aspects and master them before taking on another. Really enjoy it. Thank you.
As with all design solutions, it seems obvious once you see it done right.
When it’s so easy to get caught up in the sprawling world, the dastardly plots, the savage beasts, to get back to (advanced) basics like this is so helpful. Thank you.
What about players interrupting each other? Let’s image that when Beryllia warns rest of the party that slugs are dangerous and the egg is handed to Adam, Perry interjects that his pyromancer Ignis throws a fireball at the slugs. Should that behaviour be discouraged or encouraged?
That seems to me like good player awareness and participation, so long as they do it in moderation and don’t interrupt the GM or other players when they jump in
First of all, Beryllia is the party’s mage, not Perry. Perry didn’t get invited back after the “mayonnaise on the ceiling” incident. I still don’t know how the hell he did that. But anyway…
The GM should neither encourage nor discourage that behavior unless the GM — you, let’s say — feels it is disruptive. For example, suppose Perry interrupts other players or the GM in mid-sentence and frequently takes actions without consultation the other players find disruptive.
That said, it’s on you — the GM — to keep the flow of time. So you acknowledge Perry’s interruption and then re-describe the situation.
“Got it Perry… okay, Beryllia warns her allies the slugs are deadly in melee and that they are vulnerable to fire. Hearing that, Perry immediately points his staff and speaks the words of powers. An explosion fills the space…”
This is a really helpful article. Over time I’ve started to direct action invitations more to specific players, but I hadn’t thought about it and didn’t actively try to do it all the time. I appreciate the Pacing Egg metaphor as a mental image in that it’s a simple self-prompting device for a simple behavior that supports a major pillar of storytelling and gaming. I’d even say it applies to having conversations in general.
Well I had my first session of trying out shortdesc and talking to players about their characters and it was rough! After so many years of addressing players as their characters I had to focus very hard on my words and what I was saying and anytime my focused slip I switched back to my default. I really like it though and I can tell that my games will be a lot more immersive once I practice enough to narrate naturally like that. I can tell it’s going to take a lot of practice to unlearn my bad habits though.
Used inciting a principle character to act process last night – definitely allowed the game to flow seamlessly from moment to moment.
What I also noticed was with the ‘catching the egg and passing it off’ analogy, was when one character became aware or noticed something they weren’t skilled or trained in but shared it with the group, those moments where you crave for the religiously trained player to ‘catch the egg’, they always let it drop and smash on the floor. But, catching it before it falls, and then shining the spotlight on them to act, forced them to think about it and do something. Which, in turn, then created more game discussion.
Also, not sure if this could become too forced or, dare I say, a little ‘railroady’, the way I found myself phrasing some of the questions when inviting to act, helps keep them focussed on what’s we, as GMs, want them to focus on.
It was simple things like, they were going round and round in discussions about what this creature in the woods was and they had lost track. ‘James, Bogknad looks at these tracks, some appear fresher than others. James, what does Bogknad do?’ Immediately, they’re talking about following these tracks.
How far would you say you could take that phrasing of questioning to keep them playing/on track/focussed on the game, within reason and not tamper with their agency, so to speak?
Thanks!
As far as you feel comfortable with. But the secret to Player Agency is that you are not tampering with their agency until they feel like you are. Until you have a conflict regarding Agency, Agency is wholly theoretical.
And, the phrasing of the question doesn’t stop the players from going a different direction if they want to.
And the vast, VAST majority of people don’t actually want complete freedom.
So, I’d just relax and go with it.
If you want a rule of thumb, I’d say it’s your job to tell players what they notice (including recognizing or remembering things) but not your job to tell them what they decide, whether that’s deciding something is important or deciding what to do about it.
Of course, as any writer or reporter knows, the job of deciding what to mention and what not to mention will heavily impact how people think about the scene. But that amount of control is necessary for the game to go anywhere!
Thanks to Bogknad’s experience with tracking he notices some of the tracks are fresher than others.. James, What does he do?
You tell them what they notice. Then ask them what to do. No problem
My players frequently go off topic, so this might very well help. Also, sometimes I get a player that, in essence, demands I give him a reason to exist. Forced engagement, spoon-fed motivation etc. I am not fond of this and often remind said player that I am not a trained monkey.
I know this is of topic, but how do you deal with players that (often) forget how very mortal their characters are? Mine act as if they can swordfight their way out of any situation, even when that is blatantly, obviously untrue. Example: I am running Rime of the Frost Maiden right now and there is a scene on a boat where they face certain death at the hand of a great white wyrm, unless they can avoid her. She was on top of them and I still had players trying to pry gold coins from her frozen hoard.
Do i just allow them to die? Do i step in? The death of player characters also kills pace. I struggle with this and would love some advice. Thank you.
[[Ignore the Avatar: This isn’t The Angry GM, just an artifact of The Angry GM managing a comment]]
Not being a sexy gaming genius, I can’t promise a good answer, but here is what I would do, at the very least. First, talk to them, second, kill their characters. Let me expand upon that.
First step is to talk to them and make sure that there’s not some kind of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Maybe they’re not understanding that the frost wyrm is a deadly threat that can kill them in 1 – 2 rounds, or something. If they’re not understanding the way the game works, the stakes, the potential consequences of their actions, etc. then you need to make sure that they do understand that stuff. They can’t make rational, informed decisions if they don’t understand how things work.
Second step, if you talk to them and it turns out that yes they do understand that it’s dangerous but they really want the gold, or they think that you’re gonna always protect them and make sure that the big, nasty, frost wyrm doesn’t hurt them, well then that’s when you stop pulling your punches and let them deal with the consequences of their actions.
Thank you, I appreciate the response. Yeah, I guess I need to just let them screw up sometimes. Maybe i have a different take on characters. I mean, I try not to die when I’m playing a game with zero consequences for death, lol. Death feels like losing, even if you can just respawn and run to your body, or whatever.
I guess having exclusively ran IRL games I got used to pointing at someone and calling them by their character name instead of explicitly calling on them, definitely will have to try it this way.
I’m always pleased to see when Angry’s advice agrees with what I’ve been doing for the most part, I’ve often tried to call on specific people because of general bystander syndrome (having grown in a larger household I’ve seen chores go unattended too many times because we all thought someone would do it)
On a related note, do you think it is worth/good to try and impose a similar structure on the players? I’ve generally made it a rule for players to speak in first person (ie: “I walk up to the bartender” as opposed to “Ardrick walks up to the bartender”) because I feel it helps them be less separated from their characters, which has been a big issue at my tables. What are your thoughts on that?
Could you clarify what you mean by your characters are separated from their character and how that has been an issue?
I ask because to me, it’s important that players know that they are separate from their characters, so I want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
I feel like the finger point is just a gestural version of addressing someone by name, since it also clearly identifies who you’re talking to.
Your articles have a tendency to come right as I come to similar conclusions myself and stumble my way through it. Then I read your article and go, “Ah… that’s how to do that so it actually works.” Excited to try this this week!
This + the Visualization + the Script in “Well Begun is Half Done” = best game session I’ve run yet.
It cut down a ton of the overthinking and the general feeling of being lost that I keep getting from my characters. They were able to focus more on what their current goal was, or in this case, on figuring out what their current goal should even be. And that first player, once they said something, even if it wasn’t what the group ended up with, it broke the ice so they could all keep going.
Can’t wait to try this with my other group.
Got to admit, whilst Angry’s advice usually rings true immediately, I wasn’t 100% sold on this one. Asking specific people to act, sue, but does it really matter how you phrase it? My players have never struggled to remember their characters’ names.
But then I read the comments. And there’s a bunch of other commenters saying it made an impact. I’m going to try.
So thanks, other commenters (and sorry Angry for doubting!) – it’s really helpful when people come back and comment after trying it out!
I literally wrote 10000 WORDS in TWO INTRODUCTIONS at the start of this series saying PRECISELY THIS!
“My advice will seem counterintuitive”
“It won’t ring true”
“Stuff will be the opposite of what you think”
“Give me your trust”
“At least try a thing for a few weeks before you render an opinion”
ARRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!
Also,… I’m glad you came around. Hope it works out for you. Remember to give it a few weeks.
Same feeling as you, but it makes much more sense if you consider it as made for online games and not in-person.
Even a convention game with strangers will have a paper tent with the character name and everyone will turn to follow who the DM is looking at and stare.
I’m going to point out that, yes, this did solve some problems at on-line games, but it is also extremely effective for in-table play. This is for a lot of reasons, some of which are addressed in the article. The table tents are just another form of The List, and they create a delay as the GM and others scan the table to remind themselves who is playing who. Likewise, the eyeline-and-stare thing is neither as quick nor as effective at drawing the attention of someone who is either not paying attention or who is immersed in a character sheet and spell list and does not become aware of the attention. Further, despite the paradoxical-seeming nature of it, talking TO players ABOUT their characters actually helps ground all the players in the roleplaying experience by providing a constant nudge at the idea that each player is, in fact, portraying a character different from themselves. There’s a lot of psychology at play here. This isn’t JUST about flow and attention. And this is born out from running many games for many different people in a variety of venues, from online, to conventions for strangers, to personal home games with friends. Everything I write is.
I’ll remind you all again of the disclaimers I started this series with: first, I never do anything for just one reason. Every one of my solutions is a loaded solution. Second, my advice will seem paradoxical or counterintuitive at times because human psychology is weird and irrational. Third, no matter how dubious my advice sounds, you cannot judge it until you implement it for yourself for SEVERAL sessions. Not two or three, but several. Because it takes you that long to get over your inherent bias against change and then to get comfortable with a new habit. Same with your players.
In short… try it then judge or else don’t try it and move on.
This is fantastic advice. I have been dealing with these exact issues and contemplating strictly incorporating a “talking stick” that not only restricts other players from talking, but *demands* that the person with the stick talk.
What you’ve described here is more manageable and more impactful and I will definitely be implementing it.
Also, THANK YOU for actually giving real advice for playing virtually instead of just repeating the refrain “gaming online sucks and it’s just going to suck” as so many blogs do.
Well, to be fair, it does and it’s gonna… but there are ways to make it suck less.
Well shoot. I generally like this—the ‘to’ and ‘about,’ and keeping things moving by addressing specific people. I also like that I could use that to give the mic to someone who hasn’t said anything in a while.
But I’ve been using a version of side initiative very successfully for a while now, and I won’t change that mid-game. Which is like—by definition—every turn, tossing the egg at the players and trusting someone to catch it and pass it around nicely. Thing is, it’s working, and I think that’s down to the camaraderie you mentioned. My players know each well and I found that this initiative hugely improved their attention (and therefore pacing) because it’s their turn.
I do bet this advice is like the missing piece to making the normal initiative rule work, though. I’d like to give it another try in a different game.
This sounds good in practice, and I’ll give it a try during my next game, but it honestly reminds me of my worst ever experience in gaming.
It was in a PbtA game called masks, where I would consider what I wanted to do while other people were being asked what their characters did. Every time it came to my turn, I was presented with something like ‘Civilians are about to be crushed by rocks, what does Jak do?’ It forced me to respond to that event, and then it went to the next player, and all my plans about charging in to fight, or aiding an ally, or anything were wasted, and I felt like I couldn’t do anything.
After about an hour of that I left the group so I wouldn’t disrupt it. I wanted to take action, not constantly be forced to react. I honestly felt like the GM could play my character for me, because as a superhero, I couldn’t not protect the civilians, so I had to take that action.
That said, I might be the outlier here, as everyone else in the group really enjoyed the game.
While every situation is unique, it could be that the GM was trying their best and after only an hour wasn’t confident in everyone’s abilities, including their own. In such a situation you might have said “Jak hesitates for only a second as he internally debates whether to save the civilians or to confront the villain causing the rocks to fall in the first place. With reluctance he jumps in to save the innocents, but a glare of determination is directed towards the villain. Jak wants to make him pay for that.”
After-session talk with the GM could likely have solved some of it. Hard to adjust to everyone’s needs in the first hour of the first session.
I am guessing shortdesc came from MUDs and MUSHes. I think it was primarily used on RPI MUDs like Armegeddon.
I focussed on the advice in this post for my session Friday night. The 83rd session in a 6 year long campaign. It was hands down the BEST session we have had (and my game has already been pretty good if I do say so myself). Traditionally, I have used character names exclusively (Gomar, what do you do?). And, traditionally, my players have struggled to make decisions at the table, much less anything approaching a quick decision. I think speaking to the players about their characters gave them permission to role play rather than min-max and over strategize (Chris, Gomar sees Mouse consumed by the evil ritual. What does Gomar do?). Chris imagined what Gomar would actually do and just had him do it rather than perverting over what was most mechanically advantageous for Chris in the context of the game. Somewhat paradoxically it did feel more immersive and invited better role play than only using the character names. Also, when a character had been sidelined for a while, specifically inviting that player to act was pure magic. Thanks Angry! (New sub. New patreon. Will leave tip).