We Game Masters never think about narrative points of view. We just default to the thing we’ve always done. Years ago, I suggested that it was time to stop calling players you and take a third-person approach. It was great for pacing and clarity, but it affected how players connect to their characters. Is that a problem, though? And, more importantly, have you ever even thought about how your narrative point-of-view affects your game?

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Should You Really Talk To Your Players About Their Characters

A few years ago, I wrote a series called True Game Mastery. It remains one of the most popular series I’ve ever written. People have said it basically changed their Game Mastering lives, and not even because I was threatening or paying them. It was all about how to own your game, build player investment, and keep the pace strong.

In one of the series’ earliest articles, Inviting the Principle Character to Act, which was all about how to use good narration skills to keep the game moving and the players invested, I blew a lot of socks off and a lot of minds by suggesting you Game Masters should always talk to your players about their characters.

I said that proper narration sounds like, “Adam, the ogre is charging. What does Ardrick do?” You don’t talk to Adam as if he’s Ardrick, and you never say the word you to a player. Except, of course, when you, yourself, are speaking in-character and that character is speaking to Adam’s character. If you’re acting as a guard, you can say, “Hey, you, cut that out! Don’t make me come over there with my halberd!”

Now, I wasn’t making a point about the players not being their characters. That crap doesn’t bother me. I don’t even become a sneering, sarcastic pedant when someone accidentally says, “I killed three players last night.” Come on, guys. Seriously. We all know what they meant. Besides, that joke stopped being original when it appeared on the Dragonmirth page of the second issue Dragon Magazine, which was printed in 1976, which is before most of you were frigging zygotes. Enough already.

Anyway…

The point of the whole talk to the players about their characters thing was to do with memory, attention, and pacing. First, people take forever to internalize fictional names and aliases. Meanwhile, brains are wired to pick up their names out of the background noise. When you want to get someone’s attention, you use their real, human name. This is especially important when you’re running games online, by the way, but it’s also important when you’re running games for people who are less aware of the social cues for grabbing attention.

Second, it takes people more than forever to internalize other people’s fictional names and aliases. That’s why, at real, physical tables where you can’t easily just change screen names, most players start every campaign by making a list of the real players and their fictional characters’ names. Even then, or even when you use table tents with people’s names, there’s still that long, long moment when everyone has to check their lists or scan the table tents when you mention a character by name or when they have to address someone. Even online, it can take weeks or months for people to stop saying, “I give the wand to… uhh… I forgot her name…”

Those two things are pacing killers. You don’t want to be sitting there saying, “Hello, Mr. Thompson…” over and over while the player’s not answering and everyone else is trying to remember who’s playing Mr. Thompson and what his race and class actually are. Thus, because everyone has two identities, you always pair them up. The easiest way to do that is, “Adam, what is Ardrick doing?”

That wasn’t the whole article, by the way. That was just one part of how to streamline your narration for pacing and engagement. If you missed it, you should check it out and check out the entire True Game Mastery series too.

Game Changing or Game Master Breaking

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of feedback about that whole talk to the players about their characters thing. In fact, someone brought it up just last week in my supporter Discord server. Many of the Game Masters who adopted it reported a drastic impact on their game flow and pacing. It grabbed players’ attention, helped them keep track of who was who, and kept the game moving. Which matched my own observations. Which is why I offered the advice.

I know y’all think I pull this stuff out of my ass, but I really don’t. Almost every piece of advice I offer has been used at my table, researched, and examined. And I don’t test things just one time; I don’t think that works. You can’t evaluate something you haven’t tried for at least three sessions, but really, you need ten. I also give this advice, sneakily, to my fellow friends and Game Masters to see how it works for them. Honestly, I wish some of y’all would give my advice the same chance I do. I’m sick of hearing, “I tried to do this for almost one whole session, and it didn’t fix anything, and it was really hard!”

Yeah? No shit. One session isn’t enough to do something reliably, let alone do it comfortably. Especially when you’re breaking an old habit or trying a new rule. The first session is still just trying to remember what to do and how. It’s only midway through the second session that you’re doing it remotely reliably or comfortably. The third session is when it starts to work. I’m really sick of people saying, “I did one whole push-up, and I didn’t lose any weight; your initiative system sucks!”

Sorry…

On the other side of the feedback coin, though, were people telling me it felt impossible. Even after several sessions, it was just unnatural not to speak directly to the players. You can’t help but call Adam, you, let alone remember the whole “Adam, Ardrick examines the chest and finds it’s locked” bullshit.

And then there was the other downside people noticed. Because, yeah, there is a downside, and I didn’t talk much about it.

Why Now?

Why am I revisiting this at all? Why today? Well, it’s because of this series of advanced narration tricks I’m trying to finish. The series is about giving Game Masters some cool tools to up their narration game based on how other media handles narration and exposition. I think narration should do more than just describe. I think it should contribute to the narrative and the gameplay experience.

But the next trick I want to share involves a question that authors have to weigh very heavily and that we Game Masters basically don’t even think about. It’s a question we’ve been abstaining from since 1974 because, well, we have a default answer that just feels natural.

This is all down a certain point of view.

From Whose Point of View Are We Talking?

Basically, every book you’ve ever read has been told from one of two narrative points of view. Except for some odd exceptions, of course. Books are written either from a first-person or a third-person perspective.

Yes, I see you raising your hand, you nerd. I’m well aware that there’s more than two points of view. I know all about limited and omniscient points of view, and I’m going to get to the other thing below. Just shut up and listen.

The best known example of a first-person viewpoint among gamers is probably the Dresden Files series by Jim Bitchens. Or whoever. I don’t care. They ain’t my jam. Though I did enjoy that werewolf one. Basically, all the books in the series are told by telepathy. Henry Dresden, the main character, just narrates his adventures for you in one big stream-of-consciousness thing. That’s a first-person perspective.

The Sherlock Holmes books, by the way, are also first-person stories. Each is narrated by Dr. John Watson Crick. But Sir Arthur Conan the Barbarian is playing a little bit of a funny game because the doctor is actually often talking like a third-person narrator. The key thing, though, is that J. Watson Crick and Henry Dresden are constantly saying I and me and we.

You find third-person narration in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and J.R.R. Martin. Both describe the action from the perspective of a camera crew following the characters around. The characters are referred to by name or as he, she, or theys. Sometimes, the camera crew gets a little close. Sometimes, the camera points right into a character’s ear, and the microphone picks up their thoughts and conclusions and things. J.R.R. Martin is actually great for how he uses limited viewpoints to artfully show the world through different characters’ lenses. J.R.R. Tolkien, meanwhile, switches somewhat distractingly between limited and more omniscient viewpoints. It’s as if the camera crew mostly follows at a distance, but every so often, Aragorn stops short, and the camera crew runs into him and buries the camera so deep up his ass you can see what he’s thinking.

Yeah, I know I am not making any friends today. I ain’t here to make friends.

For an author, the viewpoint choice matters a lot. It changes the tone of the work, affects the audience’s relationship with the characters, and even changes how much the audience gets to know about the world.

All else being equal, first-person perspectives create closer, more intimate relationships between readers and the story’s characters. They also strengthen characterization. But they also limit the reader’s perspective of the world beyond the character. Thus, they’re great in character-driven pieces with only a single protagonist or else a very small number of protagonists who take turns with the telepathy device. First-person perspectives are also great for mysteries, suspense, and thriller stories.

Third-person perspectives put some distance between the readers and the characters, even when the viewpoint character puts a lens on the camera, and the microphone is close enough to hear their thoughts, but they are very useful when a story has multiple protagonists and follows multiple plot threads. First-person stories with multiple protagonists can get confusing, even with small numbers of characters. Third-person narratives are great in fantasy and science-fiction stories because the world and its history and the ideas and events that shaped it are often as much a part of the story as the characters themselves. The reader needs a broader perspective.

Gaming in the Second Person

Of course, we Game Masters don’t do first-person perspectives. We don’t really do point of view at all, actually. Which is the topic of the next Stupid Narration Trick. Instead, we default to what would be called a second-person perspective if it existed. Which is actually does.

In second-person perspective, the narration isn’t about I or me or she or they. Instead, it’s all about you. You find it a lot in rulebooks and instruction manuals. Especially lately. It’s the best cure for the passive instructional manual voice that bores everyone to shit. The Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook is actually mostly written from a second-person viewpoint. So are the old Choose Your Own Adventure books and those Give Yourself Goosebumps books all you millennials are always gushing about by R.L. Stine. Or R.L. Stain. I think it depends on which timeline you were born in. As a Gen-Xer, I really don’t know from Goosebumps and, to me, R.L. Stine will always be the dude who wrote the unexpectedly really funny, really good novelization of the movie Spaceballs. I shit you not.

Anyway…

In gaming, the second-person perspective is basically the equivalent of a narrative first-person perspective. It’s more intimate, it’s more direct, it’s more personal. It sucks the audience into the story as a protagonist. Or it would if Game Masters did anything with it. But we don’t, do we? Because we didn’t even know we were making a choice.

Taking the Default Perspective

Let’s be real: Game Masters don’t pick a point-of-view voice. You didn’t, did you? You just defaulted to second-person narration because that’s how you talk to people, and Game Mastering is just talking to people. You didn’t choose it consciously over a third-person voice because it’s more intimate and puts the players directly into the story, did you? You just did it. And now you do it because you always did. It’s just how you do.

Which, by the way, is why it’s so hard to do anything different. When I said, “Speak to your players about their characters,” I knew I was asking you to do something really hard. I was asking you to break a habit you’d built for years without even knowing what you were doing. So, yeah, of course you’re gonna screw it up. What did you expect?

But what if you did have a choice? What would you choose?

Why Have Seconds? Why Have Thirds?

As I said above, this viewpoint thing ain’t small. It changes the audience’s relationship with the story’s protagonists. It also affects what the audience knows about the world. That second thing ain’t a big deal for Game Masters because, one way or the other, you’re doing the limited narrator bit. It’s just part of how roleplaying games work, right? You tell the players what their characters see, hear, perceive, and know, and not much else. You also keep the camera and microphone outside the characters’ skulls.

Honestly, I wouldn’t even have mentioned the whole limited versus omniscient thing if not for a chance to torque the Tolkienistas a bit. I love torquing them because they remind me every time I mention Martin that he’s never going to finish the next book, unlike Tolkien, who finished his books. He certainly never got so lost in his own worldbuilding masturbation that his unfinished epic had to be cleaned up and published posthumously, right? He knew when to stop inventing the world and tell the damned story, right?

Sorry. I know I called a truce, and now I’m not respecting it. You can all have one free comment jabbing at me about Martin. Just keep it short, okay?

Anyway…

The viewpoint thing is not a small choice. It’s one we Game Masters should make consciously. The relationships between the audience and the protagonists are super important in roleplaying games. We need the audience to connect with the protagonists, what with them being basically the same people.

People have noticed that the third-person talk to the players about their characters thing does create a little bit of distance sometimes. I noticed it myself. It’s not huge, but it’s not invisible either. When you stop reminding your players that they are the characters, some of them have trouble remembering that. The real, true thespians don’t ever forget it, but the normal, reasonable, sane, rational, tolerable players take their cues from you. If you treat the players and the characters like separate entities, the players will think that way.

I actually started purposely, consciously experimenting at my own tables. In encounters I narrated using a second-person voice, the players tended to slip more easily into character themselves. When I used third-person narration, they tended to keep a distance. Since we are running roleplaying games and since third-person narration clearly ruins roleplaying, that’s it, right? Verdict reached.

Well, calm your tits there, Ace Ventura, Anime Attorney. There’s more to this story.

While we Game Masters don’t have to sweat the whole broader perspective thing, we do have a worry our favorite authors don’t. Our games live or die on pacing, on keeping the players’ attention, and on ensuring they all remember who’s who without name tags or cheat sheets. I actually think that pacing, attention, and the gameplay experience trump roleplaying immersion every time.

But the whole second-person intimacy thing is kind of an asynchronous thing. It doesn’t help the whole audience equally. In fact, there’s a sort of weird lockout effect that happens. When you talk to one person directly, everyone else is relegated to the spectator role. You get a more intimate connection with the person you’re talking to, but at the expense of everyone else. And while you do draw that player more into their own character, you’re also hedging everyone else out by doing the you thing instead of talking about the character. Is it more important to help a player into their own character’s head or to help every other player build a better relationship with that character?

It might shock you to hear this, but I think the latter is more important. Players are inclined to build a relationship with their own characters. They’re gonna do that. Maybe not as deep without my help, but it’ll still be there. It’s everyone else I have to worry about. Besides, I’m far more interested in the character’s actions, the world, and how each impacts the other than I am in the character’s inner states.

Is there a discussion to be had here? Absolutely. I mean, there’s a reason Jim Bitchens shoved a microphone into Henry Dresden’s earhole while J.R.R. Martin hired a camera crew to follow his ensemble all over Westeros. Maybe this is something you, as a Game Master, should decide based on the game you’re running.

Or maybe you don’t have to…

Porky Nolos Doses

In my experiments, I noticed something interesting. Well, I noticed two interesting somethings, but I already told you about one of them. First, I noticed what I said above about my players taking my lead. When I did the third-person thing, they were more attentive and engaged with the action, but they were less in their own characters’ heads. When I did the second-person thing, they fell more readily into deep character. But second, I noticed that their interactions were cleaner across the board. They tended to forget less who was who and felt more connected to each other. Meanwhile, the overall pace of the game was greatly improved.

It was as if the third-person thing helped everyone build a better understanding of and relationship to the other characters so that, when we went into deep interaction mode, it worked like a kind of lubricant. Meanwhile, the pace held, and people were more attentive.

There are scenes when the action is external, and pacing and attention are important. There are scenes when everyone is sharing the experience, and you shouldn’t be using you to address any one person. And, remember, you should never use the royal you. Especially not in online games.

Moreover, there are parts of every scene like that and parts of some scenes that are more intimate and one-on-one. Your scene-setting narration? Inviting people to act and describing the results? Pacing, attention, third-person. But the moment you want the players to get into their characters’ heads, second-person narration is the way to do it.

So you switch, right? Consciously and deliberately. Well, that is absolutely an option, but even I have to admit this is getting to be a little bit much. Narration is already tough, isn’t it? Especially when I give you drills and tell you to be conscious of every word you choose. Now I want you to add deliberate viewpoint switching between scenes or even within the same scene. Even I, insane as I am, have to admit that maybe this is too big an ask for a game about pretending to be an elf that we ostensibly play and run for fun.

But maybe you don’t have to switch. At least not consciously and deliberately.

Let’s admit that none of us who have been doing this whole speak to the players about their characters thing has actually been executing it perfectly. I know I haven’t, and I really, really try. I catch myself slipping into you-speak a lot. Often mid-scene. Oh, sure, I start off strong when I set the scene and invite people to act, but then I start to drift. Well, not always. I don’t drift in combat or action scenes. Basically, whenever pacing is really important, and I need everyone paying attention, I do keep to a tight third-person narration. It’s only when it starts to feel weird or when things turn more intimate at the table that I slip.

Isn’t that funny?

So, maybe that’s the real answer, and maybe that’s why the people who’ve had such success with switching to third-person narration actually have. Not because they’ve done it perfectly, but because they’ve broken the second-person habit enough when it really counts and only slip when slipping is for the best anyway.

In other words, I don’t really need to redact anything; I just need to add a note that it’s okay if you can’t get it perfect because you never, ever will, but really do try to get it right when it matters most.

But at least we had an interesting discussion about viewpoints. I wonder if that will be important later…

Have you tried speaking to the players about their characters? Have you experimented with different narrative points of view? Do you owe me a jab because I was mean to your favorite author you sissy little baby? Comment below?

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