Look Before You Leap

Credit: Alan Lee

This is a post about a very subtle facet of spotlight management. I consider it to be one of the most important techniques a GM needs to master, and is very often one of the primary differences between the GMs I've enjoyed playing with and the GMs who I haven't. Yet I also never really see anyone talk about it, perhaps because they don't even realize that they're using (or not using) this technique.

So, what's the big secret I'm here to expose?

Let's start with the fatal flaw

Most big RPGs will explain early on in the text the basic procedure of play. It'll usually go something like:

1. The GM describes the situation

2. The players declare what they want their characters to say or do

3. The GM determines the results of those actions

And occasionally they'll mention that between steps 1 and 2 there might need to be an extra step for asking questions and clarifying some things. Pretty standard stuff, right?

But despite seeming so simple and straightforward, the little details of exactly how you implement this 3-step process can make all the difference in how effectively the game flows. Here's something I see all the time:

Example 1

GM: You enter a medium-sized dungeon chamber. There's another big heavy closed door on the wall opposite you, a bunch of bookshelves around the walls, a locked chest in the corner, and a couple of torches in sconces providing light. What do you do?

At this moment, each player almost instantly forms an intent in their mind. Alice is planning to try opening the treasure chest. Bob is planning to scan the bookshelves. Charles wants to cast a magical spell to reveal any traps hidden throughout the room. Dana is going to look at the other door and see if it leads anywhere interesting.

Alice: I go to open the chest in the corner. 

GM: It's got a big padlock. If you want to try picking it, then make a roll for me. 

Alice fails her roll. 

GM: You accidentally set off a trap. Everyone, make a saving throw to avoid the hurricane of poison darts that shoot from every wall. 

Charles, internally: for fuck's sake.

Here's a similar situation I've been in many times:

Example 2

GM: ...Alright, and that resolves the last orc's attack. It y'all's turn now. There are still three scary-looking orc warriors left. What do you do? 

Each player forms an internal intent. Alice is planning on tossing a big net onto the orcs to entangle them and grant her allies a bonus to their attacks. Bob, Charles, and Dana are planning to just swing at the orcs. 

Alice: I'm gunna— 

Bob: I'm gunna attack the nearest orc with my sword. 

GM: Alright Bob, roll to hit. 

Bob fails his roll. 

Charles: I'm gunna try the same thing. 

Charles fails his roll. 

Charles: Shit, alright this is getting bad. 

Alice: Yeah well I think— 

GM: Dana, what are you doing? 

Dana: I guess I'm also just going to try attacking the same orc. 

GM: Alright, make your roll then. 

Dana fails her roll. 

GM: Sucks. Alice, what about you? What are you doing during all that? 

Alice, internally: you've gotta be kidding me.

Here's a third situation that I've also seen happen once or twice:

Example 3

GM: Okay you arrive at the market fair and see that it's hustling and bustling with all sorts of magical characters and creatures and whatnot. Here's a handout to see all the things there are to check out. Feel free to split up and interact with the stuff that interests you. 

Each player forms an internal intent. Alice wants to check out their offerings on exotic foods. Bob is going to enter the dance competition. Charles is going to see the jugglers. Dana also wants to enter the dance competition. 

GM: I'm going to go around in a circle so everyone can do one main thing, okay? So Alice, what are you doing? 

Alice: I'm going shopping. Got any weird food I can't normally get at the market? 

The GM hands Alice a list of goods for sale. Everyone waits while Alice peruses. She highlights a few interesting options and negotiates her purchases back-and-forth with the GM before locking them in. 

GM: Sounds good. Bob, what are you up to? 

Bob: I'm entering that dance competition. 

The GM is excited. She has a lot of notes for this. She explains to Bob that there'll be three rounds. He's gotta make a performance roll each time, but he can get a bonus if he explains some way he spruces it up. The GM begins by describing some of the other contestants and their performances, everyone is delighted by this. One of them is a snooty prima donna who scoffs at Bob right before he goes, and Bob snipes back at them. Then, when he rolls, he gets like a critical success or something and it's awesome. 

So before round two, the snooty NPC does something to sabotage Bob, and he now rolls with a penalty! He's about to be knocked out of the competition after a failed second round, but then Bob says he casts a spell to overturn the result. He creates an auditory illusion of the crowd chanting his name again and again, leading to the actual crowd joining in and hyping him up, so the judges have no choice but to let him continue into round three. 

Before the third round, Bob says he wants to go confront that snooty NPC privately. Call them out for the foul play. They then go to the stage and each make their rolls. But the NPC fails terribly and accidentally sprains their ankle. The crowd is shocked. Bob immediately says he'll cast a healing spell on them. The NPC is taken aback at his kindness and fully concedes the match. The crowd cheers, the judges give Bob a big blue ribbon, it's awesome.

GM: So good. Love it. So Charles, how about you?

Charles: Show me those jugglers, man. If I'm not impressed, I'm gunna heckle them. 

Charles checks out the jugglers, the GM consults her notes and describes a little interaction, there's some fun roleplay. He even meets an NPC who gets a name, maybe a future contact? 

GM: Great, great, great. Alrighty, Dana, what were you getting up to during all that? 

Dana: Well I wanted to join the dance competition. 

GM: Oh. 

Dana, internally: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

What's going wrong here?

Okay, yeah yeah, that last example may have been exaggerated for effect. But you recognize the basic situation, right? It really sucks when this happens, and yet I've played at tables where it happens again and again and again.

This is the exact sort of little thing that allows the game to flow smoothly. When a GM fails to do this properly, the group experiences constant friction and frustration, even frequently crashing for minutes at a time.

Going back to Example 1, just the basic scenario of probing a room, is something that may happen a dozen times or more in every session. And a lot of the time, there's going to be something like a trap or a hostile monster or some other major risk factor present, ready to be triggered by one wrong move.

To be clear, I'm not saying that it's a problem that a trap was set off. But it's frustrating that such a consequential outcome resulted from something so arbitrary and thoughtless. If Charles had just gone before Alice, the entire situation would turn out completely differently. But whether it's because Alice spoke up first or because the GM called on her first, either way Alice's action was resolved before Charles even got to announce his, and now the party has suffered a negative consequence despite having the prudence to anticipate and avoid that consequence.

Maybe you're reading this and thinking to yourself, "well those players should have said something! If they knew that their input would have made a difference, they should have spoken up!"

But placing the burden on the players to do this is also pretty shitty. Like I said, this is a nonstop obstacle that may be threatening to derail the flow literally every few minutes of the session. To expect every player to be constantly prepared to abruptly interrupt whoever is currently speaking so they can hijack the spotlight at any moment in order to "correct" the flow of actions is a recipe for chaos. It's tricky for a player to do that gracefully, they'll probably fail unless they get kind of aggressive, and even if they're succeeding at helping the group dodge this pitfall then we instead now have a different problem: a table where people are frequently interrupted and talked over and even minor actions are an ordeal to resolve "properly."

And I actually have seen some of those GMs recognize and try to address the problem on their own. But very rarely do they arrive at the right solution. Many come up with a firm rule, like, "from now on, actions will always be resolved in clockwise order" or something like that. Or, "I'll always start by calling on whichever player has gone the longest since they've last spoken." I don't know what their thought process is here, except maybe that just by making a decision at all, attempting something instead of nothing, will somehow avoid the problem.

But there is a superior method, and it's deceptively simple.

Here's your new basic procedure, finally articulated:

1. The GM describes the situation

 

1.5. Yes, yes, give the players a chance to ask some clarifying questions and whatnot before proceeding to the action.

 

2. The players declare a plan for the turn

 

3. The GM prepares to resolve the turn

 

4. Together, resolve the players' actions and determine the results

To elaborate with some nuance:

First, discuss your basic intent for this turn. “We’ll investigate this room” or “We head back to the entrance to talk to the guard.” For many turns, the plan can be as simple as, “Let’s just go north and see what we find.” All of those are examples of times when the party decides one collective action as a group, but I previously gave some examples of situations where it makes more sense for each player to declare individual planned actions. The procedure is the same either way. All basic intentions are announced before any of them are resolved.

Next, the GM checks any notes relevant to the party’s plan. Maybe they consult their map key and timeline, determine if the party will have a random encounter, read up on any NPC that the party is likely to run into, etc. But ultimately, they take this step to gather sufficient information to resolve all the action properly, including deciding in what order actions will resolve.

Then, resolve the plan in detail. “What parts of the room do you probe?” and “what do you say to the NPC?” It's only now that you walk through each action step by step. The initial declaration of intent is short and simple. Players, hold your horses. Don't jump right into the details and dice rolling until the GM has indicated that they're ready to.

A small change can go a long way

Internalizing this more nuanced and prudent procedure will help you to avoid literally all of the problems I've talked about so far.

Example 1 doesn't necessarily look that different. The GM may still call on Alice before anyone else. But after hearing her say "I go to open the chest in the corner," she wouldn't elaborate on that quite yet. She'd say, "got it, sounds good. I'll get back to you on that in a moment. Bob, what about you?" She moves on to the rest of the party to hear from them first. And it's only once she's heard all four intents that she evaluates them for the optimal order and realizes "oh yeah it definitely makes more sense for Charles to do his thing before anyone else." Even better, the players can decide their own order once they've all shared their intents aloud.

Example 2 demonstrates my own personal misgivings about the "no initiative method" norm that is found throughout most PbtA games. Obviously the consequences aren't as meaningful in a story game, since nobody is playing to "win" in those games. So it works just fine for those groups of gamers. But I personally just don't care for this kind of thoughtless messiness regardless. As a GM, I myself get frustrated and upset when the action devolves into chaotic nonsense because we didn't take the extra 2 seconds needed to do it properly.

When you ask for one player to resolve their full action before even addressing another player, you're advancing the game's clock forward in time for that one person before you've even looked around at the whole playing field. When you do move on to player 2, you now have to rewind time and ask them, "while that was going on, what had you been up to?" By doing this, you frequently run into an immediate micro-time paradox that would have been easy to avoid!

Example 3 is probably the kind that I find most important to get right. My own party splits up all the time and it's extremely important for the sake of flow that each action is resolved in the best order possible, not necessarily a consistent order. It tends to change every single round because the players' actions tend to change every single round. Thus, my own internal rationale for ordering things is to go from simple to complex.

Alice's action to go shopping is definitely the best one to do first, but I also would probably have done it a bit differently. I'd hand her the shopping list and say, "read that on your own for a few minutes and I'll get back to you after I'm done with Charles." You don't need to force yourself to resolve every event strictly one at a time. Bounce around if it makes more sense!

Then I'd address Charles and the jugglers second even though he was the third player to declare his action, because I know from consulting my own notes that his scene will be less involved than the dance competition. I can already reasonably guess that it'll be pretty short and sweet.

Then I'd go back to Alice, get her final answer on what purchases she's making, and then I'd resolve Bob and Dana together. It's silly to assume that the party has fully split up. Just ask first! It takes 2 seconds! Everyone's input is equally important.

Caller? I hardly know 'er!

Now I know what you're thinking. This whole time you've been reading, you're screaming through the screen, "This is what callers are for, Dwiz! I've been saying it for years! Bring back callers!" But it's not quiiiite that simple.

For those of you who aren't familiar, there's an old practice that used to be the norm in D&D to designate one player as the party caller. The caller's responsibility is to relay information to the GM on the party's behalf, speaking for the group so it's easier to wrangle so many people. Sounds pretty cool, right? But the practice of using a caller correctly is also something that's frequently misunderstood and leads to avoidable problems.

To clear up some confusion, here's some things that callers are good for:

1. The caller can be trusted to make firm decisions on behalf of the whole group for minor choices. The kinds of actions that the whole party technically must decide, but which aren't worth bogging down with a big group discussion. If the GM asks, "do you want to loot the bodies of the orcs?" the caller can just say "yeah, we'll do that" without consulting every other player to verify that they agree to this answer first. Not everything needs to be turned into a debate.
   
   
2. The caller can serve as a default face for the party. Obviously if there's a situation where a different PC is more appropriate to speak to an NPC, they can step in and do that. But whenever the group asks for directions or runs into a random encounter or whatever, the GM can direct their words to the caller by default.
   
   
3. Some games find ways to implement the caller role into the mechanics. I'm a little wary of this sort of thing because I see the caller role not as a part of the game itself, but as a metagame tool that helps us to facilitate a more enjoyable session. Like having someone who's job it is to provide snacks or someone who's ready to look up a rule on the fly. Tying it into the mechanics creates stakes that can confuse people's priorities, perhaps unintentionally transforming this responsibility into a privilege. Nonetheless, some games do some interesting things with this idea, like having the caller's Charisma modify NPC Reaction rolls or something.
   
   
4. (Their most important function of all!) The caller is good for coordinating internal plans that are going to get messy and involved. Things like planning a heist are not just a matter of everyone stating what they want to do in the next 60 seconds. The group first has to decide, like, what their goal is. They first have to be on the same page about the entire approach. Sneak in? Disguise ourselves and get invited? Barge in guns blazing? Are we planning to kill anyone? Do we know what comes next? They need to go through a group brainstorming process before anyone is ready to declare actions. There are going to be a lot of suggestions raised that later get discarded, and it can sometimes be better if the GM never even hears those suggestions in the first place, lest their head get filled with lots of thrown out ideas. Let the GM tune out for a few minutes, the party has an argument, and then the caller delivers the final answer to the GM.

As a GM, it really helps to have a partner among the players to help you work through these sorts of things.

But 

But

But

But it can become easy to over-rely on your caller, having them do more of your job than is reasonable, and maybe even creating a speed bump where there needn't have been one.

When it comes to the sorts of "around the table" moment-to-moment input, the caller is an unneeded extra step in the process. Imagine if we revised the core loop to include them:

1. The GM describes the situation

 

1.5. Questions and clarification

 

2. Each players declare a plan to the caller

3. The caller repeats all of those plans to the GM 

4. The GM prepares to resolve the turn

 

5. Together, resolve the players' actions and determine the results

As a GM, you aren't being saved any work in this case. You're still going to need to hear every player's input one at time, and you're still going to consider for yourself the best order to resolve them, the information necessary to resolve them, etc. Nothing about that becomes easier by having all the actions declared from one person's mouth instead of four people's mouths. This is one process where you can easily cut out the middle man.

I am normally a big proponent of taking GM responsibilities and distributing them around the table instead, making the GM's life easier. But this is a particular situation where by far the easiest way to handle this is for the GM to just take full responsibility of avoiding this pitfall. This is the one thing that is unambiguously their job to do. Like 50% of what we even have GMs for is spotlight management, and this is at the heart of that. In fact, I even think that it's easier for the GM if they take on the burden of handling this alone rather than the alternative!

So, by all means: streamline, outsource, or half-ass literally every single other part of the job. You have a lot on your plate. But do this part yourself, and do it correctly.

Conclusion

Even aside from avoiding accidental misunderstandings like these, this also improves everything else about the game as well. As a GM, I love having a designated step in the process explicitly telling me to pause and think and check my notes.

Have you ever run a scenario or system that has a lot of moving parts, tons of bells and whistles, that ends up being too much to handle? All these ingredients sound really cool in theory, but at the table you accidentally forget to include like half of them because you're just trying to keep the session moving. I've seen so many GMs who get really on edge while they're running the game because of performance anxiety. They keep themselves from ever checking their own notes or taking too long to make a ruling (ironically, out of fear that it would disrupt the game's flow). But they really overestimate how big of a delay it actually is. It probably only takes a few seconds, and those extra seconds of consideration go a long way.

It can be hard for some GMs to ask for a moment's delay, to ask their players "alright gimme a sec, I gotta check something in my notes for this." But if we instead simply bake it into the core gameplay loop itself, make it one of the main steps of the process, something that everyone understands and is expecting to happen again and again, then everyone will get used to it and now it's normal and easy.

Even though I think this should be a basic skill that you incorporate without even really thinking about it, I've nonetheless begun explicitly writing it down as a step in all of my procedures. If nothing else, writing these into the rulebook also means that the players know to expect this from the GM. When everyone at the table knows how the game is supposed to flow, it's that much more likely to do so seamlessly.

So if you take nothing else from this post, here's one idea I would like to see catch on: declaring an action and resolving that action are two separate steps that maybe ought to have some other things take place in between them.

-Dwiz