Seize, Ground, Listen

This blog is a struggle to cram thousands of words of GM advice into a limited number of actionable statements. The posts that I draw on are listed in the footnotes.

Seize, Ground, Listen

• Seize the characters
• Seize the players
• Seize the medium
• Ground in fantasy
• Ground with consequences
• Listen with popcorn

Seize the characters

Seize the characters with purpose. Give them something to do¹ and at least two reasons to do it: one moral, one venal.

Seize the players

Seize the players with decisions. The core challenge of TTRPGs is making decisions,² while also pretending to be someone who would make decisions differently to you.³ Decisions are most interesting when the number of options is limited, but no option is obviously best. So, prep three paths, make the consequences of taking each path different, and then prep three ways out of each danger.⁴ Prep from the characters’ perspectives.⁵ When prepping the way out, prep tools, but not solutions.⁶ Situations must be solvable, and not solved. Your prep is backup.

Seize the medium

GMing is the shaping of thought with noises. This gives you some limits, but also such freedoms. Say time has passed and it has.⁷ Say the players' point of view is somewhere else, and it is.⁸ Say one character is the tallest man in the world and they are.⁹ Do it! The mind is not a camera. It cannot cope with detail, but it loves extremity, and it will make a portrait gallery from a single metaphor.¹⁰ Also it can do more than see! If you tell it something stinks, it will smell it, and if you tell it cold iron has closed around its wrist, it will feel the chill.¹¹ You are playing with speech. Use it!

Ground in fantasy

Game rules yank minds into abstractions. Bring them back to the fantasy. You are their eyes and ears and more besides, so tell them what they sense.¹² Address them as their characters. Address them with your characters. Re-narrate HP drops or clock ticks back into changes in the world.¹³ Help everyone to dream together.

Ground with consequences

No easy choices.¹⁴ Prep consequences. Put up advertisements, warning signs and walls: write a world that says "come here!", write a world that says "you shouldn't", write a world that says "you can't", because attraction breeds suspicion, because a warning is a dare, and a forbidding is just a problem to solve.¹⁵ Prep your consequences in pairs, setup and payoff, and place the setup before the path.¹⁶ Give your players the chance to prepare.

Listen with popcorn

fundamentally the thing I enjoy about GMing is being surprised and delighted by the events at my table, by the actions of players, but also the actions of myself in response.

I agree.¹⁷ The joy of GMing is surprise, and to be surprised you have to be listening. So. Try to talk less.¹⁸ Get players to recap. It reminds them who they are, and shows you who they are. Invite players to say what their characters sense. If you have to give them information, give them what they need, then shut up until they have decided together what they all will do.¹⁹ When that plan is made, show it in motion.²⁰ When you speak, yearn instead to be listening. After all, these are your friends, putting on the greatest show on earth. Don't you want to hear it?