Some Ways to Talk When You GM
A friend of mine is about to be the host and game master (GM) for a tabletop roleplaying game for the first time. He asked for advice. This is what I wish I’d had ready to share with him.
I’m so glad you’re getting to play. It’s great that you’ve taken on the role of the GM — it can be so much fun. RPGs are one of my favorite media for play and storytelling. It’s a skill game, which means even if you have a knack for it, you can practice and hone your skills for play.
Beyond any one game’s guiding principles or best practices, here are some things I say and do in any RPG to get the most out of play.
A tabletop RPG is a conversation. It’s a communication game. Even if you have a board and miniatures, communication is key. Make it a conversation in which all players get to contribute. Be a good conversationalist, an active listener, and a friendly colleague. So much of the GM’s job builds out of that.
In addition to listening closely, let players know they’ve been heard. By habit, I often say something like, “I love it” or “Awesome.” I sometimes check in by repeating a player’s input back to them, embellishing it or asking a question that hones that input. “When you drive away,” I might ask, “is this a dramatic flourish where you peel out and floor it? Or do you just ease away, real casual, like it’s no big deal?” Often I add “Or something else?”
By offering options, I help the player embellish and dramatize their choices. Making it a question helps lend them some authority and helps me imply that other options are possible.
Questions are great technology. Ask pointed questions and you involve the players in the narrative and empower their descriptions for the better. Questions can embed a character more firmly in the story of the game (“How does your star-pilot know that ancient language?”), imply background lore and inter-character connections (“When they ask about the knight about their family, who do you think of? Even if you lie to them, I’m curious about the truth.”), and fuel great descriptions (“What do the other characters see when you cast this spell? What does it look like?”)
Ask big, open-ended questions and fine, pointed questions. Mix them up, all different sizes. Big, open questions include:
- What do you do?
- How do you do that?
- What do you and your character feel about that?
Finer, pointed questions are often more specific and include certain presumptions about what’s happening in the game:
- When you answer them, what do you leave out?
- When it’s time to head to the castle, how do you get there?
- How would you know if this elf is lying? Can you spot a tell?
When players ask you questions, include them in the answers — and maybe how you got there. “Can we talk our way out of this?” Look for ways to say yes, but be honest about how difficult it might be as part of honestly portraying the game world in tandem with the players.
“You can try,” is a fine response (a classic, even), but I’d follow it up with more information for the players through their characters. “The power structure in the kingdom is such that subordinates probably won’t challenge the Duchess’s opinion, if you can change her mind, but first you’d have to get an audience with her. Not subtle, but maybe effective?”
I use phrases like “because it amuses me” or “thinking about it now, let’s say” when I want to tell players that I’m improvising. When I’m improvising but I don’t want to make it obvious, I describe thing the way I do when using prepared lore: I couch it in things the characters know. “The countryside is lousy with giant crabs — too many to eat and too tough to hunt casually.”
I like to involve players in deciding how their characters might know the answers to questions. Characters live in the worlds we visit for play, after all. They know all kinds of stuff we players might not think of until it comes up. “Your wizard has been in enough shops like this to know they make most of the products to order — they probably don’t have any overstock.”
Which reminds me: Don’t limit your descriptions to battle. I see a lot of new GMs revel and relish in violent descriptions of ogre death and piercing blades. For some tables and some players, that’s fine. But whole worlds are on the game table, here, and there’s so much more to experience and do. I want to know what they’re cooking in the space cantina, what I taste when I order a space-ale, and what the music from the local droids means. (“It’s an ironic ode to a lost love by a songwriter who is plainly glad the affair is over,” I decide, in the moment, just because.)
When describing things, try to involve at least two senses at a time. A room looks like a ransacked kitchen and smells like bad eggs. The approach of a dragon brings with it the taste of sulfur and the sound of its scales skittering along the tunnel walls. Metaphors can be tough to improvise sometimes but they convey a lot and fast — just be ready to say more when players have questions about the details. Players don’t just need a sense of some places, they need the comfortable confidence to improvise within that place, too.
“The cybernetics shop looks like an Apple store was left to rot,” the GM says.
“So,” a player asks, “are the cybernetics all, like, sleek and modern?”
“They were once,” the GM says, “but a bunch of them are scuffed like floor models and look two generations out of fashion. Cybernetic arms and legs dangle from the ceiling, for browsing, and a video of someone sprinting on legs like bows plays on dirty flatscreens.”
And yet? Also? It is just plumb all right to speak plainly to the players about things. They’re your collaborators, your cohorts in fiction, so level with them when you need to. It’s okay!
This is an especially great way to save everyone labor: Say what is or isn’t a good use of playtime. You can say, “I don’t have anything fun that awaits us down this line of questioning, so what else can we do?”
That is part of being a good conversationalist in a way that involves everyone. It relates, in my mind, to one of my favorite safety technologies in play, which honors these magic words: “Let’s not.” This tells everyone to back up, rewind, and try a different way so nobody is discomforted or harmed further. No explanation needed. It’s a kind of verbal invocation of a flag on the play, or an X-card. Safety technologies protect players from doing harm and being harmed. Important.
And, of course, all of this advice presumes that you have everyone’s wellbeing and fun in mind. You’re the host of the game world, in many ways. You may also be the teacher of the game. Whatever combination of authorities and responsibilities you have the table — as a player, as a person — remember this: Use your powers only for good.
