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   clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 08:40:27 JST clarity flowers

   one of my biggest pieces of advice to ttrpg GMs is “tell, don’t show”. I don’t need beautiful prose, and I don’t need to feel like I can see a movie of the events in my mind; I need useful, specific, and actionable information. You’re not just my eyes and ears, you’re also my attention and gut feelings and vibes! “Mary looks -pissed-” “Something about his face screams ‘punch me’” “She starts rambling about something something destiny whatever, but you struggle to pay attention to any of it”

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 08:45:39 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     It can be easy to fall into the trap of “I don’t want to tell the players what they feel” but a feeling is a sense just like touch or sight! Hell, even thoughts are a kind of sense. Give them something concrete, and then spin it back to them if necessary: “what feature of his face do you fixate on that is particularly infuriating you?” “why DO you trust her so deeply?”

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 08:46:07 JST clarity flowers

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     • Darius Kazemi

     @darius I know right? Me too haha

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     Darius Kazemi (darius@friend.camp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 08:46:08 JST Darius Kazemi

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     @clarity damn I feel like “She starts rambling about something something destiny whatever, but you struggle to pay attention to any of it” is advice I could have used as a teenage GM

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:01:04 JST clarity flowers

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     • Symbolic City

     @SymbolicCity Oh, yeah, for sure! very important to give the players the feeling that they have that sort agency. I'd also avoid describing emotions as immediate reactions to events (since the players will have better instincts for managing those themselves) vs like, vibes or senses: "something about the way she just did that is really annoying"

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     Symbolic City (symboliccity@dice.camp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:01:05 JST Symbolic City

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     @clarity Blades in the Dark rules should apply. The GM says, "Your character is pissed about this," and the player interjects, "Nah, that doesn't sound like Filbo Boggins, they'd be intrigued and a little turned on," and the GM has to roll with that feedback.

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:02:22 JST clarity flowers

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     • 🐛

     @apophis yeah absolutely! IRL, we have all sorts of emotional responses and even thoughts outside our control, and then we post-hoc reason about -why- we had them and then use that reasoning to inform our choices & beliefs.

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     🐛 (apophis@brain.worm.pink)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:02:23 JST 🐛

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     @clarity i was stuck in this trap forever until i realized that sometimes these emotions happen involuntarily irl
     
     so if a potion has sudden, devastating paranoid anxiety as a side effect of an overdose...
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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:10:58 JST clarity flowers

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     This is related to a common problem I see these days (in myself often!) which is struggling to zoom out. If you don't LARP out a sword fight blow-by-blow to make sure the details are right, you don't need to act out every word your characters ever speak, either! "I exchange pleasantries with her for a while before eventually cutting to the chase, drilling her on what exactly her relationship with the suspect is." And you can rewind to specific moments if you want to give the scene color.

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:14:18 JST clarity flowers

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     I am -not- an actor or an improv theater person but I can still run a good game. Don't let the professionals and their podcasts fool you. You can lean on the amazing flexibility of conversational language to communicate all the information you need and have a great time doing it.

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:20:14 JST clarity flowers

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     • Symbolic City

     @SymbolicCity yeah, absolutely! That's "tell don't show" in a nutshell. The whole thing about "showing" as literary advice is that it leaves things up to interpretation. There's already a ton of ambiguity inherently in ttrpgs, no need to insert more!

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     Symbolic City (symboliccity@dice.camp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:20:15 JST Symbolic City

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     @clarity Reminds me of a bit of advice that's often given in NSR circles: Tell your players when their characters think they're being lied to.

     A lot of times, the GM instinct is to try to make the NPC sound fishy and let the players sort it out for themselves, but that stuff can fly right past even clever players. Just say, "Alcestis tells you she didn't see the murderer's face, but something about her claim seems a bit off."

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:23:19 JST clarity flowers

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     • Symbolic City

     @SymbolicCity honestly, I think most people I see are honing their style of play on television (hence my thread from a while back https://xoxo.zone/@clarity/113183080865479002), which has established itself as a form as being almost entirely blow-by-blow with "montage" being the exception to the rule. But you're right that modern writing style also leans on the exact same techniques, so it's pretty inescapable wherever you look. Maybe GMs could stand to read more Borges lol.

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     Symbolic City (symboliccity@dice.camp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:23:20 JST Symbolic City

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     @clarity A lot of this is compounded, I think, by the blow-by-blow nature of modern genre fiction. Every thought is noted. Every conversation is presented in full. Every impression of a scene is detailed. And since a lot of people hone their sensibilities for role play on the genre fiction they read, it feels natural to lean on that style when they GM. But reading is a very interior activity, and what we do at the table is much more exterior, and benefits from a different language.

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:27:02 JST clarity flowers

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     • vera grey :verifiedplural:

     @QuietMisdreavus so I'm obviously a huge hipster and would only play D&D if it were the moldvay basic red book, but this is actually what I really love about most of my favorite games: they give me nuanced & powerful tools for creating interesting characters, relationships, conversations, emotional moments, etc, entirely through engaging with mechanics and leaning on my character sheet.

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     vera grey :verifiedplural: (quietmisdreavus@squad.town)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:27:03 JST vera grey :verifiedplural:

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     @clarity god, this is the thing i hate the most about TTRPGs and the reason i don’t really play. i really love the minutiae of the combat mechanics in D&D (for example, i don’t have much experience in other systems) but absolutely suck at conversational improv and character acting, so i eventually bounced off

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:28:51 JST clarity flowers

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     • vera grey :verifiedplural:

     @QuietMisdreavus When my Brainer (a weirdo psychic) in Apocalypse World gets her hands on someone, I can roll to read the deep corners of their mind and ask questions like "What are your secret pains?" and "With whom do you crave forgiveness, and why?" and, oh boy, getting answers to these questions provides -way- more interesting depth and nuance than any amount of skillful improv or acting ever could.

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:30:33 JST clarity flowers

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     • vera grey :verifiedplural:

     @QuietMisdreavus my thing about D&D is that it gives me nothing to hold onto the second I'm not crawling a dungeon. And honestly, that's fine, I love crawling a dungeon! But if you want to play a game about going on a fun adventure with your friends, it's really not gonna help you with any of that and will leave everyone who isn't a professional improv-er hanging and feeling incompetent

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:31:58 JST clarity flowers

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     • Symbolic City

     @SymbolicCity The Wizard of Earthsea is also a great one (but not really the sequels! as much as I love them)

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     Symbolic City (symboliccity@dice.camp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:31:59 JST Symbolic City

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     @clarity Oh, definitely Borges! But closer to home, I think Dunsany is also a good reference point for style. And William Morris maybe? Even Tolkien sometimes just lapses into, "And then they talked for a long time about orcs, and here's a summary of what Gandalf told them." I doubt very many readers had a hard time imagining how that scene played out.

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     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:35:07 JST clarity flowers

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     • Symbolic City

     @SymbolicCity They're very worth it! Strange books that take big swings.

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     Symbolic City (symboliccity@dice.camp)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 09:35:08 JST Symbolic City

     in reply to

     @clarity Ooh, good call. (Though I haven't yet gotten around to the sequels.)