@Roz said:
@Misadventure said:
There are a lot of discussions about how to be a ST, and many of them tell you to avoid the patterns that STs and players tend to fall into anyhow.
A common example is the ST who has a single story path laid out in their mind, and keeps the players from getting off it. This is a terrible thing if your players want unpredictability, and to be able to make choices that change where the plot goes (this is called Agency).
HOWEVER, if your players aren't proactive, if they want to have the story fed to them, or just have a chance to show off their awesome strengths and quirky weaknesses, or other interests, then this may be a good fit for them.
This is a good point, which brings up another thought for me: sometimes players aren't particularly proactive, but sometimes players are actually lost and just don't know what to do. In which case, give them more to go on. It's awful as a player to sit there and you've read all the stuff and you just don't know what you're supposed to do next and the GM is kind of just waiting for you to figure out the magic action. Don't do that.
Yesss.
One of the things I've tried to implement (after too many years of being too damned clever for my own good), is to ensure that at the end of a GM'ed scene, I KNOW what the PC plans to do next, and their motivation for it. I also encourage players to let me know if they're stuck or lost or out of ideas, and I'm happily willing to rattle off a group of possible courses of action, without forcing the player to choose any one of them.
My purpose, after all, isn't to "beat" the player, or to give the player an exam on How Good They Play, but rather to make something that's enjoyable for everyone involved.