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View Full Version : Focus on group vs Spotlight



Cicciograna
2020-10-08, 07:09 AM
Hello people! While browsing this forum, I read many times that a good DM should be able to always engage their players: everybody should always have something to do, because otherwise players might get bored.

What prompted me to write this was reading a sequence of posts about how to handle scouting - and the intrinsic split of the party that sending a lone scout implies. Some suggested to keep the action short, so that the scout can join again the party and nobody will get bored; or that in any case, the focus should be on the group, rather than on the single.

Personally I think that overdoing this might be counterproductive. It might be just me, but sometimes I enjoy being able to just sit back, relax and see how the story unfolds. In other words, I think having to focus on the group at all costs might work for some player, but it's not a panacea for good DM'ing, as some seem to imply: dead time has its perks, it's not necessarily a bad thing in and by itself.

Am I wrong in thinking that having to ALWAYS put the accent on the group is too forced? Maybe it could be helpful to ask to players, beforehand, if they would enjoy being consistently engaged, or if they can accept, from time to time, to take the back seat?

Vahnavoi
2020-10-08, 07:47 AM
The idea that every player has to have something to do all the time to be engaged, is trivially proven wrong by existence of various turn-based games which are widely popular. In fact, since most tabletop RPGs are fundamentally turn-based, a trivial solution to sharing play time is giving players individual turns, clocking them if you have to. The fundamental unit of all roleplaying games is not, and doesn't have to be, a group.

MoiMagnus
2020-10-08, 07:51 AM
I'd say it depends.

The extreme case of "giving the spotlight to one player" is to actually go with the player outside of the room to have a one-on-one DM-with-player chat. I think everyone can understand why it is bad to have too much of this, but it's not a reason to never use this method. (Especially if the game is not fully cooperative between the players).

The slightly less extreme case is when the player is still in the room with everyone, but is doing something which is boring to watch. As a player, I'd not be very interested in watching a 5 round combat encounter happen between the scout and some random guard.

For me, "focussing on the group rather than the solo individual" is a similar advice to "don't split the party". There are moments where splitting the party will leads to the most interesting gameplay, with the spotlight alternating between the multiples groups. But that doesn't make the advice invalid: splitting the party is harder to handle.

That's the same here, giving the spotlight to a single person for a significant amount of time is not something easy to handle, especially since players who fish for those spotlight moments might already be the ones with the most spotlight time. But on the other hand, if you're always avoiding them, you're missing out on some huge opportunities that are fun for everyone.

Quertus
2020-10-09, 08:02 PM
I suppose it depends on how much abnegation there is in your group - how much they want to sit back and listen to a story vs how long the scouting takes.

Best answer is, discuss this with your group.

If you and your group don't have the tools to discuss this, then… I suppose I would suggest, as general "best practices"

1) as a rule, keep the scouting short.

2) make the scouting sometimes allow the scout to shine.

How much you lean on either of these will allow you to help balance the spotlight sharing in the group.

Always making the scouting take over half the session (and, often, letting the scout solve/solo most of the challenges), and never acknowledging / rewarding the "resources" (character points, skill points, class levels) that the player put into the character to make them a scout are two rookie mistakes I've seen GMs make time and time again. Better to build yourself the tools (brief but sometimes rewarding) to steer a course between this figurative Scylla and Charybdis of potential failure.