Ask Lots of Questions
I have been a player in some spectacularly shitty games in my life, and one thing each of those games had in common is the GM never asked the players any questions. Oh, sure, the players were occasionally asked questions necessary to advance the plot (“The door is locked. What do you do?” or “The orc is attacking you. What do you do?”), but there were never any questions about the characters themselves. A good GM asks lots of questions about the characters and, further, he pays attention to the answers and incorporates them into the fiction.
Some games practically codify this behavior in their rulesets. In Monsterhearts, for example, the rules require you to spend almost the entire first session peppering the players with questions about their characters’ recent past, about their relationships with NPCs and other PCs, and their home life. As the MC (which is what the GM is called in Monsterhearts), you are to furiously scribble down notes about the answers to these questions, and then use those notes to build the world for future sessions. It’s an excellent process, and one that never really ends, since a good MC will continue to ask questions in future sessions, and further build on the answers. Ultimately, what you end up with is a world the players actually give a shit about, since so much of it came directly from them.
But what makes a good question? This may sound a bit counterintuitive, but I think the best questions are not open-ended ones. The best questions are very specific, are somewhat leading, or they make assumptions about the character’s past. Let’s have an example of what I mean:
The open-ended question would be phrased: “Tell me about what happened between you and Sarah last summer?”
The better version of this question would be phrased: “Last summer, you and Sarah went on a date. The date went very poorly. Why?”
An even better version goes like this: “Last summer, you and Sarah went on a date. It ended very badly, with you literally kicking Sarah out of your truck. What happened to cause you to have such a violent reaction?”
Let’s assess all three versions. The first question is a good one if your player is imaginative and quick on his feet. So long as he gives you something to work with, you can ask some follow-up questions to get to the really good stuff. Still, it’s not my favorite question, because it’s a little too open-ended and there is a risk your player will say something boring (consider, for example, if the player answered with something like “Last summer, Sarah and I worked at the same job and we became really good friends.” Dull, dull, dull).
The second version of the question is much better, because it pre-loads the drama. We know that Sarah and the PC went on a date, and that the date ended badly. Now, there is still a chance the player will answer with something boring, but it’s a much smaller chance, for sure.
The third one is the best, because it makes a very strong assumption about the character (in this example, that the character is capable of domestic violence), and the answer to this question, if it’s an honest one, can only be interesting. You don’t physically kick people out of your vehicle over something minor or boring. Some kind of bad shit definitely went down, and discovering what it was, and what its implications are for the story, is going to be a hell of a lot of fun. Astute readers will have also picked-up on the following benefit: the questions, particularly these stingingly specific ones, allow the GM to shape the story indirectly.
Now, your immediate reaction to this analysis might have been “But what if I don’t want my character to commit domestic violence? What if my character wouldn’t do that? Who says my character was even into Sarah in the first place?” This is an understandable reaction, because we have been taught by lesser roleplaying games that, while the GM controls the wider world, we are in charge of our characters. Questions that make assumptions about our characters seem to rob us of our agency. This may be a particularly acute problem for the types of players who bring six-page backstories about their character to the first session (A minor detour: never do this. You are the most insufferable sort of dick player if you arrive to the gaming table with a bunch of fucking backstory. No one cares. Ever.), but even more thoughtful players could feel this way, too.
My response to this concern is two-fold: 1) Don’t be so goddamn boring and 2) these characters had a life before we got our hands on them. The first part is pretty simple. When you actively disengage from the interesting things in the name of protecting your precious character, you are being a boring asshole. Consider the classic situation involving Bonds in Dungeon World. The Thief playbook says something like “Character X is running a con with me.” Sometimes, when Character X is named, their player objects with “My character would never do that!” and then they just ignore it. If you have ever done that in my DW game, you should know that I probably wanted to reach across the table and punch you. That particular Thief bond is giving your character a chance to be interesting, but you are completely shutting it down in the name of protecting your character’s integrity, which, I should mention, no one gives a fuck about. Maybe your character is involved in the con, but he doesn’t want to be? Maybe he is being blackmailed, or he’s a patsy? Who knows, but those possibilities are a hell of a lot more interesting than “My character wouldn’t do that.”
The second part of my response, that these characters had a life before we got ahold of them, is a little more nuanced, and somewhat philosophical. Basically, the idea is that you only have control over your character during a small slice of his life. Anything that happened before you got your hands on him can be filled-in by the GM and the other players, so long as everyone is being true to the spirit of the setting. The questions the GM asks you might make your character seem very unsympathetic, but all he has done is make your character more interesting at the outset, and it’s on you to redeem the character through play (if that’s what you want to do).
To summarize: ask lots of questions. The more specific and front-loaded, the better. Use the answers to ask even more questions, and then build on all these answers. Your game world will be ten times more interesting to the players, and everyone will agree you are a rockstar GM.
Great stuff!
Great stuff!
I still cringe when asking front loaded questions, because I used to assume that I was taking away autonomy, and I still feel some residual guilt. Plus, some people still get up in your face about it.
That said, some of the best GMs I know are not afraid of it, but the longer a game goes on, the harder it is to do. In one-shots, mini-campaigns, and most story games, it’s a lot easier to do, I think. The longer a game goes on the harder it becomes.
I still cringe when asking front loaded questions, because I used to assume that I was taking away autonomy, and I still feel some residual guilt. Plus, some people still get up in your face about it.
That said, some of the best GMs I know are not afraid of it, but the longer a game goes on, the harder it is to do. In one-shots, mini-campaigns, and most story games, it’s a lot easier to do, I think. The longer a game goes on the harder it becomes.
Doyle Tavener There probably needs to be a caveat regarding genre. I ask far fewer questions in the fantasy adventure games I run, because I don’t need as much from the players to get going in that setting. The genre tropes do a lot of the heavy lifting. But in games that are less about combat and adventure, and more about interpersonal drama, those questions are very helpful, and I ask tons of them.
That’s an interesting point about long-term campaigns. I’m not sure if it’s a feature or a flaw that asking provocative questions gets harder to do the longer you go on. My instinct says those characters have probably run their course. When there is nothing left to discover about a character, what are we then doing each week? I’d rather move on to new stories. But, to be fair, I haven’t run a game that way in years.
This came up on the podcast recently, when we were discussing the merit of long-term play. One of the chief advantages, I think, of story games is that the stories actually end. I mean, there is no other storytelling medium, apart from traditional roleplaying games, in which the story just goes on forever.
Doyle Tavener There probably needs to be a caveat regarding genre. I ask far fewer questions in the fantasy adventure games I run, because I don’t need as much from the players to get going in that setting. The genre tropes do a lot of the heavy lifting. But in games that are less about combat and adventure, and more about interpersonal drama, those questions are very helpful, and I ask tons of them.
That’s an interesting point about long-term campaigns. I’m not sure if it’s a feature or a flaw that asking provocative questions gets harder to do the longer you go on. My instinct says those characters have probably run their course. When there is nothing left to discover about a character, what are we then doing each week? I’d rather move on to new stories. But, to be fair, I haven’t run a game that way in years.
This came up on the podcast recently, when we were discussing the merit of long-term play. One of the chief advantages, I think, of story games is that the stories actually end. I mean, there is no other storytelling medium, apart from traditional roleplaying games, in which the story just goes on forever.
Wellll… I see your point about a single narrative that never ends, but Soap Operas and serial fiction have been doing this for years, and you could certainly argue that only a single RPG session could be called a “single” Narrative. God knows, ever since Conan Doyle and ERB, people have been creating new stories of their iconic heroes repeatedly.
Robin Laws points out that we privilege dramatic heroes over iconic heroes – dramatic heroes change and develop of the course of the narrative, while iconic heroes are challenged by the narrative, and find their success in remaining the same.
In a serial RPG game, like origin stories of superheroes, the narrative derives it power from the hero becoming what she was meant to be. This is why the best of the superhero movies are usually the origin movies and why trad fantasy games end when the characters become too powerful – once the heroes have achieved their destiny, the story is not as interesting. Or more simply put, the story has reached the end.
A typical, trad fantasy campaign is an extended origin story – it tells how the players got to be awesome.
Wellll… I see your point about a single narrative that never ends, but Soap Operas and serial fiction have been doing this for years, and you could certainly argue that only a single RPG session could be called a “single” Narrative. God knows, ever since Conan Doyle and ERB, people have been creating new stories of their iconic heroes repeatedly.
Robin Laws points out that we privilege dramatic heroes over iconic heroes – dramatic heroes change and develop of the course of the narrative, while iconic heroes are challenged by the narrative, and find their success in remaining the same.
In a serial RPG game, like origin stories of superheroes, the narrative derives it power from the hero becoming what she was meant to be. This is why the best of the superhero movies are usually the origin movies and why trad fantasy games end when the characters become too powerful – once the heroes have achieved their destiny, the story is not as interesting. Or more simply put, the story has reached the end.
A typical, trad fantasy campaign is an extended origin story – it tells how the players got to be awesome.
I kind of want to start a DW game with all the characters holding bloody knives. “Paladin, why did this farmer laying dead at your feet deserve death?” have fun watching players melt or be horrified when they justify it with something like “the greater good”.
I kind of want to start a DW game with all the characters holding bloody knives. “Paladin, why did this farmer laying dead at your feet deserve death?” have fun watching players melt or be horrified when they justify it with something like “the greater good”.