Genre Police: Playing The Player

Running an RPG is a kind of arcane act, weaving an illusionary spell of storytelling for a group to devour. But when we think about spellcasting, it’s often easy to forget the material component of such a conjuring.

While our verbal and somatic components of a game might be explainable in our tale telling and game components, the fundamental building blocks of our game, the thing that allows the tale we are weaving to take wings and live is imagination.

If you think about how an RPG functions, we’re taking the stuff of imagination and weaving it together. Not just from ideas in our own heads but in shaping the minds and hearts of those around the table. Making it easier for them to agree to suspend their disbelief in order to play.

In many ways, the ‘resource’ we can cultivate is the interest and imagination of other players. Their combined minds are like a garden of ideas that we can help grow and harvest at the optimum point in order to keep a story fresh and alive.

This long winded metaphor is my way of saying: players are important. It’s their responses to your game that allow your design to take flight. And one of the ways we can really get a good game is leaning into knowing them and how they interact with the game. Here’s some things about the types of good player traits that I’ve seen that I think are worth sharing and how work with them.

Dynamos

It’s important to recognise when a player is dynamic. In that, I mean when a player comes to a game ready to not just play the game but engage with its narrative, grab it by the reigns and lead the story.

This can be very different for each player. Some players are naturally dynamic and want to drive a story forward. They’re engaged and down with this world, want to know things about it, talk to its people, live in it. Some players this tide comes and goes and that’s ok, not everyone wants to be the decision maker all the time, some people are happy to let a story wash over them and happen.

Knowing who is in the dynamic space can help you work out who to pitch the hard decisions to and who will respond to being asked ‘what do you do?’ when the narrative is driven more by players.

You can usually spot a dynamo player because they have a list of things they want to do during downtime prepared. They’re creating this world in their head even when you’re not at the table. They’re an important part of an RPG game ecosystem, and often, having one or two dynamic players in a group is the real reason a campaign survives long-term. Cultivating dynamos is pretty easy – if someone shows dedication to a game in a way outside showing up or makes something related to the game in their spare time, make sure you give that effort the respect is deserves. Don’t call out the player who spends ages giving other players handouts on factions or wants to talk to other players about theories about what is going on in their spare time. Make sure they know their passion is adding to the gaming space.

Also, when a player makes a decision about something in the game world, make it have an impact, because a dynamo is looking to have their engagement rewarded by goal achievement. If you’re asking the group to make choices, then just continuing with little impact, you begin to crush dynamism with a group as a sort of conditioning about their agency takes hold.

Empaths

Some players, Dynamic or not, can also be Empathic. They’re dedicated to the spiritual well-being of a group. They value emotional storylines and want to know the inner lives of the characters, but they also want the group of PCs to have a clear identity.

This is not the same as a moral crusade, it’s more about a player who likes to know about the inner lives of world you’re making. If given the choice between moving a story forward and spending a night chatting to the PC and NPC groups in tavern, a player who is in a dynamic space will choose the plot, and empath will chose the tavern, seeing value in a session that doesn’t move a plot forward but builds world detail or progresses character development.

But it isn’t a spectrum with both at both ends; you can be or want both things. A group without at least one empathic focused player can feel like it is moving forward through a plot but with no time to stop and do things that aren’t related to a mission. Character discussions are often about tactics and not feelings. This is a fine way to play the game – constantly making important plot-relevant decisions is a rewarding and efficient way to play a game.

But know your players – this sort of thing does not interest an empathically engaged player. Cultivating an empath is a factor in providing space for conversations between players to have an impact and depth.

Hide small personality quirks in your NPCs, give them motivations and memories, reactions to certain lines the players speak. This creates intriguing ‘character puzzles’ for a empath to work out. Which might not advance a plot or be relevant to it but if uncovered, they paint a more complete picture of a person. To truly know that someone is a prize an empath prizes.

Analysts

Another type of player to look out for is someone being Analytical. This player is engaged with the game as a GAME rather than a piece of theatre. They’re interested in mining the mechanics of a system and working out how all of it runs.

They might be invested it in lots of different ways. Some are looking to see if they can build a set up that provides the best outcome and are often very into making the rules do the thing they imagine. Others are into exploring a mechanic to see what story it makes them tell. Which is to say, a player who is making cool build in D&D, a Vampire player who is interesting in keeping their Humanity/Willpower high or a PBTA player who is acing the mechanic loop of their particular games Moves/Stats relationship are all engaging in an analytical way, even if they look really different.

These sorts of players tend to raise the gameplay bar just by existing. If they’re a good player, they often offer advice to players about making their gameplay experience. You can help cultivate this by making sure those exchanges don’t feel like the analyst is preaching or patronising – they really just want to help but their system expertise can sometimes feel like gloating.

You can tell an analyst because when presented with an idea for a character that someone has made that is purposefully sub-optimal, they look puzzled – often because they can see a way to make that same character with optimal choices. The other way to reward analyst is to really go hard with the idea of challenging them. They’ll love if you construct something within the ruleset that pushes their gameplay ideas and forces them to think round a problem. Don’t just assume they’re a power gamer. Occasionally they should dominate, but a good analyst is looking for the challenge.

Great players are all over the place! They come in an amazing variety, and I hope you have some at your table! These three traits are far from the only great player traits, so I’ll be returning to this discussion again in the future. But for now, take a moment to think of the great moments from players in your group and appreciate them. Until next time!

Creative Commons credits: scifi gunslinger by macarious, The fountain of heroes by b-cesar and Morgana by Arsonolace.