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You’ve just finished describing in your Feng Shui game how the evil cyborg clone of Jet Li has leapt through the warehouse window, sending a cascade of glass glittering across the oil-soaked floor and landing in a perfect three-point stance. You pause, but the players don’t immediately respond. So you keep talking: Cyborg Jet Li somersaults forward and raises his arm. The flesh peels back, revealing a machine gun… Oh, god. Still no response. Okay, so the machine gun fires, spraying the room with bullets. Then the cyborg dashes behind a forklift for cover. Then he shouts out, “Your deaths are all part of the program!” Then he summons a couple of his attack drones, which come flying in through the window. And then… and then… and then…

This is something I call fearing the silence. The GM finishes describing something and pauses… but there’s not an immediate response from the players. The silence, however fleeting, is like a vacuum, and the GM feels compelled to fill it. So they start talking again. And what can they possibly talk about? Well, whatever would happen next, right?

Gotta keep talking, gotta keep talking, gotta keep talking.

From the GM’s perspective — either consciously or subconsciously — the players aren’t engaged with the game. If they were, then they’d be declaring an action. But they aren’t. Which means the GM has done something wrong. So the GM has to do something — they have to say something — that will get the players engaged again.

(Oh god. It’s all going horribly wrong. What can I do? Gotta do something. Do something. Do something. Just keep doing things.)

But what’s actually happening is that the players are being boxed out. They can’t make declarations about what they’re doing, so it stops feeling like they’re interacting with the world and starts feeling like they’re just watching it.

This often becomes a cascading problem: Because the players lose “momentum” in interacting with the world, it can take a moment to sort of reconnect and get rolling again… except the moment they need is a moment of silence, and the GM is nervously filling it before they can get going.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

When I find myself fearing the silence and feeling a need to fill it, what I find effective is to consciously choose to fill it by saying, “What do you do?” or “What are you doing?”

In other words, very deliberately and very explicitly pass the ball to the players. Now the silence is their problem!

Or, more accurately, their opportunity.

You may also find it useful to think explicitly in terms of turn-taking, particularly if NPCs are involved in the scene. If all of your NPCs have had a chance to say something or do something, then it’s definitely time to make sure the PCs have a chance to say something or do something. (It’s a challenge to roleplay multiple NPCs talking to each other, but if you get into a rhythm with it, it can be surprisingly easy for the NPCs to just chat amongst themselves endlessly without the players being able to get a word in edgewise.)

It’s perhaps unsurprising that I’ve often seen this sort of problem in the first session of a campaign or the first half of a one-shot, only for things to improve as the game goes on: A lot of this is being driven by nervousness. As the GM settles down and the group finds its groove, the problem goes away. Of course, there’s only one chance to make a first impression, so it won’t hurt to consciously work towards avoiding the initial misstep.

GM DON’T LIST #14.1: BOTTOMLESS LORE

A similar problem occurs with bottomless lore. I commonly find myself falling into this trap when I’m improvising some cool new element of the world. Maybe the players have gone to a location I didn’t anticipate and so I’m creating it on the spot. As I describe the location, I keep getting cool new ideas.

So I Just. Keep. Talking.

There’s this… and this… and you see somebody doing this… and somebody else doing this… and there’s also this other thing… and also… and then the first guy does this other thing… but then…

There’s always more stuff to share about the infinite world! You’re once again stuck in a loop and the players are, once again, boxed out.

This is actually quite similar to the freeze-frame boxed text we discussed in GM Don’t List #13: Boxed Text Pitfalls, where the PCs get stuck while the GM narrates their way through a cutscene. The only difference is that in this case it’s happening spontaneously at the table.

THE REACTION POINT

The solution, however, is quite similar. You need to consciously identify the reaction point — the point at which something happens that the PCs will want to react to — and then you need to stop talking.

Another useful tip here is to set a mental description limit: What’s the maximum number of things you can describe before you need to stop talking. This isn’t hard or fast, but I recommend three to five, and almost never more than seven. (You, of course, don’t need to describe that many things. If you describe three things and that’s everything you need to set the scene, that’s great.)

This limit can feel constraining, but there are a few things to keep in mind that will help:

First, at the beginning of a scene — a new location, etc. — start broad, then specific. You’ve given yourself a “budget” for your description, and you’ll want to make sure the players know that they’re in a forest before you start describing individual trees.

Second, identify the reaction point before you start the description. Ideally, aim your description at the reaction point. At a bare minimum, when you’ve spent all of your “budget” except for the reaction point, arbitrarily stop describing anything else and cut to the reaction point. (“Okay, I’ve said four things about the hotel room. Now I need to mention the ogre with the gun and see what happens.”)

If you identify multiple reaction points in the scene, what you’ll usually want to do is prioritize them. Present the first, let the PCs react to it, and then present the second. Upon occasion there might be two reaction points that are truly happening simultaneously — e.g., the ogre pulls a gun at the very moment that kobold ninjas leap in through the window. That’s fine. It’ll just chew up more of your “budget,” since you’ll need to describe both reaction points.

(For more on reaction points, and why you should almost always put the reaction point at the end of your description, check out Random GM Tips: Reaction Points.)

Third, remember that description can persist through the scene. You don’t need to describe every single detail of the hotel room before the PCs react to the ogre pulling her gun. You may not have had time to describe the lamp, but as Antoine rushes forward to knock the gun out of the ogre’s hand, you can describe how the sickly light flickering out through the cigarette-stained lampshade throws his shadow against the far wall. Maybe you haven’t described what can be seen outside the window, but the kobold ninjas bursting through it gives you a chance to mention the “billboard declaring Mayor Thomas’ re-election campaign” behind them.

And so forth.

This is particularly useful if you find yourself bubbling over with bottomless lore: You don’t need to discard all those cool ideas that are sparking in your imagination; you just have to hit the pause button on them, drop the reaction point, and then look for the opportunity to weave them into the action.

GM DON’T #14.2: SAVING THROW MERRY-GO-ROUND

GM: The Lich-King waves his hand and a cloud of black miasma begins oozing up through the floor. Give me a Fortitude saving throw!

Player: 24.

GM: You quickly gulp in a breath of untainted air. But huge gouts of flame erupt from the ceiling! Give me a Dexterity saving throw!

Player: 15.

GM: You’re scorched by flame! As you grimace in pain, the Lich-King points a finger in your direction. There’s a lance of sickly green energy. Give me a Dodge roll!

Player: 9.

GM: It strikes you for 36 points of damage! The Lich-King pulls a lever on the wall, and a trap door opens in the floor beneath you! You’ll really want to make your Dexterity saving throw!

Presented like this, it’s pretty easy to notice that “the player gets a turn” doesn’t appear in this list of events. But this can often be harder to see at the actual gaming table: There are multiple players reporting results. The GM is weaving evocative descriptions of what’s happening in the scene as a result of the various reactive checks or saving throws. And it can certainly feel as if the PCs are doing a lot of stuff: They’re gulping in air! Heroically diving out of the way! Rolling dice!

And, of course, there’s a similar impulse that we’ve seen in fearing the silence and bottomless lore: You want the game to be exciting and engaging. That means you need to keep talking! And if you’re going to keep talking, then stuff needs to happen for you to describe. And you can make that stuff happen by using the playing pieces you control — e.g., the NPCs.

This is also why this problem most often crops up in action scenes: moments that seem to demand a breakneck pace, and so the GM feels pressured to keep things moving.

The solution to this is largely just Don’t Do It™. Which, of course, is not terribly helpful. Couple things that may help if you find yourself doing this:

First, if appropriate, get into an initiative order sooner rather than later. This doesn’t necessarily require combat or even the presence of NPCs. You can just call for initiative checks and use them to structure the scene.

Second, you don’t have to go for the ultra-formality of an initiative order to think in terms of turn-taking. The Lich-King created the black miasma. Has Sasha had a chance to go since then? If not, ask Sasha what she’s doing before the Lich-King takes another action. If you just make a point of thinking about this, you can probably keep track of it in your head. If not, make a list on the notepad in front of you and use tally marks when people take actions.

(This will also help individual players from dominating an encounter and boxing out their fellow players.)

CONCLUSION: CARE ABOUT THE REACTION

In the broader scope, the big solution to all of these problems is simply caring about what your players are doing.

Minimize the mindset of the Story you’re trying to tell or the World you’re trying to immerse them in. Your NPCs should be awesome, but they are ultimately not the stars of the campaign.

The mindset you want to emphasize, in my opinion, is: I want to see what the PCs do.

I’m having the ogre draw her gun because I want to see how the players react to that. (And I want to see how I react to what they do!) I can have a lot of fun playing around with all the cool lair actions the Lich-King can take, but ultimately the point of the Lich-King encounter is for the PCs to confront him.

It can be a subtle shift in thought, but when your primary focus becomes, “Oooo… I wonder what this will make them do?!” you’ll never forget to give them the opportunity to do it.

Go to Part 15: The Railroader’s Fallacy