Dungeon World spotlight.... er... etiquette (?)

#1

I’ve been GMing PbtA games (mainly Dungeon World) for years now and I still thoroughly enjoy them. I run a campaign weekly (over Discord) with two old friends and we’re having a great time. (For context, I’ve listened to all the Gauntlet Discern Realites podcasts and regularly read these forums and others around the subject of PbtA, so I feel I understand these games pretty well.)

One thing has started to tickle at the back of my brain recently, though.

When you’re running a PbtA game, spotlight management is obviously really key and the GM/MC is responsible for moving the spotlight around. A thing I have begin to notice recently is that because this task always falls to me, my players are usually waiting for me to turn the spotlight on them (usually with a question, like “you see the paladin go down under a pile of skeletons, what do you do?”). My players are good, they trust me and they get plenty of time in the spotlight because there are just two of them.

So things are happening, we’re following the fiction, moves are snowballing nicely and my players are engaged, listening and waiting. But here’s the point I’m trying to get at: I decide when all the spotlight changes occur. My players have learnt, through play, that this is how the game works. However, in other more “traditional” games that I still play from time to time, players will be interrupting the GM, interjecting, trying to get an action in before something else happens. They do this, I think, because they have similarly learnt that games that have rules regarding who can act in what order (e.g. intiative, speed checks) don’t just move the spotlight based on GM whim. They’re hussling for “the spotlight” and the game sometimes rewards them for that.

In Dungeon World my players don’t hussle for the spotlight. They accept that I will turn it on them when I think it is the right moment. I’ve started to wonder if that’s something I have done wrong (e.g. unwittingly set or reinforced this by own style of GMing) or whether this is just a fact of PbtA games. If it is, I don’t think that I’ve seen this explicitly called out in any PbtA rulebook (e.g. in player advice sections I haven’t seen statements like “be ready to act when the spotlight is turned on you”).

I find myself someone wanting my players to try to jump in, interrupt me, but - rightly or wrongly - they’ve sort of learnt to wait. :slight_smile: Mostly it’s fine but occasionally, in action scenes, I have to explictly “switch on” a player to encourage them to make a reactive move.

Sorry for the rather rambly post. I would appreciate other peoples’ thoughts and opinions on this!

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#2

This is an interesting question. The same issue has evolved in my games of Scum & Villainy (which is Blades in the Dark derived, and so quite closely related to PbtA). my group are old hands with GURPS and D&D among others, and only been playing PbTA and BitD type games in the last couple of years. The players are definitely sitting back and waiting for their turn more when we play those games.

Are there rulesets that specify how a player can ‘buy’ time in the spotlight, perhaps? That might be illuminating.

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#3

Ah, the spotlight! My favorite part of GMing Dungeon World.

You seem to have much more experience than I as a GM, but in my opinion, you are doing it right. For what it’s worth, I’ll share my perspective.

When I’m at my best, the fiction is a shared illusion woven from threads of thoughts, both mine and theirs, and I am their spirit medium. If I am active in guiding the spotlight, it is to move the fiction along, or, more likely, to increase tension. I tend to increase tension by way of compounding problems, and so I will often pause the action for one player, especially if they hesitate, and draw another player into the action, or create another situation for them. Sometimes my players will jump in on their own if they feel inspired, and almost always I will ask them to add to the fiction at some point. I might incorporate what they say verbatim, or if their idea sparks something in my head, I’ll bring it in to the fiction with my own twist.

I really believe in the “leave blanks” aspect of GMing DW games. I might ask a player, “You raise your torch up higher, the light illuminating a wall carved in glyphs both familiar and unfamiliar, tell us what it looks like.” I probably didn’t even plan for there to be a wall of runes, I just planned for there to be some kind of barrier between them and their goal and a wall of runes or glyphs was what was appropriate for the current fiction. The player might say, “It’s a wall made of pure bronze…It has like a carving of a big tree on it…and the glyphs are the leaves of the branches of the tree…The ones I can read, that’s dwarvish, I can read dwarvish…” And then I would probably take over like, “yes and at the base of the tree…a door, small, the size of a tall dwarf…alternating glyphs, the ones you can read and the foreign ones…tell us, where did you first hear the dwarvish tale about the great tree below the earth.”

Putting players on the spot where they have to make something up in the moment seems to foster a shared narrative environment at my tables. What do your players think, or how would they react to being welcomed to contribute to the fiction?

#4

I’m here l glad that you agree that this is an interesting subject. I’ve not seen this specific aspect of spotlights discussed!

I’m not sure if be keen on a game that involved buying spotlight time because being able to follow the fiction (and in this case, often the action) is really important to me.

If a player were to try to jump in I’d welcome it, but ultimately I’d still judge whether their character could react or interrupt in the current fictional circumstances, and tell the player.

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#5

That’s cool but it’s not for us really (my players like me to be the sole “keeper of the knowledge” really and so do I).

Even if we did embrace this, I’m not sure that it would help my concern anyway. I would still be the one deciding when to invite the players to contribute wouldn’t I? Or did I miss your point? :slight_smile:

#6

@Ben_M 's OP is a very interesting take.
I agree that not many people have gone into the detailed analysis of spotlight management and how this can affect GM and Player behavior.
I experienced something akin to the problem Ben mentions… but definitely not in the terms he puts it :sweat_smile:
Let me explain…

In my opinion what Ben describes is not a “problem” of PbtA games, but a much welcome (to me at least) feature. A feature that DW kind of overdoes :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
I mean… in any RPG spotlight is not optional. It is needed to play, and someone or something will have to handle it somehow.

In the vast majority of Trad games (for example D&D, to stay in the realm of fantasy adventuring) the rules are very lacking or completely absent in this specific regard. Outside of combat initiative there are no explicit spotlight procedures for play, nor (intentional) side effects shaping up the game structure. There is combat, and there is chaos.
As a result the GM becomes, yet again, an implied fiat-based rule-system filling the rules void. In this structure Players that manage to be heard first, or heard most, or heard loudest, have a clear advantage in play, with more quiet Players being at risk of being left behind, being silenced, being talked over/past/around… unless the GM specifically spends effort according to their own awareness/skill to more equally and reasonably distribute spotlight. And this within a vacuum of rules which doesn’t support, and sometimes thwarts, their job as moderator.
The “hassle” of Players competing for spotlight, as you aptly describe it, is one of the possible natural consequences.
And I personally very much dislike it :sweat_smile:
Hassle culture at the play table? No thank you :grimacing:
Especially because it doesn’t necessarily equate to Players being proactive (steering the game according to their own aims, goals, drives and plans) or being invested (thoughtfully and meaningfully engaging with the game because they “care” about something in it).

It’s a valid way to play! :peace_symbol: :heart:
I just personally don’t like it (and tend to find plenty of problems and drawbacks in it :sweat_smile: )

Then we have PbtA games… or at least some of them. I’ll stick to Apocalypse World, Dungeon World and Fantasy World as main examples, because I know them best. On the surface they pretty much work the same, but looking closely to their design there are meaningful differences, both big and small.

Both AW and DW do spend a few explicit words on spotlight management, albeit no specific procedures are provided. This is already better than nothing, but the trick here is that the rest of the game system provides a “soft structure” that exerts a notable influence on gameplay, as @Ben_M has noticed.
The overall structure is very much GM-centric, but with a lot of elements leading to a more mindfully distributed spotlight.
You succeed… what do you do now?
You fail… what do you do now?
You stumble on X problem… what do you do now?
It’s a small rule with a huge impact.

Also, the way in which individual Moves are written is very important.
How much or how little they prompt Players for choices and details and descriptions, this is spotlight too!
And then how some Move outcomes are shaped to pass the ball to a Player, or to the MC, or to leave things open, allowing Players to take the initiative if they feel like it.

The result is…

Personally this sounds great. It evokes images of a table that plays in harmony, with everyone waiting for their (rightful) turn because they are confident it will come, trusting the GM to make it happen at the most appropriate time.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I feel like this kind of “relaxed” play does not prevent your Players from being creative, proactive and invested… right?
They are not “passive” Players (aka the characters do nothing, have no drive, unless the GM force-feeds them an external call to action) but rather they are “relaxed and orderly” Players. They got the rhythm of the game, and simply swing to it. Correct?
This sounds like you did something right, not wrong! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

But… I see your gripe with them being a bit too relaxed, maybe?
In my experience this might be specifically a DW problem stemming from its specific Moves and overall campaign structure.

The famous “Moves Snowball” is part of the reason. Chaining up one move after another after another after another tends to funnel the game conversation in a somewhat tight way, often at the detriment of the broader situation. This leaves less space for Players to do something on their own, at least until a specific Move outcome handles “initiative” back to them. And then they need to say/do the right thing to actually keep/seize this initiative, turning the GM/NPCs into a more reactive stance… until some move switches the flow again.
Both AW and DW share this structure, but DW tends to present moves that allow for less Player initiative and less conversation space.

As a result, playing AW you might find your Players somewhat more prone to initiate the action, less prone to just “wait their turn”, than in DW. This might be what you are looking for? Albeit it’s never going to be like the hassle dynamics so common in Trad games.

FW is a good counterpoint because it intentionally behaves differently in all these regards :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

First of all, it explicitly discusses spotlight management, offering clear procedures on how to handle it. This is intentionally placed in the first half of the rulebook among the “essential game mechanics” that pretty much anyone ends up reading, instead of being part of the GM advice section, in order to offer Players an understanding of how the game conversation is supposed to flow in practice.
AW and DW have nothing comparable (they mention the conversation in general and offer broad-strokes examples, but do not focus on exposing the spotlight bits), and then the little they explain is hidden in the GM section in the latter part of the manual. Spotlight management is presented as an advanced technique, rather than as a fundamental building block of play.

Second, FW explains the concept of Moves snowball… and then explicitly instructs the GM to stop it and break it down :scream: ( :wink: ).
The way in which this is done ends up allowing more breathing room for the Players to assess any situation and maybe “take the initiative”. Plus a bunch of helpful side-effects that help the GM handle chaotic and tense situations.

Third, FW moves tend to prompt both GM and Players for meaningful input and choices as part of the move itself, much more than the average AW or DW moves do.
And in general Move outcomes are shaped in such a way as to offer space for Player-driven interactions.
In this regard I feel like DW is kind of the polar opposite of FW, focusing so tightly on immediate and consecutive action action action as to require GM and Players to somewhat wrestle personal space away from the system in order to inject their own ideas and direction.

For example… the act of taking a rest and of travelling in DW are handled with extremely tight and compact Moves, with a firm focus on pure resource management and danger handling.
In both cases the Players spend some resource, maybe make a couple of logistics choices (again about resource and risk handling), then roll dice to see if anything bad happens.
The game pretty much skips the “boring” parts, abstracting them as resource expenditure, and then jumps right back into the action: you either arrive at the other side of the trip/rest or you face a danger interrupting it. Either way the group blinks from the action before the rest/journey to the action after it.

AW has nothing of the sort, leaving such narrative moments open ended and in the hands of MC and Players. And thanks to the rest of the game structure (Sex moves, the focus on personal goals and struggles and on PC-NPC-PC triangles [aka character drama] ) both Players and MC end up playing interesting scenes during the rest/travel times, sometimes, if anyone feels like it.

In FW, being a game about fantasy adventuring like DW, the scenes of rest and journey are a narrative staple of the genre, so they get their own moves.
But in FW they are only tangentially about resource expenditure and logistics, and instead offer the Players and GM plenty of prompts to “do their own thing”, carving and safeguarding plenty of space specifically for that purpose, intentionally halting the frantic flow of action action action to allow Players a chance to steer the wheel by themselves.

In conclusion:

  • it’s not a bug, it’s a feature :wink:
  • your “problem” imho doesn’t stem from PbtA games in general, but from DW specifically :sweat_smile:

Maybe try to apply the Spotlight Management procedures from FW to your DW flow. It might already fix the issue without much effort.
Maybe try switching gears for a bit by playing alltogether a different PbtA game in place of DW… in the fantasy realm there are plenty of options :slight_smile:

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