Developing Your Table's Shared Storytelling Skills (Patreon)

As promised, here is the big essay I've been working on. There's a lot here (it's the length of a respectable short story), so I've done my best to break things down into sections to be more digestible. I hope you'll find some of these ideas and techniques promising and try them at your table!

Setting the Table

In the past three or so years, I’ve gotten increasingly excited about TTRPG play where players have a great deal of narrative authority within the story. I’m not just talking about agency in acting through their characters, but authority over the fiction in general. When I am a player in a game, I tend to have more fun if I’m able to contribute to the fiction above and beyond the actions of my character, and as a GM, I take a great deal of pleasure from spotlighting players and handing them the mic to bring their full creative skillset to bear.

See, when I’m writing fiction, it’s just me and a manuscript. Depending on the piece, my agent and any editor for a piece will also give notes, and I place great value on the collaboration when it happens. But for a good 90% of the time, I am one person writing on my own, alone with my thoughts.

A big part of why I go to TTRPGs is to tell stories with my friends. Since this topic is often on my mind--even more so lately--I thought I’d share some of my experiences and tips for developing the skills and practice of sharing narrative authority for richly collaborative storytelling in your TTRPGs.

The number one thing to know is that you can start wherever you and your group are in terms of experience and familiarity with shared narrative authority. You can develop these skills as a player as well as while you’re GMing. But it can be intimidating for friends/colleagues to move in this direction, especially if they’re not already familiar with what that more collaborative style feels like.

GM: “Okay, so in this game, everyone is going to play their PC, another PC’s rival, and take responsibility for one of these four pillars of the setting.”

Player 1: “So I have two characters and a third character that’s bigger than an entire faction?”

Player 2: “That sounds like a lot of work.”

GM: sweating

Keeping the above example in mind, I’m going to start with light-lift tools, the ones that are most focused on the player’s character themselves. These aren’t necessarily only for people new to TTRPGs as much as people not accustomed to players having narrative authority beyond their character’s immediate actions. Depending on your group’s comfort and the existing play culture of your table, you might start with Light, Medium, or Heavy-Lift techniques.

n.b. the way I’ve organized these might not fit with your experience, and that’s fine. It’s also possible that you’ll introduce these techniques at your table and find that some players are just not interested in taking on more narrative authority. And maybe that’s fine? That returns to the question of what the group wants from their time playing together, which is the topic for another essay. These are, of course, just my opinions and experiences, not any sort of dogma.

Light-Lift Techniques

These mostly involve short, one-off moments where a player makes a small addition to the story and then hands the mic right back to the GM. Many tables already use some of these without explicitly thinking about them as moves that share narrative authority.

How Do You Want to Do This?
Critical Role GM Matt Mercer’s best-known catchphrase is a move granting players narrative agency and asking them to take the mic. They’re not only describing their attack but the effect it has on the enemy, giving the player control over the fiction (or story, or camera, etc., depending on how your group conceptualizes play) to describe a significant moment of triumph in defeating a notable foe.

Player: “That’s a total of 27 damage.”

GM: smiles “How do you want to do this?”

Player: “So I knock their sword aside with a flicking cut, then jump, running up their body, a foot on their knee, the next step on their hip, then the chest, and then I cut the skeleton’s head off as I backflip away and land with a crouch one hand on the ground, then throw my hair back as I look up to see the skeleton collapsing into a lifeless pile of bones.”

What Do We Think This Looks Like?
Rather than asking a player to describe a finishing move, the GM can ask one player or the whole table for input on the results of an action or move. By framing it as “we”, the players are brought into the creative process, but no one person is put on the spot or saddled with the entire weight of expectation. The table can spitball and brainstorm and then reach consensus (likely with the assistance of the GM as facilitator) so that the whole group is clear which version ends up being true in the story. This extends the players’ authority to a shared collaborative process where each PC’s action contributes to a larger whole.

GM: “With that roll, you definitely steal the map from Nariseya the archaeologist’s pack. What do we think this looks like?”

Maeve: “So I’m chatting up the archaeologist, right? I twirl a lock of hair around my finger and give her that smile.”

Jono: “I’m playing with Darling while in dog form, so we’re making lots of noise to cover up any sound Salem makes while taking the map.”

Reston: “And maybe Darling is chasing you around Nariseya and Maeve so that the sounds are coming from several directions.”

Zathiele: “Which means I can slip in right as the archaeologist’s attention snaps back to Maeve. I open the pack with my magic hand and then gently slide the map out and into my vest as the hand re-locks the pack.”

GM: “That all works together, I think, Maeve flirting, Jono and Darling romping around, Reston chasing them both, and then Zathiele slips in with the magic hand and nabs the map, done and gone between when the archaeologist blushes from Maeve’s smile and when she opens her eyes to look back up.”

Another implementation of this technique is asking a question like “Why do you think this didn’t work?” when a roll doesn’t go the PC’s way. This version softens the blow of failure by giving the player a chance to establish why their action didn’t go as planned. They can play it off for laughs, they can focus on a character flaw or weakness, or they can dig themselves an even deeper hole to make climbing out of it a bigger challenge. But it’s the player that does that rather than the GM pouring salt on a wound.

Adding Details
Another light-lift technique is soliciting additional details to flesh out or add to an existing description. Here, the GM (or another player) has done the majority of the work in establishing the object, space, etc., and the new player is just adding an adornment or getting a bit more specific in some aspect of the whole.

GM: “The spring festival in Kale’s Gorge is mostly known for the colored candles – green for the new growths and new beginnings, grey for the retreating burden of the long winter.”

Player 1: “Ooh, can I add a detail??

GM: “Go for it!”

Player 1: “They burn the grey candles overnight, starting at twilight the night before, then blow those out and light the green candles at dawn to signal the arrival of spring.”

“Player 2: “I love it!”

GM: “And so as you ride into town just after dawn, you see people standing around with their freshly-lit green candles, some holding snuffed-out grey candles burned down nearly to nothing.”

Medium-Lift Techniques

These techniques generally ask the player to take on broader or more in-depth narrative authority within the game, but generally include a fair bit of guidance or structure from the GM to help make the hand-off more seamless or less intimidating.

Paint the Scene 
This is a technique created by Jason Cordova (of the Gauntlet), seen in his games Brindlewood Bay and The Between.

Paint the Scene involves a shared prompt for the players of the table to add to a description started by the GM. We can think of it as the more involved version of Adding a Detail, since it requires a bit more intention from the players and involves developing theme, mood, or an idea that the GM wants to convey with the scene.

A Paint the Scene prompt asks players to add an element to the location description that reinforces the theme, motif, or idea that the GM presents. A Paint the Scene prompt is usually given after an initial description by the GM to set the scene and provide a bit more of a foundation for players to build on.

An example Paint the Scene prompt would be something like:

You walk down a half-flight of stairs into The Glass Jaw, a dive bar with about a dozen folks huddled close around a few tables. What do we see in this bar that tells you that it’s a hangout for supervillain lackeys-I mean, henchpeople?

Player 1: There’s a whole coat check area and the rack is filled with blood-stained costumes of all sorts.

Player 2: Almost everyone in here has noticeable bruises or other injuries, like there was just a big brawl.

Player 3: The drink specials are all named for famous plots and heists that almost worked, like The Two-Ton Penny Caper.

Paint the Scene is a good intermediate technique because you ask players to think about theme and imagery, while also providing a focused prompt to guide their thinking and prevent choice paralysis.

For more on Paint the Scene from Jason himself, read this piece from 2018 that describes the technique: https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/blog/paint-the-scene. Or pick up one of his games like Brindlewood Bay, which can be described as Murder, She Wrote meets Call of Cthulhu.

Shared Worldbuilding in Session Zero
Thanks in part to actual play shows (like Friends at the Table, then The Adventure Zone drawing inspiration from Friends at the Table), playing worldbuilding games as a part of prep/session zero has become more popular over the last few years. It can be a great way to get everyone at the table invested in the world right from the start and you don’t need a specific game’s rules to do it, though having that structure and guidance can be helpful.

Worldbuilding games you could use include:

• The Quiet Year by Avery Alder

• The Ground Itself by Everest Pipkin

• Ex Novo by Martin Neurrkar and Jonstantinos Dimopoulos

• A Land Once Magic by Viditya Voleti

The important part of this technique is that you are asking everyone to contribute. You want everyone to introduce things they’re interested in and excited about when building the setting. Players may focus on elements that will directly support or inform their character, but by framing it as all part of the larger shared effort of creating the setting, you set the understanding that this world is created by the whole group (rather than being “the GM’s world”) and that everyone can make contributions at a high level.

Vignettes and Epilogues
I’ve come to really appreciate these techniques as I run more one-shots and miniseries. In a shorter form, it’s harder to get that gradual accumulation of confidence and sense of shared ownership of a setting, so I look to different techniques to prompt players to take the mic. I think of Vignettes and Epilogues together because they’re meant to be short, evocative, and don’t need to contain any engagement with resolution mechanics.

When using vignettes, I’ll invite players to describe a short sketch of a scene, usually without dialogue, that conveys something about a character. I ran a game of Fight With Spirit by Storybrewers RPG that used vignettes and I was really pleased with how they helped round out our characterization and plotting without taking up much time.

GM: Let’s do a quick round of vignettes to re-establish where each character is as we start this new arc. Nothing big, just a quick sketch of what everyday life is like for your character after the time jump.

Player 1: Artoras has gone back to working as a fencing teacher. We see him with a young noble girl, like 13. The girl shows a great deal of promise, but she’s rash, and we see Artoras as the patient one here, though there’s a sparkle in his eyes that tells us he sees himself in her.

Player 2: Yolen is back in the library, desperate to find clues that point toward a cure for their son’s malady. They stack books several feet high, candles burn down over several nights, but they’re finding nothing. We end with Yolen shoving a stack of books off the table and wiping away tears, the fear and worry clearly getting to them.

Player 3: For my vignette, we just see a quick montage of Massie running scams and grifting on the street, fleecing the rich folks and then giving money to the orphanage where he grew up. We end with him and a bottle of wine, sitting on the roof during a hot summer night as he drinks and watches the sunset.

When I’m running a one-shot or miniseries, I try to leave time at the end to do character epilogues. I ask for each player to give their character a coda or resolve some arc that the player developed during the game. These often broadly overlap with vignettes, but in epilogues, I hand over full authority and let the players say farewell to the character on their own terms. They get to decide what kind of scene, what kind of moment, what element they want to return to or achieve as the story wraps up. And then I tend to use the final word to tie a bow on the story or maybe to highlight a loose end that could come into play if the story continues.

Character-Specific Prompts and Questions
This is a technique I’ve been using thanks to creating and watching actual play, where big swings and heightened moments take on an additional dimension thanks to the audience. As I use them more, I’ve tried to dial in on how specific to be, how much to lead vs. how much room to leave, and when to deliver a prompt that’s also showing the barrel of a gun.

I mostly adapt these techniques from the Powered by the Apocalypse tradition, where one of the ways the Powered by the Apocalypse standard “Play to Find Out” principle manifests is through leaving a lot un-established and letting things become concrete or definite in play.

When prepping a game, I now often write myself questions about potential story beats and about PCs. Some of these prompts involve me adding to the world in my question, others focus on the potential actions of the player and PC.

1.      “Will <PC 1> tell the others about their secret orders?”

2.      “You’ve been to this town before. Who would you go to if you needed some place to lie low for a day or two?”

3.      “You’ve heard of an especially dangerous beast that lurks in the Inverted Woods. What is it, and why is it so dangerous?”

4.      “Which one of these bandits do you think you know, and why are they not happy to see you?”

Some of these create more immediacy than others thanks to hard-framing – examples #3 and #4 suggest immediate danger and uncertainty, while #1 and #2 are a little more lightly-framed in when they will come up and how relevant the new information is to the tension of the current scene.

There’s a lot to be said about a hard-framed question that puts the spotlight and pressure on one player and their PC. But that immediacy and excitement involves the GM asking a lot of the player in that moment, often without much warning. Depending on the player, the hard-frame version of this technique might count as Heavy-Lift rather than Medium.

Heavy-Lift Techniques

Speaking of Heavy-Lift techniques, here are some moves I find really energizing when a player takes the invitation, but are asking a lot of one or more players and could grind a game to a halt if the player isn’t up for taking on the greater level of authorship and responsibility that comes with it. It might be a good idea to flag your interest in trying these out during your group’s session zero, whether you’re a player looking to take on more or a GM hoping to give your players more to work with.

Player Region/Topic Authority
This is a technique I’m drawing from both GMless games and from actual play shows like Friends at the Table (if you didn’t already know, they’re my favorite AP group). The idea here is that if a player creates a faction or place as part of making their character, the GM can give them de facto authority over not just their character, but those important aspects of the world that surround the character.

In Friends at the Table’s weird west season Sangfielle, player Jack de Quidt created the Shape Knights, an order dedicated to hunting and killing rampaging sentient/sapient trains that barrel through the Heartland following/creating a supernatural pattern known as The Shape. Since Jack created the Shape Knights, GM Austin looked to Jack frequently when that faction and the train they hunt came up during play, leaving that part of the setting as being largely under Jack’s authority as co-creator of the setting (Friends at the Table built the Sangfielle setting collaboratively, though GM Austin usually creates the largest portion of a setting).

I think many GMs use a version of this technique when working with the home settlement and/or factions created by PCs, wanting to implement the version of that place or group that fits the player’s vision of how their character fits into the broader world. The heavier lift version comes into play if the GM takes a very hands-off approach and leaves the player with wider, more comprehensive authority over a part of the world key to their character. This might also apply when deferring to a player that created a part of the setting even if it isn’t directly applicable to their PC.

1.      “George, you created this island chain, what animals do you think people on the mainland would know from there?”

2.      “As we arrive in Hanna’s hometown of Falspur, what do the other player’s notice first? Ollie, you made this place, so why don’t you describe the town.”

Delegating NPCs
This is a form of troupe-style play, where each player plays more than just their single PC.

In a scene where one PC goes off to do something important on their own, a GM might invite other players to take on the role of NPCs in that scene or sequence, especially if it’s a bigger or longer departure from the larger party. This gives those players something to do more actively in this part of the story and lightens the load on the GM when running a scene between one PC and three or more NPCs. Rather than talking to themselves, they might quickly give a short breakdown of the character so that the player has the basic information they need to play that character.

This technique is easier if the characters being handed to other players are much smaller in their role – bit parts, people in the crowd, and so on. Asking another player to step into the role of a major villain is asking a lot and it increases the chances of the GM derailing their own prep through the player doing something that contradicts information they’re not aware of through honest RP using their limited knowledge.

“Since Syelle is the one on trial and you’re mostly being forbidden from testifying, I wanted to try something out. What if the three other players take on roles in the trial? You’d be witnesses, the magistrates, etc. This would also help me out so I’m not talking to myself for twenty minutes at a time. I’ve prepared some character summaries here.”

Play GMless Games
We’ve seen a lot of growth in TTRPGS that operate without a single GM, dividing authority over worldbuilding and resolution among the players. Another way of talking about these games is that rather than being GMless, they’re GMful, aka everyone is the GM, collaborating to keep things rolling. These include mapmaking games like The Quiet Year by Avery Alder, crossover hits like Fiasco by Jason Morningstar, and ensemble games like Once More Into the Void by Rae Nedjadi and Going Rogue by Jess Levine.

Some of these games divide up the universe/aspects of play into discrete facets that are assigned or taken up by an individual player in the moment (here I’m specifically thinking of Belonging Outside Belonging games). This overlaps with the Player Region/Topic Authority technique above, and can help make this a lighter lift, since while they ask the player to take on more authority, it is within a limited/specifically-defined way.

“I’ve always wanted to play Fiasco, and I thought it would be fun to try out and let us all flex our improvisation and storytelling skills. There’s a bunch of scenario and prompt cards, so the game will help us as we play.”

Someone Else Tries GMing
For obvious reasons, this shares a lot with the above “Play GMless games”. At least in terms of what you’re hoping someone will learn or get to practice. But it’s notable that being the GM in a game with one GM instead of 0 GMs/Everyone is the GM might be a bigger lift for some players, especially if they’ve never GMed before.

If you’re normally the GM, you can be a ringer to help make things easier for your friend as they take on the GM’s role. If they have reservations about taking on the GM’s mantle, see if you can address those concerns directly (“I’ll handle the scheduling, don’t worry about it.”)

Honestly, you can intentionally be a ringer and helper even if you’re not usually the GM. You can be the person who arranges the space to play the game (hosting or booking the space), you can manage food/snacks, you can help people make characters, and so on. Think about the jobs that tend to be lumped in with GMing (scheduling is a big one) that you might be able to take on to let the GM focus more on the game facilitation and worldbuilding parts of the job. This should make it less daunting and shows your support in a really tangible way.

“Since Annika is trying out GMing with this next miniseries, I thought we could come together and help make it easier for her. I’ll still do scheduling, Frank or June, can you handle snacks this time so Annika doesn’t have to do game prep and baking?”

Conclusion

Some of my most memorable experiences playing TTRPGs have come from when a player took on more narrative authority and absolutely knocked it out of the park, changing the story and the world in an unforgettable way. I like games that help groups share the load and give everyone more of a chance to flex their creative muscles, and I hope some of you will try out these techniques either to develop your own skills or share them with your tables for everyone to try together. It’s not for everyone, but I think there’s something to be gained from trying one or two of these techniques just to see how you feel about it.

Who knows, you might surprise yourself and discover a whole new way to play.