Players enjoy spotlight time during a game, some more than others, but as a rule the opportunity to let your character shine is one of the key elements in having fun at the table. How you as the gamemaster manage the spotlight can be critical to creating a fun, rewarding experience for everyone playing. The players at my table are really good at sharing spotlight time but every now and then things tend to linger a little too long on one character or another character sort of fades into the background. It’s incumbent on me to recognize when this is happening and do something about it.
There are a variety of ways in which to put the spotlight on one of the characters in the campaign. The three methods I like to employ include highlighting a character’s background, their abilities, or their goals. Any of these three elements go a long way toward putting the attention on that character and the player. Here are a few ideas and tips to help you include any of these spotlight techniques in your campaign:
Spotlight Background
I like characters with developed backgrounds. They don’t have to be extensive historical narratives but they do need to be��least a few solid bullet-points that serve to tie the��character to the setting and the other characters. Ideally a background should also suggest a potential plot-arc or two to use in the future. An adventure that focuses on coming to the aid of an old friend, mentor, or family member definitely highlights a character’s personal story. I’ve built adventures based on all sorts of character background information; things like: where they grew up, where they trained or went to school, old friends and acquaintances, their former career, or a criminal past. I’ve even used a non-background for inspiration. You know the kind I’m talking about; the player that says their character is an orphan, without any friends, from another region, who grew up making their own way. The last time a player did that in my campaign they discovered Jeren’s home village… of identical clones… that wanted him back in the fold… and were ruled��over by his archenemy. That adventure became very personal and defining for character as well as the player. It also built an epic back-story for a character that started the campaign with a one-sentence background.
Spotlight Abilities
One of the reasons players create the character that they are playing is because of the cool abilities the character possesses. Whether it’s awesome super powers, unique class abilities, or having a specialized skill set, players want their character’s to do “stuff”, especially stuff they are good at. Take advantage of this as you set up adventures and stories. Make sure the party detective has clues to find, the cleric has undead to turn, and the Jedi has simpletons to use his “mind trick” on. In my current D&D campaign I want to focus on the party rogue for a session. I put together an adventure with lots of opportunities for stealthy maneuvering (she excels at this), daring acrobatics, and the need to quietly take out lone guards. This last point is especially important to the player because it highlights her assassin sub-class; as opposed to the “regular” killing that the whole party engages in.
Spotlight��Goals
Goals come up all the time for characters and players. Most of the��time these goals are��part of the ongoing campaign narrative and are applicable to the entire group; things like defeating the evil necromancer or saving the colony. What you want to look for however are the goals that��relate to a specific character. These might be background elements, like reclaiming an ancestral home or avenging the death of a loved one. Or they might emerge from party goals such as killing the arch-villain’s lieutenant or finding the fabled Axe of Korra-Nar. Building an adventure around the potential for one of the characters to realize a goal is a great way to spotlight that character for a session. To ensure maximum impact make sure the goal is one that the other players at the table are well aware of. Whether or not the character achieves the goal, your goal of highlighting the character will be met.
Final Thoughts
The above topics cover how to place the spotlight on a character, however the most important part of managing the spotlight in your game is to be aware of it and communicate with your players about it. Pay attention to where you’ve placed the focus or on who has taken the focus. We have all experienced having more outgoing or more reserved players at the table. As gamemaster it’s your job to ensure that some players don’t completely overshadow others.
There are many different ways to manage this but I think talking directly to the players is one of the simplest and most effective methods. I have recently begun adopting the technique used in the Malifaux RPG, Through the Breach. In this game every session includes a brief prologue that hints at the adventure to come and informs the players of who will have their fate “in play” for the session (each character has a multi-part “fate” that resolves over the course of the campaign). I have taken to letting the players know if the upcoming session is “Salazar-centric”, or focuses on Braethel’s quest. I don’t necessarily do this for every session but when I do everyone at the table helps in keeping the game on the focus character.
This brings me to my final point. For the spotlight to be truly effective in your campaign you need players that will embrace the opportunity to celebrate a character other than their own. You need to foster and encourage a gaming environment where your players are invested in each others’ characters. Rotating the spotlight between characters helps support this by allowing a player to “back-off” a bit when the spotlight is on someone else, secure in the knowledge that their turn is coming soon. Playing a character and doing cool things is great, but playing a character and doing cool things and everyone at the table celebrating it is awesome!
I really enjoyed this article. I have a player who is becoming a Dad rather soon and he likes to ‘sit back’ and play Clerics/Healers and the like in any D&D centric game. Only thing is, he usually only does anything when prompted/pumped up to do it by me or other people around the table… he never seems to take the initiative and when he does it is few and far between. I like your suggestion in this article that each player has a spotlight session sometimes and maybe sometimes you foreshadow it right as the game is starting. Thanks, I like your ideas.
I hope some of these ideas help. Some players just need the right atmosphere to “come out of their shell” but others truly prefer staying out of the spotlight. For the latter I recommend using a more subtle approach. Take some of the elements from this article but use them in very small doses. For the player you mentioned you might have and adventure featuring the group helping his old friend, or maybe something as simple as encountering an injured traveler that he can potentially heal (who knows maybe the peron he heals turns out to be important latter in the cmpaign).
John Lewis recently posted…This Week In Roleplaying – January 9th, 2015
These are great tips, John.
I would love to hear more about how to spotlight abilities in the future.
Johnn Four recently posted…Left Hooks: 24 Plot Twist Ideas & Design Patterns
You’re going to see them talked about a lot in our campaign design guide. Spotlight time features prominately in the way I set up and run a campaign. In fact oftentimes it’s one of the primary driving forces behind our games.
John Lewis recently posted…Alchemists’ Guide to Campaign Design: Prelude
Really good article, thank you for the examples. I have a question about the “solo adventure”. What do the other players (not characters) do while the one player is having their adventure? Do they watch from the gallery? Take a break for whatever? Play NPCs in the solo adventure? Just trying to figure out how to keep them from bailing.
Thanks!
@Bill – That’s an awesome question, Bill. I’ll respond as a player in John’s games. When the spotlight is shining on another player for a bit, I can tell you that our group is typically talking to each other about the game and planning our own next actions.
For example, if our Drow Rogue sneaks away from the party and gets into a little spotlight time with a side adventure, I’ll typically talk to the other players about what our next plan of attack is. When John gets back to us, I (or another player) usually catch him up to speed and say something like the following:
“John, while you were dealing with Melissa’s (Drow Rogue) adventure, our characters have been talking in the inn. We’ve believe that those coins our characters were given are actually cursed and being used to track our movements. So we’ve decided to go spread them around the Citadel. Stacey threw his coin in a fountain, Colin sold his to a merchant, Vance gave his to a homeless person, and I just threw mine in the gutter.”
Usually John will say, that’s great. And we move forward from there. Occasionally, one of those actions will provoke something from an NPC or something else and John will narrate it out. In this example, Stacey, Vance, and I just succeeded at our actions. But John chose to roleplay Colin’s action out a little more since the merchant was wary why this person was selling a collectible coin given to him by a noble at a bargain price.
Hopefully that gives you an idea on how it works at our gaming table!
Samuel Van Der Wall recently posted…Top 5 Reasons for Player-Facing Mechanics
One of the things I do right before a short solo break-away is to give the rest of the group some sort of task, puzzle, or situation that I know is going to require them to think, debate, or plan their next course of action (I also do this to the entire group when I need a little time to plan my next move!).
Visual aides can assit you in this a great deal. Recently I had a situation where two of the characters were involved in a short break-away infiltrating a building. I handed the other players a map of the village and the tunnels beneath the village to help them in their plan to liberate the captives being held beneath the grange. They planned out their next moves while listening to the action the others were engaged in. Worked out nicely.
I think this might be a great topic for an article…
John Lewis recently posted…Review of Neon Sanctum
I would like to hear your advice and experience on it personally – where you maybe also give advice on how to run things differently and plan differently based on maybe like 3 players instead of 4… so you in effect would be giving different experiences from 3 compared to 4 players.
I have a situation where we are now down to 4 players due to a baby being born and one of the players that is left is really ‘responsible’ and ‘corporate in their direction with work’ and only sees the game sessions as a tertiary thing he enjoys or allows himself to enjoy, and I can understand that, but from my perspective I put in time to to do this thing and run it… if you interested enough to play in my mind, you are interested enough to make time to regularly attend… we meet once a month, and if I don’t aggressively schedule times ahead he is always choosing 1-1/2 or 2 months out instead to attend
That in my mind detracts from everyone elses experience since they are capable and willing to attend more. While having said that, he encourages us to play without him when it’s not convenient enough for him… ok, well, that means we are down to 3 players. I haven’t missed one game session so far since started Phandelver in July… I would hope that would be the case with the players also.
So, have said all that, can you either marry in both the different directions that running a session can provide based on different number of players. Also, since we meet at one of the players houses (a couple) since they have a bigger place for all us to play and room for my stuff, I am a bit shy on trying to invite new (strangers) into their home and haven’t given much thought to add players through a ‘looking for group in RL not online’ except to think it’s a bad idea right now.
Aeternal – That sounds like a tough situation. I’ve noticed that the older we get, the more things pull our own time away from the game (work, family, and all the little chores that go with them). I been on both ends of that stick. I’ve been the GM running a game that a player seemed non-committed too AND I’ve been the player that has had things come up to where I couldn’t commit as much.
From the GM end, having a non-committed player is frustrating and I think you just have to roll with it for your sanity. I had a player that was calling in to cancel last minute seemingly all the time for much less important reasons than having recently had a child! I just got to the point where I planned gaming without him and if he showed up it was a bonus. Kind of like having an active NPC in the party!
From the player end, our group plays on Mondays. My job changed for four months where I worked every other Monday. So I could only attend 50% (or less) of our gaming sessions! I told our GM to count me out, but when I was able to show up I either played some one-shot NPC for the evening or just enjoyed being at the table with friends. And honestly, I had one or two pretty memorable NPCs that were supposed to be one-shots, but ended up becoming larger pieces to the campaign puzzle! So that is an option for your player too if they’re inclined.
And as for being shy, I HEAR YOU! I am the same way. I’m fortunate that many in my current gaming group aren’t. I will warn you of one thing though. If you stick with people that aren’t providing your gaming needs because you’re too afraid to venture out, then you’re going to be unhappy as a gamer. I wasted WAAAYYYY to much gaming time playing with people I had marginal fun playing with because I was too afraid to go out and try new things. All I can say is, try to embrace change. Just try playing with a few different groups at a hobby store or convention once or twice. I almost guarantee you’ll have fun and meet some new gamers to boot!
Samuel Van Der Wall recently posted…Review of Neon Sanctum