I'm Just Asking Questions

Introduction:

I think people new to the craft of GMing often have a lot of different ideas about what the most important skill for a GM to have actually is. Some folks think it's all about crafting interesting NPCs, with unique voices, traits, and mannerisms. Others think that the most important skill for the nascent GM is being able to craft interesting and memorable combat encounters, complete with exciting enemies and intricate battle maps. Other new GMs are tempted to first start with creating a complex setting with detailed geographies and political climates and thousand year histories. Still some imagine it comes down to knowing every minute rule within a 600 page RPG book so that they can cover every edge case scenario that they could possibly encounter.

However, have you ever had the situation where you’ve just set up a scene and when you look up to your players expecting a response, you just get crickets in return? Perhaps one of them shuffles around their notes and another just stares at their character sheet. Maybe you’ve delivered some lore information, and you can watch in real time as your player’s eyes glaze over as they are overwhelmed by the fictional history lesson. Maybe it just feels like you can’t develop a rapport or conversational rhythm at the table, and it feels bad. 

So, how do we ameliorate these issues? I believe it comes down to what is the most important skill for a GM to develop, asking good questions. But, what kinds of questions do we ask, and why? What questions provoke fiction forward play, encourage a culture of being invested in one another’s creativity, and collaboration at the table? Let’s talk about it.

Ask “What Do You Do?”

The phrase “What do you do?” is the cornerstone of the cadence I set at the table as a GM which is something I have adopted from PBTA games. Any time you are returning the momentum of the fiction back over to the players, try to make it explicit by saying “What do you do?” What do I mean by this? 

Typically when playing a traditional RPG, the GM describes a situation for players, and then players respond with what they want to do, and the GM reacts to that, with perhaps some dice rolls happening along the way, in a cycle of conversation that becomes the fiction. 

However, this process can typically only start if the player characters have something to react to. So, when you describe that your session is beginning on a snowy mountain top and then just end there, it may not give your players enough content to actually do anything with. You have not described any immediate obstacle for them to overcome. You might instead say something like “You are on top of Mount Brernen, and snow is falling down around you. You can see torchlights descending down the mountain at regular intervals, suggesting someone else has passed through here not too long ago. What’s more, you can feel the chill of frostbite setting in. If you stay in this cold much longer, you’re likely to risk serious injury or death. What do you do?” You can see how providing players with a fictional environment, a current obstacle, and asking them what they want to do engenders forward fictional momentum. 

PBTA games refer to this method of GMs setting obstacles for players to react to, as introducing a soft or a hard move. We do this all the time in games, and it is always followed up by asking “What do you do?” Here are some examples:

• “The giant spider is descending on you and you can feel its acidic venom dripping from its fangs onto your armor, leaving burn marks. What do you do?”

• “As you continue deeper into the ruins, you feel the twang of a tripwire snap against your ankle, and hear a rumbling behind you. What do you do?”

• “Your ship’s engine is failing and you can feel it making a tumultuous descent into the orbit of the planet below you. You have maybe five minutes before you crash land. What do you do?”

See how the statements flow? It goes from the introduction of something bad, either in the immediate, or the future, and then prompting a reaction. After this, the player says what they are going to do and the threat is either resolved, escalates, or terminates into the worst possible outcome. The primary difference between a soft move and a hard move is the immediacy of the threat. A soft move might look something like:

“You look at the straps of your backpack and can see they’re fraying. If you continue to go without maintenance on them, it's likely you’ll lose the bag and possibly the contents inside depending on when the bag bursts. What do you want to do about it?”

On the other hand, the same threat can be introduced as a hard move by changing the immediacy of it being introduced. It would look something like this:

“As you are traipsing through the jungle, the straps of your backpack give way, and send it tumbling down a hill and spilling its contents along the way. It's likely you could prioritize items to quickly grab, or you could slow down and take your time to methodically grab everything. However, that’s likely to get you noticed by some critter or another. What do you do?” 

As you can see, in both cases the GM is giving the fictional response back to the player (or players) by asking for their reaction. This creates a sustainable flow of dialogue at the table. 

Ask Pointed Questions:

You can also ask questions directly of players and their characters. I tend to find this an effective way of drawing quieter players more deeply into the conversation. This practice is often referred to as spotlighting. For example:

“Ebre you see the alien lifeform grapple onto Hans, and inject an appendage into his neck. What do you want to do?”

So, even though the move I’m making is primarily affecting Hans, I’m asking Ebre for her reaction. This might prompt her to shoot at the alien, or provide medical care to Hans, or to run after seeing the danger. Either way, I have specifically chosen a character who has the agency to do something by asking the player a question.

You can also ask pointed questions in a way that promotes creativity by giving the player boundaries to work inside of. For instance, I might ask something like this to frame a scene:

“Gritch, Dremmer has you pinned up against a wall and a knife against your throat. What the hell did you do to piss him off?”

This gives Gritch’s player a way to contribute to the fiction of our world in a fairly narrow way. They might decide that Gritch is a loud mouth who was shooting off and insulted Dremmer’s sister, and so Dremmer came at them. They may instead decide that Gritch has been unreliable in the past and is late on a payment to Dremmer. They could also decide that Dremmer is a hot head, and when Gritch accidentally spilled their beer on him, he shoved them up against the wall. All of this fiction can come from a player if they are prompted with a pointed question. 

You can also ask pointed questions about feelings to get at a character’s internal state. “Petey, you just watched your crewmember Mordecai shoot one of the bodies of the Emperox hivemind, killing it. What are you feeling and how does it come across your face?” Questions like these allow us to get a deeper sense not only of what the characters are experiencing, but also how they are interpreting that experience. 

Ask Worldbuilding Questions:

This piece of advice is probably the one that will catch the most flak from more traditionally minded GMs. I believe one way to make your worldbuilding more accessible is to give your players input by asking them questions about the world. This can be as small as asking them “What does your berth on the ship look like?” or “What kind of rations do you pack?” Small questions like these, especially when asked in the first session or two, allow for the world to feel lived in and give players an opportunity to start coloring in their character's personality and how they engage in the world around them. 

You can also ask larger world building questions! I tend to let players color in the society their characters come from. For instance, I asked a player in my Stars Without Number game what people who grew up primarily in space were like, because his character grew up in spacer culture, and he filled in the lore of that society by drawing on his own well of fictional inspiration. 

Asking worldbuilding questions relieves the GM of carrying the creative burden by themselves, and distributes it more equitably around the table. Furthermore, it has the potential to create a world players are more invested in because they get a hand in creating it.

Conclusion:

Apocalypse World 2e has this to say about asking questions:

“Ask questions all the time. Ask about the landscape, the sky, the people and their broken lives too, don’t just tell, share. Turn a player’s question over to the group: “I don’t know, where DO you get your food?” But especially, anything you want to know, ask. Anything you think might be interesting later, ask. Anything a player says that sticks out, anything that seems like the tip of an iceberg, or like fish moving under water, ask.” (Apocalypse World 2e, pg. 99)

In summary, questions are the bedrock of the conversation that happens at any RPG table. Questions are the signifier that the GM is looking for a response from players. Players can ask questions of one another too, and of the GM to further clarify the fiction shared between everyone.

Questions to Consider:

• How might asking “What do you do” change the flow of conversation at my table?

• What questions am I already asking of my players?