This is a targeted prompt in which the GM asks a player to share and describe the inner life of their character. (“Emily, it’s your turn.”) Even without formal mechanics, however, they can also commonly occur as a process of elimination: Everyone else has declared their action, and so, “While that’s happening, what is Emily doing?”Ī specialized technique is the inner monologue prompt.

Targeted prompts will formally arise from initiative counts or similar priority mechanics. Instead of prompting the table as a whole, the GM instead prompts a specific player: “What is Emily doing?” For example, while roleplaying their PCs chatting about recent events around the campfire, one of the players might turn to the GM and ask, “Do I know anything about King Roderick?” Open prompts like this are almost always the purview of the GM, but more specific prompts from the players aren’t exactly uncommon. It’s kind of like saying “over” when you’re using a walkie-talkie. There can be a lot of different reasons for using a specific prompt, but it usually boils down to clarity in the handoff (“I’m done talking, so now it’s your turn,” in a fashion somewhat akin to saying “I’m done” at the end of your turn in a board game) or an effort to refocus the table (“let’s stop talking about which flavor of Cheetos is the best and get back to fighting the bilious zombies”). Probably the most typical example is the GM, after presenting events in the world, saying something like, “So what are y’all doing?” In some cases, however, this will be prompted. Often this conversational handoff is unprompted: The GM talks, the players talk, the GM talks again, and so on in a seamless back-and-forth. But then, of course, the GM takes their turn and, playing the world, reacts to what the PCs have done. One of the ways I find this analogy useful is thinking in terms of action and reaction: The GM takes an action, and the players react to it on their turn. Roleplaying games dance freely between these two turn-taking dynamics, and in that dance the GM and the players are partners. In a game, we formally take turns using the mechanics of the game. A roleplaying game, at its heart, lies at an interstice between game and conversation: In a conversation, we informally take turns sharing information.

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