The Problem

Some Players find it difficult to answer the questions posed by the World and some Moves. They struggle, they squirm, they ask the World to answer in their place.

What can we do?

Is there help to be found? Should we ignore the rules and just let the World always describe everything for everyone, like in more traditional systems? And would this break the game?

Some Solutions

First of all it’s important to acknowledge that this is a fairly common problem, to various degrees. Not all Players feel equally comfortable imagining details and situations and then describing them out loud, especially on a direct prompt, with specific constraints, at the drop of a hat. Capable, yes, everyone is capable. But comfortable doing it? Not so much, and for many this discomfort can be enough to impede play. This can be the case for new people approaching the RPG hobby, but also for traditionalist veterans that come to the more collaborative and open ended world of PbtA games, or for people that are just a bit shy about expressing themselves “in public” even though the audience is just their friends.

Practice will make them incrementally more comfortable and skilled at doing this, but at times some help is needed to ease them into it. Here I offer a selection of practical techniques to do just that...

0) Why bother?

If the World answers and describes instead of the appointed Player the game won’t go up in flames, especially if the Player was the one asking them for input in the first place. But the overall play experience will sensibly lose quality, while the workload for the World will increase both in quantity and in difficulty. So, a pretty bad deal.

This happens because the core of most mechanics (in many PbtA games but especially in FW) relies on flags (a form of Player input) to reduce, ease and direct the World’s activity. This is literally the double-secret ninja trick of emergent playstyle: content you create is inherently more engaging and meaningful for you than content created by someone else, even if its quality could be considered superior. Personal involvement beats extraneous skill any day of the week, with only a few exceptions.

As the game mechanics continuously prompt all participants to contribute small bits of content, the overall result is both novel/surprising and engaging/meaningful for everyone at the table. Remove this dynamic, and you end up much closer to traditional games where the GM has to do 99% of the heavy lifting, hoping that their personal skill and expertise will hit the emotional marks of every Player at the table.

Finally, some mechanics require input that is specific and unique to a certain PC. In these cases it might be awkward and unwieldy when someone else decides very personal things about your PC. Again, not game breaking, but certainly not ideal either.

1) Stick to the rules... with love

When someone struggles with the rules because they conflict with some preexisting habit, expectation or somehow push the boundaries of their comfort zone, this is when it is all the more important to stick to the letter of the rules... but with extra love and care for the people at the table. There are two fundamental assumption at the root of this technique:

A - Everyone was properly informed of the kind of game they were getting into, and they willingly accepted to play it. In this frame, attrition is seen as an expected(ish) transition cost towards the habits necessary to play the new game. Sticking to the rules ensures that this transition will smooth out as fast as possible.

B - Attrition and mild discomfort are one thing, but if the practice of play turns out to be substantially and consistently different than expected and feels incompatible with personal enjoyment, then this is a matter that should be discussed outside of the game, as people and friends, not as “players”. This might lead to considering playing a different game, or to playing this game with a different group. In FW there is one golden rule that pretty much formalises this process.

In either case Players should be given a fair chance to learn the rules and adapt to them through practice. Changing the rules to avoid discomfort might fix some problems in the short term, but then Players will never deal with the parts that are problematic for them, stunting their chances to learn and grow. 

I firmly believe in maintaining a varied gaming diet, that there is no “one” game and that even when one finds a favourite, they can and should still try new things and enjoy different experiences. Sticking to the letter of the rules is the best and fastest way to test a new game, to discover what possible pain points there are, and eventually how to overcome them... or to decide that this is not one’s cup of tea.

That said, rubbing someone’s face in the problem they are dealing with is not a great way to have a good time with your friends. So while “the rules are the rules” it is also important to be patient and supportive and understanding with one another, and to remember that the rules (at least in the case of FW) also provide tools meant to ease this learning process. Like how FW defines fluid play to encourage a more relaxed table mood, or how the World never calls for rolls but always poses a question to the Players, or how metagame can be used to delegate decisions onto the World or other fellow Players.

2) Answer by proxy

So, can the World answer for the Players? Yes. FW states in many places that the whole game activity is a cooperative endeavour. If a Player should answer but they look for help, suggestions and ideas, then anyone at the table can and should offer some input. Metagame is your friend, use it to enhance your play experience!

But it’s crucial that the other’s contribution be made in the form of a pitch. The World (and/or other Players) can offer their answers, but then everyone should look at the original Player: they must have the final word. Maybe they use the offered answers as inspiration to formulate an answer of their own. Maybe they accept one of the options as is, making it their official answer. Maybe they reject all suggestions and come up with a new answer, now that they have seen a few examples and the ice has been broken. Be as it may, they are supposed to answer, so at the end of everything they are still the ones answering. Everyone else is just helping.

This technique can be used in two modes.

When a Player is mostly fine answering questions but on a specific occasion gets stuck, affording them extra time might end up putting them more on the spot. This technique can then be applied to “save them” from this awkward moment.

Alternatively when a Player is still having constant trouble answering questions, the World can immediately and directly open the question to the whole table; this helps avoid putting them on the spot in the first place while still keeping them involved as final arbiters of which option gets picked.

This technique is most effective when more than just one option is offered, especially when only the World is giving input: be sure to always present the Player with a small selection of 2-3 possibilities.

3) Clear the air

Another technique mentioned here and there throughout the whole FW rulebook is that of “clearing the air” by having the World recap the salient elements of the current situation before reiterating the question. This helps everyone get on the same page while also offering time to think, and focusing this thought process towards whatever the World is highlighting. Extra comments and questions, with an eye towards what the PC could reasonably know/understand/perceive, might also grant additional insight. More often than not, this is enough to get a Player unstuck, making whatever answer was required of them more obvious and easier to formulate.

The Long Rest move has this technique in-built in its procedures, as it re-frames each PCs activity as a single moment/vignette with a specific time, location, starting situation, and a single mechanical effect. And then, after performing this ritual for every PC’s utility scene and possibly for their bond scenes... it eventually gets to a roll that might ask them to describe something about the world surrounding them. If the procedures have been followed faithfully until this last moment, every Player should have a pretty vivid image in their head that can help imagine what their PCs might find beautiful or worrisome about the area they just spent their Long Rest in.

This is also a useful technique for the World to use when they are stuck. Recap, refocus, clear the air... and the narrative detail you were fruitlessly chasing will often present itself spontaneously.

4) Reset expectations

Along with clearing the air and posing again a refocused question, it also helps to clearly mention the expectations for the answer. Most Players are often hold the wrong assumption that their answers should be:

• long
• beautiful
• poetic
• interesting
• clever
• surprising
• etc

This is absolutely false, creating a disproportionate amount of pressure that helps exactly no one. So a good technique (stolen from improv theater and actually presented in the FW rulebook as a help to both Players and World) is to remind everyone that they should strive to be banal. To be obvious and banal. To say the first thing that pops into their mind. Nine times out of ten what one person imagines to be not worth mentioning, the other people at the table will perceive as one or more of the following:

• reasonable, conforming to common sense
• logical, fitting their expectations
• surprising, as what is obvious to one person might not be so for another
• useful, as a seed idea that others can refine and build upon

At the very worst, an idea that no one likes can work as future reference for what not to describe. Communicating these concepts can lift a lot of weight and pressure from a Player that is anxious about providing a “worthy” contribution. Communication = Strength

5) Use the PC as a Lens

Some people have a relatively strict/stifled vision of what is or is not their “job” as rpg Players. When they describe what their PC says and does, they are playing. When they describe a flower along the road or offer a name suggestion for an NPC, they are not playing ... and they are here to play!

On the other side of the spectrum, the World might get too excited about the prospect of offloading some of their creative workload onto the Players, ending up asking all kinds of setting-related questions, involving the Players in broad world building decisions or random detail creation.

Neither of these positions is “wrong” strictly speaking, but excess and lack of flexibility can brew attrition and resentment on either side, contributing to Players having trouble answering the game’s questions. A useful technique to avoid both these problems is to channel, as much as possible, the questions through the lens of the PCs.

Instead of asking a Player to invent a random dish found in the food culture of the fantasy setting you are playing in... ask a PC to recount what their favourite dish is. Seems like an immaterial difference, but it’s actually a huge conceptual shift in mindset:

• it feels pertinent to “playing a PC”
• it’s more specific and circumstanciated, which makes it easier to answer
• it inherently helps the World avoid questions that might be too broad or complex

And then the World can use this initial answer as an anchor for further related questions: is the dish you ate typical of the region/culture you are in now? did you like it? was this the first time you ate it? etc...

What to ask, and how much to ask, will vary depending on the purpose of the original question, but overall this makes it much easier and more palatable for Players to answer, one fictional bit at a time, always as an info from/about the point of view of their PC. Too much of a good thing will still be problematic, but balancing the amount of followup questions can be gauged by trial and error without causing real damage to the game experience.

An addendum technique based on using the PC as the focal lens for the questions, is to point out to the Player that their PC is their personal domain. The World can’t know how their PC thinks and feels, the details of how they are dressed, what they know or don’t know, where they come from, etc. Answering questions about a PC’s own past experiences or about their immediate surroundings is part of roleplaying that character. “I can’t play your character for you” is a good way yo convey the idea that no, the World is not asking the Player to do something that is not roleplaying their character, but rather they are asking the Player to play their character to the fullest, imagining and then communicating more details than they are used to. Sometimes this simple shift in perspective is all that is needed to smooth out the attrition some Players feel at answering questions.