Image: Artist Unknown, The Skirt Dance ( plate from Albert A. Hopkin's Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography ), 1897. Public domain source.

In a recent episode of Fear of a Black Dragon the hosts dedicated an entire show segment to spotlight management - the practice of moving the proverbial "spotlight" around from player to player in your game in order to give each an equitable share of the fun. I recommend giving it a listen, but for convenience I'll (non-exhaustively) summarize some of their tips here:

• As a baseline, check in with a player for 5-10 minutes, then cut to another player. Repeat.
• Use spotlight shifts to build suspense and buy time to respond to what the player's did.
• Implicate players in the results of other players' dice rolls or investigations.
• At higher player counts, bundle pairs or trios of players together.

Good advice, and worth rebroadcasting, but I'm posting here to add a few thoughts of my own - both on why spotlight management is important and what you can do about it.

It Helps Make A More Inclusive Table

Fundamentally, I want to play in roleplaying games that are as inclusive as possible. The table is fundamentally a social gathering and, as with any social gathering, players arrive with different levels of access and different barriers that may prevent them from participating.

As someone writing from a position of relative privilege, it's important to recognize that I may not even always be able to observe, in the moment, all the barriers that may be preventing someone from participating. The player may not have shared them with me and part of being in a position of privilege is that it encultures you into thinking of your own level of access, resources, and expectations as being the shared "norm." All that say, that just because I haven't detected a barrier faced by another person at the table, that doesn't make that barrier not real.

I can work on being more perceptive to this in real time, but in the short term, having a proactive spotlight management strategy to ensure that the camera moves from player to player regularly help provide a baseline level of access that you can adjust as need arises.

It's Not Just the GM's Job

In many games, the GM is responsible for the interstitial narrative between players' actions and for pulling in the game's mechanics when that narrative calls for it. Mechanics frequently face individual players so they often find themselves shifting the spotlight by saying "so-and-so, what do you do?"

This is a critical moment of spotlight shifting, but it's not the only one. To my mind, good players are also invested in the pacing of the fiction and can take proactive steps to move the spotlight.

Players can and should throw to one another. Have your character ask what another character thinks about a situation. Ask them if they can help your character do something. Do cool tag-team attacks or combine your abilities. All of this keeps the camera moving in a way that's more engaging than the GM simply shifting it around.

With that in mind, players should also keep track of how often they are speaking up. In the classroom, I encourage students to follow a step up/step back guideline. Pay attention to how much you speak up during a given session. If it's a lot, "step back." Consider giving more time to others (either by throwing or by simply pausing to let others respond). If it feels like not very much, "step up." Try to proactively share your thoughts and be the first to take actions.

I do think that in the fact of most tables, the GM has a heightened responsibility for managing the spotlight. GM's tend to be facilitators and organizers of their games, not just participants in a larger group. That being the case, I think a GM should help provide space for player's to step up or step back. Nothing helps organize this though, like I good out of character conversation before or after a session.

It's Not Just Game Actions

It's worth stating explicitly that the spotlight is not restricted to in character conversations or actions. If you are telling a story, making a reference, or talking about the rules, you are holding the spotlight. Online over voice, if audio is coming through your mic (even from a side conversation), you are holding the spotlight. That's not to say these things are bad and you should avoid doing them, just that it's all part of what we're talking about when we consider spotlight management.

It's Something You Can Check Up On

Much of the blog content I've seen addressing this topic either dismisses it as a "story game" phenomenon or says "that's not a problem at my table." Comment sections are often even more vitriolic, establishing conservative positions like "adversity in fiction makes the players share the spotlight by working together or else their character's die." Maybe that's the case, but why not check to see how the spotlight is distributed at your table?

As a GM, simply make a roster of players before your next session. Include yourself. Every time someone talks, mark a tally next to their name. If someone talks over another player, make a special mark (perhaps an "!"). At the end of the session, assess for yourself: Did everyone actually get an equal chance to participate? Who would you like to see participating more? Who could stand to participate a little less?

As a player, you can take a similar tally. Make two columns on a sheet of note paper. When the GM throws to the players, mark a tally in one column if you speak up first. Make a mark in the other if someone else does. At the end of the session, assess: Does that ratio seem fair to me? Should I speak up more relative to the number of players in the group or should I leave room for someone else to get their say?

This is a crude method, but it at least gives you something to talk about in detail, rather than only having a hazy memory of the session to go on. Plus it gives you something concrete that you can share with your table if you decide to have a larger discussion as a group.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on spotlight management. I'm absolutely not an expert and I am always looking to learn more. Any tips missed by Fear of a Black Dragon or by me? This post notably omits any conversation of actual game procedures (e.g. initiative order) that might be applied to shape the story. I'd be curious to hear about any novel spotlight management rules your table might use.