Session Spotlight
From UTRPG
- This is an experimental GM technique designed to reduce the incidence of bland sessions. Sometimes a GM tries to put lots of character hooks into a session to get all the players involved, but winds up just diluting the plot. This is my attempt at a solution. --Dave
With the "session spotlight" house rule, each session has one character who is the "lead" and the rest are "supporting cast". The plot mostly revolves around the hopes, dreams, strengths, weaknesses and dark secrets of the lead. However, since all the supporting characters have ties to the lead, nobody should feel left out.
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[edit] How it works
The lead's aspects will naturally be compelled more frequently than the supporting cast, and the lead will have more opportunities to invoke their aspects. To balance this, the following rules apply:
- Any supporting character may invoke the lead's aspects, as long as they can provide some narrative context.
- When a supporting character needs to spend a FATE point, the lead's player may choose (or be persuaded) to use one of their own FATE points instead. Again, some narrative context must be provided.
[edit] Who leads
The GM decides, in preparing each session, which character will be the lead. The lead role rotates among the characters -- not necessarily in any particular order -- but the following guidelines are to be adhered to whenever possible:
- Everyone eventually gets the same number of turns in the spotlight.
- Nobody is the lead twice in a row.
[edit] Player responsibilities
In order for the GM to prepare a spotlight session, they need to know who will be present. Therefore, players must abide by the following:
- If you know you will be able to make it to the session, you must tell your GM in advance. If you know you won't, or don't know, it's best to tell them so, but that's not as crucial to this method (it's just good manners).
- If you don't tell your GM beforehand that you will definitely be at the session, you won't be the lead. You may be welcome to play in the session, but no RSVP means you're guaranteed to be a supporting character.
- By the same token, don't say you'll definitely be there unless you're sure.
[edit] Feedback
This method is under construction, and the particulars will likely change as it is playtested. Please, please, please, if there's anything you think doesn't work well about it, contact Dave or use the Talk page for this article. Any comments, criticism, suggestions and other feedback is very much welcome. After all, the objective is to create a fun gaming experience for everybody.
