Trust. It’s the most important aspect of a story, whether you’re writing it down on paper or telling it with dice and friends. If a player doesn’t trust their GM, then why are they spending time at that table?
In the first article, we looked at ways to build trust at your table. In this article, we’ll talk about maintaining it by keeping the narrative promises you made to your players.
What are narrative promises? I’m no panda, but the term is important enough that I think I should take a swing at defining it anyway: A narrative promise is a commitment you make to your audience, the folks experiencing your story (or in the case of a TTRPG, the people creating the story alongside you).
Think of a cozy mystery show like Murder She Wrote. There are at least three narrative promises in every episode:
- There will be a murder
- Jessica Fletcher, even though she is not nor has she ever been a licensed investigator, will be tasked with solving the crime
- The culprit will be discovered and brought to justice
If any of these promises aren’t fulfilled, the viewer could be left unsatisfied, and there’s a high risk they’ll lose trust in the entire series altogether. (Yes, there are ways of breaking format that will satisfy the audience, but those are all based on the trust the storyteller has built up. We’ll talk more about that later.)
The Writing Excuses podcast has a number of episodes devoted to promises authors make to their readers, and I highly recommend checking out at least one or two. They’re incredibly helpful.
THE PROMISES YOU SAY OUT LOUD
When you’re running a TTRPG, there are two kinds of narrative promises: the ones you say out loud and the ones you don’t. They’re both tricky to keep, though, so let’s look at each category on its own.
Most of the promises you say out loud you’ll say before the campaign even starts. I’m talking about things like lines and veils and other safety mechanics – the things you promise either won’t be in your game at all or will only be included in a limited capacity.
Hopefully, I don’t have to explain why it’s bad to break the promises you set forth there. But there are other aspects of session zero and maybe even pre-session zero where you will specifically make promises to your players. Maybe not by saying the words, “I promise,” but they are promises all the same.
For example, let’s talk about campaign pitches. When you go to your table and say, “I’ve got an idea for a Shadowrun campaign,” you’re essentially saying, “I promise that I’m going to – you know – run Shadowrun.” Not D&D or Kids on Bikes or Pasión de las Pasiones. You’re promising Mr. Johnsons, magic, and cyberware.
If, on the other hand, you want to use the setting but swap out the rules system for something more streamlined, then that’s something you have to say when you’re proposing the campaign. Otherwise, when you’re players show up on game night with a suitcase full of D6s but you say you’re going to use the Genesys system instead, well, trust is going to be stretched.
Likewise, always, always, always avoid bait and switches. I won’t harp on it too long here, but promising a high adventure, almost pulpy modern-era campaign and then pulling out the rug and running a brutal horror campaign should be an obvious no-go.
Now, campaign premises will often shift over the course of play. That’s natural, but when you notice it happening, it’s a good idea to check in with your players to make sure they’re okay with the drift. Acknowledging the deviation from the original pitch will let them know you’re aware and that you care. Maybe you’ll lean into the drift. Maybe you’ll pull back and refocus. Either way, you’ll definitely solidify that trust we’ve been talking about.
THE PROMISES YOU ONLY IMPLY
A lot of the promises we make at the table go unsaid, and these are the trickiest ones to nail down, but I’ve found there are two big areas of unspoken promises: character backstories and genre conventions.
BACKSTORIES
We talked about backstories in the last article and how listening to what your players are telling you is an important step in building trust at the table. But they’re an important part of the game and worth talking about twice.
When you accept a backstory, you’re making an implied promise that the story means something to the game. This means that unless you’ve stated otherwise, you’ve got to find a way to work it into the campaign. (See my advice on organically working backstories into your campaign here.)
Obviously, how much of their backstories you’ll be able to fit into the game depends entirely on the kind of game you’re running. A one-shot at a con? Probably very little, if any, AT MOST. A five-year campaign spanning levels 1 through 20? They better be getting their own arcs.
Regardless, if a player hands you a 75-page tome detailing every aspect of their character’s past, from grandmother’s birth to the present day, what you do with that massive amount of information matters. If they give you too much, ask them for bullet points or a TLDR, but be frank and upfront. Otherwise, they might expect you to know the name of their childhood bully or fourth-grade teacher.
And whatever you do, don’t dismiss it outright or accept it with a smile and then turn around and toss it. Regardless of whether or not it’s appropriate for your game, that player spent time and energy crafting that backstory. Even if it’s not what you asked for – even if you didn’t ask for it at all – if you want that player to trust you with their character, you at least have to acknowledge the effort they put into crafting the history.
GENRE CONVENTIONS
These are the other unspoken promises you’re going to make when you decide to run any kind of game, and those are your genre conventions – the tropes people expect when they show up for a certain kind of story.
Romances, for example, have to have a happily-ever-after ending. Trust me, romance fans are VERY vocal about this. Mysteries, likewise, need to reveal the culprit because there’s an inherent promise that the unknown will become known (see the Murder She Wrote example above). Space opera should probably have spaceships or be set in, you know, space.
A lot of these conventions live in the sub-basement of our consciousness, but they’re easy enough to haul up out of their hiding spots. Just search for “YOUR GAME’S GENRE + Genre Conventions.” I guarantee you’ll find more than enough YouTube videos and writing blogs with a detailed checklist to run through.
Then, if you plan on breaking any of those conventions, follow the evergreen GMing advice of bringing it up during session zero. Think of it like establishing the difference between a superhero game based on The Avengers versus a superhero game based on The Boys. Both of those are technically in the superhero genre, but they use the conventions of that genre in very different ways.
A Rant on Twists
Everyone wants to pull off a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. Unfortunately, when we try to do a big twist reveal in our games, 99% of us are going to end up being more like M. Night Shyamalan when he directs pretty much any other movie.
Twists run the risk of coming off more as bait-and-switches (see above), and that’s why the general rule of thumb is to just avoid them.
In order for a twist to work, you need to lay A LOT of groundwork. That way, when it happens, it feels both obvious and inevitable, but hopefully only seconds before you actually say, “He was dead the whole time.”
However, since TTRPGs are an interactive medium, you also have to be ready and willing to abandon your twist if your players figure it out beforehand. Because if you’re laying out the clues in a way that they can piece them together – they might actually piece them together earlier than you expect!
And really, is that bad? It means they’re paying attention and that they care about your narrative!
I know from experience that the temptation will be there to railroad them away from the answer or change the twist at the last minute, but this won’t be satisfying for anyone. It will be obvious what you’re doing, and it will erode the trust you’ve worked so hard to build.
And I know some of you out there are saying to yourself, “That sounds like a challenge!” And by all means, take it as such, but might I suggest you do your homework first? And if you’re still dead set on pulling it off, make sure you are playing with a group that’s willing to trust you and also willing to forgive you if things go horribly wrong.
Next Time
That’s it for keeping your promises. Next time, we’ll look at how to build trust with your rules and rulings. (Spoiler: it’s about being fair BUT ALSO fun.)
