Over on his always-engaging blog Ludanta Retero, Joshua BishopRoby has posted a list of 64 player skills — things that players are expected to be able to do at the gaming table.

I’d like to use Joshua’s excellent (and unbelievably thorough!) list as a tool for discussing what expectations GMs have of their players.

So how about it — what skills do you expect your players to possess?

As a possible jumping-off point for discussion, think of the game you’re currently running, or of the last game you ran, and try to answer these questions:

  • How many of these 64 skills do your players possess?
  • Which ones do they use regularly?
  • Of those, what are they best at?
  • Which skills are they lacking?
  • And lastly, which skills that they don’t use regularly would you like to see used more often?

I’m not interested in player-bashing — I think honest assessments of these four questions could lead to some intriguing conclusions. Feel free to ignore my five questions, too, in favor of the big one: What do you expect of your players?