I was thinking about a disappointing session I had run and it led me to delve into my thoughts on spotlight in RPGs. The concept of spotlight is simple: when a player gets an extended chance to show something about themselves, whether a major story beat, a small character moment, prowess in combat or another skill, or even just a fun conversation with an NPC or another player, we can think of that player as being in the spotlight. Spotlight is vital to the experience of an RPG as it’s the opportunity both for the player to explore their own character and for them to demonstrate it to the rest of the table. A character who is never seen in spotlight will seem dull and shallow, regardless of how well-detailed their concept or background may be.
Spotlight isn’t only on a single player -- multiple players talking in-character among themselves are all spotlighted. However, there is a limit, if not a hard and fast one, to the number of players that can be involved in a scene for the spotlight to sit on everyone. I would set the soft cap at four, but I’m far more comfortable with scenes involving two or three (with the GM counting as a player). What tends to happen when more than four players are in a scene is that spotlight is dominated by the most invested -- either in the specific scene or the game as a whole -- and most outgoing players. This isn’t inherently a bad thing and shouldn’t lead us to avoid putting more than four players in a scene, but it’s important to recognize that the more time you spend with that many players in a scene the more your game will tend to narrow in on the ones that dominate the spotlight.
Different games attempt to solve the issue of spotlight in different ways, but sometimes don’t try at all. D&D and other party-based games handle it by encouraging parties formed of characters with a diverse set of skills, and then focusing the game on challenges -- usually dungeon crawling, skill checks, and combat -- that give each character a chance to shine. Combat in particular naturally breaks up spotlight by giving every player an equal turn, though that can fall prey to different characters having more or less to do. However, outside of challenges D&D doesn’t do much for us. The concept of a party “face” -- the character that does most of the talking to NPCs, because they have the highest charisma and best persuasive skills -- is baked into D&D. The face works fine when an argumentative NPC is just one of many challenges to be overcome, but if you try to play a game of D&D focused on interactions with NPCs it becomes a problem for one player to insist (and be mechanically justified) on being the only one in the spotlight.
By far the best games at dividing spotlight are GMless. Fiasco and Firebrands, for example, have players take turns at being the primary character in a scene. There is always the option of setting a scene and making another player the focal point, but it would take a major digression for a player to end up with little spotlight throughout a game. The reason why GMless games are good at this is obvious: without the benefit of a GM to set scenes and focus on characters they have to provide mechanics that can at least act as a starting point.
Which brings us to us: the GMs. Since few of the games in which we’re needed provide any mechanics for focusing spotlight (and when they do they’re often seen as overly confining -- sometimes we GMs are the architects of our own problems) it’s up to us -- and hopefully our players, but I’ll get to that. At its core the concept of spreading spotlight seems simple: pick a player or two and focus a scene around them, then do that for the next player. Repeat until every player has a scene. Depending on how long your scenes are you can either play the whole thing out, or bounce between them during natural pauses. Jumping back-and-forth between scenes is a good way to give your players time to think and process what’s already happened and what they want to do next. Whichever you go with, let each scene run to its conclusion and then move on. Simple, right? Okay, maybe not. Here are some tools to make it happen.
Always Split the Party
There’s a saying in tabletop games: “Never Split the Party” that’s common enough it has its own page on TV Tropes. Ignore this saying.
There are situations where it makes sense: if you’re exploring a dungeon or about to go into combat, you want to stick together so you can handle whatever you run into together. But that’s it. In an investigation or social scenario there’s little reason for your entire group to be together in every scene -- it’s an inefficient use of their in-game time, makes no sense in the fiction, and doesn’t lead to any less waiting around then bouncing between multiple scenes. In a heist or stealth style game, keeping everyone together makes it easier for everyone to be caught at once and leaves you with no options for last-second distractions.
Some players will resist this assuming that any attempt to split the party is a trap. You can tell them outright that it’s not, but in-game techniques work as well: have a messenger come with an invitation to dinner for two of the PCs from a key NPC ally at the same time as the kid they spotted sneaking away from the crime scene opens the door, goes wide-eyed, and bolts.
In a heist or stealth mission encourage players to take roles that fit their skills. The bard can get an invitation to the party, but the rogue will have to sneak in via the roof. The fighter can join security while the sorcerer gets invited as entertainment. They’ll be separated and individually spotlighted, but when the shit hits the fan they’ll all be close enough to jump into action.
Once players realize that splitting up is safe they’ll start doing it on their own. If you provide hooks and NPCs it’s inevitable that different players will have different interests, and they’ll happily chase those interests even if no other players care.
Tie the Players to the World
When your players need to talk to a high priest to get information about the big bad don’t just make it a high priest of some random god, make it the high priest of the party cleric’s god. When the whole group shows up to talk to him the priest is going to have no interest in talking to the charismatic bard, they’re gonna talk to the cleric. The fact that the cleric’s persuade skill is lower doesn’t matter.
Some connections will be obvious: the cleric can talk to the priest, the rogue has ties to the thieves guild, the wizard knows the scroll dealer. Sometimes connections will be less obvious, based on background: the rogue is a professional dungeon delver with no ties to the thieves guild, but the party sorcerer grew up on the streets. Don’t be afraid to make up connections on the spot! When the group tries to get an audience with the Duke ask the fighter -- a career soldier -- whom from the Duke’s retinue she served with.
You shouldn’t do this every time. You’ll stretch the bounds of belief if every tavern owner is an old friend of a player, and your bard will get frustrated with no strangers to charm, but some well-placed existing relationships will not only spotlight players in different situations but will give them attachments in the world, give you more story hooks, and give them more to fight for.
Have Players Talk to Each Other
One of the great tragedies of the party-based D&D game is that everyone is so focused on exploring the dungeon, killing the monsters, and getting the next quest that no one ever talks to each other. Two players talking to each other in-character is a quick and easy way to spotlight those players, plus it gives the GM a break!
The first step to encouraging intra-party talks is just having downtime. When characters stop in a tavern or take a long rest don’t just skip to the next day, encourage your players to take a break from worrying about traps, HP, and optimizing attacks to talk to each other. If it helps, set the scene: ask about the food they eat, who makes the campfire, and how people sit or lay down. Make sure the players feel like they can talk privately with each other in-game, but let everyone hear the conversation for dramatic irony. If no one is biting, you can use prompts or leading questions. Ask the wizard, “You recently learned that the fighter was in the army before she became an adventurer -- didn’t you say you fought in the war?” and see if that leads anywhere.
It doesn’t take much to jump-start a relationship between two characters, and once it’s started it will feed itself. The hardest conversations are always the first few, but once they have a bit of history your players will start the conversations themselves.
In fact, the great thing about all these techniques is that they feed into themselves and each other: the more you encourage your group to split up, the more comfortable they’ll be doing so. When they split up they’ll learn things that the rest of the group doesn’t know, and that will encourage in-character conversations to exchange (or conceal) what they learned. When you’ve established their ties to the world they’ll use those in each new situation to get more information. As they learn about each other’s ties they’ll have more reason to have conversations with each other: the paladin with a rough upbringing finds someone who understands in the sorcerer who grew up on the street.
The greatest risk when you’ve developed all of this is that your players will have so many interesting relationships and hooks to follow that you’ll hardly have time for the quest at all, and that’s a good problem to have!