Increase Your GM Perception Skill
GM Blindness
When preparing for an adventure, GMs spend a lot of time looking at all the elements of the game. The key elements of the adventure, as well as any hidden secrets, will be very present in your mind while you are preparing. While this is a normal element of game prep, it can lead to a shift in perception. What seems obvious to you might not be so obvious to your players, and can lead to issues where your party cannot see what to you is so obvious. This inability to realize what you are missing is what I like to refer to as GM Blindness, and if you keep a few things in mind, you can avoid it being an issue.
What Is GM Blindness?
GM Blindness at its core comes from a difference of perception between the Gamemaster and the party. It causes the GM to cannot see how certain elements of the adventure might be less obvious from seen from a player perspective. The result between player and the party can make certain encounters seem much more difficult than intended.
How Does GM Blindness happen?
GM Blindness most often comes from overexposure to the material you are running. As part of the preparation process, you will spend a lot of time looking at the same adventure. Even if you have a less prep heavy process, you will see an encounter you are preparing much more than the party. Imagine you have crafted a dungeon encounter. The party needs to find a hidden door in order to proceed through the adventure. In preparing the adventure, you can constantly see the secret door. After a while, the door itself might seem very obvious to you. However, the party might not see it as much, and that is when the problems can arise.
This effect can also occur because a Gamemaster has more information than the party. When you run an encounter, you will see the entire map. You know what dead ends exist, as well as any potential trap or pitfall. The party has to uncover this information one step at a time, opening doors and entering rooms relatively blind. Back to our dungeon encounter. When the adventure starts, you will see the entire dungeon. You will know what areas have secrets, and what areas have dead ends. As you move through the encounter, you will maintain this knowledge. Your party, however, can only see as much as they have encountered. To the party, the map has a lot of black spaces that could contain almost anything. They can only know as much as they can perceive. So when the party comes to a fork in the path, their perception will be different. You will know one way leads to a dead end or a trap. The players, however, will not have this knowledge, and will have to act according to what they know (or do not know).
How to Mitigate GM Blindness
Now that we understand what GM Blindness is, and what can cause it to arise at the table, we can come up with some ways to mitigate it. Previously, we identified this situation arises because of two things mainly: a difference in perception and a difference in knowledge. We as GMs see encounters for a longer duration than the party does. Knowing these two facts, we can work to balance out the difference between player and game-master, as well as make ourselves a bit more knowledgeable about player perception.
Three Clues
The worlds you build as a GM have a lot going on in them. You want to paint a picture of your world, but sometimes that means important details can get lost, and become hard for players to see. In order to make sure your party has the proper knowledge, you will want to provide important clues more than once. The repetition helps make sure that your party will notice them amongst the rest of the world that you create for them. I like to follow the rule of three. Simply put, if you want to make sure your players know something specific, you will want to give them clues about it three different times.
Going back to our dungeon, for example, it may not seem obvious to the party where they should look for the secret door or even if one exists. With everything else at play, that information might get lost in other elements you present. Making sure the players have multiple ways of knowing about the door will make sure that they at least search for it. You can provide a note that the party finds that talks about making sure the door remains closed, as well as marks around the door itself, and potentially an enemy the party can interrogate. Each instance by itself might not be enough for the party to focus, but providing all three points them toward this secret door, as well as ensures that they will find at least two of your three tips.
Focus your Descriptions
Similar to the above, any sort of description you give to your party can unintentionally overwhelm them with information. I have often gotten caught up in crafting the perfect atmosphere to convey to my party, only to realize that my flavor text overpowers what I want to convey to my players. I might have created the ultimate horror atmosphere, instilling chills and fear into my table, but through all that, they might miss the unusual door or ruffled rug I want them to investigate. When that happens, the game can stall until they guess upon the right element or I give them a hint to move them along. In order to counteract this, you can tailor your descriptions, drawing focus to the important elements.
First, you will want to try keeping your descriptive text shorter when possible. It’s easy to get into too much detail and overload the party with too much information. I find keeping most descriptions in a few sentences or a small paragraph helps avoid information overload. Anything more than that (unless for a special occasion) might overwhelm a party with information, causing the important elements to be lost. You can end your description on the element you want your players to focus on or interact with. Your table will remember the last few elements of your flavor text the most, so putting the important information there can focus everyone. It helps to think of the description in terms of a movie, with the camera zooming in slowly on an important shot. You start your description with broad elements and slowly narrow down what you are saying until you reach the point of focus. Doing this can really assist players in knowing what they need to focus on.
Don’t tie progress to a single roll
Another important step to take is to avoid hinging elements of the game, especially story progression, on a single roll. When creating an adventure, it might make sense for only one path to lead to success for the party. You may even make some challenges along that path specifically for your characters to succeed at. However, there is always a chance for at least one failure during the progression through an adventure. If that failure has no effect on the party moving forwards, then it can be a significant element of the story, especially if you try to embrace a Fail Forward design and allow progression, but with complications. If you put a check between the party and the ability to complete a quest, however, you are asking for frustration, and it does not always seem apparent when creating the adventure.
Imagine that you planned an encounter where your party would infiltrate a lord’s estate by going through the sewers. The sewers have a secret passage that opens into the basement. Your party prepares and enters the sewers. They explore the whole sewer, but cannot seem to find anything, mostly because of bad rolls. What happens next? If you made it so the party can only progress through finding the door through rolls, it may come grinding to a halt. Players might start to dogpile onto skill checks, trying until they succeed. At that point, it becomes less about the narrative and mechanical elements and more about statistics.
You can avoid this by avoiding pass/fail rolls that are tied to game progression. These binary rolls have a purpose, but they should not be the determining factor in if the game moves forwards or not. You have a few options on how to approach this. The simplest is just removing any sort of roll that would cause such a situation. In our example, perhaps the party discovers the secret door by progressing through the dungeon. Maybe the party comes across one of the lord’s henchmen sneaking back in through the door. At that point, the party will continue forwards. You can also change the intention of a failed roll in this check, moving it from pass or fail to something that determines any benefits or complications that could arise from the roll. The party has found the door, and now they have to pick the lock. The rogue pulls out their trusty lock-picking set and works.
Instead of having a DC to determine pass or fail, you can determine any sort of effects of the check. Perhaps the player rolls high, and you allow them to open the door so quietly that they do not catch the notice of the guards in the room, giving them a little bonus. Perhaps a low roll means they get in, but the rogue breaks their thieves’ tools. They still got through the door, but now might have to resolve something else in order to proceed. Any of these options will still feel organic in the world, but will avoid causing any sort of stall out.
Final Thoughts
While you can work to mitigate GM Blindness, it never truly goes away. Having clear and effective communication at the table helps to keep these instances down, so working on that can help with it the most. One of the longer term options I like to use to stay on the same page with my party are Session 0-2s, or mid game debriefs . These out of character round-tables serve as a great opportunity for players and GMs to communicate back and forth, making sure that communication and perception are as clear as possible. I go over my methods in the link above, and recommend looking.
Another long-term strategy you can employ to reduce down GM Blindness is to play on the Other Side of the Screen from time to time. When you only play as a GM, you will only have the perception of someone running a game. Playing from time to time will help you understand the lack of information that PCs can have at the table. Besides that, having time to step out can be a refreshing change of pace from time to time. It can help you Deal with Burnout , something we all experience, as well as be a great opportunity for someone else at your table to try out a different role.
Finally, if you run into this issue in the moment, do not be afraid to give your players a helpful nudge forwards, even if it comes across as more deus ex machina than an organic act in the world. As the individuals who make the world run and react to the party, we sometimes get the pressure to make sure that we never break immersion. You want to stay as the “person behind the curtain”, not letting players see the nuts and bolts to worry that it will break immersion. However, an occasional push from time to time can help keep the game’s momentum going and everyone having fun, with a minimal change in immersion.
Conclusion
While GM Blindness might not have affected your table, the possibility always exists. The difference in perception of game master and party along with the fact that you get more familiar with an encounter when you prepare it just means that sometimes elements will stand out more to you than the party, and sometimes that can make it hard to convey important information. Luckily, we can employ some ways to mitigate that and make sure the party can know what they need to continue playing. Making sure you adhere to the rule of three with important clues, tailoring your descriptions to keep them concise and focused but flavorful, and avoiding tying your game progression to a single roll can help make sure that if your party has the best opportunity to pick up the hints you are putting down and can act accordingly.
Do you have a memorable moment where GM Blindness Struck, either as a game master or player? How did it affect your game? How did you resolve it? I would love to know in the comments below.
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