What Your Players Expect & How This Can Help You

In today’s video, we are revisiting expectations in a little more detail. We know by now that expectations help to provide you with constraints for your roleplaying game, but it is also important that as game masters, you start to rely on expectations when creating your own world space as they will help you to not only come up with ideas on the fly, but also allow the players at your RPG table to create ideas & scenarios in their own minds that you can use and incorporate in your TTRPG. Whether you’re a DM for D&D, Pathfinder or Call of Cthulhu, having & relying on expectations will change the way you run your roleplaying games.

Today we are revisiting expectations.
Previously we spoke about expectations in the context of giving us constraints – find that
video here: https://youtu.be/B8dyRC5_sjc

We’re going to be doing that even more and revisiting some of the older concepts because
we need to begin to rely on expectations when we are creating our own world space. By
doing so it will empower you to create stuff on the fly and allow your players to create stuff
in their own minds and you can incorporate into your game.

• Expectation is personal
o We all expect something slightly different.
o We as game masters must play upon the expectations of our players. We
need to be aware of how we can control and manipulate those expectations
– in a good way! We need to control the game and we need to surprise our
players from time to time.
o Always ask yourself first – what do you, as the game master, expect?
o Then ask yourself – why is it this way? You need to understand why it is this
way and not another expected way.
o Work through options – use your constraints and understand your goals,
then explore the options.
• How do you do it?
o Entrench, subvert, alter, abandon.
o Combine these and use them as you need.
• Entrench it
o Lean into what has been established before so we all know what is expected.
• Subvert it
o Give it a twist of your own – something new.
• Alter it
o Add to it or expand upon it.
• Abandon it
o Make something totally unique to your game.