Thread by @AcademicFoxhole

A little procrastinatory GM philosophy thread.
I'll talk a bit about kibitzing at the table. Sometimes a player is facing some sort of big challenge in game and looking a bit lost. And sometimes fellow players will offer suggestions about what they could do in that situation.

Disclaimer: As a GM, I'm always going to make sure that a player isn't bum-rushed by other players. i.e. if a player doesn't want advice, I try to make sure that other players don't give them with advice. You know, let the player make their own decisions without pressure.

It is especially important to protect newer players or marginalized players from being bum-rushed. So I'm onboard for stopping unwanted advice for other players. However, this isn't what I want to talk about with regard to kibitzing. Let's set up the situation...

The player is facing some sort of tough challenge and looks to the other players. The other players start tossing out tactics and possibilities. Now some GMs will shut down those conversations right away because they see them as meta gaming and somehow unfair.

They'll force the player to make decisions without any sort of input. I tend to let the kibitzing go on...not for hours...but I let the players talk to each other OOC. Why? Because I tend to see the PCs as having way more experience being themselves than the players do.

That PC who is an expert Face and is used to coming up with plausible stories and and manipulating people and has done it for years? Maybe when needing to come up with a social engineering plan in the moment, the player would freeze in a way the PC wouldn't.

So if a player (who isn't a Face) wants to crowd source some ideas for a social plan their Face PC would come up with before they roll some dice? I'm all for it. Same with tactical PCs or Shadowrunners, etc.

I really try to avoid what I perceive as gotchas...punishing a PC because the player doesn't have the lived experience of that PC. For example, unless the PC is established as irresponsible, I'm not going to tell a player, "You didn't specifically say your PC cleaned your sword..

...after that fight. So you need to have your dumb fighter give me a memory roll or you forgot...failed? Okay, well now your sword has -1 damage from now on." But that PC, in that world, would totally clean their sword...so I'm not going to punish that PC.

For me, "realism" also means giving the players the benefit of the doubt, letting them talk to and support each other, and recognizing that PCs live in this world and they know things without needing to roll.

Though I want to add that there are other styles of play and GMing and that is also fine! Some players really enjoy a much stricter experience at the table. As long as everyone is informed and consenting to the experience, then it is all good!