Warm up your players for a better game
Actors and improvisers warm-up before they perform - why should your players be any different?
Athletes stretch before exercising and actors and improvisers warm up before they perform. They do it for the same reason - getting their bodies and minds used to something they don’t commonly do every day.
TTRPG players need to warm up too. Unless you are super lucky most people dig out their dice once a week (maybe not even that frequently), they aren’t RPing their character most of the time. If your group wants good RP and wants to get people super comfortable with roleplay then it might be a good idea to get them to warm up.
I’m really lucky that my home group comprises improvisers, actors, DJs, comedians (and an IT professional who also happens to be the biggest extrovert of the lot) so we’ve got performance baked in. But when I’m GMing for other groups I like to give my players a few gentle RP stretches to get them in the mood, get them roleplaying their character and help shake off any self-consciousness.
Ways to warm-up
The good ol’ character description: there’s nothing like the tried and true “take a moment to describe your character - how do they look?” Visual descriptions are a bit easier to slip into than “how are you feeling right now.” Also, if you’re in a pretty trad first meeting scenario then first impressions are normally visual and no one gets a window into someone’s rich inner life the moment they clap eyes on them.
Five senses: if you’re starting your session in a tavern (or anywhere for that matter) get everyone to go around the table and contribute something that is visible, then go again for things you can hear, smell, feel and taste. Taste can be difficult in some places where characters aren’t licking the scenery but a smell or a taste in the air is super evocative. Let players know they can “yes and…” what the last player said if they can’t think of anything or be inspired by what’s just been said before. It doesn’t have to be free association. The great by-product of a warm-up like this is that they are doing the scene-setting for you and if, as a GM, you are listening to what they say and their reactions you’ll get an idea of what excites your players and where their heads are at right now.
Free association: the favourite of high school drama teachers everywhere - so why not your table? Get the players to come up with words that associate with what the last player said. Get them to concentrate on being in the moment for this one. It doesn’t have to be about their characters or the session. It’s just about connecting with the people you will be sharing the table with for the next few hours.
Shift the spotlight: maybe there’s someone else in the space - a guard, an innkeeper, a scout. Get the players to help describe that person. The stakes are lower because it’s not about their character.
I’ll do you, you do me: this works better if players know or trust each other. Get them to describe a small, probably inconsequential detail of another player’s character. The aim here is not to take the power off that player by saying something of consequence but just to provide a cool detail the player hadn’t thought of.
How we met: this sort of warm-up is baked into Powered by the Apocalypse games where building strong relationships right off the bat is key. But there’s no reason your first session couldn’t start with some relationship-building. Especially once players have described their character. It also stops the over prevalence of the “moody loner/renegade” stereotype that is interesting for a player as they develop their character but soon becomes trite/burdensome or destructive when you hit the table.
Last week on…. get someone else to recap what happened in a previous session. Then get each player to provide a short narrative of how their character felt. This could be done in 1st or 3rd person. Anything like this helps other players understand how their fellow characters think and might be useful meta-knowledge to use later….
Collective worldbuilding: everyone at the table jams out on a piece of worldbuilding. It could be an organisation, a store, or an unusual type of flora - something that would be public knowledge. No pressure for it to be something that gets used right away, but a really nice reward for everyone if that thing comes up later - and less prep for you to do as GM.
Group drawing: sort of the same as the last one. But time to get the pencils out. Get people to draw a town, or a location and add bits of details in as you go. Then you’ve got a draft map for somewhere ready to go. This is a little different in stakes from just talking because it has an activity involved and takes some of the pressure of “performance” off. This warm-up is inspired by Justin Sirois’ excellent Party Backstory Generator which is a great Session 0 tool and has bits and pieces that could be taken as a warm-up. The development of the ongoing backstory could also be built in as your every session warm-up….
These sorts of exercises don’t need to be limited to the beginning of a session either. They can be just for fun at any time, as a circuit breaker after a long combat grind, to reset after a break or when energy and creativity seem to be waning a little. As GM you should be involved in these where you can too - but on an equal footing. This isn’t an opportunity for you to puppet-master. Instead, it is an opportunity for you to bring the group together and get people ready for play.
Warm-ups that build worlds
You’ll notice that many of the warm-ups that I’ve suggested actually do bits of world-building here and there. That’s because I’m a GM who likes to let players in on this, whether they know it or not. I’m not someone who foists hours of my own work on players (at least I hope) - and part of that is that I’m too busy/lazy to devote hours and hours to complex world-building.
As an improviser, I also know the huge buzz that people get from seeing their suggestions reincorporated later. Take something created in a warm-up and bring it in later, or focus on a detail in the next passage of play. This sort of stuff creates engagement and a sense of shared storytelling and player agency. And, like I said earlier, when you use things that the players create you know it’s something that they’re going to like!
A little stretch now makes for more fun down the stretch
For most adults play is not a natural thing. We’ve had it mortgaged, KPI reviewed and responsibilities out of us. But it’s always there - and people who seek out roleplaying are probably closer to that spirit of play than many. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need a little stretch to help us adjust from the mundanity of paying for parking, queuing for coffee and monitoring the slack channel to fighting dragons or undertaking risky spacecraft boarding actions. A better stretch makes for a better run and a little stretch before play makes for a more relaxed, happy table.
If you don’t already - give it a go. And if you do - leave some of the pre-game stretches you do with your players in the comments!