This is one of those “duh” posts that I figure everybody does. Making sure your players stay engaged in your tabletop RPG campaign by meeting their expectations is pretty obvious—the alternative is a host of disappointed players who don’t feel like their desires and decisions make any difference.

But in this case, I don’t mean “give your players what they want” in the sense of “give them all the gear and money they ask for.” It’s more like “give them opportunities to lay groundwork that they can use later.”

Let’s look at an example.

Codewords.

I run a Star Wars campaign on Roll20. It’s an Age of Rebellion game set in the time between the end of Rebels and the start of Rogue One—basically, when the Alliance is preparing to fight the Empire but hasn’t been pushed into open war yet.

The whole group is a counter-espionage team engaged in deniable ops. One of my players, Thom (who you may remember from my Rough Edges campaign) is playing a highly social character, able to charm and deceive his opponents with ease. Not long into the campaign, Thom expressed an interest in having him become a double-agent, pretending to be sympathetic to the Empire while secretly feeding them false information.

It’s a classic setup with some fun potential, so I said sure. We had a whole subplot wherein the character was scouted by Alliance Intelligence and then recruited. Part of that involved receiving a datapad with a bunch of codewords stolen from the Imperial Security Bureau, with the idea being they would help the character insinuate himself into the Empire later.

But it never panned out. The campaign went in a different direction, and the character didn’t end up using them. With everything else that followed, I honestly forgot about the codes.

Then, before the most recent session, Thom emailed me. The team’s current assignment is to extract a rebel agent whose cover has been blown. They were up against the ISB in a closed-room mystery scenario, where their assignment was to maintain the mystery in order to get the agent out of there. They were trying to wait out the ISB and escape when the coast was clear.

But Thom had another idea. He reviewed his notes and rediscovered the datapad filled with codewords. Rather than try to use them himself, he wanted to give them to the rebel agent, in effect embedding her into the ISB. That would both let the team walk out of the situation alive and, critically, allow the agent to continue her own mission.

In short, the player saw an opportunity that we had left on the table before, and took it.

Picking up threads.

You’ll probably hear Game Masters (and writers, and storytellers in general) talk about “plot threads.” It’s part of a large and common metaphor about how telling a story is like weaving a tapestry: often times, you’ll need to leave one part of the story to focus on another, and you want a few threads left hanging so when you come back it’s easier to pick up where you left off.

In TV writing, especially, it’s handy because you’re not sure who will be writing the story later—or what story they’ll be telling—and you want to give them material to work with. But it’s as useful when running a game as when you’re running a show.

In my Rough Edges campaign, when we started the penultimate arc in Episode V, I went back and reviewed my notes for the previous four arcs, looking for threads that I left hanging. I was looking to finish the story, and I wanted to tie off as many dangling plot threads as I could.

I couldn’t take care of them all. Rare is the storyteller who leaves just enough threads, rather than too many or too few. In my case (and, I suspect, as is common with most tabletop campaigns) I had too many. One character in particular had dangling threads related to his deceased mentor and his long-lost sister, and I couldn’t fit both into the ending. I settled on tying his mentor into the end, and left the sister’s fate unclear.

But in the example with the codewords, I wasn’t the one looking for threads to re-introduce in order to try to create a satisfying ending. Rather, the player came to me with a year-old thread and asked to use it.

And my answer, as it should always be, was: yes!

Was it easy? No, it was be a challenging roll. It involved the character trying to convince the ISB that the person they had figured as a rebel agent is, in fact, one of their own. But without the codes they had from a previous adventure, Thom couldn’t have even made the attempt. He ended up succeeding.

This opportunity also makes the campaign better, the story more tense and rewarding. Whereas before there would have been a potentially lackluster ending to this particular mission, either in the form of an anticlimactic success at hiding or a generic shoot-out, now there’s a tense social interaction. If the players succeed, they get to walk away with a huge boost to the rebellion in the form of a new double agent. And if they fail… well, there’s always the shoot-out.

None of this would have happened, of course, if I hadn’t given Thom the opportunity to become a double agent, which I was only able to do because I listened to what he wanted. So listen when your players tell you what they want, and if all they really want is money and gear, then give them the opportunity to earn it.

Trust their instincts.

During Rough Edges, Mara’s player Pris came to me with an idea she really liked. Since it was a Corellian custom for the deceased to be cremated and their ashes compressed into “soul diamonds,” could one of her parents’ diamonds turn out to be a lightsaber crystal? When she thought of it, she already knew Mara was Force-sensitive, and she wanted to make her crystal something deeply significant.

I told her I’d think about it, and then turned to the official FFG forums. I phrased it as a question about kyber crystals—what makes a kyber crystal a kyber crystal?—but I made sure to include why I was asking. I mentioned that I loved the idea and wanted to make it work, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything in the canon that made it impossible.

The overwhelming response was, Who cares about canon?

And it worked out really well! It was significant to Mara and Pris, the latter since it was her idea, and even became instrumental to the plot of the endgame.

Don’t forget that RPGs are supposed to be cooperative games, and that applies just as much to the Game Master as it does to the players. When they have ideas and they come to you, they’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about them. There’s probably something there. If you’re not sure, or even if you’re pretty sure it’s not going to work, just tell them you’ll think about it.

Then, you know, actually spend some time thinking about it.

That’s it. If it’s a good idea, you’ll find yourself gravitating towards allowing it, maybe with a couple of extra tweaks. If it’s not, you can figure out how to let the player down gently, or maybe come up with a compromise. And if you’re still not sure, put the question to someone—even strangers on the internet.

Share the responsibility.

It can be hard to remember that roleplaying games are, at their heart, a collaborative storytelling exercise. It’s traditional to see the GM as the one in charge of the story, but everyone at the table has a share—and I would argue, an equal share—in that narrative.

By opening yourself up to letting the players dictate some of that story through their characters’ wants and needs, you’re showing your players that you value their contributions. You’re also relieving the burden from yourself to come up with every twist and turn the story takes. In general, things that decrease your workload while also increasing your players’ buy-in are worth pursuing.

Next week, I’m hoping to revisit this topic in a different way by exploring how a GM is also a player. In the meantime, though, think about ways that you can open your game up to story input from your fellow players.