[C-Moon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Essentially, following the Golden Rule.

Since role-playing is a multi-way conversation that is quite lengthy, there is a learning process about how other players want to interact. It's important to distinguish between players who don't actually want to talk very much, and those who do, but get talked over by other players. So I'm alert for people who've been interrupted and try to cue them to talk, the ones who've said least first. This requires listening all the time, which is hard work, but worthwhile.

I try not to be an adversarial GM. There's an important issue with being helpful to players, in that one should not tell them what their characters are feeling, only what they are perceiving. Telling a character what they're feeling, as a deduction about the character's personality, is fraught with peril; characters' minds often work quite differently to GM expectations.

That's a really good point about a characters feelings being so connected to the player. Something so obvious that I'd never considered! Thank you!