[Agemegos]

My third piece of advice is this: Strive to amuse, but stand ready to be amused by others.

When another player has a moment alone in the limelight, step back into audience stance and appreciate his artistry and efforts. Don't butt in, especially not to "help" the GM and player to pick up the pace. For ****'s sake do not take out a comic or your phone and read until it's next your turn. When another player is done with his moment in the limelight, show a little appreciation: applause and congratulations are usually over-the-top and may be read as sarcastic, but a nod and a smile, perhaps even an appreciative chuckle or semi-in-character comment, help you to feel your own appreciation more sharply as well as showing it.

My fourth: Make room and opportunities for others.

In some types of games it may be appropriate to have your character show weaknesses, make mistakes, or imprudently over-reach himself or herself, in ways that are consistent (variously, according to the type of game) with his or her game-mechanical weaknesses, the conventions of the genre, or the nature of the character. Do not try to wriggle out of doing this. Often, especially when you have been diligent about collaboration from the beginning of character creation, these are opportunities to give other players their opportunities to be cool and take a moment in the spotlight. In one of my favourite campaigns, my friend Tony could enjoy playing his idiotic but devastatingly agile Chevalier d'Alembert with a much more carefree flamboyance for the knowledge that he could do the appropriately stupid things and I would get him out of trouble with my reserved and sinister Chessmaster the Earl of Rule. Conversely, I got to strut the Earl's stuff as a master of Thanatos speed chess so much more enjoyably for d'Alembert having created real messes for Rule to untangle.

In a gamist game, play cagily. But in a narrativist or simulationist game, be prepared to have you character make mistakes as required by his or her nature, genre convention, or whatever rules the game. When your character looks foolish in an appropriate way, you look like a skilful and generous entertainer. All the world loves a clown — so long as he or she has a straight-man.

My fifth piece of advice concerns pacing. Let the GM edit: let him or her cut into a scene in media res and cut out as soon as the outcome is clear.

In a tactical or operational wargamey game it may be necessary to set up your fallbacks and contingency plans. Then there will be passages of play in which you make careful lists of supplies and equipment, and play out in detail your approach to the enemy defences and the preparations for getting out that you make while getting in. For a group that is into that sort of thing (or indeed that has wider tastes but is doing that this time) that can be very enjoyable and even tense. But in a few different sorts of games the GM will be editing the stream of events as a writer or film-maker does to maintain pace and eliminate what is irrelevant to the theme. If he our she is taking the advice of film-makers and fast-pace hard-hitting writers he or she will be cutting into any dramatic or procedural scene as late as possible, and cutting out as soon as possible. He or she ought not to be screwing you over by refusing you the chance to make preparations before the scene or decisive actions after the scene — if you don't trust him or her, don't play in his or her game. Neither ought you to be screwing him or her over by jumping the conflict with preparations for bizarre and unexpected actions.

So if the GM says "You track down 'Fingers' McKnuckle in Hanrahan's Fried Oyster Bar and drop yourself into a spare seat at his table", play along. Fight the temptation to say "Before I go in….". If it were that sort of game the GM would tell you that you learned where Fingers was and pass the initiative to you to choose whether, when, and how to approach.

At the other end of a scene, fight the temptation to change the outcome after the decisive moment of the scene, or to drag out the denouement into anticlimax. If you think that you have a decisive point to make, or if you decide that your character is going to pull a derringer and not go quietly, okay. Otherwise, let the GM cut out of the scene as soon as its issue is decided.

If you have a GM who is fond of snappy dialogue, such as me or (I gather) whswhs, and if you recognise a closing zinger, then it's okay to top it if you have a witty comeback, but don't try to re-open the issue.

Let scenes just end. You don't have to narrate leave-taking and departure. In fact, you don't need to narrate anything that everyone can just fill in by extrapolation.

Sixth: concerning dialogue. A lot of role-players avoid dialogue because they think they are bad at it and are afraid of doing it badly. To this I say "Have a go! You don't have to be Oscar Wilde or P.G. Wodehouse, and you'll get better if you practice." Dialogue is fun, and as a way of denoting character it is unequalled. Start with clichés, they're good for a laugh and no film reviewers are going to be criticising you.

Like the dialogue in TV, most movies, and most kinds of written story, dialogue in RPGs neither is nor ought to be realistic. We're aiming to amuse, not to document the inarticulate verbosity of our contemporaries. Vivid, entertaining dialogue is figurative, even indirect, it sticks to the point, and it has the structure of a scene — that is, it progresses as a series of reactions of character to incident in which the level of conflict rises to a crisis in which an outcome is established, and when it the outcome is resolved the conversation ends without trailing into an anticlimax. In reality the issue of whether a lord is going to grant a petition, or whether two people are going to bed together, often involves an hour and a half of importunities, negotiations, and impassioned declarations. To fit into a story, drama, or RPG in which it is but one trial in a larger episode, dialogue has to be stylised.

Consider each reply in a dialogue as a response to the challenge implied by your character's interlocutor's last contribution, and let it be a challenge that raises the level of conflict one step, that goes one step closer to bringing the underlying issue to a head. Ratchet the tension up steadily to a crisis: the final decision — or the explosion into violence. And when crisis has passed and the decision been delivered in a definite refusal or a change to the dramatic situation, don't straggle off into anticlimax. Deliver a zinger or a topper if you want, but let the result stand.

Books of advice to writers about how to write dialogue have helpful things to say; but if you're going that way get a short, cheap one — in RPG you don't get to draft direct dialogue and then re-write it as indirect, and then polish it.

Keep your mind on amusing the other players who are listening, which you do by depicting your character through what he or she says. Display character!

I can't do voices or accents — I can't even do an Australian accent, though I'm Australian — so if all of your voice characterisation blurs into "convention Mexican" know that it is alright to simply not bother. I do put some effort into posture and gesture, word choice, rhythm, and emphasis. That might work for you.

Finally: expressions of appreciation have their place in many games, even in the form of semi-in-character comments. Sometimes they even improve the pace with some leavening punctuation, and give participants a moment to mentally regroup. But keep them in the darkness of the auditorium, don't let them obtrude into the limelight. If your character is absent, or if it is simply some other character's moment in the limelight, don't lose sight of those facts.

Kibbitzing on someone else's scene — such as by criticising another player's play or giving unsought advice about what to do — is very seldom amusing. And heckling a player or the GM is never entertaining. If someone else makes a blunder, try to get over it as lightly as you can.