One interesting thing in Glitch: A Story Of the Not are spotlights. Each player has a few spotlights they are supposed to use each chapter of the story. When you spend one, you ask the GM (or someone else) to describe something in greater detail, until you’re satisfied.

And that’s it! Pretty simple, but I think it’s an interesting mechanic because of how it affects play. This A) keeps us focused on the fiction itself but also B) reinforces that this is a collaborative medium.

(Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish Granting Engine uses a similar mechanic. Those are both hefty games that are hard to wrap your head around. I think spotlighting is a thing that could be extracted and used in other games. You should take the idea, build on it and add it into other games.)

Spotlighting details is something that has been done informally since the dawn of RPGs, of course. But making it a clear, formal and explicit part of the rules is important. It reminds players to do this. And by having it an explicit mechanic, other mechanics can tie into the spotlighting. Chuubo’s and Glitch have spotlights tied into their experience and story pacing mechanics, for example.

(Glitch assumes the GM will usually be the one detailing the spotlit item, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You could have it reversed, with the GM spotlighting player actions. Or in GMless games, players can ask each other to spotlight things at different times in different ways. I’ve been playing around with the idea in some recent games – the Mystery Creature game I put out a bit ago is little more than 4 spotlights and some scene framing tools, but it works really well in play.)

A lot of game mechanics, including those from popular story games, can wind up pulling focus *away* from the fictional events. When a game does that too much, it can feel like reading a plot summary for a movie rather than watching it. Spotlights help pull the group’s attention onto details in the world, make things more fleshed out and real. It can help keep the story grounded as well, by repeatedly asking “okay, so what does that look like? How do you actually do that? How does that make you feel?” etc.

But it still keeps us focused on RPGs as a collaboration. This isn’t one all-powerful GM handing out lore and details and clues while the players drink it in. You spotlight something that you’re interested in, and someone else then tells you more about it. There are always at least *two* players buying into that aspect of the game being cool and interesting.

You add detail on a topic until the asker is satisfied, so spotlights are about pleasing and exciting the other players. You’re trying to make up some fiction that will satisfy their curiosity and interest.

Conversely, Spotlights help everyone get on the same page about what is important and what isn’t. You can describe things loosely until someone asks for a spotlight, so the story won’t get bogged down in minutia that nobody actually cares about. (You do need to describe things a little, though, to give someone something to hook a spotlight into.)

The Spotlight mechanic reminds me of a long-lost blog post on the now-defunct 20 by 20 Room blog (which had the best RPG thought and analysis) on Pushing mechanics and Pulling mechanics. (Someone could probably find the post in the Wayback Machine, but I couldn’t find it after poking around a bit.)

Most RPG mechanics (at the time of writing and still now) are Pushing mechanics: you are given the power to force your ideas into the shared fictional space. You have the authority, or win a conflict, so people have to accept what you say. Pushing mechanics are a little bit aggressive and conflict-oriented. They see the world as a fight to be won, a challenge to overcome.

Pulling mechanics are different. They create an opening and invite others to fill that space. Asking questions and leaving things blank for someone else to fill in later. Pulling mechanics tend to be more gentle, collaborative and easy-going. Spotlights are an excellent example of a Pull mechanic (as I understand things).

And because of their less forceful nature, they fit better into modes of play that are more quiet, collaborative or cozy. They produce a different feel at the table, and a different dynamic of play, from standard game mechanics about overcoming challenges and exerting your will. If you want a game about gentleness, calmness, introspection and togetherness, you probably want Pulling mechanics of some sort, and Spotlights might be a tool for that job. (You can, of course, combine these types of play, as Glitch and other games do, depending on your game design goals.)

Spotlights can be general (simply “tell me more about X”) or you could build a variety of different spotlights. In my never-to-be-released flail snail rancher game, people begin with spotlights about concrete sensory details (how things look, sound, feel, etc.) and acquire through play spotlights focusing on emotions, relationships and memories.

In the Mystery Creature game, there are 4 specific spotlights every scene: one for specific concrete sensory detail, one for what people are thinking or feeling, one for reality being surreal or bizarre, and one about obstacles between the protagonist and their goals. The story is created by repeatedly highlighting those details in each scene of the story.

Glitch also encourages you to make spotlit things important to the plot, changing the plot if necessary. So in the examples, at one point a PC spotlights a random diner patron, and they begin to hang out with said patron before eventually discovering they share part of their soul with a elder god from outside Creation. The point is, the specific nature means people know that someone at the table cares about this moment, so they know to make it actually important. This totally negates the “I had a plot planned but the party spent all night goofing off with a random shopkeeper” by, you know, making the plot about the shopkeeper.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about spotlights as a mechanic for the last couple months, and I think they’re pretty cool and I think they could be used more widely. (There are plenty of other cool ideas in Glitch and Chuubo’s that also probably could be more widely used by are hidden behind giant tomes of rules and strange settings.)

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. If you know of other games that use spotlights in an interesting way, or that do something similar, I’d be interested in hearing about them.