Words on a Screen

What is spotlight time?

As we'll use the term here, "spotlight time" means the opportunity for a player to be (and, more importantly, feel like they are) at the center of the game's action. In other words, spotlight time is the time that a particular player spends as the focus of the game, be that mechanical or fictional.

Most players want to spend a reasonably fair proportion of the game in the spotlight. Obviously, the more players there are, the less time each gets to spend in the spotlight. Also, most players - being reasonable people - are not measuring their spotlight time with a stopwatch. What's important is that each player feels like they get to spend a fair-ish amount of time as the focus of the game.

Spotlight time management is a joint player/GM responsibility: the GM has the responsibility to fairly distribute the opportunity for spotlight time; players have the responsibility to capitalize on those opportunities and not disrupt the opportunities of other players. As with the vast majority of metagame issues, out-of-character communication is the key to success.

Non-exclusive communication

The core advantage of a PbP game in managing spotlight time is that the primary communication medium is non-exclusive. That's an unnecesarily high-falutin' way of saying that while only one person at a time can talk and be heard at a live table, it is entirely possible to have multiple simultaneous scenes or conversations in a PbP game.

What this means in terms of spotlight time management is that there's nothing stopping the GM from dividing the opportunity for focus among the players, which eases some of the traditional problems with spotlight time management.

Let's take the classic example of the hacker/decker/other-game-jargony-term-for-computer-specialist. One of the traditional live-table game management problems is how to allow that character to show off their expensive and necessary skill set without creating a situation where the rest of the table sits by and listens to dice hit the table around a discussion of various types of intrusion programs.

In a PbP game, this problem is significantly reduced. There's nothing stopping the GM from running the hacker through their intrusion while the rest of the group does something else. The hacker still gets to show off their skills, engage with the system's mechanical detail, and justifiably feel important to the fiction, but the rest of the game doesn't have to stop.

Split-screen

Of course, not every player can be in the spotlight simultaneously, even in a PbP game (excluding one- or two-player games, of course). While a GM could conceivably run a separate scene for each player in any size group, this works counter to the notion of the spotlight itself - i.e., the feeling of being at the center of the game. If the game's focus is split five ways, no player is going to feel like they're at the center.

Therefore, generally speaking, don't run more than two focus scenes at the same time. If there's a third player or player group that's doing something tangential, that's probably fine, but as far as the main action of the game is concerned, don't try to spotlight more than two players simultaneously. If the hacker is hacking and the face is going through some sort of important character development, give the other players things to do in those scenes, but keep the focus of the scenes on the hacker and the face. Then rotate the focus scenes through the other players over the course of the game.

Player Responsibilities

The non-exclusive nature of communication in a PbP game does have a downside: it's easier for players to more-or-less ignore one another and only interact with the GM (or with certain players to exclusion of others in the group). Don't do this.

In fact - do the opposite. Interaction with other players in a way that validates their feeling of being in the spotlight is important. When another character is having their moment, recognize it both IC and OOC. I'm not advising characters or players to fawn over one another, but player-player interaction is an important component of generating the feeling of being in the spotlight.

One last note that should go without saying: don't step on other players' spotlight time. Pay attention for clues that the GM is trying to give players who have been out of focus a chance to shine, and help that happen. And, look for opportunities yourself to direct the action of the game in the direction of players who haven't had a chance to show off in a while. Your game will be better for it. (This, of course, is no different than how a player should act in a live-table game.)