It’s also possible to hold the spotlight without holding very much narrative authority. If Gurr’s player is the one who actually gives the description, Gurr’s player has the spotlight. If Gurr and Snark live in the same castle, the players of both might be able to determine its description and contents. Spotlight refers to the time they spend actually speaking. Narrative authority refers to a person’s ability to make decisions about what is happening in the game. It’s important not to confuse narrative authority with the spotlight. When characters enter a new location, who gets to decide what is happening there? When the giant centipede is struck down with a fatal blow, who gets to describe what that looks like? Narrative authority is not the same as the spotlight
Narrative authority is the ability of a person in a game to say what happens and describe things in the story. In this article, I will discuss why you should be mindful of sharing narrative authority in your games, and how you might do so. And we do this by sharing narrative authority. Regardless of how the story goes, we act together to create it. Or we delight each other-playing into hints and clues left earlier to create a bitter conflict or a smoochful romance.
We surprise each other-developing new twists and turns in the narrative as we go. I like to think that when I play a roleplaying game with other people, we are working together to tell a story.