Thinking about (a very broad definition of) quarterbacking, especially as it relates to TTRPGs (part 1)

May 24, 2023

Somehow this one didn’t make the great cohost migration! I’ve converted and back-dated it appropriately, and lightly touched up a header or two, but otherwise it’s intact. - Binary, Sep 22, 2025

This is going to be a bit meandering and I’m not going to have answers at the end of this post because it’s already too fucking long. Bear with me.

Disclaimer/preface: I’m mostly spitballing based on my own experiences as someone who has both seen and done this. I’m sure there are better terms for what I’m saying and that I’m probably reinventing the wheel. I’m fine with that. I know about the killer/explorer/socializer/roleplayer model for multiplayer games already, it’s useful and there’s definitely an intersection point on a venn diagram of where it interacts with this but it doesn’t 100% map to where I’m going with this.

As I mentioned at the end of my post on diceless ideas for APOCALYPSE FRAME, I like the idea of resource-management-based rather than randomness-based methods for tactics games, but I am slightly worried that it would increase the prevalence of quarterbacking.

What is quarterbacking? #

Typically the definition used for this in this context is: in a setting where everyone is on the same team, one person (the “quarterback”) tells everyone else in the group what to do. I’m expanding that definition here into generalized situations where people are telling seemingly-equal peers what to do during a game or even to some degree when people feel pressured/coerced into taking certain kinds of game actions. I like to think of this on two levels:

• Strategic. The kind of decision that’s made at a high level, usually before anything that actually happens takes place. Quarterbacking here takes the place like someone having to pick a specific class or character or role. If you’ve ever picked the party cleric because nobody else wanted to be a healer, even if nobody told you to or even suggested it, that’s what I mean. The more defined player roles are and the more essential they all are, the more this comes up, but it can also be reflected in things like equipment loadouts.
• Tactical. The kind of decision that’s made at a per-action, per-encounter, etc level. “Go over here”, “do this”, “cover X other player”, “spend this level of resources but no more”, etc. The more important a given action or resource expenditure is, the more this comes up.

Tactical is mostly what I’ll get into because that gets to what made me think about this, though I’ll probably get back to Strategic later a bit in part 2 because I have a few thoughts there.

Where does this show up? #

As much as I’d love to say sports, in seeking a useful definition, I’ve actually defined it here in such a way that kind of crowds them out: in American football, for instance, it’s not intended to be an equal team of people making play decisions: roles are predefined, a play is passed down from a coach to the quarterback to players, and it’s up to them to stick to the spirit of the play while interpreting the best course of action along the way. In the context of non-sports, you can see it a lot in video games, board games, and RPGs.

Online games are a big one that comes to mind. There can be a lot of coordination involved and if you’re in a group of randos you will inevitably run into someone who decides to tell everyone else what to do. They’ll probably start being real shitheads if you ignore them too! Co-op board and card games have this too (I’ll get into this more below). And of course, TTRPGs, that’s what brought me to the dance after all and got my brain spilling all over the page about it.

Is this actually a problem? #

Maybe! It depends! It’s a really broad thing I’m outlining here so it’s hard to answer.

I think it’s a function of expectation going into it. For a lot of groups maybe this is how they like to do things: the strategy person gives out marching orders and everyone else goes along with it, everyone decides party composition ahead of time, etc. If one person is just not as good at using the tools at hand, they might ask for suggestions and that’s good! If someone’s obviously floundering, suggesting a way out of it is probably also good as long as they’re cool with it.

I’m going to use the cases of TTRPGs especially for cases where I think it can be a problem because I reckon there’s a few kinds of expression going on that can be at odds. I’m going to make some terms up so bear with me, I’m sure someone way smarter has come up with a better distinction but this is how I’m thinking about it:

1. Game state expression. This is the “trying to win/lose” or “trying to solve the puzzle” layer. This is where quarterbacking makes the most sense! If you’re coordinating to win then coming up with a strategy together, maybe with someone setting it all out, can definitely make perfect sense.
2. Narrative expression. When you think about an action scene or a fight, usually there’s one of two things happening. One, there’s a major plot point that’s getting resolved by it. This is where you get like “boss fights” and “setpieces”. Two, and this is more common, they’re pretty low-stakes but are used as a way to show off how characters prefer to do things. Does a vulnerable character keep distance or put themselves at risk? Does a bruiser character pick targets to keep friends safe, to take down easy pickings, or to go for the biggest thing they can see? Do defensive characters mostly keep themselves alive or protect others? This is where I think TTRPGs can really shine. Sub-optimal play isn’t strictly necessary for this, but situationally, it can be a way to express this. Quarterbacking often steps on those impulses, but not always: maybe characters are willing to put their personal ways of doing things aside for the greater goal, and that can be narrative development too! But I suspect that’s not going to be the response every time.
3. Personal expression. Sometimes people don’t like to do a certain kind of thing, you know? Maybe someone doesn’t like their characters having less than half health even if it’s like, fine. Maybe someone never wants to spend more than half of their resources “just in case” even when that makes no sense. Maybe someone always goes full auto instead of using bursts because it feels better. Maybe someone only prepares AOE attacks instead of individual-target ones. But it sure would be better for everyone else if they did things that made more sense! This is the one that quarterbacking can really clash with because it’s often strictly suboptimal behavior.

I suspect you’re going to see quarterbacking be more accepted and less of a problem in video/board/card game scenarios because Win The Game is a lot more emphasized in those, so there’s more acceptance of taking some direction from others in order to succeed because that’s why we’re here. Personal expression still crops up for sure, but aside from like roleplay servers or the more nebulous early phases of an MMO - Dan Olson’s example of a WoW player who always stays shoeless and always walks outside of combat and eventually draws the ire of their guild is a great example of that transition, for example - I don’t think there’s honestly too-too much in the way of narrative expression for multiplayer video games. Your “verbs” and goals are necessarily much more actively restricted too, which furthers this - no matter how you feel about your character or whatever, at the end of the day, W or L is in many cases the thing the game expresses, so that’s what folks will aim for. (Some games are, of course, better at this than others.)

Now, this is not to say that I’m drawing a “rollplay vs roleplay” distinction. I would really hope we’re several decades beyond that. (I know we’re not actually but I like to be optimistic.) What I’m saying is that in a given situation, someone playing the game is going to have several motivations pulling them in different directions, and in a lot of cases any of these can lead to folks telling other people what to do or feeling like they have to do something they don’t want to. I mostly think this is a game state vs. other motivations thing but it can definitely happen from narrative or personal angles too: if someone has ever told you that your character probably wouldn’t do something, for example, there it is!

Why does turn-based make this more of a thing? #

There will almost certainly end up being “correct” decisions, and when there are “correct” decisions, there will always be a frustration in some players when others aren’t making them. You can correlate this extremely strongly with the margin for error for victory/etc narrowing: as soon as there’s a perception that a binary win/loss is at stake, people will start to do this more. And the longer a game lasts, the more likely this is. The idea of playing a co-op game for 4 hours and losing kind of sucks - much less a campaign that lasts a year and is on the brink of ending in a TPK or whatever!

For turn-based games, you have much more of an opportunity to draw out a turn and figure out the exact optimal thing, and do an “are you sure” or “please do this instead” when someone says the “wrong” thing. In contrast, for a video game that’s real-time (and especially one that’s remote!) you don’t really have a chance to second-guess anyone’s course of action, they’re just going to do what they’re going to do and you can either scream obscenities at them for it or not. Depending on the game, they may not even be able to hear it!

Why does removing randomness also make this more of a thing? #

Let’s imagine a three-person combo: Person A sets something up with one ability, Person B primes it in some key way with another, Person C finishes it off with a third that ends up as something far greater than the original. Great! This is what co-op tactics games are made of! It’s cool when people contribute. We love to see it.

If this works every time, if all of them can be guaranteed to be able to happen, then setting things like this up is the play, no question. If you’re Person B, you’re guaranteed to be decreasing the value of your actions by doing something that isn’t bridging that gap between A and C unless there’s a situational reason not to do that. If you can’t guarantee any part of that combo happens/will work, though, the value of being able to set those combos up decreases or they’ll be much shorter/more conditional to account for it.

This isn’t to say it’s useless when there’s more uncertainty, but there’s way more latitude for not sticking to the plan when things have an increasing number of ways they can go off track.

Can’t we just solve this by talking it out. #

Yes. I feel the need to emphasize this, yes. I’ve done it in the past. You can always talk to a group of friendly folks to fix almost anything. It’s always correct and valid to just talk to people if there’s an issue if that’s an option. Talk to your friends.

Now that that’s out of the way, I think it’s a bit of a thought-terminating cliche. Of course you can just ask your friends to knock it off…but that assumes you’re playing with friends, and often if you’re playing with someone you aren’t that comfortable with it’s way harder to do - doubly so if that’s how they’ve always played and they’re not sure what they’re doing wrong. And especially if you’re time-limited, like at a con game! “Suddenly become an extrovert” and/or “figure out how to confront people you don’t know” is a little beyond the scope of this topic, and if you can teach people how to do that, write a book about it or something.

Ideally I’d like to design and run games so it doesn’t feel like it needs to get to that point as often or as quickly. For instance, a game that’s wildly poorly designed and unbalanced requires a lot more pulling punches and intentional spotlighting to keep things even-keeled than one that isn’t, you know? For traditional GM-centric games it puts a lot of work on them, and even for more distributed-role games it adds a ton of work that doesn’t have to be there and expends a lot of energy that could go elsewhere. As such I think there’s value in figuring out design and play tools to help myself and others with this (and luckily, there are neat examples to pull from).

Next time.

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