by Ugavine

If players are stuck for direction I would use an NPC to give suggestions.

by Bruce McG

Well, this stinks. But they are cute.



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by robbbbbb

This is one of those things that is entirely dependent on the players' collective experience level. With experienced players, I rarely provide prompting. I will sometimes remind them of information that they've received, or offer a recap of a previous situation. I find that the players will often clue me in when they need one of those, depending on the conversation at the table. "Hey guys, you remember that...?"

With inexperienced players, and especially young players, I try to be restrained about providing options, but I find that they can end up with analysis paralysis. RPGs offer so much scope for play that newbies can become overwhelmed with the options. I find that laying out a few options can help to spark movement, and then the players get into the groove of just telling me what they want to do.

In part, I think scenario structure has a great deal to do with this. How open/constrained your adventure is should be dictated by how experienced your players are. With hugely experienced players who understand the setting very well you can just lay out the broad outlines of a scenario and let them respond to it. Inexperienced players need more constraints on their scenarios. Putting guard rails on the available actions helps inexperienced players by keeping them out of analysis paralysis.

by Alexander Beetle

I will sometimes do this as a PBF GM, particularly if things have slowed down on the players' side or people seem unsure what to do next.

If I do, I'll usually recap what's going on (in case that's the issue) and offer up a couple of possible options. But I always add "Or anything else you want to do" so it's clear I'm not constraining them to only those options.

by dava1987

I’ll keep my weird questions until someone bans me. LoL

When you use a Key, do you erase it from your inv as a consumable item?

Yes, I’m talking to you Rusty and Iron Keys.

by gmpneuma

An item RPG Item: Cyberpunk RED (Core Rulebook) has been added to the geeklist PAX Unplugged 2026 - RPG Freeplay: Community Game Scheduler

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An item RPG Item: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit has been added to the geeklist PAX Unplugged 2026 - RPG Freeplay: Community Game Scheduler

by pestigor

When I hear crickets from the other side of the screen (well first I feel awful that I didn't do a good enough job as a GM to give the players something to latch onto) I will suggest some ideas to them.

by PghArch

I have also used this as an approach when a player is clearly trying to tap into their character’s expertise but either isn’t sure how or is doing something that would have an effect I’m pretty sure they don’t want.

So if an enemy was approaching and a player with mining skill said “I’m going to run over and pull out a column with my bare hands!” I might offer “You’re pretty sure that would bring the roof down on your head but you’ve seen miners pull out the column using a rope from a safe distance. Is that what you want to do?”
Or if a player is clearly stuck I’ll let them use a skill or knowledge to receive a proposed plan of action from me as DM.

by pdzoch

In all honesty, I rarely provide options, unless they are brand new players who do not know how to role play --- they still think in terms of what are my "actions" and "how do I use my sheet" instead of simply describing what they want to do.

For my experienced players, I make the distinction between what the players know and what the characters would know. It is easy to forget information, especially if they are poor at writing it down (or miswrite it as is occasionally the case), and sometimes there are weeks (even months) between sessions and no one remembers any details, much less where they left off. When a decision is about to be made and it should be made based on a bunch of information that was not recently learned, I will recap all that they know. HOWEVER, I do not simply recap for them. Instead, I asked them leading questions. "What do you know about x?" "What do you know about Y?" "Whay did you do this (past event)? and "What did you learn there?" etc. I let them provide the answer or recall the infrmation they know. Often, when there is a mistake, another player will catch it and they will have a discussion to sort true knowledge. It takes longer, but then it is their own thinking and recal to inform their decision instead of me spoonfeeding them. Too often, they are caught up in the action and are working with only recently gained information and forget about some older information that their character would know, especially since it is fresher information to the character than to the player. If they ignore information they just learned from the room prior that session that warns them of danger in the new room, well, that is on them and I do not feel bad about not reminding them.

by VolcanoLotus

As a (relatively new) player, I have appreciated it when GMs have let me know that the thing I was thinking about doing would be a problem in the metagame (e.g., I almost split the party for what would’ve ended up being essentially the entire adventure the first time I played D&D, and I was grateful that I was stopped before I made the game worse for everyone).

As a GM, I haven’t had to do this much and don’t want to do this much. When we were running our TimeWatch campaign, my son’s go-to approach was “go to a future library and find a history book”. I eventually had to start burning down libraries to get him to try to engage with the investigation part of the game. So even there I guess I prefer to construct incentives and disincentives in the game. (Ultimately it was a bad fit of a system for him because he wanted D&D, so he stepped away from the campaign anyway.)

I think I’d probably only give options if asked, or if someone was getting frazzled. Neither have really come up for me so far.

by St Cretin

Hmm. It depends a little on the group, but when indecisiveness is the problem, I tend to summarize the options and ask which one to move the game along. I do occasionally provide options when players are stumped, but don't expect them to follow. Or if discussions have been long and plans changed a lot I either ask to summarize the plan again for my benefit or summarize myself and ask if that was the plan.
Knowing that if I ask "are you sure?" that the plan immediately goes out the window and the process starts from the beginning, I tend not to ask that question anymore.
I admit to steering the group to non-silly (eg murder-hobo-ish) solutions or away from plans that would be expected to have severe consequences that would derail the story. By that I mean having the players either locked up for a few weeks or kill half the city guard and the occasional innocent bystander.