I’ve been reading the recently published This is Marketing by Seth Godin. A passage I read yesterday had been bouncing around in my mind. Alot of the ideas in that book have stuck with me. Good book.

Anyway, here is the concept I’ve been thinking about.

People behave a certain way or believe certain things based on who they are, what they want, and what they know. Other people are not you; they want different things, and know things you don’t know. They’ve experience things that you have not experienced and so they are right within the context of their experience.

This mindset creates an opportunity to be kind, empathetic and get to the root of why someone at your table might be doing something that creates problems or why your campaign or adventure is not resonating with your players.

They are right, in the context of their experiences and their beliefs about games and gaming. If we start, as game masters, with the premise you’re right and have a conversation with your player(s) to discover what they want and what they believe and thus understand why they are right.

From there, you as the game master, can decide whether what they want is right in your context. If it isn’t then you can decide that you aren’t the right fit for the group or the group or parts of the group are not the right fit for your campaign.