Negative Space Playstyle Principles
I have no mind to blorb.
Blorb is a lot of work, simply by nature of its diligent procedure. It's not synonymous to a lot of prep necessarily - thanks, elmcat - but you are creating a set of hierarchical laws of a world. You layer and respect those laws, constantly.
You set yourself to be the Arbiter of a game. A Referee, an impartial mind mapping inputs and outputs: information entries must be confronted at every truth, checked for coherence, analyzed for consistency, so that the world reacts accordingly, based on external facts, not a spontaneous reaction.
All of that in a split second during a TTRPG game.
That is beyond me.
Blorb games and experiences are alien to my world. I legitimately can't comprehend the fun! Discord discussions were had where it was claimed that yes - it is delightful to execute a world that exists as you are an impartial detached overseer. You don't nudge; not beyond the nudge of time upon as all. You execute a reality from your mind.
But hell, as someone that reads and executes contracts as a living, perhaps I stand traumatized by being a subject of the detached overseering of the piles of bleached paper.
Even so, I am also not an anti-blorbist. I like diegetic information and rewards! The game thrives in the thin veil of what is Game and what is Imagination.
Surely life and games are more nuanced, after all. These are principles, suggestions if you will, rather than actual rules. We are all humans, we forget a Truth or another. Maybe we don't quantum every ogre nor we truth every prep line.
Well then, where do I stand?
Consider this an extremely personal theoryslop of my own game experience and not an attempt to encompass anyone else. This is my fun mental space for playing TTRPGs as the Guy with the Book, or rather:
BE THE NEGATIVE SPACE PLAYER
You play everything the Players are not, and no other difference. You are the Negative Space around everything the Player Characters don't control.
You don't have different goals. You all want to enable fun, you all want to make interesting and surprising decisions, you all want to use cool abilities or mechanics, you all want to have a cool story, you all play when you sit down during a session.
The only assymetry between Player and NS Player is their voice during play. NS Player should not carry a goal of neutrality, nor one of responsibility over the fun as if bigger than any other Player.
PREP BY EXCLUSION
Prep whatever you can't come up with during play.
Be it statblocks, scenes, hex content or plot. If it can dinamically emerge during play by imagination, improvisation, extrapolation or spark tables, then let the elements of the game be born in its main stage.
Prep should be the tool used for the blank spaces in your creative arsenal that you can't rely on. The only point of prep is enabling the NS Player to better make decisions during play.
PLAY WITH EXTREME BIAS
Liberally apply your will in the Negative Space you control.
The game is the entire point. The point is to have fun. That fun can come from many places - challenges, weird voices and NPCs, crazy plans, even the fun of being sad.
Your job as the NS Player - the same as any other Player - is to allow that fun to happen by making interesting decisions.
Cut a boring scene short, change an encounter midway, cross out an NPC and change it to the PC's long stranged father that they just came up with. Control the Negative Space with intent and purpose.
There is not enough time in life to play a game where sometimes "things can happen [...] that are too boring".
SCISSORS AFTER SEEING ROCKS
A TTRPG world should be influenced by Players before session 1.
First by building it together, deciding its pieces and religions and cities together or, in the least, collaboratively.
But also because the world is shaped by the lens of the Players that see it. Don't be impervious to the influence of knowing your Player will throw rock.
A vindictive character should meet vindictive stories. A character struggling with responsibility should meet characters faced with the same dillema; a past king, the current king, the prophet of a religion that carries that same interest. If a character is expressing anger, throw a drunkard at them to pick a fight. If a character chooses not to fight natural animals for they are not coded by moral, make one of them do evil and cruelty through amorality anyway.
The Negative Space Character reacts to a Character, in the same way a Character reacts to another.
The quantum ogre nullifies a choice. Take the Player's choice and react to it with expansion. Distort the world to that choice, fold realities into themselves so that choice is the most important element of the world. Then do that with all choices.
ONLY WHAT IS SAID IS TRUE
The only truth is the one shown and spoken aloud during play. Whatever else written down is not reality. A piece of lore that has been a fact in your mind is only concrete if established. A murder mystery can have any killer until the first particular clue is established.
If it is true, show it.
EDIT IT, FRAME IT, DIRECT IT
Cut a scene short, or let it stretch unconfortably.
Provoke a player into a chain of thought, throw interesting questions in the air.
Frame the narrative with bias, show with intent, not indifference or neutrality.
Give emphasis.
THE RULEBOOK IS YOUR CHARACTER SHEET
The NS Player knows its own sheet the same way the Players know theirs.
No Player has the obligation of knowing the sheet of another.
Not all interesting decisions will be found written as an ability in your sheet.