Being a psychologist is no easy task let me tell you, when you sit in front of a person for an interview you are expected to take notes not only on what the person says but the way he says it and what he does when he says it, my notebooks are listed on Chaosium´s Call of Cthulhu as mythos book that takes 1d10 sanity points on a fast read… but in the end its well worth it.
The most basic premise of observation is to observe without judging, the best way I can find to explain it is with a short story:
Two psychologists once boarded a train in london to go sighseeing around Britain, one of them spots an animal herd on a field and calls his colleage “hey, I didnt knew they had goats in England”, the other sees throught the window, turns to his friend and apprentice and says “Well… to you its a goat, but Im only seeing half side of an animal with horns a goatee and white thick fur, I´m really curious to see the other side, I wonder if its the same”.
See the difference there?, the first one made a presupposition, based on his sensory input he interpreted what he was seeing as a goat, the other one just described what he perceived with the language he knows… a small difference but a vital one in the technique I´m about to explain.
First lets define a behavior as: the measurable changes (active or reactive) we perceive in others with our senses.
There are two kinds of body language, the first one refers to physiological reactions to outside stimuli.
For example, dilated pupils are related to states of excitement, yawns are related to tiredness and lack of activity, flushed cheeks point to exercise and socially tense situations, the body changes and adapts according to the circunstances in a biological sense.
The second relates to actions linked to a certain emotion or state of mind, this are subjective, and even if there is a social tendency, its almost impossible to speak about universal body signs, crossing your arms could mean that you are cold, that your back hurts, that you are thinking, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are on the defensive…
How is this useful to us?, by doing a little thing NLPers* call “calibration”, in plain english it means “learning the association between a behavior and an individuals state of mind and thoughts”.
I have a player, lets call him Albert, cool guy, really smart… but Albert is really shy, he hates being in the spotlight because he beleives that everyone is judging him, everytime Albert interacts in the game and hes not sure of what he is doing he gets a really bad cough, it takes him several minutes to recompose and afterwards he just does the first thing that comes to mind (usually something very passive like just sitting around, no action no judgment)
*NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming, a higly controversial theory of communication that have been misused and bastardized in the form of workshops for self-discovery and self-growth by scam artists, I use it regalurary and for me it works wonderfully, but I´ve been very careful in only reading the most prominent literature and learning for credible sources
So how does this little piece of knowledge helps me?, whenever albert starts to cough I know that I have to break his moment, I either introduce and NPC or quickly send him into action, I take away that what worries him and let him get back into the game… but I will only do so with the cough that begins when he is faced with a decision.
A long time ago I had a lady player, lets call her pickle, she always sought romance in the game, but she felt a little ashamed of liking her characters being romantically involved, I observed that whenever pickle was getting into the game she would flush and her pupils dilate (both common signs of arousal), incidentally the scenes she liked the most were those where I could observe this reaction, so I knew that when I observed those behaviors she was having a good time.
There is nothing magical about this, I laugh when something makes me nervous, I crack my knucles when I get into something I find interesting, I stare with a small smile when I see someone I like, (remember, brain-rituals?), we have little quirks and a trained eye can catch them, ask a professional poker player.
So here is an excersice for you, next time you GM something pick a player, and observe, dont interpret, just observe, what are his or her behaviors, whats the reaction when you ambush the character, when the player rolls a crit, write it down, try to find a pattern, with their actions the players are telling you how they feel about your game, the amount of feedback you can get out of this is huge.
Remember:
- Observe behaviors, dont interpret them, and inference says more about you than about the person you are observing.
- Watch for behavior patterns, things that are repeated many times.
- Dont be afraid to ask “hey joe, why do you laugh when the orc dies?”
- Practice Practice Practice.
Why is observation useful?:
In my experience I have been able to:
- Determine when a decision has made a player upset.
- Figure out when the group needs a break or I need to wrap up the session.
- A conflict between characters turns personal.
- A player is bored.
- A player is interested.
- A particular scene is emotionally touching.
- Also observation leads to a good feedback (an issue I have never seen treated in RPGs and that I want to talk about).
There is so much I would like to say about observation, but I have to go to bed, and rather than being a cathedratic I want you people to go out into the world and try this out, if it doesnt work I´ll personally go to your place and teach you 
Till next time
