The Encyclopedia of Interactive Performance

People are making offers all the time, but they’re not always aware of it. Take a moment to think about the position your body is in. Up until the moment that you thought about it, your body posture was an unconscious offer—something you were doing without thinking about it.

Recognizing unconscious offers is especially useful when playing with spects because it means that they’re always making offers, whether they realize it or not. The tilt of a head. The shift of an eyebrow. A sigh. All you need to do is interpret the unconscious offer as a part of the narrative, and suddenly spects have made a meaningful contribution to the scene.

Cody and Candy are seated by the campfire, eating toasted marshmallows. Candy makes an unconscious offer when she glances to the side for no particular reason. Cody looks in the same direction. “You heard it, too? I’m pretty sure there’s something in the bushes over there.”

There may be times where it seems that spects aren’t doing anything at all. That’s an unconscious offer too.

Andy steps into the trailer at the construction site. The foreman, Butch Hancock, is seated behind the desk. Butch just sits looking at Andy, saying and doing nothing. Andy finally speaks. “Butch, you’ve been sitting inside this trailer for an hour. The crew’s starting to get antsy.”

When you can justify spects’ unconscious offers as contributions to the story, you make it possible for them to play successfully, even when they’re doing “nothing.”