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This used to be more of an autobiography of my roleplaying past and present, but I've decided I could be saying something more useful! So, if you're interested in what gaming I've done, and still do, the old page can be found here. What follows are some very general and meta-game thoughts I have about roleplaying - if you want more directly applicable tips, then go and check out our articles, but if you want to know where I'm coming from and why, read on. It's long, and rambling, and wanders through all sorts of different territory, but by the time you're done you should have a fair idea of the basis for many of my opinions. Collaborative vs Competitive Gaming I've often described myself as engaging in collaborative roleplaying, so I think a few words about what that is, and why I prefer it to competitive gaming are in order. Competitive gaming is perhaps the simplest to describe, and it's the traditional way of doing things, so I'll start there. In a competitive game, the players view the GM as their opponent and vice versa. The GM presents the characters with dangerous situations and enemies who are trying to kill them, and the players then try to keep their characters alive. Fundamentally, the GM is out to kill the player characters, and the players are out to stop him/her from doing so. Websites dedicated to this kind of gaming tend to include advice on the best way to kill your PCs, or the best way to screw up your GM's game. You won't find any of that here, so if it's what you're after you may be disappointed! Collaborative gaming, on the other hand, involves the GM and players cooperating in order to create a gaming experience which everyone enjoys. Ideally in a collaborative game the players would trust their GM to try to make the game as enjoyable as possible, and would feel comfortable in asking the GM for the kind of gaming experiences they want. The GM, on the other hand, could trust their players to cooperate with the plot and to do things to make the game more enjoyable, and would feel happy talking to their players about what kind of experience would be the most fun for everyone. Obviously this is not so simplistic in real life - I'd say it was a continuum. For my part I sit firmly at the collaborative end. Which end you gravitate towards is, I think, largely related to what you want out of a game. If you're after a tactical, board game like, experience then competitive gaming is probably more your cup of tea. If, however, you're more interested in the acting and storytelling aspects of roleplaying, then competitive gaming will probably be an exercise in disappointment and frustration, and collaborative gaming will be more your thing. Which leads me to another related distinction. Storytellers and Referees Many of the existing gaming systems out there have different names for who runs the game. Game Master, or GM, is the most common and inclusive, and for that reason it's the term Gareth and I use on this site. Dungeon Master, or DM, is the traditional Dungeons and Dragons term, and is also very commonly used. There are a whole range of others, from "Keeper" (Call of Cthulhu), to Hollyhock God (Nobilis), and each of these terms has something to say about the system that uses it. The two most illustrative examples (for me at least) are "Storyteller" (White Wolf) and "Referee" (Cyberpunk 2020), because they are not just there to add colour. I once had a Cyberpunk GM and friend of mine explain to me what she saw as the difference. A Storyteller is trying to tell a story in their game. They have a plot, and they have a world which they will steer in ways which follow certain narrative rules. Ultimately, to play in a game with a Storyteller style GM is to be a character in a story, which will move in dramatic and interesting ways. A Referee, on the other hand, simple creates a world, and then mediates the character's interactions with it. Once the world is established, it behaves in a logical and consistent manner, following its own rules. The Referee doesn't try to steer the game to a particular dramatic conclusion, the world just does what it does. This friend of mine was a Referee, when I expected a Storyteller. And she was quite right in saying they are two different things. Dungeon Crawling is really a Referee style of gaming - the GM creates a dungeon, and stocks it with monsters, then rolls the dice for those monsters when the PCs (player characters) try to kill them. But this can extend to far more complicated games (like Cyberpunk), where the NPCs have fixed personalities and goals, and much like a monster's stats they'll react to the PCs in whatever way they were designed to, regardless of the consequences to plot. Another friend of mine once explained the difference as trying to create a work of art, and trying to just provide an alternate reality for the PCs to run around in. Now, why do I prefer to run in the "Storytelling" style? Well, first of all, I think the Referee style is an illusion. The GM _does_ have control over their game world, whether they know it or not. To demonstrate with another simple example, take the Dungeon crawl. Whilst I'm not an aficionado of such games, I'm pretty sure there are Dungeon Crawls that would be considered good, and those which would be considered bad. A good Dungeon Crawl would involve the PCs facing monsters which challenged, but did not tend to overwhelm them. These monsters would get increasingly powerful as the PCs went up in levels, until finally they reached the big boss monster at the end, and the players would expect that their characters picked up some loot and magic items on the way. If the Dungeon crawl ended with the death of the entire party at the first monster, every time the players tried to go into the dungeon, I suspect they would be annoyed. Likewise, if the monsters were all a walk over, I doubt it would be much fun in the end. So, essentially the GM must choose how powerful those monsters are, and what kinds of things they are likely to do, with the PCs' combat abilities in mind. But wait a minute - this is just like storytelling - the GM basically just decides what should exist, in order to make the game roughly follow a narrative principle. What I'm saying is, that no matter what philosophy of gaming a GM follows, they decide what their universe includes, and thus they control what happens in their game. But wait, I here you say, dice add randomness to games. Yes, to a point, but dice also follow the rules of probability. I'm pretty sure any GM could look at a player's character sheet, and then provide an opponent which was so much more powerful than them that the PC's death would be pretty much guaranteed. (Which as a side point is my problem with all that "How to kill your PCs" advice which is out there - it's easy. Just give them an opponent they can't possibly defeat, and watch probability take its course. If, by some fluke the PCs escape doom, ramp up the baddies and repeat until the PCs are smears on the ground. Of course, this isn't really what these types of articles tell you how to do - what they're proposing is more correctly "how to kill your PCs and make it look like it wasn't your fault".) So anyway, the GM mostly decides the nature of the story, no matter how faithful they are to the mechanic. My reasoning goes like this. If I control the game world, and hence what kind of story is told, I may as well accept it and try to do it well. I may as well think about what effect my NPCs will have on the player's experience, and I may as well think about what outcome the players are likely to want, because in the end it's in my power to give it to them. Which brings me (in a round about way) to dice. GMs like to think that dice are impartial. If they roll badly, and a PC dies, it was the dice, and not them which killed the character. But this is an illusion. The GM still controls all the important factors, like the fact that the NPC decided to try to kill the PC, and the fact that the NPC was powerful enough to do it. So ultimately, the competitive game can never be a "fair" competition, without becoming a collaborative game. The GM can kill the PCs whenever they want to, and if they are restraining themselves in the interests of making the game _seem_ fair, then that's more like collaboration. At this point, surely it's easier to let the players in on the secret that you can all work together to have fun, so that you can stop having to worry about what next trick they're going to use to try to stuff up your game. Dice, and the Illusion of Randomness and Free Will There are, of course, pitfalls for "Storytellers" as well as "Referees". The big one that springs to mind is "railroading". This is where the GM decides how their game will work out, what the PCs will do, and how it will all end, in advance, and then forces the players to stick to that path. This is really no fun for the players, who often end up thinking they could have just watched TV or read a book, for all that they've had an impact on the plot. One of the nice things about roleplaying is the free will you have to effect the story, and railroading derails that sense, so to speak. Now many GMs would tell you that this is where dice come in. Like any "Referee" style GM you should work out the stats of whatever is in your world, and then roll dice to see how it turns out. That way the players can cleverly use the mechanic to change the plot. I have several problems with this answer. First off, some outcomes are more fun than others, and by fudging dice rolls a GM can make sure that what happens is interesting. A fight which becomes a walkover because the GM is rolling badly (or underestimated the PCs) isn't usually very exciting, and conversely having your character killed by something they should have been able to defeat sucks large green rocks. Secondly, as we noticed before, the GM still has near total control over the game world despite the dice, so it is entirely possible to roll dice constantly and still railroad your players. All the dice in the world make no difference when you tell the PCs they are in a featureless tunnel heading to one unavoidable destination. So what should you do? I think the answer here can be found in examining another common illusion in roleplaying games. That is, the illusion of free will. Now, in the end, no matter what the players do, the GM determines how the world will react, and if they decide that the PCs will have no effect, then the PCs will have no effect. The trick is to make the players _think_ that they have free will. Dice present one simple way of doing this. When players roll dice, or see the GM rolling dice, it seems for a moment that the fate of their characters is hanging in the balance. This is exciting, and this is why, if you do fudge rolls, don't tell the players which ones you've fudged. They'll pretty quickly forget that you do it at all, and it will _seem_ as if there is an exciting element of randomness. This is why you may wish to keep using dice, even though you're prepared to fudge the results if you need to - they create a useful illusion. However, I think it's important that the GM realises that that is all they are - a barrier to put between your players and your decisions. Ideally, in a collaborative game, your players should trust your decisions (and you should be willing to listen to their complaints), so dice are really only one tool of many. Having played in a non random system before (Nobilis) I'd say that there are other, probably better, ways of creating that excitement - good description of dramatic situations and effective set up of threats spring to mind. Finally, of course, you can play completely free-form, and dispense with mechanics all together. This takes a lot of trust between player and GM though, and I wouldn't recommend it if that kind of trust is something you find hard to build. Another convenient (and in my opinion far superior) way of creating the illusion of free will involves being subtle and clever in how you steer you players. Now as a GM you could probably do no preparation whatsoever, and just make up the entire game on the spot. This way the PCs really would have free will. But if you want to create a consistent and interesting story, you'll probably do better if you do some preparation, and just adlib the details. I've known lots of GMs who could create simple and episodic games on the fly, but all the most far reaching, and interesting games I've played in have been at least partly prepared before hand. The problem here is that unless you're going to railroad your PCs through the plot, you are going to need to accurately predict their actions in advance, in order to know what to prepare, and as we all know, players will _always_ do something you didn't expect from time to time. Ah hah! Says the Referee style GM, this is not a problem for me, because I haven't got a plot, just NPCs and a world frame. To which I would say, good start. If you want to be able to deal with the unexpected things your players do, you'll need to know how your world works, so that you can adlib consistently. But that still doesn't help with preparing a useful plot, and encouraging the players to go in the right direction, whilst leaving them feeling as if it's their decision. Thankfully, this isn't too hard to achieve, with a little forethought. First, ask the players what they want from the game. Try to give it to them. They should choose the thing they say they want more often than the other options (note the "more often" - players don't always say and do the same things). Secondly, know their characters, and how they play them. Tailor your plot hooks, and the players will be more likely to swallow them. Thirdly, be aware that your plot tunnel is flexible. Should the players choose a course of action that takes them away from the plot you have in mind, remember that in many cases you can put that scene in whatever place they _are_ going to, with only small changes. So they had to travel down the road on the right, to meet the NPC with the important information, but instead they've gone to stay in the tavern. No problem. The NPC is now in the tavern. One of the advantages of taking a Storytelling approach is that you need not feel guilty about changing things behind the scenes. As long as it's consistent with what the players have already seen you can change it as much as you like. Just remember to take notes. Finally, the trick is to give the players actual free will, in a meta game way, by listening to their requests. If the players really don't like something, you can drop or change it. Ask them what they want. Get feedback. The more you know about what they want, the more easily you'll be able to lead them through your plot by the nose, without them ever knowing it. Just remember that when all your subtle manipulation fails (as it will occasionally do) that you should be willing to let the players do something bizarre. Really, to sum up, what I'm saying here is that I believe the GM has control of their world, and may as well take advantage of this to create the most interesting story. Given that we are all in this hobby to have fun (I hope) we may as well work together to make it as fun as possible, because in my experience Roleplaying often falls very short of the mark (endless sessions of bickering, anger, frustration and ultimate pointlessness are probably not unfamiliar to most gamers). Now, there are lots of other odd meta-game things that I have an opinion on, but seeing as I intend the rest to be the subject of articles, I'll not double up by rambling about them here. Go to the Game Master Articles page for more of my opinions! Don't agree
with something I've said? (and there's a lot to disagree with on
this page!) then email
me with your opinion, and we can discuss it. |
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