Thoughts on GMing

[OneSeventeen]

I've written two blog posts about role playing recently. One published today has a short "What's an RPG?" section and then a section about how my group and I do things, specifically (which is far from typical). I don't want to reproduce it in it's entirety here, since it's somewhat lengthy, but I'd love to hear what folks here think either on the blog or in this thread. Here's the link.

The second article is yet to be published, but here's a sneak-peak link. It's about the nature of the players as both audience and actors and my thoughts on the implications of that on the fourth wall. For those that don't want to click through, this is the whole of the second post:

The Circular 4th Wall

This is a post about my RPG hobby. I posted a sort of introduction to the hobby and my habits regarding it before. If you're not a role player and you find some of this not making sense, it might be because you're missing some terminology I explained in that post. So, without further ado:

I liked Ocean's 11. I also liked the two sequels. They didn't change my life, and I know there are people who think they're drivel, but I thought they were fun. I also like a lot of Ben Bova's novels, the main characters of which are often scientists. Similarly, the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy with very exciting geology going on (well, strictly speaking, it's areology). Okay. That's probably enough links to satisfy my neurotic need to supply context.

In thinking about what worlds it might be fun to play in and what kinds of stories it might be fun to tell, I often harvest fiction that I've enjoyed consuming. I'd heard a snatch of Caravan one day, which always puts Ocean's 11 in my mind, and it occurred to me that playing a campaign with a similar goal about similar characters would be fun. So I started brainstorming. Eventually, I hit a problem: The part of those movies that is most fun is that you're watching a plan unfold that you only vaguely understand. Then, things seem to go way off the rails and things get tense. In the end, though, it turns out that Danny was so smart, he anticipated various turns of events and the plan incorporated them. Seeing him be so clever is fun (and for those of us that imagine ourselves clever, as I think many people do, it tells us that smart overcomes all obstacles).

The key point I'm trying to make, here, is that the cool factor of watching the Ocean's 11 crew work is the reveal. They know something that the audience doesn't and the revealing of that knowledge and subsequent application of it makes them seem smart. A similar phenomenon occurs frequently in a certain class of SciFi stories (like the afore mentioned Bova and Robinson works): the main character knows about some aspect of the world that the reader does (and often can) not. For a particularly heavy handed and over-used example, see any Star Trek episode where Geordi saves the ship. The Next Generation examples fall flat because the big win comes from the audience gaining the understanding that the characters had all along.

After analyzing this story telling method, I've come to realize that it pretty much cannot be used in a collaborative setting. Which was both disappointing (because I like this device when done well) and exciting (because I think I've spotted a unique challenge in telling stories with RPGs). The nature of the players is that they are audience and main characters. This, as suggested by my GM-consultant, I have started referring to as the "circular fourth wall".

If a PC knows something crucial to the plot that a player does not and, trying to mimic the Ocean's 11-style reveal, it comes up at a tense moment... well, then what? Do you just tell the player what his character has known all along? That's not so cool; in fact, you just stole the cool from the player. Do you try to set up the knowledge ahead of time so that the player has it, but maybe doesn't think it's important? This is hard to do and also risky. If it works and they learn the information but don't think it's important they may not bring it up at the "appropriate" (over scripting, here) time. Other times, this kind of leading the player into the situation just isn't possible: Consider the scene where Danny is taken by the Big Bad into a room to get beaten up by a Tough Looking Biker. It is revealed pretty quickly that Danny somehow arranged to have that guy get hired by the Big Bad and to, instead, help Danny. Well, if Danny did that, then Danny's player should probably have been there and known about it. So there is no reveal (I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool, just not as cool).

Note that I'm not saying the story of Ocean's 11 couldn't be told around a table with dice. I'm just saying that you couldn't tell it in quite the same way. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, whether you're a role player or not, since this has to do as much with story telling in general (which humans love to do) as it does with the specific method of telling them called role playing games.

If you have a comment about either post, feel free to leave it here or there. I don't really care to drum up traffic, I'm just looking for feedback. Thanks.


Ben

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by OneSeventeen

Consider the scene where Danny is taken by the Big Bad into a room to get beaten up by a Tough Looking Biker. It is revealed pretty quickly that Danny somehow arranged to have that guy get hired by the Big Bad and to, instead, help Danny. Well, if Danny did that, then Danny's player should probably have been there and known about it. So there is no reveal (I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool, just not as cool).

It's hard to make the kind of character who's so clever that he's already planned for or even manipulated obstacles and plot twists.. partly because doing this requires a lot of knowledge on the character's part that the player doesn't have (and therefore can't use). Most GMs would require the player of such a character to set up his twists in advance; if you didn't spend time in play recruiting your Tough Biker and getting him hired by the Big Bad, or if someone on the BB's side makes his roll to notice that the TB is your agent, or if you're taken to the wrong room or whatever, too bad for you.

OTOH, GURPS' Serendipity could be played in the "plans in advance" style, instead of the "occasionally gets strangely lucky" style, and some games give players some kind of currency that they can spend to change things in the game world.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Xplo

It's hard to make the kind of character who's so clever that he's already planned for or even manipulated obstacles and plot twists.. partly because doing this requires a lot of knowledge on the character's part that the player doesn't have (and therefore can't use). Most GMs would require the player of such a character to set up his twists in advance; if you didn't spend time in play recruiting your Tough Biker and getting him hired by the Big Bad, or if someone on the BB's side makes his roll to notice that the TB is your agent, or if you're taken to the wrong room or whatever, too bad for you.

OTOH, GURPS' Serendipity could be played in the "plans in advance" style, instead of the "occasionally gets strangely lucky" style, and some games give players some kind of currency that they can spend to change things in the game world.

I've got a vague idea for a Planning ability, as a character trait Modern Action RPG, that gives the character a low number of Planning Points, recharging daily or weekly (I'm unsure about a lot of the specifics).

During play, the player can then use the Planning ability by saying "my character anticipated this course of events, and took this precaution".

The GM then uses his sense of realism ("use your sense of realism" is the #1 piece of GMing advice in MA RPG) to gauge how plausible it is to anticipate the event and take the stated precaution, which in turn results in a Planning Point cost:

zero points (utterly trivial - anyone could have anticipated the turn of events and taken the precaution)
1/3 point (almost trivial, not surprising at all, any devious mind could have foreseen it. An 1d6 is rolled, and if the result is 5 or 6, a Planning Point is spent; the Plan works regardless of the roll outcome).
1 point (not too predictable.)
3 points (quite surprising, but it is barely foreseeable)
No can do (no Planning Points are spent)

It's a very odd concept, so I have no idea how it will work in actual play, other than that it will probably be interesting in the Chinese sense of the word.

[Shrale]

Well, if you're a GM and you've done the Heroes Save the World
Campaign™, you've probably done a few generalities, meaning you let the
players get away with something -- so I don't see a big problem with letting
them smooth over a few situations to get something for the plot.

Some GMs aren't like that, or don't acknowledge when they let the PCs get
away with something (or that it's only for innocuous little things that don't
really matter).

"Gee, we could really use a Chinese Acrobat for the next part, too bad he's
in prison or his visa isn't up to snuff..." might lead the players to hashing
over a jailbreak or a forgery scenario that the GM doesn't want to play out.

I've done it and I usually relegate those to the "small things" but if the
players are on a roll and their idea is greeted with "Danger, danger!!!" in
my mind, I might hand wave it and start the next game with... "So, you've
forked over $50,000 for a great phony passport and your boys are picking up
the Acrobat as we speak, what's next?" so I don't bring the whole campaign
crashing down because they never got to the casino.

But I'm sure that type of generosity would be poison in most GM's
eyes...

Also, if I do something like that, I'd sure as hell keep a written record of
that, so that when the players start bitching...you can whip out that
you haven't been Killer GM the entire campaign :)

>

[Agemegos]

After analyzing this story telling method, I've come to realize that it pretty much cannot be used in a collaborative setting.

It works okay in collaborative writing. It is because RPGs are participative and to a certain extent because they are extemporary that the Batman gambit seldom works well, and that Chessmasters are difficult to pull off as PCs.

It is the difficulty that you allude to that makes the Indy Ploy the favourite of fun-seeking roleplayers. It all comes down to the qualities of the Unspoken Plan Guarantee. It's very hard to have an unspoken plan in an RPG because as you say of the collaborative nature of the storytelling. The closest I have ever come to pulling it off was with a co-operative GM, and fellow-players who were happy to ham it up in the limelight with my character playing Xanatos Speed Chess in the shadows. That is, one player knew the plan and the others didn't. Which left an audience to make the reveal to.