Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs
That appeals to me, but then I've always liked the monkey's way better than the kitten's way. But I think there is an approach to gaming based on the expectation that "We're the heroes, so the author [GM] is on our side!" And I think many people like that.
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It's possible to like both approaches, depending on who you game with. But as a GM, if you game mostly with fans of just one of the ways of looking at this, you come to focus your skills in that area.
For instance, I've always been a highly extroverted, non-traditional, liberal-minded improviser – the sort who likes do-it-yourself punk music, makes career choices based on feelings, just kisses the girl, cooks without a recipe, invents cocktails, and is now deeply invested in a fully improvised dance with no standard patterns. I've always attracted likeminded people who preferred to ad-lib quite literally everything. That includes those I game with: We're gaming for the laughs and socialization, and there's no "power imbalance" in the first place because I just let players alter "how things are" as takes their fancy . . . which makes having a laid-out, mapped, planned version of how things are seriously uncool.
The irony of this being that I need Rule Zero, not because it lets me be the boss, but because I'm going to have to say, "Damn what the rules say, where we're going is more fun!" anyway, so I prefer to have that eventuality spelled out ahead of time.