I have to respond here because Alexis will just delete my comment, a practice that I partially blame for the misconception in the first place because I had made many comments that were deleted before the one about the "piano for only virtuosos" got him to stop for a short while. I admit the logic of that comment was flawed, but I was trying to write it in a way so as to not anger him any further (something I then later failed at, so I really was walking on a fine line). So lets start fresh with the assurance I won't be deleting my own arguments (rofl).
Gaptooth and I disagree on Story Games as a genre. I don't like them and I have well thought out reasons for that. And Gaptooth likes them and he has well thought out reasons on his side as well, I am sure. I have been spouting off some comments that assume some points that Gaptooth is unwilling to concede as assumptions, thus the nut of the conflict. That's what happens when you talk in an echo chamber too much. So I want this thread to be a forum for discussing that disagreement, resolving it, and moving on with the shake of a hand.
I am going to put forward an argument that strikes at the heart of Story Games and the narrative control element that defines them. I want Gaptooth to come back and prove me wrong. I am not going to moderate the comments like I did in my discussion with Zak to cut out anyone else. I want this to be open to anyone who wants to jump into the ring. That said, I expect to find more support among my readers than Gaptooth will, as most of the blogs that redirect traffic to me are OSR blogs and that is going to stack the deck. So I am pledging NOT to make appeals to the popularity of my opinions because that would be unfair. I really am trying to keep the playing field even.
---
Why We Need Strong Gamemasters
I believe that one of the central innovations that D&D contributed to the world, next to the now widespread use of hit points and experience points and "to hit" mechanics and so forth in media far beyond the mere tabletop RPG, is the concept of a Gamemaster. The GM provides a function that is unique in games, the ability to adjust rules and conditions of the game ad hoc while remaining unbiased. The GM can control the world of the game in a way that is just not possible without a GM. They can rearrange the world, moving a town from here to there, teleporting people about, and so on. They can stop dumb exploits of the system, they can give a player who is down on their luck a treasure to brighten their day, and so forth. The GM has a unique power and the power of the GM is what transforms Statecraft from a strategy game into an RPG.
In the pure classic D&D construction, the power of the GM is almost absolute. Save for a few rules that they are obligated to follow, the GM can do whatever they wish. However, this power is a double-edged sword. In an effort to control against arbitrary GM behavior, games began to add more and more rules to constrain them. Much like the plethora of rules which has paralyzed the American school system in the hopeless attempt to remove judgement from the equation, these rules have paralyzed the GM. Of course, the caveat is always there that "the GM can change these rules whenever they want" but having a player with a book that they can cite as "proof" that something is supposed to work a certain way has dramatically undermined the GM's ability to do his job. The GM has been reduced to a builder of worlds only, his adjudication power largely withered on the vine. Many OSR bloggers use the term Referee instead of GM (or DM), to reinforce the judgment aspect of the role.
I certainly cannot fairly categorize all story games as being a certain way, there is simply too much variation. But story games have a gradient of control that they take from the GM and give to the players. In White Wolf games, this is small; limited to creating your own henchmen and contacts and so forth. That's why I cited them as a gateway game in the argument I made previously. And as the amount of control shifts from GM to players, as the gradient slides further away from the classic maxim, you see a similar hamstringing of the GM.
I think that if we could get the survey data, we would find that a lot of people left the hobby because their GM sucked. He was a bastard. He used his pet NPC to do everything for you. Deux ex machina. Etc etc. So I can certainly understand why someone might want to curtail that power. However, I think we are throwing the baby out with the bath.
It doesnt really matter whether you take the power of the GM away by making too many rules or just explicitly assigning narrative control to the players, the result is the same. The GM becomes a figurehead without much power. There becomes a perception that anyone can be a GM. That it is easy, requires no real work or skill, and that it should be something everyone does sometime. Why is this a problem?
Basic group dynamics psychology can tell you that when you form small groups of people and don't tell them who will be the leader, a leader will emerge. If you remove that leader from the group, a new leader will emerge. This is how humans work, they are social animals. It works in dogs, monkeys, and a variety of other social animals as well. This is an immutable fact of life. People like to have a leader. It is the reason why smart kids generally hate group school work, because they become the leaders and they do most of the work. They are the one working hard on the project while the other kids eat cheetos. It is also the reason why people often vote for someone and then promptly stop paying attention to politics.They assigned worrying about that shit to that guy they voted for.
The GM in a traditional RPG works with the grain of this tendency. They take the leadership position, they do most of the work, and they have the power. And like an orchestra conductor, they control the tempo. They organize the game to work as a coherent whole. They say "here is a dungeon/town/tower/etc, when you go inside you see this, outside you see this, etc". They make the orchestra play as one.
When you strip the GM of this power, you destroy the harmony of the orchestra. You either get rules lawyers, in the case of GM crippling by rules, or you get players going in different directions, in the case of the dispersal of narrative control. My experience with story games is that by empowering all the players with narrative control, they all go in random directions. Instead of everyone focusing on exploring a tower with a unified design, you have people adding elements to the tower. Suddenly, there is a door leading to a sublevel. A dwarf appears who tells you about Timbuktu. You find a Wand of Monkeys. Things go.... awry. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth. The coherent vision of one person is scattered to the wind.
Five people have a hard time making a coherent plot at the table. And five people armed with a 300 page book of rules can quickly destroy one with minutia. And thats why I don't play D&D 3e anymore and thats why I don't play story games. Just to establish some cred, I played several FATE variants off and on for several years and I have read extensively about the indie game scene and what they are doing.
A single powerful GM is the only way to consistently get a game with a coherent story. By story I mean a game that proceeds according to a reasonable sequence of events. If you are going into a tower to find a magic ring, you fight some monsters, you talk to some wizards, and you get the ring and leave; that is a coherent story. If it is a part of a larger campaign of landless warriors wandering around in search of glory, that is also a coherent story.
So when I say that story games require too much of players, it is in this context. The context of having so much narrative control in the hands of players that they can't tell a story together that makes sense. Often the control is in the hands of people who don't want that control and/or don't know how to wield it effectively. Players use their powers in ways that undermine the coherence of the story in favor of their own aggrandizement. They use the power to just do whatever pops into their head, without much constraint at all.
For people who have never played story games, I describe my experience with them as such; imagine if the GM didn't ask you to make checks anymore, you just said what you wanted to do and it happened. It doesn't take someone long to figure out the flaws in that, they just think about all the crazy ideas that their friends have had in the past and how they were thankfully squashed by a well-reasoned GM. Or worse, tell a horror story about the time the GM heard the crazy idea and said... OK.
Now given all this, I am willing to concede that there is a risk to a strong gamemaster. The risk that they will suck at their job. That risk is what drove us to have 300 page rule books, as I mentioned earlier. But I am willing to take that risk because I know that cream rises to the top and over time the bad GMs will be filtered out. But bad players just swirl around in the toilet bowl endlessly. I will take my chances with a GM.
I suppose it is possible to say that this is merely my experience or that I have too much attachment to seeing a coherent story, but I feel that I have provided a convincing argument in my favor. I cede the floor to Gaptooth whom I have great faith will provide me with a strong counter-argument. As I said in the beginning, it is fully my intention to remain as civil and fair as possible.
---
As an aside to James Smith, in the previous post I was promoting the randomness of classic D&D as a hedge against GM prep. That is because I was viewing the game from the perspective of bring in noobs and being able to run a game with minimal prep is important. I expect noobs to benefit from such randomness while competent GMs no longer need it, or need it only as color. The randomness is a kind of training wheels of sorts. I hope this clarifies my position about the role of a classic D&D GM who has some experience with the job. I wasnt trying to peg all OSR games as working a certain way.
No comments:
Post a Comment