Remaking a Gamer

[Matt Gwinn]

I've been languishing over how I was going to answer Ron's profile post for nearly a week now.  I looked back on my many years of gaming trying to deside what games were the most fun, and came to wonder whether or not I ever "really" had any fun playing RPGs.  I figure, I must have, otherwise why would I have played for the past 17 years?  Since coming to the Forge I have discovered that I am not having much fun playing RPGs.  the funny things is that I still want to play - A LOT.  I am currently gaming up to 3 times a week for up to 15 hours total.  Why would I subject myself to that if I wasn't having fun?  What I have come to realize is that one of the following has occured:

1)  I did have fun, but have since changed my priorities in regards to what I look for in a game and have yet to find something that truely embodies what I desires as a player/GM.  

2)  I never had fun gaming.  I have only confused the gaming with the social aspect of the gaming process.

or

3)  Ron Edwards and Moose have ruined gaming for me and I can never truly enjoy gaming again.  Sorry guys, but my recent reevaluation of my gaming priorities are largely you fault :-).

So, now I must ask, how have you changed as a gamer since discovering the Forge?  What realizations have you come to in regards to how you play and why?  Do you think you are better or worse off because of it?

,Matt G.

[joshua neff]

I went through a long period where I liked RPGs in theory, I liked the potential & the aesthetics of them, but I wasn't really enjoying playing them, except in patches. The theory stuff I've read on the Forge (& back in the day on Gaming Outpost) has helped me figure out what it is exactly I like about RPGs & what I don't like, what I want to do & what I don't want to do. But for me, theory is useless without practical applications, without tools & techniques to help put theory & idea into practice. I've gotten that here, to the point where I'm enjoying playing RPGs more than I ever have before. And I think I'm now a much better GM. In fact, for the first time in my life I honestly feel like I'm a damn good GM.

I used to think I hated combat in RPGs. Now I realize I don't like "pointless" combat--I like dramatic fight scenes in which conflicts are addressed. And I can't stand tactics & combat that involves lots of modifiers--I like my fight scenes to move quickly, with lots of kickass action.

I'm becoming much more of a scene-framing demon, cutting away when the scene is dragging & starting the scene right before or during the action, avoiding as much as possible the typical (at least for most gaming I've been a part of) "we walk here, we do this, then we walk over here, we do that, then we go over there, we do that one thing..." gaming that just drags for me.

And I'm much better at facilitating the players taking an active autorial & directorial role--in my last session, Colin asked, "Can my character have the next to last scene?" Sure, I told him. He ran into the other room & came back with a CD, which he put in the machine & started playing: James Brown's "Sex Machine". "Okay," Colin said, "Lupe" (his PC) "comes strutting down the hall from the dorm bathroom in a towel, booty-dancing. She goes into her room & disappears into the closet. Clothes come flying out. Finally, she reappears in a nice dress, still dancing." Chris took over, "There's a knock at the door." Colin: "Lupe opens the door." Chris: "Ernie" (Chris' PC) "is standing there, wearing the same Polo shirt & Dockers he usually wears, but looking dressed up. 'Are you ready, Lupe?'" Colin: "'No, Ernie, are you ready?' Then they walk out together." I just sat there & watched. It was a beautiful thing.

So, yeah, I think I'm much, much better off than I was pre-Forge.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I've changed radically as a gamer since coming to (um... that is, creating the forum for) The Forge. I used to not play RPGs, really. I did have a weekly D&D game that I loved, but outside of that, I didn't run or play RPGs. It got worse once I moved to Seattle - I didn't play at all, instead buying and reading them.

I was a bad GM. I know self-mollification is all the rage, but I mean it. I was really, really awful. I ran a one-shot for a group here in Seattle soon after the forums started and one of the people in the group called me, seriously, "the worst GM he'd ever seen." (This guy and I had personal problems - we sort of hated each other - but it still wasn't far off the mark.)

What the Forge has taught me, more than anything else, is how important the system is in running a game, and that it matters not only to the players, but just as importantly, if not more, to the GM.

Tonight, I'm GMing for the first time in a year. (I've been GMing Donjon for the last month and a half, but - it's not really GMing. Seriously.) And I'm excited about it. I have my shit together, so to speak.

The big lesson I've learned, that I don't think gets said enough around here, but is shown in action is: running a game is some work. It's not easy, and RPGs are a lot more than a social activity - you can't just show up and expect things to happen well. I've finally put in the time on this game, and am excited to see how it turns out.

[Bankuei]

The best thing that I've learned as a GM and as a player since coming here:  put it on the players!  I don't mean that the players should do all the work, or that the game flys or falls from them alone, but that there's a lot more freedom players should and need to have.  

If you're playing G,N, or S, players are the players, you're just the facilitator.  Gamists want to play the GAME, Narrativists want to make the Story, and Simulationists want to Simulate.  

I love seeing what happens when players get authorial control.  In most of my games that I've been playing or designing, the focus has shifted from the randomness of the dice, to the randomness of the outcome when the players get control.

I can honestly say that most of my gaming experiences have either been not good, or else I've been GMing.  The not good ones, have been a result of seeing the potential of the character, the potential of the story, and the potential of the game, and hoping for the payoff.  It's just like an abusive relationship, and that Ron nailed on the head.  

The ones I've GM'ed, have had the stories I wanted, but only one or two players taking the active role.   The games have been cool, but not, "Wow!"  Really understanding what I'm going for, cutting away the rest of the fluff, that's given me some wow games.  Instead of being a hack-narrativist, I'm getting a chance to focus on what I wanted: gaming.

Chris

[gentrification]

This is sort of turning into a GMs-anonymous meeting, but what the hell: my name is Mike Gentry and I used to be a shit-ass awful GM. I could tell you stories about this old Mage campaign I used to run in Austin that would make you cringe in disgust. You'd run me out of the village with pitchforks and torches before I was done.

Back then I used to consider myself a "story-focused" GM. What the Forge has helped me do is work out what "story-focused" really means -- where the story actually comes in, who controls it, how that control actually affects the game.

It turns out that I'm not a very narrativist GM, and for the most part I don't want to be. But thanks to ideas I've gleaned from Forge discussions, I'm better at being the kind of GM I want to be, and I'm better at seeing how attention to different kinds of "story" affect my games.

[Laurel]

I came to the Forge when I was emotionally wiped out from all the headaches of being a senior ST for WW's moderated java WoD game.  I'd been investing 30-40 hours a week dealing with it since it opened, and hadn't had time to actually read an RPG front to cover except for reference for the MMORPG much less play one for a year.  I knew I was hating the Storyteller System, but I felt stuck.   I'd surfed the RPG Net forums for a while, but didn't really feel like it was a good place for me personally to talk about gaming.

Then a random post there led me here and I started reading the articles, then the reviews, then the forum.  It took a long time to decipher the jargon... stances, illusionism, but I felt a real affinity for the conversations and admired the way people here could have conversations, even disagreements, without losing respect for the other people involved.  

So I started going from there to reading indie games and working on my own indie games in what spare time I had, and after a couple falls off the wagon have divorced myself from the Storyteller System-- because I knew even before coming here that I hated it personally even if I liked the WoD as a setting.  Coming here helped me identify why it was a bad system for me, and many other people I knew who nevertheless played it almost religiously.

It opened my eyes to what else was out there, and the calibre of what existed.  Not to mention I found a fun group of guys to RP with, even though I've been too sick and too busy to do that and have missed out on Donjon.

[Fabrice G.]

Actually I came to the Forge because I had no player to play at that time.

I allready was searching "something else" in rpg, so much that my players said "with Fabrice you're playing to make a stoty" :)

BUT since I've discovered this site, I'm more aware of me and my players' expectations. I've become more "high standard" in what I expect during play, so dissatisfaction is still here (I allways want to do better and expect more of the players, even when for every one it was a cool evening).

Argh !!...the Forge is turning me into a perfectionist...damn !

Fabrice.

[Emily Care]

I'm becoming much more of a scene-framing demon, cutting away when the scene is dragging & starting the scene right before or during the action, avoiding as much as possible the typical (at least for most gaming I've been a part of) "we walk here, we do this, then we walk over here, we do that, then we go over there, we do that one thing..." gaming that just drags for me.

Reminds me of the change in direction style between the '70's and the '90's in Hollywood.  Exactly the kind of action you're talking about ie walking from the car to the door of the house, standing there ringing the doorbell, wait for someone to come to the door.... which at one time would be shown, is now simply implied.

And hurrah for the "putting it on the player" plugs for shared narrativism in this thread!  Of course it's more fun--for GM's and players--for the authorship to be shared.  Less strain and pressure on the GM, more ability to be creative and more opportunities to engage for the player.  I was lucky enough to start out playing with completely eccentric troupe-style players who encouraged everyone to come up with world, multiple characters, plot etc.  I've been coming back from that low-mechanics, deeply sim playing background, and am appreciating discussions that help discern what mechanics are useful for which aims.  

Most recently, my gaming has been radically improved in the full concesus co-gm'd game I'm in with Vincent and Meguey, by Vincent's suggestions that we incorporate more Narrativist criterion into how we frame our game.  

In order to help each session give us good story, we picked a type of event (a visitor coming to our covenant--it's a formerly Ars Magica campaign) and decided to simply go forward in time and pick up play each time this happened. We've skipped a month or so between most sessions lately, and each session has been engaging, we've had important plot developments and is helping us to figure out what the next long arc of plot (order politics) will look like.  

However, before we started this pattern, we played sessions specifically oriented towards allowing us to get a sense of what our coventant's members (main character and supporting) interactions were as well as their interpersonal dynamics. We all wanted to do this, but at least I required this good simulationist base of experience in play to underly the narrativist plotting we would engage in.


Another thing I value about my gaming group is the flexibility we all have in our openness to trying different ways of doing things.  Co-gming by full concensus can be challenging in that respect: everyone has to be willing to try new approaches and also be supportive of them.  At least we can help eachother implement techniques. Only one of us has to be good at something for all of us to benefit from it.

More power to everyone in finding styles of play they enjoy, and people to indulge with.

--Emily Care

[Paul Czege]

Hey Matt,

Ron Edwards and Moose have ruined gaming for me...

Can I get some recognition here? Haven't I damaged you...at least a little bit?

Seriously though, I've got a question. You're gaming like crazy, sometimes with a more Gamist focus, sometimes Sim, sometimes Nar. Rather than an actual increase in your unhappiness with your gaming, do you think your pain may instead be related to no longer having hope of solving frustration through a "one true game" experience? Don't you have just as much game-related frustration as you always did, except now you know the solution isn't one of unification, but one of focus and selection, and you just really wish the world worked the other way?

Paul

[hardcoremoose]

Hey, I'm being blamed here, so I should chime in.

GNS has made me a worse GM.

Okay, maybe not worse, but I'm having less fun with it.  And it's probably not GNS's fault, but the fact that I'm playing with some very discriminating players (Paul, raise your hand).  That said, I haven't given up.  In the past, my players were happy with what I gave them - which were often railroady, spoon-fed storylines - and there was no need to rock the boat.  My GMing skills are in a transitional period - they're being challenged by all sorts of things, and in the end, I expect I'll be better and have more fun with it.

Now, what GNS has done for me: It's made it possible for me to play games.  I have never, ever, in the 20 years I've been gaming, seen myself as a player.  I always wanted to GM.  But the things I did as a GM - railroad my players, illusionism, whatever you want to call it - were exactly the sorts of things that turned me off of playing (not that there weren't exceptions - Matt ran some very good Mage games a few years back which I absolutely loved, primarily because my character was featured very prominently in nearly every storyline).  Authorial and Directorial power have made it fun for me to just play a game, even games that just a year ago I would have turned my nose up to (frex, Blue Planet, which Matt and I are currently trying out).

Anyway, I apologize if I screwed up gaming for you Matt.  I think there's a falling out period with this GNS stuff, like what I'm experiencing as a GM right now, and eventually the good wil rise to the top.

- Scott

[Paul Czege]

Hey Chris,

It's just like an abusive relationship, and that Ron nailed on the head.

Since I weathered the storm of hate-mail, I might as well take some of the credit:

http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1095

Paul

[Paul Czege]

Moose...good lord!

GNS has made me a worse GM....And it's probably not GNS's fault, but the fact that I'm playing with some very discriminating players...

A championship arm wrestler who takes up shotput is going to experience some transitional pain. He's using different skills and flexing a different set of muscles. He isn't worse. He isn't less of an athlete. He's cross training.

Paul

[Matt Gwinn]

Rather than an actual increase in your unhappiness with your gaming, do you think your pain may instead be related to no longer having hope of solving frustration through a "one true game" experience?  Don't you have just as much game-related frustration as you always did, except now you know the solution isn't one of unification, but one of focus and selection, and you just really wish the world worked the other way?

I don't think that's it, because before I learned about GNS, scene framing, authorial power, director's stance and all that I always had fun gaming.  Or thought I did anyway.  I never "longed" for the perfect game to satisfy my needs; D&D and White Wolf were pretty much keeping me happy.  Now they seem lacking to me.  I think this whole experience has somehow convinced me that the way I played before was not sufficient and that I should long for more.  Well, now I'm longing for more, not seeming to get anywhere and it's too late to turn back.

I always saw myself as a damn good GM and a pretty good player, and no one ever contradicted that.  Now I suddenly find myself languishing in inadequacy as a GM and frustrated as a player.

I think I may be forced to design a game specificly to satisfy my current needs.  Questions is, will anyone else want to play it?

,Matt G

[Robert Leal]

Matt--

Your response--"I think this whole experience has somehow convinced me that the way I played before was not sufficient and that I should long for more. Well, now I'm longing for more, not seeming to get anywhere and it's too late to turn back"--was much like mine.

I found myself looking at the times my gaming had inadvertently met these new expectations and felt that those were my finest moments.  I looked at the new group I'm in (the only gamers I know in the area), which is primarily a gamist/simulationist D&D3E group, and thought that this is so far from where I wanted to be.

Then it hit me, what Ron says over and over again--there's nothing wrong with gamist/simulationist gaming if that's what you want!  Instead of using GNS as a diagnostic, I found myself using it as a "cure."  I went into gaming sessions knowing what to expect and finding it, and because I knew what was going on, more fully understood the expectations and motivations of the GM and my fellow players, I was able to relax and enjoy the gaming experience for what it was.

So, while my inclination, and some of my favorite memories, are narrativist moments, I'm thoroughly enjoying and embracing my gamist experience.

Rob

PS: I'm also biding my time, picking the players who I think would be most open to a different kind of game, and scheming for a way to introduce them to it.

[Mike Holmes]

It occurs to me that there is, in many a gamer, a period upon finding GNS in which they decide they are a "This" or "That" gamer ( I still say that I'm a Simulationist, though often just to be argumentative ;-) ). And then they are dissapointed in play which is not this or that respectively. They also think that they are not as good as others at this or that, or that they haven't truely found the secret nature of this or that.

Then, for some GNS gamers (including myself), after a while they realize that one can enjoy any RPG as long as they don't expect out of it something that it will not provide. And then that gamer finds themself very happy indeed with just about every game they play. Because they realize that they can just have fun going with the flow, and that there is no expectation of miracles; just enjoyment of the game on hand.

This is one of the real advantages of GNS. Oh, we're playing a Gamist D&D romp tonight. Cool! Let's roll some dice and level up! Oh, we're playing Narrativist Sorcerer? Cool! I get to author my characters descent into madness tonight!

Mike