Theory at my Table

[Judd]

This post isn't about one night, it is about 4 years, my past four years with the Forge and its games and the game tables I have played at with Theory as my co-pilot.

I only understand the real basics of theory, the parts where we understand that its people who rules are aimed at, not fictional creations and character sheets.  But damn...that's a huge revelation and it has turned me from a talented young GM who has greats nights that rock worlds, good nights and dismal, dismal slow nights.  Before understanding theory at all I didn't know why these bad nights happened.  I didn't understand that I was afraid to push a conflict because I wasn't going to like where the rules took me.

I wasn't sure of the exact moment during character generation when a play jumped the tracks and started trying to manipulate me, the party and the game.

But my great games were so damned great that I was willing to chance it, my homeruns were hit with the combined power of everyone at the table and I knew that was a great thing but I wasn't sure how to harness it, how to get the power behind every swing.

The truth is, games that aid my style of play, lets call them Forge-baked, and the theory that guides my play of them hasn't changed my frequency of homeruns but it has increased the overall batting average.  I hit way more doubles and triples and when I say *I*, I mean *we* but in that way that the GM seems like a magician pulling rabbits out of his hat and taking silver dollars from behind his players' ears when everyone should know the players manufactured the cute li' rabbit and their ears are producing the silver dollars, all shiny and pretty.

I was lucky to have Dust Devils as my first Forge-baked game.  Dust Devils showed me how to let go as a GM.  It showed me that when I let go the game begins to really fly.  It showed me that the burden isn't all mine.  I was blessed to have it as a first.

Sorcerer showed me how to get players' input for the game, what to have as prep going into the game.  I used bangs and kickers but I didn't have names for them and didn't understand what they were.  It was like using salt and pepper but not know what the fuck salt and pepper were, only that they were in these rocks I passed over my stew (man, the shitty metaphors are FLOWing).

The Riddle of Steel and Burning Wheel showed me how rules effect setting and how the character sheet should have everything the GM needs to create the adventure, which should have the elements that are important to the player.  Of course Sorcerer and Dust Devils had this too in their own ways but I was still reeling from my lessons learned from them.

Dogs in the Vineyard showed me that I can trust the dice, that they were my friend, that they can aid the story instead of hinder it.  It changed the way I look at my dice bag.

Burning Wheel Revised taught me all of the lessons of TRoS and BW but better and through circles it showed again the power of player-created collaborative setting creation.  I should have put my pen down when creating Sorcerer-setting after Sorcerer-setting and turned to my players but in my pride, I didn't.  It took BWR to show me that I had to, like in Dust Devils, get out of the way every so often and make shit up with them to get at the best setting.  Less is more.  How can I inspired them with the least words possible?

And lately Primetime Adventures showed me that players need to enjoy one another or this all doesn't mean shit.  Good groups are creative and fun.  Great groups are creative and fun and enjoy each other.

So, the theory GNS and Theory boards are gone and so theory will remain where it always has been, right here in our AP threads.  To make a corny comparison, theory's like that painting/poem about God and the footprints. 

[Michael S. Miller]

Amen, brother!

[insert boistorous cheering and fist-pumping!]

[jmac]

I'm bursting with envy :)

I spend hours and days and weeks trying to convince my rpg-friends to accept some "changes". It's like fighting a mother protecting her children.

I needed this kind of post to keep my morale high, Thank you :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Judd,

Give me two examples, prefereably pretty different from one another. Context of play, rules used, people involved, fictional events. Actual play, man, not this vague-ass generalizing.

Best,
Ron

[Joe J Prince]

To make a corny comparison, theory's like that painting/poem about God and the footprints.

Is that the one where god says -
"Yeah at that point I kicked you up the arse so hard! You flew. How I laughed. It's good to be omnipotent."  :)

[MetalBard]

Burning Wheel Revised taught me all of the lessons of TRoS and BW but better and through circles it showed again the power of player-created collaborative setting creation.

This was the part of BW that pushed me over the edge into player-collaborative narrative goodness.  One night, while running Burning Wheel, the players, through two separate Circles tests, created both their villain and their ally/patsy for the ensuing "plot."  When they were clamoring for Lord Whitestone's (villain) effete and helpless anger and Pip's (patsy) cockney accent as I roleplayed their creations, I realized that this sort of input can really drive a good game consistently and enjoyably.

Since then, gaming's been even more fun, consistently.

[Judd]

I was lucky to have Dust Devils as my first Forge-baked game.  Dust Devils showed me how to let go as a GM.  It showed me that when I let go the game begins to really fly.  It showed me that the burden isn't all mine.  I was blessed to have it as a first.

Just before I played Dust Devils for the first time, a few months before Matt e-mailed me when I went-a-lookin' for a western RPG on the wild prairies of RPG.net, I ran a big game, co-GMed with a friend of mine.  We split the party up into two groups and ran this ridiculously big adventure using D&D 3.0.  It had a bunch of problems but most of all was that whenever my co-GM and I were in the same room, I'd step on his scenes.  I'd get this gitchy feeling that he was letting things go for too long despite the other players digging it.

I'd cut it short.

I couldn't let go of the control, just couldn't do it.

I remember reading Dust Devils over and over in shock that I was going to let go so much.  It was the way I planned adventures, with a situation and nothing else but this time it would work, wouldn't it?  And it did.  The times I have run Dust Devils it has worked and worked really well.  I think those kinds of games tend to work best with either bare-naked newbies who don't know that other games don't have shared narration and with veteran GM's who play who love getting that kind of input at the table, in between that can be troublesome.

I also have this memory of making up Dust Devils characters and my girlfriend, Janaki, who had not yet gamed with me, was in the next room doing schoolwork.  After the game she commented that she liked what she heard, that she could tell what the characters were like by the descriptions on the sheets.

I love what is on those character sheets, what is on most RPG's I dig's character sheets, that is, what you need to know to make a great story happen.

Sorcerer showed me how to get players' input for the game, what to have as prep going into the game. 

Robert played in the Dictionary of Mu campaign once the text was coherent enough to really be called something tangible.  He was playing this wonderful character and he loved to go on and on about him in post and pre-game fiction, just three or four paragraphs.

After a session it was obviously time for a new round of kickers, the last ones were played out.  Rob's was lukewarm but we left after a long session thinking that he would e-mail me later and sharpen it up.  Instead, he emailed me this fiction about his character in the world.  Paragraph one was the kicker.  It would mean everything after taht would have to be made moot and left to in-game fate but he was more than willing.

Kickers take frustrated player fiction and give them breath and life at the table. 

Burning Wheel Revised taught me all of the lessons of TRoS and BW but better and through circles it showed again the power of player-created collaborative setting creation.

A few months ago, I was playing Burning Wheel with my buddies, one of whom is Aaron, who pretty much walked out of his home game of D&D second edition into a Riddle of Steel game and then into my Dogs in the Vineyard game and now Burning Wheel Revised.  Needless to say his head is spinning and in a good way.  He's pumped to play.

he had e-mailed us during the brainstorming about his character phase and mentioned something about the knighthood that served his character's brother, The Order of the Gray Feather.

So, an NPC got created through play, just a mysterious assassin who was made whole-cloth via a Circles roll during a series of Burning Wheel one-shots.  The assassin was from a secret Order of the Black Feather, unknown to most.

Aaron was in shock taht I took something he mentioned off-hand in an e-mail and ran with it, incorporated it, that we were in fact building this world, brick-by-brick, piece-by-piece together.

Circles rolls just breed that shit, begs for it.  It allows players to bring in controlled bits of imaginative stuff to the table and no matter which way the dice tumble, good story is had.

[Arpie]

Well, I agree with your sentiments, but I got that release from West End Games' old Paranoia and, of course, Teenagers from Outer Space by R. Talsorian (way back in the 80s.)

Paranoia specifically encourages you to "create the illusion of fairness" which I think is the fore runner of concepts like tuning rules to reflect perceptions rather than physics. (Sigh.) Specifically: Primetime Adventures uses a fluctuating value for screen presence, giving one player the "feel" of being focused on. Specifically: Unknown Armies gives you benefits for your passions (as alternatives to alignments, etc., when trying to motivate players.)

R. Talsorian fed its scenarios to you as TV Guide blurbs and measured injuries in terms of embarrassment levels. It gave storybuilding advice based on frustration and situation comedies.
("Frustration is funny" It said. I beleived it.) It suggested that you write out events on little cards and make up excuses to spring them on players. That works. It's taken to it's next level by Capes, I think, which has you write out specific events on little cards and assign scores to them, then has players fill in the roles which need playing. The story flows along from event to event.
In the game we played, we told a revised version of the invasion of galacticus using a gingerbread man, a guy whose only power was a big magnet and this really powerful little raccoon. We traded off characters a lot whenever we had a funny or keen idea for one player. We all had fun. We're going to do it again.

So, yeah. Letting go - as in not, for instance, running the entire game from a map with numbered and pre-planned encounters on it, gives you a lot more options to fit the game to the players.

[Judd]

So, yeah. Letting go - as in not, for instance, running the entire game from a map with numbered and pre-planned encounters on it, gives you a lot more options to fit the game to the players.

Oh no, it is more than that.

I knew that lesson when I was 14 years old.  I was pretty damned good then.

But even through my 20's when I was really putting in my time with the GM's Heavy Bag, pounding away on a year and a half long Ars Magica game or the year long Deadlands campaign, I still didn't realize that the magic in those games happened when I let go and followed the player's lead but still was a strong leader.

I'm not even talking about not running modules, I'm talking about coming to grips with the very real fact that games rock harder when everyone at the table gives something to the session and shapes it.

I'd have these astounding successful sessions followed by these dreadful, dead, sargasso sea sessions and I wouldn't be able to figure out why, didn't realize that it was about leading but letting go.  That took a long time to figure out and it was Dust Devils that did it.

[Mike Holmes]

"Well, but my players add to the game through their characters!"

...is what a common response to this is. Judd, for Forge folks this rhetoric might work. But to convey what you mean you have to include what you mean specifically by

let go and followed the player's lead but still was a strong leader.

Heck, that sounds like the Impossible Thing as stated.

What you mean to say is that you gave up being the one to have sole control of NPCs, setting, plot, secrets, everything. Right? Like Ron says, give specific examples.

I'll give one. In my HQ IRC game, we've recently broached the topic of heroquests (it's only taken 60 sessions to get to it!), and what I've told the players is that they should create the myths that they need including what they want to get from the myths. This is somewhat akin to a DM telling his D&D players to design the module themselves. Well in other ways not at all like that. But the point is that I'm sharing with them elements of preparation that are traditionally the GMs.

As for the "leadership" issue, I'm not simply abandoning the players to do this, I'll be working with them as "community standards editor" (doing things like canon monitoring), and adding my own ideas in as an equal participant in the design process.

So, Judd, give an example of your first trepidation in Dust Devils in giving up control of...what?

Mike

[Judd]

So, Judd, give an example of your first trepidation in Dust Devils in giving up control of...what?

Mike

The game's direction, the narration rights, the way scenes play out, the way conflicts are resolved, all of the stuff you hand over when someone else has the high card in Dust Devils.

Does that make sense?

[Mike Holmes]

Well, yeah. Still a bit vague. I was hoping for a "In one session Player A lost the conflict, but had high card, and narrated..."

Mike

[Judd]

Well, yeah. Still a bit vague. I was hoping for a "In one session Player A lost the conflict, but had high card, and narrated..."

Mike

Hell yeah, my bad.

This was a conflict in a game when I had already internalized the letting go but it really drove it home for me.

There was a vicious gunfight and Robert's character lost the conflict brutally.  It was his narration and he described how he smiled just a bit before he drew his gun and just narrated this really beautiful moment of calm before the bullets flew.  And I know that I would have never, in a thousand years, narrated it quite like that and captured that kind of moment.

I think that was the final bit that drove home the value of shared narration and the value of everyone's input, rather than the GM tricking his holy writ from behind the screen..

[Arpie]

But even through my 20's when I was really putting in my time with the GM's Heavy Bag, pounding away on a year and a half long Ars Magica game or the year long Deadlands campaign, I still didn't realize that the magic in those games happened when I let go and followed the player's lead but still was a strong leader.

I'm not even talking about not running modules, I'm talking about coming to grips with the very real fact that games rock harder when everyone at the table gives something to the session and shapes it.

Oh, ah... see, I've never really been a good GM or a strong leader.

But, yeah, I've pretty much been letting go like that since high school. Most of the games I play are pretty fun, but, like I say, not because I'm a great GM. I just have go-with-the-flow kinda friends, I guess.