[D&D] I quit DMing.

[Rob Alexander]

I'm not sure if this suits as "open-ended play", but it was open-ended from our perspective.  It was certainly open-ended enough to keep the game loose, but not so much that anything felt made-up or chaotic.

Hmmm... so the players all work together to help keep the game details at least borderline consistent? That seems like a good approach, with multiple brains to keep track of it all. Has there ever been an attitude expressed that this should be the GM's responsibility?

Regarding "open-ended", can you think of a time where the PCs struck out in a very unexpected situation in the middle of a session? How did the GM handle it?

[Thenomain]

Hmmm... so the players all work together to help keep the game details at least borderline consistent? That seems like a good approach, with multiple brains to keep track of it all. Has there ever been an attitude expressed that this should be the GM's responsibility?

Not from us, no.  We seem to understand at some level that we're all involved in if not creating the world, then in the playing of the game.  We do leave the GM strictly to the world- and scenario-creation portions, and we simply help by creating characters worth an interesting world and scenarios.

None of this was ever planned, and it wasn't as idyllic as I might be making it sound.  Sometimes our "helping" was interrupting the GM with ideas while he's trying to describe what's going on.  It sure does flood him with feedback, which can be frustraing for him.

If I started over with a different group I would try to encourage this kind of play, even with the drawbacks.  Other members of the group had GMed (Shadowrun, Changeling, Vampire), and we fell into the same mode of play each time.  GM is in charge of the setting, we're in charge of being interesting and helping keep the communal brain.

In-depth (and in-character) logs of parts of one of the campaigns can be found here.  I apologize for the back-to-front format, but I haven't updated anything there for quite a long time and that's how blogs do things.

Regarding "open-ended", can you think of a time where the PCs struck out in a very unexpected situation in the middle of a session? How did the GM handle it?

A few times.  Each time the GM just let us do what we wanted to do, but often made the concequences just as hard as if we had done somethingelse.  I believe he knew the source material so well that a slight turn from a path wasn't usually a problem, though sometimes a tower was only vaguely described and some retcon crept in.  I think the secret was that things that were unknown evolved, with definite input but no solid authority from the players.  Many things were not perfect creations right away.

But to keep this more Actual Play:

We were playing, oh, some moderately low-to-medium-level drow-related module.  In it, near the entrance, there was a room that was meant to be a nasty challenge to the characters, that if they overcame they would get a reward, and he tailored the reward so that we were more likely to try for it.  The trap was that some kind of orb radiated some kind of viscious, gasious stubstance that burned bright and hot when set alight.  After surviving the encounter, and the entire module, we decided to close this entrance to the Underdark.  Making sure that it was perfectly in-character to do this (and much to the GM's chagrin, it was), we conspired to let the gas build up to something resembling a critical mass and light it on fire, turning the entire room into a bomb.  We collapsed the hill in on itself.

To say we laughed about it for a half hour is embarrassingly correct.  To say the GM was frustrated by this plan is also probably correct, but he let us do it, and he let it work.  Did he have further plans for the module, a reoccurring villain perhaps?  We don't know.  We found plenty of villains on our own, though, so it was soon forgotten and only referenced as "The Hill" later, which prompted more delay-of-game snickering.

The title of that log was, "The Men Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Crater".  (Hah!  Film humor.)

...

On another occasion, the GM planned an encounter in dangerous environment (middle of an inland sea, at night) with a shady character, and we decided to do nothing.  It involved risking a confrontation in a place where the nearest land was under a lot of water.  After the session, he laughed about it and told us we missed an opportunity to stop someone smuggling undead.  C'est la vie!

But all in all, the this GM simply would not let himself be shaken by unexpected events, even if it meant we had to take a break while he got his thoughts together, even if it meant not having every detail known immediately.

[Will Grzanich]

Hi Adam,

You talk a lot about what you did during the game. I don't feel you're talking much about how the players reacted to things. I don't know if that means that the players were really passive most of the time and did exactly what was "expected" of them or if you just didn't explain what they did very well.

This is one of the things I've always had trouble with.  In social situations, including gaming, I tend to be very "inward-focused," as it were, more concerned about my own behavior and appearance than about what others are doing or saying.  I'm working on this, but in the meantime, it means that I often don't notice things like that; I'm too busy feeling the spotlight on me.  Know what I mean?

So, basically, the things that stand out in my head:

• The look of surprise on a few of the players' faces when they realized the monastery had "changed management," as it were.
• That same surprise immediately turning into righteous indignation in a couple of those players.
• The bewilderment they seemed to show at Kault's passivity during the showdown.
• More shock -- mostly on the part of one player in particular, Mike -- at the realization that Kault was praying to the elven gods.

I wouldn't say the players were passive at all.  They knew what they wanted to do, and they went and did it.  Which is cool.  But, yeah, the bangs weren't as bangy as I'd have liked. 

-Will

[Will Grzanich]

Hi Rob,

Hmmm... as a GM, you can provide controlled, gradual, exposition of "what's going on". If another player proposes it, it's all revealed at once, up front. Spontaneous player-authored content may also challenge Nik's sense that the game world is 'out there', 'real', and self-consistent. I.e. if you encounter a cave that you placed there he can believe that it was "there all along", or that it at least makes sense in terms of the (abstract) world model that you have in your head. When another player proposes it right there at the table, it's obvious that none of this is the case.

Yeah, true enough.

Is Nik the player who you think is "hardcore Sim"?

Nope.  Although he may be more Sim than anything; it's hard to tell.  We need to try more games and styles before this sort of thing will become really apparent, I think.

-Will

[Will Grzanich]

Man, I can relate to this. I wouldn't use the term "should be run", but I am aware that I've got pretty narrow interests in terms of the kind of rolegames I'm interested in playing or GMing. I think that the style I'm working towards is one one that can be enjoyed by a wide range of players (significantly, many people who are attracted to rolegames in theory but who've been driven off by the playing styles they actually encountered), but until I get good at it I'm worried (I think rightly) that my games will be unsatisfying to everybody.

Mmm.  I'm more thinking of D&D specifically; at that point in my life, I wasn't even aware of the existence of really different RPGs -- all I knew was D&D and games that were close enough to D&D as to not make much difference as far as play-style (GURPS, Vampire, etc.).  Anyway, I'd suffered from a couple of really tightly-wrapped DMs, as far as weird rulings and such go.  So, well, while I might prefer being a player to being a DM, at least when I DM, I get to be the one making weird rulings that seem perfectly appropriate to me. 

-Will

[Will Grzanich]

Hey, Sean,

Quick note to Will -

If you go #3, which it sounds like you are, don't think it's just going to be all 'make it up at the table'. It's less prep in some ways, but you still need to know e.g. who NPCs are, what's between them, what they want. For some games you need to know more than that too.

I recommend DitV as a good transitional game because it tells you more or less exactly what prep you need to do.

Thanks.  Yeah, I know -- the more I think about it, the more I think the problem isn't the prep, it's the lack of structure to the prep.  It's the way everything's just unstated, with respect to what I'm expected to do as preparation.  Maybe by just laying out Sydney's scope guidelines and the like, and getting players to buy into them, the spectre of prep won't loom so high overhead.  Hmm.

Anyway, I own DitV, and am definitely going to run it at some point. 

-Will

[Will Grzanich]

After the discussions in this thread, do you have any plans to try GMing again? As you suggested yourself earlier on, it might be worth trying some games that directly support (or, indeed, require) a more improvisational play style. Even if you don't end up playing any of these regularly, they may be valuable as an occasional practice tools for you. I, for example, am expecting to go back to a more traditional rule system in the longer term, but I'm using TSOY for the moment to help my development in this style.

An alternative would be to try a mini-campaign with an agreed length and scope.
...

Yeah, I'll definitely GM again, although I don't think I'll be DMing a "campaign" in D&D for a while yet.  I'm getting a lot of insights, through introspection and this discussion, and hope to get more through talking with my group...but I feel like I need to keep things scope-limited, as you suggest, for now, to allow me both the freedom to experiment with various techniques, and a "light at the end of the tunnel," as it were, to keep me from getting too overwhelmed.

I'm eagerly reading both Sorcerer and Burning Wheel, and they both look fascinating.  I think Sorcerer in particular looks well-suited to short games.  I should re-read Dogs, too.  Hmm.

I'd also very much like to hear how your players feel about the game you ran and about some of the suggestions raised in this thread. If you're willing to share this, could you break it down by player (who said what)? For example, you mentioned that Nik seems to have some attitudes that conflict with this style of play - I'd be very interested to hear his view on the matter.

Yeah.  I haven't had much of a chance to talk with them yet; we haven't met since that last game, due to scheduling problems.  We should be getting together this weekend, so I'll see if I can't pull together a post-mortem discussion or something.

Thanks, Rob.

-Will

[Rob Alexander]

Kent,

Okay, so it sounds like your GM rolls with the punches. Question is, how much illusionism is involved here? E.g. if the GM has an adventure in mind, does he tend to warp the world so that, whatever you do, you end up pursuing that adventure?

If we want genuinely open-ended, player-driven play, there needs to be some sense in which the players are selecting some options and shutting down others. There needs to be a sense in which the play that happens wouldn't have occurred if the players had chosen otherwise. I'm struggling to put this concept into words, but it seems quite central to the discussion here.

I guess that without asking the GM in question, we can't know what he was doing.

Will, it's possible that this isn't relevant to your problem, but I guess that if you were willing to go heavily illusionist you could just lay down a rigid plot and then twist and turn until the PCs stuck with it.


rob

[Will Grzanich]

Will, it's possible that this isn't relevant to your problem, but I guess that if you were willing to go heavily illusionist you could just lay down a rigid plot and then twist and turn until the PCs stuck with it.

Oh, I totally could.  I'm not willing to, though. 

-Will

[Sydney Freedberg]

Is Nik the player who you think is "hardcore Sim"?

Nope.  Although he may be more Sim than anything; it's hard to tell.  We need to try more games and styles before this sort of thing will become really apparent, I think.

I just want to give a cheer for someone not rushing to impose GNS labels on an individual for once. Yes, those preferences only emerge clearly once the player's been given alternatives and time to try them out.