Co-GMing

[JamesDJIII]

Just to put my $0.02 in:

I used to play with a group in which I was the youngest and newest player. All previous RPG experiences were pretty good, but this group took the hobby to new levels for me. They played in a rather shocking manner. They called it, jokingly, "Co-GMing." The concept is not alien to most of you, I'm sure.

Basically, if what the other players said during the game was more entertaining (read: more deadly and possibly comic) than what the GM was thinking, blatant idea theft would occur. Now, the reality of the game world was very consistent, but everything was always bent towards maximizing the player's entertainment. Always.

At first I was a little shocked at this. Even mad. How dare 1 player make such a offense at the GM's carefully crafted world and story! It took me a few games, but when I finally realized how the social contract of the group worked, I swore I'd never play any other way.

It may be that for your players, they are simply not going to come around to making these changes. They can be really scaring for some players. I'll bet you, however, that a couple will eventually realize they are bored with their laziness, and snap out of it. The rest wont, but don't lose sleep over them.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The above post was split from Stupid player tricks, a thread from about a year and a half ago.

James, for future reference, please don't post to older threads. Start a new one with a link back to the old one. Please see the Forge Etiquette sticky at the top of the Site Discussion forum.

No blood, no foul - you're new, so it's no big deal. Don't waste time apologizing; let's just get on with the topic.

As for your point, it's interesting to see yet another generational difference in players. The mode of play that shocked you was the default for most of us in the middle 1980s. When I and my friends ran into "GM narrates all, GM's story is all" role-playing, we tended to kick it in the nuts immediately right there at the table.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Gwinn]

Basically, if what the other players said during the game was more entertaining (read: more deadly and possibly comic) than what the GM was thinking, blatant idea theft would occur. Now, the reality of the game world was very consistent, but everything was always bent towards maximizing the player's entertainment. Always.

I think that illusionist GMing supports this style of play.  I often find my storylines shifting closer to the ideas of my players.  There are a lot of times when I will introduce a problem to the players and they will make the solution far more difficult than I had orginally intended.   In my mind, it's better to change the solution of the problem to the more difficult one than to make the players feel stupid by saying, "All you had to do was _______ ."

When my players are trying to figure out who their enemies/allies are I get all kinds of ideas about who they consider a formidable opponent, who they trust and what NPCs they find compelling enough to even consider.  I'm never opposed to turning a minor NPC into a major one or even reworking the whole plot of the campaign.  On ocassion I will outright ask my players, "What's the most interesting thing that could happen now?" or "What do you think would better progress the story at this point?"

I'm all about letting the players determine the flow and direction of a campaign.

,Matt G.

[Mike Holmes]

As for your point, it's interesting to see yet another generational difference in players. The mode of play that shocked you was the default for most of us in the middle 1980s.

Sez who?

We never played like you did. We went from "GM controls the world, you will play this adventure module as written" mode to, "GM controls world, you will play the GMs plot as he sees it". And everyone I played with including at conventions played the same. Author Stance was abhorred by most players. We would have cried foul if the GM had taken a suggestion from the players. That was all throughout the 80s, and into the nineties.

I think it was your group who was in the minority; though I've no empirical evidence to back this up. I can only point to the fact that competitive play was the norm (and probably still is) and was seen as dysfunctional unless the GM were an impartial arbiter of in-game fact.

It was guys like us who pioneered railraoding (um, I mean Illusionism). WW gets way too much credit. :-)

I feel that you're trying to engender some notion, Ron, that there was some Author Stance revolution going on at the time that somehow got blotted out by WW. That wasn't my experience at all.

In fact, I assumed that James is our age when I read the post, and was shocked to run into flakey WW Narrativists.

James?

Mike

[JamesDJIII]

I was about 22 at the time (this was 1993, or thereabouts, could be off by a year). Most of the players and the GM were about ten years (give or take) older than I.

But that's just it, these guys weren't flakey WWists. We were playing GURPS! Ok, so we _did_ end up playtesting the Vampire book for SJGames, but it was still GURPS. (Everything I had played up until then was AD&D, Twilight 2000, and so forth. But that sortof "system shock" was another story altogether...).

I had never, ever encountered anything like was these people were doing. I was absolutely knocked out of the water by how fun it was.

Not to say I learned my lesson. There are 2 incidents that happened years later that were horrid railroads while I was a GM.

Looking back, I now recognize why the players rebelled (rightfully so) and how I could have taken a different path to a more enjoyable time.

[Valamir]

Yeah, I agree Mike.  My historical gaming experience was all GM driven adventure plot and adventure.  It was very "module" based as you note, but we was all poor and couldn't afford real modules (the only real modules I owned were Keep, G 1-3, and Isle of something (a blue one with Rory Barbarossa and intellegent monkey Phaetons living in the trees above a dinosaur infested jungle).

So basically we wrote our own modules and then ran the group through them exactly like we would a published module.  My Magnum Opus was Dragon Keep where every single room on my quadrille mapped castle / dungeon / and crypt had at least a pages of description.  There was a seperate section of description for "Approaching the Room", "Entering the Room", "Quick Search", and "Thorough Search"...for every room.  I was quite proud of my 215 page "module" written on my Apple IIE with Bankstreet writer thank you very much.

The players job was to roll dice when I told them to...out in the open so they couldn't cheat the little varmits, and get nailed with pit traps when they forgot to mention they were probing with their 10' pole.  Input?  The only input I wanted from those knuckleheads was to give me their correct Thac0 when I asked for it and make sure they had their marching order selected.

That was roleplaying to me in the 80s.  Author Stance...what kind of crazy drama student wannabe would play like that?  ;-)

[Simon W]

In the early 1980's we were heavily into Blakes 7 - so I designed a Blakes 7 RPG. The rules gave Avon (one of the main characters - the leader when Blake wasn't around, which was most of the time) a 'Plot Influence' , which the player could use up to 3 times during an episode. Essentially the player could describe something that he was going to do/had done - it needed only loosely to be related to the plot as designed by the Director (GM) - and then this became either a new part of the plot or even a completely new plotline making the Director revise his scenario ideas. (As he had only 15 minutes before the start of play to design his scenario anyway this wasn't too troublesome).
All the characters had 'Acting' skills - which they were compelled to roll at certain points in a game - for example after the description of the opening scene by the Director, or when Avon had made his 'Influence Plot' speech, or if some of the scenery/props failed/wobbled (yes the props had a 'failure chance'). Failure to Act properly lead to a roll a random line (different for each character and taken from actual lines in the series) and the player had to say that random line - whether it suited what was going on or not. That line then had to be used in some way, by the Director (if appropriate to do so - some lines were simply comments).
The point is that even 20 years ago we were playing the occassional game with rules that we had not 'named' or 'identified' as Narrative or whatever, but the idea was already there.

When I first read the Co-GMing title of this thread, I thought it was going to be specifically about playing a game with 2 GM's. I ran a game with a friend Mark George recently, where half the players (4 players) were a team of superheroes and the other half (5 players) were supervillains. Essentially I GM'd the superheroes and Mark was the 'enemies' own GM and we went into different rooms with our teams.
We used a very simple fast paced game of my own design as some players had not role-played before (and I'm not keen on many of the superhero RPG's out there).
The game was set in Generic City - and there were a number of important locations marked on a simple styalized map - City Hall, Hospital, Airport, Gaol, Armoury and so on. The players chose a location for their base and then the supervillains had to plan bank robberies/evil doings and the heroes had to plan a way of patrolling the city and protecting the people.
Myself and Mark would meet up after each 'turn' to see whether any superhero patrols bumped into any villains and then run the combats with the players involved. (We played them out in front of everyone, just because we felt it was more fun that way).
Anyway, the game went very well and everyone loved the style of game - the sort of vaguely 'competitive' game with the two teams and as one of the GM's I found it great to run. I did however find myself rooting for my 'team' and Mark found himself doing the same with his own 'team'at times even though we were supposed to be impartial. It is strange how this 'competitive' edge comes out in this sort of game, when normally the two GM's concerned are extremely impartial in a normal rpg. Why is that? Table-top wargames often tend to do the same thing.

[Mike Holmes]

Gideon,

I loved Blake's 7. Avon was my favorite character. I've always tried to figure out how to get a character like that as a standard part of a game. Y'know, all duplicitous yet still manages to hang around.

I'm not saying that this stuff was unheard of back in the 80s. Lots of examples abound. I'm just saying that it was the minority of play. Hell, D&D was 90% of play, and 90% of that was bog standard. So I'm guessing that 80% or so of play was all "Actor Stance enforced" "Author Stance when you could get away with it" sort of play.

So it's no surprise that James was unaware of the other 20% and their aberrant perversities. ;-)

James, have you seen Universalis? Might give you an idea as to why Ralph and I are responding to your thread.

Would you be surprised to hear that I still like games played solely in Actor Stance?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'd like to wrench this thread away from all the implications of my phrase "most of us," which I'm happy to amend to "most of the folks I was playing with" and be done with.

James - what would you like to discuss further? As you can see, many of us agree with you wholeheartedly that this mode of play is fun and functional.

Best,
Ron

[JamesDJIII]

I think that as far as finding transcripts I got some solid hits.

I'll try and set up a page or two with all of them once we're done.

BTW, I just want to emphasize I find reading other people's games very fun and educational. I love to see how other people do the actual "thing" with their players. I guess it all goes back to reading the model "This-Is-How-Thoust-Role-Plays" example in the Basic D&D game book. It was like watching a master chef prepare a dinner. "So THAT'S how it's done, eh?"

[arxhon]

Isle of something

Its was X1, Isle of Dread. It was included in the Expert set blue box for D&D.

I originally played module style, but after some exposure to games that didn't have modules like Robotech and Sentinels, i began to move away from the heavily pre-scripted adventure style of play.

The biggest thing that influenced this move was an adventure that i basically scribbled a map for 20 minutes before the usual noon hour session in high school, with a quick mission goal (it was Robotech, BTW). That session was one of the most fun we ever played for years to come.

Later on, i began to incorporate more and more player ideas during the game itself, sometimes just letting them guide me during the session, and rolling with the punches.

Last year we had a couple of sessions of WFRP where not a single die was rolled for the entire 3 hour session. I even commented the first time about that being the very first time ever i had seen a game session go without dice being rolled. The players were mildly shocked, as was I. And these were good sessions, with a great deal of roleplaying and gaming.

I've long ditched the "This is the Campaign. You will do this, and that, and then defeat the evil (whatever) and save the world." set plot that typified earlier gaming. Remember GDQ 1-7? Holy railroading. Epic stuff, but still highly scripted. I've found that the players will sometimes come up with better ideas than i will ever have, and steal them for incorporation in the game. This worked especially well with the conspiracy type game that i was running for WFRP.

[Ben Morgan]

It's funny sometimes to see players who are used to the whole "This is the plot as dictated by the GM, everything else is superfluous" mode get all nervous and agitated when they can't figure out what game elements are important plot things, and what's color.

The way I usually try to run is that almost everything starts out as color. Then whatever things the players get interested in get promoted. Of course, sometimes I have to double-time it to keep ahead of the players. Robin Laws has written a very very short, but very very useful guide to GMing, and the best advice he put in there is a primer on improvising. This, coupled with the practice of stealing descriptions of things from any and every source I can think of (Need a diner? Pulp Fiction. Need an airport? Die Hard II), allows for me to run a game session with a more than adequate cache of color, and any one of those things can turn into a major plot element at a moment's notice.

It sounds weird, but one of my favorite parts of the gaming experience comes not from the game itself, but in between games, when I've managed to get players talking amongst themselves about what they think is going on. I'll go ahead and set up the beginnings of several potential plot elements, without really planning on how they'll resolve. Then I sit back and listen to the players discuss what they think is going on "behind the scenes". Whichever of their theories I like the best, that's what I go with. On one hand, it's quite Illusionist, but on the other, it's the players that are deciding (even if they don't know it) what's going to happen next.

That's why I love Kickers so much, Ron. I used them in the Cyberpunk game I'm running now, and they've been working out fantastic.

-- Ben

[JamesDJIII]

Just a minor update: we've just had our first "in-game" chat session. Without me! It was rather fun to read the 3-person chat of the players trying to resolve their Kickers so that their characters could work together.

Again, I'll post everything. I'm not sure if I'll edit out the OOC items. I think I will leave them is, as it's just as much a part of the game as anything.

Imagine, if you will, an Asian hitman, an opium addled gentleman, and an alcoholic detective seargent of Scotland Yard attmepting to discern the whereabouts of the gentleman's missing nephew. Over wine. Eating "wings" of some kind. All the while they know each other to be demon summoning freaks.

This is gonna be real intersting Saturday night.

[Dr O]

Hello all,

The first session that James mentioned, where the three players met without the GM, was fun but a little awkward (I was one of the three players). I am not used to adding story elements as a player to that extent. I did not feel comfortable adding facts and details at first. However, I did know that I wanted to play in a game that the players were involved in creating.

Is there a point where a player adding 'facts' into the game should be limited? What limits (if any) should the player self-impose to avoid 'breaking the game' or 'spoiling the fun?' (Besides the obvious hurtful comments.)

Thank you,
John

PS This is the first time I have ever posted to any forum, anywhere, so forgive me my errors!

[Mike Holmes]

Hello all,

Hello Doc, and welcome to The Forge.

Is there a point where a player adding 'facts' into the game should be limited?

In a word, no.

That is, there is no point a priori that's better or worse to limit player creation. Some people do interactive storytelling where the only limit is that you are supposed to respect the text of the other players. No GM, just everyone adds to the story as they see fit. Heck, you could even drop that limit if it suited you.

Now, this might not be your cup of tea. That's certainly possible. You may find that there's a point at which you have more fun if there are more limits. I certainly do. And that's all well and good. Play games that limit you appropriately, and/or limit yourself to where ever it's comfortable.

But it's just a preference. No level of limitation is superior to another for all players.

Mike