Good cop, bad cop

[Callan S.]

Recently I had an idea to operate a game at a different level. I thought of almost having two GM's (yeah, nothing new). But in this case one has more limmited powers, defering to the other, and the kicker is, he plays the villain of the piece.

Sort of a GM/villanous PC hybred. What am I trying to adress with this idea? Well, probably the watering down to vibrancy when the GM is forced to wear two hats...that of opposition but also of ally, to the players. Opposition so somthing interesting happens, but also ally so the players can actually investigate and interact successfully with whatever happened.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people have had, for whatever reason, a player play the monsters in a combat once or twice (actually I haven't done it as GM, but I should try it). From what I've heard, players DO NOT run monsters/foes like the GM do. They feel no need for fairness, they as hard as if they were running a PC. The game world goes from one where its casually assumed some benign agency wont allow foes to push hard, to one where the enemy/opposition in no way is connected to them by an 'ally' hat. Also, these enemies are as unpredictable as you'd expect in real life, as they don't have all the workload the GM has on their mind to handle. They just live their aversarial role, just as the PC's live their role. Quite a bit more life there.

Anyway, I was thinking a co-GM post that is filled by a player playing the main villains position. How much GM power he can wield is unsure, it's mostly up to the other GM who now just wears the 'unbiased ally' hat now. And by ally I mostly just mean that he helps them interact with the world and he inserts some clues and things to help them get tucked in.

However, the villanous PC's goals are a bit funny. In character his goals are to win. But as a player he'll have to eventually accept that his character will either end up dead, forably retired or converted to good. He might win some battles in between, but eventually his time must come. It's a sort of destiny good PC's don't have to carry around automatically, but the player of the villain PC would. Bit of a distraction to his playing the role, in a way.

Anyway, the last strong point I see of this is in terms of playing role. Players will try to get in role, but when what their PC lives with in that world is a GM handling several roles, their going to meet NPC's who are less alive than they should be, IMO. I also think this makes them inclines to be less alive in their role themselves.

However, when the foe they face is full of life and the GM has reduced his responsibilities so he can enliven NPC's more, it's bound to be a richer world. And that'll reflect in the players enactment of their role.

So, what glitches and problems do you see here?

[Mike Holmes]

First, what you're describing is obviously Gamist. All bets are off on the following if you think that what you're talking about is not meant to be Gamist.

Anyway, I was thinking a co-GM post that is filled by a player playing the main villains position. How much GM power he can wield is unsure, it's mostly up to the other GM who now just wears the 'unbiased ally' hat now. And by ally I mostly just mean that he helps them interact with the world and he inserts some clues and things to help them get tucked in.

Facilitator makes a good term for the non-villain GM, IMO.

However, the villanous PC's goals are a bit funny. In character his goals are to win. But as a player he'll have to eventually accept that his character will either end up dead, forably retired or converted to good. He might win some battles in between, but eventually his time must come. It's a sort of destiny good PC's don't have to carry around automatically, but the player of the villain PC would. Bit of a distraction to his playing the role, in a way.

When you play a wargame like, say, Europa, you don't play the Germans to win for the most part. You play to "do better than historical". One can win theoretically as the Germans, but it's stacked against you so much that what you really can only hope for is that you last longer than the real world Germans did. The idea being that, if the game is a good simulation, that equal players would end up with something very much like the historical result.

So what the villain-GM has as a challenge is to try and do worse to the PCs than would happen on average. Make the PCs use more resources than they should have, or even eliminate some. If he can do that, he can say that he's won the challenge as presented.

However, when the foe they face is full of life and the GM has reduced his responsibilities so he can enliven NPC's more, it's bound to be a richer world. And that'll reflect in the players enactment of their role.

One potential problem with allowing the GM to play some NPCs and the Villain-GM others is that as soon as the Villain-GM plays a character we know that this character is a villain. In fact, unless you allow that player to play all of the NPCs, you'll have players afraid of all NPCs played by the villain (even if he's allowed to play "decoy" NPCs). If you allow the player to run all NPCs, then that leaves little for the Ref-GM, and means that the NPCs that aren't set up to be inimical to the PCs may be played "incorrectly" by the Villain-GM for profit. In which case, what happens?

If you only allow the Villain-GM to play the Villain NPCs when they reveal themselves as such, then that leaves the Villain-GM with potentially long stretches of nothing to do. What other powers were you thinking for that player? How would they be limited?

Mike

[Michael S. Miller]

First, what you're describing is obviously Gamist. All bets are off on the following if you think that what you're talking about is not meant to be Gamist.

Hi, Mike. Just for clarification's sake, you're saying that Noon's particular reasons for assigning the main villian to a single player (i.e., to make that villian more challenging) are Gamist, not that the technique of assigning a main villian to a single player is essentially Gamist, right?

I have been toying with this very idea in my narrativist superhero game-under-construction, where one player might take on the role of supervillian. It allows stories to develop in a way that more closely resembles the source material (and makes cut scenes a necessity rather than an add-on) as well as highlighting the contrast of hero and villian. With one player for each, it's easier, IMHO, to compare and contrast the motives and methods that each employs.

One potential problem with allowing the GM to play some NPCs and the Villain-GM others is that as soon as the Villain-GM plays a character we know that this character is a villain.

This only really applies if the players are encouraged into Actor Stance all the time, doesn't it? Otherwise, the element of surprise is not a factor.

[MachMoth]

I had a small group that did just this, and it was rather successful.  The players felt that the GM at the time may have been a little "bias."  So, they decided to have a single player run most of the baddies and all of the major villains.  Funny thing:

problem 1 - If the Co-GM plays just villains, he has periods of inactivity, and the villains are obvious.
problem 2 - If the Co-GM plays all NPC's, the GM has little to do.

In practice, these two problems cancelled each other out quite nicely.  The Co-GM would play every major baddie, though GM#1 would assume a few minor enemies in a full fledged battle.  In a pure NPC roleplay scene, both GM's would play different NPC's.  While it seemed random at first, different GM's began adopting favored characters.

If the two GM's had a good deal of synergy, we ended up with very vibrant and active sessions.  While, technically, GM#1 was in charge of the general story, GM#2 always had input, and it made for a much more solid adventure.

[Callan S.]

First, what you're describing is obviously Gamist. All bets are off on the following if you think that what you're talking about is not meant to be Gamist.

You know, I thought that as well at first. But unless I'm wrong, gamist suggests fairness. The evil GM isn't supposed to be fair, just in role and working within whatever system the group uses to be fair in play. Well, for the evil GM as a player, its pretty gamist I suppose.

Anyway, I was thinking a co-GM post that is filled by a player playing the main villains position. How much GM power he can wield is unsure, it's mostly up to the other GM who now just wears the 'unbiased ally' hat now. And by ally I mostly just mean that he helps them interact with the world and he inserts some clues and things to help them get tucked in.

Facilitator makes a good term for the non-villain GM, IMO.

Dead on, that one! :)

However, the villanous PC's goals are a bit funny. In character his goals are to win. But as a player he'll have to eventually accept that his character will either end up dead, forably retired or converted to good. He might win some battles in between, but eventually his time must come. It's a sort of destiny good PC's don't have to carry around automatically, but the player of the villain PC would. Bit of a distraction to his playing the role, in a way.

When you play a wargame like, say, Europa, you don't play the Germans to win for the most part. You play to "do better than historical". One can win theoretically as the Germans, but it's stacked against you so much that what you really can only hope for is that you last longer than the real world Germans did. The idea being that, if the game is a good simulation, that equal players would end up with something very much like the historical result.

So what the villain-GM has as a challenge is to try and do worse to the PCs than would happen on average. Make the PCs use more resources than they should have, or even eliminate some. If he can do that, he can say that he's won the challenge as presented.

Yeah, somthing like that, so the evil GM knows what he's working toward and doesn't go over the top or do nothing much.

However, when the foe they face is full of life and the GM has reduced his responsibilities so he can enliven NPC's more, it's bound to be a richer world. And that'll reflect in the players enactment of their role.

One potential problem with allowing the GM to play some NPCs and the Villain-GM others is that as soon as the Villain-GM plays a character we know that this character is a villain. In fact, unless you allow that player to play all of the NPCs, you'll have players afraid of all NPCs played by the villain (even if he's allowed to play "decoy" NPCs). If you allow the player to run all NPCs, then that leaves little for the Ref-GM, and means that the NPCs that aren't set up to be inimical to the PCs may be played "incorrectly" by the Villain-GM for profit. In which case, what happens?

At the time of writing, I thought that would be a prob. But I've just had an intersting idea...you never meet only one NPC. You meet bob and joe (and perhaps frank and dee, etc, etc)...the facilitator plays one, the evil GM the other. What, the players will just trust the facilitator NPCS? Hah, just have some system where the NPC's with the important info are played randomly (it could be either GM) and they'll never know! Occasionally the facilitator might have to have a word with the evil GM, if he's holding back to much info...but apart from that it should be okay.

If you only allow the Villain-GM to play the Villain NPCs when they reveal themselves as such, then that leaves the Villain-GM with potentially long stretches of nothing to do. What other powers were you thinking for that player? How would they be limited?

Mike

I think this multiple NPC encounter idea should help with that. IN FACT, imagine meeting NPC's who can talk to each other without the usual problem where single GM's look insane! :)

[Mike Holmes]

I think we're getting somewhere.

One thing we have to establish. It's OK for players and GMs in RPGs to compete. Competition is Gamist (though there are other forms as well). So what I'm envisioning here is a GM (Ref) with all the normal GM powers, players with the normal player powers, and another player who plays the part of NPCs including competing with the other players when appropriate. As long as this Villain-GM doesn't have any powers that a player normally wouldn't have, the playing field is level.

Is that what you're envisioning. One of the sticking point is that this position as I've described it might better be called a player. Villain-player? Because he doesn't have any more Directorial Authority than any other player. You haven't stated yet if that would be the case or not. Can the Villain-GM say, for instance that it's raining out? Can he create more NPCs? If so, then you have to look at how to limit these things, or you're just sharing the normal GMing duties.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Anyhow, I assumed that there would be "many" NPCs. My point was that when played by the Villain-GM that they'd become obviously inimical. I sorta like your idea, but it still falls into a potential trap. That is, if the Villain-GM is competing with the players, and can control NPCs at random in order to make the question of which are inimical hard to detect, he can take a character that's not supposed to be inimical and make them act inimically. That is, if he's actually competing, then what's stopping him from having every NPC encountered stab the players in the back?

What might work (and maybe this is what you're thinking) is that the Villain -GM is only allowed to compete under certain circumstances. Like combat, for instance, or general conflict resolution. In that case, the Villain-GM can only declare a conflict with the approval of the GM who can therefore keep him in line. Once the conflict has been declared, however, the Villain-GM has free reign to do whatever he likes within the bounds of his control of the characters in order to win.

Is that what you're thinking of?

Mike

[Callan S.]

I think we're getting somewhere.

One thing we have to establish. It's OK for players and GMs in RPGs to compete. Competition is Gamist (though there are other forms as well). So what I'm envisioning here is a GM (Ref) with all the normal GM powers, players with the normal player powers, and another player who plays the part of NPCs including competing with the other players when appropriate. As long as this Villain-GM doesn't have any powers that a player normally wouldn't have, the playing field is level.

Well, there is some fuzzyness. Like the old 'I'll meet you by the fountain' players might say, when the GM hasn't established there is a fountain. It also occurs to me that villains ususally need to have more resources than PC's do. EG, the PC's don't own a dungeon!

I think the facilitator would have to outline the villain GM's resources, but with a +/-10% condition, to allow for some flexibility.

Is that what you're envisioning. One of the sticking point is that this position as I've described it might better be called a player. Villain-player? Because he doesn't have any more Directorial Authority than any other player. You haven't stated yet if that would be the case or not. Can the Villain-GM say, for instance that it's raining out? Can he create more NPCs? If so, then you have to look at how to limit these things, or you're just sharing the normal GMing duties.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, I do. Although running NPC's and deciding what villainy is happening and playing monsters are strongly associated with a normal GM. But yeah, he is mostly just a player.

But, unless you want this player to plot out every resource, he'll have to have some of the latitude of a GM (watched over by the facilitator). Stuff like ploting out every guard route is a chore. Rough designations and facilitator monitored finalisations would be better, IMO.

Anyhow, I assumed that there would be "many" NPCs. My point was that when played by the Villain-GM that they'd become obviously inimical. I sorta like your idea, but it still falls into a potential trap. That is, if the Villain-GM is competing with the players, and can control NPCs at random in order to make the question of which are inimical hard to detect, he can take a character that's not supposed to be inimical and make them act inimically. That is, if he's actually competing, then what's stopping him from having every NPC encountered stab the players in the back?

Sort of like a matrix agent? Sorry, that just flashed in my mind and made me smile! :)

Good point. How about making it clear its a different role and not one to be played in competition (social contract like). And THEN using fire/competition to fight fire. The facilitator, after the end of the session, judges how authentic the NPC roles were played and gives the villain PC a small amount of XP based on that. So he's socially obliged to not play them in competition and he's also bribed not to do so as well. You'll still get some venom seeping in where it shouldn't, but if the games set in a gritty world, that might be perfect! :)

What might work (and maybe this is what you're thinking) is that the Villain -GM is only allowed to compete under certain circumstances. Like combat, for instance, or general conflict resolution. In that case, the Villain-GM can only declare a conflict with the approval of the GM who can therefore keep him in line. Once the conflict has been declared, however, the Villain-GM has free reign to do whatever he likes within the bounds of his control of the characters in order to win.

Is that what you're thinking of?

Mike

Yes. Controlling friendly NPC's is basically there to give him somthing to do (it also adds more to the game, but that's another point). So as I said, he'd need to be socially obliged not to play them visciously. Bribing him with XP also helps, because if he plays the NPC's friendly rather than hostile, his PC becomes a bit more powerful, which is probably more important to him than a cheap back stab (if he also cares about social contract).

PS: Please excuse me doing the whole insert answer into quote thing. Old habit! :)

[The Benj]

This is an idea that's been around for a while. Specifically, it's in the GURPS Basic Set.

It's an interesting concept to say the least.

A friend of mine, Nathan, was asked to be the Adversary for a game his friend was running. Apart from plotting evil schemes, Nathan has nothing to do with the game. He doesn't go to the sessions or anything. The GM just tells him what's been going on and he plots accordingly.
When they meet the villain, Nathan will be asked to show up.

[Andrew Norris]

Hello, all.

In the online games we run using Neverwinter Nights, we invariably play with multiple GMs. It's hard to know exactly how much the anonymizing factor of online play makes it look as if we're one supercompetent 'hive-mind' GM, but I think in practice it's probably easy enough for players to tell us apart by our 'speech' patterns, even in character. Nevertheless, the fact that the players don't ever see us OOC probably makes a difference.

I can definately vouch for the fact that in this kind of situation, Adversary co-GMs are often inspired by the Gamist elements of the game, even when the game itself isn't played that way. (In practice this leads to Sim/Nar games with either exploration of character or the premise 'how are you changed by adversity?' that go Gamist when the big battles of the night come to the fore.) We've been fortunate in finding players that are happy to bounce back and forth between modes, and I think the fact that this is a computer-game venue helps the transition.

Having multiple GMs really shines in dialogue scenes, though, not just because it allows NPCs to talk to each other, but because at times we'll even allow multiple threads of conversations to be going on at once. (It seems like it'd be very confusing, but in practice it works well, as those standing close to a conversation will only hear it, while those 'standing aloof' can eavesdrop on several conversations.)

We found that with three or even four GMs (something I doubt you'd see often if at all in face-to-face games) people naturally fell into different roles based on their interests. One would become the main Adversary, handling tactical planning of the enemies, another would focus on portraying a few key characters in depth, still another might prefer to shadow the party and keep the rest appraised of trouble spots, etc. Again, I'm not sure how this relates fully to face to face games, but I've found it to be an interesting dynamic.

[Emily Care]

We found that with three or even four GMs (something I doubt you'd see often if at all in face-to-face games) people naturally fell into different roles based on their interests. One would become the main Adversary, handling tactical planning of the enemies, another would focus on portraying a few key characters in depth, still another might prefer to shadow the party and keep the rest appraised of trouble spots, etc. Again, I'm not sure how this relates fully to face to face games, but I've found it to be an interesting dynamic.

It seems like that would be a natural division of labor. No reason not to do it in person, except perhaps for scale.  In person gaming groups are probably much smaller than on-line, so one person can fill all those roles, and as MacMoth pointed out, duplication of gms could end up leaving too little for each to do. Most all mushes and muds have to have multiple staff to do site maintenance and keep an eye on all the various players.  Now that I think of it, it's probably common as dirt to have multiple gms.

So why not in face-to-face? Probably for a lot of the same reasons that concerns were voiced in this thread about the second gm hosing the players etc. Traditionally, the gm is given so much narrative power or credibility etc. that having more than one would seem to be double-teaming the players. Stepping out of those assumptions, we can get to the kind of competition I think Mike's talking about: sporting and healthy.

Regards,
Em

Marry this thread to John Kim's thread here, add in the simple fact that the idea of gm/player division is arbitrary, and I'm a happy gamer.