GM Technique and Teaching

[clehrich]

As some of you know, I teach in college classrooms, usually small seminars.  And the more I think about classic problems that arise in teaching, the more I think that a really expert GM has a lot to teach the college teacher.  {Note: by "expert" I mean a GM who has a mastery of a wide range of techniques by which to accomplish various GM-ing goals.}  So I want to ask you all, most of whom know far more about GM technique than I do, to help me out.

First a couple caveats:
1. I'm not in any way suggesting that my classroom experience is going to help you be a good GM.  I suppose that's possible, though I doubt it, but I'm interested in doing things the other way around here.
2. I'm not talking about secondary school (K-12) teaching, about which I know next to nothing.  If you want to draw from experience there, or comment on that, please be clear that that's what you're talking about: there are real differences of style, technique, purpose, and situation that I think change matters considerably.
3. Lecturing is a whole different thing, and works differently, and I think the analogy does not work: lectures are not railroading, they're something else entirely.

So as a starting point, what's similar here?  That is, why do I think the analogy valid?
1. In a college classroom, you can pretty much ignore the students who don't want to be there and can't be bothered to do the work.  You just fail them and leave it at that.  Among other things, this keeps your GPA down, which pleases administrators, and allows you to give a bit higher grades to the majority who actually do care about the class.  [Note that this is very different from the situation in most K-12 teaching, in which it's a nightmare process to fail a student, usually not worth the trouble -- one of many insane problems facing the K-12 teacher.]  Similarly, in an RPG, a GM doesn't (or shouldn't) spend all his time agonizing about the wanker who shows up an hour late, eats all the pizza, leaves an hour early, and spends the whole game reading a book and not paying attention.  If you are stuck with a player like this, you try as much as possible not to let him be a distraction to the people who matter; better yet, you chuck him (i.e. give him an F) and then you don't have to deal with him again.

2. Students often think, or act like they think, that they want the prof to provide all the information and content.  They want to be taught; they don't want to listen to each other.  This makes them tend to be rather passive.  But a really effective class is usually marked by student participation to a great extent.  It's guided discussion, not lecture.  The great trick of the seminar teacher is to get the students to do all the thinking and work, within certain constraints, given that the students do not "naturally" act this way as a rule.  The analogy to RPG's is, I think, obvious.  The GM can't do everything himself; he must get everyone else to participate.  And in a really great game session, the GM often increasingly recedes into the background, as more and more creative control shifts to the players, who act and dominate the game.  This is the whole "How can I get my players to be more proactive?" question.

3. Seminars usually have some point.  That is, on a class-by-class, week-by-week, or block-by-block (quarter or third of a semester, for example) basis, you need to get the students to a given point in their learning.  If you're teaching the history of early modern witch-hunts, for example, you don't want everyone simply to rant about their personal feelings about witch-hunting; they need to be guided to put their enthusiasm and interest to the service of learning something, and in particular to analyze specific materials.  In terms of RPG's, this is not necessarily the case, but often is.  If you have a very rough storyline, as in "PC's search for and find object," you need to ensure that they do indeed find the object.  You don't really care what they do with it, and you don't really care how they get there, but you can subtly manipulate things such that they do indeed find the object and feel that they have accomplished something – which they have.  So it's this kind of GM-ing I'm talking about: the kind in which you do have goals in mind, but you try not to turn things into a force or a railroad.  Which I see as a particularly tricky type of GM technique, though I don't know that you'll all agree.

4. As a rule, if you have a really great seminar in which the students do a huge amount of the creative and analytical work, as well as most of the talking, and they end up learning a lot actively through the process, they will turn right around and say that the teacher was entirely responsible.  They will actually thank you for the experience!  This is also true of RPG's, to some extent: if the GM says almost nothing and all the players create and contribute constantly, and a great time is thus had by all, they will often lodge the full responsibility with the GM: "He's a great GM!" they say, even though they did most of the work to make the game great.

Okay, having set up the analogy, let me ask my questions:

1. If you were going to teach someone how to ignore and play down the effects of a pain-in-the-butt player, one you can't at the moment simply get rid of, without letting that person screw up everyone else's game, how might you do it?

2. If you were going to teach someone how to get players to be more proactive, how would you do it?

3. If you were going to teach someone how to guide players to specific goals without undermining their desire to create and contribute, i.e. without weakening goal #2, how would you do it?

Any advice or suggestions much appreciated.  Feel free to use any and all actual play examples, which will help immensely.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Okay, having set up the analogy, let me ask my questions:

1. If you were going to teach someone how to ignore and play down the effects of a pain-in-the-butt player, one you can't at the moment simply get rid of, without letting that person screw up everyone else's game, how might you do it?

2. If you were going to teach someone how to get players to be more proactive, how would you do it?

3. If you were going to teach someone how to guide players to specific goals without undermining their desire to create and contribute, i.e. without weakening goal #2, how would you do it?

I'm actually planning a bit of GM-teaching in our rpg-club when I get the time, so I'm likewise interested in any ideas people have. I'm not at this time at all sure what would be the best way of imparting these things to interested GM-wannabes.

My general answer to these questions is that I tend to teach by self-reflection; I explain what are the movements in my own head and what I myself do in these situations. So for example in the first case I'd tell about how I myself construct a shared understanding with the other players about how we take the problem player with humour and don't let him bother the business at hand. Lot's of concrete examples about non-verbal ques, that kind of thing.

I'm actually not sure if your splitting this into three questions is at all fruitive: the actual answers are likely the same in each case, as they all pertain to teaching specific GMing techniques.

In any case, before going to teach these specific things, I'd start with teaching the basics of GMing in the style in question (don't forget there's many styles). The classical style, for example, is absolutely dependant on GM authority, so I'd first teach personality projection to give my pupils ability to take the whole table for at least a little while, before going on to any specific things.

Thinking about your questions I'm pondering if you really meant to ask about how we do these things, instead of how we'd teach them. I mean, isn't it basic pedagogy how some specific thing is taught? These are all social techniques, so I'd teach them the way I teach social techniques. Nothing more to it.

I might have something more to say if what you really want is how I do these things instead of how I'd teach them, but at this stage I suggest a good book about pedagogic technique. The questions as presented have only passing relevance to roleplaying, ne?

[clehrich]

Eero,

Good point.  What I'm really interested in is what you do and how you do it, but I'm hoping people will formulate that in terms of practical instruction.  That is, I'm hoping people will say, "Well, what I do is X, and the way I think you might get there is Y."  That would help me translate over into my own pedagogy.  I think I'm getting wound up a bit in my own discourse, because I'm thinking pedagogy and I want everyone else to think GM-ing, and that's causing me to explain a bit incoherently.  "Teach me to be a good GM of this type," is what I'm really asking.

At the same time, I think it could be very helpful to think about it in terms of teaching good GM technique.  Can you follow up on your remarks on personality projection, for example?  That's something I see startlingly lacking in a lot of the people whose classes I have to observe and evaluate, but it's very difficult to explain what one is talking about and why it's important, not to mention how to go about it.

As to dividing up the questions, I just figure that's a useful way of explaining the kinds of things I'm interested in answers to.  If it makes more sense to you to treat this all as one question, go for it.  If you'd rather cut things up more finely, that's good too.

At base, I'm looking for comments and remarks about good GM technique of the sort described elliptically here (i.e. with goals in mind but making it seem to come entirely from the players), and I'm not convinced that I have either a total list of the right questions or the right ways of breaking down the right questions in the first place.  Any help there is also much appreciated.

Incidentally, I do have this very distant, nebulous idea that somewhere far down the line, discussion of this sort might be very useful in bridging the academic/RPG gap a bit.  That is, I have argued before (as have you) that academic theorizing and analytical technique can be useful for thinking about RPG's.  But it's not clear, as yet, what RPG's have to contribute to academia, except as a potentially interesting (though thus far ignored) object of study.  I think if GM technique could be used to demonstrate and teach really effective classroom technique, that might force academics (a few, anyway) to sit up and take notice.  I'm not really very sanguine about this, in the short run anyway, but it's a possibility.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Good point.  What I'm really interested in is what you do and how you do it, but I'm hoping people will formulate that in terms of practical instruction.

An extremely complex question, IMO. Hopefully others get their heads around it. I might try to write something useful by guestimate, though. (Note how I have had more time for Forge with the Easter here? Who knows, I might even get to Ars Memorativa before returning to Helsinki)

At the same time, I think it could be very helpful to think about it in terms of teaching good GM technique.  Can you follow up on your remarks on personality projection, for example?  That's something I see startlingly lacking in a lot of the people whose classes I have to observe and evaluate, but it's very difficult to explain what one is talking about and why it's important, not to mention how to go about it.

Gladly. Let me start with one or three parables of roleplaying, just because I want to be kewl and I have time to write for a change:

The first parable is about the black wizard Etythitus, and his zombie ducks. Etythitus was a greek, you see, and thus he had only a slight understanding about the necromantic arts of the east. He was a hard worker, though, and managed finally to rise something up. That something was of course a rat, in accordance to the 2ed necromantic cantrip. It was soon that Etythitus, a respected mage in his own right, grew unsatisfied with his rat, being that it never did anything very interesting, and understood even less. Etythitus worked even harder now, and finally managed to give life to a bat, bat being a rat only with wings. A dismal failure that bat was, for with it's skeletal wings it could not fly, and with it's weak legs it could only crawl. Etythitus, being greek, didn't give up at this misfortune; he scrounged far and wide for secret knowledge, and succeeded finally in bringing to unlife a veritable flock of ducks. This flock, it was a wonder to behold: with it's vacant gaze and flaccid wings it was the terror of all neighbourhood. Now Etythitus could start with his dastardly plan; he took a long staff, you see, the kind a respectable wizard needs, and started to prod his ducks. At first they paid him no mind, but with practice Etythitus could get the ducks to quack whenever he hit them with the staff. Now he had truly made it, for he had an orchestra of zombie ducks: whenever Etythitus gave rise to his staff a duck would quack. But alas, life was not so good: before long good (or perhaps evil, who knows) Etythitus grew tired and had to put down his staff. When he did that, the ducks grew silent and the chambers of the necromancer were once again quiet.

This being a parable means of course that my little fable isn't as insensible as it at first seems. One should understand when reading it for the second time that good Etythitus there verily is the GM, while the ducks are players. What we have here is the most basic of social situations in roleplaying, the one where the GM is the driving force of play to his exhaustion, and while the music will sound as long as he swings the stick, it will quickly fade when he grows tired.

Now that I think of it, it might be better if I don't tire you with my parable of the dancing bear or the story of seven weavers. It's sufficient that you ponder on the sublime wisdom of the staff and the zombie ducks. We'll return some other time to my version of a guide to roleplaying ;)

To get on with the program, about projecting your personality: when the game is staffed with zombie ducks or other unmotivated folk, it's absolutely essential for the game master to learn to project. This is needed because a zombie duck doesn't care about his responsibility to the game, but expects the GM to lead it to glory. Also it's useful for a GM to learn to project for the rare situation where he genuinely needs to lead disparate players to cooperate in creating the game.

What is meant by personality projection is simple: there is a social space, and the nature of roleplaying is to operate in it. Because nature abhors vacuum emptiness in this social space is the death of roleplaying. It's good if players are deep in introspection and therefore do not fill the space, but it's the sign of immanent death if there is an expectant silence about, and the GM doesn't move to fill it with his personality. This is projection, the skill of fullfilling the space the players do not.

There is many ways of projecting, but they all are based on getting and keeping attention. Whether this is done by clownery or rhetorics or pure substance, as long as you have their attention you are golden. The skill of projecting thus needs the skill of rhetorics to accompany it; when one has attention, it has to be used for the reason one grabbed it in the first place. The players quickly grow tired of the attention-grapper who fails in rewarding that attention. Therefore projecting is one with rhetorics, the skill of presentation.

To look at different ways of projection, let us consider the rhetorics squared, or the skill of drawing attention by speech. The ancients already wrote everything relevant about this, and their word is true even today: Speak clearly, enunciate carefully. Keep the speech coming with rhetorical structures, even when planning your next argument. Move forward with logic, structuring your material and letting your audience know about the structure. Use your whole body and the full range of voice to give graphical dimension to the verbal matter.

The second path of projection is the personal magnetism, and should only be used with small groups, like the roleplaying group. Take personal contact with eyes, touch the recipient of your wisdom, ask for responses and use the socratic method. Switch between the group swiftly, to keep everyone concentrated on you.

The third path of projection is the path of ritual, where you use existing social structures to your benefit. You are the GM, and therefore you can grap attention. Use a GM screen to make them remember who you are (I don't, incidentally; I use mainly the first and second paths). Break the ritual (by f.ex. silence) to gain attention, do the unexpected.

The fourth path of projection is that of teaching. From the first reward attention and punish inattention, and you shall see them flocking to you. Humans and zombie ducks are learning animals, and they will know you by your ways. While you might have to work for attention at first, later it is easy if the groundwork is laid correctly.

Those are the paths of projection, or at least the ones I recognize tonight. They are but the basis of good gamemastering, but I've met a fair share of gamemasters who have trouble even in this department. A stuttering man can be a gamemaster, but a stuttering fool can not. Unfortunately, it's a rare sight to see the stutterer who has the confidence of supporting his projection by physical and material means, and therefore most Gms who fail to be facile of tongue also fail as gamemasters, simply because they can not hold the attention of players. Then the only salvation is a player or more who are not zombie ducks, but living and breathing ones who open their beaks in indignation and and start quacking when they notice that the gamemaster cannot keep authority and attention.

Finally, what happens if the social space is not filled? There is a great black force outside the social space, but close to it. Like ancient dark gods, it waits eternally to consume all social construction. That force is called the Doubt, and it will grab your players if you fail to fill the space when called on. The Doubt will flow into the social space, and it will desecrate the ritual of roleplaying. The players will see it for the quackery it is, and for the night will be unable to put anything of themselves to the inherently laughable action that is roleplaying. Do not let Doubt in, for it will destroy you as surely as it destroyed Christianity.

After teaching projection by simple exercises I'd move on to constructing more complicated social structures. Projection is only a way of making room for social planning, and after it is learned it's important to learn to recognize and understand your players, so you know what kind of material they are. After that it's necessary to start learning the different social structures (or techniques, if you prefer), so you can start structuring the ritual space (I really love this idea) to the enjoyment of all. In the real world these are of course self-evident matters everyone is facile of by the virtue of caring about them, but if you find it necessary to teach them, it's good to have some kind of system.

The question about practical instruction is a wide one, as are the three questions about specific things one would like to instruct. If the conversation proves interesting, I might try to answer one of those somewhat later. They are however too long to put into a single post, I should think. If you care to indicate your theoretical interests in pedagogy, it should make it easier to formulate something useful.

As a starter, I already formulated above my method of teaching social matters: teach manipulation of social structures. I'm sure there's good books about this too, so I'd be glad to converse about some other approaches as well, if interest holds.

[M. J. Young]

Well, on the positive side, I did have some experience teaching undergrad after I became a game referee; on the negative side, I'm not as persuaded as you are that the techniques used in each place so easily cross over. However, it is an interesting notion.

1. If you were going to teach someone how to ignore and play down the effects of a pain-in-the-butt player, one you can?t at the moment simply get rid of, without letting that person screw up everyone else?s game, how might you do it?

It's a delicate matter, I think; yet I've always been successful at it.

All structured social situations have parameters within which everyone is expected to participate. In a role playing game many, but not all, of those parameters are in the rules; in a classroom, they (again, many but not all) are in the classroom expectations.

When I have a player who is trouble, I generally tighten the expectations around him. It usually is unnoticed by this participant that he has been singled out for such attention, because in the main it isn't that he's the only one being constrained by such strictures but rather that he is the only one who pushes far enough to bump into them.

The other tool in this regard is to blunt, at least, the reward gained from the egregious conduct. That requires looking into what it is that motivates the individual in this direction. If the individual is challenging your authority within the social context, it is helpful to shift him to a place where it is clear that there is nothing to be gained by this. If he is trying to show off to the other participants, either ignoring him yourself in such a fashion that he seems to go unnoticed for his antics or turning the tables such that his antics become an embarrassment to him are usually effective techniques. I'm reminded of the one Academy Awards show I did watch, when David Niven was presenting and a streaker passed behind him on the stage. Niven kept his calm and said something like, "It's sad to realize that the most attention that man will ever get comes from taking off his clothes and showing us his shortcomings." Streaking died a swift death after that.

2. If you were going to teach someone how to get players to be more proactive, how would you do it?

I have not always been successful at this; I think that there will always be players, and students, who are withdrawn and don't wish to be involved.

This is sometimes from fright or, if you prefer, nerves. In this case, loosening up a bit and encouraging whatever input you do get can be a big help.

I remember an excellent professor teaching an introductory course in New Testament Introduction (that is, the background to the writing of the New Testament), and he asked one student to tell what he knew about the gnostics. The student didn't seem to know anything about the gnostics; but the professor recognized that this particular student wasn't the sort who participated in class much, so he pressed it and asked what the gnostics believed about knowledge, and got the answer that they believed you could have knowledge. He pressed further, asking whether this was ordinary knowledge, and elicited the response that it was special knowledge. He worked to draw the student into the discussion by trying to validate his contribution even when others were thinking the guy either didn't bother with the reading or was too dense to pick up the simplest facts from it.

I think I've done something like that with my players--trying to get them to do something, and then doing whatever I can to make that decision "rewarding"--fun, or interesting, or positive, or successful, or in some way providing feedback to the player that doing this was a good thing.

It's particularly daunting, of course, when you have both the troublemaker and the withdrawn type in the same group, because efforts to squelch the troublemaker must be done in a manner which doesn't threaten the withdrawn type, and efforts to encourage the withdrawn type must be such that the troublemaker doesn't recognize that he isn't given as much freedom. It can be done, but it's a delicate balancing act, I think.

3. If you were going to teach someone how to guide players to specific goals without undermining their desire to create and contribute, i.e. without weakening goal #2, how would you do it?

That may be toughest on the list. It helps to have some clear idea of hooks that can be used at different points, if that's what you're after. In an RPG context, that could be the next clue, the next encounter, the next event--things that in essence announce that we are moving beyond this to get to the next part. In a classroom/seminar, I would guess that directed questions are the analogous approach. We've been discussing A1 for a while now, but this question moves A1 to segue into A2, and while that doesn't squelch all talk of A1, A2 starts to dominate it.

It is also particularly useful to begin sessions with such hooks, or even to use them at break points--if you've got a seminar with a break in the middle, ending with the suggestion that participants consider this question during the break and then raising it when they return can in some ways be the equivalent of the cliffhanger in the game.

Anyway, I'd never really considered this this way before, so thanks for bringing up the idea. Makes me think maybe I should go back to teaching.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

M.J.,

Many thanks for your comments.  For people who haven't taught, maybe I should clarify that you don't need to do the translation work; that's my problem.  But since you (M.J.) have stood on the same side of the desk....

It's particularly daunting, of course, when you have both the troublemaker and the withdrawn type in the same group, because efforts to squelch the troublemaker must be done in a manner which doesn't threaten the withdrawn type, and efforts to encourage the withdrawn type must be such that the troublemaker doesn't recognize that he isn't given as much freedom. It can be done, but it's a delicate balancing act, I think.

See, I see this as exactly where the good GM can help the poor slob teacher.  We (teachers) are always dealing with a little bit of both, and we have to live with it.  Drawing-out of the shy and the scared is something that every GM lives with as well, but the GM who's good needs -- in a way that a college prof can (if he or she really wants) avoid -- for that player to join in and play.  I think that a lot of profs live with a weak semi-contribution where they could get real contribution, and that the GM, who works to tighter tolerances, must produce real contribution or fail.  This is why I am asking for y'all's help.

In an RPG context, that could be the next clue, the next encounter, the next event--things that in essence announce that we are moving beyond this to get to the next part. In a classroom/seminar, I would guess that directed questions are the analogous approach. We've been discussing A1 for a while now, but this question moves A1 to segue into A2, and while that doesn't squelch all talk of A1, A2 starts to dominate it.

What worries me here, from both my GM and my teaching experience, is that people will respond with, "I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but...."  What I'm really looking for is excited participation; the rest I can fake.  But when what I get is participation qualified by "is this what you want?" I have a weak class and a weaker game.

Basically my point here is that GM advice about standard problems can produce better pedagogy.  GM's work to tighter restrictions than do college profs; profs just need to keep the majority awake, and then figure that if the average work is about B-range, they've done their jobs.  This, I think, is weak teaching.  But the point is that if you did GM-ing that way, you'd soon lack a gaming group.  GM's have to get participation, creativity, and excitement constantly, and have to encourage, drive, and tweak continuously.  I think that a good GM has an enormous amount to teach a college prof, and I want to learn from the feet of masters.  

Many of you really rock at GM-ing.  That's clear from Actual Play sessions, passing comments, and everything else.  You've worked, trained, and struggled in a very hard area.  And if you suck, you're out on your ear.  College profs are thrown in usually without any training whatever, and if you suck it will matter very little for your long-term prospects.  So lots of teachers suck because they don't know better and don't have any great reason to investigate better options.  I believe strongly that great GM's can change this, because their advice can be so practical and so hard-won.  

So tell me: what makes you a successful GM?  If you don't like the questions proposed, set up new ones.  How do you make players excited?  How do you get them to do, and act, and be, and create?  What do you do when they seem to lose energy, if there's hours to run and you don't want to scrap the evening?  Give, guys!  I'm not asking you how to teach; I'll try to translate what you say into other terms, so make that my problem.  Tell me what you think great GM-ing requires, in a practical sense.

[Eero Tuovinen]

So tell me: what makes you a successful GM?  If you don't like the questions proposed, set up new ones.  How do you make players excited?  How do you get them to do, and act, and be, and create?  What do you do when they seem to lose energy, if there's hours to run and you don't want to scrap the evening?  Give, guys!  I'm not asking you how to teach; I'll try to translate what you say into other terms, so make that my problem.  Tell me what you think great GM-ing requires, in a practical sense.

One technique I've hardly seen anyone else use hereabouts (as in Helsinki) is shifting perspective. This is especially useful if there is some problem impeding play - this could be a puzzle players are unable to solve, or tired players, or one player having a demostration fit, or whatever. In these situations I usually intervene by asking straight on what the problem is, and perhaps suggest a solution. An example of this would be when couple of weeks ago we played D&D  with my regular group and they got stumped with a puzzle where (they were certain) failure would result in a party kill. Nobody was willing to take the plunge with a guess, and the play stalled into a decelerating loop of hint rolls (from various knowledge skills) and rehashing the meager hints. Puzzles have been really rare in this campaign - the play is usually decicively nar/sim, and this was probably the second puzzle in two years of gaming. When I judged that prolonging the situation wouldn't bring any reward I took the bull by the horns and asked how the players would like to solve the situation - we could continue with the challenge, or I could tell them the correct answer. People here no doubt see how different solutions would cater to different agendas. Anyway, we talked about it and as nobody had any gamist sensibilities to overcome (real gamism is by the way really rare; hardly any "gamist" is ready to kill his character just to keep within the challenge), proceeded to solve the puzzle with my solution. This was example of a perspective shift - an important tool in general. It's the skill of intervening in the conversation and trumping all trends in favor of your own, more productive line of thought. It's not too rare to see a play group start ripping at each other like hungry mongrels, and that's when you have to see how to open a new direction for the discussion. This is especially useful in roleplaying when play demands (as it virtually always does) many levels of thinking and players have trouble finding the right issue. This is really common - another typical train of thought in our game has been when a player starts to willfully destroy a stylized situation by escaping behind his character: "my simple agrarian soldier wouldn't think about that" and so on, hiding the fact that it's the player who's view on the matter is expected. The most efficient tool here is a blunt explanation, forcing the player to consider the right issue. Perspective shifting has also been useful with intentionally disruptive players - this kind usually hides behind accustomed social conventions (of rpgs or general ones) and is most easily flustered and guided by a GM who simply cuts through the dross to the matter at hand.

In addition to straight talking and readiness to take an appropriate role in the social structure (the projection issue we already took care of) my GMing has found success from treating the players as individuals. This means that the responsibilities about playing the game are constantly redistributed in an adult manner based on player interest. I tend to constantly reaffirm the idea of proactive playing (not the least by parables like the one I told you) and offer in a veiled way different responsibilities to the players. When a player clearly has a good idea about something I ask about it, and apply it to my best ability. The mainstay of D&D, combat, is a good example of this: from day one I've always left drawing combat maps to the players - they can draw a lone road through forest just as well as I can, as well as place monsters in the bushes. I tend to expect great things from players very vocally, and take their actual contributions without much comment, be they good or bad. Expect good play, and with time it will emerge.

My GMing habits have largely formed to answer the threat of passivity, which is here in Finland the most common problem. The immersionist tendencies you all probably know about tend to give rise to players who are either completely passive audience to the GM or apply their own, undeveloped gamism under the GM's radar. In these conditions it's of utmost importance to take all player initiative and try to foster it and make it grow.

[Christopher Weeks]

I've never given grades.  And I despise them as a paradigm.  But I have taught: kids as an adjunct in public classrooms and my own at home, and adults in grad school when I taught computer use classes to students, faculty, and staff.  (Some classes lasted two hours, some three months.)  But I don't consider myself an expert GM.  I think I have as many faults as skills.

1. If you were going to teach someone how to ignore and play down the effects of a pain-in-the-butt player, one you can't at the moment simply get rid of, without letting that person screw up everyone else's game, how might you do it?

I don't necessarily want to validate the idea that this situation exists.  My response has been to fire players that proved intractable even when they were friends of mine or of useful players.  But the two techniques prior to that I've had success with are: describing what you perceive as the problem to the offender in private and asking why they're there and what they're getting (or not) out of the experience -- talking about it openly is a wonderful and rare technique, and giving them responsibility (ask him/her to map, manage the minis, provide names for incidental NPCs or color-"text").

2. If you were going to teach someone how to get players to be more proactive, how would you do it?

Engage their ideas when the do come up with stuff.  Make sure it is usually important to you.  Your behavior toward their participation will be obvious.  They'll loosen up over time.  Probably.  I had a player in my game group for six years (during which time I was the GM only about 1/4 of the time) who only really injected something meaningful about once every two  six-hour sessions.  And yet, he was there every weeks for all those years.  He was usually paying attention and always ready to answer questions.  Did he need any special handling?

3. If you were going to teach someone how to guide players to specific goals without undermining their desire to create and contribute, i.e. without weakening goal #2, how would you do it?

I don't know.  I'm bad at it.  I can run games where the players are nailing whatever they want and I can totally railroad.  And I can even alternate these techniques quickly enough that it sometimes feels like a good balance.  But it isn't.

I dig the analogy between teaching and GMing for many of the surface similarities you note, but particularly because I think both environments should be completely voluntary and always rewarding.  And both GMs and teachers are underpaid.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

First, I think that teachers probably have more to say to us about how to GM well, than vice versa. But as it's not what you want to hear about, we'll save that for another thread.

Just to be clear here, there's this potential for confusion based on levels of abstraction. What you want is help from GMs in terms of how to better theach pupils (what's often called "train the trainer"). We're teaching teachers here, not teaching pupils, right?

1. If you were going to teach someone how to ignore and play down the effects of a pain-in-the-butt player, one you can't at the moment simply get rid of, without letting that person screw up everyone else's game, how might you do it?

I don't necessarily want to validate the idea that this situation exists.  My response has been to fire players that proved intractable even when they were friends of mine or of useful players.

I want to back Chris up here. First you're saying that you can ignore the uninterested student as part of your analogy. Well, if there's someone in the class that's uninterested, or a pain somehow, can't you kick them out? Simple as that? The teacher is the authority controlling the classroom. If that isn't true, then I think everything else is precarious from then on. So, point of advice one, if you're going to be a teacher, be a leader first. Actually take leadership courses if you need to do so. Check with your ROTC deparment. I'm dead serious.

But the two techniques prior to that I've had success with are: describing what you perceive as the problem to the offender in private and asking why they're there and what they're getting (or not) out of the experience -- talking about it openly is a wonderful and rare technique, and giving them responsibility (ask him/her to map, manage the minis, provide names for incidental NPCs or color-"text").

Yeah, bingo. A really important principle is to do this in private, as Chris mentions. Too often people do this in front of the group. At which point many more social connections are becoming involved in what is a social contract issue. If you do it aside, then the player can be more candid, and doesn't lose any face.

All teachers know that, right? Isn't that standard in the handbook? Isn't that what office hours are for?

As for co-opting behavior by delegating responsibility, that's, again, right out of any leadership manual. A while back there was this management fad called "Total Quality Management" or TQM. What it ammounted to was that leaders need to empower their underlings to get the job done. The worst way to dissafect someone is to give them a responsibilty and not the resources to succeed. Empowerment is the key.

2. If you were going to teach someone how to get players to be more proactive, how would you do it?

The biggest thing is to make the player's contributions central. When in discussions, often I see teachers doing a particular behavior. They'll ask a leading question, and then, when they get the wrong answer, they'll say, "Well, yeah, sorta, but wouldn't X make more sense?" That's terrible technique. Better to take up the subject in full, and tell the person why they're wrong than to brush aside their comment. Because when the teacher does this, it has the worst chilling effect that you can imagine. Now nobody wants to respond, because they're contributions are being ignored. This happens in all sorts of ways. Sometimes the answer is right, but the teacher then goes on to just use the answer as a jumping off point for some point that they want to make. "Yes, that's correct, and here's why..." In RPGs, GMs do this a lot. "No, there's no tavern on this corner, but there is one on the next." What's the point of that, other than to smack down the player's creativity (notionally it's to improve player feeling of immersion, but done right just accepting player input works just fine for that - and immersion is a complete non-issue for teaching anyhow).

So, empower discussion. Be a facilitator, not a director in discussion. That is, allow the people talking to actually take the discussion where they like, just be there to see that it doesn't get completely off track, and to add your own points as an equal contributer.

3. If you were going to teach someone how to guide players to specific goals without undermining their desire to create and contribute, i.e. without weakening goal #2, how would you do it?

This is basically covered by what I said in response to 2. You act as an equal in the conversation. There's no reason that you can't participate, too, you just can't dominate it to the point where the players don't see their contributions as being productive at all.

Now, it would seem that I've set up a contradiction. You have to be a leader, and you have to be an equal. This is the hardest part of all. Basically, you have to "cordon off" where you have the authority, and where you are sharing power. Basically, you set up "arenas" over which you have complete administrative control (you can kick people out for social contract problems, etc), but in which you are just a "first amongst equals" as it were. A moderator, a facilitator.

Once you have that set up, then more than half the battle is won, I think. Because you've engaged the people involved, and they are now productive members of the event.

The other half of the battle deals with being an interesting presenter. Do you really want to get into techniques like that here? For example, the "shock effect" statement. "You wake up, and you look down to note that your leg is missing." Sometimes you just have to say something like that to get you're player's attention. Often followed by, "Then you wake up from the dream. You realize that it's a prophecy of some sort, however, and one that deals with Hervald." You've dissembled, but this gets across the point better than, "You think there might be trouble with Hervald."

Again, are you looking for the cheap theatrics that GMs use? I think they could be helpful, but I'm not sure if you're looking for more gross scale advice than techniques.

Have you noted, however, how the whole of this discussion has followed to some extent the whole "Big Model?"

Mike

[clehrich]

Thanks for the comments, all.

Mike,

1. Yes, actually I did notice that this parallels the Big Model.  I hadn't expected that, exactly, but it's quite striking.  I'll have to think about what that means.  Anyone have ideas?

2. You're right that probably good teachers have a lot to offer GM's, but I leave that to people rather more experienced than I!

3. Yes, I did mean to be talking about pedagogy, and what you've said fits well with what I was asking.  Sorry if I wasn't clear.

4. A brief note on the "problem student" thing.  I wasn't very clear in my setup of the analogy.  Basically yes, a college prof can indeed ignore or kick out a problem student, or just fail him.  But that's only a good solution if dealing with the student more effectively would impede everyone else's class experience.  Talking to the student alone can work, it's true, but my experience is that the real problem student won't come see you in office hours -- the ones who come see you are not the problems, as a rule.  You can certainly demand that they speak to you, and that's what I do, but it has mixed results.

But what I really meant was not so much the student who sleeps or makes fart noises or whatever, but the student who keeps asking off-topic or inappropriate questions, who seems weirdly off-kilter from everyone else.  Confronting that student directly often doesn't work, because he doesn't know what you're talking about -- he thinks he's participating and being helpful.  

The thing is, a GM can do all the same things a teacher can, but at base the GM can't just ignore it, as a college prof often can.  And let's face it, gamers as a group are not always the best socialized folks, and quite often gaming groups are an extremely mixed bag.  So the GM has to be really very good at handling individual prickliness and weirdness, much of which a college prof can sort of blur over because social pressure will ensure a considerable degree of plain old conformity.

--

At any rate, my point is that in many respects a GM deals with a harder situation than a college prof.  At base, a prof doesn't owe the students anything: he just does the best he can and the students have to live with that.  To be sure, lots of folks don't even do the best they can, and in fact make a half-assed job of teaching, but I'm not interested in them.  By contrast, a GM does owe the group quite a lot, and if he doesn't give it he will soon be out of a job, as it were.  Again, not true of profs.  As a result, I maintain that a good GM could very well be a masterful seminar teacher.

--

As to technique and theatrics, I'm sort of thinking GM technique at a slightly more abstract level.  What I've gotten so far is great; I'd love to see some more concrete examples, though.  In short:

As a GM, can you think of a moment when you really made it work wonderfully, and had a sense of what you did right?  I don't mean when the group just sort of gelled by itself, as often happens, but when you think you can take considerable credit for making a great game session?  What happened?  What did you do?  What worked?  Why?

Thanks.

[Mike Holmes]

But what I really meant was not so much the student who sleeps or makes fart noises or whatever, but the student who keeps asking off-topic or inappropriate questions, who seems weirdly off-kilter from everyone else.  Confronting that student directly often doesn't work, because he doesn't know what you're talking about -- he thinks he's participating and being helpful.

I think that this is problematic for the analogy. For the GM can, and I'd argue should, kick this player out. That is, I don't think that the GM does have anything useful to say to the teacher here, other than "sucks that you have to deal with that."

I suspect that there will be someone who will tell me that you can "recalibrate" a player like this, but I'm not sure that I buy it. I mean, if the player is on my social radar in the first place (the prime requisite for being a player), then he just won't be so odd. I never get this player in the first place.

At any rate, my point is that in many respects a GM deals with a harder situation than a college prof.

It's just entertainment, as opposed to the ethical requirement of the professor to do a good job. I don't buy this for a minute. The GM can and does choose his players, the professor can't. If this isn't true, and you're playing desipte social problems, this is Ron's #1 rule that you're violating. Play is social first, then creative under that umbrella, or it's likely to be problematic.

Further, if I said to the teacher that they should become friends of the students, would that be good advice?

In any case, I don't think that any disparity in pressures results in GMs knowing any more. When they do try to be accepting of the eccentric player, problems happen, period. At least that's been my experience, and I have nothing to relate as to how to fix it.

As a GM, can you think of a moment when you really made it work wonderfully, and had a sense of what you did right?  I don't mean when the group just sort of gelled by itself, as often happens, but when you think you can take considerable credit for making a great game session?  What happened?  What did you do?  What worked?  Why?

The best moments, to me, are when you put them in situations where they see a way to proceed with their characters that's fun, in a manner that specifically cross-sections with other players having similar drives. Basically, you have to "bait" one player to go one way, and "bait" another to go off in a direction that co-incides with the first somehow, but which together produce a third, unexpected result.

In the parallel classroom, I dunno, this might be seeding one student with an idea that gets them rolling, and another with a different one, and then letting them loose on each other? Might work.

Mike

[M. J. Young]

I have run a lot of games in which I didn't have much choice over the players--players brought friends, and the first players were people I barely knew who wanted me to run a game for them because they didn't know anyone else who could. I do demos, and you take what you get. I ran a game once with a guy who said he was there because from what he'd heard about Multiverser he thought it was the worst game ever written and he wanted a copy so he could show people. (Jim said I should have suggested he buy two.) I have had hostile players. I've had players who were socially inept, and I steered them into socially appropriate interaction within the game. I've had people who were withdrawn, and can only remember one who couldn't be pulled into being involved. I think there are a lot of tools I've used for such things.

But, Chris, I think that there's a problem with your connection. As a referee, I don't have to assure that anything in particular is ever done, or that we stay on any kind of schedule. As a teacher, I usually have a syllabus and a timeframe, and by the end of sixteen or twenty or however many weeks I have to have covered at least the essentials of every aspect.

Thus, one of the tools I've always used as a game referee is letting the players take things where they wish to go, and then causing it to be interesting wherever that is; one of the necessary functions of being a teacher is guiding things where they need to be. Those are very different core concepts, and suggest that referee techniques may need to be adapted to a considerably greater degree than you imagine.

Maybe that's not a fatal connection, though.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

Oh, for Pete's sake.  

Look, as I said at the outset, I figure it's my job to make the translation to my classroom.  I'm trying to get advice about GMing, because I am and remain convinced that there is a lot I can learn from good GM's, for the reasons listed and probably others.  My hope is that I can learn a bunch from you folks about GM technique, the nitty-gritty how to stuff, at a pretty heavy-duty level because you all have spent a lot of time thinking about the intricacies.  With luck, in a year or so I will be able to post back and tell you what effects all this had within my classrooms.  Until that time, though, this is all an untested hypothesis, and I don't think it can be knocked down or supported on a priori grounds.

I should have just posted an "advice on how to be a great GM" thread and left it at that, but I thought it might be interesting to explain why I wanted to know, specifically.  I know it's not a perfect analogy.  I know there are differences.  I know that I have to cover a certain amount of material, and a GM does not necessarily have to do that.  But what's that got to do with the price of cheese in China, as they say?

M.J., you mention a lot of difficult situations in which you have GMed, I hope successfully.  How did you pull it off?

Mike, you have a lot of "nots".  Don't you have any postive advice, things that one ought to do?

[Mike Holmes]

Mike, you have a lot of "nots".  Don't you have any postive advice, things that one ought to do?

I did have a positive comment. About intersecting threads. So I guess I do have positive things to say.

At the risk of being negative again, I think that you're under some illusion that GM's do more thinking about how to present their material than I think that they do for the most part. That is, my prep for play, for instance, usually involves writing down perhaps 100 words of notes on things that might happen. Then I "wing" the rest. GM's have the advantage that, in theory, their players are coming intending to participate. As opposed to the classroom situation where almost every participant has to be coaxed in.

So, to spin that in a positive way, I'd ask the teacher if there was any way to create an atmosphere around the class that would make it more like a game. That is, where the people who were coming were coming already with the idea that they were going to be there as participants, not just as passive listeners. To continue with the parallel, if the GM had to deal with something like the classroom situation, I think it would be like there were 15 people coming to "play" who thought that they were just going to be there to be an audience for the game. That is, they have no "character."

Is there some way that you as a teacher can give your students a "character?" That is, some personal investment in the event of the discussion that was theirs to drive? What I'm seeing is a "chargen" session as the first session of a discussion section. In that session, each person would have to decide on what "part" they wanted to play in terms of the continuing "game."

If you were to establish that, then I think that much of your job in engaging people is done. I think that many people in discussions simply see them as a duty that they have to go and listen, just an extension of the lecture that they're not particularly excited about going to. In fact, I think that the most animated discussions that I've ever been a part of were actually RPGs. I speak particularly of certain poli-sci exercises that run very similar to the National Security Decision Making excercises (http://www.nsdmg.org/) that one can participate in at major cons with the war college personnel. In these, each person is given a role in world politics, and a situation is created, and the students (players) play out the scenario. I've never seen a group of students so interested in the material.

Similar to this are Mock Court games, Mock UN stuff, Fake Stock market investing, Market games, etc, etc.

I'm proposing that you don't have to go to that length (though why not if these are pertinent), but that you find a way to give each player some "role" in terms of an investment in some aspect of the class, such that they have a preconcieved idea before coming to the discussion that they are going to be a participant, and some inkling of how they are going to participate. Even if they're reluctant, at least then you have a "hook" to drag them in by.

For instance, if you're doing a literature class, and discussing a particular book, then maybe you give each student a character that they're responsible for knowing well. Then when something comes up about the character, the discussion automatically turns to that participant. Or maybe chapters or something, I dunno. But the basic idea is to give them something that's an investment in the discussion before hand.

Without that investment, a lot of GM tecniques aren't going to apply. I mean, the basic GM technique to get a player moving is to "hook" the player's character (I won't get into efficacy here). That technique can't be used unless you already have established the student with some particular fixture of his participation which can be addressed.

So, overall, what I'm saying is that the game takes care of half of the heavy lifting. If I'm playing, and feeling that I'm having to pull special techniques out in order to engage my players, then I feel that there's something "wrong" with the game. It should never get to that place in the first place. When you are in that place, and trying "tricks" and whatnot to engage your players, I think that the game is already problematic - I don't think that these techniques often work.

Or, rather, I'm sure that there are GM's who work entirely on being able to enchant their players with their own personal presentation style. I mean, if Robin Williams were presenting a game, rules would probably very much just get in the way of his personal charisma making it brilliant. But most of us aren't Robbin Williams, and can't pull off what he does. Some teachers have that charisma that just engages people, others do not, and I don't know that this is something that can be taught (outside the scope of our discussion anyhow). So I'm fairly sure that teaching "engagement" techniques that are about presentation are not the answer. Gimmicky at best.

My best advice to GMs is to use a ruleset that engages the players. Because then you don't have to be brilliant. So my advice to teachers is framework, framework, framework. Don't focus on presentation gimmicks, but have some way to frame the entire discussion that, by following the simple rules, leads to interaction.

Let me turn this on it's head. Chris, what techniques do you use to engage players? Can you give us an example of one thing that you do as a GM that does this? You're as experienced a GM as any here - surely if we're to have ideas like this, you would too? So give us just one, and maybe that will spur us on to come up with more thoughts like it. Maybe I'm just not thinking in the right way.

But, I posit, it might just be that there really are no techniques here to be learned.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

OK, so I've been thinking about this thread.  And I think the best way that I can help Chris is to think about things from the other side.  I was a preK-12 student for fifteen years and a university student for nine.  I've been a player for 23, on and off.  And I'm thinking about these experiences and wondering what made the great ones great and how they interrelate.  And I am seeing common threads.  I realize this isn't what Chris is asking for, but it's what I can provide.

As an aside, I really consider the first three years at a big university to be an extension of high school, academically.  Only around the middle of junior year (I didn't exactly follow the path you're supposed to, so I'm guessing a little) do you start taking classes that treat you like a participant.  But once you do, the parallel to games is pretty clear.  And I too, think that there are shared techniques.

The most important of these techniques is steering into my interest.  The best games and the best classes, both took what the authority had to present, figured out why I was there to have it presented and tuned their presentation to my needs.  

Mike downplays prep in his note above.  I think that the best classes I ever took, were taught like that.  The prof (who's a world-class scholar in something cloely related to the topic at hand) would come in with a pretty minimal agenda and we'd riff.  Maybe eight students and this font of knowledge would play with ideas and I know that the profs got as much out of these experiences as we did.  You could see them get excited when the students came up with new twists on their theories and stuff.  This may not help with a lecture hall full of "I had to take this class" kids.

Presentation of beauty helps inspire interest.  The reason that I took nine years for two degrees is that I took many, many classes that I didn't "need."  They were just too cool to pass up.  I saw good teachers, even in big lectures (art history, general genetics, American colonial history, English lit, Wines of the World, etc.) start by presenting something wonderous.  Whether it's a slide of some , a poem, or a feature of RNA, starting with something really, really cool, revvs up interest that helps carry into the game...er, lecture.  And GMs do the same thing.  How many of us/them gather pictures to use as source?  Look at the one-sheets people post.  People use pictures of movie/TV characters to represent their characters.  I play in an online game every two weeks in which the GM often starts by posting an ancient Chinese poem, and sometimes passes out photocopies of source myths.  I can't help but think these techniques of the classroom and the gameroom are related.

I guess the final common aspect that I want to talk about is player involvement in parameterizing the course.  Some of my favorite classroom experiences (over a semester, not a single meeting) were ones where the instructor had the students work together to build how the class was going to work.  There were always strictures, either from the prof or the administration, but otherwise the players were able to customize the course with the assistance of the instructor.  Bluntly, this is the only way to teach...or run a game.  It does several things:  It invests the players/students.  It best meets their needs while still conforming to institutional/GM needs.  It takes the course material in new directions every semester.  It broadens the horizon of awareness about how things can be done for both the students and the GM.  It makes the students aware of the instructor's priorities and limitations much more explicitly.  And it's a fun organizational exercise.

I hope there's at least a tidbit of use in this.  To me, the idea of a professor getting better at teaching because of gaming and the Forge is exciting.

Chris