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I split this off from Why would anybody want to GM? because it's a little off topic, and I want to take it a LOT further.

Quote from: lumpleyI articulated it on my blog kind of like this: there are three ways of knowing a character.

First, as the character's player/creator/owner/author. I want to know my characters inside and out so that I can do them justice.

Second, as the character's audience/fan. I want to know my fellow players' characters because they are SO COOL and I catch my breath every time they come on screen. I can't wait to see what they do and I can't wait to see who it shows them to be.

Third, as the character's GM. I want to know your characters inside and out, but not so that I can do them justice - so that I can inflict upon them the exact right, very worst grief.

The player and the GM have the same goal wrt the character, which is to make the character shine. The player approaches it by learning what makes the character tick and playing it fully; the GM approaches it by learning what makes the character tick and playing fully against it. Between the two of us, the character comes to life.

And I'm agreeing, and I'm agreeing.  It's a GM-task, which like all other GM-tasks can be assigned to any person or persons, and...

QuoteFurthermore, I think that there are probably very good reasons to give the person responsible for providing adversity some serious rights when it comes to arranging the world around the characters.

... right there I stop understanding clearly.  Or possibly I understand and disagree.  Hard to say.

Vincent, I'm seeing two points combined in that last paragraph, and I don't know how to deal with them separately, so I'm passing the buck back to you:[list=1][*]"The person responsible", emphasis very much mine.  Is this just lazy language, or do you feel that there are reasons this role needs to be centralized?[*]Good reasons to give the person [or persons] responsible for adversity serious director-stance rights.  Is that saying that they need a lot of power, or that they specifically need more power than the people they're providing adversity to?[/list:o]

1. Every protagonist should have at least one. That's "the." Whether it's better for all the protagonists to have the same GM, whether it's better for each protagonist to have only one GM - or come to think of it, whether it's better for each protagonist to have as many GMs as possible - I don't know. Probably it just depends.

2. The current, acting GM (per the current, acting protagonist), having identified the adversity that the protagonist so richly needs, should have the power to bring it. That means some or all of: playing supporting characters and antagonists, creating circumstances, establishing world details, framing scenes, calling for resolution, interpreting the rules - pretty much most of the things you'd identify elsewhere as the in-game GMing tasks.

How bad would it suck if I looked deep into Soraya's soul (Soraya is Emily's character, whose GM I've been most recently) and decided that what she needs, more than anything else, is for the Europe-spanning Order of Hermes to sunder, pitching her into the middle of a war of Houses ... but I don't get to make that happen because I don't have enough GM power? Bad, is how bad.

Does that mean more power than the PC's player? Sort of.

-Vincent

Welllll....

How bad it is sort of depends on why you don't have enough GM power, doesn't it?

Say, for instance, more than one person is suggesting adversity for Soraya, and the power they have to bring it about is linked somehow to her interest levels in the adversities being proposed.  You decide that she needs the Order of Hermes to sunder, and someone else decides that she just needs this one beloved person in the Order to become a schismatic so that she can deal with the issues in microcosm, and she decides "Yeah, that microcosm thing is more personal and telling anyway".

At that point you've had your chance to pitch your idea, it got turned down, and you shouldn't have the power to make it happen, right?

Quote from: TonyLBSay, for instance, more than one person is suggesting adversity for Soraya, and the power they have to bring it about is linked somehow to her interest levels in the adversities being proposed....

Just to make the implicit explicit, the mechanical models Tony's thinking of presumably include
(a) his own game Capes, where you gain resources to shape the story ("story tokens") by proposing plot elements that other players are interested in investing in -- although Capes isn't quite built to handle the "Soraya Scenario" as outlined above.
(b) Universalis, where players bid resources & challenge each other for control of the story -- although a player:character identification as in the Soraya Scenario isn't common in Universalis, as I understand it (haven't played).

Tony, do I have you right? And anybody, can we think of a (c), (d), (e) etc., i.e. more games with this kind of formalized distribution of story power?

Quote from: TonySay, for instance, more than one person is suggesting adversity for Soraya, and the power they have to bring it about is linked somehow to her interest levels in the adversities being proposed. You decide that she needs the Order of Hermes to sunder, and someone else decides that she just needs this one beloved person in the Order to become a schismatic so that she can deal with the issues in microcosm, and she decides "Yeah, that microcosm thing is more personal and telling anyway".

At that point you've had your chance to pitch your idea, it got turned down, and you shouldn't have the power to make it happen, right?

Oog. The last thing I'd do is trust the player to know what's the right adversity, until afterward. I'm a good GM to Soraya because I know things about her that Emily doesn't, because I've been watching Soraya so closely and with such malevolent intent. Emily and Meg are good GMs to my character because they know things about him that I don't! That's where good adversity comes from, from seeing a truth about the character that the player doesn't see.

...But that's an implementation question and I'll try to not fix on it.

Instead, what I'll say is: well, if more than one person needs power over the game world, then you have to coordinate it between you. That's okay, and there are strategies to make it fun, and that falls under "there may be good reasons," I think.

But given appropriate negotiation of shared NPCs and world stuff - no, no way. You can't ask me to be there for you and then cut me out of the process.

-Vincent

Why not?

If, as a player, I offer you the opportunity to interest me and you fail... then you fail.  Happens to everybody.  You'll get plenty more chances.  Moving on.


I gather that this sort of attitude would violate the Social Contract you've got with your group... and possibly the SC of every group other than mine.  Which is a really intriguing indication of diversity.  If anyone wants to jump in with an assessment of what group-specific elements of SC this would breach, I think we could get a rocking (and hopefully broader) discussion going!

Quote from: TonyLBIf, as a player, I offer you the opportunity to interest me and you fail... then you fail.  Happens to everybody.

Interesting. When I was a GM, I handled this through a "big box of tools" approach. First, I spent a fair bit of energy creating Setting and Situation, with some pieces in motion on their own but most power in the hands of the PCs. Then I saw what the players took interest in and ran with that -- sometimes improvizing material out ahead of them if they went in a direction I'd not thought of sufficiently or at all -- and ignored what they ignored.

(E,g. I remember one "you run the Empire" campaign where I tried vigorously to foment backstabbing and civil war, only to have the PC princelings band together to preserve Imperial unity. But boy, did they have fun with demon-hunting, humiliating NPC nobles, and, of all things, tax reform, budget cuts, and fixing soccer matches).

But all this was done by unaided GM acuity -- or lack thereof, when I blew it. The question at hand, I presume, is putting such feedback into System with a capital S.

Quote from: lumpleyOog. The last thing I'd do is trust the player to know what's the right adversity, until afterward. I'm a good GM to Soraya because I know things about her that Emily doesn't, because I've been watching Soraya so closely and with such malevolent intent. Emily and Meg are good GMs to my character because they know things about him that I don't! That's where good adversity comes from, from seeing a truth about the character that the player doesn't see.

An excellent description of a skillful game master -- and of a skillful human being in real life!

Quote from: TonyLBI gather that this sort of attitude would violate the Social Contract you've got with your group... and possibly the SC of every group other than mine.  Which is a really intriguing indication of diversity.  If anyone wants to jump in with an assessment of what group-specific elements of SC this would breach, I think we could get a rocking (and hopefully broader) discussion going!

In many groups, a good game master is the set designer, properties manager, and background extras so that the players don't have to waste time concerning themselves with such things when they could use that energy instead to experience and perform their characters.

Groups in which players do not prize highly immersion and/or performance are not as likely to care about this, I imagine, and therefore may be less interested in having a game master take care of such things.

Moreover, many groups want to play off a fictional reality which adheres to a unity of vision.  If the source of that vision is one man or one woman, said unity is more likely to occur, and thus, the players again don't have to waste time fretting over matching everyone else's minutiae of unity but instead can focus on experiencing and performing their characters, surfing the backdrop or launching from the background provided by the game master (to amuse myself by mixing metaphors).

Doctor Xero

Quote from: lumpley

Quote from: TonySay, for instance, more than one person is suggesting adversity for Soraya, and the power they have to bring it about is linked somehow to her interest levels in the adversities being proposed. You decide that she needs the Order of Hermes to sunder, and someone else decides that she just needs this one beloved person in the Order to become a schismatic so that she can deal with the issues in microcosm, and she decides "Yeah, that microcosm thing is more personal and telling anyway".

At that point you've had your chance to pitch your idea, it got turned down, and you shouldn't have the power to make it happen, right?

Oog. The last thing I'd do is trust the player to know what's the right adversity, until afterward. I'm a good GM to Soraya because I know things about her that Emily doesn't, because I've been watching Soraya so closely and with such malevolent intent.

To me, this is a different style of GMing.  Personally, I don't trust the GM to know what the right adversity is.  I prefer for the GM to offer a variety of possible challenges/conflicts, and have the player pro-actively pursue them (cf. my essay, http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/plot/proactivity.html">Proactive PCs and Related Issues).  This is true both for me as a player and for me as a GM.  This is mainly a product of experience.  In my gaming history as a player, there have been a number of GMs who pushed particular conflicts thinking that they were "just right" for my character, and I've generally experienced it as awful.  The GM has some simplistic and wrong-headed understanding of my PC, regardless of the amount of information I give.  I have enjoyed it much more when the GM was laidback and I could proactively go after things.  

As a GM, I do select conflicts at times, but it is more the exception than the rule.  I have certainly used it to good effect, so I don't think it's impossible (cf. my http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9367">Spirit Tests in Vinland report as an example).  But I don't like to rely on it.  

Now, I guess you've got a different group dynamic with your friends and fellow gamers.  For me, it just seems to be that I'm on a different wavelength with the people I GM with.  I think that makes it interesting, because the differences give insights into other ways of seeing things.  But no, I don't think I've ever felt that a GM has known my PC better than me in the way you describe.  As GM for other people, I think I have about a 50% success rate in the spirit tests I've run -- and that was a lot of work.  To me, it has been much more successful for PCs to proactively create conflicts rather than have them be GM-decided.

Quote from: TonyI gather that this sort of attitude would violate the Social Contract you've got with your group... and possibly the SC of every group other than mine. Which is a really intriguing indication of diversity. If anyone wants to jump in with an assessment of what group-specific elements of SC this would breach, I think we could get a rocking (and hopefully broader) discussion going!

Waah! Tony! We were on the verge of something interesting! You ditched out on me!

(See, like that. I was counting on you to provide adversity!)

Seriously: I don't think we should write this off as social contract differences; that's just saying there's no way to talk about it. Instead let's figure out what the hell we're talking about and where we actually disagree.

Where we actually disagree is definitely not where this thread seems to have gone: of course I drop a conflict if it's a dud. Duh.

Universalis' rules, and Capes' rules you showed me - those count as my "given appropriate negotiation of shared NPCs and world stuff" for sure. Robbing me of enough power to act on my insights sucks; me ceding power to you because your insights are better, or because you win, or whatever - that doesn't suck at all.

It also doesn't suck at all when enough power to act on my insights is only as much as anybody else has. This is how our Ars Magica game mostly works. Usually when I want to inflict maximum grief on Soraya, all I really have to do is to have her father do the worst thing he would realistically do. Power-wise, that only requires that I be allowed to say what he does, same as anybody playing a character.

When I need power over things that aren't already mine, we negotiate, like we would in Universalis or Capes or any game.

I also must insist very strongly that this person I'm talking about, who knows your character as well as you do, but complementarily, need not be the traditional GM. John, I'd like to hear more about your experiences in light of this:

When we played the Mountain Witch at Dreamation, Tim, the GM, applied general pressure to the situation, but Judd was the one who saw what my character needed. Check this out, from my 6 Ronin etc. thread:

Quote from: JuddI wasn't sure if he [my character -VB] was the one pure ronin or the most cunning bastard of us all and I figured my character who grew up in the emperor's court just wouldn't trust that kind of purity.

Vince: "Judd, did you know that I was going to attack the Mountain Witch as soon as you released me from service?"

Me: "I didn't know, just seemed like the thing to do."

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Judd studied my character for nine tenths of the session, then - apparently by pure instinct, but I know better - he had his character do something so right to my character that I thought he could see the future. I didn't know that my character was going to kill the Mountain Witch if Judd's released me, but it sure as hell seemed like Judd knew.

So John, forget who's the GM and who isn't. You've had that experience with a fellow player, or seen it happen between others in a group, haven't you?

-Vincent

Quote from: lumpleyWaah! Tony! We were on the verge of something interesting! You ditched out on me!

See, I think you may be over-sensitized by people who use SC as a cop-out rather than a tool.  I'm asking what specific elements of SC would be violated.  That's my polite way of saying "What rule would I be breaking if I asked you to provide me adversity, then told you it wasn't good enough?"  And if there isn't a rule then your claim that "you can't do that" doesn't hold up... y'know?

I sort of figured we might start talking about issues of respecting people's contributions, or extending trust to another player, or like that.  Which is a bit squishier than the hard numbers that I like, but still very valid territory.  But this stuff's all good too.

QuoteWhere we actually disagree is definitely not where this thread seems to have gone: of course I drop a conflict if it's a dud. Duh.

I don't think it's that simple.  The question (in my mind) is not about whether you back off (which I agree is a foregone conclusion in high-function gaming) but why you back off, and under whose control.

If you're backing off because you (the current-GM) choose to, that's one interaction.  If you're backing off because you have no choice, that's another interaction.

I don't see how what you've been saying can be done if the current-GM doesn't have some currency (trust, authority, deceit, whining, whatever) to push ahead past the moment where the current-protagonist isn't interested.  So what's that currency, and why do you need it?


p.s. I'm holding myself back from some truly pointless rants about Capes structure... 'cause it's really easy to read "negotiate" as "reach consensus", whereas "negotiate" in Capes is more like "sell your ideas in the story-line market and see how much control you can earn."  And those sort of semantics are crazy-making to me, but probably not productive to the thread.

Quote from: lumpleyI also must insist very strongly that this person I'm talking about, who knows your character as well as you do, but complementarily, need not be the traditional GM. John, I'd like to hear more about your experiences in light of this:
(...Judd says I don't know.  It seemed like the thing to do...)
I didn't know that my character was going to kill the Mountain Witch if Judd's released me, but it sure as hell seemed like Judd knew.

So John, forget who's the GM and who isn't. You've had that experience with a fellow player, or seen it happen between others in a group, haven't you?

I'm not sure.  Offhand, I'd say no.  I have had many interesting interactions with other PCs, but I wouldn't describe it as the other player knowing what my PC needed better than I did.  Indeed, most often other players find my PC's extremely puzzling.  Other players' predictions of my PCs are often drastically wrong.  Now, I'll allow that maybe they understand stuff about my PC on an unconscious or instinctive level, but that's hard to quantify. On the other hand, maybe the interactions came from reading cues which I was unconsciously giving off.  And maybe there's a random element to this as well.  

I find it intriguing that you use an example of someone who did not consciously know what the right thing is -- but rather just did what he felt like.  I find that in my experience, this is by far the most successful route.  i.e. If another player is trying to give my character just the right adversity, it generally falls flat.  For example, this seemed to happen a lot with my PC Idelle in the Ars Magica 767 game.  On the other hand, unexpected outcomes have worked really well.  Say like Dot's romance with Max in the Buffy game, or Inspector Grimmond's hatred of Professor Hayward in The Ripper campaign.

Okay, so bearing in mind that I'm not skillful in the way Vincent is....

What I have been working at is diffusing this job of proposing conflicts.  I agree with Vincent that people don't always see the right adversity for themselves.  They sometimes do, of course, and go right after it, which is great because then the GM can just be lazy and roll with it.  But a lot of times a player is thinking, "What I think would be cool is for me to get into this big deal fight thing with this secret society," but what would actually be much cooler, and the player would love it much more afterwards, is for the character to suddenly find her legs cut out from under her magically, or something, and she has to dig down into that dark secret that never really amounted to anything and develop the character deeply.  For example.

So what I've been doing with Shadows in the Fog is to have the whole group generate a horrendous mess at the same time as the player is generating a desired solution.  So you say, "I'm going to do the following thing, and it will produce X."  And you get X, but you also get a nightmarishly complicated situation that produced X, and now you have to deal with it.  But you can't deal with everything.  So everyone's contributions, based on the character and all those observations that Vincent's so good at go toward creating a whole range of possible issues, and the player now selects among them to try to straighten out the tangle.

Which brings me to SC.  It seems to me that a lot of players feel, quite reasonably, that they have enough to do.  They have to deal with their characters, who are complicated and have inner lives that may never get externalized clearly.  They have to do what Vincent's doing with everyone at the table.  They have to do a certain amount of small-group dynamics (in most games, anyway).  They have to be on the alert to take the lead from the GM, and to handle him gently if they don't want to take the lead.  Asking them also to be extraordinarily self-conscious and reflexive seems like a lot, and as everyone else in the room is already watching them very carefully it seems like something readily delegated.  Besides, then there's the element of surprise.

So it's a division of labor.  I think in many games, the GM has this as a primary task, as Vincent describes.  It sounds like in Tony's games, the reflexive self-awareness is considered a good thing and an important part of playing well and enjoyably, so they don't want that handed over to somebody else.  I do wonder what they don't do; I mean, they may all be amazing, but surely there are some tasks they're not handling if they have to handle this one on the fly, reliably.

Seems to me that there are quite a number of important social roles here, and not a lot of people to cover them.  The GM is often the clearing-house of the things the players feel they cannot or do not want to handle.

Quote from: TonyI don't see how what you've been saying can be done if the current-GM doesn't have some currency (trust, authority, deceit, whining, whatever) to push ahead past the moment where the current-protagonist isn't interested. So what's that currency, and why do you need it?

What's this moment where the current-protagonist isn't interested? That's the moment where I ditch out, right, and better luck next time, isn't it? Why would I push past it?

Is pushing past my fellow players' disinterest what you understand me to mean by "power"?

-Vincent

Well yes, that's precisely what I've been reading you as saying.  When I asked about what happens in that moment earlier, your response was:

Quote from: lumpleyOog. The last thing I'd do is trust the player to know what's the right adversity, until afterward.

Which struck me as really odd, but which I've been trying to roll with.  It would actually be a relief to find that I'd misinterpreted.

If all you're saying is that you wouldn't trust the player to create a good conflict for themselves then I'm right there with you.  That's the Czege principle in action ("When one person is the author of both the character's adversity and its resolution, play isn't fun.")  So, by the way, Chris:  I don't promote careful examination of the conflicts that would be good for your own character at the gaming table.  In fact, I think it's sort of pointless.  Players will never introduce things that challenge themselves in a fun way.

But I do trust them to respond instantly to good adversity when it's layed out for them.  Are we on the same page there?

If so, I think that implies that adversity qua adversity, cannot be introduced into the SIS by anyone other than the player of the current-protagonist.  "Wait!"  I hear you cry, "That's the exact opposite of what you said two paragraphs ago!"  But there's a subtle distinction.

The current-GM can (and should) create the circumstances that outline what the adversity could be... "the Order of Hermes is undergoing a schism".  But only the current-protagonist can decide "This is a problem for my character".  Example from a recent PBeM I played (circumstances not even remotely sugar-coated to protect the heinously guilty):

QuoteGM:  So the evil villains are creating a mystic bomb that will destroy the entire Faerie realm!
Me:  >yawn<  That's nice.
GM:  What? NICE?  The faeries are your allies!
Me:  The faeries claim to be my allies, but you have such an obsession with them that they're all-powerful, and therefore always find excuses not to help me, lest your story become boring.  Which is all by way of explaining that this whole bomb thing?  Not interesting to me.  I won't rise to that bait, try something else.
GM:  But if Faerie is destroyed, all the worlds will be in turmoil!  There will be chaos everywhere!  The grand conjunction of draconic-kin will be disrupted.
Me:  See, now THAT is interesting!  Let's go with that!
GM:  NO THAT'S BAD!  I QUIT!  YOU RUINED MY GAME!

What I find (and find interesting) is that when there is a firm SC saying that choosing to address a situation is the sole province of the current-protagonist, it becomes much easier to give people the power to offer the situation.  If I'm allowed not to care that the Order of Hermes is falling apart then it's really not a big deal if you make it happen without my permission.