Discussion with my GMing Mentor

[Judd]

Jim is my gaming Qui-Gon.  He got me to GM when I was 13.

But here's the thing, when I told him I didn't know the rules well enough to run a game he said, "Rules don't matter."

Uh-oh.  Forge comandment NUMERO UNO.

As such I had a hard time with Rules Matter when I read it, years ago and it wasn't until playing several Indie RPG's that I got it.

Suddenly, I could trust game book texts and run them as they were written.  This was a new idea to me. Before that, throwing rules out the window was the norm.

I just got into a long discussion/argument/debate with Jim about GMing after returning from Dexcon and lamenting on my non-indie games.

I told him that gaming outside of the Forge folks at a con was a crap shoot with incredibly bad odds.  The Forge-ites are the only reason I go to cons at all.  Otherwise, it is just not worth it.

He told me how uncomfortable he was with my GMing practices.  They made him edgy.  We've only gamed once in the past five years and I ran a shit game.

The primary practices that made him uncomfortable:

 - me, the GM asking my players where they wanted to take the game in the next session.

 - Handing key NPC roles to my players.

He's an old school GM and a damned good one.

What we got down to is that he doesn't trust his players and doesn't feel like they can handle it.  I do'nt feel like any group he has played with...maybe ever, has really blown his doors off when he was GMing, not like he was blowing their doors off as a Gm.

For many players, Jim is the first GM to step back and allow them to just go with the flow.  They feel like he is doing magic, like he's reading their minds.  They've never played under a GM like him. 

But I explained to Jim that among d20 gamers, I feel he is a rarity.  He is one in a million.  I am not willing to wade through the games upon games at cons upon cons to attempt to find him.  Not when I can go to any indie table and have a great time.  The Forge's convention game batting average is Hall of Fame material.

He mentioned a time in his Deadlands game when the gambler and the gunslinger wanted to play poker.  he had the other players take NPC roles.  They'd often throw the game to get the PC's money, not really playing their roles, eager to get back to their own PC's.

I suggested this was because the PC's taking the roles wasn't set up efficiently, that it takes a bunch of work to do so.

On one hand, I really feel that my gaming life has been blessed.  My player pool in Ithaca has been so deep and now that I'm connected on-line, I can't well imagne a place I could go where I wouldn't be able to track down a gamer.

On another, more pompous hand, I feel that my GMing has picked up skills that Jim has not (no worries, I'll forward him this thread) and that he is holding on to what works for him rather than trying new techniques out of distrust.

[TonyLB]

Mistrust is a very painful thing, precisely because of the way that it's self-reinforcing.

Say that for years you keep your players in a box of your controlling, never giving them choices that have any chance of utterly ruining the game.  Now you decide "Hey, these guys are so cool, I bet I could trust them with responsibility over the game."  Well, sadly, you can't.  Because you've trained them to act within that box, not to take responsibility.

I hear from GMs who say exactly what Jim says:  "The two times I gave the players the chance to screw up, they leapt to take it, and ruined everything we created together."

And then there's me, and I say "Every time I give the players the chance to utterly screw up, they instead think of something incredibly ingenius and make the game better than it ever could have been otherwise."

The difference is (I think) that I give the players that opportunity every single session, over and over.  But to the Jim-like GMs, it sounds like I'm a wilfully naive person benefitting from a player group of unparalleled skill and discretion.  It's like we're in different worlds, with no communication or agreement possible.  Which sorta sucks, but... ah well, my different world is the one of the two I'd rather live in anyway.

[Eric Provost]

It's like we're in different worlds, with no communication or agreement possible.  Which sorta sucks, but... ah well, my different world is the one of the two I'd rather live in anyway.

That sounds like a bit of giving up Tony.  Doncha think? 

I mean, two years ago I was a Jim.  Now I can't even imagine haveing five minutes of fun GMing that way.  Something changed in the way I thought of gaming.  Some of that had to do with 18 months of catastrophic gaming, but more of it had to do with finding the Forge and finding DitV. 

I specifically mention DitV because, though it wasn't the first Forge game I purchased, it was the one that introduced the Forge NewSpeak to me in a way I could understand.  It was the game that, after pestering my D&D players over and over with "Just play it once" converted my whole group to NewSpeak.  Of course, DitV doesn't have all of the new & nifty ways of playing tied together in a neat little package.  It has just enough to make us realize that there really is a different way to play and have fun.  A way that we've really been looking for and didn't want to admit we were even looking for.

And one of those things was player empowerment.

My point is that the Jims of the world can be converted.  It just takes the right game text.  And a fellow player pestering them to just play once.

-Eric

[LandonSuffered]

I can certainly relate to Jim’s perspective...it pretty much echoes all of my past GM’ing career.  Now that I’ve been opened up to the possibility of different ways of playing “the role of GM” by the Forge and its contents, I’m excited to explore more collaborative gaming.  Of course, one thing that might be different from Jim is that I’ve lost touch with all my old “gamer buddies” and intend to be very selective in putting together a new group.  If I was still with my old friends (the past three or four groups I’ve played with), I’d probably still be GM’ing the same way.

I’m not necessarily a “blow your doors off GM,” but my past experience with gamers is (for the most part) that’s what they’re looking for.  Their creative agenda I would call “going along for the ride,” somewhere between Gamist and Simulationist but with the dial spun HEAVILY to the Sim end.  Maybe this is because I’m from Seattle and we love whatever escapisms we can find, but for many of the players I’ve encountered, its not necessarily about winning or defeating anything, its about becoming a diffrerent person in a different world and losing yourself for awhile...and there is an expectation that the GM facilitates this “trip” like a needle dispensing your heroin (game) of choice.

In other words, my players didn’t want to think much about the NPCs, the plot, or even too heavily about their character; they just wanted to Explore and expected the GM to provide the colorful Setting for them to explore.  More than half the players never even bothered to purchase/borrow the game or learn much about the rules other than character creation.  As a control-freak, enabler-type guy with a lot of cretive inspiration and a love of rules and system was all too happy to take the reins...that’s why I got to GM.

And when you’re gaming under these type of circumstances, it is understandable (not justifiable) that you may lack trust in your players’ abilities to help facilitate the story or gaming experience. HOWEVER, here’s the trick (which I only started to learn and experiment with  towards the end of my experience)...you’ve got to ask the players for their input. You’ve got to leave a space for them to step into.  You don’t force them to pick up an NPCs role or continually ask them “what do you do” but you let them know the options they have in contributing to the game world and setting and see which ones rise to the bait.  Then you encourage them and provide positive feedback (perhaps a little more specific than “rules don’t matter”) and pretty soon you may have another co-GM/creator which may encourage others in your group to follow-suit!

[Valamir]

You know. 

Somewhere on the "About the Forge" page there should be a link to this thread.

[Bankuei]

Hi Judd,

I recently was talking to a new player of mine, and he mentioned his first experience with roleplaying was WEG's D6 Star Wars.

His group wouldn't let him play a Jedi.

Now, all of the movies are about Jedi.   Most of the videogames are about Jedi.  If you ran up on any 7 year old kid and said, "Let's play Star Wars"- you'd all be playing some Jedi.

And the "reason" his group wouldn't let ANY player play some Jedi?  "Jedi would overpower the other PCs"  "Jedi are too powerful"  "Jedi would 'ruin' the adventure/challenge/whatever" Translation:  Fear of players.  "Chicken Littling" is what I'm calling it- "If you let the players get out of control, if you let the players get too much power, then the game will explode and everyone loses."

This advice has appears in many ways, in many games, in many editions.  And it has poisoned gamer culture overall.  The GM's are afraid to let players get "too much power".  The players are afraid of what happens if they DO get too much power.  Why is it so conceptually hard to shift from GM fiat to Conflict Resolution(since that's what the rules ARE FOR)?  Because Conflict Resolution in any form means the players get the power to bring their full intents to fruition, unchecked except by the rules of resolution.

Gamers don't even trust the rules, since many games start by telling you, "Rule #1 is ignore the rules"...

Chris

[Judd]

The whole I-was-Jim thang bugs me.  It strikes me as condescending.

Jim does listen to his players.  That is why they think he is a miracle worker.  But what he doesn't do is ASK them.  Jim comes from a school when the DM was behind the screen, reading the air.  And we got effing good at it.

I think many indie games rock because the incorporate reading the air right into the game, into the character sheet.  Specifically, I'm talking about Sorcerer's Kickers, TRoS's Spiritual Attributes and BW's Beliefs.  These are what cut down on having to read minds and listening in on snacks breaks.  We still do read minds and we still do listen in on snack breaks but the system helps us along.

My departure from Jim's school of GMing began before I knew the Forge existed, mid-90's when I would hand NPC roles to players.  And wouldn't ya know it, the game would take turns that thrilled me, NPC's would shock me...not every once in a while but EVERY single NIGHT.

I realized that the more power I handed to the players, the better the game, the more they were invested in it.

But it took Dust Devils to cut the cord completely.

[Nathan P.]

What I think is really cool is, it goes both ways. That is, sure I'm a better GM than I was since I started thinking critically about my fun. But it's also enabled me to talk about gaming with my players in ways that get them thinking critically, and it creates this awesome positive feedback loop. I posted recently on my blog about this, and here's my favorite part:

But you know what he said? This friend of mine, who I've been gaming with for about 10 years, off and on, who doesn't really game with anyone else or is into any kind of theory or anything like that? He said things like "the most interesting characters are normal people in messed up situations" and "D&D was really boring because the only time you roll dice is during fights, and thats the last 20 minutes of the session" and "the problem with fantasy games is that people don't think theres consequences for their characters actions" and "kewl powers are fun, but shouldn't be what the game is about."

You don't need to be a theory wonk to get all this stuff, you just have to be willing to talk about it and willing to think about what you find fun and what you don't.

I think it is possible to break the cycle that Tony wrote about. It may have to start off slow, but basically, if you can talk about things like adults with other adults who enjoy the pasttime, you can get some amazing results.

In my efforts to speed this process, I've started doing things like never making hidden rolls, and being very upfront about whats going on (like, "I'm not gonna kill you guys, cuz that sucks." or "The currency is there to spend. There's more where it came from") You can feel the energy flowing, man, and its awesome.

[Eric Provost]

The whole I-was-Jim thang bugs me.  It strikes me as condescending.

Sorry, man.  Wasn't intended to be condescending.  Just trying to say that I too used to GM like that.  I had my group of loyal followers.  A half dozen close friends who swore I was the best thing that ever happened to gaming.  But then my play style changed.  And I can never go back.

I still say that the Jims fo the world can be converted.  But my implication that they should be converted was a little too strong.

-Eric

[Judd]

Eric,

I hear ya.  I'm just picture Jim looking over this thread and drawing conclusions about "elitist indie gamers."

[TonyLB]

Yeah.  I have great respect for the skills of people who can (as Judd put it) "read the air."  It was never a skill that I developed to the point where I could consistently entertain people... at least not to my own satisfaction.

Honestly, a large part of the frustration that led me to look for new ways of playing was exactly that.  I would constantly be thinking "God!  I want to know what you want as players.  You want me to know what you want.  Why do I have to play some demented version of twenty questions?  What is so hard about just giving me a straight answer when I ask you?"

If I'd been more skilled, I might not feel the need for systems that make those skills unnecessary.

[Judd]

I think another interesting facet of this is:

I am the godfather of Jim's child.  I was the best man at his wedding.  If Jim was putting together a Gaming All-Stars Group, I'd be among his first draft picks.  Ya dig?  There's trust and love and respect between us. 

However, the way I tell him I game makes him uncomfortable.

That is effin' interesting.

So, I'm thinking about the nay-sayers, those who talk about not liking indie RPG's or talk about how some of 'em aren't even RPG's at all, the Forge hatah's and I'm thinking about Jim's discomfort.

That interests me too.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Yeah.  I have great respect for the skills of people who can (as Judd put it) "read the air." ...If I'd been more skilled, I might not feel the need for systems that make those skills unnecessary.

The thing about the Indie approach -- when it works, which is, y'know, nowhere near always -- is that it's just easier. The GM Jims of the world are awfully skilled; they have to be, since they have to take published materials and informal traditions and "kitbash" them together into something that really works, which is of course a long tradition in RPGs and the wargaming/miniatures/modeling hobby from which it derives. But for the rest of us, and maybe even for the Jims, it's great to have a written set of instructions that addresses all the things you need to do -- which means, as Ron Edwards endlessly says, it actually talks about how to work with the real people around the table and what they want, not just the fictional characters.

And there are bunch of great Indie games around that explicitly talk about the Real Human Beings stuff, but I think the thing that makes me bow down to Vincent Baker again and again is that Dogs in the Vineyard is so shockingly lucid: "Build a town like this, stop before you do that, pay special attention to what the players do here and here and there, then escalate, escalate, escalate."

[Judd]

The thing about the Indie approach -- when it works, which is, y'know, nowhere near always -- is that it's just easier.

Amen.

I was talking to Jim about his game the other night.  He ran his speciality, one of his specialities, the run-and-gun dungeon crawl in which the players attempt to get in and get out...QUICKLY.  During these games players sweat and characters are under constant threat.

When the players get their PC's outta there, they feel like they've accomplished something.

I couldn't run that game.  Jim played in a Gamist D&D game, d20 played as straight up hack and slash and so now he knows how it works.  The guys he hacks with are a seperate group all together and it was through them that he learned enough about d20 to make it all work for him.

I do not have the patience.

The last game I ran with Jim was d20 and it was the game when I realized that Forge games had spoiled me.  I hate swimming against the current.  It drives me nuts.

Anyway, well said, Sydney.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Thanks.

And there's this thought of yours:

So, I'm thinking about the nay-sayers, those who talk about not liking indie RPG's or talk about how some of 'em aren't even RPG's at all, the Forge hatah's and I'm thinking about Jim's discomfort.....

Possible analogy: I learned to cook from my parents, all hands-on, nothing written down. So my instinct is, "Recipes? I don't need your stinkin' recipes!" And I've got a ton of cookbooks I hardly ever use, and if I do try to use them, I tend to riff off the written recipies more than I follow them. Which is great for making the 12 things I've been making in a rotating cycle for the last five years. But boy, do my wife and I get bored with those 12 things. And if I want to branch out -- if I want to try something new -- I'm going to have to buckle down and follow the instructions in a cookbook. But, damn! I resist. Because getting new options by following someone else's instructions feels like subjecting myself to constraints, when in fact it's a path to freedom.