Online Harry Potter Game: GM Epiphany

[Brennan Taylor]

My wife Krista started an online Harry Potter game for some offline gaming friends. Three of us made up characters, and then made initial posts, about a month ago. That is where things pretty much stalled out. I have been talking with her, and she was sort of at a loss about how to get things going. I recommended kickers, and then proceeded to write a new post for my character that incorporated a pretty big one.

My character’s parents were accused of being Death Eaters (villains) and were killed by Aurors (cops). The kicker is that the character receives an anonymous note telling him that the truth about his parents will be revealed, he just has to meet with the note-writer at a particular time and place.

After this, the game still didn’t go anywhere. While Krista and I were packing last Saturday, we got to discussing game design theory a bit, as I was putting my game books in boxes. As she has done in the past, Krista expressed her annoyance at my game theory babble, saying she really couldn’t tell what practical use it was (a testament to my rotten explanatory skills, I would say). Then we began talking about the structure of play in Dogs in the Vineyard and The Shadow of Yesterday, and how the players’ choices pretty much create the plot and drive play.

She had an epiphany. It finally sank in. She explained to me that she had been having this trouble all along because she was trying to create a plot, and then couldn’t figure out how to work all of the characters in. And she was having trouble coming up with a plot in the first place. Suddenly, a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She could let us do the work, and worry about NPCs and backstory as the players created scenes and supporting characters with our contributions. Now she is excited about running the game and is eager to get things moving.

I just wanted to share this, because it felt great for me to be able to help her make a breakthrough on this game. This concept is so difficult for many people to get, and yet when folks talk about a “great GM”, they are often talking about someone who listens to the players contributions and makes game play about them and their characters. This is so fundamental to how to play an RPG, and yet it is so rarely communicated. I’ve done this instinctively, learning these techniques over the years of role-play GMing that I have done. It's really nice to be able to actually explain how this works to a novice GM, and have her really get it.

[xenopulse]

That's great, Brennan. You're right, it is a difficult thing for many players who were introduced the traditional way to wrap their heads around. Now all you need to do is get the other players on the same page :)

Good luck for your and Krista's game!

[MatrixGamer]

Brennan

You might want to try out using Matrix Game rules ideas in your game. I've been doing on line games like this for seven years - where I step out of the way and let the players make up the game. The rules mechanism works well for scene descriptions send via email.

Here is how it works.

Players send in turns just like they do now. They are nice written descriptions of scenes. The Game Master decides how "strong" they are - in other words how much they like them. This yields a probability of it happening. The GM rolls a die and the argument happens or it doesn't. This adds a gaminess to the proceeding as opposed to it just being a creative writing exercise. It move action from critical event to critical event - which I believe is similar to what Forge theory describes as conflict resolution versus task resolution (though done in a different way.)

I've had great success is getting women to play games this way because it involves very few rules and gives them maximum flexibility. About a third of the players in the con games (and of people buying my games) are women.

My version of Matrix Game rules are free on my web page http://www.io.com/~hamster

Chris Engle
Hamster Press