"Expert" Players for better Simulation

[Palaskar]

I've been toying in my RPG, Signature, with the idea of having expert players take over GM responsibilities for certain facets of a given game.

For example, I know a fair amount about martial arts, but little about guns and next to nothing about sailing. If I were GM'ing, say, a pirate game, I would let a player who knows about sailing handle the resolution of sailing based-tasks by players, as well as give PCs who are supposed to be expert sailors tips.

The only thing I worry about is suspension of disbelief -- having somebody complain, say,  that the Norse used solar compasses instead of magnetic ones, would be a bit distracting to play, I think.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
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[Shreyas Sampat]

I'm not sure what you're asking here - on the one hand you're suggesting handing Simulation responsibilities to more knowledgeable people, and on the other hand you're talking about disagreements about the Simulation breaking the suspension of disbelief.  As far as I can see, as long as your designated Simulator does in fact know more than anyone else and sticks to what he knows, the second situation should never happen.

[Palaskar]

Blasted library computers. Can't cut and paste.

Anyway, I never thought of it that way, Shreyas. I believe you're thinking of having Simulators (neat name, BTW) set up things beforehand, while I was thinking of having them handle things "on the fly." Yours is the better application.

Y'see, this all grew out of a bad session of Stormbringer I had in high school. The low point came when my PC opened a door slightly to check for traps. I had hip tap the floor. When nothing happened, I had him open the door.

Immediately he was hit in the head with a flail that had been propped up by the door, like a prankster's bucket. He took full normal flail damage to the head.

Now I know enough about physics and weapons to know that there's no way in Hell a flail could cause full damage set up like that. I assumed that if I were the Simulator in this case, I would say something like, "Hey! That doesn't work!", thus disrupting play.

What you seem to be suggesting was to have me handle setup beforehand, thus preventing this situation from happening in the first place.

Thanks.

[Mike Holmes]

No, I don't think that's what he's saying. But your post does reveal something that you hadn't stated before.

See, Shreyas is under the assumption that the players are not the sorts who would be bothered by creation in play. Here's an example.

GM: The ship nears shore. There are odd reefs with tentacles here. Tex, you're the sailing Simulator, what do you think that they'd do?

Tex: Well, I think that in this world, that sailors encountering these reefs would...

And Tex makes up something plausible on the spot.

For some groups, there is no SOD problem with making stuff like this up constantly and on the fly. As long as the group trusts Tex, then there's no problem with him making some on the spot ruling about in-game reality. Indeed, how different is this from a lot of what the GM does?

Player: I make obesiance to the Prince. How do we do that in this country?

GM: Well, hmm. How about you have to bow and touch your forehead? Yeah, let's go with that.

I mean the GM has to make up stuff on the fly all the time. Now, a really good Illusionist GM can occasionally make it look like he's finding or remembering the info, but not always. Sometimes it's just obvious that the GM is excercising his powers. Indeed, did not someone at some point make up the information in question?

So the question becomes whether or not there are any players who have an actual objection to players making stuff up based on SOD. And I'd argue that, done well, this sort of thing is not at all problematic. I'd say that 90% of the resistance to this sort of play is due to problems with mistrustful play (leading to GMs feeling that they have to be solely in control of anything non-character).

I'd at least try it out, and give your Simulators the ability to create things within certain purviews. In fact, this idea is pretty much how Universalis started as it happens in terms of character knowledges.

Mike

[Shreyas Sampat]

Astute analysis, Mike.  And indeed you are correct.

In fact, I believe that this is the only way that such a method could be functional - creation-before-play requires superhuman foresight, and covert creation-in-play is difficult to pull off.  Only when CiP is consensual can such divided responsibilities be at their maximum effectiveness.

[James Holloway]

creation-before-play requires superhuman foresight

Or king-hell railroading.

I actually have an example of this from a game I ran the other day. It was a con one-shot, set in the Chicago of Al Capone. It turned out that two of my players had lived in Chicago, one for years and years (this player was also very knowledgeable about the history and folklore of Chicago). I have never even been to Chicago; I just picked it because it was, you know, gangsters and G-men. So conversations would go like this:

Me: "all right, you received a tip off that the Razors Riley mob is going to knock over the First National, a big commercial bank on --" (points at Chicago Expert).

CE: "La Salle avenue."

Me: "-- and that they're going to do it some time in the next two weeks. Right now, Razors and his boys are holed up in a grubby little apartment in --" (points again)

CE: "Bronzeville."

It worked really well, I thought.

[Fade Manley]

I've found this sort of thing very helpful in keeping my own games from getting too unrealistic or too repetitive. While I try to research things ahead of time--usually with a handy GURPS book for the relevant subject, or a quick internet search--I can't handle everything. So if it relates to a specific PC, I have the player research it: a player with a PC who's a former drug addict looked up common illegal drugs, their symptoms, withdrawal effects, lingering symptoms, and the like, while a player running a PC from a culture I hadn't much detailed got to create the family structure, language, customs, and religion for that culture.

It's also useful for expanding a setting quickly; in my scifi game, players can choose from pre-made planets, or make up their own within some loose guidelines, and that gives me that many more planets in the setting to deal with. Better yet, I have one PC who's supposed to know lots about the area of space they're in: whenever the PCs get to a new planet, I send him a quick message about the general type of planet and details I need, then his PC goes and gives all of the specific details about the planet. The player with the engineer PC makes up his technobabble on the spot, and gets to decide what it will take to fix some problem, and how.

I don't have many experts on RL subjects in my games, at least not that come up in the settings I've been running lately, but if a PC has the skill, I'm quite happy to let the players make up the details. It's one less thing for me to worry about, gives them more to do and more of a sense of control, and it keeps the game moving much faster than if they had to keep stopping and asking me how their PC should do something, or what that PC would know about an area.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Palaskar, my experiences and observations lead me to agree with Mike, Heather, and James about this technique of play.

I suspect that the issue of ...

The only thing I worry about is suspension of disbelief -- having somebody complain, say, that the Norse used solar compasses instead of magnetic ones, would be a bit distracting to play, I think.

... is a non-issue if the group is not already experiencing social conflict about power over input into the game. Without that conflict, I can't see the technique as anything but value added.

Best,
Ron

[iago]

So conversations would go like this:

Me: "all right, you received a tip off that the Razors Riley mob is going to knock over the First National, a big commercial bank on --" (points at Chicago Expert).

CE: "La Salle avenue."

Me: "-- and that they're going to do it some time in the next two weeks. Right now, Razors and his boys are holed up in a grubby little apartment in --" (points again)

CE: "Bronzeville."

It worked really well, I thought.

I've had a similar experience.  One of the things I did in running my Fate Amber game http://www.iago.net/amber/kings/">Born to be Kings was to give the players a feeling of investment by taking contributions that added to the setting and the cast of NPCs (sometimes from seed ideas I provided, sometimes wholly on their own -- worked out well in both cases).

The nifty thing about this was that it allowed the players to act as experts about completely fictional details of the world.  Thus, we got something like this:

Fred: Baron Karm strides into the room, looking irate.
Rob: Aw, *crap*
Others: What, what's wrong?
Fred: Rob, tell us about Karm.

(and so Rob tells the details -- which he created -- about Baron Karm and his nasty, nasty tendency to duel with anyone given half an excuse when he's ticked off)

The whole concept of Local Experts is a nice one to better involve your players in the game, thus, and one I can't recommend enough.