There is only players in RPG

[Minx]

Sure, the GM has all these functions and more. But I have often encountered GM and Players alike who believed that it is the GMs duty to entertain the other people around the table, no matter the unpleasantness on the GM side. Sure, it is (IMO partly) the GMs own responsability to have fun.
But look at it this way:

I think everyone will agree with this assumption:

"It is the players responsability the he/she and the other players have fun."

It doesn´t mean that they have to take the other peoples fun higher than their own, it means they just have to keep it in mind when playing.

If now the GM is also assumed to be (just/only/particular/whatever...) a player, then this is also valid for him. (Not much a difference, as most GMs do that already.) But there´s a big change on the players side, or tat least it should be, because it is a players responsablity to keep in mind that the other players also have fun. Which now includes the GM too.

The statement "The GM is also (just/only/whatever) a player." doesn´t HAVE to mean player empowerment or a shift in power over director stance. It just means a change in the players responsabilities.

M

[Tomas HVM]

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[Tomas HVM]

My role as GM isn't 'only a player', I am organiser, host, rules-writer and arbiter, world-builder and social architect. None of my players can invite someone to my sessions, nor throw someone out. I set the tone, maintain the social niceties, keep the game on track and keep the story moving.

None of the things you describe here are contrary to the view of you being a player with certain tasks to do, to make the game come through. I would of course call rules-writing and world-building, tasks for the gamesmith, but in reality the players tend to make their own rules as they go along, and they certainly are expected to make the world in most cases.

However: you seem to have described the role of the GM quite nice. We may take a look at every one of these tasks later on, and try to solve them by other means than appointing a "master of the game".

It seems to be me that you are denying that part of the GM's role which is important, for the small gain that you realise the GM has to have fun too.

Well, I do not deny that we have to make the game come through. Someone has to invite the people, read the stuff, give it a kick, etc-etc.

So, I have not forgotten everything important. On the contrary: I've discovered one very important detail, and a detail that seem to be forgotten most of the time:

Everyone participating in a game are players, and all players are entitled to good gameplay!

Why do we forget about it? The answer is obvious: to appoint a GM makes it so much easier for gamesmiths to write their games. We make it easy for ourselves, and make hell for young and unstudied "masters"! They take up the uncertain task of being the master of the game, but they feel nothing like masters. They are left groping in the dark.

So, my humble point is that gamesmiths will make their players a favor by regarding them all as equally important, and trying their best to make games were none of the players are left with tasks they are badly equipped to do. To empower is not only to give a player formal authority and functions in the game-setting. It is also to give her insights and tools to make her authority shine.

It's a serious and professional attitude: If I want to make one of the players a "master of the game", I must do my best to ensure that she master it, and still may enjoy it.

Honestly: I'm tired of gamesmiths and companies churning out RPG's with low standards, leaning heavily not only on the creativity of their players, but also on their ability to create their own method and gametools. No wonder players tend to say:

The "system" is insignificant. All you need is a good GM.

Meaning: the system is generally bad/lacking/uninspiring, but if you have a GM who is a real master of the game, an ingenious gamesmith, a great storyteller on the fly, a strong father and caring as a mother...

- if you got a GM like this, then your game may rise and fly, in spite of the bad job done by some insignificant gamesmith.

[Jack Aidley]

None of the things you describe here are contrary to the view of you being a player with certain tasks to do, to make the game come through.

You're right of course. But it's not a matter of what can be contained in the view but what is emphasised by the view. I think your view emphasises the wrong aspects. In my experience GMs who's primary goal is to look after their own enjoyment make crummy GMs and thereby fail to enjoy themselves. Good GMing comes from an understanding and awareness of your players needs; and happy players make for a happy GM.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tomas,

You may be missing the fact that you have discovered the choir. We agree with you - even the ones who point up "disagreements." Your phrasing,

I'm tired of gamesmiths and companies churning out RPG's with low standards, leaning heavily not only on the creativity of their players, but also on their ability to create their own method and gametools. No wonder players tend to say:

The "system" is insignificant. All you need is a good GM.

Meaning: the system is generally bad/lacking/uninspiring, but if you have a GM who is a real master of the game, an ingenious gamesmith, a great storyteller on the fly, a strong father and caring as a mother...

- if you got a GM like this, then your game may rise and fly, in spite of the bad job done by some insignificant gamesmith.

... is dead on target in agreement with my original essay, "System Does Matter," which is now heavily refined and altered in detail but not in its point. It's not gospel at the Forge, but it is widely considered useful, especially in its social implications. You may have no idea how wonderful it is for me to read your points as independent corroboration of my own experiences.

Now let's review the posts. All of the points raised so far are clearly aimed at getting your point into the most effective phrasing, not in refuting the point. You're defending when no one is attacking.

It grieves me to moderate you in a thread which says stuff I agree with profoundly, but you are actually keeping yourself from being heard, by shouting. Boldface and capitals are shouting. You cannot shout at the Forge; you must change your social image of what's happening here from a bear-pit (take on all comers!) to a coffee-shop or friendly bar.

Really: you've found friends and allies. Don't get stuck on the small stuff.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Heh, yeah.

Hate to throw cold water on your enthusiasm, Tomas, but alot of this is pretty old news around here.

So no need to prove your point I think.  Most of us would agree with the general premise of the GM being another player whose been given an additional level of empowerment by other players.  You won't find many "the GM is god and the players are his slaves" types around here.

So if there are some specific aspects and nuances of that idea that you'd like to discuss more specifically, that would be a great topic for a thread (and I think was the point Gordon was trying to make earlier)

[pete_darby]

None of the things you describe here are contrary to the view of you being a player with certain tasks to do, to make the game come through.

You're right of course. But it's not a matter of what can be contained in the view but what is emphasised by the view. I think your view emphasises the wrong aspects. In my experience GMs who's primary goal is to look after their own enjoyment make crummy GMs and thereby fail to enjoy themselves. Good GMing comes from an understanding and awareness of your players needs; and happy players make for a happy GM.

Yeah, but consider this re-wording:

In my experience role-playerswho's primary goal is to look after their own enjoyment make crummy role-players and thereby fail to enjoy themselves. Good roleplaying comes from an understanding and awareness of other players needs; and happy players make for a happy game

Does changing GM to roleplayer make it any less true? I'm not saying we must eliminate the GM, or the GM doesn't have a bigger effect on the game in conventional RPG's than other players, just that any selfish player can ruin a session, not just a gm.

[Tomas HVM]

In my experience GMs who's primary goal is to look after their own enjoyment make crummy GMs and thereby fail to enjoy themselves.

Yes, and that's why I propose for the gamesmiths to be more vary of the demands a GM will face, and empower her in better ways. We, the gamesmiths, must ensure the fun for GM's.

[Paganini]

As I see it, games divide responsibility and control.  All of the players agree to this.  Thus, no participant is inherently more empowered than any of other.  It's not like the GM ever has any magical powers -- she has exactly as much power as the other players collectively decide to give her.  

John! Yo! You just nailed the Lumpley Principle!

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.)

[Jack Aidley]

Yes, and that's why I propose for the gamesmiths to be more wary of the demands a GM will face, and empower her in better ways. We, the gamesmiths, must ensure the fun for GM's.

Of course. But is the best way to do this to concentrate on the GM as a player? I think not. The Gm is best served by tools that allow them to perform their role as Gm well, that help create vivid and memorable games and avoid getting bogged down in detail. On those very aspects of a Gms role that aren't being another player.

I like your term 'gamesmith' by the way, I may adopt that.

Does changing Gm to roleplayer make it any less true? I'm not saying we must eliminate the Gm, or the Gm doesn't have a bigger effect on the game in conventional RPG's than other players, just that any selfish player can ruin a session, not just a gm.

Well, yes. But not in the way I was meaning. A player can ruin a game by being disruptive, uncooperative, stupid and generally a knob. A Gm can end up running a really bad game simply by failing to concentrate on what the players enjoy. A friend of mine is a really bad Gm. Not because he doesn't try, or because he's rude, or uncooperative, but because he concentrates on those bits which interest him. Namely creating a world, and writing a compex plot. Trouble is that walking through an exposition of the details of Dwarven steel mining is excessively dull. And while he might have a twisted and detailed plot; there's no place for the players input in it. In other words he's built the game around aspects that have no interest for the players.

Now I'm not saying that other player/Gm or Gm-less configurations don't have merit, or aren't worth following. But if you are going to maintain a traditional Gm/player split then treating the Gm as a more powerful player is not the way to go.

[Tomas HVM]

I do like to discuss my ideas, and by discussion I do not necessarily talk about disagreement. I'd rather like to play with the ideas, look at them from different angles, and investigate them. In this discussion I have mainly tried to correct some misconceptions about my stance, and to answer some statements I heartily disaggree in.

If I, in refuting some points, have offended someone here, I regret so. I have been lurking on this forum for a time, and smell it to be a somewhat special forum. People seem to be quite selfconscious here, and eager to point out that arguments have been made here before. I accept that, but it is not necessarily a good way to greet newcomers, or enough for eager gamesmiths with ideas they need to get response to.

To pick on my use of bold types and such is besides the point, and frankly: a bit of nitpicking. I'm only playing around with the interface, nothing more to it.

I do not recognise all arguments as valid or true, and find it easier to say so. As long as I keep to the issue there is no reason to rebuke me or try to make me change. I am old enough to word my own opinions, and too old to change by the whim of someone I do not know. I would prefer people to be tolerant, and to accept me (or anyone) at face value.

That cleared away:
I've made some bold points here on empowering the players, and on the GM being a player like everyone else. I am quite eager to discuss roleplaying games with this as a premiss, and especially the finer points of what I call empowerment.

I am testing alternative ways of empowering players in two of my new roleplaying games, and expect to make some experience out of it. I would also like to get some general input on the possibilities inherent in such a stance, and post here to sharpen my grip on the challenges facing me in my work as a gamesmith.

To hear many of you have disussed this theme before makes me optimistic. I expect you have some valid and eyeopening points to make...

[Tomas HVM]

The Gm is best served by tools that allow them to perform their role as Gm well, that help create vivid and memorable games and avoid getting bogged down in detail. On those very aspects of a Gms role that aren't being another player.

Yes, the GM is best served by this, but I am a gamesmith, writing to gamesmiths, and I have to have the game in mind.

My point is; you seem to raise an objection to my stance on the premiss that the GM is an irrefutable part of the game. I do not see it so. I consider every participant in my games a player, however their roles may vary. That is my stance, as stated in my first post. By this stance I try to enable myself to make better roleplaying games. I expect this to be a sound approach (so far it feels good).

More than that: I expect this to be a sound approach in trying to make better GM's too, within the confines of the traditional roleplaying game.

[Walt Freitag]

The choir, indeed...

Tools to help GMs be better GMs is a subject close to my heart. (I have a game in progress that has, for the past several months, been "practically finished" in the eyes of most who have seen it. What it lacks are exactly such GM tools. No one would notice the absence of these tools if I were to publish the game as is. It would look like any other reasonably sound Simulationist game, a really great game as long as you've got a really good GM to run it. The exact thing I have no interest in further burdening the world with, because frankly, and present company excluded, really good GMs are thin on the ground.)

The word "empowering" requires some caution. When used here, it usually refers to giving a participant authority to influence the shared imagined space and/or the outcome. I sense that that's not exactly the kind of empowerment you're talking about. Traditional GMs pretty much have as much of that type of power as they want for the taking. If I'm not mistaken, what you're talking about is ways to empower GMs to be better GMs, which might very well entail curtailing their traditional "empowerment" in particular ways. Kind of like the way the computer chips in a modern family car "empower" drivers to be better drivers, partly by curtailing their power to do tire-screeching accelerations, spin-outs, and sliding turns -- curtailments that a NASCAR driver would certainly see as disempowering.

Like others, I came here with a mixed sense of pride that I'd managed to develop effective play techniques, and annoyance that the game system texts I'd been using had not been helpful, and were often actively obstructive, in developing those techniques. System does matter, system doesn't matter, that depends on one's own experiences. The important thing is, system should matter. That is to say, system should help.

If the ultimate thrust of your assertion that designers should think of GMs as more like players than they generally do is that GMs should be provided with creative tools that are more like the ones they provide players with, I couldn't agree more. Most systems give players lots of help: clear goals, clear choices, clear expectations, clear limits, and clear rewards (though these things are likely to come at the cost of curtailed creative empowerment). GMs don't get these tools; instead, they get advice describing all the things they should be striving to accomplish (with some of those things being, according to prevailing Forge theory, demonstrably impossible), and tools completely inadequate for accomplishing them.

I look forward to discussing your ideas about how this state of affairs can be improved.

- Walt

PS Oh by the way, if I complained about your use of boldface etc., it might be nitpicking. Dude, Ron is the moderator. His enforcement of whatever etiquette rules he chooses to establish is never beside the point. The availability of an option in the interface is not to be interpreted as the guaranteed right to use it.

[Minx]

Well, yes. But not in the way I was meaning. A player can ruin a game by being disruptive, uncooperative, stupid and generally a knob. A Gm can end up running a really bad game simply by failing to concentrate on what the players enjoy. A friend of mine is a really bad Gm. Not because he doesn't try, or because he's rude, or uncooperative, but because he concentrates on those bits which interest him. Namely creating a world, and writing a compex plot. Trouble is that walking through an exposition of the details of Dwarven steel mining is excessively dull. And while he might have a twisted and detailed plot; there's no place for the players input in it. In other words he's built the game around aspects that have no interest for the players.
Now I'm not saying that other player/Gm or Gm-less configurations don't have merit, or aren't worth following.

Take a look at this reworded statement:

In my experience role-players who's primary goal is to look after their own enjoyment make crummy role-players and thereby fail to enjoy themselves. Good roleplaying comes from an understanding and awareness of other players needs; and happy players make for a happy game.

It has already been posted but I think it was worth to repost it, especially with your example in mind. Acording to this very intelligent statement, your friend is a bad role-player. Simply because he forgot the other players fun.

The statement "The GM is a player", added to the statement above actually prevents such behaviour (Or at least should prevent it), as the GM, as a player, is not allowed to act in such an selfish and egoistic manner. Which is at least my point with this statement.

But if you are going to maintain a traditional Gm/player split then treating the Gm as a more powerful player is not the way to go.

Simply put: Why? What should happen? Would the players revolt because of this sudden relevation? Would they quit acting in a mutual and respectfull manner towards the GM? Would his word count less because of it?
IMO not.

M

[Mike Holmes]

Considering the GM as a player with specific responsibilities is an important tool in design, IMO. It's just a perspective, really, but one that allows us to take apart those duties and look at them individually.

This is nothing new, really. I recall reading in, IIRC, Rolemaster's Gamemaster Law that they were of the opinion that the GM should never host a game at his house. And I think there's some merit to that notion. Whether you agree or not, it's looking at these things in their specifics that advances the art of design.

Indeed, it's not because we want to take away the GM's powers, neccessarily- though in some cases reapportionment is the idea (see COTEC threads here). It's very much in order to look at the GM powers and see how we can make them work more effectively, regardless of who wields them.

I think the argument of what the best apportionment of power is a moot point. I think lots of games can be made with all sorts of different ways of doing it, each as valid as the last. But I do think it's important to think in terms of the individual powers themselves lest they be ignored. Too often designers just say, "Oh, and one player is the GM who plays everything else." It's precisely because this is worded as the player being an especially empowered player, but not having the powers enumerated well, that problems arise from that description.

So, I think that the argument as a whole is moot. If somebody needs to see the GM as another player in some way I don't see much harm per se. Nor help particularly, other than it may help them to think about the powers in question. Like Walt said, what we all want in the end is participants who have well defined roles with well defined powers that lead to good play. The rest just seems to be perspective.

And I don't think it's a harmful perspective in any way. Everyone who espouses that perspective also espouses the idea that all participants are responsible to use their powers to entertain the group, and not just themsleves. So that's a non-argument.

Mike