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.

lumpley wrote: I 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.

Furthermore, 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.

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?

TonyLB wrote: 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....

Tony wrote: 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?

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!

TonyLB wrote: If, as a player, I offer you the opportunity to interest me and you fail... then you fail. Happens to everybody.

lumpley wrote: 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.

TonyLB wrote: 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!

lumpley wrote:

Tony wrote: 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?

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.

Tony wrote: 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!

Judd wrote: I 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."

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

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.

lumpley wrote: 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:
(...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?

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.

Tony wrote: 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?

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:

lumpley wrote: Oog. The last thing I'd do is trust the player to know what's the right adversity, until afterward.

GM: 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!

Yes! Same page.

So like, here's you and me and Mike Miller sitting down for a ten-minute Capes demo, right? And I create this little scientist guy via click & lock. And I'm sitting there looking at him, going, huh.

You put forward as a goal "stop this fiendish experiment" and my eyes light up! I'm like, "ooh, I didn't know that about my character. That's awesome! That's painful! That's deepening!"

You had an insight into my character. You were empowered to act on it. It was good.

Notice especially that me having the right to reject it is compatible with you having the power to act on it in the first place. That's the power I'm arguing for, not the power to bull through rejection.

-Vincent

I think I'm finally getting this thanks to this example.

lumpley wrote:
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:

Judd wrote: I 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.

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

Okay, cool. Same page. Your example is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

I'll say, beyond this (because I like going out on limbs) that the process of tossing out ideas and having them shot down is a vital thing, which games often lose out on... sometimes by design.

I'm thinking in particular about the many games that set out Conflicts by first achieving player consensus. Let's say that in Vincent's example, I propose "Stop this fiendish experiment", looking at him significantly, and his eyes don't light up. Ho hum. No excitement.

How much should this cost me? In a consensus-driven game, this costs me two seconds of discomfort, before I say "or maybe 'Control the hideous mutation'!" and try again. In Capes, I've just spent my action, no take-backs. Maybe I can worm a decent Inspiration out of it, or somehow spike the Conflict in later turns. But I get immediate negative feedback reinforcing the fact that I tried and failed.

And that's good. That's the best way to learn: positive and negative feedback, both.

So, Vincent, it seems like part of our miscommunication is that you're excited by the fun to be had when this works well (which I'm totally excited about too, but sort of tacitly assuming), whereas I'm focussed on the value to be gained when it works poorly. Does that sound right?

Kat Miller wrote: At that moment Michele is my Personal GM.

yes?

John wrote: 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.

Kat wrote:

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

the until afterword part-
is that until after they hear the suggested adversity or after the adversity is in play? Or until after they've faced and overcome or been crushed by the adversity?

Kat Miller wrote: So anyone in a play group who creates adversity that your invested in, can be your own personal GM for the moment.

Oooooh! Insight!

I just recognized my dysfunction.

I have a history of playing in games that are pretty heavily built around a TITBB model. Often, the provided adversity isn't really what I want to engage with. I play along, but the thing that makes the game enjoyable for me is that I have one fellow player (my wife) who I can almost always rely on to feed me conflicts that I _do_ engage with. And I do the same for her.

I've had GM's who were okay with this, even supported it as long as it didn't detract from their story, but I have only had really great experiences in strong-gm TITBB-type games when I wasn't relying on a fellow player to engage with MY conflict.

Data pointing,

Mark

Tony wrote: I'll say, beyond this (because I like going out on limbs) that the process of tossing out ideas and having them shot down is a vital thing, which games often lose out on... sometimes by design.

Lumpley wrote: Tell us again how Capes works, in that regard? I've only seen the two scenes' worth in action. (Yes, I have the book, but like the man says, reading is for chumps.)

Yes, thank you! That's actually quite slick.

How does the wombat thing eventually go away, or does it never?

-Vincent

I'll have to let Tony weigh in on this one fully as I haven't had a chance to play the final rules yet.

However, in playtest it worked like this: It just sat there, and sat there, and sat there while everyone did the stuff that mattered to them. Eventually someone would find themselves without anything really grabbing them and would take a short break to do a quick snatch-and-grab on the Wombats. If no one is opposing you you are basically garuanteed victory. There's your Inspiration.

That's basically it, the Wombats sit there until the pacing allows a player to grab it for a mechanical advantage, basically for free.

Thomas

Right here Sydney posts an actual play incident of this feedback system running well in both negative (against me) and positive (for him) modes.

I introduced something I thought would interest him. I was wrong. I got nothing but an Inspiration. Woe is me.

He introduced something that absolutely zinged me perfectly. He got a pile of Story Tokens.

That was our first session. We both go into the next round of conflicts armed with more information about each other. Our technique can only improve.



Re: Crossposted Wombats

The Conflicts do, as Thomas says, get gobbled up for Inspirations. What happens to those Inspirations (in terms of driving further story) is another matter.

Sometimes the Wombats go away ("They attacked your girlfriend, kidnapped her, now she's gone... you don't care? Okay.") The Inspiration gets spent on something unconnected, and the cascade of causality peters out.

More often, somebody figures out a way to turn the Wombats into something that will grab the attention of some players. "You knew me as Trudy Trueheart, pathetic heroes, but you failed me. Now I return in vengeance as WOMBATTA, QUEEN OF THE WOMBATS. I will destroy your puny city and all its inhabitants! And there is nothing you can do to stop me, for you are failures! I am the living proof of that!"

lumpley wrote:

John wrote: 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.

I know what you mean. My current game is working out wicked well - and all the con games I've played too, pretty much - but I know just what you mean.

lumpley wrote: I'd have to think back hard to be more sure, but casually it seems to me that my failed experiences have been sometimes 1) the GM trying to impose an agenda on the player, like Tony's Fairyland example; sometimes 2) the GM understanding the character really shallowly, just missing the boat, like what you're talking about; and sometimes 3) the GM getting the character, but not seeing how to bring the insight into play - flubbing the right conflict, as opposed to choosing the wrong one.

John wrote: For my style, I just feel like it's not a good fit for the GM position.

Hard to say. Part of it is that you did spend a renewable but scarce resource (Actions) to get your shot at the Story Tokens. But mostly I think it's the difference between what you hoped for and what you achieved. I think people generally judge their success relative to the range of possibilities, not their starting position. So they can see an objective success as a subjective failure, because it's less than they might have achieved. Likewise they can see an objective failure as a subjective success, because it could have been much worse.

John Kim wrote: Rather, my style is to maximize the interactions and connections and ties and opportunities. So there's lots of opportunities for things to click, and in practice many do.

Know what I'll bet, Tony? I'll bet that Capes isn't providing negative feedback at all. I'll bet that people get better at putting forward juicy conflict because Capes rewards them a little bit for trying and a lot for getting it right.

-Vincent

Aw man, you're undermining my whole "negative reinforcement fosters learning" motif. You may be right though.

I'm not entirely sure Vincent. The big negative reinforcement thing to me is that your miscalculation doesn't go away. It sits there in front of God and everyone, mocking you.

Also, you are not garuanteed an Inspiration just for starting something that no one likes. In fact, anyone could get that Inspiration. It's been my experience that it's won by someone else at least as often as it is won by the originator.

So the only thing that the Inspiration does is provide a way for that lame duck. Without some reason to pick it up it would just sit there, useless to everyone. So, I think that this is a form of negative reinforcement, but that the negative side is not proportionate to the positive side. That is, it's a minor little negative, almost a slap on the wrist, vs. a big reward on the positive side...

Thomas

Setting aside the Capes talk, and the question of whether it's negative reinforcement or just "not-as-positive" reinforcement:

You can look at the mechanical results of some systems (notably, Capes and DitV) and they tell you whether or not you've successfully provided adversity to another player. In Capes I know it when I get Story Tokens. In DitV I know it when the players are rolling huge piles of Fallout.

That mechanical feedback is a teaching tool. It helps people cut through missed social cues and courtesy and trust and false enthusiasm and all the similar BS that can prevent them from realizing when they're boring another player.

TonyLB wrote: In Capes I know it when I get Story Tokens. In DitV I know it when the players are rolling huge piles of Fallout.That mechanical feedback is a teaching tool....

A thought: the term "GM" has some pretty heavy connotations already. And we've pointed out repeatedly that "GM-tasks" is a bad term.

There's already a good term for someone who creates adversity for a protagonist. Rather than saying "there can be as many GMs as players"--a great idea, but slippery in definition--why not say "any player can be an antagonist?" Or, if you're helping to expand the character in a non-directly-oppositional manner, "any player can be a catalyst?"

I've been battering my brains out on the question of "What is the right term" since about ten seconds after you posted it. It's a really useful question, and appeals intrinsically to the word-smith in me.

I'm not thrilled with the following, but it's the best I've yet wrung from english:

Coaching tasks: A set of vital tasks in the game. For each character, some person or persons must:

• Understand the character's drives, issues and limitations.• Deduce a specific challenge of Theme (for Narr) or adversity (for Gam) that the character can uniquely answer/rise-to in-play.• Present that challenge in the SIS.

Coach: The participant who is, at the moment, performing coaching tasks for a given character.

GM-gated Coaching: A specific, common, division of Coaching tasks whereby players undertake tasks 1 and 2 for other players's characters, then present that information formally or informally to the GM, who then undertakes task 3.

Direct Coaching: A division of Coaching tasks whereby the successful undertaking of task 2 reliably gives the same player power/authority to undertake task 3.

Coaching Dysfunction: Any situation whereby coaching tasks are not appropriately performed for some character in the game. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Games where nobody undertakes coaching tasks• Games where players undertake coaching tasks for their own characters• Games where players attempt task 3 without anyone having completed task 2.• Games where players attempt task 2 without anyone having completed task 1.• Games where players, having completed task 2 cannot cause an attempt at task 3.