We've started the third epoch of our Draug campaign, set in a mythical Norway in the early 1800's. Since the second epoch ended in a local apocalypse - the coastal town that was the center of the campaign was overrun by living dead, and the PC's called a storm flood on it to wash the evil away, destroying the town in the process - we thought we might change location. We also wanted to tone down the supernatural elements. And we wanted to jump forward in time, about 10 years.

So we had a get-together to talk about it, and ended up in the Danish-Norwegian colony Tranquebar, on India's east coast, near Ceylon. The characters' powers were toned down, and we talked about trying a different system. I offered up Draug (which we'd been playing so far), Dogs and PTA. After some pros and cons, we went for PTA; I was the only one who'd tried it before.

Now, in the last year or so, I find myself growing as a GM and acquiring new skills. I want to focus more on the players and their characters, and give them a chance to shine. (Yes, it's Forge speak, so sue me). And PTA works very well for this style of play.

Recently on the Norwegian forum rollespill.net there's been some talk about social dynamics, and it seemed like a promising field to check out, so I read a few Wikipedia articles - in particular, the one about facilitators was interesting. Writing about it in the light of our pre-game discussion and pilot episode showed me a few blindingly obvious things - mainly, that good rules not only help the GM as a facilitator, but can actually take over that role. Talk about letting rules have authority!

A few examples from the list of what facilitators do - and approximate quotes from what I said to the players:
* Setting up a safe environment where members feel comfortable contributing ideas. "When it's your turn to request a scene, you can wait if you want, and we'll get back to you. It's perfectly OK to ask others for help, and to offer advice; the one who's requesting has final say." "When you have narrative authority, you can make it all up yourself, or you can let other people offer suggestions and just say yes or no - it's all up to you how much you want to be in control."
* Ensuring the group doesn't settle for the first thing that they can agree on because they find it painful to go on disagreeing with each other. "I really want us to finish finding the premise BEFORE we go on to the next part. I want everyone to agree with the wording. So far we have this: (...) Any suggestions? X, is that what you meant?"
* Offering opportunities for less forceful members to come forward with contributions. "So when it's your spotlight episode, you get 3 cards, while the others get 2 or 1, so you can really affect conflicts." "Everyone gets the same number of chances to request a scene."

A lot of the things on the facilitator list - in fact, most of them - could just be handed out to beginning GM's as great advice on how to run sessions.

Hm. Rambling, rambling. The main point of that post was supposed to be:

Good rules not only aid the facilitator in leading the group towards its goal; they fulfil some of the facilitator's functions all by themselves.

And, as an aside: Those rules don't have to be "GM advice". They're for the whole group.

matthijs wrote:
Good rules not only aid the facilitator in leading the group towards its goal; they fulfil some of the facilitator's functions all by themselves.

They responded very well. It seems to me that most of these techniques are so... sane, in a way, as in "not dysfunctional"... that they're instantly accepted, when presented as a part of a whole.

At the beginning, I was a little too wary of pushing the players into something they might not want - it's one of my failings as a GM, I believe. At one point, in reference to a particular rule (I forget which one) I said something like "...but of course, if the rules don't work for us, we don't have to do it just this way". One of the players replied that if we were going to try this, it would probably be best to stick to the rules to begin with, so we have a solid frame to work within. Of course, I agreed - in fact, I thought so all along, only I didn't really want to push it.

The background for this is probably that the same player and I once used part of the PTA rules to start a campaign, and it didn't work too well. You can't be part facilitator, part laissez-faire, part control freak. Whatever you do, you have to do it consistently.

There was one point where we paused the game, when things got tense and tight in the group. One of the players had narrative authority, and the stakes were: "Can we get the governor (NPC) to tell us why Victor August (PC) was arrested?" The player didn't want too much control over the story in the first place, and when she won narration, she didn't know what to do - she didn't know why he was arrested. I started playing the governor, speaking in character, telling them what they wanted to know. Then I portrayed him laughing and walking away. The player wasn't satisfied with the answer, and wanted more - because her character wanted more.

So, what to do? We stopped and tried to talk it out. The tension didn't quite give, and I ruled that we just move on - I've had some bad experience with focusing too much on problems in play earlier, and didn't want that to happen. We talked a bit more after, and came to the conclusion that A) we shouldn't set stakes we didn't want to win; B) having narrative authority doesn't mean you have complete responsibility for everything - you're allowed to ask for help, and don't even have to supply your own stuff if you're in a fix; C) narration should stop very soon after the stakes have been narrated - it's not a tool for giving PC's more than the stakes they played for. In this case, they got the basic info, and going into further detail would remove suspense, not add to it, I believe.

Now, on the list of "things facilitators do", there's some pretty heavy stuff about what to do when there's a conflict in the group. In particular, "Recording the current issues within the group in large script on the wall using phrases agreed by the group". I'm not sure that this would work at all in an informal, gathered-for-fun gaming group - again, undue focus on problems. However, taking notes of such issues and setting aside some time to talk about them afterwards is a good idea - and that's exactly what one of the players did (same person who said we should stick to the rules).