In recent history here at the Forge I've read several threads on how many of the social and game related tasks generally get shoved onto 1 person's shoulders and defined as just part of the GM's job description.  Ron and others have noted that this isn't the only way to divide these tasks up and probably isn't even the optimal way.  After reading and thinking about this for a while I was inclined to agree.  Part of my tendancy to "burn out" and need long breaks from gaming is that I was always the GM and thus ended up being responsible for all the social arrangements (when we play, where we play, etc) and all the in-game minutae also (rules interpretation, keeping track of all sorts of game information, etc etc).  It was a lot more work than it was fun.  I mean, everyone else just got to show up and play.  So, anyway, I decided that I was going to change a good bit of that and see how it worked out. 

The Group:

Me:  I'm 35, male, married and am traditionally the one who runs all the games.  I'm not sure how I got that job.  It might have something to do with being the only one in the group who is married and owns a home and therefore has a convenient place to actually play.  I'm also the oldest person in the group.

Trey:  Male, 33, divorced and one of my best friends.  I met him in the military and he eventually moved to my hometown after leaving the army.  He's played RPG's a lot longer than I have but generally just plays instead of running anything.  He has run some stuff that I've played in but that's a subject for another post altogether.

Fred:  Male, 25, single but pretty darn closed to married.  I've known Fred since he was born.  My wife and I introduced him to his girlfriend, he and I are the worship leaders at our church and we do lots of stuff together outside of gaming.  I introduced Fred to gaming a couple of years ago.

Seth:  Male, 21, single but dating Fred's girlfriend's sister.  I've also known Seth since he was born but the rather significant age difference meant we didn't run in the same social circles until the last couple of years.  My wife and I also introduced him to his girlfriend.  I'm not sure how this keeps happening except that my wife seems to gather young, attractive women around her and that in turn seems to attract the young men.  I introduced Seth to gaming a couple of years ago.

Lindsey: Female, 17, not married or attached and in high school.  I know Lindsey because she goes to church with my wife and me and she is one of my wife's dance students.  She recently showed an interest in playing some games, D&D in particular, so I let her start playing with us.  She seems to be having a good time.

The Game:

A month or so ago, Fred had seen The World's Largest Dungeon online and got all excited.  He went out and bought the $100 tome and handed it to me.  "Run this for us.", He said.  All the other players were pretty stoked about this.  Although dungeon crawls are not my favorite style of gaming, it is one I enjoy.  Also, I was pretty happy because the players actually took the initiative and found something they wanted to play and brought it to me rather than waiting for me to come up with something.  So I agreed to run it.

The module is huge.  It is 900 pages, 1600 encounters, includes every monster type from the 3rd Edition D&D Monster Manual, and it has 16 poster sized maps.  This kind of gaming is pretty heavy on GM prep and I was kind of leary about that.  However, the book is very well laid out and minimizes the number of other sources needed to run the module.  That, coupled with the recent threads on spreading out GM tasks, I decided to give running it a shot.

The Sessions:

First, I started with the social tasks normally left up to me.  I told the group that I couldn't be responsible for feeding everyone at all the game sessions.  For two sessions I handed out tasks to each of the other players about what kinds of things to bring so that food and such would be covered.  One sessions I didn't even do this.  I simply put Seth in charge of it and told him to handle the food.  This worked out really well.  Having most of the logistics of hosting the game (the food and drinks) handled by someone else put a whole lot less stress on me and my wife.  Now my wife tends to look much more favorably on game night because someone else is planning and everyone contributes to the activity.  She and I aren't solely responsible anymore.

Second, traditionally at least in my group, as the GM I've been the guy who looks up rules, interprets rules, keeps up with initiative order, keeps up with game state effects (ie spells and such), draws the dungeon map, sets up the battle map, plays the NPC and monsters, and well... just about everything else other than actually play the PC's.  I decided to unload some of this.

I assigned one player to be the keeper of the initiative order in combat and all the game state conditions.  In other words, during combat, I no longer had to keep up with who was next and which round we were on.  Fred did this.  In fact, he brought his laptop and set up a spreadsheet to keep up with the information.  He also keeps up with poison, diseases, spell durations, and all the other effects in D&D that has durations that affect how the game rules operate.  Now, giving this task to him meant that I had to give away some of the information typically reserved for the GM.  I had to tell him that there was a curse, it's effect, and how long it would last.  Things like that.  It was SO worth it.  Just this one change really made a huge difference.  We had several combats (obviously) and I could just play the opposition without worrying about all the minutae.  Combats ran quicker because I wasn't having to pause all the time to update stuff.  I just looks at Fred and said "That spell lasts 4 rounds." and he took care of the note-taking.  The game was smoother because the traditional behind the scenes stuff was now out in the open.  I didn't have to remember that Fred's PC was diseased and had negatives to certain rolls.  The information was tracked by someone else and when a situation came up, Fred just said, "Hey, does my being diseased affect that?" 

One GM task off-loaded to someone else... Yay!

For my second off-loaded task I appointed Trey (for 2 sessions) and Seth (for 1 session) to be the rule guru.  The rules were always a big pain to me since I didn't even own the 3.5 core books.  I quit buying the D&D books at 3.0.  So, if I didn't even own the books, why should I be the guy in charge of looking up the rules and shit?  I gave this to one of the other players who actually did own the books.  During the sessions if there was a question about a spell, I just waved the question towards the appropriate player and let them field it while I went on doing other stuff.  This also streamlined the game.  Everything didn't come to a halt because I was looking up rules.  Nope.  I didn't look up rules.  I kept the pace moving while someone else did that.  While it didn't come up in play, I intend to unload sole responsibility for rules interpretation also.

Second GM task off-loaded to someone else... Yay!

Conclusions:

I had fun for 3 sessions with very little stress.  Prep was easier.  Play was smoother.  Everyone was more constantly involved even if their character was currently the center of attention.  There are actually a few other tasks that I plan on sharing since they were still a pain during play.  The biggest one to come to mind is drawing the stupid dungeon map.  It takes too much damn time to keep drawing out corridors and rooms and whatnot.  I'm going to just plop down the poster map next game and point to where they are on it.  So, it takes out some of the "mystery".  It should also keep the game from halting while I try to draw out every little detail of the dungeon when the players move from one area to the next.  I figure 15% to 20% of our actual time at the table was spent with me recreating the map as the players moved around.  Recapturing that much time for actually playing seems a reasonable trade-off for losing the "mystery" of what's around the next corner.

When I've been still playing D&D 3.0/3.5 regularly (that is, before the massive prep required turned me off), I had an idea connected to the map issue.

Simply use the maps that come with the module, covering them with four big sheets of paper. Then, you can reveal only that part of the map the party can see. If that would be difficult due to the size of the maps from the book, try to copy them in some more manageable paper format, or cut the poster to smaller pieces (if you have no mercy) or something. That should solve the dreaded automapping problems.

Yeah, it's really interesting how that works.  The social interaction of the group not only affects the game but the game affects the social interaction of the group!  Dividing up a lot of those tasks is very important.  It might seem like things this simple wouldn't matter but in my case, I wasn't really able to start enjoying roleplaying until I recognised how important it really was.

Regarding the map, again I think you're on the right track.  I think the mystery is really what you encounter in the dungeon and not the dungeon layout itself.  And knowing the layout of a giant dungeon without knowing what's inside of it can still be mysterious and interesting.

I'm glad that you've been able to enjoy the giant dungeon so much.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Eric

Hi All

Dividing up the GM tasks is a great idea, in theory BUT doesn't it destroy the 'fog of war'?

In otherwords the players should have no knowledge of the following under most conditions:

• duration of spells on them,
• hit points, tactics, or spells of the monster or adversary,
• anything other than a general idea of what there own hit points are,
• severity or type of there disease (only symptoms),
• type, effect and severity of poisons
• intuitive, combat and most game state information.

The GM should have knowledge of the above and also be responsible for:

• Interpreting the rules
• representing the rest of the world for the players
• telling the story

The problem is that RPG games can overwhelm the capability of any one individual (GM) to properly handle all the above and more.  My solution is to design a game from the ground up that increases realism, playability, enhances game play, while simultaneously making the GM's job easier.  This is possible with the assistance of technology.  Omnificent Role-playing System is the RPG and the software will handle all of the tedious chores.  In the above example all of the items that a player shouldn't know and it even interpretes the rules in most cases.  This is the project I am working on.

Kent
www.dreamborn.com 

Kent, Andrew has obviously experienced positive effects from his efforts. Saying that what he describes is good only in theory dismisses the actual experience he's presented. It also misses the point. He quite clearly states that some of the "mystery" as he puts it (or "fog of war" as you say) is lost, but that the gain is well worth it. This issue is not whether this happens, but whether it's a good thing. His experiences provide a roadmap.

Also, please realize that not every discussion you take part in is an opportunity for you to market your system. Certainly, reference it when it adds to the topic at hand (and I see several ways that it could be applicable here, for example). Know that if you steer every conversation back to ORS, however, folks are going to start tuning it out like spam.

Andrew -- awesome. Is this the final form, or do you have other elements traditionally handled by the GM that you intend to offload in future sessions?

I'm totally there with you Andrew, the two threads here and here have been a real eye opener to some of the really strange responsibilities that get put onto the GM's lap. 

Can you believe I used to pick people up from their homes and drop them off afterwards, because "I was the GM"?  And they all had ways and means of getting to the play area, I just thought that I was "supposed to".  Pretty damn screwed up thinking.

Happily I don't do that anymore.  We even have a system for food in all my games -> everyone drops a set amount of money for takeout (usually Pizza).

My Burning Wheel campaign has been an experiment in loosening Situational and Plot Authority, encouraging and asking for suggestions on what should traditionally come out of my noggin alone.  The results have been revolutionary, the players come up with ideas that I would never have even come close to imagining. They're pretty much the greatest source of ideas that I can draw upon.

One great example of this was when, before the game started, the players said "ok, what do we want to see happen in this game?"  And each player piped up with something they wanted to see dealt with or brought up in play.  This 10 minute conversation beforehand resulted in 3 of the most fun filled hours outside of Disney World.  The AP of it is here (there's some BW Jargon, and it's not a Forge link, sorry guys).

Weirdly, now that I let the players come up with ideas for scenes me running with them, it's utterly alien to even think of going back to the bad old days of having to balance all the plates on my lonesome.  This means I don't know what's going to happen next, they players pretty much constantly surprise me.  And let me tell you, this is the capital city of awesome,  otherwise known as Awesometown!

dreamborn wrote:
Dividing up the GM tasks is a great idea, in theory BUT doesn't it destroy the 'fog of war'?

In otherwords the players should have no knowledge of the following under most conditions:

• duration of spells on them,
• hit points, tactics, or spells of the monster or adversary,
• anything other than a general idea of what there own hit points are,
• severity or type of there disease (only symptoms),
• type, effect and severity of poisons
• intuitive, combat and most game state information.

Hello Callan

What qualties does that grant the game?
I think once you can describe the qualties it would give, you can objectively weigh up whether those qualties important/worth keeping. Could you list them?

Kent,

The GM tells nothing to the characters. He doesn't speak to the characters, but to the players. Also, it's not the characters that decide what they do - the players are the decisive force behind their characters' actions. Whatever the GM tells to the players, it doesn't affect the point of view of the character in any way (who is imaginary after all, and therefore has nothing to say). The players do.

Now, assuming, as you apparently do, that the point of the fun is "realism", why should any of the players damage the game by dictating "unrealistic" actions to his or her character? Given that the group strives for "realism", it seems natural to me that the players will use the information they get from the GM to steer their characters in a more "realistic" way.

Let's say there is a "realistic" game going on, and the GM tells the player that his character is approaching a bandit's surprise, not knowing about it. Because the player is all about "realism", he obviously should control his character "realistically" and walk into the surprise. And he should be grinning, cause he's doing something "realistic", and this is what the game is about. Cause, why should he use this knowledge improperly if the goal of play is producing "realism"?

Of course, if "realism" isn't a priority for the player, but, say, "winning" the scenario is, he will have no reason to walk into the surprise. But then, why would this hypothetical person play in a game that's all about "realism" in the first place?

Reading your posts I get an impression you are used to having similar situations. The GM pushes in one direction, the group wants to go in a different one (or, worse yet, each player wants something else). Probably, the group isn't at the same level because point of play wasn't discussed enough. So the GM needs empowerment to defend "his" game and "his" story. Otherwise, things are not fair, right?

The problem is, with this kind of adversarial relations in the group - with everyone pushing in his own direction, or one almighty GM forcing a "proper" course of events, with  a total disregard what others want - no computer software will help. At this point it's not even about dosing proper amounts of knowledge or making GM's job easier. It's all about having broken human relations that need to be mended in order to get anywhere.

Filip

The GM tells nothing to the characters. He doesn't speak to the characters, but to the players. Also, it's not the characters that decide what they do - the players are the decisive force behind their characters' actions. Whatever the GM tells to the players, it doesn't affect the point of view of the character in any way (who is imaginary after all, and therefore has nothing to say). The players do

Guys - you're handling this like a debate, and it's not a debate.

Kent, nothing these guys are saying is challenging your experience or saying you're wrong about stuff. You're posting a little defensively and a little bit as if you personally own the entire concept of "GM." Let them talk about their experiences and the nuances of it without lecturing about what "a GM is" in an authoritative way. That doesn't negate your own experiences. This isn't about who's wrong and who then has to trudge away defeated.

Andrew and Filip, clearly Kent has his own views. Let him have them. I think you're responding to the lecturing tone in an equally defensive way, and that's not necessary. He's not going to agree with you or concede anything, so stop trying.

Best, Ron

That was a great description, Kent, I think I get what you mean.

One is illuminated with 120 watt light bulbs, the other is rich in possibilities.

I'm going to get back to this thread but I've been out of town.  Give me until Monday, thanks!

Hmmmm ... mapping, huh?

How do you feel about the prospect of trading an hour of your time pre-game for half an hour in-game?  'cuz you could have the map photocopied onto some card-stock, cut out the rooms, label 'em on the back and organize 'em in a folder ... then you could plop them into place like a jigsaw puzzle during play.

Or ... and here's the real fun, to my way of thinking ... if you're already comfy with the prospect of exposing the map to everyone, you could ask for a volunteer to do that task, and be Keeper of the Map during the game.  Then you spend an hour of someone else's time for half an hour of your in-game time.  They get the feedback of knowing the map layout (if that kind of knowledge appeals to them), being the one who preserves the mystery for everyone else, and maybe some compliments for any craftsmanship they do in terms of the map proper.  I don't think it would ever be a coveted position, but it might be one that someone got a lot of satisfaction out of.

Hi Tony

'cuz you could have the map photocopied onto some card-stock, cut out the rooms, label 'em on the back and organize 'em in a folder ... then you could plop them into place like a jigsaw puzzle during play.

dreamborn wrote: It work well, that is until a household pet decided to play with some of the puzzle while we ate dinner.  :^)

Andrew (Cooper),

First, congratulations!  I'm glad that your game is going much smoother because of these changes.

Reminds me of when I used to play Rolemaster, yea those many years ago.  There were three of us in the group, but we did a similar division of labor.  I was the GM, and I tracked wounds and damage and whatnot.  One of the other players manned the spell rulebook, and the other did all the weapon and critical lookups for us.  Off-loading some of the "processing" onto "co-processors" sped up gameplay a LOT, which increased our enjoyment of the game.

So, nifty for you!

Okay.  I'm a little late getting back to this thread.  The holidays kicked my ass.

Kent - Yes, some of the changes I've made hurt what you call "the fog of war".  The question is whether that is a good thing or a bad thing or... just a thing?  On one hand the players now have more information than their character's would technically have.  However, recent play has seemed to support this as actually heightening tension and increasing anticipation rather than lessening it.  I'll give an example from my last session.

The big, nasty dwarven fighter who was without a doubt the most combat effective character failed his Saving Throw to resist a Fear effect in the first round of a combat.  I immediately told the player who was now in charge of keeping initiatives and game state variables that the Fighter would move at double movement away from the fight for the next 3 rounds.  It started a countdown.  Each round was a little more tense as the players examined the map and their options and tried to determine whether the remaining characters could "hold the line" for the remain time until the dwarf returned or whether they should retreat.  The dwarf player was still interested in what was going on because he knew that the effect wasn't terribly long and he was doing calculations to determine how long it would take him to get back to the battle and helping the other players plan on how to hold out for that long without him.

In similar situations in the past the dwarven player would have disengaged and the rest of the players probably would have simply retreated from the fight altogether because they didn't have the information needed to determine to stay and try to still win.  Is this "realistic"?  Probably not.  But this is D&D and not reality.  The fun (for this game at least) is in making the cool and effective tactical decisions.  To make those decisions, the players need information.  I give them that information.  It lets them have more fun and it makes it so I don't have to keep track of what information they know and what they don't know.

Mapping - I think I found a pretty good solution to the mapping issue.  I bought a large sheet of poster board.  I cut out a 3x3 inch square out of the center.  I taped the big dungeon map to the table and then placed the poster board over the map with the hole showing where the party actually was.  When a fight broke out, we pulled out the battlemat and drew the battle area on that and played out the encounter.  We didn't actually draw any maps unless a fight happened.

An interesting side effect of this method was that secret doors and certain room features were visible to the characters.  So, the players quit trying to find secret doors when there were no doors to find.  They only tried to find doors when they knew there was one.  So, I adopted the Burning Wheel "Let it Ride." rule.  This worked great!  No more sitting around for 20 minutes while players verified through massive amounts of rolling that there were no secret doors in a room.  They got one chance to find a door they knew was there and if they found it, great.  If not, then they just couldn't utilize that door until something significant changed in their situation. 

The other effect was that glowing runes, altars, portals, etc actually marked on the map.  They players could now actually see these things.  They would now look and say, "Hey, that room has a glowing thing in it.  We need to check it out."  This totally and utterly destroyed the character vs player knowledge divide but was totally and utterly a good thing.  Nothing was worse as a DM to know that there were these really cool rooms with really cool encounters in the dungeon but that the characters were pretty likely to not even go there because they didn't know the rooms existed or where they were.  These clues on the map actually guided them to the cool encounters.  Interestingly enough, because they knew the symbols meant something interesting was there but they had no idea what exactly it was, tension was actually higher than when 70% of the rooms they opened were pretty boring.

Well, that's it for now.  Questions or comments are welcome. 

Andrew, those points you raise about increasing tension are really interesting. Thanks for that explanation.

Could you explain the "Let It Ride" rule? I've never played Burning Wheel.

Ricky,

Essentially the Let It Ride rule states that a player (including the GM) will only roll once for any given task and the result stands until something significant changes to allow for a reroll.  Let's take an example from D&D.

A player wants his Ranger character to track some bandits.  He begins tracking in the forest and after all the modifiers are added the DC is determined to be a 15.  The player rolls and gets a 17 for a result.  Blam!  The Ranger tracks the bandits.  The GM cannot say... "Okay.  You track the bandit for an hour.  Reroll and see if you can continue to track him."  The Ranger suceeded at the Tracking roll and that's that.  The results "ride".  Now, to continue... The Ranger tracks the bandit to the edge of a bustling frontier town.  The DC of tracking through a busy city is a 20 and not a 15.  The Ranger loses the trail at the city without a roll.  His previous roll of 17 isn't good enough to succeed at a DC of 20.  Neither the GM nor the player can call for a reroll unless something changes significantly.  The Ranger gets a bloodhound to assist, goes up a level, gets magical help, etc would all be changing the situation significantly and allow a reroll.

What this does for things like searching for secret doors is it keeps the game from devolving into "I roll... hmm, failure.  Okay, I try again!"  The player (or GM) rolls once per task or conflict and the result rides.

The rule also protects the player from having the GM continually call for rolls until he gets the result he wants.

WOW. That rule is brilliant.

The talk about mystery versus enablement is very interesting, and I'll chime in on that in a moment. I am mainly posting regarding the Map Issue... and I am rather surprised that no one else has posted this yet; it's the way we *always* played map-heavy games (ex: dungeon crawls) and I even think it was the "best practice" method advised in the DM Guide released for AD&D.

Make one of the players the travel mapper. The GM describes the room/area/road as best he can (or reads the description, in a module) and it's on the player(s) to accurately draw it. Keep in mind that this "re-mapping" is ONLY relevant if there are time pressures in the game situation; I have played in map-heavy games where "we return to the surface" was a completely valid assertion, and I have played in games where the travel time (and random encounters) would make or break some plot element. Furthermore, some dungeons are so intuitively laid out (ex: very linear or symmetrical design) that one really couldn't get lost in it, anyway, and so the travel map is moot. I mean, do you make a map of a mall you've never been to, to be sure you could find your way back to the entrance? Of course not, and it's because the layout is so intuitive and there are so many visual clues (stores) that you almost can't get lost, if you have any kind of decent memory.

A player mapper also has a chance for making mistakes, which can become very amusing (or tense) as they play out later. Draw a door on the wrong wall, and then later end up with an "overlapping" room? Whoops--good luck, Dr. Livingston. Or... does anyone remember Queen of the Demonweb Pit? There's a level of that dungeon which has, basically, "mobius paths" that go over and under each other without any perceivable slope. My players were near to crying, half way through that run (in a good way--no one was pissed off, just totally confused and running low on torches).

And I've even seen clever players make a symbolic map, to speed up their own mapping time. Ultimately, to find one's way around, it doesn't matter that the connecting corridors are ten feet or twenty feet wide, or that there's an S-bend in one--they'd just make a little box and write a room name, then make lines to connect rooms (corridors, etc); they made a flowchart, not a map, and it worked fine. Of course, that left me having to re-check distances in the module instead of having it right there in front of them, when calculating travel times and such.

Now, if I have totally missed your point, I'm sorry. Maybe you meant "drawing out the battle area" as you mention in your last post? In which case, yeah, it would be fastest to draw it yourself, to avoid the whole verbal layer of description and interpretation... and mistakes which wouldn't be "possible" given it's supposed to be a simulation of real space. See, it's OK to have mistakes on the *character's map* but it's not good to have them on a *simulated space*. Thus, I'd suggest you draw battle areas yourself, but leave it to the players to make their own travel map (or not).

In case it's not obvious, I am in favor of preserving the fog of war. Your points about "one-shot secret door checks" make some sense, but not if the game is heavily about resource management. For instance, a secret door check takes (IIRC) 1 minute per 10 sq.ft.; and that time expense is supposed to be the control that prevents "check for secret doors every ten feet" rolls. Likewise, with the "cool glowing bits"--odds are good that there's something in the module or plot that will drive the players to the cool bits; if not, that's the point of attack (IMO) rather than just letting the players see the cool bits and be drawn to their shininess. Make the cool bits attractive via allusions, plot hooks, fanciful descriptions (ex: the characters could be told they see a faint glow under one of the doors) and out-and-out railroading, if necessary. The "show it all" method just makes the module into more of a shopping catalog than an exploration fraught with risks and rewards. In my opinion.
David

David wrote:
Make one of the players the travel mapper.

David wrote:
And I've even seen clever players make a symbolic map, to speed up their own mapping time. Ultimately, to find one's way around, it doesn't matter that the connecting corridors are ten feet or twenty feet wide, or that there's an S-bend in one--they'd just make a little box and write a room name, then make lines to connect rooms (corridors, etc); they made a flowchart, not a map, and it worked fine. Of course, that left me having to re-check distances in the module instead of having it right there in front of them, when calculating travel times and such.

David wrote:
The "show it all" method just makes the module into more of a shopping catalog than an exploration fraught with risks and rewards. In my opinion.

Andrew wrote: It has its upsides but it can be really, really frustrating for me as the DM when someone makes a mistake on the map and now the players are flailing around trying to find the next cool encounter.

Andrew wrote:
I'm not sure how you reached this conclusion.  Have you played the "show it all" way?  I have and my experience doesn't match your opinion.  The session didn't seem like a shopping catalog.  It was tense.  There were obvious and recognizable risks and their resultant rewards and/or consequences.  Can you give me any counter-examples from your own play?  If so, please, give them.  There might be situations where the "show it all" method doesn't work quite as well and I'd love to know about them before I actually run into them in play.

Ricky wrote:
WOW. That rule is brilliant.

David,

There is a resource management element to my game.  The party does have limited supplies, spells, etc.  I just haven't found that the management of those resources becomes any easier with my method of just showing chunks of the map.  In fact, the party is getting into more encounters and fights in a shorter amount of time and thus running through their resources at a faster rate.  So, while they might gain resources at a faster rate they are also burning them faster too.

In any event, I'm not dissing your opinion.  I just wondered if you had perhaps tried this kind of thing before and run into any concrete problems with it that was informing your opinion.

Andrew, those points you raise about increasing tension are really interesting.  But I have found a similar increase in tension or more so using the fog of war.    Take your example of the Dwarf with fear.  First off rather than just saying you failed your role for fear you could describe the effect and then indicate to him that his character has to run away.  Each round you could inform him that his feelings have not changed and he must continue running away as fast as possible.    From his point of view he may or may not have concluded he is under the fear spell.  You are just describing the effect.  He also doesn't know how long it will last, could he run into something worse all by himself?

For the other players they might only know that the dwarf takes off down the hallway.  They might not know why.  As the rounds go by they realize he may not come back, should they do a fighting retreat and attempt to join up.  They don't know the whole picture.  I would suggest that handled (GM'd) properly the fog of war would increase realism and tension within the game.

In similar situations in the past the dwarven player would have disengaged and the rest of the players probably would have simply retreated from the fight altogether because they didn't have the information needed to determine to stay and try to still win.

But that would be their choice.  They are basing their decision based on the knowledge they would have.  You have not proven your case that they have had more fun.  I think you really want to say, You as the DM had more fun.  yes?  That is ok, I am not attacking that point, just trying to make things clear.

They only tried to find doors when they knew there was one.  So, I adopted the Burning Wheel "Let it Ride." rule.  This worked great!  No more sitting around for 20 minutes while players verified through massive amounts of rolling that there were no secret doors in a room.  They got one chance to find a door they knew was there and if they found it, great.  If not, then they just couldn't utilize that door until something significant changed in their situation.

I like fog of war in miniatures games and wargames.  I like it less and less in RPGs, where (to me) the focus is on story, character development and plot.

In my opinion, trying to put Fog of War into an RPG is sort of like mandating tubas as required on-court gear in NBA games...

My classic example is running a mystery, where "Fog of War" is "Fog of Narrative".  Nothing is more excruciating to play than the "monkeys pulling random levers to get the next clue" mode of solving a mystery, because the players are disempowered - they know that it doesn't matter what clever ideas they come up with, the Mystery Trumps All, and it's all about getting the next clue ticket punched in the right order.

Even worse is when the characters have some power (Divination spells, usually) that SHOULD let them short circuit mysteries, but the GM has come up with cockamamie reasons for it not to work - which the players then spend time at the table trying to logic their way around and circumvent.

Even worse is when the characters have some power (Divination spells, usually) that SHOULD let them short circuit mysteries, but the GM has come up with cockamamie reasons for it not to work - which the players then spend time at the table trying to logic their way around and circumvent.

I agree, if the characters have some power, they should be able to short circuit a Monkey type riddle.  But if they do not then you can, as GM, assist them by understanding the players intellience is not the characters.  In otherwords if the character has extremely high mental faculties and the player is not figuring it out then you can introduce hints and tips keep the game flowing.

Kent Krumvieda
www.dreamborn.com

The best thing about the term "fun," is that everyone can define it differently.

If people find the concept of "Fog of War" fun, then breaking up some of the GM roles is much much harder with rules intensive games, where they have to keep track of a lor of information.  Dreamborn has it right in some sense.  If you like FoW (fog of war), and the GM can't/doesn't want to manage the rules of your chosen game, then change the game.  However, if, in the case of the original poster (sorry, I lost track of who that was), wants to switch it up to make their lives easier, and (lo and behold) make the game run smoother, then all the power to them.  Also, to pinpoint a perpetual problem in RPGs, some of the issues mentione here refer to metagaming.  That is, knowing something that your character does not, and acting upon it.  Of course, I don't want to take this thread anywhere near the topic of metagaming, but it is inherently a problem when the GM divulges tasks to other people.  However, if you have metagaming issues BEFORE you divulge tasks and have not addressed them, well, this isn't going to change anything, will it?

I'd like to say how much I agree with the concept of NOT making the GM the proverbial parent of the group.  In my personal group of friends, we've come to realize that we need to pamper our GM, because they put in WAY more time than we, the players do in making the game work.  We've started to make the meetings times, running meals, and even chipping in for his food.  It's only fair. 

I also agree, the GM does NOT have to be the rules lawyer, judge, or anything else.  To put it in other terms, often times many role playing games force the GM-type person to be the arbitrator of the group, where they become the major deity of the group, so to speak.  And I agree that it is OK to let the GM merely be the moderator of the group, especially if it improves everyones gameplaying experience.  And heck, the GM at any point can say, "alright, for this portion of the game, I'm taking 'control' back, because it'll be more fun for you all."  Being in a group where the GM has done both, according to what works best for the gaming system he is using.. it is often much more fun to do what the GM finds more fun, because then they make YOUR gaming experience better.  My GM prefers, for example, to have me memorize all the rules, have someone else keep track of data, and then finagles the game circumstances when he deems is appropriate to make play flow better.

Finally, despite the nature of this thread, if you truly want to keep the nature of dramatic tension in the game by never knowing what's going on beyond your own character and the GM can't keep track of it all, then assign a herald, task-master, etc to manage the often overwhelming amounts of ad ministrivia many games can have (the co-GM thing idea).

I appreciate everyone participating in this thread; however, it's kind of turning into a debate on "The Fog of War" which I'm not really interested in debating actually.  It's a perfectly valid topic for another thread but I think I've gotten all the mileage out of this thread that is in it.  Could we give the current debate over how much information the players should/should not have to another thread?  I'd like to let this one end.

Plus, if someone puts the effort in to make it another Actual Play thread then that implies that they'll have to find some incident from their own actual play that highlights the benefits and pitfalls of some particular take on the question.  That would be a very good thing for grounding the conversation, I think.  I'm all in favor, and will be on the look-out for the thread.

The practical task of outsourcing the gaming environment is essential. With regard to the food and drinks issue, there has been a relatively unspoken rule of "feed your GM", as they often forget to bring along their own munchies because they're tweaking last minute setting, plot or challenge issues. The alternative of "everyone chips in and gets pizza" also applies, although I've also noticed that the "feed the GM" caveat seems to sneak its way in there as well.

I understand the "fog of war" issue, and have found from numerous experiences (indeed, from way back when I first started playing twenty three or so years ago) was that rotating GMs at narrative break-points in a story (say, after six to eight sessions) keeps everyone fresh. Of course, this does mean that there is more collaboration on the meta-plot level, but I've actually found that to be beneficial rather than a problem. There is always room for secrets and surprises within the micro-plot level.

And it feels like ages since I've posted here.

Hiya,

My thinking is that now's a good time to close the thread.

Um, Lev, that's not meant to indicate anything about your returning to post. It's nice to have you back.

Best, Ron