I would just like to rant for a moment:

And I'd like to start with a quote from Shapesphear:

"This, above all else, to thine own self be true."

I'd like to point out that, in my short experience, player protagonism seems to be the most important issue.

Thus, I would like to add onto Shakesphear's quote:

"This above all else, to thine own self be true and be sure that thee protagonise PCs in the art of gamemastering."

First, let me define protagonism, as I would:

pro·tag·o·ni·sm

1. The being of a protagonist, the main character in an ancient greek play.
2. In gamemastering, the art of allowing your players have control of who their characters and affect the game in significant ways.

I'll stick with definition 2.

I'd like to cite the 3 most common problems in my experience, and how protagonism can be used to deal with each:

3. Social conflict- As a GM, there are very few ways to deal with social conflict. And if it leaks into the game, it's even worse. I would suggest that you fix out-of-game problems with out of game solutions. However, RPGs can even be a way to deal with some problems. Allowing your players to express themselves with their characters can be a great way to let them deal with their problems.

Example: Billy is a huge Asimov fan and find worth in his literature to be good despite whatever certain administraters may think. However, Joey is good friends with the DM and has convinced him to play Shadowrun. Billy wants to play a robot, even though that isn't normally allowed by the game. He is forced to play a disgrunted cyberman next to Joey's elf mage. They come into constant conflict, as the GM is taking them through a very fantasy-esqe game of shadowrun. The GM may help this problem if he just let Billy play his stupid robot.

2. Style conflict- Style conflict can be many things. Perhaps one of the players doesn't like how they're always going through towers instead of dungeons, or that they're going through political termoil instead of solving riddles. In any case, one could solve this problem by just letting the characters define what type of challenges they go through by what type of character they play. Problem solved.

1. GNS conflict- GNS conflict is very deadly, but I've always felt that it can be overcome if each of the players respects eachothers different intersts to this end. What can be fun is switching between each GNS mindset rapidly. But how do you facilitate this? Protagonism, pure and simple. If each player can choose how they play their character, they can choose what GNS style they place on the game. Sometimes it works beautifully.

In any case, I would argue that protagonism directly corresponds to player satisfaction 90% of the time. So what can you do? Choose games that give players more options. If you're a D&D fanatic, try playing Exalted. If you're more of a Star Wars fan, try letting the players come up with new force powers. Never stifle creativity and be aware of what your players want.

Buying lots and lots of expansion books is not required.

(Sorry for the bad rant. I'm unsatisfied with it, but I'd like a little feedback. This is basically inspired from a Planescape campaign that my friend has been playing in where everything finally came together. I'll post about it in a seperate thread.)

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

First - I mostly agree with you. Something I used to say, years and years ago, was that what players most wanted was for their characters to work the way they wanted them to, and what the GM most wanted was for the players to engage his scenario.

However, a lot of what you're talking about sounds more like trying to make compromises between players with rather different agenda. In which case, I foresee 'make compromises to make everybody happy' will fail to resolve the issue.

Although I think your idea of GMing in a different mode for each player interesting; it's something I've found myself trying to do myself, but I suspect it rapidly leads to overall incoherence.

- James

Just another angle on protagonist. Rather than focus on it revolving around what someone gets to control, another idea is that it revolves around which character your examining.

Eg, instead of it being about whether the PC gets to choose politics or direct conflict to get past a problem, it is instead really about examining what he chooses and the thoughts behind it.

The important diffence in this is less 'Aww, you didn't let me do what I wanted/You gave me no choice and railroaded me'. It is instead 'Well, I had no choice, so you gave no means for myself to explore and express my PC's character.'

It's less about being able to play a robot, and more that you just can't examine the thoughts of a robot unless your playing one.

This also drifts away from 'I need choices so I can make strategic resource allocations' to 'I need choices so I can express my character thought what he does with resources (which includes the resource of his own life, amongst other things like honor, etc). Resource use externalises my characters mind'. The funny thing is, the former often ends up being like the latter, but without a clear focus on that latter goal it only dysfunctionally reflects it.

Anyway, just another direction I thought I'd mention.

Good points. I just wanted to express my hapiness at my friends' campaign working out with a rant. They were able to overcome the different priorities (after a LOT of time) with a different type of gamism that everyone enjoyed. Each of the party members broke up and persued different objectives, but it still managed to be fun. I think that it worked out because of character protagonism. It's modded D20 D&D, but the chatch is that each character is an 'affinate' of a speficic plane. My character is the affinate of Mout Celestia (I play a LG character). Another character is the affinate of limbo (the plane of chaos). He likes to play these happy go lucky characters.

Anyway, all of the PCs are competing against eachother in this complex power-politica framework (gameism), while exploring the planes at their own leisure and choice (simulationism), with some of the characters persuing thematic and plot objectives (narrativism) and it's actually working (astounding).

Anyway, I'll get around to starting a thread about it.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron