Tuesday 5 March 2013

GM as Auteur and The It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To Rule

Generally speaking, I favour a loose approach to GMing. I like creating detailed settings, but I usually allow the players quite a lot of leeway in the process (I might have them each say one thing about the setting, or I might let them create a handful of NPCs who they know, for example) and permit them to do what they want with their character within reason.

I think this is more-or-less standard amongst GMs, at least among those who blog regularly or post on Google+. We tend to avoid being too draconian. I wouldn't describe it as a fear of saying no, but there is a sense in which being a stickler about your setting - in which being precious about it - is seen as petty and old-fashioned. It's unusual (I think) for a GM to tell a player directly, "No, you mustn't do what you want to do in developing this character - I don't want that type of character in my game".

It is even rarer to imagine a GM saying to a player, "No, your character mustn't do what you intend him to do" once play has begun. That goes strongly against what has now become established orthodoxy wherever you look, be it on story-games.org (where players are supposed to have narrative control), within the OSR (players have complete freedom within the sandbox) or at rpg.net (where you must never judge anybody for anything or tell anybody how to behave - unless of course they have the wrong opinions, but why would you game with such a person in the first place?). It is the most arbitrary and obvious form of railroading.

Which is all well and good - generally speaking I don't want to run games in which I am constantly telling players, "No, you mustn't do that". (And here I have to stress the distinction between "No, you can't do that", as in "No, you can't understand dragon if it is not on your character sheet", as opposed to "No, you mustn't do that", as in "No, you mustn't torture that orc".) In the vast majority of cases, that way leads adolescent authoritarian bossy madness.

I do wonder whether this avoidance of "mustn't" prevents the GM from acting like an auteur, however. This, you may think, is no bad thing - indeed, there is little more horrendous than a GM who thinks he is a novelist, as we all know. But let's try a thought experiment: imagine that your GM was actually Tolkien, or Mieville, or George R R Martin, or Mervyn Peake, or RE Howard, or H P Lovecraft, or [insert your favourite fantasy author here]. Wouldn't you want to allow them to auteur things to a certain degree? Wouldn't you be interested in having [your favourite fantasy author] have complete control over the tone of the game, within reason? From time to time, wouldn't you want him to tell you "No, your character mustn't do that, because it is not in keeping with the type of game I am running"?

I don't for a second mean to suggest that if Tolkien was my GM I would want him to boss me around to such an extent that I had no control over my character. I am not making an argument for turning RPGs into interactive fiction - God knows Dragonlance was bad enough. But I would certainly want his guidance to a certain extent - I would want him, from time to time, to tell me, "No, what you are proposing just is not appropriate for my game".

Nor am I suggesting that sensible, decent people with an average level of social skills can't just sort out misunderstandings around tone between themselves in the vast, overwhelming majority of cases. But "vast, overwhelming majority" is not the same as all.

Is there anything to be gained from allowing a GM a greater level of auteurship than orthodoxy suggests? Should a GM be permitted opportunities to say, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to"? "This is my game and I just don't think what you are suggesting is something I am comfortable with"? "Trust me that things will be better for us all if you just don't do that"?

28 comments:

  1. YOU ARE TALNKING IN A HYPER-TERRORTICAL...NO WON WONTS TAHT SO TEH DM/AUTTER IS AMA RE NEED TO SHAT TEH FECK UP AND ROLL TEH DICES!!1

    :p

    -NUNYA

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  2. If I'm running a "genre" game like Pendragon or Cthulhu, I have no qualms in instituting GM controls on player choices, at least as far as character creation is concerned. I also try and very explicitly state the expectations of the genre in question up-front, so that there's hopefully no need for "GM as auteur" control during game play but the players will instead police their own decisions to keep things genre-appropriate.

    Greg Stafford's essay on "genre vs. generic" fantasy is ever my guide on this issue:
    http://www.gspendragon.com/genreandgeneric.html

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    1. Yes, that piece is a very useful one. If there is one trend in RPGs that I find a bit uncomfortable, it's the way the OSR has sort of crowded out traditional genre-based games like Pendragon or Call of Cthulhu. These days the groupthink is that the kitchen sink is what's cool. But I loathe kitchen sink games.

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    2. In this vein, Black Vulmea just posted a very interesting piece on why "sandbox" does not equal "kitchen sink" and "player agency" does not equal "screw the GM's stated campaign objectives".

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  3. Consider the unit of GM plus players as auteur collective. Each needs the permission of the other for any given story to develop. This is no different from your imagined collaboration with Tolkien, than for the players who decide to go gonzo and pull the GM along with them. A grumbling GM is still a collaborating one. Refusing to accommodate certain players is little different from refusing to follow certain narrative ideas that occur as an author.

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  4. I'm more interested in the kicking Dragonlance gets.

    "... God knows Dragonlance was bad enough ..."

    God maybe, but do we know? I'm not defending it. I will ask how much the awareness of a problem stems from that one post at Grognardia years back. How much has James Maliszewski shaped the spaces we sense?

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    1. I think it's incontrovertibly true that Dragonlance epitomises rail roading and set a certain tone for how a D&D campaign should run (ie in preplotted fashion). Whether this is a bad thing is obviously a matter of opinion.

      One thing worth emphasising is that part of the problem with Dragonlance was novelisation. Everybody playing the adventure series had read or was reading the books, and this solidified the sense in which a plot was predetermined.

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    2. "I think it's incontrovertibly true that Dragonlance epitomises rail roading and set a certain tone for how a D&D campaign should run (ie in preplotted fashion)."

      But maybe only in the same way it's incontrovertibly true that 40K epitomises grimdark and set a certain tone for how a 28mm science fantasy wargame should play (i.e. with a small number of tightly defined lists and scenarios). From this perspective, in this edition, in 2013, with the context - including the language used to frame the ideas - the way it is as a result.

      If we define our own terms by very particular phenomena - 'railroad' against Dragonlance say - the reasoning could easily become circular. If we then assign value, which is natural of course, but often highly subjective, the thing can get wound up even tighter by the deep emotion. Talking largely with people of the same view can't help us much either.

      Take a look at this:

      "Everybody playing the adventure series had read or was reading the books ..."

      Where did that statistic come from?

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    3. Come on now - it's not a statistic, just an observation that comes from being alive and playing D&D in the early 90s. The Dragonlance books were on the New York Times bestseller list - do you think anybody was reading them who wasn't playing D&D?

      I don't really understand the rest of your comment, to be honest. I said in my previous comment that whether you think Dragonlance's approach is good or bad is a matter of opinion, but what's indisputable is that it was to be played in a more-or-less pre-plotted fashion. My value judgement is that the approach was broadly bad, but sure, others may not think that way.

      As for the rest of what you wrote, you seem to be saying that there is a bit of groupthink going on amongst people who play RPGs. I wouldn't deny that for a second.

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    4. I think what the gist is, forgive me, noisms, is that anyone who had an interest in playing in a Dragonlance campaign had read the books. (Why play in that particular world, otherwise?)

      The very act of playing in a novel's world railroads, to an extent. Who wants to kill off the classic NPCs, after all, even if they are the BBG? Deviate too far from "the story" and you run the risk of complaints about how it's "not really Dragonlance/Tolkien/Conan" anymore, and at that point you might as well just have designed your own campaign and stolen whatever you wanted out of the books to use in it.

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    5. Yes, quite.

      It's for that reason that nowadays I would avoid running a game in any published setting, particularly one from a novel I liked (e.g. Middle Earth).

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    6. We avoided that in our teenage MERP game by having the campaign be set after the LotR trilogy, with most of the action taking place in Rhûn, where there's enough detail in the books to have some sort of hooks (Sauron used to have a fortress there, some of the dwarf clans went there, the two blue wizards were thought to be in the area, etc.) yet not enough direct content from Tolkien's various writings to bring player agency into question.

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  5. People were bitching about Dragonlance well before Grogrnardia existed.

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    1. People were playing D&D well before blue box, but after Holmes more played to his particular vision of the game. And now you can't move for people trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

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  6. Is there anything to be gained from allowing a GM a greater level of auteurship than orthodoxy suggests?

    a world becomes more tangible and consistent, less "gonzo"/anything goes. if you like that it's a gain. ;)

    as david posted before, this is something best discussed before the game starts. i would only urge a player to reconsider his actions under very severe circumstances.

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  7. I think it's a slippery slope. Once the DM starts saying banning certain activities then the players will be scared to do anything original or creative. If some things are off the table due to tone(not railroading), the DM needs to communicate very clearly what are the bounds i.e. "Don't torture that Orc." doesn't tell me what is on the table generally: Is the problem an amoral party ruins the heroic tone(or the Horror tone)? Is the problem that the Orc will give information that will ruin the mystery?

    Anyway, a resourceful DM has a huge set of tools for more softly directing things, without a direct appeal to players.

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  8. I'm not quite sure what 'auteurship' means, so I may have missed your point.

    My usual rule of thumb as GM is that the GM determine the details of the world, and the players determine their characters' choices. I do not directly interfere with those choices. But I do sometimes point out when I think a player may not be aware of something important about a proposed choice that would be obvious to the player's character. And I always strive to deliver consequences for character choices that reflect the world I am running. As part of determining the details of the world, I often limit player choices at character generation time. A player character cannot have an object, technology, skill, scientific theory, religious belief that does not exist in the world I am running. This is no different than many game systems with limited lists of races, skills or equipment. Having said this, I am often open to suggestions about what might be in the game world and try hard to satisfy the main thrust of the player's desire in a way that fits with the world.

    I think out-of-game talk about the kind of game the group members are trying to play is very important. I want players to enjoy my games, and so I listen closely to what they say and try to shape the world and its presentation to reflect their interests.

    In some ways this sounds like a higher level of GM-control than you describe as 'orthodox'.

    But I dislike the idea of interfering with players' control of their characters. I think what makes RPGs work is the interaction between presenter and player. If one party's role is curtailed, the process loses its creative and immersive quality. The roles are not symmetrical but they are 'equal' in the sense that both are essential to the process.

    Unlike Billy, I don't think the GM banning certain activities creates fear in players. although I think it can promote frustration and withdrawal. I strongly agree with him that the GM has many, many ways to shape in-game events without telling players how to play their characters.

    Is there anything to be gained? If orthodoxy means letting anybody play any character they want, regardless of its fit with the world, then I think there is something to be gained.

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    1. That's pretty much exactly the way I run it, too.

      But I wonder what the consequences would be if a DM were to take a somewhat more active role in shaping player responses. Perhaps frustration and withdrawal? Or, perhaps, a closer understanding of what the DM is trying to achieve, and a more interesting experience as a result?

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  9. I run a game much in the orthodox manner of allowing players free will within the sandbox. It usually doesn't cause any issues, and a lot of concepts of the world make it more open to that sort of play.
    I've found that an interesting thing happens: my players, generally enjoying the setting, seem to make assertions about tone to new players more than I do. No one is a tyrant, but I find it interesting to see a long-time player turn to a guest and say something like "people don't do that", in situations where I would let things slide.
    I generally let them work things out amongst themselves, but I love those rare moments where I feel like my players have gotten to know my setting almost more than I do.

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    1. Yes, that shows you've done what a DM should do.

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  10. I just experienced a Con game with an "auteur" from Gygax's original cadre. We were in a sandbox, but doomed from spiteful plotting and his noticeable delight in our insipience. I took nothing away from the game other than the realization that someone who claims to have "written the rule" isn't the only one who should enjoy playing by them.

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    1. That's interesting. I can't tempt you to name names? ;)

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    2. Heh, not a long list to pick from. The game was supposed to be a preview for the yearly nostalgic event in Wisconsin, but changed on a whim to reproach a pair of players known to the DM. One sad quote was, "I'm making one of you a paladin so you can't do X".

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  11. "But let's try a thought experiment: imagine that your GM was actually Tolkien, or Mieville, or George R R Martin, or Mervyn Peake, or RE Howard, or H P Lovecraft, or [insert your favourite fantasy author here]. Wouldn't you want to allow them to auteur things to a certain degree?"

    Nope.

    I don't play roleplaying games for the same reasons that I consume passive media: If I'm reading a book by Tolkien or watching a movie by Kubrick or listening to a song by Lennon, then I want them to deliver me to a carefully controlled and curated experience.

    But trying to use similar techniques to curate an RPG doesn't work: You sacrifice the advantages of control that passive media allow the creator while simultaneously sabotaging the advantages of participation and spontaneity that an active medium like an RPG provides. What you end up with is a compromised experience: If the creator is good enough, it may still be entertaining. But it is nevertheless flawed.

    When I play an RPG, I want to make choices as my character and have those choices actively affect the game world around me. When I GM an RPG, I want the players to actively engage the scenario I've created so that the scenario can evolve and change in unexpected ways in response to the actions they take.

    It's not there aren't ways for Tolkien or Howard or Lovecraft to have a creative vision for an RPG scenario and to see that vision expressed in a rich and rewarding fashion at the table. But they aren't going to achieve it by trying to turn an active medium into a passive one.

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    1. I should have paid attention to the cardinal rule of blogging: suggest something a modicum removed from one extreme, and people will read you as saying the opposite extreme.

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    2. Cardinal rule and it's horrendous consequences aside, it is true that what makes a good storyteller is not the same as what makes a good GM. Even if the GM is great at creating exiting plots and complex and wondrous worlds for me to play around in, i don't think him nudging at my decisions, even a little, is going to improve upon my experience of his imagination.

      Of course, if someone is going to the trouble of setting up a game and running it for me and trying to make my friday evening fun, I'll play that game to whatever specifications he has in mind. That Black Vulmea article referenced earlier said some nice things about that.

      All I'm saying is if the GM is up front about what he wants the game to be about, and everyone around the table gets what he tries to communicate and also is not a dick, he shouldn't have to nudge the players decisions in the right direction for them to experience all the wonderful things inside his head. They'll find them on their own, and to many players thats the point.

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  12. I think a good player looks for a certain amount of direction from the DM. Whether you are playing a in a commercially published setting or one totally original, the DM should be at the very least as knowledgeable about the setting as the players, but more often than not he should be intimately aware of the minutia of the setting and therefore be in a position to offer insight.
    This is especially true in an original setting.

    For instance, in a setting where property crime is often shrugged off, but crimes against a person is taken very serious, it is the DM's responsibility to tell the player that their character freaking out over a stolen shoe is inappropriate within the setting.

    It would be the same as if a player wanted to make a breakdancer/fighter pilot character in middle earth. An extreme example, but the concept is the same.

    If roleplaying is a concern at all (and it damn well should be) then the DM is obligated to help the players fit into the setting.

    The same can be said of the tone of a game.

    The players must take cues from the DM and the DM must take cues from the players.

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  13. OK, you won me over

    http://billygoes.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/should-players-know-rules.html

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