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United States15536 Posts
In the past year I’ve lived in two worlds. One is the real world, and the other is a world inhabited by Pokemon. A world where you can trek from Kanto to Kalos, bond and battle with Pokemon companions, and face the trials and challenges of Gods and mortals alike. I’ve traveled through the world with five fellow players, characters brought to life by a few close friends (and remarkably so for a group of non-actors). Our party has argued, compromised, and persevered through thick and thin, defeating our foes with few losses (particularly since the dead tend not to stay that way). It’s a compelling journey, and it’s become one of the best things that I’ve ever done with my friends.
While most of us are player characters, one of us must always be the Game Master; the omniscient being who sets the challenges, creates the obstacles, and weaves the narratives within the world. Even surrounded by friends, being GM is an isolating experience. You’re part of the game, but at the same time you’re not. You’re above it, a Creator, presiding over malleable creations and willful players. The players are immersed wholly in the game’s universe, but you reside both in and out of it, sometimes taking the voice of an NPC and other times providing the players with narrative guidance. Taking up the mantle of GM is far different from performing the smaller and more direct role of the Player.
With two campaigns completed and two GMs’ stories told, the job of Game Master now falls to me. It’s a mixed blessing.
Becoming Game Master allows me to insert my own ideas into our game’s universe, but it also requires a far greater time commitment than acting as a player. I wanted to take a turn as GM because I thought up a story for my friends’ characters, a narrative that would test the game’s characters like never before. I sought to write a tale with twists and turns, surprises and nail-biters, and perhaps even some nerve-wracking and tear-jerking. Not only that, I wished to expand our game’s universe and imbue it with more history and character. So far, my session seem to be turning out well, even though the cast and I haven’t reached the overarching plot yet. I’m excited to learn what they’ll think of the new characters, settings, and (of course) the story itself. That being said, actually making all of this takes a ton of work. Writing the dialogue and figuring out the exact details of the tale are just the beginning. Player choice must be accounted for, enemy and ally Pokemon must be given stats and attacks, and battle strategies must be considered. It’s a lot, and it increases my respect for my GM predecessors. As much as I love creating something cool in this, my favorite of worlds, it’s quite a heavy burden.
It is also the GM’s responsibility to maintain the delicate balance between the player’s choices and the narrative itself. The power of player choice is an important thing in tabletop RPGs. Uninhibited choice is what differentiates a tabletop RPG from a video game, which makes it an essential element of the tabletop experience. As a player, I should be able to follow my character’s whims and take the path that is right for her. It’s important that my character guides her own destiny and heads in a direction that will make her the very best, like no one ever was.* However, as a GM, I must consider the integrity of the narrative. When you’re playing a once-off campaign and the characters decide to ignore the quest and go on a rampage, it doesn’t matter because no one invests in those characters and there’s always next week anyways. However, story is paramount to our tabletop, both for the players enjoying it and the characters who grow and change as they progress through it. Unfortunately, the very nature of a pre-written narrative circumscribes a character’s “free will.” To get them to the final goal, they have to advance through the “story events,” not unlike a video game. The role of the GM then becomes a balancing act between the player’s agency and the plot, creating the illusion (or existence, depending on your faith) of agency while advancing the story. This requires a creative flexibility and penchant for improvisation that I’m not yet sure I command, but I’m excited for the challenge regardless.
* I just had to.
A GM also must consider the ups and downs of challenging their players, especially regarding the player’s enjoyment of the game and your own designs in campaign. On one hand, if the players fear nothing, believe they are invincible, or fail to recognize when they are in danger, the GM is doing something wrong. A critical component of a hardcore tabletop such as our own is the reality that the characters and their allies are in mortal danger during combat. Only intelligent tactics and well-executed strategies should allow players to escape battle with their lives. Emerging unscathed should be almost impossible. It is essential that the GM poses a real threat his players. By understanding the players’ capabilities and what they can overcome allows you to make battles scary and intense, as well as achievements to be proud of once completed. On the other hand, no one likes dying. No one wants the character to which they are attached to disappear nor their role in the game to suddenly diminish or cease to be. It’s also difficult for the GM when a character dies. If a character dies, so do any ideas you planned for their development or any positive impact they could have on your story. More selfishly, the worst case scenario for a player moonlighting as a GM is that your oown character will also suffer any terrible fate of the party even though you had no chance to fight back. Of all the responsibilities I’ve described, this one weighs on my mind most heavily. I really want to challenge my players, but I also want them to play through the campaign’s story to the conclusion I envisioned. Neither do I want to lose my own character nor the characters with whom she’s shared her adventures.
From everything I’ve heard, the role of GM should be undertaken only when one truly understands the players, characters, and game itself. This post comes from the realization that I’m not sure I understand the game well enough to create a perfect campaign. I don’t want to ruin this beautiful game we have, and I’m much more likely to do so now that I am GM. That’s why it’s so important for me to understand the tenuous surface on which I stand and the goals for which I strive. In the end, the real goal is for everyone at the table to have fun, GM included. As long as I make sure to remember everything I know about the coveted Game Master position, fun will be inevitable, even if it’s not easy.
You can read this post and many, many more at the N3rd Dimension.
 
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this is surprisingly deep
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Speaking as a fellow GM (and, if I may say so, one that has been a GM for well over 20 years), the level of reflection expressed in your post indicates that you'll be doing quite well. That said, I'll take the liberty to give a few recommendations on stuff that's probably hard to catch if you have only ever watched other GMs and theorized about their role.
There's good railroading and there's bad railroading. As you rightly pointed out, the players' choices are at best conditionally free. So long as you're playing a story-driven campaign, the GM needs to keep the players on track (even though detours are to be expected), and that means he has to limit their choices. Now, I would be lying if I would say that the solution is to sensilbly balance incentives and risks so as to limit the players' freedom but never completely strip them of it - even though that should be the goal, that's not where the problem lies: that's what happens if everything runs smoothly. However, sooner or later, any GM will face a situation where he has to either give up on the campaign or to override the players' decisions. When that happens, there are two imperatives. First, get it over with.
As you pack your bags for the journey to Off-the-track-mountain, a passerby warns you that a snowstorm is coming up and that the journey might be too dangerous. - Ok, we'll wait for the storm to pass. - Well, he says, usually these storms lead to roadblocks that take months to clean up. - What if we assist with the cleanup? - That will only speed up things marginally. - Ok, then we need to find a sled to travel off-roads. - There are no sleds. - We should build one. (...) That was as bad as it can get. Here, the players - consciously or unconsciously - start to battle for their free will, and the longer that lasts, the more frustrated they will get.
As you pack your bags for the journey, a passerby warns you that a snowstorm is coming up, and you realize that there will be no way to reach Off-track-mountain in the forseeable future. As far as free will goes, this one sounds even worse because it actually decides for the players; yet, I can assure you that that it will feel less like railroading than the former... which brings us to the second imperative: Tell them what they do, but do not tell them what they feel.
As you pack your bags, a man warns you about the upcoming storm, and you feel too intimidated by the certainty of freezing to death to continue the journey to Off-track-mountain. This is the worst; the players are accustomed to you being their eyes and ears, and even to you describing their own actions taking effect - but the emotions of their characters are off limits. Even if you deem a certain reaction to be natural, it is up to the player to express it.
The players are not the epicentre of the world. While it is nice to know how to properly railroad if things go south, it's even more important to know how to avoid situations where railroading becomes necessary. While it is, as mentioned above, impossible to completely avoid such incidents, more often than not (at least in my experience as both a player and a GM), the need for railroading simply comes down to bad world design - namely a world that needs the players to behave in a certain way in order to exist and that does not work without them. For instance, there is the NPC whom the players are supposed to meet at a certain place at a certain time; but if it's a well-designed NPC, then it's possible to meet him elsewhere later because the purpose of his existence goes beyond 'handing out vital information in a tavern'.
Naturally, there is a lot more to the design of a 'self-sufficient' world than the avoidance of railroading. If I had a penny for every time that bad dungeon design made a player ask "Well, how do these archers get up on that ledge? Do they live there?" or "Why are there doors in a demon's mansion? Shouldn't he be able to teleport where he wants to go?", well, I'd probably not be rich, but it would be enough for a cup of coffee. Naturally, the extend of this depends on the players in the party... but it's safe to say that what film geeks call 'fridge logic' affects RPGs much more than movies. As a GM, you don't get away with NPCs that have the personal depth of a goomba (eventually, one player will ask: How does Bane eat?), and that's a good thing because as long as the world continues to exist - and even develop - without the PCs, chances are that their decisions don't so much make or break but rather progress or delay the campaign.
Fuck yeah! vs. holy fuck! As for your biggest concern, the danger of player death and the balancing of adequate challenges, this is indeed one of the most problematic issues about GMing. It's somewhat system dependent (for instance, in Cthulhu, PCs are dying left and right, and death poses a serious threat; in high fantasy DnD, PCs don't die nearly as often, and if they do, they usually are resurrected soon thereafter), and arguably there are systems that don't deal all that well with it (e.g. in classic RoleMaster, players get bonus points for death experiences... at which point death does not become merely meaningless but dying is even encouraged). Yet, in practically all games, it plays some role, and it usually is one of the greatest concerns for the GM and the players alike. Naturally, the biggest issue here is power assymetry between the PCs. When dragonslayer-embermage Minmax ibn Munchkin joins forces with the aquaphobic pirate Gimp the Bardic Jester, it becomes increasingly hard to challenge the former without murdering the latter. Inevitably, it's the job of the GM to devaluate power assymetries before they destroy the possibility for any meaningful danger. To do so believably, he has once again to consider that the players are not the epicenter of the world: Blanket immunities rendering a specific character's powers useless are idiotic. In certain instances, they may be a last resort, but you should use them as sparingly as possible and instead revert to more elegant solutions. Even if the fire mage turns every opponent to ash, teflon elementals are still a stupid idea. A 'magic-dead area' is just lazy dungeon design; a mill full of flour-dust prevents fireballs just as well.
Most importantly, however, the whole issue is not about real dangers and challenges - it is about how threatened and challenged the players feel. Even though this might sound disheartening to a beginning GM, what the players will take away from your campaign - what they will remember your game for - is not primarily the profound story, the immersive constellation, or the epic climax... it's the moments that made everybody go "Fuck yeah!" or "Holy fuck!", no matter how important it was to the main plot. By "Fuck yeah!", I mean a sense of achievement when a character does something really cool; and by "Holy fuck!" I mean an unexpected incident that leaves the characters stunned (either in awe or in terror). Now, especially new GMs tend to think that these moments occur in correspondence to what's at stake - which is why so many of them favor scenarios of epic proportions (and try to one-up each session by running apocalypse after apocalypse). It's not, simple as that... and a good GM, i.e. one that is able to convey the illusion of significance, can create meaningful tension without raising the stakes - so that the players feel challenged, yet nobody runs the risk of dying. For a decent example, think about the Avengers movie (spoilers incoming!), namely the scene where the Leviathan drops on the party (Holy fuck!) only to get one-shotted by the Hulk (Fuck yeah!). Both moments ultimately don't matter - the Leviathan isn't nearly as dangerous as it appears to be (after all, what can be subdued with one punch isn't that much of a threat to begin with), and there are many more where this one came from (so defeating one hardly matters in the grand scheme of things). Yet, the scene sweeps the audience off its feet - twice.
Last but not least:
Don't fix what isn't broken. Player ingenuity should never be punished or discouraged. If they come up with a solution you didn't account for, you should appreciate the amount of thought the player has put into this. Even if it royally fucks up the campaign, it doesn't make them bad players, nor does it make you a bad GM... in the same way that they're only conditionally free you're only conditionally omniscient when all is said and done.
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United States15536 Posts
Wow this is awesome! Thanks for all the tips! I already see a few places I could improve. One question: do you think the GM can act as the PCs' subconscious? There are some moments where I want to be struck with a sudden thought or memory on occasion, like those ones that come out of nowhere? Or is that too much railroading?
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On November 02 2013 14:17 AsmodeusXI wrote:
Wow this is awesome! Thanks for all the tips! I already see a few places I could improve. One question: do you think the GM can act as the PCs' subconscious? There are some moments where I want to be struck with a sudden thought or memory on occasion, like those ones that come out of nowhere? Or is that too much railroading?
It's hard to draw a line here. For example, when we're talking dreams, 'using' the players' subconscious is definitely okay... even in RL, we're used to be unable to control what our dreams are about, so nobody will mind a GM hijacking their dreams, even though it ultimately interfers with the 'inner' dynamics of a PC. Nearly same goes for memories, at least to some extent, i.e. as long as the role the PC has in it is consistent with their self-image (for instance, a brave warrior who suddenly remembers how he was running away from a bully will most likely complain). As for sudden thoughts, I personally don't like that idea - even if the viability also depends on your game world... where do these thoughts come from, if not from the players? Does it make sense that such thoughts suddenly appear - is there some sort of telepathy involved? Unless that is the case, I'd probably try to avoid that.
You're the players' eyes and ears... in other words, you have five senses to work with before you even need to consider thoughts and emotions. Usually, that should be enough to convey sufficient information and incentives to let the players draw their own conclusions. For example, let's say I want to introduce the big bad of my campaign to the party and I want the PCs to be frightened and on alert because they realize that they're about to get ripped off.
It seems as if the room itself gets colder when the black wizard raises his voice, and even though he holds a smile in front of his face, you can easily make out the contours of the foul visage hidden behind that grin. Cold sweat starts to pour from your forehead as the stench of sulfur strikes your nostrils, and with each of his words, you get the image of a dagger grazing up and down along your spine. Basically, all I'm telling the PCs is that they're frightened, and it could only be more direct if I had stepped forward and simply announced "You're frightened." However, I don't intercept free will because nobody has control over their sweat pores. All I'm describing is their surroundings, actual events, and bodily (somatic) reactions... thereby, I hand them their own thoughts (this guy is a dangerous double-dealer) and emotions (fear) - wrapped up in sensual data.
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EPT
