ars ludi

Jay Loomis put together a great video interviewing folks from the Seattle-Olympia story games family, including yours truly, flanked by ducks.

“Play more! Less talk, more play! More play!”

The big finale! You thought we’d never make it. We’re continuing from part 5, but if you’re just arriving (because you’re seeing the last post first) you probably want to jump straight to part 1 and start there.

So… we’re just about done, unless people have questions?

One thing I want to point out before I say anything further is that: this is just a bunch of talk. And this is not how to learn about these games. The way to learn is to play them. Play them constantly. And in fact, if we were to drill a hole through this wall, and then another wall…

(unknown): There is a door there, you know?

Yeah but I want to drill. Can you imagine the look on their faces when we come in with our giant mole machine? In 306, four rooms down, is the room where these games are being played. And that is probably far more useful than being here listening to me. It’s crazy! 306. [sponsored by our beloved Gamma Ray Games] There’s a big sign outside and there are people sitting there Vanna White-style.

So my strategy (and in fact I argued to put this at the beginning of the weekend so people who heard about these games wouldn’t hear about them Sunday and then go home), if you want to learn about them you have to sit down and play them. That’s the only way to get your hand in. I highly recommend it.

Morgan, you have a question?

Morgan: So in GMless games, how do I be a good antagonist?

Whole ‘nother topic. Whole ‘nother topic. But I’ll tell you what it is: Listen. Don’t do anything.

(unknown): Not like that Xander guy…

Xander: He’s a dick!

The best way to be an antagonist is to be a very sympathetic and caring person, as a player. Don’t do anything. Don’t steal the show. Listen. Listen to Xander talk. And wait. Wait until you know what he wants. You have to know what he wants.

Reid: Then deny it!

No! No. Let him have it… for a price. Attach a nice price tag on there! Like “hey, yeah, yeah, you can overthrow the government… if your wife dies.” Or “you can overthrow the government… if your best friend thinks you’re a hypocrite.” Or “you can overthrow the government… if the government you set up instead becomes a terrible jihad that is just as bad as the previous…” And he’s like “NOOOO! But I still want to overthrow the government…” Yeah, so that’s good antagonism. Never stop them. Always give them what they want and then just… yeah, we’ll avoid the profanity. But yeah, big price tag. But it’s about patience. You have to wait long enough to find out what it is they really want. You don’t rush in and try to make them want something.

Any questions? I think we’re… we’re beyond good. Any last thoughts? [silence]

(unknown): Do you document the games?

Actually that’s a good question. Back to the document the games thing, think about it right, when you document the games as GM it’s because the players don’t care enough to do it. West Marches experiment, motivating players, one of the rules was I wouldn’t document anything. They had to. If they wanted documentation they had to do it. If you take that away from them you’re effectively just doing more of a “I’m running the game you’re just a [audio muddled. Spectator?].” In a GMless game there’s often someone at the table who is interested enough to write up something. Or not. If no one’s interested to write something up…

(unknown): I meant you personally.

I do sometimes. If there’s four players, I probably do it a quarter of the time. Other times I don’t want to. Other times I’m like “well that game was fine, but I don’t feel like writing anything about it.” And there are different motivations. Because it’s a one-shot game you don’t need documentation in the long-term, it’s more of a “let us share this experience with the internets” or so that other people who haven’t played this game will know whether they will like it. When we do Story Game Seattle, that’s our motivation for documenting games: to teach other people what game they could have played had they been there. And they can look at it and say “Oh, yeah. Pickets & Fences. That game… I don’t know if I’d play that. Didn’t feel like they had a great time.” We try to be [honest]… we try to make it a learning experience, not just about the fiction, but about how the rules of the game created the fiction. So it’s a little bit of a tutorial of what kind of game you’d get if you played it.

Ben M: Just something I would like to throw out for everyone. Use it or not as you please. Something I’ve done coming from a very old school GMing background and trying to get people more creative. If you’re playing a game like Pathfinder / D&D / GURPS, whatever, give people mechanical bonuses to encourage their own creativity. Such as, if your character is a swordsman. Okay do you sell your swordsmen ship academy? Yes. Okay, make you a deal. I’m GM, I will give you an extra 500 EP (or whatever your system uses) if you write me up a usable to the other players description of the swordsmanship academy and some interesting NPCs there, that they can go muck around with.

Morgan: Kind of like spread out narrative control a little bit that way?

Ben M: Yeah

It is kind of late in the day, but I will point out one thing. This isn’t exactly what you’re talking about, but there are some games that reward you for playing the character you said you were going to play. Like you say “My character’s a joker!” Every time you make a joke, you check a checkbox, and that’s progress.

Think about that for a second. Think about how stupid that is.

Morgan: Waaah, I love that.

Think about it. Morgan said, “hey I wanted to play this certain guy.” But I don’t really trust Morgan, that he would just do that on his own. I feel Morgan needs a donut every time he plays his character correctly. I feel in some ways that might possibly be the most insulting thing to say to a player…

Morgan: But I need it…

It’s not quite exactly what you’re talking about… But, we’re playing because we enjoy the game. You picked that character because that’s the character you wanted to play. I trust that that’s what you want. You’re an adult. Why don’t you want to play the guy you made? WHYYYY? Why am I giving you donuts?!?

Morgan: I’m going to have to disagree with you. Morgan is not an upstanding knight. Morgan is a power gamer. [laughter] That’s why he plays role-playing games. But if you give Morgan a carrot, an advancement power gaming carrot…

I’m teaching you the wrong thing. I’m teaching you to want the carrot. In fact there are psychological studies…

Morgan: No, no, no, it’s like eventually… [audio muddled] If you have a treat in your hand when you tell the dog to sit, it will sit, and then eventually it will sit on its own. [laughter]

And that’s the thing. I feel very strongly against the idea of treating the players like dogs. But more seriously, psych studies have been done (you can look them up) that say that basically if you have a pleasurable activity and you associate a reward with it and then you take away the reward the pleasurable activity stops being pleasurable. You can actually de-pleasurize things that initially the person liked, because their desire switches focus and becomes focused on the reward. In other words, you stop playing the joker character because you want to play the joker character, you start doing it because you want the “dings!” And that, I feel, subverts… it takes you down exactly the wrong path. Instead of teaching you to be a happy role-player, doing what you want to do, it teaches you to…

Morgan: I’d be interested in seeing the psychological studies and seeing if the reward is tangible or if it literally is checkboxes.

Checkboxes are very tangible.

Xander: Yeah, checkboxes are actually used in my job, which is Skinnerian psychology all the time because it’s a great to reinforce people without giving them a million cookies or something. But, the point is, you get to choose what your own rewards are, like FATE which is an example and in Shadow of Yesterday, or in AW [Apocalypse World] which also does that. You get some control over you want to have the focus on. I have a joker aspect. Every time I make a joke and it’s inappropriate, I get rewarded for it. But you can always be like…

Morgan: I’m sorry, you get rewarded with narrative control…

Xander: No, you receive a ding. The ding in some of these allows you to get more narrative control.

Eventually, you might get narrative control…

Xander: But the ding that you’re getting, you get to choose it. And you can always say, “Five games later, I haven’t used this joker aspect in a while, I’m clearly not feeling it, I’m going to switch it.”

If you look at it like two continuums… two roads you can go down. One… you said you were a power gamer and you wanted to stop, I don’t think this is going to help.

Morgan: I didn’t say I wanted to stop… [laughter]

There are two options. One where I’m going to engage your reward cycle. Like WoW [World of Warcraft], which is a great, carefully, carefully sculpted reward cycle. All those video games. Carefully, carefully designed by psychologists. Perfectly designed. That’s great. And that keeps you chasing it. And then there’s a different way to do this. To say “Hey, let’s use our brains. Let’s engage in artistic activity, in which we are being creative people and making something cerebral that is touching… we’re artists.” And you say “I don’t need a ding if I’m trying to be like Mozart…”

Morgan: Okay. But on the other hand though, maybe Mozart needed to be bribed with a couple of cookies to pick up the violin the first time. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe if you gathered a bunch of artists together and just handed them paint, it might not go that well no matter how creative they are. The training wheels… [more and more laughter]

From play what I see… the reason I’m really against this is when I see it in play, the worst thing that happens is the people who are focused on the reward cycle (because they know they’re going to get a long-term benefit), they don’t play heads-up. They go “oh I made a joke! -check-check-”. Their brains — character sheets are the devil — they get back down here, because now they’re tracking an inward thing. They’re not sharing their character anymore. They’re not out here [with the rest of us]. They’re not paying attention to your character. They’re tracking their own little progress. They’re playing a solo video game at that point.

Reid: That’s the first thing that happened to me when I started playing Burning Wheel.

Heads down?

Reid: “I get things every time I do something! I’m gonna do something now, and then now…”

You remember Pendragon, from back in the day? If you go basket weave, you’re going to get a level-up. And this isn’t really true but it’s an old joke we used to make in the dawn of time. So people would be like “I’m hiding in my room and basket weaving for three days! -check-check-check-check-! Best basket weaver ever!” “You are a knight.” “Best basket weaver!” And mechanically it’s accurate, and mechanically it’s realistic, but…

(unknown): There’s a guy, I think he’s a game designer from Seattle, he wrote an essay on ethical game design. And a lot of it’s about the reward cycle in WoW… like you can make bad, unethical and addicting rewards… [audio muddled]

Or it might even feel fun, it just might not be something that human beings should be doing.

(unknown): The guy from Spiderweb Software

Oh, Jeff Vogel. Jeff Vogel’s awesome. Love Jeff Vogel.

This is just me. I feel that as gamers and game designers I’d rather go up here (see me raising my hand). I’d rather go up to this higher level where we talk about… even abortion. We talk about real issues. We talk about deep stuff and we go away saying “I felt touched by that.” I’d rather go away saying “That was a moving, touching scene. That part where I made the king sleep with his daughter and we all freaked out. It was crazy!” But if I did that to get a ding… would that have happened?

(unknown): You would have leveled up!

I would have leveled up! It would have been awesome! [laughter] In a way I think it’s almost magically convenient that if you’re playing a one-shot game, a “story now” game, since there isn’t really a “later,” leveling up doesn’t exist. Most of these games have no character progression at all, because where would you have it? So you’re kind of saved from the reward cycle that would be incumbent in a lot of traditional long-term play games.

We’re really almost done, so whaddya got?

Xander: Well my response to that is, that the problem is that’s great to be on that level, but not necessarily everyone is there.

Not everyone even wants that! That’s cool!

Xander: I’m there on Thursdays [at Story Games Seattle] because I’m doing this on Saturdays. I’ve been doing this for years.

They’re different activities.

Xander: I have four people at the table with me, not necessarily all of them on the same page and if I can say “Look, you get a carrot…”

Sure. And it’s very important to not think they [role-playing games] are all the same. When I sit down to play fourth edition D&D, I know I’m not playing Shock. I don’t say “we should make this more Shock-like!” That would be… kind of rude. Like going to a movie, but saying “y’know I think I should LARP some of this movie! Wooo! Rocky Horror!” [laughter] I mean, it would be inappropriate and rude. But because we call them all role-playing games, we think it’s all the same thing, but in fact they’re a very broad… Be respectful.

Reid: I disagree [laughter]

And I respect your right to disagree!

Reid: Some RPGs are just better than other ones!

And I think with that… we’re done!

[applause, rioting, collapse]

Huge thanks to everyone who came and participated. It would have been a lot less fun without you. No really, a lot less fun. And thanks again to Jobe for thinking to record the workshop. Now stop listening to me and go play some games!

Continued from part 4.

Ben M: One of the initial fears I had the first time I was approaching GMless gaming was “oh shit, if Xander doesn’t like me, he’s going to spend the entire time killing character. This is going to suck.” But what actually happens…

Right. Xander does do that.

Xander: It’s just how I am…

And you get to another important point. I’m going to interrupt you for a second to say that most of these games take death off the table. It’s not physically possible [for the protagonist] to die. Not physically possible. There’s not even a roll for it. Banned. Not an option. Keep going.

Ben M: But what actually happened was that out of game the players realized the way we could become more popular at the gaming table was by giving each other cool stuff, whether that cool stuff was antagonism or protagonism. If you said to yourself “I want to oppose Ben’s character, but I’m going to do it in a really cool way that furthers the plot line, that furthers PC involvement or motivations,” then all of a sudden there was this massive carrot on a stick that became sort of the self-check. Don’t just be a dick antagonist…

Is that a rule?

(unknown): Rule zero, don’t be a dick.

Ben M: Because then they were getting the same reward that traditionally the GM got. I’m GMing, I run an awesome game, everyone’s like “damn Ben, that was a really good game. Thank you.” But it’s like “man, Xander. You were such a great asshole to my character today. Thank you so much.”

The thing we love, the thing we’re always looking for in these games, the antagonism moment, is the “my face when” moment. When you’re going back and forth, say it’s Shock, and someone’s like “okay, my goal for this conflict is y’know, free the slaves.” And the other person is like “yes, but only if your wife leaves you, because you haven’t been spending time together.” And the other player is like “ARGGH!” It’s not that they hate the idea. It’s that they simultaneously hate and love the idea. They can see that development in the plot like “Argh!” and it gets them right in the gut. And they kind of like it. And they kind of really want to stop it. They want to stop it so much, but they also feel that going down that path would actually be awesome.

And that’s an important design element of a lot of these games too, is that there’s no GM, there’s no guy saying “let’s make something cool happen” so the rules have to in many ways enforce a positive result. [meaning, no one person has the authority to take over the fiction and make sure it is entertaining]

One of the good examples is that in a conflict, where two possible things can happen, it’s bad design to have one of the results be nothing happens. “Well we try to do something, what happens?” “Nothing, zero.” Why did we bother? So almost all of them take an approach where there are two sides to the coin, two things could possibly happen, but they’re both going to something. And ideally both should be interesting. Failure should be interesting. If you try to overthrow the government, it’s not just that you don’t, it’s that you don’t and you’re thrown in jail and your wife leaves you. The negative path has to be just as interesting as the positive path. No middle ground.

Ben M: And it also really helps to prevent Mary Sue characters.

Often in a game like this, it’s not even possible to be a Mary Sue character.

Xander: The rules of Fiasco, you’re going to die. [laughter] Die, prison, it’s your choice.

Right, you’re going to die.

Reid: When are you going to talk about your game?

I… y’know what? I’ve got to say honestly… someone [talking to me about me running the GMless workshop] said “oh, you’re just going to talk about your game.” and I was like “Really? I don’t think so.” Microscope is weird and I’m not sure it fits in a lot of these categories… Okay, I’ll talk about Microscope.

(unknown): Yay…

Here’s the best I can say about Microscope. I GM’ed for decades and I loved it. Had a great time. But what I really enjoyed was… I enjoyed running the games, but any serious GM will tell you that one of the biggest funs you have as the GM is making and preparing the game. You have this whole world in your head. Wherever you are — at the bus stop, walking down the street, working your job — you’re scribbling on envelopes. Because you’re working on your game constantly. That’s the fun part. It’s so great. It’s so good. And then players ruin it. Y’know, players come in like “I’m killin yur doodz!” [laughter]

But this thing happens, right, where you’re this GM and you’re making this world and you’re doing all this stuff, but the players aren’t. They’re just watching you, going “That’s fantastic! I love your world!” And you start to recognize there’s a weird dichotomy of creativity. The more creative you are… it is very possible for a lot of people to become less creative, because they’re just watching you, going “It’s mesmerizing! Tell me more about your world!”

So you could say in some ways Microscope is an attempt to make everyone at the table be as creative (even when they don’t want to be). To take the fun of GMing, of making cool stuff, and to put it everyone’s lap and say “You are going to make cool stuff, even if you never thought you could.” Even if you never had the confidence to think you could make cool stuff. And the whole time thing, the whole a-chronological / being able to move backwards and forwards in time, are really social mechanisms to diffuse the scariness and danger of making things. Because we know in a linear game, where you’re going forward in time, when you make something that’s what we do next. If I say “Your turn! Reid, what happens?” And you say “hey, the city burns down.” And Pat’s like “oh crap! I wanted to do something in that city! You screwed me!” There’s a social problem there. Your actions have consequences. And Microscope, by intentionally permitting you to go anywhere you want in time, if you burn down the city, Pat can still do something in the city [before it was destroyed]. He’s not really bothered by that. It’s an intentional escape valve. You have a question?

(unknown): You just answered it.

Whole other slew of stuff. I find that people who’ve never role-playing games or only played D&D, they respond to it great. But as far as discussing GMless games or what are GMless games are like, it’s not typical. It would be a weird place to start a discussion. I don’t think it’s typical. Does anyone thinks it’s typical? Is it indicative of normal GMless play?

Reid: Why do you think that is?

Why did it turn out that way, or in what way do I think…

Reid: Why do you think this game exists separately from these other GMless games?

Character. Plot. Total lack of that. Lack of antagonism. In fact there is antagonism but it is actually between the players. It’s creative antagonism.

(unknown): Social conflict

It’s not even social. It’s just you have a creative vision…

We were going to talk about Surprise. Let’s bring this in. Surprise and the Unknown. Often people say, “GMless games cannot have the same impact as GMed games, because in a GMed game the GM has a big plot. He’s written it down. It’s a big mystery he’s been working on for years.” Done that. I agree. It’s absolutely true.

Reid: The Big Reveal.

The Big Reveal. Thirty games I didn’t tell you that your sister was the same person as this other character and you’ve been talking to them both… yeah, freaking out. Right. Awesome. Love that. And to some degree it’s true that a GMless game will not have that same impact. In fact secrets are disadvantageous. We don’t like secrets. They don’t help. If we know what you want to have in the game we can help you. If you hide it from us, we never see it. But, here’s the thing, the surprise and the unknown, the other players — and this very much where Microscope comes from — the other players are the biggest surprise you’re ever going to run into. Their cool ideas — because no one prepared this game, we all just sat down at the table together with nothing in hand — and from our brains made something. The cool stuff that people say is what’s going to surprise us. That’s going to be the stuff where we go “Wow, I didn’t see that coming.” It’s surprise and the unknown, but on a much faster and shorter scale. You’ve got a question?

Feiya: Well it’s not really a question, I think I disagree with that a little, because I surprise myself. I think there’s the whole [muddled] they say “okay, go!” and you’re like “okay, I’m going to start talking” and suddenly you’re like “whoa!” [surprising yourself]

You mean in a GMless game?

Feiya: Yeah

Oh totally, I agree. Other people surprise you but you surprise yourself too. I agree completely. We’re on the same page. You’re thinking of your Remember Tomorrow character, aren’t you?

It’s a different species of surprise than one person having a hidden secret they’re going to reveal, and you know they have that secret. In fact that’s one of the stock [tools] of any GM, is convincing the players that there’s this huge world they’re delving into mysteriously. And we know when we sit down for a GMless game — that’s like a pickup game that we all started an hour ago — nobody has a secret they’ve been working on for years for this game. They can’t. We know that. That’s right off the table. So you’re never going to have that same belief, so it’s a different type of surprise. I think it’s great. You’re being surprised at a much faster pace by people’s immediately creatively, versus being surprised by something somebody prepared a year ago.

Ben M: If I may elaborate on that then?

Yep.

Ben M: I think we should differentiate between the surprised players, such as the big reveal that the GM traditionally gives, versus the surprised characters

Oh yeah. I don’t care about the characters. Right. [how's that for a quote out of context?]

Ben M: Because what I’m thinking of as one of the advantages of open secrets could be, using White Wolf for example, you can take flaws. I have the flaw Dark Secret, I have some dark secret on my character, which in a GMless game is me telegraphing to the other players that I want my dark secret to either be revealed or be in danger of being revealed. So while the characters may be surprised “oh my god, you all found out I was actually the Lindberg Baby…”

Morgan: Dramatic Irony. The authors know something that the characters don’t know.

Yeah. And in a GMless game it’s exactly that. You would often tell people flat out what your dark secret is that’s going to be revealed. “I’m really a werewolf!” Love in the Time of Seid. One of the characters is a werewolf. We all know it. Our characters don’t. But if we didn’t know that and midway through the game “surprise, I’m a werewolf!” we be like “WHAT?!? The Hell…” [laughter] How can we say ironic things like “I feel so safe with you! Let’s go walking in the park in the moonlight!” How can we say that if we don’t know that we need to set you up as a werewolf? By knowing these secrets, by knowing people’s flaws that are supposed to be secret, it empowers us to help them set up those beautiful scenes of like… the guy we know is the traitorous spy, that’s the guy you turn to and say “Y’know what? You’re the only one I trust. Bros. Bros forever.” That’s the guy! You gotta do that. That’s the best. That is the most fun. But if you didn’t know that guy was a spy and you play and you play and the guy goes “hey, guess what, I was a spy!” You go, okay, I get that, but as a story… as both audience and author, I would have to watch that again, because I don’t really see how that all played out. You missed the story. So different types of surprise. Surprise of our creativity is awesome when it happens. There’s nothing but surprise from creativity. You’re always surprised.

Morgan: You don’t feel bad for Harvey Keitel if you don’t know that Tim Roth was a cop the entire time.

Precisely.

Xander: He wasn’t a cop.

Reid: He wasn’t a cop? He was totally a cop.

Xander: He didn’t *die*. That was the part… I’m forgetting what was ambiguous. [laughter]

Morgan: Someone needs to watch Reservoir Dogs again…

There’s some argument I had on the internet (on the internet!) where a guy was talking about Aliens. The second Alien. Talking about character creation. I was trying to explain that movies are a terrible way to learn how to game. You look at a movie and say “yeah, I’ll imitate a movie!” But you can’t really imitate a movie. Movies do things like they have cut scenes, where a character walks in a room and they’re doing something, and we don’t know why they’re doing it. But we’re the audience so we don’t have to know. But if we were players, we would have to know. “Why am I in a room?”

(unknown): Movies show, they can’t tell.

Yeah. And also if I’m playing that guy doing something mysterious and I don’t know why I’m doing it, I don’t have a script to follow, I go “why am I in this warehouse?” “Just trust me.” “No, I need to have some concept of my motivation.”

Ben M: [audio muddled] …then it could be, “you see my character washing a piece of crystal in a fountain of green goo.”

But you know why… [audio muddled]. And that’s a totally different technique, “fishing”, where you say “tell me why I’m doing that.” That’s a different form of collaboration. You’re essentially saying “I don’t have an idea, so you tell me.” That’s awesome too. It’s a different form of brainstorming. But the point is that you can’t just imitate a movie, with its weird cuts and assumptions like “well how did he get there? What happened in that last scene?” I don’t know how the transition was made.

Like the example of Aliens. At the beginning of the movie we have no idea… in the director’s cut she has a daughter that died while she was away. Cutting room floor. And the person [on the internet] was like “no, we don’t need to know that, that’s not relevant.” Well no, as an audience we don’t need to know that. But if I was the guy making the character, that would be on my sheet, that Ripley wants a daughter. That wouldn’t be something I made up part way through the game. It could be. But that would more likely be a stated / yelled flag you raise to the other players, “I think her arc is maternal instinct…”

(unknown): Otherwise no one knows to play Newt.

Yeah! Why’d you bring in Newt? And maybe it’s serendipity. That can happen. Serendipity is totally awesome. I just happened to bring in Newt, it just happened to click. That’s the difference between a played-to goal (Shock, Remember Tomorrow) versus a ‘see what happens’ (Polaris, Fiasco).

next up: All good things come to an end, even this workshop. Part 6, the big finale.

Continued from part 3. We’re halfway through the workshop. We started off by making a list of all the things a GM does, then condensed that list into a few core activities. We’ve been going through each item and looking at how games with no GMs get those same things done, or in some cases deciding if we need those things at all.

Ben M: With that, one of the things I’ve found in some of the, I guess they’d be called partial GMless games, I’ve played, popularity comes into play. Not necessarily of the player but of the idea, and how much control it has over the table. If I have a very plot-affecting goal, like the kingdom is being invaded, but someone else has put forth another plot-affecting goal, the ancient ruins have been disturbed, generally speaking it’s going to be difficult to work both of those in evenly. So, in my experience, part of that was, which plot do the players at the table think is interesting.

Alright, go back to this step. Play structure. We’re taking turns. If we’re playing Shock, we’re going to go in rotating pairs and play each person’s story an equal number of scenes. Equal. Remember Tomorrow actually does do a weird thing, which I think might be a little bit of a problem, where you do actually let, to some degree, the popularity of the plot kick in, which can be good and bad. But in a lot of these games, not even a question. Like Fiasco: it’s your turn, you make a scene about yourself. It’s now your turn. There might be more or less interest or motivation in that based on how much desire people have for a particular plot. Absolutely. And there should be, frankly. I mean — Microscope — I absolutely agree that people should go to what interests them.

Reid: In Fiasco it usually ends up being the popularity of one relationship or another.

Oh sure, absolutely. And I think that’s an intentionally smart design. You want to give people choices so they can decide what interests them. But as far as social popularity, like “I just don’t think Xander has good ideas,” he still gets a turn, and we’re going to advance the story. And we might even be bored during that story, but…

Xander: [grumbling]

Ben M: So how does this work for Xander is for his plot line, he really needs your guys’ support, but you’re all interested in another player’s plot line and that’s where your characters are off doing stuff.

Which actually gets another point… you’re actually doing a great job of exposing things I forget that people don’t know. If you watch a movie… well let’s skip the movie example. When you make characters in a lot of these games — Fiasco doesn’t do, but a lot of the others do — instead of saying you’re a party a la D&D, you’re a team together, you’re interacting — a lot of them throw that out the window. They say, you’re going to have separate story lines and they’re often going to be completely non-touching stories. Much like if you read a William Gibson book where there are interlaced chapters. That can be good or bad. There are pros and cons to that. In Shock, that is absolutely the mechanic. If we have three players we have three protagonists and we play one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. We see three separate stories. The nice thing is you can have effects where you can get a domino effect of things that happen… things you do that affect the world. Like the thing you said, if you find the ruins and the ruins unleash a thing [monster, elder god, etc], that world event influences other people’s stories. But generally speaking, when it’s your scene, you are the star of the movie. They’re built to do that intentionally, to undermine that question of whether you get as much spotlight time as everyone else.

Reid: So you’re saying in Shock, you end up with a movie for each player?

But they’re all happening at the same place at the same time. I’m trying to think of a movie that…

Morgan: Game of Thrones.

Perfect. Most movies don’t do it, because in two hours you couldn’t have three stories very easily, but Game of Thrones would be a good example.

(unknown): Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction is even weirder because you have the time problem, but you’re right. If you eliminate the achronology of Pulp Fiction, exactly right. They’re separate characters but their actions affect each other’s world. Particularly with a game like Shock where you potentially…

(unknown): Do they meet up tangentially at some point?

No. You can, but often it’s much more fun just to see the consequences of your actions. Like we’ve had crazy catastrophe Shock games where one person on their turn released the slaves and overthrew the government. Well, if I was the Governor… man, my next scene gets a lot more interesting. Suddenly I’m in a government in hiding.

But here’s the underlying thing about that, by doing that, by giving other people that kind of control of the creative space, potentially they can ruin your story. You’re trusting them. You’re saying, “hey y’know what, I could play it safe, and I could live in a little walled off space where I control all my stuff.” But one of the underlying things of this kind of game is that instead of saying “this is my guy and I control him,” you’re saying “this is a guy, or this is a story, we’re going to do together.” You’re kind of taking your character sheet and pushing it to the middle of the table and saying this is something we’re all in together. And in some games, like in Polaris for example, you actually do that. You actually push your sheet to the center of the table and that’s the character we all play together.

(unknown): Is that a multi-session game?

It can be. We play it one-shot a lot. It’s an older game — older being 5 years — but it’s initially designed for multi-session. But we play it one-shot all the time and it works fantastically.

You have a question?

Ben M: So play structure then, is it usually assumed that I can interact with your character and I can even control him and say drastic things may happen to him. Maybe he loses an arm in battle or maybe his girlfriend says “I’m leaving you.” And as long as I am respecting the basic ideas of what your character is, then I have the freedom to do that?

That’s getting to our next question. Antagonism. Jump back a step. We have this protagonist. We know the protagonist wants something, which is awesome. It’s great. Cool for the protagonist. BORING! Because he says “I want to overthrow the government.” “Yay, you do, done! Raaah… this is not very fun…” We desire a challenge, even in D&D (even more so in D&D). In fact in any kind of game, we want the correct level of challenge. We don’t want too much challenge, we don’t want too little challenge. We don’t want an easy fight, we don’t want a stupid fight that’s incredibly hard. We want just that perfect level of push-back, right? That’s what the GM does. The GM scales good fights. When the GM’s good, you go “That was awesome!” We felt like maybe we could have failed, even when we don’t. We don’t fail but we feel like we could have failed. We don’t feel like we’re on a railroad.

So we have this protagonist, we have this guy, and we need an antagonist. We need a challenge. We need someone to give him a hard time. Who’s it going to be? We don’t have a GM anymore.

Ben M: Everyone becomes the antagonist.

Could be.

Reid: Yeah, in Perfect, there’s a game called Perfect where you play the antagonist of the person to your right.

And in fact, Perfect is the Shock pattern. That is in fact one of the most common solutions. To say, we’ll pair off. You will have a designated antagonist. You have somebody who’s job it is to make your life difficult. And I’m looking at Xander, but I really should be looking at Pat. [laughter]

Morgan: In Fiasco, is everybody your antagonist?

No! No! No! And this is why Fiasco bends… This is why the spectrum [of game books] is laid out this way. This is my “What the Hell” spectrum. So on one end… so Microscope we’re not even going to talk about because I don’t even know where I’d bring it into this conversation. It feel like that would just be weird because it doesn’t obey any of these rules. Fiasco, which is again fascinating because it’s been this break-out hit, and I think there’s a lesson to be learned of why it is so popular even among people who haven’t role-played ever. It does not designate antagonism! No one is your designated antagonist. You have relationships. Those might be antagonistic, they might not be. But there is no… it’s breaking all the rules… there is no designated antagonism. None.

Reid: But all the other players, any other player, can push that die forward…

And that’s not antagonism. That’s not antagonism.

Reid: No, because you have to take it

Let’s break it down a little bit. Antagonism is the person who says what it is that makes it harder for you to get what you want, or why you can’t get what you want. Let’s put it differently. The player who is the antagonist is the one who makes up fiction that says why you can’t get it. You want to get a bunch of money? They’re the one who says “hey, the bank is foreclosing on your house…”

Reid: I agree…

Yeah. So there’s no player whose job that is [in Fiasco], which is fascinating. And people do it just kind of ad hoc. People just mess with you. And often, I think because of the subject matter, you create antagonism for yourself. Which is again, something that for years now, people have said… it’s the Czege Principle… people say that doesn’t work. You can’t do that. You can’t make up a challenge and beat it yourself. [meaning, it's not satisfying to do that] It’s like a golden rule. Czege Principle. Write that down.

(unknown): Who came up with it?

He did. Well it’s something he said at one point and everyone said “yeah, that’s right!” It’s make sense right? If you present a challenge for yourself…

(unknown): But what was he talking about?

Games in general. It’s a game design principle that if you both set up a challenge and then beat the challenge, it’s not very much fun. [pause] Argh! Right! I don’t know if I agree! But it’s a good… most of the time it’s a good guiding principle. Somebody else should make something challenging for you and then you overcome it. And there’s other arguments. Like Vincent Baker, who is down the hall, would say one of the functions of game rules are to subvert our natural inclinations. To make us do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. Maybe that’s true too. I don’t know.

Reid: He made Dogs in the Vineyard?

He made Dogs in the Vineyard. And, in fact, a little game called Apocalypse World. Yeah. I hear that game’s popular.

Ben M: One mechanic a game called Houses of the Blooded had that I saw was used very well in a GMless game, was at the start of the session, all players have the opportunity to ask for enemies. It doesn’t have to be a carrot. I step forward and say “I’d like to have three enemies, who here wants to hate me for some reason?” And someone might step forward and say “I’d like one enemy.” You could step forward and say “I want no enemies. I want everyone to love me.”

(unknown): Boring!

Right. And in fact, one could argue that by not deciding which of those is the right answer, the game design has kind of punted. It’s thrown it to the players and said “oh you guys figure it out.” If zero or three are all a good answer… there should be a chapter explaining what those decisions mean.

But effectively that is what a lot of games do: designating somebody who will be your antagonist. It’s their job.

Here’s an important distinction: it’s not that your protagonist is their antagonist. In Fiasco, it could be. In Perfect it’s not either — Perfect is the Shock pattern, it’s the same logic. Polaris, same way. It’s that you’re a second character who is the antagonist. So when you’re putting on your antagonist hat, you’re not saying “my protagonist is an antagonist to your protagonist” — your protagonist is a protagonist — you’re a different guy who’s “bad.” Does that make any sense? Lot of ‘tangonists in that situation.

Simple example. I’m a knight of the order of the stars. Yay! I’m going to go save the kingdom. Morgan also has a different character who is a knight of the order of the stars. He’s going to go try to save the kingdom. We’re both separately going to try to save the kingdom. At some point though, when we flip roles, I will be his antagonist. Now I’m playing demons. They have nothing to do with my knight. I’m a totally different guy. And when I put on that hat, when I put on the antagonist hat, my job at the table has now completely changed. My job is now to care about his protagonist.

And this is a big thing, this is a big mistake people make. People think their antagonist is a protagonist. They think their antagonist is a main character and they start to care. “Oh, but while you’re gone, my antagonist is going to go build a secret lab…” NO ONE CARES! You’re not the protagonist! Stop doing that! Just die in a volcano already and stop doing that. Make a new one [antagonist]. It’s about the protagonist.

And the whole question, like we talked about before, of what is the right level of challenge… there’s the whole question of how do you challenge people, how do you antagonize them in ways that they enjoy. Because that’s the thing. You don’t want them to not enjoy it, right? You could easily… it’s like “rocks fall, everyone dies.” Classic, right? We know that’s bad GMing. We know that’s bad antagonism. The GM is in fact picking a careful level of antagonism the players like. Same thing with GMless. It’s just now more people are doing it on the fly and they’re doing it in reaction to the things one person wants. So in a way it’s a harder job, because you’re having to think on the fly and you’re adapting to what they say they want.

Reid: See, that’s where I disagree. I think it’s easier. When I’m playing Fiasco, and I’m playing my character…

You’re not an antagonist in Fiasco…

Reid: I’m a protagonist. And I’ve got a relationship with you and a relationship with you. And I frame a scene, where maybe one of these guys is in my scene and maybe some other NPCs who can be played by other people. And they can just jump in, and he can just decide to be an antagonist. And be like “I’m not going to give you what you want!” And then somebody else can be like “We’ll I’m somebody else who’s arguing on your side, so dammit you should give him what he wants.” There’s always that balancing act between… and that becomes part of the social control.

No, completely. And in fact again, one of the things I think that’s really critical about Fiasco is, because it is a real world setting, and you don’t have a set goal but you have effectively real world desires: “I want some money.” Okay we get that. Then we go over to Shock, where your goal is to prove that the world computer that everyone thinks is a god is really a machine, and we’re antagonizing that story goal. It’s a different level of complexity, because here you saying “oh I’m a guy and I just want some money.” It’s more understandable.

Reid: The point I was making is that’s easier for four players to play my antagonist than one player.

Maybe. But you also get the case, and this happens in Remember Tomorrow…

Reid: The reasoning is that I think that four players can more adequately… and at a constant rate… find my perfect antagonism level. Whereas one player is going make a guess and they’ll be right or wrong. Four players are going to be constantly tuning.

Let’s say it’s the difference between auto-fire versus a sniper. I think the scenario you’re describing is more of an auto-fire situation. Where you want something and what you want is pretty obvious, and a bunch of people are trying to hit you back, and kind of bombarding you with opposition. Which can be cool. Which can be awesome. But you’re rarely going to get as poignant of an opposition because you have multiple people maybe stepping on each other’s toes. That’s another problem. Of the people there, nobody knows who has the ball, who’s supposed to be antagonizing. Whereas in some of these other models you say “No Reid, it’s your job. You’re going to antagonize.”

And in fact part of the game is seeing what you think is interesting antagonism and the mental bond the protagonist and antagonist [players] form. A game like Polaris, where you do this very careful interaction to reveal what you care about. You basically do this jockeying / phrase / discussion thing and you come up with very surprising results, where you didn’t quite think that’s where you were going.

But if you had a bunch of people… Remember Tomorrow suffers a little bit from this problem, where because it’s not designated sometimes no one takes the ball. Maybe in Fiasco you have a guy, but no one really cares to antagonize you. And that’s back to a social problem. We all look at that guy and go “I’m just not that into your character.” And that’s the thing. It is important that we’re into your character. So some of these games make us be into your character. “Hey it’s your job. You’ve got to be into this protagonist.” Because like in Fiasco. Maybe there’s one character who is just not that interesting, and that guy just kind of gets… he has a chance to be on screen, but maybe nobody takes him up on his story. And he kinds of fades away. And we don’t remember that guy that much.

next up: part 5, more antagonism, death and the element of surprise

Our workshop continues from part 2.

Okay, so we were talking about world creation in Shock. One thing we kind of hinted at is that each of these games approach these critical questions in ways that are sometimes extraordinarily different. Like world creation. If you’re playing Fiasco, which is a massive hit among the PAX crowd, you’re operating in effectively what is the real world, so you’re doing a very different type of world creation than if you’re playing a game like Shock, which is kind of all about making a fictional world. So out of all the different GMless games, they’ll approach this element very differently [points at list] and they’ll approach this element somewhat differently [points at list].

Let’s jump ahead to an element that they tend to answer the same way. Every single one. Who Gets To Talk. Play Structure. You are sitting down at the table and if you’re in a GM’ed game the GM says “hey, you get to go now.” Almost every single GMless game that you’re going to find follow a very simple rule for play structure, which is that we take turns. We go around the table and each person has authority to usually make a scene, create something, something like that. It’s incredibly mundane, but it’s incredibly effective.

And stop and think about that. Compare that to the last time you played D&D or something. You go around the table in initiative order for combat, but outside of that, how are you deciding who goes now?

(unknown): The loudest person

Ben M: Or the person who is most actively coming up with new plot ideas. Because there are some players who…

Morgan: Or a combination of the loudest and most active.

Yes. And then we have the “Lilies of the Field” effect. Where we have people who are really creative and who really have great ideas but they’re socially quiet. And they may not be confident about their ideas. In a traditional game, where the GM is — the GM is doing a lot of work, the GM is under a lot of pressure, right, so be fair to the GM — the GM is looking at the table the going, “who do I think wants to say something? Who do I gotta give time to?” Sometimes the GM will intentionally put someone in the hotseat [who doesn't look like they have something to say] but you’re the gatekeeper, as was described before. You’re the person who’s deciding who does what. Very difficult. And often times if someone is quieter and has inner thoughts, you don’t even know it. You think they’re bored. You think they’re staring into space.

I think that’s never true. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a GMed game where I actually believed that the people who are quiet did not have very active ideas about what should be going on in the game. They have, in their brain, pages and pages of what the cloak of their ranger looks like. It’s just doesn’t come out. They’re not sharing it with us. And in a normal [GMed] game, because you’re requiring one person [the GM] to read another person’s mind and say “I think you want to talk”, that may never come out. With the rotating play structure, we have a very different scenario. We say, “hey Morgan, it’s your turn. Give us something.” And we kind of sit and wait. You can give us a scene, or it might be… depending on which game it is you might need to make a scene about your character, you might need to provide us some adversity, which we’ll talk about in a second.

Ben M: Is there an expected time restriction?

Good question. Is there? Should there be?

(unknown): If I’ve got somewhere to be…

(unknown): Only if you anticipate it being a problem. Maybe.

Morgan: On the other hand, I don’t know. Like, short… in the same thing with writing, you want to be concise.

You want to be. But the question is not whether you want to be. It’s a question of ability, right? So we go around the table, and some people are like “yeah, I’ve got ideas! It’s awesome! I’ve played a million story games! Yeah there’s a scene! There’s a monster! Rarr!” Another guy has never role-played before and is just sitting down. The question is, do you put a shot-clock on that person. Does that help? And no, you’ll notice we’ve just jumped right back to the social question… [really play structure / who gets to talk]

Ben M: My curiosity was not actually that type of player, but the player who has a very detailed idea that doesn’t necessarily advance the plot for the rest of the table.

We’ll cover that in a second. That’s under Story / Plot. Good question. We’ll get to a whole question of: what is the story? What is the plot? We haven’t even talked about that. How do we agree what the story is. That’s a huge question.

Morgan: So was your question sort of not that they’re going to take too much time, but they’re going to take too much narrative control? Or that they’re not going to progress the story in general?

Ben M: More not progressing the story. Because I know that if Dominique wants to take her two minutes to talk about the fashion business that her character’s running, it’s not interesting to me. But if I know that there’s a two-minute timer and then it’s going to pass to Billy, okay, y’know what, have fun with that. I only have to listen for a few minutes then we’re moving on, whether I’m interested or not.

So let’s talk about that. Let’s jump down. Play structure, like I said, often very simple. Rotating. Taking turns. What you do in that turn can be very different a lot times. It could be, in your turn, make a situation in which we all play. In your turn, frame a scene. Framing a scene is kind of the lingua franca of almost every story game. Y’know, it’s stolen from movies. It’s not about, like playing D&D, what happens at two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock. It’s not a continuum of time, it’s fast cuts to the good stuff. That’s almost always what play structure involves.

And to back up even further, a ton of these GMless games are in fact one-shot games. They’re often dramatic games, in the sense that we’re going to play an entire story tonight, in the space of a couple hours. So stuff that’s kind of off-task, that’s really kind of costly. We’re trying to get the critical parts of this character’s life.

Jumping ahead to story and plot… let’s talk about story and plot, because that’s really what your question is about. What is the plot of this game? What is the story of this game? In a GM’ed game, what’s the story and the plot?

(unknown): Whatever the GM feels like…

Whatever the GM feels like. And that… can be awesome. So here’s the thing. You’re the GM and you’re preparing a game. You’re going to play it on Sunday [today's Friday]. When do you make the characters, when do they [the players] make the characters? When do you need characters? Say we’re playing D&D.

(unknown): At least two weeks ago…

Do you? For D&D?

(unknown): You need them by the time you start.

Do you… let’s make it even worse. Be honest. Take the last D&D game you ran (it’s an easy example because everyone plays D&D). Do you, really, in your soul, need to know who the characters are before you start the intro..?

(unknown): Noooo

Sinners! Sinners! SINNERS! To be fair, I’m drawing stark contrast. Obviously in serious campaign games… I’m not saying there are not GMed games where the GM takes into account the player characters, because of course there are. I’m just saying that there’s a whole continuum where they don’t. Where it’s not even a question. Because as we said, the GM’s preparing a story or plot and giving you the freedom, you could argue, to make whatever you want. And saying “this is going to be an adventure, you’re going to go rescue the kingdom the evil sorcerer. Make a thief, make a cleric, make whatever you want, that’s cool.”

Reid: Soulless, faceless robots…

No, but honestly, it’s not that the GM doesn’t care who your characters is, it’s that the GM makes the adventure (often), then sees your character and says now that I know what your character is, in play I can say, “yeah, that’s awesome, you totally have a crisis of faith!” But that, intrinsically, the plot isn’t really about you.

Ever read any books written by famous GMs? Anybody read any of Gary Gygax’s famous novels? [silence] GMs are terrible writers. Y’know why? They don’t make main characters. It’s not their job. [apologies to Gary Gygax and Gord the Rogue. Being a great GM has its price.]

Ben M: One style of quasi-GMing that I’ve seen though that touches on this is that the GM in question was not very creative, and he knew this, but he was the best person at the table for running the mechanics of the system. So the PCs [players] got together and said “We want a nightclub and he wants to be a bouncer and she wants to be the sexy hostess and blah blah blah. And we want you run it.” And the GM said “Sure, I’ll facilitate.” And the party basically gave the campaign setting to him, but then the GM acted as game facilitator.

The word you’re looking for, and in fact the word you just said (and the word we’re going to get to) is “facilitator.” They’re playing a partially GMless game right there. They’ve chosen to. That’s awesome. And to be clear, these are all continuums. It’s not black and white, one or the other. It’s a vast continuum. I’ve played a lot of D&D that was entirely character-driven, “I need to know who your character is, I need to know how to tie you in to the story” all that kind of stuff. That’s to say it does not have to been one or the other.

We’re going to get back to story and plot, but: rules knowledge and enforcement. We should have done this one earlier because it’s a really easy one to get out of the way. We sit down to play Fiasco, someone has to know how to play Fiasco. We sit down to play Shock, someone has to have read the book and know how to play Shock. In most GMless games and story games that’s the facilitator. You’re not the GM. You’re just the person who knows the rules. You’re going to teach the rules. You’re going to explain the rules. Enforce the rules, in a gentle way, because you don’t really have social power, you’re going to say “hey, that’s not the way the rules work.” and everyone might say “we don’t care we’re having fun!” And that’s where your GM(like) power stops. You don’t get to say “Nooo!” Now it’s just social. Now we agree what we’re going to do or not.

So that’s the facilitator’s job. The key thing about being a facilitator, and it’s often very good to say this right up front when you’re the facilitator: you’re not the GM. You don’t get to say “but I don’t like that bouncer idea.” You don’t have that GM power to choose what the fiction is [any more than anyone else]. You’re only talking about the rules. It can be kind of weird for people who are used to GMs. You start facilitating and they think you’re GMing. You have to constantly remind them that no, that’s not the power you have.

That’s a very easy one to get rid of. Somebody has to read the book. Somebody has to tell us how to play.

So back to the story / plot thing. Because the GM isn’t showing up with a plot, right, we had that whole discussion where there are these characters, but in a weird way these characters are just kind of filling the void left by the GM. An inversion, in fact, of storytelling logic. In a story, we have a protagonist. What’s a protagonist?

Reid: The person…

You got it…

Reid: … who starts doing actions…

Morgan: …that advances the plot. Who goes through Joseph Campbell’s hero’s cycle…

And in fact Reid’s definition is the critical one. The protagonist is the guy that does stuff. He’s the guy that initiates action. Pro-tagonist. He does stuff. Superheroes are not protagonists, in all likelihood. You almost never see a superhero initiating action. They react. It’s weird.

Reid: Supervillains are protagonists

Supervillains are protagonists. Exactly. So the protagonist is the person who initiates action, or who has desire, has some thing. So if we don’t have a GM, but we have a bunch of players, what do we start off with? We start off with characters in all likelihood. We start off with people making characters. So suddenly we have Morgan sitting down and making a character, and instead of this [prepared] plot becoming the center of the story, with a hole that any character could fit, it all goes completely backwards. Morgan makes a character, and his character’s desires and goals now become the center of the story. That’s the plot that we agree on. You see what I mean?

Morgan: So just like with the game that he was describing, right, I’ve got a nightclub now, so now the game is about this nightclub that I care about.

Precisely. Instead of the GM saying “it would be awesome if we ran a game where you all worked at a nightclub” and the players go “okay, we can work with that,” from the point of view of story and drama, this is more natural. The character’s come first. The character’s desires come first.

Most of these games address that. That is the one thing these games do. If they don’t talk about that, throw them out the window (if there’s supposed to be characters). It’s a question of, who is character? What does your character want? What are your character’s goals? What are your characters fears? What is your character linked to? That is the solid gold nugget in GMless games. If you’ve got a game with characters (yeah I’m looking at Microscope) that is the thing you have to nail down. Of the spectrum of games we’ve got here, they all do it. They all do it different ways. They all do it in some cunning ways and some strange ways.

How many of you have played Fiasco? Fiasco is like the breakout hit of indie gaming. And the question might be: why?

Reid: Because it’s good.

Well, and Wil Wheaton gave it a pitch, which was awesome! But a lot of games are good, but there are a couple of things about Fiasco that highlight what we’re talking about. One is, it’s set in the ordinary world. You don’t have to debate. This whole thing vanishes, world creation. We don’t have to talk about, “are we going to be on a space station, is it going to be ancient Mordor.” We just don’t even talk about that. We say “oh, it’s a small town.” Done. We know what that means. Or, “oh, we’re white trash, living in the South.” Got it. Everybody kind of knows what these settings mean, so that [world creation] kind of falls away. But then we get to the story / plot stuff… oh my god. That’s where suddenly the game has a very simple mechanism that relies almost entirely on the players being, kind of…

Reid: And you don’t have to make a character.

For Fiasco? Yeah, you make a character.

(unknown): Well, you… [blurred]

Oh, you get relationships, you get random seeds… correct, I see what you’re saying.

Reid: You get a framework and you fill in the blanks.

Right, you are given relationships to the people around you and then you brainstorm based on that. Which is, if you stop to think about, a chaotic, messy, uncontrolled, wild and crazy process… and it works great. Right? There’s not a big list of numbers, where you say “oh, my Honor is 5, my whatever is…”

Reid: How do you figure it’s chaotic? Because you’ve got the dice…

Oh right, you’ve got the dice, but think of it, our relationship is drug dealers and over here my relationship is old lovers, and I rapidly turn to both these people and I go “oh who should I be? Should I be the principal of the school?” and you do this crazy brainstorming process. I’ve done it with about six people who’ve never gamed before (maybe five who’ve never gamed before) and it’s amazing because people will, in a very sloppy human way, arrive at human relationships. And it works awesome. And what it gives them is the nuggets of the story / plot. It gives them a lot of stuff to go on. What it gives you is the kernels of the connections to other people around you which theoretically should drive some kind of a story.

But honestly, to be fair, Fiasco is very light on telling you what the story is. The one thing it does do, is there’s a built-in (and this is similar to Polaris as well)… it’s says, there’s an arc. This is going to be a tragedy. Get used to it. And by just saying that, even if it doesn’t enforce tragedy at all — which it kind of doesn’t, mechanically, it doesn’t make you play a tragedy — it just says “hey we agree, because we’re playing this, that it’s going to end up badly for the characters involved.” [aftermath rolls push tragedy, but that doesn't happen until play is basically over]

Other games, for example Remember Tomorrow and Shock, take a much more direct approach. They say, what is the goal of your character? Write it down. Step one: what’s your goal? What’s your dramatic goal? And it might be like, in Shock, find the cure to the disease that’s wiping out all the people on the space station. Or it might be be reunited with my brother. Or it might be overthrow the theocracy. What’s your goal for this movie? And it’s either going to happen or not happen. [you'll succeed or fail]

But you’re required, and this is kind of critical… to play these games well, you’re required to tell the other players what it is you want. You’re required to write down a goal and present it to them so they know what it is they’re supposed to be… what you’re interested in and they should be interested in. You’re declaring these things overtly. It’s not a stealth-plot. It’s not a stealth-goal. It’s completely on the table. [to the players, not the characters]

We’re halfway there. Told you we covered a lot of ground. Next up: part 4, Antagonism!

Continued from part 1. In case it wasn’t clear, the section titles weren’t in the talk. I added them to make it easier for you to follow the conversation.

Okay if the GM does all of those things, what’s the next question: Do we need these things?

Morgan: Without antagonism, it’s going to be pretty boring.

Let’s start from — I agree — let’s start with the ones I know we can do without. [taps the board] Social Control. Do we need somebody to be the boss of the room in this situation. Do we need one individual?

Reid: I say we either need one individual or we need a pre-arranged agreement about what sort of means of social control we’re going…

Morgan: Like a contract… [laughter]

Let’s examine that. [late arrivals enter] We’re talking about what does the GM do. To get rid of the GM we have to establish what does the GM do. We’ve gotta know. So we made a big list of what the GM does and then we broke it down into a couple of things.

Reid: So look, I think you could go ahead and suggest that everybody understands the rules knowledge and they’ll be beholden to…

Totally different thing. Totally different.

Reid: How so?

If we play in a game and you just piss me off — nothing to do with the rules, I’m just sick of you — in a normal game the GM kicks that person out, eventually. Or the players go to the GM and say “we are so sick of playing with Freddie” (I hope there’s no one here named Freddie) “Freddie is killing me, let’s get rid of him.” And the GM makes that call. No one else gets to make that call.

Ben M: I would disagree in the strongest terms actually. Several times, in groups I’ve been in both as player and GM, it’s been the entire group makes that call, because either the GM themselves felt like “I will seem like a tyrant if I just say ‘you suck Freddie, go.’” Or the GM was a very non-confrontational individual outside the game and didn’t want to get on Freddie’s bad side, but if multiple people could come and say “Freddie, that whole ‘I’m a Nazi’ shtick is getting a little old, we need you to leave.” No one takes the blame individually.

Yeah and what you’re getting at is kind of where we’re going. It’s proof that it’s not necessary to have one person do that. It is in fact not a requirement. If you look at any social situation we’re in day-to-day, we don’t have a designated parent figure. We don’t have designated authority. We’re out at dinner: who’s in charge?

Reid: Conversely our culture is full of individuals who have those roles.

Yes. Like why am I standing up here? Because for the purpose of this [workshop], amongst strangers, it can often expedite the functionality of a group to have someone be in charge. So you’re getting to a very interesting point. There’s a functional value to it, but can we live without it? What happens if we get rid of it?

(unknown): I think we can just say it’s important among strangers, right? But it depends on whether you’re gaming with a bunch of random people at PAX or whether you’re gaming with people you’ve known for years and years.

You’re very correct.

(unknown): So all of my role-playing, almost, is with these guys and some other people and we’ve playing for years and years together. And already have sort of a social…

You know each other. Right. You trust each other.

(unknown): Yeah

If you hated each other, you would have solved that problem by now.

(unknown): So I think most people who are friends outside of the game don’t necessarily need a GM to tell them how to behave in a game. They already know how to behave.

The depressing point is that if you are strangers and you get together and there’s a GM, he might be the asshole. You don’t know. We’ve all been in that game. We’ve all been in that game where we’re like “guys, this’ll be awesome… oh crap, I signed up with the wrong GM and I’m sorry.” Here’s the thing. If there are five people at the table, there is no guarantee that the one person who’s been given the authority is the nice guy at the table, or the guy who’s the most successful. You just don’t know. You’ve picked the guy, he’s the guy.

So the social control thing. Let’s see if we can agree that by taking that responsibility away from one person we do enter an interesting landscape, that is much more like normal life, where you walk around. It’s going to be less controlled than if you had one person who that authority, but it might be a brave new world. You cool with that?

Morgan: Okay

Reid: I would say that it immediately puts the onus on every player as individual.

Yes it does. And is that a bad thing? Or is that AWESOME!

Reid: I’m here aren’t I? [laughter]

But here’s the thing, right. So playing every week with total strangers, if you go up to people and say “hey, come to my game, sit down, I’m in charge,” they’re like “oh, okay” and sit quietly and stare at you, much like you guys have to do now. But if you say “hey, we’re all in this together. We’re all adults. What’cha got? I’m counting on you to participate.” you put them in a whole different stance. To some degree, by taking social control, you potentially undermine… no undermine is too strong a word. Let’s say you put everyone else’s game playing, their creative participation, in a more secondary role. You’re saying “I’m the GM. And you may participate — I want you to participate — but I am the final arbiter.” The social role bleeds into the game authority. Does that make sense? You cool with that? It’s a fuzzy thing.

Okay. So let’s agree, let’s give it a shot, let’s say “hey, let’s play GMless games and let’s have no designated social control” except that which normally exists in society. Which is that, if we’re pissed off at people we go “you’re driving me crazy.”

Ben M: So are we assuming then, if we’re starting a new game, and the players are sitting down together, is it just going to be group vote, do we play an intrigue game, do we play a hack-n-slash game, do we play a very adult mature themes or a game that is very light and fluffy?

Yeah. I think that’s exactly what it is. Would you even want a GM who just told you which one to play? You wouldn’t. You would say “but I don’t want to play a hack-n-slash game.” You would have that conversation even with a GM. Because that’s not even a social control thing. That’s a fictional thing, right? It’s in the fictional sphere.

Xander: That’s often a problem with conventional games, is if I think I’m playing D&D, three players could walk to the table. One’s like “hack-n-slash!” and the other’s like “oh it’s going to be this crazy fantasy world” and the other one’s like “I’m going to be a wizard and it’s going to be all about spell-casting…”

If we eliminate that, if we stop having social control, we in some degree force that conversation. We have to have that talk now. We can’t just say “oh, the GM said that’s the game. The game is cyberpunk. We’re playing cyberpunk. Yeah, I don’t want to, but I’ll do it because the GM said so.” Now we do have to have that conversion. We have to step up and take responsibility. We’re getting more into the game sphere, less than the social sphere, but we’re on the right track.

Ben M: One thing I could see this leading to is, with the classic, Ben’s running a game. Ben says it’s going to be Shadow Run. Certain assumptions come into play, and Ben can talk to these people and say this is the style of game. With this, if we’re all having the say “meeting zero” to decide what to play, we just need a larger group, because if I say “I really want to play a Shadow Run game focusing on abortion politics. I want to discuss that in-game.” And three other players are like “that’s bizarre. No.” But then we might need a larger player group.

Shouldn’t that be the same way in a GM’ed game? Should you be allowed as a GM to walk in and say “we’re playing a Shadow Run about abortion, and I don’t care what you think.”

Reid: I think it’s really interesting, what you were talking about is social control, and you eliminate that. You had that hazy space, where they’re not using their full creativity, it’s because it puts them in a responsive position.

Correct.

Reid: You say “I want to play Shadow Run with baby murdering” and the response is yes or no. When you say “let’s play a game together” you’re asking what game, which is an open-ended question.

Yeah. So jumping ahead, we’ve kind of left social control and we’ve moved to the effects of social control, so let’s shift the conversation slightly. A couple of other categories. Let’s say world creation. When I say world creation, I don’t mean world, I mean fiction. It could be “oh we’re going to play a gangster game set in the 1920s and it’s going to be set in a country estate.” That’s the world. We often call it “the fiction” because world is too limited a term. We often not making a world, just making a setting.

So world creation and agreement about tone, agreement about what the hell we’re doing today, what game are we gonna play, that is square one. That’s step one of any game.

So the question is, if we don’t have anyone telling us, how do we do it? Depending on the game we’re playing, some games, of the games we have here, have a very simple way of solving that problem: they’re games about one thing. One thing. Like literally, one thing. Polaris for example. Polaris, as written, has one setting you’re playing in. You’re playing as a mythic knight, in the far North of a forgotten people who’ve unleashed demons and you are a knight of the order of the stars. And your job is to protect the people from the Mistake. When we say we’re playing Polaris, we’re done. We know what the setting is. We don’t have to have that discussion. Other games you play… Contenders. Contenders is a game about being a boxer. If you play a game of Contenders, it’s about being a gritty boxer striving to make your fame. When we agree to play Contenders, a lot of those conversations have again been taken away.

There are pros and cons to this. On one hand, you might go “okay, well now we’re playing Contenders, that’s all we can really do with it” but on the other hand we potentially eliminate a lot of this discussion.

But the goal is not to eliminate this discussion. To be clear. There are some games that do that. And then other games, like end of the spectrum, Shock and Microscope, where the very discussion of what the setting is that we’re going to play is a big part of the game. Let’s talk about world creation in Shock. That’s a good example. How many people here have played Shock? Shock is awesome, for those of you haven’t played it. So, your example, the abortion thing. That’s a good example. Because we don’t have one person who is dictating what it is we’re playing, we can decide… we can say “hey, do you want to play this thing.” And you’ll see if people want to or not. You’re taking a poll. You’re testing the water. Shock, the first step of game play, the very first step, is you decide what issues you want to talk about. Each player picks one issue. Issue meaning an issue about humanity or society… [enforcers check in] Something that impacts humanity or society. Shock players, give me an issue.

(unknown): Abortion

Good call. Pollution. Mine’s pollution. Who’s got the third one?

Xander: Over-saturation of media

Over-saturation of media. Those are our three issues. We picked them secretly, without conspiring. And then we’re going to brainstorm a sci fi setting that address those three issues. All three of them. And we’re going to play those issues.

Yes?

Ben M: A question then? I could see setting it up at a con where I’m playing with complete strangers and just saying anything is on the table we’re going to totally decide this. But with a home group where it’s the same six people every month, and I’ve gotten to know these guys. And I know John really hates talking about politics, or Beth really hates anything that deals with children in a negative light, should there be a sort of gamer etiquette, where “hey guys…”

Is that even a gamer etiquette? If you were at a party with those same people… [would you bring those issues up]. It’s not even just a game thing. If you know those people, it goes beyond gamer. But you do raise the question, we normally wouldn’t talk about it at this point, but since you brought it up we’ll talk about it.

Ben M: Sorry I’m throwing you off

No, no it’s okay. It’s not even really relevant to our discussion but I’ll bring it up since it’s addressing this sort of thing.

Reid: He’s not a GM… [meaning me, laughter]

It’s true, it’s true. The big thing, that sits above and around this [draws around the social circle], which is The Veil. It doesn’t really do that, but let’s draw it that way. Because of this exact process — Boom! Pollution, abortion, over-saturation of media — we’re all coming up with ideas, but somebody, just as you said, might throw in an issue (like abortion) that bothers somebody. We have one rule that is — we’re getting ahead to what GMless games are versus how we arrived at them — but the rule that has evolved is called The Veil. And this is a cardinal rule. Anybody that is bothered my material, where it actually makes them uncomfortable (not just you don’t like it creatively, like I don’t like talking about politics, that’s a preference but you might not actually be bothered by politics) but if something actually makes you feel uncomfortable you’re always allowed to draw the Veil. In fact we really hope you draw the Veil.

All you have to say is “I’m drawing the Veil on that.” Done. And we, everybody else at this table will say “awesome.” We will omit that from the game. We will respect your discomfort. You don’t have to justify it. That’s a key point. We don’t have a big discussion about why you’re bothered by shooting dogs. We don’t have a big discussion of why dolphins scare you, or midgets looking like children stealing children… We don’t have that discussion at all. We actively do not have that discussion. We say awesome, good and we move on. Because we’re adults and we don’t need to have it turn into a therapy session. There are another spectrum of games where people do that and they intentionally turn them into therapy sessions, but that’s not the default.

(unknown): I will not abandon you!

“I will not abandon you.” But you have to agree to do that. The default is, don’t. You all have to be on the same page if you’re going turn it into a therapy session.

Ben M: And with the very focused games you mentioned that could also help I imagine. If I say I’m playing Little Fears, the role-playing game of childhood terrors, then I’m automatically saying I want a group that’s okay with child endangerment, so if you want to Veil that, this is not the time to do GMless Little Fears.

Yes. And more importantly… Dreaming Crucible, right… you’ve got to really make sure they understand exactly what you mean. “It’s great, it’s fairy tales! Wait, when I said fairy tales I meant childhood endangerment…” Argh! Crap!

Again, we’re kind of getting ahead of ourselves, but that raises one really important underlying thing about all of this, which is not so subtle once you think about it. Which is that, the only way a GMless game is going to work — think about it, right, we’re all adults, we’re all sitting down — is honesty. Honesty. Blatant, crazy, honesty. Not subtle, like “oh I didn’t like that but I kept it to myself”, “oh that bothered me but I kept it myself”, “that’s not the game I wanted to play but I didn’t speak up”, “that’s not subject matter I wanted to get into…” You have to be honest. In fact the more honest you are… and I don’t mean critical, or rude, I just mean not having that thing at the table where you just sit there and silently pout and then later on on the internet you’re like “doh frickin’ Dreaming Crucible! Frickin, dark spirit, taking my kid away!”

So we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. But you could look at those as ways we make the social contract work amongst people at the table. The way we, as peers, maintain not social control, but social balance, social equity.

next up: part 3, the surprising sin of making stories without characters…

Friday, PAX 2011. About a dozen people piled into a tiny room to talk about GMless Role-playing Games. This is the transcript of that workshop in all its unexpurgated glory.

Instead of a rigid lecture, I opted for a lot more audience participation. More chaotic, yes, but did it pay off? In spades, I would say. We covered a ton of ground in only an hour and half. Where I could, I identified who is speaking, but farther from the microphone (anywhere past the first row of tables) it’s impossible to tell who’s who. There’s some excellent stuff in there. To everyone who attended: thanks for making it so fun and thought-provoking.

The topic today is GMless RPGs. Everyone’s here for that? You’re on the right airplane? I am Ben Robbins. I sometimes write a blog, Ars Ludi, which is about game theory. I’ve kind of dropped off on that. I do it less nowadays because I’m spending my time playing, which is better.

And in that light, the other thing I do is run a weekly Story Games Seattle meetup which is open to the public. Every week we have people come in, people who have never gamed before, people who have never played story games before, people who have never played any role-playing games before. Every single week we have people come in and we sit them down and we introduce them to games and we get them to play. That’s a venue in which we play a lot of GMless games, which in fact is where a lot of the stuff that we’re going to talk about kind of comes from.

And lastly, I’ve also written a game recently, Microscope, which is a GMless RPG. Which is another thing from which [audience hooting] I will share some knowledge. Forgot to bring out all my demo games. [lays out Fiasco, Shock, Remember Tomorrow, Polaris, Microscope] These are some of the games we will talk about or reference…

Okay, so who all here has played RPGs? Everybody? How many of you have played RPGs with a GM? How many of you have played an RPG without an GM? So most of you… How many of would say you’ve played a lot of RPGs without a GM?

So you have some experience. Here’s the thing. I started gaming a very long time ago. For decades, the deal was, if you played an RPG with a GM. A GM was essential. There was not even any question of playing an RPG without a GM. In fact, I’m not even sure what the first GMless RPG was. There probably was one in the 90s but they didn’t really become a thing until the last ten years and more so in the last five years.

So to understand, to even think about how you could play a game without a GM, there’s one big question we have to answer first, which is pretty simple actually: “What does a GM do?”

So what do guys think? Let’s make a list, make a big list: functions that a GM performs. [writing on post-it posters as participants answer]

Reid: I think they’re the antagonist.

The Antagonist. What else do they do?

Morgan: Seems like a lot of times their job is to know all the rules and stuff like that.

Rules. Rules Knowledge.

Feiya: Make up the story.

Make Up Story. What else?

(unknown): Build the world.

Build the World.

(unknown): Keep people on task? If they lack focus…

(unknown): Only when you’re playing…

What else?

(unknown): Introduce randomness, or, they have information that’s integral to the story that if people knew it would be boring.

The element of surprise. Or Suspense. Does everybody not love these post-it notes? Are they not the best thing ever?

Morgan: That is pretty amazing. Is that a 3M product?

I think it might be a patent-offending… So we have surprise, I’ll write suspense as well.

(unknown): Keep the games fun.

Keep the games fun. What else? There’s more. Think about it, you’re at the table… or, how many of you GM? I should have asked that. How many of you call yourselves hardcore GMs — like you GM. Okay cool, about 50/50, perfect. So what? What do you do as a GM?

Morgan: Make sure that the tone stays appropriate.

Tone Enforcement. So what else?

Reid: All the NPCs.

Yeah. Play the World. What else?

(unknown): Doll out experience.

Ehhh… [some games do that, some don't]

(unknown): Loot, reward / punishment.

Reward / Punishment. Now here’s a good question: the players or the characters? Who are you rewarding, the players or the characters?

chorus: Both

Both? Both?

Morgan: Sometimes you have a player character… [ha ha]

Points to Morgan. So would we agree those are two separate activities? Let’s cross that out and let’s say reward characters, reward players… you’re going to come back and you’re going to say “What did I just say when I said that?” and then you’ve got… [writes punish character, punish players]

(unknown): That falls under things fun…

It might. We’re going to collapse these, we’re going to do a Wicked Age thing where we’re going to go back and collapse [ideas into groups]. Yeah?

(unknown): What about note-taking, homework.

Reid: Oh yeah, keep a log.

Tracking the game, keeping track. [late arrivals are lovingly welcomed] Call it uh, what do we call that, game documentation?

We’re making a list of things the GM does. It’s like a quiz: “What does the GM do?” Anything else?

Reid: They resolve arguments

Morgan: Arbitrate, yeah

That’s a good question. Are they resolving rules arguments or or are they resolving personal disputes?

Reid: All of the above

All of the above. Correct. That’s both 1) Interpersonal — and tell me when my handwriting becomes completely illegible — and 2) Rules. And that’s going to kind of get back to rules knowledge.

Anything else? They’re pretty busy. They’re doing a lot of stuff. How will ever live without them. It will be crazy. Is that it? [Silence. I look over my notes]

Reid: I’ll guess there’s more on that list… [laughter]

My list is potentially very different. Or actually my list is pretty much the same. The only things I would point out, I think we might have actually covered, one thing they do in some systems — and this might fall under resolve disputes — is they maintain balance of power between characters. For example say you’re playing D&D, three different people make characters, one guy makes a character that is much better than everyone else’s, the GM says “hey wait, not cool, we’ve got a problem.”

But more critically one thing they do which might fall under one of the other things we talked about: they decide who gets to talk. Big thing you do as a GM. You say, “hey, I want to know what Xander is doing now” and you say [pointing at different people in room] “you, don’t talk, because I want you to talk”. They are the floodgates through which all action passes. So what do we call that? [assorted suggestions] What is it? Gatekeeper? Pacing? What did you say?

(unknown): Game Master…

Game Master! [laughter] We could call it Who Gets To Talk.

(unknown): Who gets the conch.

Con-ch? Con-k? Con-ch? It’s going to sound bad?

Morgan: Is that… do they set scenes? Are they the scene-setter?

More than that. I mean you’re the GM! Someone says “Hey, I wanted to do this thing.” You say “Wait… it’s not your turn right now.”

Feiya: They run the show.

They run the show. I’m going to say [write] Who Gets To Talk / Gatekeeper / Who Runs the Show.

Wow. We’re up to four [poster-sized] post-it notes. Is there anything else they do? So tomorrow, you’re going to run a game tomorrow. You’re going to show up. You’re going to play. What are you doing the night before?

Xander: Prepping

Prepping! And is that… you’re making the world, you’re building the world, you’re preparing some of the stuff we spoke about before. You’re preparing antagonists, you’re preparing a plot, you’re building a world. But you’re preparing, you’re bringing the game to the table. And not all GM’ed games do that of course but a lot do.

(unknown): GM takes the blame when it goes boring.

Funny you should mention that. So you talk about a game — Morgan ran a game last year, we were in it. What do we call that game? Morgan ran Burning Wheel. We say “we played in Morgan’s Burning Wheel game.” We use the possessive. Which is kind of weird if you think about it. [assorted humor ensues]

So we’ll call it Responsibility. That’s a big one. I’m not sure that’s how you spell responsibility… Yeah, you, you’re responsible. You’re responsible for what happens at the event. People show up… Kind of like how you guys are right now, you’re looking at me like I’m running the show. You’re like “Hey, Ben’s workshop sucked.” Or “his workshop was good,” but it’s like I’m responsible.

Whoops, almost dumped an entire thing of water on your phone.

What else? Anything else? We might be done.

Morgan: Pretty close.

Reid: You’re the GM… [implying I should decide, laughter]

I used to GM a lot. I mean I used to GM a ton. I don’t GM very much at all anymore. I’m a little rusty.

Okay, so this is our big list. And some of these are going to overlap. Let’s condense these now. Because I’ll bet you… my theory is… that we can condense these down to just a couple of things you’re doing, the GM. A couple of related tasks. Which of these do you think go together.

Well let’s put it this way, there’s kind of two levels of what’s happening at the table. Two big, big, important levels. And you guys all know this, you just might not know you know it. It’s actually remarkably fundamental. [drawing] Here’s a big circle, right. This is the social circle. This we’re all here, we’re all people, we’re all in a room together, we’re all interacting. And then then within that is the game, rules, all stuff. The fiction. One is definitely inside the other. If Pat steps up and punches me in the face, it doesn’t matter what’s happening in the game. That has become moot. On the other hand, if in the game, Pat’s character jumps up and punches my character in the face, life goes on. We continue playing. Problems in the social sphere completely completely outweigh things in the inner [game] sphere. So if you take that in mind, and say hey there’s this big social circle, which of these things are social powers the GM has…

Morgan: Resolving interpersonal disputes

Exactly

Xander: Controlling who gets to talk

(unknown): Tone enforcement.

[switching markers] Can you see that?

(unknown): Reward the players

Reward the players. Yeah and that’s a really weird question: rewards the players? Rewards the players…

(unknown): Yeah, like patting on the back. “Good job!”

Let’s get something out of the way right now. This is very important. I GM’ed for like a zillion years. There will be a lot of things that sound like we’re dismissing GMing, like we’re saying it’s bad. But that’s not our agenda at all. Our agenda is to identify what actually happens. There are cases where the GM can be a complete tyrant and that can be extraordinarily beneficial to having a good time. You show up at a game and somebody says “I have responsibility for making everybody have a good time. I’m responsible for making sure everyone is going to behave and I’m literally going to be a dictator and say ‘no, you be quiet, it’s someone else’s turn to go’.” If I want to show up at a game and relax that’s awesome, because then I don’t have to worry. All those responsibilities have been taken away from me. I can just chill. Someone has now said they’re going to run the show. That can be a very pleasant thing. So it’s not to say that these things are necessarily bad, they’re just part of the deal.

Sorry, what were you saying? Reid?

Reid: I said ‘people on task’

People on task [writing]. Any others?

(unknown): Keep game fun

Xander: Arbitrate

Keep game fun and arbitrate. [rules knowledge or social thing] I’m going to say rules knowledge is not a social thing. I mean, obviously all the rules stuff is within the social circle, but I’m going to keep that in the game circle.

So those are all of our social activities, right? Those are things that are purely social, that almost have nothing to do with the interior of the game.

Okay, so how can we condense the rest of these? What are the things these break down into?

Reid: The story and the plot and building the world are kind of connected

Xander: Antagonism

Let’s keep those separate and let me tell you why. You can make a world, and you have the world be active, without antagonism. And you can have an antagonist without a sense of the world. They’re separate tasks in the game space.

If we break these down, we already know we’ve got. Social enforcement / social control. We know that someone, to make the game interesting, has to provide a challenge, has to provide antagonism.

And we know we need a fictional world. We need a world to play in. We need both Making the World and we need Playing the World. We need somebody to have people talk, to breathe life into it. Those are really two separate activities.

So which of our things have we not now covered, based on that?

(unknown): Uh, documentation

So here’s a good question: is it necessary to document a game? Do you always document your games? Or is it a perk?

Morgan: I think it’s a perk

It’s a perk? We’ll put it under things that you might want to do. Maybe not documenation. What do we call that?

Morgan: Homework

It’s afterwards.

(unknown): It’s kind of part of world creation, because you’re just updating what you’ve created.

Well the question would be, say you’re playing a one shot game of D&D, is the function of recording it, is that because you need it, or because it fulfills a nostalgia purpose?

(unknown): Even just more than note-taking, it’s like the game master is the memory of the game world. Your players may come and go or not show up one week, or they just aren’t paying attention, and they’re like “oh, the Red Wizard said we should go where?”

Yeah. And I think if we unpack that further that also tells us a lot about what’s going on. What does it say when the GM is both making the game and then having to motivate the players to be interested in the history of it.

Okay, last one. Very critical one. Who Gets To Talk is a social thing but it’s also full-on something you have to have within the structure of the game. You have to know who is allowed to do what. What authority do people have. Let’s call it the Structure of Play.

Morgan: Where does rules knowledge fall in there?

Oh. Absolutely want that. Both rules knowledge and enforcement.

I think that’s all of them. I’m not sure. And if we’re missing any we’ll jump up. So all of these… oh Surprise/Suspense. That’s the missing one.

Xander: The GM is like a secret keeper.

What’s that?

Xander: Just someone has to know something other people don’t.

Okay. We’re done? That’s what the GM does? Twenty minutes, we’ve broken it down, we now know exactly what a GM does. Oh Story/Plot, we left out Story/Plot. Which is very different than fiction.

[final list has only eight items, condensed from the original twenty: social enforcement, rules enforcement, antagonism, making the world, playing the world, surprise, story/plot, and who gets to talk]

next up: part 2, which of these things do we actually need..?

“Several times I have attempted to talk about music with you. It would have interested me to know your thoughts and opinions, whether they contradicted mine or not, but you have disdained to make me even the barest reply.”

He gave me a most amiable smile and this time a reply was accorded to me.

“Well,” he said with equanimity, “you see, in my opinion there is no point at all in talking about music. I never talk about music. What reply, then, was I to make to your very able and just remarks? You were perfectly right in all you said. But, you see, I am a musician, not a professor, and I don’t believe that, as regards music, there is the least point in being right. Music does not depend on being right, on having good taste and education and all that.”

“Indeed. Then what does it depend on?”

“On making music, Herr Haller, on making music as well and as much as possible and with all the intensity of which one is capable. That is the point, Monsieur.”

– Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse

Find and replace: gaming.