What is the GM's Most Important Job?

[overgeeked]

The most important job of a referee is to respect player agency, i.e. not railroad the players.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I feel like I already responded to this. If ASOIAF was a game run by a GM, was the GM not a fan of the characters who died? IMO, no. Nothing about being a fan means you no longer can run the world real and consistent. In fact, if they were mutually exclusive, then it'd be just impossible to run many games that have both as GM guidance.

Not to be repetitive, but if you don't understand the distinction between being a fan of the players, and other styles of RPGing, then I'm not sure that a detailed history is really going to help you.

Being a fan of the players (and/or the player characters) is most certainly an aspect of some games, and not of others. That you don't recognize this does say something, but not about the general history or current status of RPGs.

Are we literally stating the PCs are not on the screen except as part of the game. Is the GM meant to be just playing out scenes without them in it or am I not typing it out clearly enough.

Because I specifically said the game is focused on PCs. Reynard brings up a good point to distinguish what I said - I didn't say the world revolves around them.

I feel like talking specific system would help - not just say a whole bunch of them.

Again, this is hardly novel territory. By simply invoking that particular phrase, you are necessarily aligning yourself with a particular style of play that is not universal.

 

[billd91]

The idea that GMs should not be fans of the players, but should be neutral and impartial, is a feature, not a bug, of numerous different games.

I don't think being a fan of the PCs and being neutral and impartial with respect to certain kinds of decisions are mutually exclusive here. I think people frequently misconstrue being a fan of the PCs (and players) as somehow excluding that. I'd be hard pressed to find a game that really doesn't ultimately revolve around the PCs/players and putting up challenges and situations for them to act and push the play forward. The main shift in the use of being a fan of the PCs, as I see it, is in recognizing that fact and making it explicit rather than assumed.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don't think being a fan of the PCs and being neutral and impartial with respect to certain kinds of decisions are mutually exclusive here. I think people frequently misconstrue being a fan of the PCs (and players) as somehow excluding that. I'd be hard pressed to find a game that really doesn't ultimately revolve around the PCs/players and putting up challenges and situations for them to act and push the play forward. The main shift in the use of being a fan of the PCs, as I see it, is in recognizing that fact and making it explicit rather than assumed.

See, I disagree completely with that statement.

Being a fan of the players is an idea that first arose in the context of a particular game (James Bond 007) in the '80s, was intrinsic in some narrative-y styles that arose in the 90s, and truly gained currency with, inter alia, PbTA and its derivatives.

However, the idea itself arose as a reaction to the concept of the neutral and impartial referee.* Now, whether or not you want to say that this is making "explicit" what some people were doing, or as a counterweight to either neutral or adversarial methods of play, is fine- but this is a codification of a style of play that not everyone and every game share.

Moreover, there are those that feel that this is anathema, simply for the reason that having the GM be a fan of the players reduces the agency of the players. I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, but it's certainly a strain of thought I've encountered with some players.

So I have to disagree with this. Being a fan of the players is a particular style, and it's not the same thing.

ETA- to make sure I'm clear, there is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with this style, and many games require it (and many tables enjoy it). But saying that this is an absolute requirement for all GMs, of all games, at all tables, is just wrong.


*Leave aside that some games, and some tables, have a conception of an adversarial GM.

 

[John Dallman]

For example, in the comment you just replied to, there are some games where being a fan of the players is a core requirement, and other games where that would be anathema.

There was a convention game where I didn't realise how determined two of the players were to act up until we were well into it. Indicating through events that if they wanted to get their characters killed, I wasn't going to stop them calmed them down.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

There was a convention game where I didn't realise how determined two of the players were to act up until we were well into it. Indicating through events that if they wanted to get their characters killed, I wasn't going to stop them calmed them down.

The masochist says, "Hurt me!"

The sadist replies, "No."

 

[mamba]

And the game should be focused on the PCs - not about your setting or NPCs.

PbtA is showing through I guess. While the game is not about the setting or NPCs, it does not revolve around the chars either. They act within a world, their actions matter and propel the story forward, but that does not mean I want it to turn into navel gazing

 

[Breaking Star Games]

PbtA is showing through I guess. While the game is not about the setting or NPCs, it does not revolve around the chars either. They act within a world, their actions matter and propel the story forward, but that does not mean I want it to turn into navel gazing

Help me understand where we are disagreeing. We both say the game is about the PCs. We both say, the world doesn't revolve around them.

Because I specifically said the game is focused on PCs. Reynard brings up a good point to distinguish what I said - I didn't say the world revolves around them.

 

[Reynard]

PbtA is showing through I guess. While the game is not about the setting or NPCs, it does not revolve around the chars either. They act within a world, their actions matter and propel the story forward, but that does not mean I want it to turn into navel gazing

Even more specifically, it propels A story forward -- that of the PCs. There are many potential stories happening in the world, it just so happens the camera is on the PCs.

I think this is an important distinction because it helps with centering the PCs in a (and I'm going to type it and I know a couple posters who will be deeply offended by it) living and breathing world. A world where the dragon sits in its lair and does nothing until the PCs happen upon it is not a living and breathing world. If that dragon (or any major player in a region) has an agenda, motivations and things it would be doing absent the PCs, now you are approaching the living and breathing world. If the PCs hear about the dragon's actions and go seek it out, the action is centered on the PCs in a living and breathing world. If they don't, it still is. But if there is no dragon until PCs enter the frame, it isn't.

 

[Reynard]

I want to push back against an idea upthread that suggested that the GM's job of pacing was not important if the game was player led, such as in a sandbox.

The GM is still responsible for session pacing, even if the PCs are the ones making all the decisions and driving all the action. It is still the GM's responsibility to cut short long stretches of flipping pages for rules, to shift the spotlight between the PCs, and to speed up and slow down time as is appropriate to the events going on in the game. Those are all pacing and they matter even if the PCs are wandering through the Bleak Bog in search of random encounters for those last few XP to level.