You are not the Director

[darjr]

I just don't wanna be the grip.





again.

I must admit that the analogy loses it for me.

 

[CleverNickName]

Although a crappy DM can leave most of it on the cutting room floor.

A good DM might need to do this as well, depending on the quality of the film adventure.

I'll throw my two coppers in with everyone who says that this is a bad analogy. Both the DM and the players must work together to tell a story...and it isn't the same kind of story that a movie tells. The job of writer, director, actor, editor, producer, caterer, etc. is shared by everyone at the table, but not always at the same time. (I know there is a Schrodinger's Cat joke in here somewhere.)

If you are a DM and you need a title of authority, go with "referee." It's not perfect either, but it's about as close as you can get.

 

[amerigoV]

So long as they do not think the DM is the Fluffer...


One can argue analogies and such, but a good DM does have one thing in common with good movie directors - Pace. Good directors know how to shape scenes and control the flow of the story. A good DM does the same - they up the tempo or set an subdued mood when the story calls for it. They also know when put in extra material (players take an interesting tangent) or cut material (that encounter does not add anything, and it is almost quitting time) as the story develops.

 

[nedjer]

Jazz hands!

Spirit fingers seems more choreographic. And Jazz is not half as exciting as it makes out, while cheerleading is well dangerous.

 

[Odhanan]

Comparing RPGs to anything else to convince people to try them out is one thing. That's fine.

Comparing RPGs to anything else to try to distill GM and/or player advice from them, or worse, design intent and ideas, is something that has been done ad nauseam, and often led to poor game play results, to put it mildly. In any case, I think we need to get over such comparisons (with stories, novels, movies, video games, card games... anything else) and move on with RPGs as they are, not as they might have been or could have been, if only they had been like something else...

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I'll throw my two coppers in with everyone who says that this is a bad analogy.

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's a decent one. Can somebody come up with a better analogy, or are analogies off the table when talking about RPGs, because RPGs are just plain special?

Both the DM and the players must work together to tell a story

Kinda like a director and actors, right?

...and it isn't the same kind of story that a movie tells.

How not? Couldn't Lord of the Rings have been a fantasy RPG campaign? Couldn't Serenity have been a science-fiction RPG adventure? Hell, if I got to play an adventure something like The Usual Suspects, I'd be thrilled.

The story of an RPG campaign doesn't have to end up like a movie, but it certainly can, and IMO most do. (I'm saying nothing about the quality of the "film," though.)

The job of writer, director, actor, editor, producer, caterer, etc. is shared by everyone at the table, but not always at the same time.

On the set of a film, many excellent directors not only take input on staging, dialogue, story, and other things from actors, but actively solicit it.

 

[CleverNickName]

Kinda like a director and actors, right?

Erm, not really. The director will say "I have a unique vision regarding the story of Hamlet: I am going to use the words of Shakespeare to retell the destruction of the Death Star!* So all of you actors, go stand over there and do exactly what I say." If an actor does or says anything that does not agree with the script or the director's vision, the director yells "cut" and they start all over. And over, and over again, until they get it perfect.

In the director's mind, the story is already written and told. He isn't looking for input, he is looking for actors who can bring that complete story out of his head and put it onto the stage. Very rarely does a director see an actor doing something new and like it. I mean, it happens. But I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen it happen in more than 10 years of professional theatre. Usually the director will get angry and actors will get replaced.

So I think that is why people are so offended by the "director" reference. It's not because RPGs are "special," it's because directors are so...inflexible. A director must rule the story with an iron fist to protect both his vision of the story and the integrity of the written script; a DM can't do that and expect the players to have fun.

On the set of a film, many excellent directors not only take input on staging, dialogue, story, and other things from actors, but actively solicit it.

I've never heard of a director soliciting input from actors. Maybe it's different for film?

-----
*I would pay a week's wages to see this, by the way.

 

[Celebrim]

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's a decent one. Can somebody come up with a better analogy, or are analogies off the table when talking about RPGs, because RPGs are just plain special?

I think analogies should just be off the table on the internet. Not because RPGs are special, but because analogies are seldom illustrative even in real life and the internet is this special place where understanding is almost unknown and even tiny things can hinder otherwise normal understanding.

I'd say that its similar to the problem with sarcasm, except that it isn't (false analogy). The problems stem from entirely different sources I think.

What RPGs are like is a group of friends setting out to play an imagination game under some sort of structure by which conflicts will be systematically resolved. And after that, very few firm assertions can be made and some one is bound to say that even that goes too far. In many cases, one player takes the role of secret keeper and assumes narrative authority over the setting and the antagonists, while the rest of the players assume narrative authority over one or more of the protagonists in the story. But this isn't always the case. In many cases, the game can be described as a form of collaborative story-telling, but games and groups differ over how important the actual act of story-telling is to the game. Because its imaginative play, and particularly because one player is often a secret keeper and antagonist, story telling can take a back stage to finding out secrets and overcoming challenges.

And that is what RPG's are like. They are games and they are usually a form of literary art, but they aren't movies any more than movies are books. You can adopt some narrative techniques from other narrative art forms into RPGs, but before analogy would be really useful there has to be some one to one and onto relationship between the things in another narrative art form and RPGs and there just isn't.

The closest thing IMO RPGs resemble is childhood imaginative play as undertaken usually between age 3 and the onset of puberty. But even there analogies are of little obvious use.

It's just usually better to actually talk about the thing you want to talk about than to construct analogies.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think a decent analogy would be to compare DMing to running a "retroscripted" TV show. You create a general, vague outline of events and leave most of it blank for the actors to improvise. Reno 911 is a retroscripted show.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

If an actor does or says anything that does not agree with the script or the director's vision, the director yells "cut" and they start all over. And over, and over again, until they get it perfect.

In the director's mind, the story is already written and told. He isn't looking for input, he is looking for actors who can bring that complete story out of his head and put it onto the stage

As I said, this is not always correct. Watch interviews. Different directors work in different ways, and while there are "my way or the highway" directors, they grow increasingly rare.

(And, yes, I'm talking about film.)

A director must rule the story with an iron fist to protect both his vision of the story and the integrity of the written script

Simply not true in modern cinema.

I've never heard of a director soliciting input from actors. Maybe it's different for film?

Apparently so.