in Story Now play as a GM, it's generally best to only define something as "true" within the fiction as late as possible.
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it's usually best to put forth what actually is true as a response to play.
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one of things I had to learn for Story Now GM-ing is to scale back the level of specificity of my ideas. As a "trad" GM, we get used to defining highly detailed, highly granular notes about everything. Story Now play seems to work better if you take general ideas / themes / concepts, but then let the direction of play fill in the specifics along the way.
By holding the point of "truth definitionality" to the last possible moment, it allows you as a GM the freedom to impute the most relevant details and descriptors. It lets you dynamically weight potential risk/rewards, scale the dramatic impacts, and telegraph the right threats / opportunities that drive play toward PC concerns, now.
And honestly, this can be harder in moment to moment cases than "trad" GM-ing. There's definitely a learned mindset and technique to it that in my experience doesn't naturally follow from doing what I'd usually do in "trad" GM-ing play.
Harder, I guess, in the sense that you don't have notes telling you what exactly to say?
On the other hand,
easier in so far as you don't need to spend so much time writing up notes!
If and when the most obvious conclusion of a turn of play is in front of you, take it
This can certainly help as a prompt to creativity.
Here's Eero Tuovinen's description of (what he calls) "the standard narrativistic model":
Backstory is the part of a roleplaying game scenario that “has happened before the game began”. The concept only makes sense when somebody has done preparatory work for the game or is using specific heuristics to simulate such preparation in real-time. For example, if the GM has decided in advance that the butler did it, then that is part of the backstory – it happened before the player characters came to the scene, and the GM will do his job with the assumption that this is an unchanging part of the game, even if the players might not know about it. Similarly a player character’s personal history is part of the backstory in a game that requires such. Backstory is specifically separate from what might happen during play itself. . . .
One type of player role is when the game requires a player to be an
advocate for a single player character – this advocacy thing is an exact theory term, unlike the fuzzy concept of “player role”. When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to. . . .
I find that the
riddle of roleplaying is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship. . . .
[A]ll but the most experimental narrativistic games run on a very simple and rewarding role distribution that relies heavily on both absolute backstory authority and character advocacy. . . .
- One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications.
- The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. Then they let the other players know in certain terms what the character thinks and wants.
- The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.
- The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.) The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).
These games are tremendously fun, and they form a very discrete family of games wherein many techniques are interchangeable between the games. The most important common trait these games share is the GM authority over backstory and dramatic coordination . . . which powers the GM uses to put the player characters into pertinent choice situations.
Tuovinen contrasts the above framework with a RPG that is
explicitly No Myth, as it presumes that the setting and characters and everything else in the game is only thinly present as story elements introduced by the players on the spot. Any backstory presented to the group is handled as an extension of other authorities the players wield, such as the right to describe a scene and thus imply things about the location’s past. To preserve story coherence and provide twists into the story the game doesn’t use a backstory, but rather evaluation of reasonability (if somebody starts spouting some wacky naughty word, you stop the game and talk about it) and pure imaginative inspiration (assuming your wacky naughty word is not too wacky, it gets into the game and thus changes the story on the spot, even casting doubt on what has gone on before).
Most "story now" RPGing will not be as literally "no myth" as just described: the players will have established some "myth" about their PCs, and the GM is allowed to refer to "myth" - that player-authored myth, or their own myth, or "myth" they invent as they go along (this is Tuovinen's reference to "heuristics that simulate preparation in real time") - in order to present situations to the players, and establish consequences for their actions.
Coming up with that myth does require effort. It's a creative endeavour. But the "story now" GM should have prompts in front of them: the work the players have done; the work the GM has done in presenting a scene/situation/obstacle; the sorts of outcomes or consequences suggested by the rules and genre and themes of the particular RPG being played. There is also a technique that Apocalypse World sets out: asking the players and building on their answers. (Eg "Why would so-and-so be so angry at you?")
Be very, very careful about directly injecting your own ideas of "This sounds fun to me" without consulting the other GM principles first ---- Does it follow from established fiction? Does it address PC concerns? Is it the most impactful version of the outcome? Does a recent PC action success or failure require it to help or hurt more than usual? Have you followed the correct procedure as identified by player and GM side "moves"?
I certainly agree that you should be following the rules. For instance, if the rules state that, in a particular at-the-table circumstance (say, if the player rolls a success) or in a particular in-ficiton circumstances (say - and referencing Burning Wheel - if the player has their character seek out a character with whom they have a Relationship) the player gets what they want, then the GM should be conforming to that. These rules create the expectations for who gets to establish what bits of the fiction, and when and how they get to do it - it's not the prerogative of any one participant to change that, and there's a pretty good chance that the designer has written the rule as it is for a reason.
But when, as GM, it's your time to say something, I think you can do worse than saying something that seems fun or interesting to you. After all, if the players disagree, then - as per the OP - they should be able to use the methods the game gives them to steer play towards other things!
