Be a GAME-MASTER, not a DIRECTOR

[Scott Christian]

While I agree with the essence of your statement, I don’t think it’s obvious to everyone. Mostly because being a GM does not mean the same to everyone, and because the profession and the responsibilities of a director are misunderstood by many.

A director and a GM differ mainly and principally in the fact that a GM is not responsible for guiding the acting of their players, though you could say that a GM should guide their players in a more general sense.

Other that that, the tasks of a GM are remarkably close to those of a director given the difference in media, enough for me to say that a GM is to RPG what a director is to a movie.

I can agree with everything you're saying except the first part. It is obvious to everyone that these two things have similarities. I mean, maybe, if you have never seen a movie or TV show and don't understand anything or have never heard about film, then it's possible those people are out of the loop.
But I am willing to bet the vast majority, if not all D&D players understand what a director does. And if they don't, the simplest of Google searches conjures up in the very first line:
"A Film Director is a creative professional who oversees the artistic aspects of a film production. They are responsible for guiding and managing the actors and film crew, interpreting scripts, and ensuring the visual storytelling aligns with the desired narrative style."
So the fact that it is "not obvious to everyone" is, in my humble opinion, bologna. It is. People just like to piecemeal things, or if they attach themselves to an argument they favor, they stick with it, despite the obvious.

But everything else you said - spot on.

 

[bloodtide]

For instance, until something is introduced in play, it’s not yet established. You can only change things that are established. So therefore, the players will absolutely notice. You seem to be assuming that play must be prep heavy and that changes to the prep can go unseen. But many folks here would not view it that way.

I'm not, this is what everyone else is doing.

The DM 'says' Galt is a fighter and the character does 'fight' the PCs, so all the players go "yup, this character is a fighter". So, lets say a year passes. Then one game the DM 'says' Galt is a sorcerer and the character casts a spell. Ok?

So....the players can whine and cry and complain and say "but.but Galt is a fighter!". And the DM can just say "nope, your wrong".

Also, as a GM, I don’t think I’m allowed to change anything I want. Again, this is related to things introduced into play. Those things are not generally meant to be changed… though they can perhaps be given a new context. As long as I don’t contradict what’s previously been established. There are even some rules systems that tell a GM when they can take such an action, and don’t grant the GM carte blanche to do whatever they like.

Well, most DMs understand they can change anything in the game they want: it is part of the Role of the DM. Sure lots of DMs make a little pile of stuff and say "oh, I say I can touch any of that stuff"......but that is a choice.

And sure, maybe some RPG has a rule somewhere that says what a DM can do. But....any DM can just close that rule book and toss it out the window and do whatever they want.

As for the players being an audience… they are the people who are partaking in the events of play. They are very much an audience in that sense. Especially if we’re going to talk about things like “edits” and such that come up in literature and film. Whether you consider the players an audience or not does not change the fact that they would witness “edits” in a way that the audience for a film or book would not.

Audience is just too passive for me. I don't want "players" to just sit there.

I get none of the above is the way you and some other play RPGs, but that does not say others don't.

 

[Umbran]

And sure, maybe some RPG has a rule somewhere that says what a DM can do. But....any DM can just close that rule book and toss it out the window and do whatever they want.

Yeah, the common picture of, "The DM can be a despot if they want, and nobody can stop them." As if this is an attractive, or useful, concept. Might as well just lay it out as, "The GM can abuse their position."

In the social situation that is a game session, doing "whatever you want" can lose the trust of the players, and sour the play experience. There are consequences for breaking social expectations. "I can do whatever I want," is putting the self before the overall social group. When done elsewhere, it is commonly called, "being a jerk." (Or, more colorful monikers that aren't appropriate here.)

Asserting that a GM can do a thing rather overlooks the question of what the GM should do, and when, and for what desired end. Victor Frankenstein did whatever he wanted, and the villagers came with torches and pitchforks. Don't be Victor Frankenstein.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not, this is what everyone else is doing.

The DM 'says' Galt is a fighter and the character does 'fight' the PCs, so all the players go "yup, this character is a fighter". So, lets say a year passes. Then one game the DM 'says' Galt is a sorcerer and the character casts a spell. Ok?

So....the players can whine and cry and complain and say "but.but Galt is a fighter!". And the DM can just say "nope, your wrong".

Sounds like a crappy GM.

Well, most DMs understand they can change anything in the game they want: it is part of the Role of the DM. Sure lots of DMs make a little pile of stuff and say "oh, I say I can touch any of that stuff"......but that is a choice.

So is a choice to change anything you want whenever you want. That's the point.

And sure, maybe some RPG has a rule somewhere that says what a DM can do. But....any DM can just close that rule book and toss it out the window and do whatever they want.

I would say not without good reason, or they'll find themselves without players.

Audience is just too passive for me. I don't want "players" to just sit there.

I get none of the above is the way you and some other play RPGs, but that does not say others don't.

No one is saying that the players are only an audience. You're focusing too much on that specific word rather than the point being made.

Your example above of the fighter who later is presented as a sorcerer.... even in your own example of an "edit" like that, the players noticed. That's the point.. the players will experience the events of play both pre and post edit. Where as the audience of a movie or novel will not... they'll only get a post edit view. Which means for them, nothing "changed" as you describe it. So your earlier comments about the players not noticing would seem to be incorrect.

As for how I or others play RPGs, I prefer you not make any assumptions about that. I don't think you understand any method other than the one you seem to use.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not, this is what everyone else is doing.

The DM 'says' Galt is a fighter and the character does 'fight' the PCs, so all the players go "yup, this character is a fighter". So, lets say a year passes. Then one game the DM 'says' Galt is a sorcerer and the character casts a spell. Ok?

So....the players can whine and cry and complain and say "but.but Galt is a fighter!". And the DM can just say "nope, your wrong".

That's not editing. In one episode of play, the GM describes a character as a fighter. In a subsequent episode, the GM describes a character, ostensibly the same one, as a sorcerer.

That may be good play or bad play, it may or may not make sense to the participants. But nothing has been edited.

 

[pemerton]

most DMs understand they can change anything in the game they want: it is part of the Role of the DM. Sure lots of DMs make a little pile of stuff and say "oh, I say I can touch any of that stuff"......but that is a choice.

This is just as true for the players. If a player decides that their PC is now a sorcerer and not a fighter, what is stopping them . . .

All you're really pointing out here is that RPGing involves multiple persons more-or-less spontaneously producing a fiction.

For play to work, there needs to be some consensus in respect of that fiction - that is, it needs to become a shared fiction. Maybe the players agree with the GM that the former fighter Galt is now a sorcerer, maybe they don't. Maybe the GM and other players agree that the former fighter PC is now a sorcerer PC, or maybe they don't. There's nothing special here about the GM's role vis-a-vis the players'.

 

[clearstream]

I'm not feeling the force of this contrast. Giving rise to fiction of the desired kind is the central function of a RPG's mechanisms. Not something that is different from the mechanisms' functions.

I'm drawing a distinction between the qualities of a mechanism as a mechanism, and its qualities in performing a job users care about. The former includes explaining itself well to players, easy to implement at the table, consistency of effect, well balanced; and yet even with all those qualities in place, it might still be rejected because it's not giving rise to the kind of conversation the designers intend. Designers ordinarily design more than they release, and some of what stays on the cutting room floor are perfectly good mechanics... just not for this game.

Part of preparing a text for consumption is settling on the page size, the margin width etc. This is editorial only in some loose sense. Choosing which ink is best for a given paper is also part of that preparation, and I don't think that's editorial at all.

In the context of a RPG rulebook, choosing which rules to include is editorial in the sense that it is a decision about what to include in a published work. But the process of winnowing out by testing is not editorial.

The analogy would be a cook book: deciding which recipes to include, and how exactly to present those recipes (eg with or without metric/non-metric conversions), is editorial. But the process of testing the recipes to see which ones are worth including is not editing. It's cooking.

It seems you're thinking of editing as largely a matter of arrangement, while I have in mind artistic choices made to achieve a creative intent. The best way to judge the aesthetic impact a recipe has is by testing (tasting) it, and after doing so one might decide to leave it out of the book. Not because it fails as a recipe, but because the chef has a creative intent for this book and it doesn't fit their present intent. (The distinction here is just the same that I drew for mechanisms above.) Creative work for publication is typically over-productive, and it is that power over what stays in and what us cut that seems to me editorial.

I also prefer to maintain clarity of terms, rather than blur their use.

A rehearsal is when a performer, or a group of performers, practices a thing - a play, a recitation, a musical piece, etc - to get better at performing it. A composer working on their piece, and on their score, perfecting each, and also perfecting the relationship between the two, is not rehearsing. They are composing. Suppose they call in some musicians to perform the piece, or some part of it, to help work on both the composition (and its sound) and the score (and its adequacy in conveying the piece to a musician): that is still not rehearsing. It's part of the process of composing.

A group of people play-testing a RPG rule to see what sort of fiction it tends to produce, and then using that experience to improve the rule and/or the written presentation of the rule, is not rehearsing. The group are designing and/or developing a game's rules.

There is justice in your point about clarity of terms. One way I am looking at playtesting is in relation to the question - what is it like to conceive a rule. How does that happen? A notion I've considered is something that could be labelled "prospective play", where the designer has not seen their rule elsewhere nor yet played it, but they're able to imagine how it would be played. They turn it over in their mind and think about how it could go.

Playtesting then forms an extension of prospective play. The aim is to see what effect the rules will most likely have on conversations. Taking rehearsal as an activity done to secure that a performance goes as planned, I had in mind a notion of rehearsing on behalf of. One might discover that the wording of a prompt tended to produce conversation Q when one wanted more to see R. There's a strong connection between playtesting and a game text's performance at tables, which led me to contemplate it as a "prospective rehearsal". Ultimately here I agree with you that "rehearsing" isn't ideal due to its strong meaning of a performer practicing to themselves deliver a prescribed performance. The important point is to understand playtesting as a bridge between designer and players, that enables designer to procure (but not guarantee!) that players perform along lines they intend, where rehearsals by said players are going to be ruled out.

The way they use the rules in this process might also give some insights into better ways of writing those rules, and we could call those insights, if we speak broadly, editorial insights. Vincent Baker gives an example in the AW rulebook, where he says that he wanted to start with 4 dots for improvement, with the fifth "dot" triggering an erasing of the 4 filled dots and earning an improvement, but this didn't work: players would treat the 4 dots, when filled, as complete, and so he had to introduce a fifth dot to fill in even though, as soon as it is filled in, all five dots are erased as the improvement is earned. But this is not any sort of editing of the fiction that the play of the game will produce; it's all about improving the communicative qualities of the game rules, which are a set of instructions.

I don't see this as an exercise of editorial power. One result of playtesting is that a rule is serving designer's creative intent, but with glitches of some sort. One fixes that rule, but retains it. I am saying that noticing a rule (or any game element for that matter) fails to meet one's creative intent and cutting it is editorial. In this example, had Baker noticed that filling in dots distracted players from the play he desired and cut the rule altogether, that would exercise his editorial power. One could just call that designing, but then I think one could use that term at a high level to capture a range of disparate activities, some of which are editorial.

The development of theme, rising tension, etc, is a property of the fiction that is created in the play of a RPG. It is not a property of the cues that are used in the course of that play, except for the special case (that I already mentioned) of a pre-plotted adventure where the play of the game consists in the particular group, in their play, reproducing the pre-authored fiction of the adventure.

Even in that special case, we have to make some careful distinctions. The way a pre-plotted adventure encodes and presents a fiction with theme, rising action etc is different from how (say) a novel does, and from how (say) a script does, because it is written to be used by the GM of a group of RPGers to lead the other participants through the fiction. A novel, if well-written by mainstream standards, will draw the reader into the experience of the theme, the rising action, etc. A pre-plotted adventure module is not likely to produce that same sort of experience just by being read though. Even more than a script, it is likely to need to be experienced in play to actually generate those narrative phenomena.

Once we turn away from the special case to RPG rulebooks more generally, we wouldn't expect to, and we won't, find theme, rising action etc in the books themselves, any more than you will literally find good things to eat in a recipe book.

That doesn't seem right. Theme and rising action are built into (part of the intent of) the rules of some games, and communicated by them. Maybe not everyone notices that, but it's there to see. This comes back to prospective play. When I read a game text, I imagine the play - that gives me a taste of the experience it will offer at the table. I think such qualities are in some sense a property of the cues, else how does one explain one set of cues more likely having those consequences than another.

 

[pemerton]

Theme and rising action are built into (part of the intent of) the rules of some games, and communicated by them. Maybe not everyone notices that, but it's there to see. This comes back to prospective play. When I read a game text, I imagine the play - that gives me a taste of the experience it will offer at the table. I think such qualities are in some sense a property of the cues, else how does one explain one set of cues more likely having those consequences than another.

The explanation is that X causes Y doesn't mean that Y is a property of X.

Consider vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. One might go faster than another: that is a result of (perhaps) engine design, or transmission design, or body design, or . . . . It doesn't follow that speed or maximum speed or typical speed is a property of any of those vehicle components.

One might have a greater range than another: that is a result of (perhaps) fuel capacity, or fuel efficiency due to engine design, or fuel efficiency due to transmission design, or . . . . It doesn't follow that maximum range or typical range before refuelling is required is a property of any of those vehicle components.

Like you, I can sometimes read a RPG rulebook and imagine the play it might lead to, if its instructions are followed. I assume that a skilled driver or automotive engineer can read the specs for a motor vehicle and imagine how it might perform, what its speed and handling and range and so on will be like. But that doesn't mean that the specs for a vehicle are faster or slower or more or less efficient, or possess any of the salient properties that the reader is imagining the vehicle having. Likewise for a RPG rulebook.

This point can be made by reference to concrete examples: Burning Wheel, played as set out in its rulebook, is more likely to produce theme and rising action than AD&D as set out in Gygax's PHB. But that doesn't mean that there is theme or rising action in the BW rulebook. Both the BW rulebook and Gygax's PHB are colourful reads, but the properties of them as reads are not the properties of the fiction that will result from playing the game they provide instructions for.

what is it like to conceive a rule. How does that happen? A notion I've considered is something that could be labelled "prospective play", where the designer has not seen their rule elsewhere nor yet played it, but they're able to imagine how it would be played. They turn it over in their mind and think about how it could go.

To me at least, I don't see that RPG design is going to be any different from other sorts of design or authorship or composition, except that it is probably at the simpler end (compared to, say, the very complex technical designs that engineers are involved in).

I mean, I don't know how much of this sort of drafting you have done or thought about. I've got a reasonable amount of experience, not so much in relation to RPGs (though I've probably written as many house rules as the next ENW poster) but in relation to written rule-promulgating instruments. I've studied statutes quite closely, have taught and published on both the theory and practice of statutory interpretation, and have assisted in the drafting of policies and procedures in the institutions in which I work. My experience is that most people - even very clever people - who have not had much of the sort of experience I have had are terrible drafters, in multiple ways: they are unable to come up with clear language that actually sets out the norm they wish to implement; and they are unable to think clearly about how the norm they wish to implement will interact with other norms in the neighbourhood, with the various sorts of corner cases that inevitably arise, etc. (One can see both problems being manifested in the way WotC has drafted the Steath and the two-weapon rules in the new PHB, and the ensuing discussions/complaints about these rules.)

I think this is an area where the quality of RPG design has improved, due to the gaining of experience and also greater intellectual grasp of what is involved. (I suspect the same is probably true of boardgames more generally, but that would be a bigger claim.) It's clear, for instance, that many of the rules in Gygax's rulebooks - especially his DMG - are conceived of in an ad hoc fashion, in response to particular situations that have arisen in play, without any systematic attempt to think about how they relate to the broader context or dynamics of play, how they might contribute to a certain "feel" in play, etc. It's also clear that, to the extent that Gygax did have an understanding of the broader context and dynamics of the play he was aiming for, he was only partially successful in reducing that to writing in his rulebooks. (His efforts in this respect reach their peak success in the AD&D PHB's discussion of Successful Adventures.)

But in any event, none of this directly affects the proposition that the fictions created in the process of RPGing are not edited. And its indirect relevance is this: if a RPG designer cares about the properities of the fictions that will be generated via their game they will recall that that fiction is a bit very lightly edited, and hence will design rules that are apt to generate the desired properties first time around. Baker's design of the GM-side of the AW rulebooks is perhaps a par-excellence illustration of how to achieve such design. Conversely, there are chunks of Gygax's DMG, and even moreso of the whole Rolemaster corpus, that could serve as examples of what not to do: rules that are designed with no eye at all on the sort of fiction they will produce first time around, but rather only with an eye to the mathematical and wargame-y features of play.

Playtesting then forms an extension of prospective play. The aim is to see what effect the rules will most likely have on conversations. Taking rehearsal as an activity done to secure that a performance goes as planned, I had in mind a notion of rehearsing on behalf of. One might discover that the wording of a prompt tended to produce conversation Q when one wanted more to see R. There's a strong connection between playtesting and a game text's performance at tables, which led me to contemplate it as a "prospective rehearsal".

There is a strong connection between what a composer writes down in the score and what an orchestra will produce when they perform that scored piece; that doesn't mean that the composition is rehearsal. There is a strong connection between how a rocket performs during test firings and whether or not it will take its payload and astronauts to the moon; that doesn't make a test firing a moon journey. A cook testing a recipe, and adjusting it to see if it works, is not the same thing as another person practising their own preparation of that dish.

There are many passages of text that I've read and re-read - non-fiction technical texts (eg monographs, articles, judgments, RPG rules) as well as creative texts (eg novels) - to better understand what is going on in them. I imagine that the authors of those texts might have, at least in some cases, read and re-read and re-written those passages, just as I have done in my own writing. But those authors were not "reading on behalf of me". They were authoring. My reading is my own.

To put it more generally: there is no such thing as "rehearsing on behalf of". That is simply perfecting one's own design, so that the designed thing will do its thing properly when others use it.

Design and composition; perfecting that through iteration; communicating it to others via a written set of instructions; others then using those instructions; and others perfecting their own performance (via rehearsal) so that when they perform without the chance for editing it will go well - these are all different things.

The important point is to understand playtesting as a bridge between designer and players, that enables designer to procure (but not guarantee!) that players perform along lines they intend, where rehearsals by said players are going to be ruled out.

But playtesting is no more a bridge between designer and player than any other part of the design process: writing down the rules, for instance, and even conceiving of them in the first instance. Playtesting is one important way of perfecting the rules; but careful editing (in the conventional sense) of how the rules are written is also important. All these are ways in which the designer perfects their conception of what it is that they are trying to design, and their communication of that conception to others.

And while players in RPGs typically don't rehearse, they do practise, and in that way they do get better. In their practice they may even discover possibilities that the designer didn't conceive of. (This was especially common early on, when the possibilities of this genre of game were still being discovered, and quickly outstripped what Arneson and Gygax themselves seemed to have imagined.) How closely we should connect this practice to rehearsal will depend on specifics: is practising one's chess openings, or one's M:tG play against a deck that is well-known in the current "meta", or a particular set of combat interactions between the PCs in a D&D party, also a mode of rehearsal? (Eg imagine a group getting ready to go to an AD&D tournament c 1980 with the intention of winning it.) Not always, but maybe sometimes that makes sense as a way of thinking about it.

In any event, I don't think that there is any tight connection between the significance of playtesting, and the perfection of design more generally, and the degree to which RPG players practise and (perhaps, in some cases) rehearse. Even if you knew that the users of your design would practise a lot, you'd still want to perfect your design, and playtesting would likely be part of that.

It seems you're thinking of editing as largely a matter of arrangement, while I have in mind artistic choices made to achieve a creative intent.

That is not editing, is it?

When Wagner decided to adopt a particular approach to the relationship between voice and instrumentation in The Rhinegold, that was not an editorial decision.

To step down a level of artistry, when Wilkie Collins decided to use the form of letters and diary entries for The Woman in White, that wasn't an editorial decision either.

Editing is a process of improvement of delivery of content by honing the "vehicle" whereby that content is delivered. Editing might reveal the need for new artistry, or prompt new artistry - perhaps the editor notes that a particular passage is falling flat, and that leads the author to conceive of an entirely new way of doing what that passage was intended to do. But in these sorts of cases I think it is helpful to retain the distinction between what is editorial, and what is authorial.

The best way to judge the aesthetic impact a recipe has is by testing (tasting) it, and after doing so one might decide to leave it out of the book. Not because it fails as a recipe, but because the chef has a creative intent for this book and it doesn't fit their present intent.

<snip>

I am saying that noticing a rule (or any game element for that matter) fails to meet one's creative intent and cutting it is editorial.

An editor might read a recipe, and then - based on their skill as a cook or a gourmand - imagine what sort of food it would produce, and on that basis query whether it coheres with the book as overall conceived. That can be part of the editorial role: pushing the author on the coherence or tightness of their conception.

Maybe the same conclusion is reached not by imagining, but by actually following the recipe and making the dish. That doesn't mean that cooking something is editing.

Play-testing may prompt decisions about what to cut from a RPG rulebook. That doesn't mean that the play-testing is editing; nor that anyone else's play, using the edited book, is itself edited. Whether the cutting of the rule counts as editing or not may be a matter of degree. (Likewise for the recipe.) If the decision is made at an early stage, as part of the process of conceiving of the point of the work, it is less likely to count as editing than if it is made towards the end, as part of the process of perfecting the work's communication of its point. Even then, we may want to say that the author who decides how to respond to the editorial prompt is making authorial, not editorial, decisions. This is not of purely abstract relevance - it matters, for instance, in decisions about who gets credited as an author and who gets acknowledged for their editorial assistance. Within academia, different disciplines have their own conventions and understandings here; likewise, I would imagine, in other fields. In RPGing this also feeds into the designer/developer contrast - whereas normally I would assume that the editing credit in a RPG book is more about layout, copyediting and general qualities of the text, rather than about deciding what should be in or out in a substantive sense of serving the purpose of the game.

 

[clearstream]

The explanation is that X causes Y doesn't mean that Y is a property of X.

Consider vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. One might go faster than another: that is a result of (perhaps) engine design, or transmission design, or body design, or . . . . It doesn't follow that speed or maximum speed or typical speed is a property of any of those vehicle components.

One might have a greater range than another: that is a result of (perhaps) fuel capacity, or fuel efficiency due to engine design, or fuel efficiency due to transmission design, or . . . . It doesn't follow that maximum range or typical range before refuelling is required is a property of any of those vehicle components.

X has the property that it causes Y, and in that it differs from some X' that doesn't have the property of causing Y.

Such that it is distinctive of X, that it has the property of causing Y.

Typical range before refueling is exactly a property of the designed components. (Taking "typical" here to imply differences over otherwise similar conditions.) What else could it be?

I think you are arguing something like Y in series S (where S is an observed performance) is a property of S rather than X (being factors that give rise to that performance). I'm focused on the distinctive properties of X compared with X', where one gives rise to Y and the other does not: making choices over X amount to choices over Y.

 

[clearstream]

clearstream said:
It seems you're thinking of editing as largely a matter of arrangement, while I have in mind artistic choices made to achieve a creative intent.

That is not editing, is it?

I think when it is done after creative over-production, as a cutting back, potentially by a person other than the originator, then it is editing. Such as might be done by film editors or music producers. Or in the case of game design, a lead designer or sometimes a game producer. This from Wikipedia gets at what I'm thinking of

A film editor must creatively work with the layers of images, story, dialogue, music, pacing, as well as the actors' performances to effectively "re-imagine" and even rewrite the film to craft a cohesive whole.​

(Emphasis mine.) Perhaps our differences come down to semantics, in which case we might best agree to disagree. I can see how there's a sense of editing that fits what you say.