What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

[aramis erak]

I think 'serving' is a terrible way to characterize RPG play. I think it's more useful to start with the idea that everyone at the table is a player, with the GM just having different tasks. I haven't seen any evidence that valorizing the GM role (or the player role) is in any way useful in discussing the form and execution of RPG play.

The GM who fails to serve player needs plays solo...

 

[Fenris-77]

The GM who fails to serve player needs plays solo...

Serve is still the wrong word.

 

[aramis erak]

Serve is still the wrong word.

No, it's not. If you don't provide them the experiences they need to enjoy the game, they walk. Providing something to someone else for an expectation of some reward (even if it's just the reward of having players) is still service.

It's soundly a service industry, and part of the reason people burn out is that they bend too far... but if they don't bend at all, only the worst players are prone to stay. And even then, you're still serving them... until you quit in frustration or rage.

 

[zakael19]

lol.

We're playing a game together, we all create a cohesive group as a whole. It's straight up standard group forming/norming/performing crap, with the GM as facilitator.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The GM who fails to serve player needs plays solo...

The GM who fails to fulfill player needs plays solo. Serve is only appropriate for paid DMs.

 

[Fenris-77]

No, it's not. If you don't provide them the experiences they need to enjoy the game, they walk. Providing something to someone else for an expectation of some reward (even if it's just the reward of having players) is still service.

It's soundly a service industry, and part of the reason people burn out is that they bend too far... but if they don't bend at all, only the worst players are prone to stay. And even then, you're still serving them... until you quit in frustration or rage.

Argh. I want nothing to do with this verbiage. Service industry? Get back. It's about matching expectations and playstyles, not kowtowing to player needs. GMs are in hot demand, they don't need to serve anyone.

 

[zakael19]

Argh. I want nothing to do with this verbiage. Service industry? Get back. It's about matching expectations and playstyles, not kowtowing to player needs. GMs are in hot demand, they don't need to serve anyone.

Surely there's some middle ground between "DM is god of all they survey" and "I'm just a wee service animal GM."

Maybe we could call it a "collaborative group of players with different roles?"

 

[pemerton]

Argh. I want nothing to do with this verbiage. Service industry? Get back. It's about matching expectations and playstyles, not kowtowing to player needs. GMs are in hot demand, they don't need to serve anyone.

I don't think I'm in "hot demand" as a GM. I'm certainly not part of a "service industry"!

I just have a thing I like doing - RPGing, including GMing RPGs - and I have friends who like RPGing too, and who mostly prefer the player to the GM role. So we play games together.

It doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Maybe we could call it a "collaborative group of players with different roles?"

I have to say, from my ages and ages of roleplay ^^^This^^^ can't be stated enough as "new design". I think it very much is. Maybe there are a few obscure old games that said some to this effect, but certainly not any of the big companies. And certainly no game that got huge alongside the big dogs. Somehow, some way - somebody put words to it recently that caused it to finally catch on, and that matters to me.

To me, and maybe only for me, the statement that "Everyone is collaborating to tell a great story, and the GM just has a different role in that, but still must adhere to the collaboration." Just opened up roleplay like never before.

It ended all debate/agony/effort, for me, about "fudging dice rolls", or exhaustively tryin to "balance encounters", or trying to help players or find systems that had "balanced characters", and so on.

It forced me to realize that well before dice are rolled, that its was not "my" world, or "my" game, or "my" plot. It was "ours" and the more I considered that, the more...like...exponentially more I got out of my fellow players and the fun we/I all had.

Cut back to 20+ years ago: That was just not how GM guides were ever written. That's not how Modules were created. That's not how game mechanics phrased any roll.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have to say, from my ages and ages of roleplay ^^^This^^^ can't be stated enough as "new design". I think it very much is. Maybe there are a few obscure old games that said some to this effect, but certainly not any of the big companies. And certainly no game that got huge alongside the big dogs. Somehow, some way - somebody put words to it recently that caused it to finally catch on, and that matters to me.

For the record I'm pretty sure the breakout game that did this was (as so often with modern gaming trends) 2010s Apocalypse World. Which called the GM the Master of Ceremonies, took away their dice, and gave procedures and agendas.