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Approaches to prep in RPGing - GMs, players, and what play is *about*
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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8975336" data-attributes="member: 6785785"><p>Perhaps you missed the below passage? It's largely what I took to be the point of the OP. </p><p></p><p></p><p>And maybe you missed this bit at the end where [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] specifically tagged me, in reference to the thing I then posted about?</p><p></p><p></p><p>So, biased though I may be, I think my post was pretty relevant. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No. For a traditional game, the GM <em>may</em> take hours/days/a long time to create the setting. It <em>may</em> be a lot of work. But that's a choice. It does not have to take that much work. I used to prep very much along the lines of what you're describing, but over time I have moved away from that. My trad games have significantly less prep than they used to. </p><p></p><p>It's a choice to put that level of work into the game. I wouldn't like to hold my choice over others' heads. I don't think it's particularly healthy for a group of people to have that level of imbalance in their time spent on a leisure activity. Not unless the GM really loves to do all that prep and isn't going to shame others for not doing as much. Nor do I expect for players to put in a ton of prep ahead of time. I want them to be engaged in play while we're playing... what they do before we play, I really don't care about. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, I don't see how a couple paragraphs would be all that difficult to handle, but even still... there's a way to avoid this. That's to make the characters and the setting together. Don't make all these decisions in a vacuum, either as player or GM. </p><p></p><p>Collaboration... work on all this stuff together. Build the world and the characters as a group. Then everyone has a say about the setting, and all the characters fit naturally into it. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's not the way it works at my table when I GM, even when I run trad games like D&D. Other games do a lot more to make this possible. Plus, I don't really care about credit. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No, that's not what the OP advocated for. See the section I quoted above. </p><p></p><p>Yes, he said to shift some of the effort from the GM to the players. But he also pointed out how it need not be onerous. </p><p></p><p>For the Blades in the Dark character I shared above, I did pretty much the minimum required for character creation, and the GM took those decisions and used them heavily in play. Those things then triggered other events in the fiction, and had ripple effects. The game was very much about the characters involved. The GM didn't do any more prep for the game than being familiar with the game, and the setting, and then looking at the decisions we made as players. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>In recent threads, I have offered several. So have others. The ones I've mentioned most are Blades in the Dark, Spire: The City Must Fall, and Stonetop, which is a Powered by the Apocalypse game, meaning derived from Apocalypse World. That game, Apocalypse World, is a major work in character-driven play, though there are other games that did so which predate it. But it did so in a clear and intentional manner, and it spawned a whole school of game design. </p><p></p><p>When these games get mentioned, you typically just say "I don't know that game" and then go back to your assertions that "GMs must do X amount of prep" and "players will barely ever bring anything to the table" and so on. But we've been telling you that, while that may be true for the way you play, it is not a requirement for all play.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 8975336, member: 6785785"] Perhaps you missed the below passage? It's largely what I took to be the point of the OP. And maybe you missed this bit at the end where [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] specifically tagged me, in reference to the thing I then posted about? So, biased though I may be, I think my post was pretty relevant. No. For a traditional game, the GM [I]may[/I] take hours/days/a long time to create the setting. It [I]may[/I] be a lot of work. But that's a choice. It does not have to take that much work. I used to prep very much along the lines of what you're describing, but over time I have moved away from that. My trad games have significantly less prep than they used to. It's a choice to put that level of work into the game. I wouldn't like to hold my choice over others' heads. I don't think it's particularly healthy for a group of people to have that level of imbalance in their time spent on a leisure activity. Not unless the GM really loves to do all that prep and isn't going to shame others for not doing as much. Nor do I expect for players to put in a ton of prep ahead of time. I want them to be engaged in play while we're playing... what they do before we play, I really don't care about. Well, I don't see how a couple paragraphs would be all that difficult to handle, but even still... there's a way to avoid this. That's to make the characters and the setting together. Don't make all these decisions in a vacuum, either as player or GM. Collaboration... work on all this stuff together. Build the world and the characters as a group. Then everyone has a say about the setting, and all the characters fit naturally into it. That's not the way it works at my table when I GM, even when I run trad games like D&D. Other games do a lot more to make this possible. Plus, I don't really care about credit. No, that's not what the OP advocated for. See the section I quoted above. Yes, he said to shift some of the effort from the GM to the players. But he also pointed out how it need not be onerous. For the Blades in the Dark character I shared above, I did pretty much the minimum required for character creation, and the GM took those decisions and used them heavily in play. Those things then triggered other events in the fiction, and had ripple effects. The game was very much about the characters involved. The GM didn't do any more prep for the game than being familiar with the game, and the setting, and then looking at the decisions we made as players. In recent threads, I have offered several. So have others. The ones I've mentioned most are Blades in the Dark, Spire: The City Must Fall, and Stonetop, which is a Powered by the Apocalypse game, meaning derived from Apocalypse World. That game, Apocalypse World, is a major work in character-driven play, though there are other games that did so which predate it. But it did so in a clear and intentional manner, and it spawned a whole school of game design. When these games get mentioned, you typically just say "I don't know that game" and then go back to your assertions that "GMs must do X amount of prep" and "players will barely ever bring anything to the table" and so on. But we've been telling you that, while that may be true for the way you play, it is not a requirement for all play. [/QUOTE]
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