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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6141393" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION], I've XPed you too recently to do so again - thanks for the thread!The stuff you call out on social contract is interesting and prescient. But you mightn't be surprised that the bit I find the most interesting is Carr's reference to "an ever-changing situation". The idea of the GM as arbitrator of a situation which it is the players' responsibility to engage has a lot in common with the standard "indie" version of RPGing.From that point of view, here's my take on the repeated insistence on being fair:In a modern "indie" game, fairness is acheived mostly via a fair and functional distribution of (i) responsibilities, and (ii) metagame resources, within a mutually known action resolution system. The GM frames the situation; the players engage it via their PCs; and when the action resolution mechanics are invoked, both sides have their known and defined resources that they bring to bear.In this early D&D, the responisbilities are pretty clearly defined, but the action resolution is very different. The fundamental orientation is, I think, simulationist rather than metagame (eg the chance of success is determined based on "what makes sense within the fiction", not "what would make for satisfying fiction"). So the action resolution is not known in advance, and the players and GM don't have pre-allocated bundles of metagame resources.The GM therefore has a clear conflict of interest - s/he has to frame situations that will challenge the players (via challenging the PCs); but s/he also has to settle the action resolution techniques that will resolve those situations! Hence the importance of being fair. Of course a modern "indie" GM should be fair too, but for the reasons I tried to explain the idea of fairness isn't so important to the role, because the set up is intended to avoid the conflict-of-interest that I think is present in this early D&D.I don't know if you have access to British materials, but Lewis Pulsipher had interesting GM advice articles in early White Dwarf magazines. His solution to the conflict of interest problem is for the GM to design every aspect of the dungeon in advance, and to make up nothing on the fly. So the GM frames the challenging situations independently of having to resolve them; and then when the GM has to make calls during action resolution, the actual content of the situation, and the way it unfolds, should be a matter of complete indifference.My own view is that, while this solution can work well for a certain type of "location-based" adventure, as soon as it is adapted to more story-oriented goals it has an inherent tendency towards the railroad - because a non-railroaded story-style adventure precludes the GM working out the content of the situations in advance. (This is part of my own pet theory as to why, between the mid-80s and the decline of "early D&D", and the mid-to-late 90s and the emergence of "modern indie RPGs", we have a long trough of RPGs-as-railroads.)Anyway, excellent thread. Once we're done with the GMing "style" advice can we look at the dungeon-building/scenario-design aspects? I think they're very interesting too.</blockquote>

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