Be a GAME-MASTER, not a DIRECTOR

[hawkeyefan]

I say random and casual and you make the huge jump to the random words: "not serious". So, how? Do you really equate random = not serious and/or casual? It's like you read the text and jump to what you think I sorta kinda meant to your point of view. Why? How? Lets just assume I'm not some type of amazing wordsmith typing to say eleven different things with each typed word. Maybe just go with what is typed.

Casual certainly implies not serious. What do you think casual means?

Now, I’m not going to say that my games are of utmost seriousness because (a) they’re meant to be fun and entertaining, and (b) it sounds awful. I joke a lot during play, as both player and GM… but the events of play are often quite serious. The stakes tend to be very high.

I'm a very serious gamer.


I'm not one for all the theories. I'm about reality.


I think it's lot about the game play........

I see the talk of the DM doing very little or nothing and asking the players to continuously tell the DM what to do in the game play. This saves the DM from a lot of work, as the players will come up with all the ideas. And it has the feeling that if you give the players exactly what they tell you to give them, then the players will like the game more and have fun. The main idea seems to be to make sure the DM can never be a "tyrant" and put their badwrongfun ideas in the game: everything must be player lead. The players are Batman (batmen) and the DM is Alfred. Or the players are the Avengers and the DM is Jarvis(the human butler, not the AI).

Where have you seen anyone say this?

I’ve made it pretty clear that the GM brings a lot to play. Just because the players contribute ideas dorsn’tmean they’re coming up with everything. You seem to see it as either one extreme orthe other. Either the GM is doing everything or he’s doing nothing. There’s a large middle ground that exists.

As presented though.....this means you can only have a simple game play. Players just say simple and direct things like "goblins over there with a chest of gold" most of the time. And the DM nods and says "yes player". Then the character go over there and find goblins with a chest of gold. And this is hours of game play.

No one has provided an example like “goblins over there with a chest of gold”. That’s your own example, and yes, it’s terrible.

It would seem to be rare to the extreme for a player to say "uuuummmmm, I want six noble houses all competing to reassemble the six fragments of a lost artifact for some mysterious reason". And even if a player did, this is impossible to create in a second.

No, it’s really not. There is the entirety of fiction to draw on for inspiration. I can easily look to fiction like “Dune” or “A Song ofIce and Fire” or something similar to come up with noble houses. It’s not difficult at all.

But it also doesn't have to be done in a second. The GM can take a minute or two to come up with these details.

For this the DM will likely need several hours to create all of this and even more hours to make it a complex adventure. But....of course....if the DM does this they will be creating it all from THEIR ideas. The player input was just that one line. But anything the DM makes up is badwrongfun....

No one has said the GM can’t contribute. Very much the opposite. This is your own inability to see anything but two extremes as being possible.

This is why I have said you should ask questions. You clearly don’t understand this kind of game. So… ask.

If someone out there had no idea how to play D&D and you were trying to explain it, and they continued to just tell you that you were wrong… don’t you think they’d be approaching the conversation in a poor way?

And this would be a mess to just improv on the fly. You can't just 'improv' six random noble family names any time a player asks 'what are the six noble family names'. You have to write them down and keep track of them. Same with family member NPCs. You can't just have random names every round.

Once something is established, you can write it down if you want. Once it’s introduced to play, then it’s in play. Things don’t change. Again… you’re not understanding, or you’re choosing to ignore when this has been said.

And the same goes for an adventure log: you need to keep track of what happened. So, you have to have a lot of details, and more each hour of play.

No one is saying otherwise. I mean, I don’t write everything down… I rely on our collective memories for some things. But the players take notes and so do I as the GM.

And to have a complex game, you need to have a web of connections between all the pieces of information. That is what makes it complex. But to have that complexity, you have to have written down saved details, notes and content. All made by the DM alone, with sure some vague input from the players. This is not possible in a player lead game where each moment a player is just saying "DM make this for me" and the DM does without question.

Yeah, this is just wrong. You don’t need to have all this determined by the GM ahead of time in order to have complexity in the game’s fiction. That’s just incorrect. I know this because I’ve played games that have had complexity and which were played as I’ve been describing.

I get that you have not played such a game… but that doesn’t make it impossible. All it means is that you’ve not done it and you’re struggling to see how others can do it.

 

[innerdude]

I see the talk of the DM doing very little or nothing and asking the players to continuously tell the DM what to do in the game play. This saves the DM from a lot of work, as the players will come up with all the ideas. And it has the feeling that if you give the players exactly what they tell you to give them, then the players will like the game more and have fun. The main idea seems to be to make sure the DM can never be a "tyrant" and put their badwrongfun ideas in the game: everything must be player lead. The players are Batman (batmen) and the DM is Alfred. Or the players are the Avengers and the DM is Jarvis(the human butler, not the AI).

As presented though.....this means you can only have a simple game play. Players just say simple and direct things like "goblins over there with a chest of gold" most of the time. And the DM nods and says "yes player". Then the character go over there and find goblins with a chest of gold. And this is hours of game play.

It would seem to be rare to the extreme for a player to say "uuuummmmm, I want six noble houses all competing to reassemble the six fragments of a lost artifact for some mysterious reason". And even if a player did, this is impossible to create in a second. For this the DM will likely need several hours to create all of this and even more hours to make it a complex adventure. But....of course....if the DM does this they will be creating it all from THEIR ideas. The player input was just that one line. But anything the DM makes up is badwrongfun....

And this would be a mess to just improv on the fly. You can't just 'improv' six random noble family names any time a player asks 'what are the six noble family names'. You have to write them down and keep track of them. Same with family member NPCs. You can't just have random names every round. And the same goes for an adventure log: you need to keep track of what happened. So, you have to have a lot of details, and more each hour of play.

And to have a complex game, you need to have a web of connections between all the pieces of information. That is what makes it complex. But to have that complexity, you have to have written down saved details, notes and content. All made by the DM alone, with sure some vague input from the players. This is not possible in a player lead game where each moment a player is just saying "DM make this for me" and the DM does without question.

This statement is quite obviously coming from a place of ignorance with regards to PbtA adjacent gaming, particularly my favorite iteration, Ironsworn.

With the help of my players and a small set of prompts, we could build a "six competing noble houses" game together, in session, in about 45 minutes, and have it be instantly and EXCELLENTLY playable using core Ironsworn rules.

It's fine if Ironsworn's baseline assumptions don't appeal to you, but I do have to vigorously push back against your core assumptions of the type, effort, and volume of GM prep required.

*Edit---if, BTW, you're at all interested in moving from a place of ignorance to a place of informed experience, Ironsworn's core rulebook PDF is completely free.

 

[CandyLaser]

I have been trying not to engage on this sort of topic, but against my instincts... here we go.

I say random and casual and you make the huge jump to the random words: "not serious". So, how? Do you really equate random = not serious and/or casual? It's like you read the text and jump to what you think I sorta kinda meant to your point of view. Why? How? Lets just assume I'm not some type of amazing wordsmith typing to say eleven different things with each typed word. Maybe just go with what is typed.

Let's just start off here: it's the height of irony that you're asking for charity from others in interpreting what you say when you regularly, across multiple threads, refuse to grant it to others. I don't feel like I need to explain why a reader might take "casual" and "serious" to be opposed. You even allude to "casual" and "serious" being opposed in the third sentence of the quoted paragraph.

Rest assured, though, that I will not take you to be an amazing wordsmith. If you are concerned that people are consistently misinterpreting what you say, and if this is a sincere confusion as opposed to trolling behavior, then I recommend you think about what you're posting and reconsider your phrasing and consider extending the same charity you ask for to others.

I see the talk of the DM doing very little or nothing and asking the players to continuously tell the DM what to do in the game play. This saves the DM from a lot of work, as the players will come up with all the ideas. And it has the feeling that if you give the players exactly what they tell you to give them, then the players will like the game more and have fun. The main idea seems to be to make sure the DM can never be a "tyrant" and put their badwrongfun ideas in the game: everything must be player lead. The players are Batman (batmen) and the DM is Alfred. Or the players are the Avengers and the DM is Jarvis(the human butler, not the AI).

As presented though.....this means you can only have a simple game play. Players just say simple and direct things like "goblins over there with a chest of gold" most of the time. And the DM nods and says "yes player". Then the character go over there and find goblins with a chest of gold. And this is hours of game play.

It hardly needs to be said at this point, but the mode of play you're describing as "player lead" [sic] bears no resemblance to the sort of gameplay I see at my tables when I play games like Stonetop, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, etc. Indeed, I've never seen anything like that at any table. Perhaps it's common where you play; I am dubious.

It would seem to be rare to the extreme for a player to say "uuuummmmm, I want six noble houses all competing to reassemble the six fragments of a lost artifact for some mysterious reason". And even if a player did, this is impossible to create in a second. For this the DM will likely need several hours to create all of this and even more hours to make it a complex adventure. But....of course....if the DM does this they will be creating it all from THEIR ideas. The player input was just that one line. But anything the DM makes up is badwrongfun....

And this would be a mess to just improv on the fly. You can't just 'improv' six random noble family names any time a player asks 'what are the six noble family names'. You have to write them down and keep track of them. Same with family member NPCs. You can't just have random names every round. And the same goes for an adventure log: you need to keep track of what happened. So, you have to have a lot of details, and more each hour of play.

And to have a complex game, you need to have a web of connections between all the pieces of information. That is what makes it complex. But to have that complexity, you have to have written down saved details, notes and content. All made by the DM alone, with sure some vague input from the players. This is not possible in a player lead game where each moment a player is just saying "DM make this for me" and the DM does without question.

So, this is just a blatant and severe mischaracterization of what "player led" games actually entail. I have never once sat down at a table where "each moment a player is just saying "DM make this for me" and the DM does without question." Moreover, I don't know where you get the idea that players aren't going to bring interesting ideas to the table. Giving everyone at the table a say does not turn players into autocrats and the DM into their servant. Quite the opposite, in fact - it means that everyone gets a say, which includes being able to push back on things that don't fit the narrative/the world/etc.

I'm going to use my current game (Fellowship, another PbtA game descended from Dungeon World) as an example. This game makes collaborative worldbuilding central to its mechanics. The playbooks available to players are each connected to a people with the game - one player might be "The Elf" while another is "The Dwarf" and a third is "The Construct." As part of character creation, the players have to answer the question: what are your people like? So if you pick the Elf playbook, you get to tell the table what elves are like, what elven cultures exist in the world, and so on. In my game, we had one player pick the Construct playbook, and they said that constructs were common throughout the world, but that most constructs were pure technological automata. Their character was unusual in that they were magitech, as opposed to clockwork, and this infusion of magic is what gave them proper sentience. The rules of the game meant that it was up to them to determine what constructs were like, what set their character apart from other constructs, etc.

Every other player did the same thing with their characters, and so we ended up with a world populated by nomadic ogres who don't die of old age and continue to grow until their bodies no longer could support them, nature spirits that bind animals together in a sort of hivemind, stealthy slime people, and so on. My role as GM was to ask them questions during this process. Everyone threw in ideas, but each player had the final say on what their characters and their people were like. And once something was established, it was established - it became part of the game world which others could use.

Much of this happened during our first session, but it is an ongoing process. An example: at one point, the players were headed to a particular city that was being threatened by a villain. Along the way, they met an ogre messenger, who'd been sent to find the party and tell them of a threat to an ogre community. We'd already established that ogres are nomadic and that they grow larger and larger as they age, so I asked: "what's something that's culturally important to the ogres that might be at risk of destruction?" The player came back with: "The ogres have a Great Mother, the oldest living member of their kind. She's enormous, standing hundreds of feet tall, and she's phenomenally strong, but she's also blind, so most ogre clans send some of their number to serve as escorts as she travels."

Given that, my role as the GM was to think up what was threatening the Great Mother, so I described how an army armed with fire weapons (which had been previously established by the ogre player as one of the things that could permanently kill an ogre) had trapped the Great Mother and her honor guard in a box canyon and were threatening their destruction, thereby putting a difficult choice in front of the party: they could ignore this threat and continue to their original destination, which would have meant the Great Mother's death, or they could go to her rescue, which would mean abandoning their original quest to defend a city from attack, OR they could split up and try to do both at once. They picked the third option, incidentally.

Now, you might say, "Ah, but didn't it fall to you, the GM, to stat up the Great Mother, the army that had trapped her, etc?" And in some sense, it did - but "statting up" the Great Mother in Fellowship terms looks like this:

The Great Mother: very big, very strong, blind

Similarly, the army looked like this:

Firestarter Constructs: flamethrowers (Ranged, Burning, Dangerous), fireproof.

Ranged, Burning, and Dangerous are tags with some minor mechanical weight, but mostly they do what it says on the tin - they set things on fire, at range, and they're dangerous to use.

Since you asked for people to be charitable in reading what you wrote, I will close with this: there is nothing wrong with more traditional modes of play, where the GM is responsible for all or almost all of the worldbuilding, sets up the adventure hooks, and so on. I've both played and run such games and found it enjoyable and rewarding. I prefer games like Fellowship, but that's a statement about preference, not about superiority. But it does you, and the style of play you purport to practice, a disservice when you try to describe alternate modes in such misleading terms.

 

[pemerton]

I say random and casual and you make the huge jump to the random words: "not serious". So, how? Do you really equate random = not serious and/or casual? It's like you read the text and jump to what you think I sorta kinda meant to your point of view. Why? How? Lets just assume I'm not some type of amazing wordsmith typing to say eleven different things with each typed word. Maybe just go with what is typed.

I was going to point out the irony of this, but @CandyLaser already did.

As for your substantive comments, the replies you've received speak for themselves.

If you want to see another example of play that illustrates a low-GM prep, player-driven sort of play, using a system other than Apocalypse World or one of its derivatives, you can read this post on rpg.net, where I provide a Burning Wheel actual play report.

 

[aramis erak]

Editing
An example of editing in an RPG: Playing a game with shared GMing. One player's adventure was so off theme and was so disruptive to future play that at the next session we voted to have it all have been a shared nightmare. We took a vote, 7:1 for decanonizing that adventure.
Another case: new system, 1st session. TPK due to a misinterpreted rule, realized while starting resulting CGen... instead just reset by group concensus.
Yet another: due to rules error, group decides to refund the costs of medical care, including downtime, from a really bad rules read.

Retcons are edits.

Likewise, a number of games allow for use of metacurrency to say, "Oh, yeah, I have one of those"... including FFG's Star Wars

As for "providing" one's character to the GM:
this varies by group. In the old days, the rulebook advice was to not allow characters from other campaigns; this had the effect of locking characters to one campaign, and usually just one GM.

There was little ability to GM A to enforce ownership of PC C in GM B's game; it was always B's choice. But usually, Each campaign's version was separate from introduction.

As for ownership, it varies. In some groups (and I warn players in mine these days), one installed into the campaign, even if the player quits, the character remains a part of the campaign. In some, if the player quits, the character leaves; others they die. I've done all those modes as a gm. I've often let the player pick. Also, as a GM, if the system uses some form of advancement points I give half-base for prior-notice absences for good reason (Work, family obligations, school)... to about 3 in a row. (at 4, you're out of the campaign.) During an absence, many of my players have a specific player they want to play their character... and usually, I allow it. A few times, it's been just easier to leave them "on the ship" or "Guarding the Mounts" in the interests of play speed.

As a player, I don't want my character played permanently by another player... but if I have to miss due to outside reasons, I don't mind a drop in player playing them that session, nor do I mind them being an NPC that session.

Bottom line? At least in the groups I've been in, GM or player, PC ownership is kind of a shared thing between player and GM.

 

[pemerton]

I thought I'd post an example of an actual edit in play. (As opposed to a GM reworking their material in their own head or notes; or adding new material that sheds light on, or changes, the significance of earlier material.)

In the session of Torchbearer 2e that I GMed yesterday, the PC Telemere went to the tavern during the town phase. I rolled on the tavern rumours table (Scholar's Guide p 298), and got a 7:

Your friend, bedraggled and disheveled from the road, bursts into the tavern with an incredible tale to tell.​

The complicating factor, for this result, is that this PC has no friends - he is a loner with an enemy (his brother) and no friends either as part of initial build, or established in play.

So at first I decided that a mostly innocuous rival - the bandit Turner - had turned up, and I said as much. And then, as I was thinking it through a bit more and trying to decide on some incredible tale for Turner to tell, I announced that I was changing that - in fact the bedraggled and dishevelled friend was Korvin, another PC but one whose player was not present, who came into the tavern. The change worked better, both because Korvin is something of a friend of Telemere, and because I knew what tale Korvin would tell: a tale about the river pirates getting ready to assault the moathouse, in violation of their arrangement with Lareth the Beautiful.

That was a literal edit undertaken at the table. It went fine, but I wouldn't like to do too much of it.

 

[Golden Bee]

Let's just start off here: it's the height of irony that you're asking for charity from others in interpreting what you say when you regularly, across multiple threads, refuse to grant it to others. I don't feel like I need to explain why a reader might take "casual" and "serious" to be opposed. You even allude to "casual" and "serious" being opposed in the third sentence of the quoted paragraph.

Rest assured, though, that I will not take you to be an amazing wordsmith. If you are concerned that people are consistently misinterpreting what you say, and if this is a sincere confusion as opposed to trolling behavior, then I recommend you think about what you're posting and reconsider your phrasing and consider extending the same charity you ask for to others.

....

Since you asked for people to be charitable in reading what you wrote, I will close with this: there is nothing wrong with more traditional modes of play, where the GM is responsible for all or almost all of the worldbuilding, sets up the adventure hooks, and so on. I've both played and run such games and found it enjoyable and rewarding. I prefer games like Fellowship, but that's a statement about preference, not about superiority. But it does you, and the style of play you purport to practice, a disservice when you try to describe alternate modes in such misleading terms.

A post for the ages. Amazing.

 

[bloodtide]

Let's just start off here: it's the height of irony that you're asking for charity from others in interpreting what you say when you regularly, across multiple threads, refuse to grant it to others. I don't feel like I need to explain why a reader might take "casual" and "serious" to be opposed. You even allude to "casual" and "serious" being opposed in the third sentence of the quoted paragraph.

Charity? I only ask to respond to what is typed.

Ok, maybe it's just words.....but I don't think of a game as "serious". For me it would be Casual = Focused. Or Casual = Immersed.

It hardly needs to be said at this point, but the mode of play you're describing as "player lead" [sic] bears no resemblance to the sort of gameplay I see at my tables when I play games like Stonetop, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, etc. Indeed, I've never seen anything like that at any table. Perhaps it's common where you play; I am dubious.

Well, my mode here is just pure guess work...as I have said.

So, this is just a blatant and severe mischaracterization of what "player led" games actually entail. I have never once sat down at a table where "each moment a player is just saying "DM make this for me" and the DM does without question." Moreover, I don't know where you get the idea that players aren't going to bring interesting ideas to the table. Giving everyone at the table a say does not turn players into autocrats and the DM into their servant. Quite the opposite, in fact - it means that everyone gets a say, which includes being able to push back on things that don't fit the narrative/the world/etc.

Ok, so here is the perfect spot to clear this up for me.

So, at any time outside or during the game, the player will tell the DM what they want. Then the DM, during the game, will make whatever the player wanted. Is there something I'm missing here?

And it seems like the DM has no plot/plan/adventure/input of their own: they only make what the players tell them to make. Most sure seem to say this.

My role as GM was to ask them questions during this process. Everyone threw in ideas, but each player had the final say on what their characters and their people were like. And once something was established, it was established - it became part of the game world which others could use.

Ok, I will try to use exactly what you typed:

You said your role as DM was to ask questions. You don't say, you as DM get to throw in any ideas. I guess you did not specifically say you did not, but you don't state it.

But even if you had even the slightest hint of an idea....you do say the players have final say. So....how is this not the powerless DM doing whatever the player says? The player says something and you say "yes player". Sure I guess they can be nice about it and pretend to "ask" you...while they know you will automatically do whatever they say.

Much of this happened during our first session, but it is an ongoing process. An example: at one point, the players were headed to a particular city that was being threatened by a villain. Along the way, they met an ogre messenger, who'd been sent to find the party and tell them of a threat to an ogre community. We'd already established that ogres are nomadic and that they grow larger and larger as they age, so I asked: "what's something that's culturally important to the ogres that might be at risk of destruction?" The player came back with: "The ogres have a Great Mother, the oldest living member of their kind. She's enormous, standing hundreds of feet tall, and she's phenomenally strong, but she's also blind, so most ogre clans send some of their number to serve as escorts as she travels."

Again: How is this not what I said? The Dm comes up with few or no ideas and lets the players lead everything.

You say it right here! The DM has no idea 'why' the ogre walks over: it is 100% random. Then the DM asks the players "why did the ogre walk over?" And whatever the players say the DM nods and says "yes players" and does exactly what the players said.

Given that, my role as the GM was to think up what was threatening the Great Mother, so I described how an army armed with fire weapons (which had been previously established by the ogre player as one of the things that could permanently kill an ogre) had trapped the Great Mother and her honor guard in a box canyon and were threatening their destruction, thereby putting a difficult choice in front of the party: they could ignore this threat and continue to their original destination, which would have meant the Great Mother's death, or they could go to her rescue, which would mean abandoning their original quest to defend a city from attack, OR they could split up and try to do both at once. They picked the third option, incidentally.

Now...see...you switch gears here though. Now your just taking the vague 'whatever' the players said and utterly doing whatever you want....but sure keeping the 'illusion' of what the players said.

Sure the players gave you the tiny seed, but then you just created whatever you wanted.

With the help of my players and a small set of prompts, we could build a "six competing noble houses" game together, in session, in about 45 minutes, and have it be instantly and EXCELLENTLY playable using core Ironsworn rules.

I would think that any group could stop playing the game and create a bunch of stuff in about 45 minutes.

 

[CandyLaser]

I don't want to be drawn into a long and pointless conversation, so I plan to reply to this and then exit the thread. Might change my mind, of course.

Ok, so here is the perfect spot to clear this up for me.

So, at any time outside or during the game, the player will tell the DM what they want. Then the DM, during the game, will make whatever the player wanted. Is there something I'm missing here?

And it seems like the DM has no plot/plan/adventure/input of their own: they only make what the players tell them to make. Most sure seem to say this.

Framing this as the GM "making things" that the players tell them to make is just wrong. Insofar as anything is being "made" here, it's being made by everyone, collaboratively, with each player (including the GM) having one or more areas in which they get the final word. Everyone provides input and ideas, and as GM, I have plenty of opportunities to exercise creativity. What's more, establishing that one player has the final word doesn't preclude other players pushing back on ideas they don't like. My group doesn't do that very often, because we've been playing together for over ten years and we are generally on the same page creatively, but it does happen. When it does, we act like reasonable people and figure out something that everyone can accept.

Ok, I will try to use exactly what you typed:

You said your role as DM was to ask questions. You don't say, you as DM get to throw in any ideas. I guess you did not specifically say you did not, but you don't state it.

But even if you had even the slightest hint of an idea....you do say the players have final say. So....how is this not the powerless DM doing whatever the player says? The player says something and you say "yes player". Sure I guess they can be nice about it and pretend to "ask" you...while they know you will automatically do whatever they say.

Asking questions is, generally, a way of generating and eliciting ideas, but to be explicit: everyone, including the GM, can throw in ideas. I also don't know why you're obsessed with power relationships between the GM and the other players. It's a weird lens to use for talking about what I see as a collaborative activity, wherein my friends and I get to play a fun creative game together. But in this case, there are topics on which the GM gets the final word, so the notion that the GM has to do whatever the player says is mistaken.

In fact, Fellowship is fairly up-front on who gets the final word on any particular question. Players get the final word about their characters and their cultures of origin. The game has a move called Command Lore. For everyone but the GM, that move looks like this:

When someone asks something about your character or your people, tell them. When you ask about another character or their people, they will tell you the answer. When you ask about the Overlord, they alone may choose not to answer.

Formatting from the source. Fellowship is a bit odd in that the GM has a character of their own, the villain the PCs are attempting to stop, and as the Overlord, the GM gets to Command Lore as well. Here's what the Overlord playbook says:

The Overlord is not like the other playbooks in Fellowship. One player will always need to play as the Overlord. This player has a different role than the others - while everyone else is a member of the fellowship, attempting to save the world, you play as the Overlord trying to destroy it. You also have final say in most aspects of the world - you tell the fellowship about the problems in their path, and present new complications when things go wrong. Your job is to keep the game interesting, and keep the game flowing, and make sure everyone has fun playing.

And a bit later:

...you can Command Lore about anyone you have a Bond with who is not a part of the fellowship.

Bonds are a mechanical thing, not relevant here. The upshot is that the GM has the final word on most of the features of the world, but again, it's a collaborative process, so everyone can make proposals. In addition to Command Lore, PCs can ask questions of the GM as well, and when they do that, it's often done using a different move called Look Closely. Here's the text:

When you closely examine a situation or a location, roll +Sense.

On a 7+, ask three questions from the list. Anyone can answer, but the Overlord has the final say.

On a 9-, you find one of those answers the hard way. On a 6-, you may only ask one question.

Formatting from the source, again. I've left out the list of questions, as it's not relevant; what is relevant is that providing the final answers to these questions are explicitly left in the hands of the GM, but everyone is allowed to offer potential answers or build on what someone else has said.

One crucial thing that's solely the GM's purview in Fellowship is the nature of the Overlord, the adversary threatening the players and the world at large. For our game, I came up with five or so potential Overlords before play even started and pitched them to the PCs to see which one(s) elicited most interest, but that's not required, and in the end we ended up going with the one I was most interested in anyway. The other players made their characters with the Overlord as the backdrop - they knew who they'd be fighting against and let that inform the character creation process.

Again: How is this not what I said? The Dm comes up with few or no ideas and lets the players lead everything.

You say it right here! The DM has no idea 'why' the ogre walks over: it is 100% random. Then the DM asks the players "why did the ogre walk over?" And whatever the players say the DM nods and says "yes players" and does exactly what the players said.

Now...see...you switch gears here though. Now your just taking the vague 'whatever' the players said and utterly doing whatever you want....but sure keeping the 'illusion' of what the players said.

Sure the players gave you the tiny seed, but then you just created whatever you wanted.

Your portrayal of what I described is inaccurate. I told the player that something important to the ogres was under threat. In game terms I was doing a GM move, what Fellowship calls a Cut - in this case, it was both "reveal an unwelcome truth" and "show signs of an approaching threat." This wasn't prompted by anything the player did or said; it was me, as the GM, dictating a truth about the world. The player told me what it was that was threatened. I took their answer and added to it, describing what the threat was in more detail. In this way we came up with a story collaboratively, with both of us contributing elements. I think in the case it was just me and one other player talking, but in other situations multiple players have chimed in with suggestions.

I also take issue with the way you're describing the exchange as the player offering "a tiny seed." They provided a detailed and substantive answer to a question, which served as the foundation for me to add more on. The whole process is cooperative, with all parties involved coming up with ideas and weaving them into the rest of the narrative. I didn't create "whatever I wanted." Rather, I took the player's statement about what was under threat and added more to it, elaborating on the nature of the the threat. And if I didn't like what the player said, I could have asked for something else. I could have said "Hmmm, the Great Mother sounds cool, but I was thinking something more like a location or an important cultural artifact," or what-have-you, and then the player would have gone back to the drawing board. Or I could have said that, but then thrown in an idea of my own - "What do you think about a place where the nomadic ogre clans meet regularly?" That's the nature of collaboration.

I would think that any group could stop playing the game and create a bunch of stuff in about 45 minutes.

Creating stuff is done in play; it's part of the game. When you're coming up with stuff, you are playing the game.

EDIT: fixed busted formatting.

 

[pemerton]

Well, my mode here is just pure guess work...as I have said.

Given that it is not hard to read actual play reports, view actual play videos, or read rulebooks, I don't know why you're stuck with guesswork. As far as rules are concerned:

You can download the core framing and resolution rules for Burning Wheel for free: Burning Wheel Gold Revised: Hub and Spokes PDF

You can download a version of the core engine for Maelstrom Storytelling - which is an early scene-framed, player-driven RPG - for free: DriveThruRPG

You can read the core of the Blades in the Dark system for free: The Basics | Blades in the Dark RPG

You can download the core of Agon 2e (the Paragon SRD) for free: AGON: Forge your legend in the trials of glory.

You can download Lasers & Feelings for pay-what-you want: Lasers & Feelings by John Harper

You can read the core of Dungeon World for free: Dungeon World SRD

You can download Ironsworn for free: Free Ironsworn Downloads​

If you look at these rules, you'll see a few different ways of structuring the "conversation" of RPGing. For instance, Burning Wheel, and even moreso Story Bones, lean heavily into the GM framing scenes that speak to concerns/interests/stakes that have been established by the players. Agon, and to a lesser extent BitD, rely on the game and its genre to provide the stakes - both are rather genre/situation-oriented in that respect, Agon especially so; but the players are expected to express their PCs and their PC's concerns in choosing how to approach action resolution, and in BitD in particular the way things unfold will ramify back on the characters, which will in turn feed through into what comes next. Dungeon World, in its basic structure of play, is very close to Apocalypse World and as a result is very player-led, similarly to what @CandyLaser has described for Fellowship.

So, at any time outside or during the game, the player will tell the DM what they want. Then the DM, during the game, will make whatever the player wanted. Is there something I'm missing here?

And it seems like the DM has no plot/plan/adventure/input of their own: they only make what the players tell them to make. Most sure seem to say this.

So you've already had these misapprehensions responded to in the context of a PbtA-type game.

Here are some relevant extracts from BW Hubs and Spokes (pp 9-11, 30-32), that set out the basic process of play for that game:

In the game, players take on the roles of characters inspired by history and works of fantasy fiction. These characters are a list of abilities rated with numbers and a list of player-determined priorities. The synergy of inspiration, imagination, numbers and priorities is the most fundamental element of Burning Wheel. Expressing these numbers and priorities within situations presented by the game master (GM) is what the game is all about. . . .

The players interact with one another to come to decisions and have the characters undertake actions.

One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of those characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.

Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. Even if the players decide to take on the roles of destitute wastrels, no matter how unsavory their exploits, they are the focus of the story. The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . .

[W]hat happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task.

This is important enough to say again: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test. . .

When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . .

When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication.​

So, as you can read for yourself, the players, as part of the build and play of their PCs, introduce certain priorities. The GM frames scenes that speak to those player-determined priorities. The players, playing their PCs, are thereby provoked to declare actions for their PCs. These actions are resolved via dice rolls. If the player's roll is a success, the PC succeeds at the declared task, and achieves their intent. If the roll fails, the GM re-frames the scene in a way that (i) means that the intent did not come to pass, and (ii) that provokes the player to a new action declaration, still based on their priorities for their PCs.

This back-and-forth between player and GM is what makes the game collaborative. The rise-and-fall of success and failure, all focused around the player's priorities for their PC, is what gives the unfolding events of the game a story-like rhythm (of rising action, crisis, resolution and denouement).

The PC-building rules and the setting-building rules for the game provide a lot of support and structure for the players to establish their priorities for their PCs. My own PCs for this system tend to have priorities based around their family relationships, other friendships or rivalries, their social aspirations for themselves or others, and the like.

You said your role as DM was to ask questions. You don't say, you as DM get to throw in any ideas. I guess you did not specifically say you did not, but you don't state it.

But even if you had even the slightest hint of an idea....you do say the players have final say. So....how is this not the powerless DM doing whatever the player says? The player says something and you say "yes player". Sure I guess they can be nice about it and pretend to "ask" you...while they know you will automatically do whatever they say.

<snip>

How is this not what I said? The Dm comes up with few or no ideas and lets the players lead everything.

If you look at the descriptions, above, of how BW works, you will see how the GM introduces their ideas.

Principally, the GM needs to come up with ideas for how the players' priorities for their PCs are put under pressure. Upthread I linked to a BW actual play report: you will see that, in the opening scene of that session, I put pressure on one of the PCs' beliefs - I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother - by having a peddler offer an angel feather for sale.

When, in due course, the player failed a test in relation to the feather, I introduced my own idea: the feather is an angel feather, resistant to fire, but is also cursed. And if you read on through the actual play report, you will see how that curse was interwoven by me into other elements of framing and resolution, involving the PC's player-authored relationship to a cabal of sorcerers.

You say it right here! The DM has no idea 'why' the ogre walks over: it is 100% random. Then the DM asks the players "why did the ogre walk over?" And whatever the players say the DM nods and says "yes players" and does exactly what the players said.

Now...see...you switch gears here though. Now your just taking the vague 'whatever' the players said and utterly doing whatever you want....but sure keeping the 'illusion' of what the players said.

Sure the players gave you the tiny seed, but then you just created whatever you wanted.

These parts of your post make me think that you don't have much experience with the sort of RPGing that @hawkeyefan, @CandyLaser, @innerdude and I are describing. You seem to struggle with the idea of collaboration and building ideas together - the player says something, the GM says something that builds on that, the player responds further, etc - "riffing" on one another's ideas and suggestions to build up a shared imagining of people, places, events etc.

You also seem to think that if all the details of a person, place, event etc are not pinned down all at once, then the thing must be "random". But that needn't be the case at all. This is illustrated by the angel feather: at first I introduce the angel feather; then - following a failed test - that it is cursed; then, in a subsequent session, that the curse is related to a mummy, and the looting of a tomb. This sort of development and "snowballing" of ideas and their trajectories is how a RPG can produce some of the structural dynamics of a story - foreshadowing, rising action, etc - even though it is not all authored in advance by a single person.