Be a GAME-MASTER, not a DIRECTOR

[Scott Christian]

Wow, that's a pretty toxic player mindset you are calling "legitimate" there. I thought about quoting a couple particularly apt lines from smells like teen spirit summarizing that bolded bit, but it was just too reductive for how awful that player you describe is to their table. You seem to have taken comments about overprepping to meet unrealistic expectations placed on GM's then used them to justify a level of disinterest from players that shows complete disdain for their fellow players

Yeah, rereading it sounds toxic. But my thought is really, we've all seen players like this. I have played with several of them, and, while I prefer players that are much more prepped, these players do play. Therefore, there really isn't a need to dismiss them, just like the video dismisses DMs that do a lot of prep.

That is the point I was trying to make. We've seen no-prep DMs, and we've seen prep DMs, and we've seen high-prep DMs. They are all legitimate DMs. There is a chance we've had fun with all of them. There is an even greater chance we've had more fun with the DMs who prepped - especially in a longer campaign.

We've all seen no-prep players, prep players, and high-prep players. They are all legitimate players. We have probably had fun with all of them at one point in time at a table we've DMed or played at. There is a much greater chance we've had fun with the ones that prep or high-prep.

 

[Scott Christian]

You seem to have taken comments about overprepping to meet unrealistic expectations placed on GM's then used them to justify a level of disinterest from players that shows complete disdain for their fellow players

Not at all. Unrealistic expectation placed on a GM are not real. They are either placed there by the GM themselves, or they are playing with the wrong players, or they aren't capable (or willing) of doing the work needed to be a good GM.

Note - Wrong players meaning they just aren't a right fit for that GM.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

While I do my best not to be a director, I do sometimes get frustrated when players seemingly go out of their way not to engage the adventure. I ran an Angel (of Buffy fame) campaign years ago, and I had a player who really loved dragons so I included one in the campaign. We spent sessions building up the character's relationship with Sir Kay (of Arthurian fame) with plenty of foreshadowing of a dragon to come. When the big day came and the dragon appeared, the PC pretty much said, "Nah, not interested," and went to go do something else instead. Kind of pissed me off a bit.

Back in the day, I built a D&D world in the far north; snow, ice, several civilizations (one led by sentient ice boulders) and prepped a few opening encounters. My players, when told about it, said "nah, we prefer the warmth. Heading south"

A quarter century later, I still have that ready to run ...

It is very frustrating, but I try to sign stuff so I can re-use it if possible. Proponents of zero-prep GMing might use this as an opportunity to point out the advantages of never wasting effort, but I prefer to prep stuff and ⅔ of the time have a well-planned session that is deeper and more connected than an unprepared adventure can be.

And then ⅓ of the time, you end up with a perfectly good dragon on your hands and add them to your pile of "things that might come up later" while your players deal with a generic vampire cult in the sewers.

Because they had fun doing that and you achieved your goal of directing the players to the fun. You did good!

 

[Celebrim]

That is the point I was trying to make. We've seen no-prep DMs, and we've seen prep DMs, and we've seen high-prep DMs. They are all legitimate DMs. There is a chance we've had fun with all of them. There is an even greater chance we've had more fun with the DMs who prepped - especially in a longer campaign.

I'm happy to take it further. I have played with high-prep GMs that can't GM because they don't really know how to prep for a RPG and they instead prep for a short story or a novel or whatever. But I have never played with a low prep GM that was worth a dime. An RPG can't properly be run without improvisation, but it also can't properly be run only on improvisation.

 

[Umbran]

An RPG can't properly be run without improvisation, but it also can't properly be run only on improvisation.

I think there's a ton of stuff stuffed into the one word, "properly," such that a lot of playstyle assumptions are hidden.

 

[Celebrim]

I think there's a ton of stuff stuffed into the one word, "properly," such that a lot of playstyle assumptions are hidden.

I'd have to think about that. For example, in my first clause I think that I'm happy to remove "properly", because an RPG that requires no improvisation, I think would cease to meet my definition of an RPG and become something like a board game. Nethack and most cRPGs don't have any improvisation by definition, but also it's not clear to me that the term "RPG" refers to the same game as the ttRPGs they are derived from. They are inspired by RPGs but were only able to copy part of the experience. The same is true of something like Gloomhaven or Mice & Mystics (which is almost a cRPG in paper form). They clearly copy some elements from RPGs but doesn't to me meet the definition of an RPG.

So I'm not sure playstyle assumptions are hidden by that first clause so much as what I mean by an RPG. The first clause excludes a board game.

The second clause may bundle up some playstyle assumptions, but I think that they may be sufficiently broad that that doesn't matter. It's easier IMO to improvise a novel than an RPG because at least as a novelist you have full creative control and a passive audience, and even writers that were very good at improvising novels - say Phillip K Dick - I think show evidence in their writing that they would have been better off with more planning and conscious revision and less churning out words to get drug money.

 

[Umbran]

They are inspired by RPGs but were only able to copy part of the experience.

So I'm not sure playstyle assumptions are hidden by that first clause so much as what I mean by an RPG.

Ah. That vastly limits my interest in discussing the matter. I'm not interested in your personal definition of what does, or does not, count as an RPG.

I generally avoid what looks to me like an exclusive definition of the genre - I find them unhelpful, and prefer inclusive definitions.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I'd have to think about that. For example, in my first clause I think that I'm happy to remove "properly", because an RPG that requires no improvisation, I think would cease to meet my definition of an RPG and become something like a board game.

Although I understand where you're coming from, I'm not sure I'd agree that there is a hard dividing line between a board game and an RPG. As a thought exercise, let's imagine a one-hour game with defined characters where the goal is to break into bank. Modern day spy genre.

I could make a choose-your-own adventure book for this, with various options and branching logic as per usual. If the book was 20 pages long, most people would feel very constrained and not like an RPG. But suppose the book was 1,000,000 pages long and covered any reasonable in-genre choice. It might be completely indistinguishable from a real GM to most players.

Now suppose that we augment our million page book with an LLM interface that responds to unusual inputs, builds a short scene and then points back into the book. Pretty easy to write even with current tech. Is the LLM improvising?

Nethack and most cRPGs don't have any improvisation by definition,

This again I am not sure of. The defintion of improvisation I am using is "creating content without having planned that content". If in Nethack I dig a hole in a floor and drop a monster into the shop, and then confuse it -- then that situation was not specifically planned for in the code so isn't the games reaction then fitting within the definition of improvisation?

You could argue that although the coders didn't plan for that exact scenario, they did plan for all the parts and how they would interact, but the isn't that the same for me when I run a game? I have learned rule on how the world works, how the genre works and how the specific game rules work and I combine them with some randomness thrown in?

It's easier IMO to improvise a novel than an RPG because at least as a novelist you have full creative control and a passive audience, and even writers that were very good at improvising novels - say Phillip K Dick - I think show evidence in their writing that they would have been better off with more planning and conscious revision and less churning out words to get drug money.

My experience does match yours in that I personally enjoy a game with more and deeper planning. Where I think we may differ is that I don't think that is a universal truth.

As a final thought, maybe the scale of the experience is worth considering in this discussion. I've much preferred the 6+ session arcs and year+ campaigns I've been in where the GM prepped strongly to those where they just followed the campaign book script with little extra work. But for indiviual sessions, I've had a lot of fun with no-pren sessions WITHIN a planned campaign. And I think we'd both agree that scenes that are completely improvised can be very good.

Which is why improv actors are a ton of fun for a 10 minute skit, but we don't see improv 3 hour character dramas very often.

 

[Celebrim]

Ah. That vastly limits my interest in discussing the matter. I'm not interested in your personal definition of what does, or does not, count as an RPG.

I generally avoid what looks to me like an exclusive definition of the genre - I find them unhelpful, and prefer inclusive definitions.

Sure, but we certainly mean something by them. When you or I say "RPG" we generally know we don't mean Monopoly and know also that the hearer won't understand us to mean Monopoly. So while an inclusive definition might be useful, a definition that is so inclusive as to be meaningless isn't useful.

 

[Celebrim]

Although I understand where you're coming from, I'm not sure I'd agree that there is a hard dividing line between a board game and an RPG. As a thought exercise, let's imagine a one-hour game with defined characters where the goal is to break into bank. Modern day spy genre.

I could make a choose-your-own adventure book for this, with various options and branching logic as per usual. If the book was 20 pages long, most people would feel very constrained and not like an RPG. But suppose the book was 1,000,000 pages long and covered any reasonable in-genre choice. It might be completely indistinguishable from a real GM to most players.

Now suppose that we augment our million page book with an LLM interface that responds to unusual inputs, builds a short scene and then points back into the book. Pretty easy to write even with current tech. Is the LLM improvising?

So, I think you do agree with me in this example. If the book is 20 pages long, it won't feel like an RPG. The same would be true of a book that is 200 pages long or even one that was 2000 pages long and supported say 50 different endings (44 deaths and 6 different good endings for example).

But the LLM model is clearly improvising. For some level of ability, the LLM is replacing a human DM and providing that improvisational skill. And for that matter, I'd argue that your hypothetical "1,000,000 page" book is congruent to a trained LLM on a particular domain. It's when you get up to those large numbers that we start seeing emergent property that feels like creativity and improvisation. If we get up to say a quintillion page book that supports thousands of links between pages, then we are getting up to a LLM in terms of skillfulness in responding to input.

This again I am not sure of. The definition of improvisation I am using is "creating content without having planned that content". If in Nethack I dig a hole in a floor and drop a monster into the shop, and then confuse it -- then that situation was not specifically planned for in the code so isn't the games reaction then fitting within the definition of improvisation?

No. True "not planned for that content" throws a run time error and the game breaks. In the case of Nethack, long years of refinement by the developers means that not only does the game not break when you do something "creative" but the developers typically have already anticipated it and coded the most appropriate response within the games conceit. "The DevTeam Thinks Of Everything" is so well known as to be a trope, but that is not the same as improvisation unless we start getting up to the level of your hypothetical LLM that emulates human intelligence and thus appears to improvise. At a fundamental level, as vast as your move options are at any point, they really come down to 50 or 60 commands some of which have one of 10 directions and others of which utilize the finite list of things that can be in your inventory. While the developers might have planned for any of the thousands of combinations that provides, it's still not a true RPG.

My experience does match yours in that I personally enjoy a game with more and deeper planning. Where I think we may differ is that I don't think that is a universal truth.

I remain skeptical until demonstrated otherwise.

As a final thought, maybe the scale of the experience is worth considering in this discussion. I've much preferred the 6+ session arcs and year+ campaigns I've been in where the GM prepped strongly to those where they just followed the campaign book script with little extra work. But for individual sessions, I've had a lot of fun with no-pren sessions WITHIN a planned campaign. And I think we'd both agree that scenes that are completely improvised can be very good.

Which is why improv actors are a ton of fun for a 10 minute skit, but we don't see improv 3 hour character dramas very often.

Totally agree. Exactly. It's possible to improvise a scene well, particularly if you've got a lot of experience and some ideas you've been toying around with. But there is a certain level of complexity and coherence and consistent illusion of serendipity that we see in the best long form stories (a long series of scenes, definitely "more than three") whether novels or RPGs that exceed human ability to implement without planning. To implement a good long form story without planning and effort would require greater inexplicable savant ability than someone who can multiply two large numbers together in their head. That's an objective claim, because we know the computation required to multiply two numbers is much less than in an LLM, regardless of whether humans take round about routes to get there.

Every example of a claim of being able to run an RPG without putting in that prep work that I've seen is explainable by Dunning and Kruger's observations. Which of course, doesn't prove that there isn't someone out there that can do it, but only that I've not seen any evidence of it in a score or so GMs.

And I mean as a practical matter, if you go to a convention game and the GM has prepared nothing and tells you that he plans to improvise everything, one's intuition about that is probably going to be, "We're screwed and why did I waste my time and money?" Now, have I seen the game's creator do wonderful improvisation at a convention game. Yes. But they did that "improvisation" within a framework both of a well planned scenario and deep understanding of and experience with the setting so that they "know" all sorts of facts about it that they can bring to bear.