Be a GAME-MASTER, not a DIRECTOR

[clearstream]

I've been mulling the proposal that RPG's biggest differences from other story-telling media is that there is no editing and authorship responsibilities are distributed among contributors. Each of those qualities could unpack into much that is salient to the sort of story-telling that happens in TTRPG.

Regarding the first, I was thinking about the composite nature of the various ludic fictions and facts that make up roleplaying game play. For instance, a fictional map might be imagined and drawn, talked about and redrawn. A table might be designed and consulted, and its entries imagined. A character might be constructed in advance following written rules for doing so, and then imagined, talked about, and reimagined. A die might have faces with special meanings, that when rolled direct imagination in one rather than another direction. There are signifiers of many kinds: some are prepared before play, some of those that are prepared before play are edited, some are put forward only in play. Who may put forward which, when, is normally down to roles and rules that are to some extent agreed in advance.

To get more concrete, were I to use Stonetop's The Wider World and Other Wonders, say the maps on the first few pages and the entry on Barrow Builders -- describing barrows when play moves to the Steplands, and on entering (probably a bad idea!) picturing tools of human sacrifice courting the Things Below -- all those designed and edited fictions are part of my play. The crucial skein of fiction that isn't edited is that which is contributed at the table, making use of those curated signifiers.

There seems to be something more to those signfiers than say the individual words making up a story in a book. They're more like the collections of words formed into deliberate paragraphs describing something which may be exceptional, such as descriptions of Roshar in Sanderson's The Way of Kings. That is, as well as describing goings on, they can establish new norms relating to what will go on to be said.

One way of looking at roleplaying game play is to see it as (solely) the unedited conversation itself. Another way is to look at it as a composite fiction made up of that conversation along with other elements, such as maps and tables. That could better explain the distinctiveness of the fictions woven from a given game text, such as how the incorporation of say a map or table into the conversation takes what is imagined one way rather than another. Even with this second perspective, the unedited conversation is crucial: it's the fiction created and experienced at the table.

 

[niklinna]

I've been mulling the proposal that RPG's biggest differences from other story-telling media is that there is no editing and authorship responsibilities are distributed among contributors. Each of those qualities could unpack into much that is salient to the sort of story-telling that happens in TTRPG.

Regarding the first, I was thinking about the composite nature of the various ludic fictions and facts that make up roleplaying game play. For instance, a fictional map might be imagined and drawn, talked about and redrawn. A table might be designed and consulted, and its entries imagined. A character might be constructed in advance following written rules for doing so, and then imagined, talked about, and reimagined. A die might have faces with special meanings, that when rolled direct imagination in one rather than another direction. There are signifiers of many kinds: some are prepared before play, some of those that are prepared before play are edited, some are put forward only in play. Who may put forward which, when, is normally down to roles and rules that are to some extent agreed in advance.

To get more concrete, were I to use Stonetop's The Wider World and Other Wonders, say the maps on the first few pages and the entry on Barrow Builders -- describing barrows when play moves to the Steplands, and on entering (probably a bad idea!) picturing tools of human sacrifice courting the Things Below -- all those designed and edited fictions are part of my play. The crucial skein of fiction that isn't edited is that which is contributed at the table, making use of those curated signifiers.

There seems to be something more to those signfiers than say the individual words making up a story in a book. They're more like the collections of words formed into deliberate paragraphs describing something which may be exceptional, such as descriptions of Roshar in Sanderson's The Way of Kings. That is, as well as describing goings on, they can establish new norms relating to what will go on to be said.

One way of looking at roleplaying game play is to see it as (solely) the unedited conversation itself. Another way is to look at it as a composite fiction made up of that conversation along with other elements, such as maps and tables. That could better explain the distinctiveness of the fictions woven from a given game text, such as how the incorporation of say a map or table into the conversation takes what is imagined one way rather than another. Even with this second perspective, the unedited conversation is crucial: it's the fiction created and experienced at the table.

Huh?

 

[TiQuinn]

Yes, there's overlap, but in my experience that serves mostly to lead people to think that GMing is like writing a novel or directing a movie or play. It's close enough to trip people up, but it's not the same. Trying to GM as though you are the author (only the author, the only author) is a well-known error-state, after all.

I feel like Choose Your Own Adventure style books prepared me more for understanding how a DM functions at a high level than anything.

 

[pemerton]

I was thinking about the composite nature of the various ludic fictions and facts that make up roleplaying game play. For instance, a fictional map might be imagined and drawn, talked about and redrawn. A table might be designed and consulted, and its entries imagined. A character might be constructed in advance following written rules for doing so, and then imagined, talked about, and reimagined. A die might have faces with special meanings, that when rolled direct imagination in one rather than another direction. There are signifiers of many kinds: some are prepared before play, some of those that are prepared before play are edited, some are put forward only in play.

We already have a word for these, from Emily Care Boss and Vincent Baker - cues. (anyway: post a comment)

Who may put forward which, when, is normally down to roles and rules that are to some extent agreed in advance.

Yes. RPGs are games, played in accordance with rules.

Baker gives an example in the post I linked to:

So here's a rule: "1. Don't mess with the dark forest to the North, it's Vincent's."

This rule coordinates the interactions of us, the players, with the made-up stuff in the game. The rule says that if the in-game stuff comes to include our characters entering the forest, we change our interactions in a particular way: we defer to me, Vincent, about what's what.​

That coordination by rules can also extend to who uses what sorts of cues, and how. Consider, eg, the various use of clocks in Apocalypse World.

were I to use Stonetop's The Wider World and Other Wonders, say the maps on the first few pages and the entry on Barrow Builders -- describing barrows when play moves to the Steplands, and on entering (probably a bad idea!) picturing tools of human sacrifice courting the Things Below -- all those designed and edited fictions are part of my play. The crucial skein of fiction that isn't edited is that which is contributed at the table, making use of those curated signifiers.

The cue might include some edited fiction. But it is not part of the fiction - the shared fiction of RPG play - until someone makes it such.

There seems to be something more to those signfiers than say the individual words making up a story in a book. They're more like the collections of words formed into deliberate paragraphs describing something which may be exceptional, such as descriptions of Roshar in Sanderson's The Way of Kings. That is, as well as describing goings on, they can establish new norms relating to what will go on to be said.

I'm not sure how being exceptional comes into it - for instance, when GMing a session of Wuthering Heights I needed to work out some details of the carrying of a body to dump it into the Thames. So I Googled a map of London.

That helped us (me and the players) form a shared understanding of how feasible that action was (quite) and how long it would take (not very). But it didn't involve exceptionality.

 

[Scott Christian]

Isn't it obvious to everyone that a GM shares things in common with a director and author, but is also neither of those things?

 

[bloodtide]

The last quoted passage seems to be in contradiction to the first two.

Or, at least, this is a theory of RPGing that seems almost guaranteed to produce conflict at the table: everyone must fall in line with an "on a whim" editor, yet is at the same time free to author fiction "on a whim".

It is because you see the actions of the GM and Players as equal. In most RPGs, they are not. The GM controls everything, except the players each control their character.

So more detailed it would be: The DM can edit anything on a whim and freely alter game reality, and the player has the extremely limited illusion of free will to have thier character take actions within the GMs world.

I feel like Choose Your Own Adventure style books prepared me more for understanding how a DM functions at a high level than anything.

Me too! And I still have quite a collection of them.

Isn't it obvious to everyone that a GM shares things in common with a director and author, but is also neither of those things?

Maybe not to everyone?

 

[Umbran]

Isn't it obvious to everyone that a GM shares things in common with a director and author, but is also neither of those things?

Maybe not to everyone?

And, it is also common to oversimplify to make a point.

If, for example, a speaker finds a GM being an author to be the real badwrongfun, then that speaker may leave out noting the director aspect, and only speak about the authorial aspects.

 

[clearstream]

Huh?

I'm questioning what is counted into the fiction in a session of a roleplaying game. @pemerton seems to draw the line around the conversation among participants.

Looking at what is happening in such sessions, it's common to (for example) observe a point in the conversation where a table is consulted and an entry from that table incorporated into the conversation. The conversation then takes a different course than it might have barring that inflection point.

I wouldn't say that there is necessarily any definitive answer to this, only that I can see motives for drawing the line around the cues as well as the utterances of participants. That is because I can readily point to numerous inclusions in the story of such fictional elements: that in one form or another become part of said story.

The cue might include some edited fiction. But it is not part of the fiction - the shared fiction of RPG play - until someone makes it such.

True. Once someone makes a cue* part of the fiction, it is part of the fiction. If I take your thought here correctly, you mean to exclude cues that no one has yet made part of the fiction. Thus if one specifically wants to hedge out editing, then one could say something like - the act of including is unedited even if the included cue was edited (and even if it were incorporated unaltered, such as the precise name and parameters of a creature.)

Relatedly, I have been mulling whether another differentiating feature of ludonarrative is that it is implied... which if right could motivate me to want to draw the line around cues that have been curated for inclusion, even if at a given time they have not yet been, so long as their availability influences the narrative. Such as when a player has a move written on their character sheet that they have not yet invoked.

I'm not sure how being exceptional comes into it - for instance, when GMing a session of Wuthering Heights I needed to work out some details of the carrying of a body to dump it into the Thames. So I Googled a map of London.

"Which may be exceptional" or may not be. I intended only to point toward the way in which one part of fiction may anchor other parts in a fashion that seems normative. Such as setting play in London rather than Yorkshire, making it feasible for participants that a body might be dumped in the Thames.


*As an aside, "signifiers" is a term used in narratology. Roleplaying games are taken to exemplify an overlap between games and narrative, which among other things makes me wonder whether signifiers and cues are just different labels for the same thing?

 

[aramis erak]

It's hard for me to evaluate a video such as this because I don't think it is really meant for someone like myself... who has many years (if not decades) of running games. This information within the video is very surface level stuff-- just as surface level as the Mercer and Ginny Di videos he clipped...

Ginny Di's videos have a variety of depths. Some are, as you say, "surface level" ... some are deeper. many give me things to consider... despite ≥42 years GMing, and having used over a hundred systems.

She also avoids claiming others' thoughs as her own - she's often citing her sources.

Her videos, as a generality, have material for multiple levels of GMing and playing experience... If nothing else, I can think of a designer or two from the old school who could use some reminders about the younger generations playing... and that the needs haven't changed that much...

 

[pemerton]

I'm questioning what is counted into the fiction in a session of a roleplaying game. @pemerton seems to draw the line around the conversation among participants.

I "draw the line" around the shared fiction.

I guess people can try and incorporate by reference - the whole of that tome's content is part of our shared fiction - but in practice that won't work, because not everyone can hold the whole of the tome in their head at once. So what people actually agree on will prevail over what is in the tome, where the two come apart. This can cause issues in games that aspire to adhere to some prior canon - it's necessary to make notes about the game's departure from the canon, or perhaps down the track for everyone to agree to change their mind about what happened in the shared fiction.

it's common to (for example) observe a point in the conversation where a table is consulted and an entry from that table incorporated into the conversation. The conversation then takes a different course than it might have barring that inflection point.

Yes. This would be the use of a cue. I mean, it's not as if Vincent Baker hadn't noticed this back in 2003:

What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush? . . .

sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll, a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing.​

If a table is being used as a mechanic "to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table", then we would expect that referring to it makes a difference to what is said next. Otherwise it would be a failed mechanic!

I wouldn't say that there is necessarily any definitive answer to this

I don't even know what the question is!

I can readily point to numerous inclusions in the story of such fictional elements: that in one form or another become part of said story.

We can draw technical distinctions here, if you like.

For instance, the shared fiction is - in some sense - asserted jointly by the game participants. (Though the assertion is in some sort of fictional rather than doxastic mode.)

Whereas an entry on a table is not asserted. It is presented by its author as mere possibility.

And while a tome of lore is asserted by its author (again, in some sort of fictional mode), that assertion is not part of any other table's shared fiction. If you like, we could index the fictions and say that the tome of law is asserted as a component of fiction L (the tome-author's fiction) but not as a component of fiction T (the table's shared fiction). Only when some gameplay procedure leads the table to consult a cue and adjust its fiction in response - including, say, by reiterating something from fiction L within the context of fiction T - does it become part of the shared fiction.

Once someone makes a cue* part of the fiction, it is part of the fiction. If I take your thought here correctly, you mean to exclude cues that no one has yet made part of the fiction. Thus if one specifically wants to hedge out editing, then one could say something like - the act of including is unedited even if the included cue was edited (and even if it were incorporated unaltered, such as the precise name and parameters of a creature.)

To follow on from my preceding paragraph, one doesn't make a cue part of the fiction. I mean, there's no harm in speaking in that way as a matter of casual description, but it won't do for technical analysis.

The assertion found in the cue is asserted as a component of fiction L. The assertion found in gameplay is asserted as a component of fiction T. The two assertions may be the same item at a certain level of linguistic abstraction (eg they are lexically and syntactically identical), but they are not the same item considered as speech acts, in part because they are indexed to different fictions. Failure to notice that point causes needless confusion - eg it causes confusion in explaining how I can run a Greyhawk game, and you can run a Greyhawk game, yet not everything in your table's fiction is part of my table's fiction, and not even everything in Gygax's gazetteer is part of my table's fiction. Whereas maintaining a clear sense of what fiction we are indexing some particular fictional-mode-assertion to makes this fairly easy - and to say that I am running a Greyhawk game is not to say anything, directly, about the content of my table's fiction; but rather is to say something directly about what is included in my cues, which might then suggested some further (defeasible) inferences about what my table's fiction might include.

Relatedly, I have been mulling whether another differentiating feature of ludonarrative is that it is implied... which if right could motivate me to want to draw the line around cues that have been curated for inclusion, even if at a given time they have not yet been, so long as their availability influences the narrative. Such as when a player has a move written on their character sheet that they have not yet invoked.

<snip>

"Which may be exceptional" or may not be. I intended only to point toward the way in which one part of fiction may anchor other parts in a fashion that seems normative. Such as setting play in London rather than Yorkshire, making it feasible for participants that a body might be dumped in the Thames.

I assume that your word "feasible" is meant to be an instance of the sort of normativity you refer to? I think the use of "normative" here has the potential to be misleading, because all fiction and indeed probably all speech is normative in that sense (maybe absurdist literature is an exception?) and so it doesn't point to any distinctive feature of RPGing.

Likewise the implied elements. If I go into my kitchen and reach for a mixing bowl, then - everything else being equal - that implies the possibility of a cake or some other prepared food item. If I pick up some dice and start shaking them, then - everything else being equal - that implies the possibility of generating a random number and paying some attention to it in my ensuing activity. And if I identify a particular thing - say, a character sheet - as a cue for my RPGing, then that implies the possibility of drawing on that cue in the course of my RPGing.

These are just ordinary features of deliberate human behaviour, aren't they?

*As an aside, "signifiers" is a term used in narratology. Roleplaying games are taken to exemplify an overlap between games and narrative, which among other things makes me wonder whether signifiers and cues are just different labels for the same thing?

I assume that "signifier" as used in narratology comes from Sausurrian linguistics. It means something like "meaning-bearing item". What is useful about the terminology of cues, in my view, is that it enables us to achieve more precision in our consideration of the sorts of meaning-bearing items that figure in RPG play, and also of the way in which they bear meaning and contribute to the activity.