Benevolent GM stance

[Enrahim]

The BGM often helps out by not being even slightly aggressive. Having NPCs only do 'medium' attacks at best. Or much like most movies or TV shows....the foes will endlessly wait for the players to act and will never take advantage of anything.

And this even goes beyond to "no character death" or "character harm" and even to "nothing the players don't like ever".

Is this an ideal you adhere to, or a caricature of a style of play you don't like?

 

[bloodtide]

Is this an ideal you adhere to, or a caricature of a style of play you don't like?

Neither.

The average Benevolent (I would say Buddy) DM will freely admit they never or almost never kill PCs or do any real semi-permanent harmful effects to a PC. It is not even close to a secret.

And having nothing in the game the players don't like is the whole foundation of player lead games, and the players will never lead the game to places they don't like.

I'm not saying anything about the above game styles other then to say they exist.

 

[Enrahim]

.The average Benevolent (I would say Buddy) DM will freely admit they never or almost never kill PCs or do any real semi-permanent harmful effects to a PC. It is not even close to a secret.

Ok there we have it. I know the concept of buddy GM. In common language this is a different concept than the benevolent GM. I think keeping these concepts seperate is useful. But with that clarification out of the way I think there ae something useful for the context of this thread here. The GMPC has already been identified as one way taking what I label "benevolent stance" too far. I agree the buddy is another.

However both are instances of someone taking a "benevolent stance" constantly. I am interested in if there are situations where taking benevolent stance temporarily during play can be done without particular danger of sliding into the problems of these anti-patterns.

 

[Theory of Games]

I don't see where you've clearly defined what your "benevolent stance" is. You wrote

I am thinking about a stance where the GM actively get to play on the player character's team

But, what does playing on the PCs' team actually entail? It's like asking for others' ideas on how to get the most out of your flimdron. First, you need to explain what a flimdron even is, then, people can offer their opinions.

 

[bloodtide]

Ok there we have it. I know the concept of buddy GM. In common language this is a different concept than the benevolent GM. I think keeping these concepts seperate is useful. But with that clarification out of the way I think there ae something useful for the context of this thread here. The GMPC has already been identified as one way taking what I label "benevolent stance" too far. I agree the buddy is another.

agreed.

However both are instances of someone taking a "benevolent stance" constantly. I am interested in if there are situations where taking benevolent stance temporarily during play can be done without particular danger of sliding into the problems of these anti-patterns.

I would say for the game as a whole taking any temporary stance won't effect the game much.....unless you take an extreme stance (like Buddy or Killer GM) or if you take the stance at just the right time.

Like having a helpful NPC give each PC a potion would not over disrupt anything, but if the DM "suddenly" had the arch lich use a super weak low level attack spell that had no effect on the PCs that would be very disruptive.

 

[Enrahim]

I don't see where you've clearly defined what your "benevolent stance" is. You wrote


But, what does playing on the PCs' team actually entail? It's like asking for others' ideas on how to get the most out of your flimdron. First, you need to explain what a flimdron even is, then, people can offer their opinions.

Well it might be true I did not "clearly define it". However as you point out I provide an attempt of describing how it "feels". Just that I actually think would be enough to give most a bit of ground to start talking about situations where they have experienced such a feeling, and likely been talking about what I had in mind with this concept.

But I didn't stop at that. Even in the original small version I have an example of the opposite. I also gave an example of something in the grey area between my concept and its opposite. I also provided two examples of something that was close, but not quite (and one example of something that take the concept too far). In the wall of text version I provided another example of the opposite, alongside an actual example of an instance of what I was looking for. I also clarified what was the key differences between a presumed known concept and this new concept.

Given this, what more would you think the average person would need before they could start getting a grasp at what I might be talking about, to the extent that they could start providing meaningful clarifying question, or share experiences of something that seem to match the descriptions provided?

The trouble with providing a "clear definition" is that this concept is still a bit fuzzy for myself, and I fear by trying to nail it too closely down I might lose out of something I think really would be worthwhile to include, or include things that really pollutes the conversation around the concept (like GMPC or Buddy). If I would have to make an attempt of it now it would be something like "Benevolient GM stance the phenomenom of having a temporary situation where the GM is actively trying to help out the player characters in a way that is in no way disruptive of the desired play experience of the group as a whole". I think this formulation at least includes firefighting in groups where this is accepted/expected, and excludes GMPCs and unwanted Buddying. So as such this definition seem promising?

 

[bloodtide]

Given this, what more would you think the average person would need before they could start getting a grasp at what I might be talking about, to the extent that they could start providing meaningful clarifying question, or share experiences of something that seem to match the descriptions provided?

Maybe like some in game examples?

The trouble with providing a "clear definition" is that this concept is still a bit fuzzy for myself, and I fear by trying to nail it too closely down I might lose out of something I think really would be worthwhile to include, or include things that really pollutes the conversation around the concept (like GMPC or Buddy). If I would have to make an attempt of it now it would be something like "Benevolient GM stance the phenomenom of having a temporary situation where the GM is actively trying to help out the player characters in a way that is in no way disruptive of the desired play experience of the group as a whole". I think this formulation at least includes firefighting in groups where this is accepted/expected, and excludes GMPCs and unwanted Buddying. So as such this definition seem promising?

I think the type of "help" matters.