GMs: Guiding Morals in GMing

[hawkeyefan]

Established by the GM in their campaign notes, I would gather. Not every GM treats the world like a shapeless mass of potential until the PCs interact with it.

Edit: that came off as harsh, I'm sorry. It's a different way to play that plenty of people enjoy.

No worries. I was asking just to make sure there wasn’t more to it beyond that kind of play. I took @Fenris-77 ’s point to be that there must always be some element of “shapeless mass of potential” most of the time. The degree may vary, for sure, but no matter how detailed before hand, prep can only do so much. Hence his suggestion that @Lanefan add some qualifiers to his idea about illusionism and metagaming by the GM.

The idea presupposes that kind of approach, but even within that approach, the GM has to change things on the fly.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This aesthetic is all but destroyed if nothing is actually out there and it's redefined as you go.

How so? From a player perspective, I’m discovering what’s in a dungeon as I make my way through it, whether it’s generated ahead of time by the GM or whether it’s generated though some procedure of play.

 

[Celebrim]

The idea presupposes that kind of approach, but even within that approach, the GM has to change things on the fly.

I don't know what you mean by "has to" or "change" in this context.

If you are running a game in a strictly competitive manner, which I admit is no more typical as an example of play than running a Living Campaign or a one shot at a convention with a tight time slot, then it's pretty standard for the GM to hold all the myth to the same standard. That is the GM will when adjudicating say, "If (the item) it isn't on your character sheet, then you don't have it." and likewise if the item isn't mentioned in the prepared notes the GM was given then it doesn't exist.

The point is that it's not necessary to change things on the fly even to the extent of saying (to reference the CoC example) a desk is implied to have writing equipment, papers, envelopes and various things in the drawers even if the description of the room provides no details beyond the presence of the desk. It might be a good idea to do so (as the CoC rule book suggests a GM ought to), but its not necessary that they do so and in some cases might not even be correct do so.

And that point of that is to say that changing things on the fly can serve particular aesthetics of play and can disserve other ones depending on how and why you as a GM do it.

 

[Celebrim]

How so? From a player perspective, I’m discovering what’s in a dungeon as I make my way through it, whether it’s generated ahead of time by the GM or whether it’s generated though some procedure of play.

Well, that "generated through some procedure of play" is pretty darn broad. I concede that there are some procedures of play that are in fact equal to being pregenerated. An example of this would be purely "procedural generation" in a game like Nethack. But notice the features of pure procedural generation. First, the game won't metagame against you. It is a completely neutral referee in a way that no human can perfectly emulate and certainly no human can emulate if they are creating in response to events. Secondly, truths tend to be persistent. The trap is there from the moment you enter the new level. It doesn't get created as a response to checking for or not checking for traps. If you go down a stair to force generation of a new level of the dungeon, and immediately go back up, the state of the dungeon stays persistent as an established truth. If in fact a GM could emulate a computer in this regard, then I do concede that it wouldn't matter to me as a player whether or not the fiction was generated ahead of time or generated continuously.

(There is also the matter that a procedural generator like Nethack is extremely well play tested and has extensive effort put into building it and making sure it is both truly procedural and deep and coherent in a way that most human operated random generators just aren't.)

But human GM's can't emulate computers in this regard, either in their ability to be neutral or in their ability to spin up extensive and coherent and detailed fiction without effort and time. Consider again the experience of exploring the 'Tomb of Horrors' primarily with a Discovery aesthetic of play. You enter into a new room, and the DM reads a description and then shows you an illustration of the room as well. This is really aesthetic Discovery! You feel like a real explorer seeing things for the first time. Now compare this to attempts to wing it. The DM needs to come up with a concise and accurate description of the room that leaves out nothing important because without that description how can the players make choices? And now secondly, we've lost that illustration of the room. And thirdly, as soon as we recognize the GM is winging it, we've lost the trust that the scenario is "fair" because how do we know whether or not the trap exists ahead of our interaction with it? We are now in a world of Schrodinger's Trap, where the GM adjudicates on the fly based fundamentally on whim whether or not you stepped on one. And believe me, from personal experience, you don't want to play in a dungeon with Schrodinger's Traps that are all the time trying their best to evade detection based on how you search or don't search for them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How so? From a player perspective, I’m discovering what’s in a dungeon as I make my way through it, whether it’s generated ahead of time by the GM or whether it’s generated though some procedure of play.

At least to me, it's because knowing that the world doesn't exist until I interact with it renders the entire experience meaningless, because it destroys immersion. Why should I care about a universe that is generated as you go purely for the purpose of entertaining a handful of people. Having it exist outside of myself and my PC makes it worth interacting within.

 

[Celebrim]

At least to me, it's because knowing that the world doesn't exist until I interact with it renders the entire experience meaningless, because it destroys immersion. Why should I care about a universe that is generated as you go purely for the purpose of entertaining a handful of people. Having it exist outside of myself and my PC makes it worth interacting within.

Enlarging on this there is a technique that has grown up in fiction writing called by some "mystery boxes" where you present the audience early with something very strange and mysterious to spark their interest - "The Truth is Out There". You as the writer are yourself not supposed to have any idea what is in the mystery box. Instead, you just put layer upon layer of mystery boxes in front of the audience until at some point later on you the writer pick up all the mystery boxes and try to explain them, often by examining fan theories about what is in the mystery boxes.

"Bad Robot Productions" and JJ Abrams are one of the leaders in this style of storytelling.

And personally I find it absolutely infuriating, to the point that I refuse to watch anything produced by Bad Robot or former alumni of the company. Because compared to stories where the author has some sort of plan and plays fair and authors the story with a goal, the resulting transcripts are just nightmares that always wind around to some entirely disappointing conclusion with characters whose motivations were always muddled and unclear and whose endings never quite resolve all the contradictions and mysteries in any sort of satisfying manner. "Bad Robot" has been responsible for so much IP destruction over the years that if memes, narratives, characters, and fiction were people, "Bad Robot" would be serial killers. It makes me want to pull my hair out.

So when I see GM's recommending to novice GMs that they follow the "Bad Robot" technique of inventing everything on the fly and hoping it will work out in the end, I'm appalled. And in part I'm appalled because I've experienced this crap. I started a new campaign with this GM who was very vocal about how great of a GM he was and how good he was at improvisation, and it was immediately really clear that he was actually just leaning into our table talk and letting us create stuff and he had as much imagination and idea of what he was doing as a ferret. A modern Chat Bot could extemporize a better adventure than that. There was absolutely nothing to discover in that world. He literally could not have been involved and we could have played the game without him better than with him sitting there.

 

[hawkeyefan]

At least to me, it's because knowing that the world doesn't exist until I interact with it renders the entire experience meaningless, because it destroys immersion. Why should I care about a universe that is generated as you go purely for the purpose of entertaining a handful of people. Having it exist outside of myself and my PC makes it worth interacting within.

Well, I think I’d respond to this in two ways.

First, I think we can say that what you’re describing is a preference. Meaning it’s a quality of the person rather than the game. I say this because there are plenty of people for whom immersion is not dependent on make believe that is made up prior to play versus make believe that is determined during play.

Second, the world, such as it is, cannot exist outside of play. Your experience of Greyhawk, for instance, may be very different from mine. Hell, I’ve had multiple experiences of Greyhawk that would contradict one another. These are all instances of play… individual and unique. Greyhawk in and of itself is just a list of ideas… possibilities for play. It’s no less made up than something that’s determined at the moment of play.

The only things that are discovered are those that come up in play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, that "generated through some procedure of play" is pretty darn broad.

Sure, but that’s the point. You’re excluding a wide swath of different processes and procedures with your take on discovery.

So what if I use multiple tables to generate a dungeon and its inhabitants and their possessions? If I use this method a week before play and write down the results, then that allows for discovery… but if I follow the same method at the time of play, that doesn’t?

That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, I think I’d respond to this in two ways.

First, I think we can say that what you’re describing is a preference. Meaning it’s a quality of the person rather than the game. I say this because there are plenty of people for whom immersion is not dependent on make believe that is made up prior to play versus make believe that is determined during play.

Second, the world, such as it is, cannot exist outside of play. Your experience of Greyhawk, for instance, may be very different from mine. Hell, I’ve had multiple experiences of Greyhawk that would contradict one another. These are all instances of play… individual and unique. Greyhawk in and of itself is just a list of ideas… possibilities for play. It’s no less made up than something that’s determined at the moment of play.

The only things that are discovered are those that come up in play.

First of all, I did say, "at least to me", so of course it's my preference. I don't see any reason to bring that up unless you either didn't read my post fully or are trying to score rhetorical points.

Secondly, campaign notes and setting material have existence outside of any PC, so no, the world absolutely can exist outside of play. I have over 100 pages if setting material for my homebrew, most of which I created prior to any campaign starting up, as proof of that.

what are you actually saying? Because neither of your arguments make logical sense to me, so I must be missing something.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure, but that’s the point. You’re excluding a wide swath of different processes and procedures with your take on discovery.

No, I'm not.

So what if I use multiple tables to generate a dungeon and its inhabitants and their possessions? If I use this method a week before play and write down the results, then that allows for discovery… but if I follow the same method at the time of play, that doesn’t?

I mean I just literally cited that as an example of an equivalent process to pregenerating the content. Are you even reading anything I write?