GMs: Guiding Morals in GMing

[Lanefan]

I think this is one of those times where authored fiction like Babylon 5 and Lost are probably not the best comparison to RPGs. Talking about plotlines that pay off years later… that requires a level of craft that would run counter to what many would say is a big part of what makes RPGs special.

I'm not so sure about that. Having both run and played in campaigns where the plotline payoff was years in the making and highly satisfying when it finally arrived, I posit they can - if done well - in fact be what makes RPGs special.

 

[Lanefan]

I’m talking about the insistence that if a GM doesn’t write down or otherwise strongly commit to things ahead of time, that he’s simply deciding things on a whim.

Well, it is a fairly binary proposition - either things are set in place ahead of time or they are not. What third option are you suggesting?

 

[pemerton]

Well, it is a fairly binary proposition - either things are set in place ahead of time or they are not. What third option are you suggesting?

I'm not @hawkeyefan, but one obvious third possibility is deciding during the course of play other than on a whim.

 

[clearstream]

Unless by discovery we’re talking purely about discovering what the GM has already decided.

I felt the characterisation of myth as constraint was interesting. Preestablished truths constrain what a player or GM says next.

Perhaps one way to see say fronts in DW, or the extensive preestablished world of Stonetop, is as supplying constraints that are productive for play.

 

[clearstream]

Leading I suppose to the next obvious question - what value is there in players preestablishing their characters?

 

[pemerton]

Vincent Baker is clear about the purpose of Fronts, so we don't need to guess or speculate. The AW rulebook says (p 136):

A front has some apparently mechanical components, but it’s fundamentally conceptual, not mechanical. The purpose of your prep is to give you interesting things to say.​

He goes on:

As MC you’re going to be playing your fronts, playing your threats, but that doesn’t mean anything mechanical. It means saying what they do. It means offering opportunities to the players to have their characters do interesting things, and it means responding in interesting ways to what the players have their characters do.​

He also says the following (pp 109, 136):

ALWAYS SAY
• What the principles demand (as follow).
• What the rules demand.
• What your prep demands.
• What honesty demands. . . .

Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care. You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think.​

Preparation of fronts doesn't change how any move is resolved (though it may introduce a custom move, which typically will be in lieu of what would otherwise be a GM soft move, or perhaps the more generic Acting Under Fire). It certainly doesn't dictate how any move is resolved. It does bind the GM, by reference to prep, as to what interesting things ("badness", "spots" and "opportunities", in the AW parlance) the GM introduces into the fiction.

Within the framework of Apocalypse World, it doesn't make any sense to worry about whether there were really 10 or 12 or 15 opponents in the encounter. A front in AW is simply not this sort of prep.

 

[clearstream]

Vincent Baker is clear about the purpose of Fronts, so we don't need to guess or speculate. The AW rulebook says (p 136):

A front has some apparently mechanical components, but it’s fundamentally conceptual, not mechanical. The purpose of your prep is to give you interesting things to say.​

He goes on:

As MC you’re going to be playing your fronts, playing your threats, but that doesn’t mean anything mechanical. It means saying what they do. It means offering opportunities to the players to have their characters do interesting things, and it means responding in interesting ways to what the players have their characters do.​

He also says the following (pp 109, 136):

ALWAYS SAY​

• What the principles demand (as follow).​

• What the rules demand.​

• What your prep demands.​

• What honesty demands. . . .​

​

Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care. You do it outside of play, between sessions, so that you have the time and space to think.​

Preparation of fronts doesn't change how any move is resolved (though it may introduce a custom move, which typically will be in lieu of what would otherwise be a GM soft move, or perhaps the more generic Acting Under Fire). It certainly doesn't dictate how any move is resolved. It does bind the GM, by reference to prep, as to what interesting things ("badness", "spots" and "opportunities", in the AW parlance) the GM introduces into the fiction.

Within the framework of Apocalypse World, it doesn't make any sense to worry about whether there were really 10 or 12 or 15 opponents in the encounter. A front in AW is simply not this sort of prep.

Thank you! So what I am saying in connection with what another poster wrote about myth as constraint, is that one way to see fronts is as supplying constraints that are productive for play. Those constraints can take the form of "decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations." Such preestablished truths constrain what a player or GM says next, for example when introducing badness in AW. What is best to preestablish will vary game-to-game.

Leading to the secondary thought that as much as there might (or might not be) value in a GM preestablishing truths (such as through developing a front), there might (or might not be) value in players preestablishing truths (such as through what they write on their character sheet.) Or at least, examining what one thinks is similar or different about the cases could be revealing.

 

[Celebrim]

Leading I suppose to the next obvious question - what value is there in players preestablishing their characters?

For me as a GM, players preestablishing their characters is valuable for two reasons. One, it's a point in the game where I can ask the player, "What do you want to be true?" and usually take their input without breaking the immersion of play or risking passing meta information that might harm the experience of play. Before play is a great time to allow players to insert myth into the setting. If you wait until play begins, then the players lack of omniscience makes it more difficult to find points where you can hand them narrative control. (An example of doing this in play is Matt Mercer asking the players, "What do you want to be true?" when they've downed the BBEG, which is another useful point where the players have enough information to take up the narrative on their own.)

The other reason besides it being a great point to share the narrative with the players, is that when the players establish myth about their characters there are implied story arcs that the backstory suggests would be fun to pursue ("mysterious parentage" is a common fairy tale like trope players choose) and I'm able to inject into my myth secrets, foils, antagonists, mentors, friends and so forth implied by the character's backstory. It gives me both more hooks for luring the players into story arcs I've envisioned and more opportunities to set up stories that are particular to their character and spotlight that character. And this also tends to also give the PC an implied knowledge expertise where I can infer they are more likely than normal to "know" certain things and be able to spout lore about it. "Grew up as a theater brat" for example might give the character a wide informal circumstance bonus to everything pertaining to thespianism. "Pious follower of the sun goddess" for example gives the character a better than normal chance to know things pertaining to her cult. And so forth. In short, it's great to have a PC that is integrated into the myth of the setting and belongs in it.

For the player, the value of creating myth for their character is similar to the value of creating myth for the setting to the GM. By establishing facts about their character that constrain their play, they are consciously making a separation between their own beliefs and desires and goals as a player and the characters beliefs, desires, and goals. This helps pull the player mentally out of pawn stance and encourages more complex imaginative role play. Now granted, some players aesthetic of play is something like "I want to win at the game, and get all the stuff", and so they hate this because they don't want to be in a position where the "winning move" is something that their character wouldn't do. But I've always thought that the artful thing to do as a player if that's your aesthetic is not to create no backstory, but to create a backstory that justifies the character having in world goals that are congruent with your out of game goals. And this IMO also makes big moments in the game more powerful, because when the PC makes a choice it's not just some random move made by the player but rather if the PC is being played consistently then either this is something everyone knows and expects the PC to do or else this is some sort of change on the part of the character where we discover something surprising about them. Either way, that makes the player's choices more fun, more literary, and more interesting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not so sure about that. Having both run and played in campaigns where the plotline payoff was years in the making and highly satisfying when it finally arrived, I posit they can - if done well - in fact be what makes RPGs special.

I've run and played in such games, as well. And while I wouldn't say that such a revelation can't be enjoyable, as we've already established, they're not unique to RPGs. And I think they come at a cost of something that is unique to RPGs.... player input.

Well, it is a fairly binary proposition - either things are set in place ahead of time or they are not. What third option are you suggesting?

Pre-existing or not is perhaps binary, but that's not the same as pre-existing or existing only on a whim. There can be procedures in place to determine these things, and principles to guide any decisions involved so that nothing is happening on a whim.

But I think this also brings up an interesting question... when the GM decides a week or a month or a year ahead of time that there is a trap on door X in the dungeon... is he deciding that on a whim? Are there considerations he gives to that decision? Do those considerations take a significant amount of mental effort and/or time? Do they require complicated computations beyond human ability?

 

[Fenris-77]

Not sure what you mean here.

If by "change encounters" you mean it's the GM's job to knock the foes down when their h.p. reach 0 due to PC actions, that doesn't count as change in the way I mean it; it's just following the rules of play.

I'm talking about changing the underlying parameters of the encounter - adding (or subtracting) foes on the fly, changing their hit points or abilities on the fly, and so on, in reaction to the PCs having too easy (or tough) time of it.

It was a serious question. There have been a lot of somewhat vague descriptions in this thread of what does and does not fit the bill. Some people (both you and I btw) draw the line at that last bit in your post, but others have seemed to cast a much wider definitional net. If we are specifically talking about that list above then you and I agree.