GMs: Guiding Morals in GMing

[pointofyou]

Maybe it should be a thread fork, but I'd love to have a more detailed description of how you go about achieving that. What is your prep like? Do you have a setting or sandbox you are initially drawing from? How do you hook players into possible attractions so that they aren't flailing about in a rowboat and getting bored? Do you have an initial introductory adventure and then once some momentum is going you let the players figure out what to do next? Do you describe initial fronts and forces and their plans? Do you work adventures up from backstories or in session zero discuss player character goals or conflicts and go from their? What sort of pressure do you place on player character creation to ensure you have a cohesive group, if any? Do you groups lean heavily on thespian play where people act out their characters in first person? I'd love to know more about how you make this work.

I'd be happy to discuss though I agree that discussion is probably best forked.

 

[pemerton]

You can play story now with predetermined answers to mysteries.

But the moment that the decision was made during prep need not be any more considered. It can be just as much of a whim. The moment of the decision can be just as sudden.

<snip>

As for neutrality, I think its importance is greatly overstated. Or more broadly applied than I think is useful. I think fairness is relevant, and that GMs should honor the fiction or the game world and follow through with what makes sense. I think all of that kind of falls under the umbrella of neutrality as you're using it. But I also think the GM should be trying to make the game interesting.

I was prompted to return to this thread, lo these 3+ years later, by conversations and RPGing with @thefutilist.

Over the past little while we've played two Ron Edwards games together: Fantasy For Real (5 sessions), and S/Lay w/Me (3 sessions). Both involve preparation of situation by the GM, although this is more elaborate in FfR than S/L w/M. Both can involve mysteries as a component of this, in the sense of things that are authored by the GM (as part of prep), are unknown to the player (at the start of the session), and that are of interest to the player to come to know (during the course of play).

Whim is not encouraged, but likewise not excluded.

The instructions for prep in S/L w/M begin with the player choosing a location, a character and a goal. They then continue:

What I [the GM] Do
The location you [the player] choose becomes mine to develop: the landscape, the appearance, whether anyone else is there and what they are doing, and everything else.

I don't have to include your Goal but I remember that it has to be there.

I decide whether the Monster and the Lover are different characters or the same characters. I make up everything about him, her, it, or them. I especially consider . . . How the Monster kills you . . . How the Lover desires you . . . "Kill" includes non-literal possibilities as long as they are awful and permanent . . .

The Lover must be wedded to the location in some fashion, most simply because they live there, but even if a visitor, the Lover must have some reason and the capability to stay in that location.

I do all these things now, before we play. I tell you none of it. . . .

I Go first, and my first event must introduce the Lover. . . .

I don't have to identify who the Monster is or who the Lover is, or whether they are separate or the same. You do know that the Lover is present in my first Go in some way. You may get a good idea of who or what the Monster is soon.​

For the game to work, the GM has to stick to their prep in relation to the Monster and the Lover, most fundamentally because it is the GM making moves involving the Monster, and the player making moves towards the Lover, that trigger dice rolls that feed into the resolution of the session.

In the last session that @thefutilist and I played, he at first misidentified the Lover, as a different NPC introduced in my first Go; only later on did he work out which of my NPCs was the Lover.

The instructions for prep in FfR are bit more elaborate, and I won't quote them all. In summary, they involve 3 steps:

* Choosing a setting from a list (though nothing would stop the GM adding to the list), and fleshing it out (with a map, and with socio-cultural and ecological details);

* Making rolls on a simple set of tables to determine the elements of the "pickle", that is, the session's focal situation;

* Fleshing out the details of the pickle.​

The rules for prep do include the following:

Adjust any content or details, or add concepts of your own, as you like. Apply your own standards for appropriateness and aesthetics for everything. . . .

Make a list of the necessary people and other relevant entities from the pickle’s details. Ask yourself, “so, who is this fellow (or whatever)?” Cast each of them in terms of your thoughts on locations and culture. Adopt whatever you think first, trusting your intuition – it’s easy and quick. . . .

This is not like writing a story or script. Do not consider where it may go, what the adventurer characters might do, what should happen, or anything else that must be planned. . . .

There is no story plan, so it might become a caper or drama or tone poem. It might go anywhere or nowhere. . . .

Show [the players] the map, point to the location, and confirm its description. Don’t share anything about the pickle. . . . Tell them: the characters are in the same pickle, but all they know is the specific location.​

The rules for play make it clear that the GM's job is to play the pickle, revealing it in play and using it as the basis for deciding what NPCs do:

Your primary job as GM is similar, to state the details and events at this location, including everything done or said by anyone else.

Simultaneously, provide information, both immediate to the moment and regarding the pickle backstory:

• Describe things you think that the characters would notice (this is the mirror of players asking what they notice)
• State outright what you think the characters would know or infer, phrased as, “as you know …”
• Answer players’ inquiries regarding either of the above points
• Add your characters’ dialogue into play, expressing their views and concerns about the events – over-sharing, in fact . . .​

Play your characters and “raise up” new ones from incidental characters, giving them a name from your list. Consider all of them to be a little bonkers about their goals, but intelligent regarding what will or won’t help them.

You also have the job to impose transitions at a larger scale, shifting play location and often skipping some time as well. This is a new “opening” or initiation of play, similar to a scene-shift in other media, although without scripted outcomes.

For all these jobs, consult your understanding of everyone in the whole pickle, including the players’ characters and yours. Some of them are present in the current moment and some of them are not, so refer to your local map – and make new ones – to consider who is affected by the current events, right now, soon, or later. By proactively playing their responses to whatever has just happened, you know what you will say “next.”

This dynamic practice permits you to initiate sudden conflicts or remarkable coincidences, whether in the current moment or during the shifts in time and space. . . .

At any time, consider all the active participants in the pickle, including the players’ characteers, to decide which one will do something next, and where that might be. . . .

The whole pickle changes through play: tests change scenes, and altered scenes change everyone’s perspectives or plans. Your job is to express these effects in two ways:

• Play the NPCs as determined to get what they want, and willing to try harder and differently if they have to. . . .​

Play proceeds to any of these criteria for finishing the adventure.

• A climactic ending: play hits a clear resolving moment, effectively concluding the pickle.
• A scattered ending: the players’ characters have extricated themselves from the pickle, so that any relevant resolution would be among NPCs.

o This includes when they have all or mostly “died” as far as we can tell.​

• Crazy time: the characters and pickle are in complete disarray and catastrophe, in which case just leave ’em there and end it.​

All you have to do is say, “It’s done!” and play can stop there.​

I think this shows that the pickle plays a role a bit like that of AW Fronts - it gives the GM interesting things to say, and a set of ideas about the fiction around which to organise particular decisions about what to say next. It also provides the basis for deciding when the adventure/session is done. These purposes would be subverted if the GM was not bound to their prep.

There is no neutrality in either of these games, though.

I've quoted the text from FfR that shows that the GM is expected to "initiate sudden conflicts or remarkable coincidences". There is no expectation that the GM will decide what to say next by "neutrally" extrapolating in accordance with some notion of in-fiction causality.

And here is the text from S/L w/M that most clearly reveals the non-neutral orientation of the GM:

The next adventure
Now we change roles as "I" and "you," for another hero's adventure. When we switch back, you'll return to your hero, and then after that adventure, I'll return to mine. . . .

When you stay with a Lover, your character's story is ended and your play as "you" wholly ends.

Over time, as adventures proceed, I try to make you choose to stay.​

The GM has a definite goal - to entice the player to have their PC stay with the Lover. Obviously this only works if both game participants are committed to the medium, that is, sincere engagement with the fiction and taking it seriously in their decision-making: where the fiction is not maps and equipment and treasure but goals and relationships and other emotional states of affairs. It's a fair way away from wargaming.