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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7280746" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's a cute line!, and I'll take flattery as cheerfully as the next poster; but I think there's some other disconnect going on here. (Also, maybe some of this should be in the conccurrent "living world" thread - many of the issues overlap.)There seems to be a significant, but not fully articulated, premise underlying [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=32740]Man in the Funny Hat[/MENTION]'s posts. Here's a quote from the latter, which triggered my response:This seems to assume that the GM has "ongoing plots and adventures"; and that the GM is the one who "give<s> all the attention and glory". And that the GM is therefore under an obligation to make each PC of roughly equal significance in the fiction. (I don't think Ovinomancer necessarily agrees with MitFH's further conclusion, that this equality of significance should be an AD&D-style equality of insignificance, but that difference is (I think) secondary.)</s><s></s><s>As soon as you think about the game from a player-driven rather than GM-driven perspective, that premise falls away. The player-driven game might be a Gygaxian-style one, where the skilled player/wargamer will tend to adopt a leadership role in determining logicistical and tactical choices; or an "indie"-style one, where the player who presents a rich character that engages the fictional situation will tend to shape the fiction, and drive it forward. Either way, it will be those players who tend to infuence and impact the game more heavily than the players who sit back and don't engage in the same way.</s><s></s><s>And as long as the game remains player-driven, the GM can't control this - in the Gygaxian game s/he can present challenges particularly suited to the timed player's character, but that won't guarantee that that player steps up; and in the "indie"-type game s/he can present situations that seem to speak to the timid player's character, but that won't guarantee that the player will bite.</s><s></s><s>Once we see the game as player-driven, we can also see how "spotlight"/contribution/attention is not zero-sum. If one reads the reports of the original Giants tournament, one gets the sense of a crack team of wargamers working together in a terrific fashion, with the whole of the play being much greater than the sum of the individual parts. Or when I think about favourite moments in some of my own games over the past several years, I think of moments when the players pushed their PCs, and the fiction along with them, in ways that created connections, and conflicts, and thematic moments, that made the stakes and the significance and the fallout for all of the characters greater than it would have been if just one player was doing just his/her thing with and for his/her PC.</s><s></s><s>By drawing, or at least trying to draw, the similarity (in respect of this issue) between Gygaxian play and "indie"-play, under the broader label of player-driven, I'm trying to engage with your quip about "industry standard" and suggest that it's not just about good vs sub-par games, but about approaches to how the game is played, and how the fiction is established and developed, which have roots in RPGing going back to those early D&D days.</s><s></s><s>This post is long, but hopefully answers your question. I'm disagreeing with Man in the Funny Hat, and with Ovinomancer: I think there is nothing wrong with a player's investment in and commitment to play having an influence on the extent to which that player shapes the direction and unfolding of the game.</s><s></s><s>The alternative, which I think is strongly implicit in MitFH and (it seems to me at least) also implicit in Ovinomancer, is that the GM drives the game, and establishes its direction and unfolding. I know that it is fairly popular style of RPGing (having its publication origins at or about the time of Dragonlance, and being the norm throughout the late 80s and 90s, and a basic assumption of adventure-path play). But I personally don't like it.</s><s></s><s>Whether players write long or short backstories isn't that important to me. What I care about is that (i) the player's PC has some clear drive or hook for me to respond to, and (ii) that when I do respond, the player engages in some fashion. This post, from the concurrent "living world" thread, gives some actual play examples from some of my first sessions over the past few years:</s><s></s><s>[sblock][/sblock]</s></blockquote>

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