It's not playing a game, it's acting out a novel

[wingsandsword]

Forking from: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...48-playing-game-when-you-dont-know-rules.html

On the issue of a game being more like a novel than a game because the GM has the entire plot pre-determined, right down to task resolutions of everything the PC's do to make sure nothing derails the plot. . .

I've done it before, and hated it.

My first (New) World of Darkness game was like this. I had studied up on the rules and was looking forward to trying the New WoD.

The GM (ST, whatever) basically was wanting to write a paranormal romance/urban horror novel with the PCs as characters. She was essentially dictating the novel with us there to play out parts in her story, with no awkward rules to get in her way (but trying to maintain the illusion of it being an RPG with fixed rules).

Of course, she let us create our own characters, but she somehow figured they would all act like the stereotypical characters she had in mind, like how she would play characters she made up. We might make up the characters names and try to have a personality and background and abilities for them, but she still expected them to act just like she planned no matter how nonsensical it was, because she assumed characters would act just like she would and had no ability to change or improvise.

We had the pretense of having character sheets and rolling dice, but it didn't matter. No matter how good, or how poorly, we rolled everything went by GM fiat. For NPC's, she just picked up some random dice, rolled them, and didn't even look at them before she started narrating what the NPCs were doing.

If you wanted to do something that was very out-of-character from her novel, it would make trouble, and you learned to do what she said you should do even if you didn't think it was a good idea or in-character.

For example, after a few months of play, my mortal PC was awakening as a Mage while visiting Amsterdam. Having strange paranormal visions and hearing spirits and thinking he can make things move with his mind, he decides to lock himself into his hotel room and pray while he figures out what is going on with him.

She's boggled why he doesn't decide to go bar-crawling or clubbing, reminding me how many nightspots he saw around town, even pointing out the fetish club/dungeon across the street from the hotel, the brothel at the streetcorner, ect. . . (I found out later she had extensive write-ups of the various cathouses, pubs, clubs ect. of her version of Amsterdam)

The PC was a decorated Iraq-war veteran combat medic and devout Catholic who had been considering the priesthood before getting rolled up in adventuring life. A levelheaded, kind of square, clean-cut, straitlaced guy, so when he starts having funny mystical visions and supernatural senses and hearing things he was NOT about to go out partying, drinking and doing R/NC-17 things in a foreign country, despite her dropping a few hints about all the nightlife options. She just plain couldn't understand why anybody wouldn't go partying all night if they were in Amsterdam, especially if they started having trippy visions and hearing voices in their head.

I guess she was trying to get him to stumble across fellow mages who would take him in and teach him. So, she smacked me down hard for that. When he steps out of his hotel room 72 hours later having figured out basic control of his powers, he quickly gets detained by a vampire goon squad.

Apparently an ancient treaty from 1000+ years ago has all mages, everywhere, in the world acknowledge vampires as their sovereign lords and all new mages MUST register with their local vampiric prince and pledge their loyalty to him within 24 hours of Awakening, no exceptions whatsoever.

So, for this "high crime" of being a "renegade" he was sentenced to being blood bound for life to the Prince of Amsterdam. This meant that the Prince, or anybody he recognized as a represenative of the Prince, could give him orders he MUST obey with no chance to fight it. So, any time she wanted the PC's to do something, a plot device lackey of the Prince of Amsterdam would show up out of nowhere to order it done, if my PC wasn't lightning-quick to agree with the pre-agreed plot.

I didn't stay with the campaign too long after that. When I left, her biggest gripe was that leaving the game would mean an abrupt end to the story of that character and she couldn't just write him out of her novel yet. So, she had him tag along under her (more obvious) control for a few session while she tried to wrap up what she wanted his plot to be. She was quite bitter with me for derailing her "novel" she wanted to write to compete with Laurell K. Hamilton.

In the end it cost me the friendship, she eventually un-friended me on Facebook, stopped talking to me, and eventually we just plain didn't see each other anymore.

The lesson from all this that I learned, if the GM says they are writing a novel based on the events of the game, run away!

 

[fireinthedust]

For example, after a few months of play, my mortal PC was awakening as a Mage while visiting Amsterdam. Having strange paranormal visions and hearing spirits and thinking he can make things move with his mind, he decides to lock himself into his hotel room and pray while he figures out what is going on with him.

She's boggled why he doesn't decide to go bar-crawling or clubbing, reminding me how many nightspots he saw around town, even pointing out the fetish club/dungeon across the street from the hotel, the brothel at the streetcorner, ect. . . (I found out later she had extensive write-ups of the various cathouses, pubs, clubs ect. of her version of Amsterdam)

The PC was a decorated Iraq-war veteran combat medic and devout Catholic who had been considering the priesthood before getting rolled up in adventuring life. A levelheaded, kind of square, clean-cut, straitlaced guy, so when he starts having funny mystical visions and supernatural senses and hearing things he was NOT about to go out partying, drinking and doing R/NC-17 things in a foreign country, despite her dropping a few hints about all the nightlife options. She just plain couldn't understand why anybody wouldn't go partying all night if they were in Amsterdam, especially if they started having trippy visions and hearing voices in their head.

Which is basically the only reason that one *wouldn't* go out in Amsterdam, having all earthly restraints and restrictions (like legalization) gone.

For this character, that there is a Supernatural world (including God) in a directly tangible format (ie: magical powers), the sense that Amsterdam is a free-for-all would be gone. At least potentially.

I've been in similar games. One Star Wars d20 game my character was Fiated into a confinement chair and poisoned. I rolled a natural 20 saving throw, GM said "you fail". I was knocked out before going into the chair, woken up when I was in the chair, then knocked out instantly after the "saving throw".

Worse, I spent the entire next session (4-6 hours real time) STILL IN THAT CHAIR watching *another* PC on a view screen in a tournament. That player hated RPGs because he had issues conceptualizing them: he just didn't have the ability to imagine what was going on in his head, it was too abstract. So the GM is basically yelling at him, he's crying because he doesn't understand the dice. "roll again. you hit. roll again. you don't hit. roll again. you miss. roll again..." "whatever. pfft. what did I do again? Oh. whatever. This sucks. Let's play Smash Bros.! Wait, what am I doing again? Wait, I'm fighting? I'm so confused!"

I'd booked off the night from work to be at this game. That means the GM, who was "writing a novel", robbed me of one day's wage.

I left and didn't come back. This is the legendary "worst game night of my life".

 

[Squire James]

I'm ashamed to say I ran an adventure arc somewhat like that at one time... though it was more a "tribute" to a particular novel than it was an attempt to write a novel myself. Looking back at it, I'm a little startled the players played all the way through it. I suppose I must have made the monster encounters pretty interesting, and they were pretty much "hack and slash" players. Perhaps they were a little startled there was a plot in that campaign at all!

 

[onedtwelve]

I've been in a game where the GM knew fewer rules than me and my friend, but wanted to run because she wanted to kill us in-character. That was her reason. When she ran the game, she did it to win.

I guess the best example of her railroading was when our characters were travelling through a forest that had a five foot wide path in a straight line from one end of the board to the other and the rest of the forest was "too dense to travel through." Lo and behold! A combat encounter shows up. I don't know how she expected us to fight in a straight line, but we convinced her to let us go into the forest because it couldn't possibly be so bad that there was no getting in. And then, we sneaked around the bad guys.

The campaign stopped as players dwindled away, not showing up for sessions and not giving a heads up before not coming. It was my friend and me left and she decided just to not run anymore, which was a relief for us because we were too fond of her to tell her how bad of a GM she was. We just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. And, she has now become our shining example of worst GM.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Whenever the GM of a potential game says that he/she is planning to write a novel based on the game, I usually run.

I have had some experiences with this, and they were not pretty.

 

[Jack7]

"No novel does the novel make
If made by rote to read,
And novelty is all mislaid
By long dictated schemes,
And how may play if freely cast
By writ then undecreed,
Grow to flourish great at last
If script binds every deed?

For man to find his better self
He must be free to act,
He cannot be himself compelled
To chain himself intact,
So better service do you give
To set all others free,
For men by such do truly live
As men were meant to be..."

 

[jcsites]

Totally agree! Some just misunderstand the hidden advantages of playing. It's just that their interest is different and they do not understand what we learn out of being a gamer.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

I think one of, if not the most interesting aspect of an RPG is the interplay of the characters and the NPCs, the story that they can weave and influence with one another, and the way it affects the universe.

I'm not completely against people trying to make stories or books from an RPG campaign, but the "author" should embrace the realism and flexibility of multiple, real, personalities. Relying on characters from a single source, such as the mind of the GM/author, is essentially an examination of that source rather than the potential of multiple sources. Two heads are better than one, as it were.

 

[Bluenose]

I'm not completely against people trying to make stories or books from an RPG campaign...

If people really want to tell a story based on the game, make the story afterwards. Don't go in with the intent of making the story go a particular way. Players tend not to go along with the GMs plans at the best of times.

 

[Zaran]

What I like to see in my games are players that look past the mechanics when they are developing their characters. I see way too many people who pick backgrounds and themes not because of some vision or story hook they have in their head but because it gets them some sort of bonus. I much rather they think of their characters as part of a story and as a mobile avatar that they maneuever though the levels and fight bosses.

I know this thread isn't really about that. I just think that making a game into a story isn't bad thing. The bad thing is a GM forcing players into playing characters that benefits the GM's predetermined plot and not of the players' own devising. So I guess it should be a story with input from everyone.