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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5683382" data-attributes="member: 14159">Forking from: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/311448-playing-game-when-you-dont-know-rules.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/311448-playing-game-when-you-dont-know-rules.html</a>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!</blockquote>

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