NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7064590" data-attributes="member: 16586">[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]It's all about the culture of play as a thing that can be and should be designed. So, the war gaming approach posits one culture of play - one where the GM is a referee whose job it is to ensure that play follows the fiction and protects the integrity of the scenario. The referee is expected to step in when the rules do a poor job at adequately reflecting the situation and is assumed to have no other agenda. The referee is also expected to have a respect for the rules and only step in when their expert knowledge supersedes what the rules say. The Storyteller approach posits a culture of play where the rules exist to serve the desires of the GM. The overriding priority is to maintain the integrity of the GM/ST's story. The approach to GMing formalized in Apocalypse World comes from a different culture of play. In this culture of play the GM is not the first among equals, but is instead just another player in the game. They have a different set of responsibilities, but they are a player like any other player. The rules of the game are just as binding on them as they are on other players. How does this work?You have an agenda. Everything you say and do while you play is in service to this agenda and no other. In Apocalypse World, your agenda is:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make the Apocalypse World seem real.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make the players' characters' lives not boring.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Play to find out what happens.</li> </ul>Every moment of play it is your job to be working towards at least one of these and nothing else. This is your responsibility in the same way that the players are responsible for playing their characters with integrity and pushing hard for the things they care about.Then you have the things you always say. This not what you sometimes say, say if you feel like it, say when you want to, etc. It is what you always say as best as you are able. In Apocalypse World you always say:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What the principles demand</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What the rules demand</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What your prep demands</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What honesty demands</li> </ul>I think the use of the word demand here is pretty important. These are a set of rules to live by when taking this particular approach. They help to ensure a consistent and rewarding experience for all players, including the GM. Some games within the same family modify this to achieve a different sort of experience of play.The principles are demanding. They are to help ensure you meet the game's agenda without flinching or second guessing. They also serve to help crystallize decision making and will eventually make running the game like second nature.The rules are demanding. The game has something to say. There is a reason why we are playing this particular game. We care about what it has to say. We also care that players get the things that they earn through play and actually deal with the consequences of their decisions. The rules enable this. We all agreed to sit down and play this game. Let's do that. We can all decide to change the rules or add rules to make the game our own, but that is an act of game design and an activity to be undertaken as a group.Your prep is demanding. We don't prep very much, but what we do prep is important. Part of playing the world with integrity and playing to find out what happens is making sure that the challenges we create for players in the form of fronts are something that players can meaningfully engage with as they choose. If we change this stuff on the fly there is some danger that player decision making is being made based on incorrect information. We are also not playing to find out what happens. This is the most tenuous of the demands and the most frequently changed of the demands. Some Powered By The Apocalypse games eschew prep or utilize more flexible prep.Honesty is demanding. Players depend on having information that they can really use about the fiction to make meaningful decisions that make an impact. We also want to make sure that we are not playing games with the other players to get them to do the things we want them to do. It is important that they get choose their level of engagement with the things they put out there. We play the whole world and they get one character. We should be mindful of that and ensure they get to have their say. I consider this the most important of the demands. Everything else flows from honesty about the fiction, about the rules, about what the game is all about. We can only get to a place where we are all playing a game together to really see what happens through honesty.When all of this comes together we end up with a game and a story that is bigger than any one person. Something that we cannot control and would not want to control. It does not belong to any of us. It belongs to all of us in a real and genuine way. We have a culture of play that values every participant and does not demand too much from anyone.As a GM I follow this approach for many reasons. The social footprint is less demanding of me. I get to play to find out and get many of the same kicks from playing in a good game while running the game. The mental overhead is far less once you have internalized the principles. Finally, it helps get us all to a place where we can step out of our comfort zone and get to where the real magic happens far more readily than any other way to run the game I have discovered.[ATTACH]82800[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

Verification