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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7066030" data-attributes="member: 16586">[MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION],What are your feelings on the following passage from Monsterhearts?When I talk about playing to find out what happens and following the fiction to wherever it leads I really mean it. I mean it even when its painful. I mean it especially when things do not turn out in the way I want them to. My biggest regrets, both as a GM and a player of a character, have come from the times when I tried to control the experience and make it mine. It usually comes from a good place. You want to keep your character safe so you hold back in a crucial moment where you should be laying it on the line. You have a particular arc in mind for your character so you justify a decision you made after the fact that if you were playing with integrity you would not have made. You do not want to deal with the consequences of a decision you made so you give the GM doe eyes in hopes they will rule in your favor. A player has ignored your soft moves and is in a position that would likely result in the loss of a PC so you make another soft move because you love the PC. You designed an elaborate set piece battle, but the PCs came up with a plan that circumvents it. You put a lot of work ito said set piece and want to use it so you pull some chicanery with the fiction. A player makes doe eyes at you because of a risk they do not want to deal with the consequences of so you fudge a dice roll or change some stats on the fly. Your players steamroll the villain in your planned epic confrontation through a series of crits so you add some hp. The players are off track so you nudge them with social pressure. The PCs side with a character who was supposed to be an antagonist so you contort the fiction to make them regret it. You really want that big reveal so you pull back from conveying the fictional world honestly. Robilar soloed your favorite dungeon so you send an army after him to take all his stuff!These are the things that keep me up at night. There's a very good reason why I talk about the discipline that is required to play and run the game to find out what happens and follow the fiction vigorously. Sometimes this stuff is hard! No one is immune to this underlying tension. A commitment to it helps. Embracing principles that help you get there really helps. I personally find it really rewarding in a very real way. It's not like super hard though! This is the same sort of way seasoned poker players approach the game. It's also the same way that software engineers need to approach their work. Holding on lightly and not trying to control things is also super valuable in all sorts of relationships.John Harper explains this stuff in far less words than I am able to.[video=youtube;FdVK_w9uDv8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdVK_w9uDv8[/video]Brevity is the soul of wit.</blockquote>

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