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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7066946" data-attributes="member: 16586">I should explain what I mean by my contention that I feel like GM as MC results in better stories. Obviously, this is an aesthetic judgement that applies to me personally.When Monsterhearts recommends to Keep It Feral it is not really talking about the quality of the story as something  we can enjoy after play, but rather our experience of the active tension in the fiction in play. It depends on this idea that, like film or television, roleplaying is an experiential medium. Unlike those media it is also participatory. When these techniques are used the entire group is on edge of their seats, genuinely curious about the fiction. We all want to see how things will unfold. When you are playing a character in a tense situation there is no escape valve. You cannot look to the GM to get your character out of it. All you have available to you are your own skilled play, your knowledge of the fiction, your fictional resources, and the rules of the game. Furthermore, because everyone at the table is interested in curiously exploring the fiction you owe it to them and yourself to play your character with integrity. The cool thing is that the game will actively reward you for this. More importantly, the personal and social rewards are tremendous.When you are the MC you actually get to see what happens in play in a very meaningful way. Because you are disclaiming decision making and putting it in the hands of an NPC while playing out the scene you get to experience the fiction for a moment in the same way the other players get to. Because you are saying what the rules demand and following the fiction you also have no safety valve. You get to have your heart broken. There is nothing that you can do about it while following your principles.This can be a really intense experience. It is particularly intense when we are exploring problematic material like we so often do in Monsterhearts and Apocalypse World. It is important that we respect each other's emotional boundaries when we do so. The lack of a safety valve can be a pretty potent criticism of this sort of play. My preference is to utilize a variety of emotional safety techniques including setting boundaries, check-ins, and taking breaks. This is part of the reason why I tend to run shorter games and play different games between seasons. [ATTACH]82864[/ATTACH] goes over this stuff in detail.Here's a few brief excerpts.This one goes over taking mental and physical breaks to create emotional distance when necessary.This one explains why we do this thing.This set of techniques is also uniquely suited to playing out a particular sort of story - the sort that are fundamentally about characters, the decisions the make, and the resultant fallout. These stories as experienced through play tend to be deeply personal and emotional in nature. We want them to be somewhat messy. It is important that they feel organic and not forced or neatly wrapped up. I happen to have an aesthetic preference for this type of story. Think early Sons of Anarchy, Taboo, John Wick or Breaking Bad.It is less while suited to deep mythology, grand narrative, epic clashes, Tom Clancying and the like. I have other approaches that I prefer for those types of games.</blockquote>

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