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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5745088" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my view, at least, "indie/modern/gamist" design still needs good GMing. It's just that the "goodness" of the GMing doesn't reside in being able to come up with satisfactory world-modelling action resolution mechanics on the fly, but rather being able to come up with situations that are both thematically/dramatically engaging (something the 4e rulebooks give amost no advice on) and, in a crunchy system like 4e, tactically engaging (something the 4e rulebooks give good advice on, but that many WotC modules fail to achieve).Ron Edwards <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.0" target="_blank">has a nice line on this</a>:For instance, in the Jasmine game, I scene-framed like a m*-f*. That's the middle level: situational authority. That's my job as GM in playing The Pool. By the rules, players can narrate outcomes to conflict rolls, but they can't start new scenes. But I totally gave up authority over the "top" level, plot authority. I let that become an emergent property of the other two levels: again, me with full authority over situation (scene framing) . . . And similarly, like situational authority, content authority was left entirely to my seat at the table. There was no way for a player's narration to clash with the back-story. All of the player narrations concerned plot authority . . . If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. Or if we are playing a game in which we do "next person to the left frames each scene," and if that confidence is just as shared, around the table, that each of us will get to the stuff that others want (again, suggestions are accepted), then all is well. It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared] I[maginary] S[pace] are worth anyone's time.Part of being a good/mature/advanced GM is being able to frame situations that are worth anyone's time.The biggest weakness of the 4e GM guides, in my view, is that it has basically nothing to say about this. I find something slightly bizarre, for example, that the Neverwinter Campaign Guide presents it as some sort of great innovation that the campaign, as it unfolds, will reflect and in various ways depend for its development upon the backgrounds that the players have developed for their PCs. This strikes me as utterly essential to make the 4e PC build rules worthwhile - without this, what would be the point of all those pages and pages of thematic and story elements associated with classes, races and (especially) paragon paths and epic destinies?</blockquote>

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