"Oddities" in fantasy settings - the case against "consistency"

[AbdulAlhazred]

Leaving aside that you yourself avail yourself of "but it's true" later in this same post, I want to reiterate that what I described as a self-evident truth is that it's harder for a GM to instantly and cohesively react to a major change that spontaneously arises during the course of play. I don't see that as being an issue of the philosophy of how to approach questions of world design, GM authority, player autonomy, or similar concerns; it's just acknowledging that big changes which come out of nowhere can catch people off-guard, and so are hard to react to. That's not a value judgment.

Obviously I cannot definitively speak to every possible GM out there, but I don't find this to be the case. I think it is a concern that people have when they have GMed a highly prepped game, but I honestly don't do something in inventive or descriptive terms than I did when I prepped stuff, its just happening quick. I agree that you can gain experience with the sorts of things to fling out there to make stuff hop, but really this is not rocket science. Relax, and just DO IT. Once I did it once I realized this is just not hard.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Forgive me if this has been asked before - and maybe point me in the direction of some discussion surrounding it; I don't normally participate in playstyle threads, although I might dip a toe occasionally.

If we consider:

• The referee proposes a Dragonlance game. One of the players wants to be a cleric.
• The referee proposes a Hobbit-centric game using The One Ring rules. One of the players wants to be a Noldo.
• The referee proposes a Foundation-esque Traveller game, set in a human-only far future. One of the players wants to be a Vargr
• The referee proposes a Call of Cthulhu game involving the gradual revelation of themes which are Best Left Unknown (TM). One of the players would like to start well-versed in the Cthulhu mythos.

You get the general idea. Is there any difference between these propositions (beside authorship, and the possibility that players are already familiar with the source material), and a conformity to a world/theme devised by the referee, or are these all accommodations which can/should be met?

 

[pemerton]

Most GMs that I've known can't turn on a dime when a major change happens during the course of play, and require some time to figure out how things will shake out from a huge curveball happening. Are you saying you've only ever played under GMs who were able to adapt to major alterations in the course of the game without missing a beat? Because that doesn't seem like a very common experience at most tables.

The GMs that I play and talk to are generally familiar with techniques - which are set out in many pretty well-known RPG rulebooks - for making "just in time" decisions about the fiction.

(I don't recall the first time I used the phrase in inverted commas, but here it is in a post from Feb 2011, which also identifies some of the relevant techniques.)

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, both in terms of measuring (if I'm understanding you correctly) the number of hours engaged in that specific aspect of engaging with the game, and in the salience that you're ascribing to it. Does someone who's sunk one thousand hours of time into a particular course of play necessarily understand it better than someone who's only put in nine hundred? Or is that just pointless posturing that detracts from actually examining the substance of the issue in favor of yelling "I know better than you, and here's why"?

It's not about claiming that I know better than you. It's about having more experience with the kinds of games we're talking about. Based on your comments, it seems you have very little to no experience with that kind of game.

I could certainly be wrong... this is why I asked if you would agree.

If you have such experience, I'd like to hear what games, or what methods you used and how they worked, or didn't. So far, most of your claims seem to be suppositions rather than direct experience, as I said.

Again, being able to learn how to deal with this accepts the premise that it's something that has to be dealt with in the first place, and so is an issue.

No, because anyone also needs to learn to GM the way you're advocating for. It's still has to be learned... does that make it an issue that needs to be dealt with, too?

I think it's great if you have a GM who can handle such things without missing a beat, but not every GM can, and in my experience most can't. So maybe let's start the conversation under that presumption and go from there.

I know a few GMs who can do that! I can also do it! What really helped was playing the kinds of games that actively work that way instead of actively working against it. And also letting go of the idea that this alternate method is somehow harder or more fraught than traditional GMing, rather than just different.

Considering that most of us here took years to learn how to GM trad games well, I don't think we should consider traditional games as some kind of "easy entry" so much as "most likely first entry". I don't know if learning how to GM differently is as hard as you're saying. I expect it will depend on the individual and their specific circumstances quite a bit.

 

[Lanefan]

Your argument seems to be "But that's not how I do it"; which is perfectly fine, but I'm simply saying that the prevailing method need not be the way it goes. I'm not going to limit my comments to your experience. Why would I?

We don't need to be beholden to setting conventions if we don't want to be.

If we can ignore setting conventions at our leisure then what's the point of having setting conventions? (or is that your end point, that we shouldn't have them; that setting conventions shouldn't exist?)

 

[Lanefan]

The GMs that I play and talk to are generally familiar with techniques - which are set out in many pretty well-known RPG rulebooks - for making "just in time" decisions about the fiction.

Even so, being able to hit curveballs and keep things going seamlessly is IMO and IME a skill learned best through practice, trial, and error.

 

[Manbearcat]

Even so, being able to hit curveballs and keep things going seamlessly is IMO and IME a skill learned best through practice, trial, and error.

It is for sure. I confident that neither @pemerton nor @hawkeyefan would disagree with you on that as well! It seems to me a lot of folks presume something like a Pareto distribution with this small number of hyper-capable people who can GM these games and an overwhelming number of folks who struggle (or worse); like 80-20 or 90-10. I don't see it either conceptually or anecdotally. I'm pretty confident that capability in GMing these types of games follows a slightly skewed distribution with the tail not being tremendously far afield from a normal distribution...which is probably about the same for GMing Trad games. The only difference is the two skillsets stress some different strengths and weaknesses.

I've talked about this before, but I think the pedagogical approach to teaching/learning GMing is structured in a totally fubar way to achieve success at scale. Learning and repping fundamentals in low duress environments is the best way, for the most people, to learn pretty much anything. For whatever odd reason, TTRPG culture utterly inverts that paradigm; don't focus on the fundamentals before advancing and optimize for as high duress an environment as possible immediately!

Its a total shock that we don't have more GMs in the TTRPG community! How could anyone have predicted that!?1111

 

[billd91]

Forgive me if this has been asked before - and maybe point me in the direction of some discussion surrounding it; I don't normally participate in playstyle threads, although I might dip a toe occasionally.

If we consider:

• The referee proposes a Dragonlance game. One of the players wants to be a cleric.
• The referee proposes a Hobbit-centric game using The One Ring rules. One of the players wants to be a Noldo.
• The referee proposes a Foundation-esque Traveller game, set in a human-only far future. One of the players wants to be a Vargr
• The referee proposes a Call of Cthulhu game involving the gradual revelation of themes which are Best Left Unknown (TM). One of the players would like to start well-versed in the Cthulhu mythos.

You get the general idea. Is there any difference between these propositions (beside authorship, and the possibility that players are already familiar with the source material), and a conformity to a world/theme devised by the referee, or are these all accommodations which can/should be met?

If the player expresses an objection to the GM's pitch before everyone agrees to the premise, then fine - all of these things suggest they don't want to actually play the game the GM is pitching. Time to consider a new pitch.

But if they all agreed to play a human space game using Traveller, and then the player says they want to be a Vargr, then I don't see why they should be accommodated. They're ultimately just voicing their objection to the premise late or voicing second thoughts. And if a player consistently behaves this way, then there's probably a bad fit between them and the rest of the group dynamic.

 

[pemerton]

I think there's a good reason that some more recent RPG rulebooks characterise the game as a conversation.

Conversation is a very common-place human activity, in which participants make spontaneous contributions, building on the contributions that others have made, and taking pleasure in the sharing of ideas, hopes, disappointments etc that results.

Ordinary conversation is structured by understandings of social convention - how to talk about sport, or films, or the weather; or for more intimate conversations how to talk about relationships, feelings, dreams and aspirations, etc.

RPGing, as a conversation, is structured by different conventions - what sorts of things to talk about, who gets to say what sort of things about which elements of the shared conversation (the "fiction"). So learning to RPG means learning a new way to converse - which can be a challenge - but it is not wildly different from ordinary conversation.

The most immediate implication of looking at RPGing as a conversation is that it contrasts the activity with the recitation of a script. And that in term changes the way we think about prep in RPGing - prepping in order to have something interesting to say is different from writing a script, or a story, or even a piece of descriptive text that is to be read aloud.

Thinking about the setting, and world-building, in terms of conversation also has implications: instead of something static and "fixed", we can have a world that unfolds via the conversation: the conversations we have in preparing for play, and the conversations that make up play.

RPG as conversation is not the only possible approach. But I think it is a rewarding one, that harnesses some of the distinctive features of our peculiar hobby: its sociality; its spontaneity; the way it unfolds in real time with multiple contributors and with little or no editing of their contributions. To me, some traditional GMing advice seem intended to teach GMs how to stifle or work around the conversation, rather than to embrace and participate in it. The approach suggested in the OP, quoting from Burning Wheel, departs from that tradition.

 

[Alzrius]

And for you, it may not be.

If not everyone has to play the same way, it rather follows that there are going to be ways to play that will be found viable and successful for some, that wouldn't be so for others. And that should be okay!

It is. Are you unaware that I've repeatedly said that? Because it sounds like you are.

At which point, there is no cause to try to argue against anything, or try to present an approach as non-viable, or to try to argue that somehow it is a niche application that should be ignored, or the like. It would be more constructive to engage in trying to honestly and collaboratively determine when and how and for who and why is it viable, and when and how it would be unsuccessful.

Which is an excellent summary of my last several posts in this thread, with the only departures being people who seem to take exception to my saying so, usually right before they turn around and say something similar.

So, you cannot validly try to discard who has greater experience, and then immediately base an argument on "most GMs you've known". GMs you've known is just another form of personal experience!

It's worth pointing out, here, that you likewise cannot validly say that this is ultimately a matter of personal opinion, and then turn around and try to make this an issue of who has "greater" experience. Which is kind of the point; claiming that your stance is more valid because of experience is just another way of invalidating someone else's opinion. Maybe, you know, don't do that?

There are thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands of GMs out there. Our personal experiences aren't statistically relevant samples to use as bases for consideration. We don't have access to what "most GMs" are currently capable of, or could be capable of if they familiarized themselves with new techniques.

Likewise, talking about who has more experience with something isn't a valid reason for saying why someone else's opinion on a topic (with which they themselves have experience) carries less weight. No one else has access to your experiences, so claiming that you've gained some sort of greater insight because of them is nice for you, but meaningless to someone else.