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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8006099" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think the GM is a bad one. I do think that the OP started a thread to talk about something that s/he felt went wrong, or at least less well than it might have done, in a session. That's what I'm responding to.It would be interesting to know more about what this looked like, and how it was being conveyed to the players. And to what extent is was in the mind of the GM.I guess that's one view. It's not really my view.The GM's job is to frame scenes - what page 3 of the Basic PDF calls "describ[ing] the environment" and "presenting the basic scope of options that present themselves". That involves establishing a shared fiction: the GM obviously takes the lead in framing, but nothing suggests that his/her mental image of the situation is primary. It is a shared fiction. Certainly nothing suggests that the GM's mental image is more important than, or should operate as a constraint upon, the shared fiction.Of course there can be problems, and how these are handled is a matter of GM dexterity and table expectations. If the GM describes the spiders in the room and s/he has in mind Mirkwood-type rat-and-pony-sized spiders while the players are envisagig daddy longlegs - something which will probably come out pretty quickly - there is going to be a need to get everyone onto the same page. Maybe the GM yields to the players; more likely in that sort of scenario I would guess that the GM clarifies the description and the players re-declare their actions.But if the GM's mental image of the NPC is that s/he is unable to be cowed, while all the players know is that (i) the NPC is mad and angry, and (ii) the NPC seems no stronger than any one of their PCs, then why would they expect that the NPC can't be cowed? Where does that come from? From my own play experience, my reading of modules and my reading of threads I believe there is a tendency for GM's to treat ideas and images that only they have access to as constraints on the shared fiction. Or to go back to your language of "suspending disbelief", there is a tendency for GMs to treat as part of the established fiction, and hence part of the constraint on their own suspension of disbelief, stuff that has not emerged in play, is not part of the shared fiction, and will not necessarily be uncontroversial when revealed to the players.I personally don't see it as part of the GM's job to convey NPCs to the players in that particular fashion.And apropos of this:The GM knowing the NPC better than the players is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about: the GM applying his/her mental conception, which is not part of the shared fiction, as a constraint on that fiction.You can't get this particular approach to GMing, and to resolution, out of the far more basic proposition that the GM is responsible for framing scenes. Or even that the GM is responsible for ensuring that the fiction remains consistent and "realistic".</blockquote>

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