buzz said:
Malcolm, you keep asserting that I want mechanics to protect me from the Evil GM, or that I'm painting the GM as the "bad guy" and players as the "good." Maybe I'm just not being clear, because I don't think that's what I'm describing. I think your friendship issue is really some other argument that you're kind of bolting on to this thread.
I don't think so. I'm responding to the dynamic you describe, which is "players at the whim of the GM" thing. You haven't explored ways in which GMs can make positive contributions, and the example you gave made the GM the penalty guy. I really do think it's relevant; I'm not tossing it in for the hell of it.
The "Joss Points" example I gave was just pseudocode, not an implementation. If we map it to FATE3/SotC, as I understand it, Aspects aren't always negatively invoked by the GM and positively by the players. It can go either way from either side of the screen. What I like is that it's proceduralized and shared, and that it's a story-making mechanic, not a probability-fudging one.
Nah, it's a probability fudging mechanic that uses subjective story hooks instead of traditional templating. I've already talked about an instance I'm aware of where it failed to save the game, and discussed a further critique that it leads to players relying on cliched channels of action.
Here's the thing: a traditional "sim" design supports more flexible approaches than any other, because we can add additional elements onto that base and apply them, in whole or in part, as the situation demands. In other words, such games have more possible "sockets." Simulation has this property because the outcomes of simulation are necessary to story. No matter what values you attach to it, there is, on the narrative level, a guy shooting another guy. It's a materialistic phenomenon that can symbolize lots of things, but those symbols can't exist without the guy shooting the guy (or other activity).
The group I'm currently playing Serenity with are a "traditional group of buddies." It hasn't prevented the system from frustrating some of us. It could be that our group is just not grokking how the system should be run, but is that our issue or the game's? I dunno. Heck, it could just be taste.
It depends. People have different expectations about different things. It's entirely probable that the most popular form of roleplaying (as an activity, not a product) in the 'Verse is something utterly repellent to many, many tabletop roleplayers:
fanfic-based online freeform. In other words, totally subjective, GM-dictated outcomes wedded to a rigid sense of canon (because thats how those communities work). That's about as far from your tastes as you can get, but
P.S., I did not bring up Mearls in the context of my Mother-may-I comment. However, if you read his blog entry that coined his usage, you'll see that he is absolutely talking about what I am here.
It's not really the same thing, though. He talked about things like Track, where the GM sets up situations where it might come in handy. Your "Joss Points" are just like that, if the GM gets to hand them out. I think it's more accurate to say that you don't want an explicit "buck stops here" with the GM.
This is the perspective I'm coming from, especially the way Sorensen puts it. I don't want the kind of game I'm trying to describe because I'm
afraid of relying on trust, as you imply. I want that kind of game specifically to
encourage trust. For me, that seems a better path to creating an experience that will live up to the
Firefly series. Obviously, that may not work for everybody.
Well Chris Chinn lost me the moment he decided that anybody who liked games he didn't approve of was fooling himself -- and even provided a chart. People who think gamers are self-deluding fools are categorically excluded from serious consideration by me.
But leaving that aside, how are we creating trust? Trust is not a rigidly defined social relationship with set rules. I suppose you could say it creates trust in the way parole or probation creates trust, but who the hell wants to give games the character of probation or parole? Conversely, how many films and plays have benefited from the application of a rigid social contract that limits the director's input?
Now, people will be saying, "The GM isn't a director!" That was my reflex until doing theatre and seeing the relationships at work. Directors don't necessarily have a lot of direct control over everything from the writing to even the performance itself, and like a director, the GM exists to push people to possibilities outside of what seems obvious in the text.
And a director or GM listens. It's probably the most difficult thing to listen, make sure you know what's on everyone's mind -- and to *not* always provide easy access to cliches or instant gratification. And it requires mature players who are willing to devote themselves to the process. And it means that when things don't go down 100%, it gets talked out and resolved in a continuous process.
And this goes back to a primary problem with how games are written: Most of them don't provide structured guidance about this process, because they're working with the core assumption that roleplaying is such an unusual activity it needs to emphasize GM authority to create a functioning game, and that exploring the necessary interaction would weaken it.
