Should a GM be a Captain or Navigator?

[lucek]

He needs to be both and neither and one or the other. It depends on the group dynamics and the situation at hand.

If the group is endlessly planning, then some Captain is needed to get the game moving.

If the group is just starting out in a new world/campaign, then some navigator is needed to get the ball rolling.

If the group has a plan, a goal, and is implementing a course of action, then you need to be neither.

If your group has finished the campaign, and has spent the last two game sessions discussing the relative merits of serving girls of different races, and they havent even mentioned what they are going to do next, then you need to be both.

Well put, but this was asking for opinions. Not necessarily what works best when but what you feel provides the best game when done well.

 

[The Shaman]

He is the director for an improvisational theater troupe.

Nah, he's the location manager, the set dresser, and the production assistant who herds the extras.

 

[pemerton]

OK to rephrase one the question is about setting goals vs. providing paths to goals.

If I have to choose, I'll go with the second - at least as far as I like to GM.

You can provide paths by telling the players what the path to their stated goal is.

Or you can have the characters investigate to find out what possible paths there are.

Or you can give the players/characters spoken, written, or drawn maps that get them to places the characters should already be aware of, or have already found out about.

There is at least one option missing here, and it is the one to which I am inclined - you can put situations in front of the players (via their PCs) which allow the players to achieve (or fail) at their goals by engaging those situations.

This is not your option (ii) or (iii), because it does not involve the players having to make their way through the GM's fiction before they get to the fiction that they are interested in.

But it is not like your option (i) either, because it does not involve telling. It involves providing.

Ideally, in my view, a situation that permits the players to attain a goal should also provide them with a realistic invitation to change that goal - by pushing and pulling on other goals that they are known to have. This makes for the most dramatic and surprising outcomes.

 

[jonesy]

There is at least one option missing here..

There's a LOT of options missing, because I wasn't trying to present all of the possibilities. I was trying to break down the ones he was talking about, because I don't see what he's getting at.

 

[S'mon]

The GM should be the ship-builder who builds the boat, then lets the players sail it.

 

[Weregrognard]

Captain? Navigator? Nay! the GM is MASTER AND COMMANDER!!!

But don't let it get to your head, or you'll have a Costa Concordia for a campaign.

 

[Nagol]

More like the ocena's tides, currents, and reefs.

 

[Mark CMG]

A DM/GM/Referee is a facilitator. He conveys to the players what the PCs perceive of the game world, they act or react, explaining their actions, and the facilitator lets them know the consequences. (Rince and repeat.)

 

[Niccodaemus]

It's a metaphor for running a game. Yes the DM can tell the people what their character need to do and how they need to do it but that's also called railroading.

So you are asking if a GM prefers to run a railroad or a sandbox?

That's like saying out of all the colors of the rainbow, what do you prefer, black or white?

 

[kitsune9]

Umm.. neither. In the first you are railroading them and they no longer have a choice. And in the second you are giving them a walkthrough to the goal, which also negates choice. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your analogy.

This was my thought too.