Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 5812282" data-attributes="member: 3887">Isaac Bonewits? Holder of a BA in Magic from Berkeley? I own his gaming supplement!  I prefer to call this kind of metagaming with the referee "playing the game".Two things:One: the problem with the term "metagaming" is that it accurately describes what is actually happening when we play RPGs. The negotiation between GM and players *is* the core mechanic, the ur-mechanic, of every traditional RPG (regardless of how and to what extent said negotiations are arbitrated by the formal rule set). This kind of "metagaming" is as integral to RPGs as hitting a small ball with a racket is to tennis. Two: stating the GM has all the power in the negotiation is demonstrably false, or rather, it makes the erroneous assumption that the rules are the only way to address the power balance between players and GM.This, obviously, ignores all the informal ways this can be addressed, ie by players and GM building a relationship based on trust/respect, where the players willingly consent to the GM rulings, and the GM, in turn, agrees to not be a prick. Even if the GM does stray into prick-hood, the players aren't powerless. They can also call the GM a prick and leave, or, possibly even find other, less drastic ways of negotiating a compromise, like reasonable people. The character is fiction, the player is a real person playing a real game (which kinda resembles fiction, in places). If it's all about the character, what does the player contribute to the game? If RPG play isn't, at some level, about the player overcoming/solving/beating challenges, then where is the game? Or Burning Wheel. Or Dogs in the Vineyard. I know there are games with clever stake-setting mechanics. That's one way to handle things... I'm not disputing that. Not all GM-based rulings in social encounter amounts to players trying to "please the referee". That's just (mildly) inflammatory hoo-ha. It's also a bit of an insult to every referee who puts time and effort into creating good NPC with personalities and motivations for the PCs to converse and negotiate with, who run free-form social encounters that are more than just the PCs dancing, trained monkey-like, for the DMs entertainment. If you think trust is irrelevant in a gaming group, I can see why you have problems with what I've been posting. "Supplicant players"? "All-powerful referee"? "Corruption?" Oy vey. Can't you see how using language like this is i) unhelpful, ii) inaccurate, iii) excludes the ample evidence that non-mechanical social encounters work for some people (and have for the duration of the hobby). We can meaningfully discuss pros and cons, but when you start using words like "corruption", you come across like a writer of agitprop (and as for corruption... my friends are I must posses hobbit-grade abilities to resist the corrosive effects of power, because we've born the One Ring of DM Authority for decades without succumbing to it's effect). Again, why do you think system is the only, or even the preferred, way, to address power negotiations at the table?</blockquote>

Verification