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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8677657" data-attributes="member: 4937">The power to determine the game fiction is such an extraordinarily complete power that it is ultimate power. As such, if you the GM have any intention of all of being fair, of empowering the PCs, of protagonizing the players, and not railroading the players then you do have to decide not to add anything to your creation in an improvisational manner except in the blank spaces that your players probe into.  And even then, you need to have some sort of guidelines in your head as to how those blank spaces are filled in.I do this not because my players demand it, but because I demand it of myself.  Rule zero for me as a GM isn't, "I can do whatever I want", because while that's true it's not fundamental.  Rule zero for me as a GM is, "Be the GM you would want to have if you were a player."One of the reasons I am so picky about my rules is that if I show the rules to the players, then I consider that a contract between me and the players.  I can amend it unilaterally if we find problems, but if I do I generally talk about why with the players and it's usually because the rules are failing in everyone's eyes. So many times when I run a new system and I have problems with rulings and how to rule or run the system, I'll get in a discussion with a more experienced GM about rules issues (sometimes even the creator of the system!) and there answer to me about the problem is to just circumstantially ignore the rules if it makes the game more fun.  After a bit of discussion with them, it generally becomes clear that the way they GM is pure illusionism.  They are fudging everything in order to achieve their desired results and the results system exists - even in the eyes of the creator of the system - as a way to pull the wool over the eyes of the player and trick them into thinking that their decisions really matter.  It's basically giving the player a fancy console full of controls and buttons to push, but secretly underneath the console nothing is really wired up and in fact you are controlling everything.  It's like putting a small child in your lap on the tractor and pretending to let him drive, knowing that if he doesn't actually drive the tractor where you are happy to have it go, you can put your thumb or knee on the wheel and they'll be none the wiser.In fact, it's become clear to me that some even particularly famous game creators have this relationship to the rules and the players, and as GMs are very very unhappy indeed if the players really have the slightest real control at all over what happens.  Sometimes fantasy heartbreakers are really motivated because a game like D&D allows too much real narrative currency to the players.Likewise, the reason I say that while it's not possible to run a game without some improv, it's not possible to run a lengthy improv game in that all improv games are pure railroads of this sort.   You the player only think you are driving the tractor.   Your actually only making inconsequential micro decisions.  All the real controls are kept away from you by the infinite and regularly exercised power of the GM's fictional creation.   In a very real sense, only if you prep can anything ever happen in the game that isn't what you wanted to happen.   And as GM that has been doing this for nearly 40 years, I can tell the difference in the depth of play very very quickly between a game that has some real depth because the fiction actually exists, and a world where the fiction is entirely malleable to what the GM wants to happen at that moment.  It takes me out of investment in the game really fast when I realize it doesn't matter what I do really, that I'm only adding a little color to a determined narrative.</blockquote>

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