You are not the Director

[Jeff Wilder]

[RPGs] aren't movies any more than movies are books.

Correct. And, yet, not coincidentally, movies are like books in many ways. Depending upon the context, one can analogize meaningfully between movies and books.

(Of course, the word "like," which you removed for your argument, makes the difference.)

 

[The Shaman]

On the set of a film, many excellent directors not only take input on staging, dialogue, story, and other things from actors, but actively solicit it.

And then there's Alfred Hitchcock who, in response to reports that he claimed that actors are cattle, replied, "I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle."

I'm not sure why so many people are getting their knickers in a twist over the analogy. For many years now I've likened the referee's job to a location manager, set dresser, and the production assistant who herds the extras. Producer might actually be a better analogy, but perhaps my aspirations are simply a bit more humble than that.

 

[Dausuul]

How not? Couldn't Lord of the Rings have been a fantasy RPG campaign?

LotR would have made a bloody terrible campaign. This is comedy (and the players and DM are intentionally over-the-top terrible), but it does showcase the massive problems a LotR campaign would suffer.

 

[Celebrim]

Correct. And, yet, not coincidentally, movies are like books in many ways. Depending upon the context, one can analogize meaningfully between movies and books.

I think you are using analogize in a very loose sense to mean only 'compare'. If we were to analogize them, we might speak of something like the film cells of a movie being like pages in a book. While this is poetic, it also hinders understanding of both movies and books rather than clarifies the actual role of pages and film cells.

(Of course, the word "like," which you removed for your argument, makes the difference.)

I did so because the word 'like' has multiple meanings and I didn't want people to confuse between them and thereby get off on the very tangent you've gotten off on. The first meaning of the word 'like' as in, "movies are like books in many ways", is not the same meaning of the word 'like' in "the films cells of a movie are like the pages in a book" as you can easily verify if you look up 'like' in a dictionary.

 

[evileeyore]

That's my approach. The blog post seems to construct a bit of a strawman to attack, frankly. I've never once heard anyone liken the role of a GM to the director of a movie.

If it's a terribly railroady DM they most certianly are acting the Director.

 

[Janx]

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's a decent one. Can somebody come up with a better analogy, or are analogies off the table when talking about RPGs, because RPGs are just plain special?

Kinda like a director and actors, right?

How not? Couldn't Lord of the Rings have been a fantasy RPG campaign? Couldn't Serenity have been a science-fiction RPG adventure? Hell, if I got to play an adventure something like The Usual Suspects, I'd be thrilled.

The story of an RPG campaign doesn't have to end up like a movie, but it certainly can, and IMO most do. (I'm saying nothing about the quality of the "film," though.)

On the set of a film, many excellent directors not only take input on staging, dialogue, story, and other things from actors, but actively solicit it.

Having once been approached to turn my D&D campaign web site into a movie, I can say it certainly is possible.


I think part of the problem with analogies, is that when you give an analogy, some % of people will get the core point you were trying to make, and the rest will try to find holes where the analogy doesn't fit. To quote Dr. Horrible, "It's not a perfect metaphor."

For example, when I have worked on some people's PCs who get confused about memory and disk space, I give them an analogy where memory is like the space on your desk where you do your work, and hard drive space is like your book shelf or drawers, where you store the stuff you're not working on at the time.

Somebody on here is going to quibble about my analogy, despite the fact that as a degreed, published, and 20+ years experienced computer person, I actually know what I'm talking about and am satisfied with the parallels of the comparison, and the results of using it.

In the same vein that some folks are going to argue with my analogy (of which one will have a comparable background, the other won't), a fairly large percentage of us on this forum don't have film experience. But yet, we nonetheless will debate about the roles of producers and directors in film, and how they do or do not relate to RPGs. Something of which we have very little first hand experience.

Perhaps that's a corollary to Celebrim's idea that analogies don't help.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

As I said, this is not always correct. Watch interviews. Different directors work in different ways, and while there are "my way or the highway" directors, they grow increasingly rare.

(And, yes, I'm talking about film.)

Simply not true in modern cinema.

Apparently so.

For what it's worth, I'm currently taking acting classes in LA and what my instructor says (and he has written, directed, and acted for many years and currently has a guest role on Heroes) generally agrees with Jeff W's characterization of moviemaking , at least in Hollywood, as a collaborative process.

Ken

 

[pemerton]

What RPGs are like is a group of friends setting out to play an imagination game under some sort of structure by which conflicts will be systematically resolved.

<snip>

The closest thing IMO RPGs resemble is childhood imaginative play as undertaken usually between age 3 and the onset of puberty. But even there analogies are of little obvious use.

Celebrim, I can't give you XP at this time, but I though this post (including the snippage) was a great (and very inclusive!) description of RPGing.

 

[Hussar]

I used to have a quote in my sig from Charwomangene that went something like this:

"I view my role of DM as the director. However, the players and the dice provide the script."

I don't have a problem with the idea of DM as director. He's just the guy that makes sure that everything works. That people stay on task, that they stay in character, that sort of thing (when making a movie or whatnot). Kinda like how a DM makes sure people stay on task, tries to keep people in character, set the mood, tone, pacing and all that sort of stuff.

But, the actual script? That's what the players and the dice bring to the table.

 

[Umbran]

I don't have a problem with the idea of DM as director. He's just the guy that makes sure that everything works. That people stay on task, that they stay in character, that sort of thing (when making a movie or whatnot).

If you are not directly considering the director's role in creative direction, I can buy that. But at that point you'd get a far closer analogy to say the GM is a project manager than a director.

My issues with the Director analogy lie in the realm of creative input - both a movie director and a GM have major creative influence on their respective works, but the differences between their creative roles is great.

So, as others have said, as a quick-and-dirty description for someone who doesn't play RPGs, the director is as good as most other analogies. But for discussing how to go about the job among gamers it isn't very useful, because you run across those issues of creative role nigh immediately.