You are not the Director

[Raven Crowking]

I should point out that, in the orignal blog, the writer is critiquing an analogy he was aware of -- that of the DM as director and players as actors. He suggested that, if a movie analogy was to be used, the DM should be considered producer rather than director.

I just mention this for those who didn't actually read the blog post.

(And I am not the author.)

RC

 

[TarionzCousin]

I prefer to think of my DM Title as "Rope-Giver."

 

[pawsplay]

Bad analogy, good point. It makes you think about what it is the GM does, exactly, and that's worth thinking about. However, I get the feeling that if it were conventional to talk about the GM as being a sort of producer, the article would have been called, "You Are Not the Producer," cue director analogy.

I personally like the idea that the GM is William Shakespeare... write the story, direct, play the interesting secondary parts, trust your actors. The analogy breaks down because RPGs do not have scripts, so there's the limit of that comparision.

 

[Celebrim]

Ok, now that I've said my peice about analogies, let's just for a moment assume that the analogy "players are like actors and characters are like the roles that they play" is a good one. One of the things that struck me as most bizarre about the writer pushing the analogy is that he begins by stating "We gamers commonly use a movie or theater analogy...", but he thereafter ignores the possibility that the analogy is of theater and not of cinema. As I've already said, I don't agree that 'we gamers' commonly use the analogy he makes, but were the analogy to be made I think it would clearly refer more to theater than cinema and that if we wanted to stretch the analogy we'd do so in the direction of theater and not movies.

The idea of the process RPG storytelling being at least something akin to the process of staging a play, makes to me far more sense than the process of RPG storytelling being something like the process of making a movie. Making a movie is as much a visual art as a literary art. Making a movie usually involves many retakes, many short scenes later edited together, and a high degree of directorial control over what actually gets commited to film. None of these things really feel to me like the process of playing an RPG. The process of staging a play however, while by no means a perfect analogy for an RPG, is at least a far better one than movie making.

In fact, to the extent I hear an analogy like this, the analogy I actually hear is to compare an RPG to improvisational theater, because both an RPG and improvisational theater feature either no script or only rough outlines and provide a very high degree of freedom to the actors to provide direction for the story. In this regard, the role of the GM is closer to the role of Drew Carrey in "Whose line is it anyway?" (or for those in the UK, Clive Anderson), in that he chooses a theme or scenario and grades the performance of the players but otherwise has a very light touch on how the players actually perform. The analogy isn't perfect, but its alot closer to how I feel running a game than George Lucas or Alfred Hitchcock or even Jerry Bruckhiemer.

 

[Woas]

I think referee is the best analogy.


But Rope-Supplier is pretty good too, TarionzCousin!

 

[Rykion]

I agree with the blog's point that it is important as a DM to facilitate a game rather than trying to exert overall control over it. Of course it takes some control to do that. Sounds like what a lot of directors do to me.

 

[Celebrim]

I agree with the blog's point that it is important as a DM to facilitate a game rather than trying to exert overall control over it. Of course it takes some control to do that. Sounds like what a lot of directors do to me.

This points out alot of the problem with making an analogys.

The point of the post would seem to be to talk about what a GM should actually do to run a game, but instead not only does the whole discussion turn into the relatively useless excercise of labelling what a GM does, but it turns into an argument over what a director should actually do to make a movie. I don't personally think I have much insight into how a director should approach movie making. I am not a skilled movie maker, nor for that matter have I even so much experience with movie making that I feel confident describing directors and producers. I know some authoritarian directors are highly respected for their skills, and I know some are highly reviled for their lack of skill. This therefore tells me nothing about how a GM should approach the game, much less provides any proof for the conclusion. Perhaps if I was a skilled movie producer but had no idea how to be a GM, if someone made this analogy to me it might tell me something but likely as not it wouldn't (I might for example conclude that I was supposed to buy all the books and supplementary material for the players, but not that I was to prepare a scenario of some sort or direct the game). In order to understand what the analogy means, its highly likely that you'd have to be both an experienced GM and an experienced producer and an experienced director, and since I doubt the original poster is all three I equally doubt whether someone who was all three would even make the analogy. I see absolutely no point whatsoever in describing something I have alot of experience with in terms of something I have absolutely no experience with. I don't see how there can be but a great loss of information and clarity in doing so. Analogies of this sort aren't clever: they are whatever the opposite of clever is.

 

[Fifth Element]

In this regard, the role of the GM is closer to the role of Drew Carrey in "Whose line is it anyway?" (or for those in the UK, Clive Anderson), in that he chooses a theme or scenario and grades the performance of the players but otherwise has a very light touch on how the players actually perform.

Clive > Drew

 

[Fifth Element]

Analogies of this sort aren't clever: they are whatever the opposite of clever is.

I think the word you're looking for is banal, which is also how I would describe the actual advice given in the blog post. It's fine as far as it goes, but it's nothing new, and sufficiently vague as to be nearly worthless.

 

[Desdichado]

Commonly the problem with analogies (including this one) is that it's stretched too far, and too many correspondances are made. An analogy works best if it's kept quick and dirty, and somewhat vague. RPGs are like improv theater, and the players are the actors? OK, that's a fair analogy. But does it follow from that that the GM has to have an analogous role?

No, it doesn't. So trying to make one fit him is a poor use of analogy.

I don't agree with Celebrim that analogies are more often than not bad or inappropriate tools; however, they do become difficult (at best) when you try to make ancillary or supplementary comparisons based on the analogy.

If that follows. Sorry; I got interrupted by two separate phone calls while writing this, so I'm not sure how coherent it is.