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Easy e
2023-02-09, 03:32 PM
Greetings all,

I think most games should have a "How to GM this Game" section and not assume the players know what they are doing. Some are way better than others, and many of them are kind of "samey". Despite that, I typically read this section of any rulebook first, even before I learn how to create a character. However, there are a few that I recall reading that really helped me get to grips or change my GM style over time.

I can think of a couple that helped shape me:

1. West End Games - Star Wars: 2nd Edition
This had a ton of great advice for pacing and setting up a great action-adventure style game. The simple idea of starting a game In Media Res was life changing to me at the time. However, the other pacing suggestions and the idea that the GMs main job was to keep the game flowing, thrilling, and tense was super helpful.

2. Evil Hat: Monster of the Week: Powered By the Apocalypse
I actually just read the quick reference sheet, and that was enough for me to figure out that I was doing way too much of the heavy lifting for players. Time to outsource more of the work of world building and adventure design to the players.

I am sure there are others, but those jump out to my memory at the moment. How about you? What have been your favorites? What did they teach you?

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-09, 03:39 PM
The table on p. 192 of the AD&D 1e DMG. We ended up with quite a bit of town/tavern/urban encounters, amongst all of the other adventures, and with the group of players I had this was a useful way to vary the nature of selected urban encounters.
Section's title is harlots
These days I don't think I'd use that table as my improvisation skills have broadened, and my placement of significant NPCs has changed in terms of style.

Ionathus
2023-02-09, 04:30 PM
The 5e DMG is a total disaster if you try to use it as an actual Guide for how to be a Dungeon Master. Way too many resources and tables and long bad sections on how to homebrew stuff, way too little actual advice on how to run a game. That being said - page 6 or so contains a rundown of "the different types of players" that was immensely helpful for me.

The author of that page did a great job of explaining that not every player wants the same thing, and that's okay. It's a really good way to reframe your perspective, so you don't do the thing I did in my first few sessions where I worried the quiet person at the table either A) was having an awful time or B) was a bad jerk player who didn't pay enough attention. Not everyone wants the same amount of spotlight, but that doesn't mean they aren't having fun.

I'll echo the Monster of the Week Keeper's guidebook as well. Immensely helpful insights for how to prepare for a session and keep the game moving in interesting ways. Some of it is very specific, some of it is just great advice for any TTRPG adjudicator role. Either way, a very well written book.

Tanarii
2023-02-09, 07:07 PM
AD&D 1e was a gem. Lots of cool tables to help procedurally generate content.

Same with wilderness survival, dungeoneers. Oriental adventures had some good stuff of how to procedurally generate events.

What I don't like is wishy washy how to advice with nothing concrete. That's how all DMGs since 1e have felt. Otoh I'm not new. Maybe someone else would found them inspiring enough.


What's not useful, generally, is "How to GM" advice. Mainly because it's often rooted in elitist philosophies. Examples: Palladium/Seimbeida, Amber Diceless/Wujik, White Wolf, or many from The Forge such as Apocalypse World/Baker & Burning Wheel/Crane especially.

Telok
2023-02-09, 08:57 PM
Champions 3e. Basically had the whole "session zero" thing people talk about these days, 40 years ago. Set limits, talk about characters, feel out the tone of the game, create bonds between characters, links to the setting, etc.

"Omg! <random spell that's existed for 30+ years> brokz my adventure! Doom! Angst!". Pfft, nope. That got dealt with before the campaign even started. Why are people complaining about PCs being able to fly, scry, teleport, full heal for every fight, ignore poison gas traps, boss fight with 5 on 1, or mow down a dozen mooks in a turn? Its been 40 ****ing years since we've had solutions to problematic PC abilities and such stuff.

Sparky McDibben
2023-02-10, 12:52 AM
Stars Without Number and Into the Odd. McDowell and Crawford do a lot more with a lot less.

stoutstien
2023-02-10, 08:33 AM
Stars Without Number and Into the Odd. McDowell and Crawford do a lot more with a lot less.

You gotta believe I did a double backing for CWN even if I rarely use cyberpunk content. I don't even need a preview to know that it's going to be full of stuff that will be useful.

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-10, 09:25 AM
Various PbtA games were instrumental in helping me develop my GMing style, the first foundational one would have been the original Monster of the Week, and I should really check out the Evil Hat edition to see what they've added for guidance. Apart from those, it was mostly reading and digesting random thoughts on running D&D.

I'm legitimately excited to see so many games now that provide more tools to a GM, stuff like the advice in Blades in the Dark would have been invaluable to me, back in the day.

Rynjin
2023-02-10, 09:37 AM
This is a different topic than I thought it was (I thought from the title it'd be about box text etc.), but I'll still share one piece of my favorite "tactics" section of any published material I've ever read.


During Combat Vrood tries to keep his undead allies in
front of him, activating his negative energy conduit aura
to bolster them, and making ranged touch attacks with
spectral hand.

If it looks like any enemies might reach him, he flies to the central part of the tower and threatens,“When next we meet, I shall spit your hearts upon the Gallowspire!” Contrary to these words, he then flies out of sight, casts greater invisibility, and flies back in to continue his attack, using his lesser silent metamagic rod to cast silent spells at foes

I just...absolutely love that the actual GM suggestion for running this encounter is "Have the villain make his "I'll get you next time, He-Man!" speech and then not actually run away.

kyoryu
2023-02-10, 11:26 AM
Burning Wheel has so much generally useful advice. The shame of it is that I've never, ever, ever gotten the game to click at the table.

Various PbtA games are fantastic, as they provide a lot of solid guidance and framework on how to run that game. This can be followed strictly at first and then loosened up a bit, but it's one of the reasons I always recommend PbtA games for new GMs.



What's not useful, generally, is "How to GM" advice. Mainly because it's often rooted in elitist philosophies. Examples: Palladium/Seimbeida, Amber Diceless/Wujik, White Wolf, or many from The Forge such as Apocalypse World/Baker & Burning Wheel/Crane especially.

I get where you're coming from, but I'm kind of the opposite. I know how to GM in general, but I do want to know how they want me to GM that game, in particular. Not all games are GMed the same.


Champions 3e. Basically had the whole "session zero" thing people talk about these days, 40 years ago. Set limits, talk about characters, feel out the tone of the game, create bonds between characters, links to the setting, etc.

A lot of this "whoa new crazy" stuff isn't nearly as new as people think.

Example: In Apocalypse World, a lot of moves or playbooks have a random roll at the beginning of the session to determine if their organization/etc. has demands on them. This existed in GURPS close to forty years ago. After going through my Fate learning curve, it really occurred to me that a lot of the "narrative style" of play was really hinted at by GURPS and Champions decades ago.

The RPG field is widely, widely varied, much more so than I think most people have realized. Which is why (to my point above) I really like games that tell me how to GM that game. They're opening the door to a different experience.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-10, 11:44 AM
A few thoughts, all from my personal opinion

-- Random tables are mostly noise to me. It's very rare that I want something random, and if I do, I'm going to build the random table myself to fit the world/situation/area.
-- I dislike "opinionated" systems. Systems that have to be run a particular way or they don't work well. I prefer toolbox systems that let you take the parts you want and leave the rest.
-- Worked examples that explain reasoning (ie the why) are incredibly useful. And way too rare.
-- Variants of rules are fairly useful, as long as there's real discussion of when you'd want to use particular ones.
-- If the system makes assumptions (such as "characters will have X numbers by Y level from Z gear"), tell me that in no uncertain terms.

kyoryu
2023-02-10, 12:27 PM
-- I dislike "opinionated" systems. Systems that have to be run a particular way or they don't work well. I prefer toolbox systems that let you take the parts you want and leave the rest.

I think all systems are opinionated, to greater or lesser degrees. Even "generic" systems.

"Unopinionated" systems are generally ones that don't state their opinions, but their opinions match yours.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-10, 12:36 PM
I think all systems are opinionated, to greater or lesser degrees. Even "generic" systems.

"Unopinionated" systems are generally ones that don't state their opinions, but their opinions match yours.

The difference for me is how much does the system break if I don't play/run games the way it's expecting or if I drop/ignore some rules. Effectively how wide is the band there, or how much their opinions are binding. AW is quite opinionated--if you try to GM it like you would D&D, it falls flat and makes a mess for everyone. I like games that, while they may have opinions, don't bind anyone to their opinions very tightly. I want to be in the drivers' seat as to what rules get applied when, not the ruleset. Rules are tools to be used where and when I feel appropriate, not things that demand the play get structured in a particular way or everything falls apart.

Amidus Drexel
2023-02-10, 12:51 PM
All of the Paranoia books are incredibly fun reads, but as far as actual GM advice goes, I'll quote this bit from the RCE GM's handbook about experimental gear:


R&D items are the mad-science prototypes that may have mission-solving physics-breaking powers but are more likely to backfire and kill you in some interesting new way. Give out one, possibly two per mission. They are not described here: there are no paragraphs of text for you to copy and pass to the players. The description of an R&D item should be written in a mixture of Finnish and COBOL on the back of an empty packet of high-strength sedatives and on fire. R&D items either have too much documentation or none.

---

I just...absolutely love that the actual GM suggestion for running this encounter is "Have the villain make his "I'll get you next time, He-Man!" speech and then not actually run away.

That is hilarious. I'm stealing that for a villain of mine. :smallbiggrin:


A few thoughts, all from my personal opinion

-- Random tables are mostly noise to me. It's very rare that I want something random, and if I do, I'm going to build the random table myself to fit the world/situation/area.
-- I dislike "opinionated" systems. Systems that have to be run a particular way or they don't work well. I prefer toolbox systems that let you take the parts you want and leave the rest.
-- Worked examples that explain reasoning (ie the why) are incredibly useful. And way too rare.
-- Variants of rules are fairly useful, as long as there's real discussion of when you'd want to use particular ones.
-- If the system makes assumptions (such as "characters will have X numbers by Y level from Z gear"), tell me that in no uncertain terms.

I like random tables when I'm learning a system (and its expectations), but as I get expertise running a game I tend to prefer to make those tables myself.
If a game is designed to be ran a particular way, I definitely like to be told that in the game material. Some of my favorite games are designed to support basically just one or two genres - Paranoia, for example.

Tanarii
2023-02-10, 01:11 PM
I get where you're coming from, but I'm kind of the opposite. I know how to GM in general, but I do want to know how they want me to GM that game, in particular. Not all games are GMed the same.

Most of the ones I gave as an example don't tell you how to GM that game, in particular very effectively.

AW (and most PbtA games) are an odd duck. Because they give you MC moves, which are critical to playing the game the way that game in particular is intended to be played. Those are critical rules for the GM. Then they give you a bunch of prose stuff that's more general advice, that's full rooted in The Forge's Narratavist elitist BS. None of which is needed.


- Random tables are mostly noise to me. It's very rare that I want something random, and if I do, I'm going to build the random table myself to fit the world/situation/area.Random tables are for procedural generation, and are an important DM tool if they are learning to be a good neutral referee model DM and/or how to run a sandbox.

And yes, of course they should be built by the DM. But the point of the DMG is to teach the DM how, and provide solid ones to start with until they learn that.

Telok
2023-02-10, 01:46 PM
Random tables are for procedural generation, and are an important DM tool if they are learning to be a good neutral referee model DM and/or how to run a sandbox.

I find random tables to be useful in generating content that I wouldn't have thought of for myself. They're basically writing prompts to keep from falling into ruts.

Like I've got one staring at me now, a colony of 70 thousand eldarin on a garden world among the settled core star systems that has pre-industrial tech and industry but a society and economy that are in the "transcendent enlightenment &/or post scarcity" category. They're the only people on this extremely valuable planet for the last ten thousand years through wars and migrations and other crap. I wouldn't have written that, I'd probably have done just another generic planet with a bit of local color like infectious flying shark-fungus or something. I'll have to come up with something not in my ordinary style.

Simons Mith
2023-02-10, 01:49 PM
I think most games should have a "How to GM this Game" section and not assume the players know what they are doing. <snip>

I can think of a couple that helped shape me:

1. West End Games - Star Wars: 2nd Edition
This had a ton of great advice for pacing and setting up a great action-adventure style game. The simple idea of starting a game In Media Res was life changing to me at the time. However, the other pacing suggestions and the idea that the GMs main job was to keep the game flowing, thrilling, and tense was super helpful.

<snip>

Hm, yes the Star Wars GMing advice was pretty much the gold standard IMO. Second Edition had some less good advice than first edition, though, and overall I don't think Star Wars second edition was as good a game. So when I rewrote the first edition Star Wars rules, I expanded on what was already there and omitted some of the wonkier advice that came later. I added my own material, including stuff on what makes a difficult scenario, GMing for Droids, and I filled in a couple of area where the original advice was a bit 'and then draw the rest of owl', if you know what I mean. I also put in some info on tone - because as a later poster says, it's not often considered, and if you don't have the right handle on the intended tone of a game it can be harder to make it work. A copy of my work is available on request, but you'll have to DM me. PDF or EPUB are available. (130MB, because of all the pictures)

Paranoia - yeah, another West End Games product, and again I agree with the other poster. Some good material came out of those guys.

Campaign-setting advice, it's hard to beat Pendragon and later RuneQuest editions, but in none of the various editions I've read did they ever explicitly [i]say 'here's how to GM'. Another excellent suite of advice on 'fitting characters into a campaign setting' is in the Dresden Files. But not sure how much it actually gives GMing advice tho.

Amber, have to agree with another poster - it wasn't bad advice by any stretch, but it wasn't excellent either. It was just nice to have something.

The only other game I can think of with particularly good advice is Robin Laws' Feng Shui. Again, it's advice on running high-action material. Laws has done some separate 'How to GM' books which I gather are also sound.

And a shot in the dark - perhaps the Schlock Mercenary RPG? I've not read that, and I don't know how much of Howard Tayler's game mastering advice (Xtreme Dungeon Mastery was his book, IIRC) has found its way into the rulebook, or in what form. But if I was looking for GMing advice, that's another source I would definietely track down.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-10, 02:01 PM
Random tables are for procedural generation, and are an important DM tool if they are learning to be a good neutral referee model DM and/or how to run a sandbox.

And yes, of course they should be built by the DM. But the point of the DMG is to teach the DM how, and provide solid ones to start with until they learn that.

Except that random tables, by themselves don't actually teach. They provide crutches, and worse than that, bad crutches. Now if they had a worked example of creating a good table with all the commentary, that might be useful.

But I'm coming from a position of a very tight coupling between setting (macro and micro) and gameplay. So generic random tables are genuinely a total waste of space in the main. A few (random items) may work, but the rest? Yeah. No.

The whole "run a sandbox" thing with procedural generation only works in an undefined setting. And the neutral referee model DM? Yeah, that's not my favorite at all. In fact, I believe it's actually internally inconsistent, an illusion. The DM is a player, like everyone else. Just with a different role. He's by no means neutral in anything. He shouldn't be biased in particular ways, but he should be biased in many ways that being a referee just doesn't meet.


I find random tables to be useful in generating content that I wouldn't have thought of for myself. They're basically writing prompts to keep from falling into ruts.

Like I've got one staring at me now, a colony of 70 thousand eldarin on a garden world among the settled core star systems that has pre-industrial tech and industry but a society and economy that are in the "transcendent enlightenment &/or post scarcity" category. They're the only people on this extremely valuable planet for the last ten thousand years through wars and migrations and other crap. I wouldn't have written that, I'd probably have done just another generic planet with a bit of local color like infectious flying shark-fungus or something. I'll have to come up with something not in my ordinary style.

My issues with them (and procedural generation in general) is that it either needs to be supervised so heavily as to be way more work than just doing it yourself (because you can't fill out the random table with interesting stuff you couldn't come up with on your own, kinda by its nature) or it becomes incoherent. And it never fits any particular setting unless the tables were generated for that setting. And more specifically, that micro setting.

For example, if I were doing random encounter tables, I'd need one per biome, per small region. Because established setting parameters make the generic ones utterly meaningless. And as soon as your setting deviates from the "system expectation", the tables' utility drops tremendously. For example, any table including gith (of any kind) is garbage in my setting, because while vaguely gith-shaped creatures exist, they're very different in nature and localized to one region of one continent.

But as I said, this is all opinion. I, personally, find random tables a waste of space. But I realize others do not.

Ionathus
2023-02-10, 02:08 PM
I find random tables to be useful in generating content that I wouldn't have thought of for myself. They're basically writing prompts to keep from falling into ruts.

Same. MCDM's Strongholds and Followers is nearly useless to me if I try to pluck content wholesale from it. But I appreciate how many different ideas Colville & his team had, and how they came at the mechanics from a slightly different angle than 1st-party content does. Every time I open the book it gets me thinking, and that alone was worth the purchase price.

Tanarii
2023-02-10, 02:19 PM
But I'm coming from a position of a very tight coupling between setting (macro and micro) and gameplay. So generic random tables are genuinely a total waste of space in the main. A few (random items) may work, but the rest? Yeah. No.Unfortunately that leaves you with the situation of being forced to run a non-sandbox table.


The whole "run a sandbox" thing with procedural generation only works in an undefined setting.Not at all, as shown by several games designed for sandbox play with quite detailed settings.

Trying to run a sandbox setting without procedural generation is either a quick way to make a trip to long sleeves and padded room town ... or it wasn't actually a sandbox in the first place.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-10, 02:37 PM
Unfortunately that leaves you with the situation of being forced to run a non-sandbox table.

Not at all, as shown by several games designed for sandbox play with quite detailed settings.

Trying to run a sandbox setting without procedural generation is either a quick way to make a trip to long sleeves and padded room town ... or it wasn't actually a sandbox in the first place.

If sandbox implies that you can't have tight coupling with the setting (macro and micro)...well...then I'm glad to not care about "sandboxes". Because tight coupling is the only thing that makes playing meaningful to me. Everything you see and experience should arise organically from the setting and the setting should react to that. And that requires that being on the plains of Halflingland feel very different from being on the plains of dinasaurland. Which means curating different tables by micro-region. Which is more work than just building stuff on the fly as people go there. At least for me.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-10, 02:45 PM
Same. MCDM's Strongholds and Followers is nearly useless to me if I try to pluck content wholesale from it. But I appreciate how many different ideas Colville & his team had, and how they came at the mechanics from a slightly different angle than 1st-party content does. Every time I open the book it gets me thinking, and that alone was worth the purchase price. Yeah, I am glad I got it, but no way I overburden myself with a whole pile of new rules I need to manage and balance. but idea farming? Yes. Matt's got some good stuff.

Tanarii
2023-02-10, 03:41 PM
If sandbox implies that you can't have tight coupling with the setting (macro and micro)...well...then I'm glad to not care about "sandboxes".
I don't believe you are correct about tight coupling with the setting and procedural generation being at odds in the first place. That's an artificial restriction you have created for yourself.

Easy e
2023-02-10, 03:47 PM
Tanarii- I know you are not a fan of "story driven" games, which is fine. I am asking a clarifying question in order to understand something better for myself, as I am not sure I get what you typing.

Could you link me or better explain to me the DM as Neutral arbiter, and if they are not neutral and procedurally generating content than they can not have a "sand box" game? Is this a personal preference, or is there a long line-of-thought that this pulls from?

I mean, I have run what I thought was a "sandbox game" and never had any procedural content. I left hooks to explore and then built adventures based on where they go and hooks taken, and generated more hooks and adventure from there, and the hooks they choose/did not choose impacted the world. To me that was a "sandbox experience", but I was never procedurally generating content and by your definition therefore I was running.... something else. Did I understand this correctly?

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-10, 03:49 PM
I don't believe you are correct about tight coupling with the setting and procedural generation being at odds in the first place. That's an artificial restriction you have created for yourself.

To procedurally generate material that has tight coupling with the setting, you need to curate your random tables intensely. In enough detail that most of the value of procedurally generating material is lost. For example, unless your setting is ultra-generic, you can't use anyone else's tables even as starting points, really. And even if you do, you'll have to curate the output really heavily because that particular combination of things doesn't make sense in that particular place. Because settings that are worth coupling to have very strong opinions about what should go where. So you're better off just generating material the old-fashioned way (just-in-time if needed) rather than trying to systematically procedurally-generate things and then have to redo them dozens of times and having to completely remake your tables if your party decides to move more than a few days travel away.

Telok
2023-02-10, 05:20 PM
@Phoenix. Thats a lot of absolute "can't" and "must" statements about a general topic. It really feels like you're talking about issues you have with specific types of random generation for a specific sort of setting and GMing style. It's fine if you don't like some generic "forest encounter" D&D game generator that assumes a FR-like setting because it doesn't match your homemade fantasy setting that's specifically using different assumed baseline physics & magic concepts. I honestly wouldn't use random generators for that sort of stuff myself.

But I've got a game where the PCs can have a kilometer long space battleship, decide to explore off map, and "pickled vampire anthropomorphic cyborg cucumber cocaine wizard with a laser cannon" is a legitimate character concept. I'm zoomed way out from one bit of generic fantasy grassland having different animals than another. I might need half a dozen elven/halfling dome cities on a moon one week for PCs doing industrial sabotage, a 3 km tall tau corporate hive city for the PCs to race helicopters through the next week, and then a totally new star system in a blank spot on the map the week after that. Random grassland encounter table? Useless. Random table of critter and lair generators I can poke a few times to get some weird bug-demon in a ruined temple? Absolutely useful.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-10, 06:14 PM
@Phoenix. Thats a lot of absolute "can't" and "must" statements about a general topic. It really feels like you're talking about issues you have with specific types of random generation for a specific sort of setting and GMing style. It's fine if you don't like some generic "forest encounter" D&D game generator that assumes a FR-like setting because it doesn't match your homemade fantasy setting that's specifically using different assumed baseline physics & magic concepts. I honestly wouldn't use random generators for that sort of stuff myself.

But I've got a game where the PCs can have a kilometer long space battleship, decide to explore off map, and "pickled vampire anthropomorphic cyborg cucumber cocaine wizard with a laser cannon" is a legitimate character concept. I'm zoomed way out from one bit of generic fantasy grassland having different animals than another. I might need half a dozen elven/halfling dome cities on a moon one week for PCs doing industrial sabotage, a 3 km tall tau corporate hive city for the PCs to race helicopters through the next week, and then a totally new star system in a blank spot on the map the week after that. Random grassland encounter table? Useless. Random table of critter and lair generators I can poke a few times to get some weird bug-demon in a ruined temple? Absolutely useful.

And I'd say that that setting isn't a setting that can be tightly coupled to. Because if anything goes...anything goes. You don't really have a stable setting with strong constraints. Which is fine...just not for me.

I also specified that I'm talking about my own opinions. Others may find those useful. But for the games I want to run or play in, yeah. Not so useful. And IF sandbox play requires procedural generation, THEN I'm not interested in sandbox play (note the conditionals). But I think you can get the majority of the value of sandbox play without requiring procedural generation. Procedural generation is for determining the state of the world. But if the state of the world is already generated or there are strong constraints on it, procedural generation just doesn't give much value for the time invested to make it coherent within those constraints.

stoutstien
2023-02-10, 07:56 PM
I prefer that the majority of the written content to be "GM" sections and should constantly reiterate important features that are key for the system to work. Ill take a proper index and table of content as a major factor into what lives on my shelf.

As far as stuff like random tables go I can give or take them but I don't begrudge the page real estate as long as it's only supportive in design. The one place where I think they're underutilized is in campaign modules where you could get more replayability out of them with a little bit of randomness with minimal set up.

gbaji
2023-02-10, 08:09 PM
Hah. Paranoia was great. Especially with the advice on R&D stuff. One scenario we were issued a gun that was an "anti commie-mutant-traitor-scum" weapon, designed to help us kill such horrible people. However, apparently, the design of this weapon was split into different groups, with one thinking up the physycal design, and the other the deployment. The first group assumed that the point was to hand these weapons to the aforementioned commie-mutant-traitor-scum people, so designed the gun to backfire (it literally fired backwards at the person holding it). The second group assumed it was to be issued to Troubleshooters (the PCs) as a means to help them kill the commie-mutant-traitor-scum, so they issued the weapons to the Troubleshooters. Hillarity ensued!

Um... As to GMing advice. It's hard to nail down any particular written bit, but I do tend to lean more towards sections actually describing (in prose) how to GM well, than sections with large amounts of detailed charts and tables and whatnot. I suppose the latter is useful, but more in a "worldbuilding examples" sort of way. Neglecting the first bit is problematic IMO. It leads to game's that are basically a series of random(ish) encounters, and focusing on what you encounter, and what you get as a result, rather than *why* the encounter is there in the first place.

Follow that up with the vast number of canned scenarios, and their often hamfisted adventure "paths", and it's not surprising that many GMs get a very "odd" view of how to run games.

Tanarii
2023-02-10, 08:14 PM
But I think you can get the majority of the value of sandbox play without requiring procedural generation. Procedural generation is for determining the state of the world. But if the state of the world is already generated or there are strong constraints on it, procedural generation just doesn't give much value for the time invested to make it coherent within those constraints.Of course you can. In theory. It just takes a LOT more work. Tens if not hundreds of times as much.

It took me some hundreds of hours to prep for a D&D sandbox campaign with a mix of mining old modules and dungeon magazine articles (as recommended by the Alexandrian), and creating my own procedural generation. I can't even imagine trying that without any procedural content at all. Or mining old content :smallamused: but that takes a LOT of time, and still far less than creating your own from scratch. But D&D has crap for procedural generation, which is the problem. There are systems out there with good enough procedural generation you could probably get away with a fraction of that if you leveraged the built in systems.

Telok
2023-02-10, 08:34 PM
And I'd say that that setting isn't a setting that can be tightly coupled to.....

.... But if the state of the world is already generated or there are strong constraints on it, procedural generation just doesn't give much value for the time invested to make it coherent within those constraints.

Well, that's your assumption about coupling. Which phrase I'm not sure you're using the same way other people are.

As to "state of the world" stuff, having a strong set of constraints actually makes procedural generation much easier. They set the bounds for the content and context for the tables. You seem to be assuming everything is always on the table for such a thing and that what is being generated can't be coherent. But procedurally generating things like entire star systems with inhabited planets with their terrain and weather, that are coherent and reasonable, has been a thing since the 80s. It's been used to successfully write entire campaign settings and modules.

Just because it doesn't fit your current use case doesn't mean its bad, or a crutch, or inappropriate, or makes for a game setting you automatically won't like. It especially fails your "always incoherent" and "more effort than writing everything from scratch". Those may be true for generic D&D type encounter tables vs. your setting, or for your need to write stuff to fit inside a very limiting & constrained set of existing conditions. But I'm adding content to a very bare bones setting. I don't have time or energy to write a hundred different cultures, cities, and alien animals from scratch. I'm not adding a hand crafted dungeon for a few people on foot to walk through while killing stuff, I'm adding an entire planet or thee with possibly multiple cities and space stations for characters that might lead a company of mecha through them or they might try to seduce the leaders.

You say you don't know any random content tables that fit into your detailed setting? Sure, I believe you. You say random content tables always produce gibberish that takes longer to fix than writing everything from scratch? No. Right tool for the right job. You don't need a particular tool for your job? Great. But don't say its a bad tool.

Pauly
2023-02-10, 08:35 PM
I have a memory of reading the GM section in TORG by West End Games and being impressed by it, particularly on how to GM a cinematic type game. I never was able to convince a group to play TORG or the follow up Shatterzone so the details have been lost to the mists of memory. It must be at least 25 years since I saw, let alone opened, a copy of either.

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-11, 12:28 AM
Oh yeah Burning Wheel was definitely helpful, I built a lot of game-running around that, and the way the game was structured also helped me understand how to spin a situation out of a handful of die rolls. You have to push it hard to get a rewarding experience, but there's a lot you can get out of it. The concept of challenging Beliefs also rooted itself in my style somewhere, although I don't always look for equivalent things in games--but it's something I still try to keep an eye on when building scenarios.

In general, the single best piece of advice was from PbtA, though, which is the agenda to "be a fan of the characters", second only to "treat NPCs like stolen cars". The entire framing of the GM role as the MC (c.f. Apocalypse World), the person responsible for introducing the talent and making them shine. It's an ingenious framing that would benefit the vast majority of games--really easy to port that mindset over and improve your game.

Kymme
2023-02-11, 12:42 AM
It really doesn't get much better than the GM-ing sections in Apocalypse World, Fellowship, and Masks: A New Generation for me. They're all so chock full of great, specific, and above all actionable guidance for running games. Apocalypse World's section on Disclaiming Decision Making helped me realize that, as the GM, I didn't have to bear all the weight of running the game on my own shoulders and judgements. And Fellowship's section on Spotlight Management taught me a lot as well about keeping groups of players engaged during sessions. Those games both do a lot of stuff excellently, but I think reading them genuinely made me a better GM.

Special shoutout to 4e's Dungeon Master's Guide, which was actually really great, even if I read it about ten years too late.

Ionathus
2023-02-13, 12:48 PM
In general, the single best piece of advice was from PbtA, though, which is the agenda to "be a fan of the characters"

If I could impart understanding of one concept into every new GM's mind, it would be this one. It's such a clean summation of a GM's role, and it covers a lot of GM pitfalls, from the egregious ones like DMPCs and capricious traps, to more subtle ones like encounter design and storytelling decisions.

If you were a fan watching these PCs in a TV show, would you call bull**** at the long slog through a boring dungeon just for a Shaggy Dog ending where they failed due to circumstances outside their control? Yes? Then re-evaluate whether that "clever twist" is actually an interesting development for your players to experience, or whether you're the only one who will find it funny.

kyoryu
2023-02-13, 01:18 PM
If I could impart understanding of one concept into every new GM's mind, it would be this one. It's such a clean summation of a GM's role, and it covers a lot of GM pitfalls, from the egregious ones like DMPCs and capricious traps, to more subtle ones like encounter design and storytelling decisions.

If you were a fan watching these PCs in a TV show, would you call bull**** at the long slog through a boring dungeon just for a Shaggy Dog ending where they failed due to circumstances outside their control? Yes? Then re-evaluate whether that "clever twist" is actually an interesting development for your players to experience, or whether you're the only one who will find it funny.

"Be a fan" doesn't mean that they always win, to be clear. I'm a fan of Harry Dresden, and I want him to get put in tough positions, and to get beat down. It makes his rise up even sweeter.

Ionathus
2023-02-13, 02:47 PM
"Be a fan" doesn't mean that they always win, to be clear. I'm a fan of Harry Dresden, and I want him to get put in tough positions, and to get beat down. It makes his rise up even sweeter.

For sure. You could even argue it means the opposite - you don't want to see them win every challenge easily, that's boring. You want to see them struggle and persist even when the going gets tough, making the victory all the sweeter. But "being a fan" makes that distinction clearer, and helps eliminate the perception that your ultimate goal is to kill them, or some of the other player vs GM mentality.

Tanarii
2023-02-13, 02:49 PM
In the original AW, "be a fan of the player's characters" means two things, when you read the details. Which given it was Vincent Baker writing, requires some parsing:
1) don't take away characters cool toys integral to their class just because
2) when they are successful don't screw them by making their success inconsequential

Blades in the Dark the idea in terms of enmity:
Be a fan of the PCs. Present the world honestly—things really are stacked against them—but don’t make yourself the enemy of the PCs. They have enemies enough. Be interested in the characters and excited about their victories.

It's basically "don't screw the characters" framed in a way (by the catch phrase) that makes it seem like if you're a neutral GM arbiter, you're screwing the characters. Because they're all anti-OSR.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-13, 03:59 PM
In the original AW, "be a fan of the player's characters" means two things, when you read the details. Which given it was Vincent Baker writing, requires some parsing:
1) don't take away characters cool toys integral to their class just because
2) when they are successful don't screw them by making their success inconsequential

Blades in the Dark the idea in terms of enmity:
Be a fan of the PCs. Present the world honestly—things really are stacked against them—but don’t make yourself the enemy of the PCs. They have enemies enough. Be interested in the characters and excited about their victories.

It's basically "don't screw the characters" framed in a way (by the catch phrase) that makes it seem like if you're a neutral GM arbiter, you're screwing the characters. Because they're all anti-OSR. Yes, some of that mental framing is kind of obvious in the prose in the book.

Our group is trying to get more of the scores initiated by the group putting their heads together and deciding "hey, let's do this" and "Hey, let's make contact with this faction" so that we can explore the city and its denizens. Last session ended up in a furtive attempt to expand our turf that ended with "OK, we'll be in this bar for two nights, come and see us if you are interested in our help on the down low" for a prominent figure in the local area. We'll pick up on that next session. We were missing one of our 4 group members, and decided that we'd do the Discovery pillar during the last session.

And we did that. I'd say that we are still a bit conservative in some of our approach, with moments of sheer audacity mixed in. We like that.

The game authors seem to lean into "just do it and devil take the hindmost!" as the "right" way to play the game, but none of our players is willing to push the other four into that mind set.

We are hoping for a session where our GM gets to play, and are figuring out who the next GM will be to give GM a chance at a character. (Playing online, as ever, does tend to slow the pace; in person I think our tempo would be a lot higher).

gbaji
2023-02-13, 05:03 PM
"treat NPCs like stolen cars".

Hah. Love that one. Very important. As a GM, you can't allow yourself to get too attached to NPCs. I've seen it happen, and it always results in less enjoyable game. "Let the PCs win" is important. Unless the entire table is 100% on board with a super grim/dark game setting/theme, you have to view your role as the GM as doing your part to "cooperatively tell the story of how the PCs succeed at <something>". That's not to say be a "gimme GM", but there has to be a balance.


If you were a fan watching these PCs in a TV show, would you call bull**** at the long slog through a boring dungeon just for a Shaggy Dog ending where they failed due to circumstances outside their control? Yes? Then re-evaluate whether that "clever twist" is actually an interesting development for your players to experience, or whether you're the only one who will find it funny.

Yup. Rugpulling is one of the worst things you can do as a GM. The players expect a payoff for their efforts. Make sure you give it to them. There are a boatload of ways to introduce new problems along the way to solving the current one if you want to introduce "twists", but having them ultimately fail at the direct thing they are trying to do (or having it all be meaningless) just pisses the players off.


I think someone spoke earlier about detailing large amounts of stuff in a game. Yeah. There's value to that, but I personally find it's often not worth the time spent doing so. I prefer to just outline in very broad strokes the areas/things "near" the PCs (with "near" meaning "stuff they could choose to interact with in the medium term). I only detail stuff I know they're going to directly interact with (like "might do the next session or two").

The danger with over detailing places/people/things is that there can be a bit of (not sure the best term for this), um... "use bias"?. As a GM, you're going to feel a pressure to use something if you spent time writing it. This can lead to the "quantum ogre" situation some have mentioned in the past. If you're detailed three star systems full of stuff, and the PCs decide to go to one, and then head off to a completely new area of space, you're going to really feel a need to either re-write that stuff into the worlds they find in that new area *or* find some means to require the PCs to come back to the one you aready spent time detailing.

Just put enough in there for the players to make choices, and for you to answer simple questions like "what's over thataway". And if they head over in a direction you didn't detail yet? There's always the stock GM trick of "OMG! Random encounter along the way", or something. Then fill in the map ahead of them before the next session. There's also some GM skills you develop over time of inserting "on the fly" content, which can be interesting, and engaging, but doesn't necessarily have to automatically "fit in" with the broader world (but can be fit in if you wish). It's just not that hard to put something in front of the players to occupy them until the end of the sesssion, complete with lots of "interesting possible hooks", even if at the time, you have no clue where those hooks will lead.

I've created whole subplots out of things I just randomly made up in the last hour or two of a session because my players just decided to do something random and interesting. All you need to know is a very vague "this is the kind of stuff that's over there", and then run something real quick. Then fill in details after the fact. Done right, the players will never know you didn't have the whole thing prepped up and ready the whole time. And no. That does not always need to involve combat.

InvisibleBison
2023-02-13, 07:03 PM
In the original AW, "be a fan of the player's characters" means two things, when you read the details. Which given it was Vincent Baker writing, requires some parsing:
1) don't take away characters cool toys integral to their class just because
2) when they are successful don't screw them by making their success inconsequential

Blades in the Dark the idea in terms of enmity:
Be a fan of the PCs. Present the world honestly—things really are stacked against them—but don’t make yourself the enemy of the PCs. They have enemies enough. Be interested in the characters and excited about their victories.

It's basically "don't screw the characters" framed in a way (by the catch phrase) that makes it seem like if you're a neutral GM arbiter, you're screwing the characters. Because they're all anti-OSR.

I don't see anything in your paraphrases that's incompatible with being a neutral GM arbiter. In fact, I'd say that taking the PC's cool toys away arbitrarily, making the PC's successes inconsequential or being an enemy of the PCs are all the opposite of being a neutral GM arbiter.

Tanarii
2023-02-13, 08:07 PM
I don't see anything in your paraphrases that's incompatible with being a neutral GM arbiter. In fact, I'd say that taking the PC's cool toys away arbitrarily, making the PC's successes inconsequential or being an enemy of the PCs are all the opposite of being a neutral GM arbiter.
Yes. The details are completely compatible.

It's calling it "Be a Fan of the PCs" that's a direct contrast to the idea of a GM being a OSR-type impartial arbiter.

Conversely, the OSR Principia-Apocrypha, OSR's rules for DMs in AW style, instead calls the effectively same principle "Divest Yourself of Their Fate".

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-14, 06:39 AM
I would definitely agree you're not supposed to be neutral, that's definitely at odds with the notion of being a fan. Seems self evident to me.

It dovetails really nicely with the reframing of the GM role as the MC, the Master of Ceremonies, a role which means you're introducing and highlighting the talent of the show, i.e. the PCs. Great mentality that helps remind you to dig into the best, most interesting parts of the characters.

It's also particularly important in PbtA games because the GM/MC is given so much latitude, so having that mentality of "I'm on your side" explicitly emphasized is important for attaching responsibility to that power.

Really glad it's become so influential.

Tanarii
2023-02-14, 10:30 AM
I would definitely agree you're not supposed to be neutral, that's definitely at odds with the notion of being a fan. Seems self evident to me.
And to me, that's not good advice.

kyoryu
2023-02-14, 11:13 AM
I think it's kind of interesting in that, for an old school game, you put on a number of hats. Some are neutral. Some are pro-player. Some are flat-out hostile.

Putting together the overall world/environment? You're doing at least a little bit of being on the side of the players - you're creating a world that needs some internal consistency, sure, but is also generally set up to facilitate adventuring (early levels of the dungeon are easier than deeper ones, even if the opposite may make sense).

On a general, moment-to-moment mode? Neutral. Let the chips fall as they may (I'm also against fudging.... the kindness should happen either at the system design/houserule level, or the content creation mode).

When running the enemies? Adversarial, flat out (though playing the enemies as agents with their own agendas, not just as tools to inflict maximum pain).

For me, "be a fan of the players" is mostly about making sure that you're putting them in interesting situations. I don't ever really read it as "pull punches". So that's mostly in the "content-creation" mode. Though, games like AW have a different general structure, so things you'd do for them aren't, generally, things that you'd do for an OSR game.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-14, 11:28 AM
When running the enemies? Adversarial, flat out (though playing the enemies as agents with their own agendas, not just as tools to inflict maximum pain).


Yeah, this is something I don't particularly like. At all times, all players (including the DM) should have the fun of the entire table as their #1 objective. And adversarial thinking isn't so neatly cabined--it quickly spills over. Because you can't run the enemies without also making judgement calls. So being adversarial in one will necessarily spill over into the other.

I strongly believe that neutrality is a myth at best, a negative at worst. People, in general, cannot be neutral about anything they're invested in. So either the GM is not invested[1] (bad, game-killingly-so) or they're not neutral. They're going to be biased and naturally add some spin. The trick is that the spin should favor the players, not the characters (any of them, PC or NPC). Which means knowing your table, knowing what they like and don't like, and making judgement calls accordingly. "Neutrality" (or the illusion of such) is only a good tactically, not definitionally.

And if we look at the history, those supposed "OSR" guys were anything but neutral. They were antagonistic as all get-out, trying to kill characters wherever possible by any means fair or foul, constrained only by what would cause their players to walk out. And, frankly, all the depictions of those early tables make it clear that I would strongly dislike playing with them.

[1] being neutral works for the ref of a competitive wargame where the players and the ref are different parties. D&D is not, and really never was[2] a competitive wargame in that sense. Thus, neutrality has never really been in the cards.
[2] it grew out of one, but was always players vs characters controlled by the GM. As long as the GM has pieces of their own on the field, they're a participant. And participants, by definition, cannot be neutral parties.

Tanarii
2023-02-14, 11:30 AM
I don't ever really read it as "pull punches".
Unfortunately this is how it usually pans out, at least in terms of how it seems to be interpreted online. Both by those directly quoting the philosophy and those espousing something similar to the catchphrase.

And not even just "pull punches". Far more often it's "cheat in favor of the characters / story if necessary".

kyoryu
2023-02-14, 12:22 PM
Yeah, this is something I don't particularly like. At all times, all players (including the DM) should have the fun of the entire table as their #1 objective. And adversarial thinking isn't so neatly cabined--it quickly spills over. Because you can't run the enemies without also making judgement calls. So being adversarial in one will necessarily spill over into the other.

But it's not purely antagonistic. It's mostly playing the enemies in their own best interest. Which, in many ways, is less antagonistic than it could be..... enemies acting in their own interest won't sacrifice their lives just to take a few HP off of a character, for instance.

And, really, the philosophical point is that doing so should make the game better. It's providing a real challenge to put in front of the characters, so that actually overcoming it can be meaningful. Note also that this really needs to be in a situation where players have sufficient agency to determine what and how much trouble they want to get in - if the GM is force-feeding a sequence of encounters, this doesn't work.


And if we look at the history, those supposed "OSR" guys were anything but neutral. They were antagonistic as all get-out, trying to kill characters wherever possible by any means fair or foul, constrained only by what would cause their players to walk out. And, frankly, all the depictions of those early tables make it clear that I would strongly dislike playing with them.

I mean, they work on different assumptions, and there's always bad GMs. But Tomb of Horrors was written because Gary's players complained about the game being too easy. So there's some information there about how things actually were run.

And multiple of Gary's parties made it through that, with way fewer resources than we might presume.


Unfortunately this is how it usually pans out, at least in terms of how it seems to be interpreted online. Both by those directly quoting the philosophy and those espousing something similar to the catchphrase.

And not even just "pull punches". Far more often it's "cheat in favor of the characters / story if necessary".

I think you're confusing two very different playstyles. There's the "game as story" crowd, which started with DragonLance, and have grown into the more "neo-trad" crowd. They definitely do the things you're talking about.

The "narrative" crowd (including AW) does that far less. They are usually vocally anti-fudging, and are often very, very willing to let very bad things happen to characters, although death is usually less emphasized than in old-school/classic gaming.

I mean, i get it - I'm more of a "classic" player historically, as you appear to be.

https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2021/04/six-cultures-of-play.html

Though I disagree with their description of "classic" (as I suspect you would), and "story games" is actually two different groups (storygames and narrative games), this is as close to a reasonable description of the differences as I've found. What you're talking about is very common in "traditional" and "Neo-trad/OC".

I've never fudged anything when playing any PbtA game, or Fate. Those games also generally don't go in with a predefined "story" that must be adhered to - the story is (like classic games) just what happens in play.

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 01:13 PM
Eh. I don't even like the idea of NPCs always acting in their best interest because they don't have enough cards to do so. Part of the tactical sinkhole syndrome with design is caused by the idea that we judge NPCs by their ceiling of effect rather than thier situational one.

They should make mistakes because they are acting with a flawed and incomplete logic, due to not knowing they are in a game, and have limited or no idea the PCs exist. let alone their capacity.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-14, 01:42 PM
Eh. I don't even like the idea of NPCs always acting in their best interest because they don't have enough cards to do so. Part of the tactical sinkhole syndrome with design is caused by the idea that we judge NPCs by their ceiling of effect rather than thier situational one.

They should make mistakes because they are acting with a flawed and incomplete logic, due to not knowing they are in a game, and have limited or no idea the PCs exist. let alone their capacity.

Yeah. If NPCs are played as meta-aware, optimized beasts, settings fall apart. In fact, I've long considered the idea that NPCs should optimize (either at build time or at play time) to be a "world smell"--it smacks of "giant option list in the sky" isekai settings. Which I don't like. Or "characters as chess pieces", which smacks of player (or DM) vs player play, not character vs character.

Even very smart people make mistakes out of hubris, overconfidence, lack of some critical fact, or other cognitive and knowledge biases. And not every enemy (especially beasts and less-savvy ones) should be played as a chess masters.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 01:46 PM
I definitely think NPCs should be optimized.

The main thing is though, NPCs should be optimized for different things than PCs usually are.

A pirate may not be optimized for combat. What they're optimized for is being a pirate. Unless they're supposed to be incompetent in-setting, they should possess class features, Feats, etc. that let them be a better pirate.

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 01:54 PM
I definitely think NPCs should be optimized.

The main thing is though, NPCs should be optimized for different things than PCs usually are.

A pirate may not be optimized for combat. What they're optimized for is being a pirate. Unless they're supposed to be incompetent in-setting, they should possess class features, Feats, etc. that let them be a better pirate.

Being optimistic and acting such are two different things.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-14, 02:05 PM
I definitely think NPCs should be optimized.

The main thing is though, NPCs should be optimized for different things than PCs usually are.

A pirate may not be optimized for combat. What they're optimized for is being a pirate. Unless they're supposed to be incompetent in-setting, they should possess class features, Feats, etc. that let them be a better pirate.

But how and how much do they know about such things? Do spellcasters get some mental list of every possible spell and all the details? Do people growing up get knowledge of all those prestige classes, feats, etc and all their prerequisites?

I'd say that's nonsense. Generally, people should be an eclectic grab-bag of features based on their past history and intrinsic nature.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 02:10 PM
But how and how much do they know about such things?

The same way you know how to walk, or do anything. They learned it from somebody, or picked it up instinctually.

If you're a pirate, you're obviously gonna pick up ranks in Profession: Sailor, because you're a sailor. Why do you have Improved Critical: Cutlass? Because you've been using a cutlass as your primary weapon for over a decade and know how to cut with it just right.

These characters aren't choosing options from a menu, having optimal Feat etc. choices is a natural consequence of being good at your job. Nobody is an "eclectic grab bag" of anything in the sense you're proposing. Just because your rode a horse once as a kid doesn't mean you have ranks in Ride, and just because you liked to run around as a child doesn't mean you have the Run Feat.

Chances are most of your adult life has been spent honing a very specific subset of skills and maybe a hobby or two. You are not proficient to a significant mechanical sense in anything else.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-14, 02:16 PM
The same way you know how to walk, or do anything. They learned it from somebody, or picked it up instinctually.

If you're a pirate, you're obviously gonna pick up ranks in Profession: Sailor, because you're a sailor. Why do you have Improved Critical: Cutlass? Because you've been using a cutlass as your primary weapon for over a decade and know how to cut with it just right.

These characters aren't choosing options from a menu, having optimal Feat etc. choices is a natural consequence of being good at your job. Nobody is an "eclectic grab bag" of anything in the sense you're proposing. Just because your rode a horse once as a kid doesn't mean you have ranks in Ride, and just because you liked to run around as a child doesn't mean you have the Run Feat.

Chances are most of your adult life has been spent honing a very specific subset of skills and maybe a hobby or two. You are not proficient to a significant mechanical sense in anything else.

Except...most "optimal" builds are also incredibly counter-intuitive. The obvious feats aren't optimized. A world where everyone is optimized is a world that looks nothing like any of the fictional worlds presented in any of the setting books or anything else. Or anything coherent.

So something must not work that way.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 02:18 PM
Except...most "optimal" builds are also incredibly counter-intuitive. The obvious feats aren't optimized. A world where everyone is optimized is a world that looks nothing like any of the fictional worlds presented in any of the setting books or anything else. Or anything coherent.

So something must not work that way.

Can you give me an example? What's a counterintuitive feature that makes you a better pirate?

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 02:21 PM
The same way you know how to walk, or do anything. They learned it from somebody, or picked it up instinctually.

If you're a pirate, you're obviously gonna pick up ranks in Profession: Sailor, because you're a sailor. Why do you have Improved Critical: Cutlass? Because you've been using a cutlass as your primary weapon for over a decade and know how to cut with it just right.

These characters aren't choosing options from a menu, having optimal Feat etc. choices is a natural consequence of being good at your job. Nobody is an "eclectic grab bag" of anything in the sense you're proposing. Just because your rode a horse once as a kid doesn't mean you have ranks in Ride, and just because you liked to run around as a child doesn't mean you have the Run Feat.

Chances are most of your adult life has been spent honing a very specific subset of skills and maybe a hobby or two. You are not proficient to a significant mechanical sense in anything else.

None of what you referring to are things that are world facing. Having a sailor background doesn't fully dictate how they act which is the important part.

Notably the best pirates weren't and won't be those who fit the "pirate" build you reference. The same way wars are won with shovels not bravo, staying alive as a pirate would mean planning and opportunity. Drawing a blade would mean you're already screwed up.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-14, 02:23 PM
Can you give me an example? What's a counterintuitive feature that makes you a better pirate?

An optimized 3e character will always have as many levels in whatever T1 spellcasting class they can. Because that's what's actually useful. For example. But that makes no sense from a pirate's perspective or the world's perspective--it leads to a world where nothing but spellcasters exist and then everything falls apart.


None of what you referring to are things that are world facing. Having a sailor background doesn't fully dictate how they act which is the important part.

Notably the best pirates weren't and won't be those who fit the "pirate" build you reference. The same way wars are won with shovels not bravo, staying alive as a pirate would mean planning and opportunity. Drawing a blade would mean you're already screwed up.

Or really this. "Optimization" is entirely meta. Because the ruleset is entirely meta. Classes, feats, levels, builds, even discrete spells are not world-facing things. People don't "level up". They don't have skill proficiencies. Those are game UI affordances for the players, not things the characters themselves have any conception of. They're player-facing abstractions.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 02:24 PM
An optimized 3e character will always have as many levels in whatever T1 spellcasting class they can. Because that's what's actually useful. For example. But that makes no sense from a pirate's perspective or the world's perspective--it leads to a world where nothing but spellcasters exist and then everything falls apart.

That's not what optimization means, though. I thought this misuse of the word was solved years ago? Optimization just means picking the best options for your character concept.


None of what you referring to are things that are world facing. Having a sailor background doesn't fully dictate how they act which is the important part.

Notably the best pirates weren't and won't be those who fit the "pirate" build you reference. The same way wars are won with shovels not bravo, staying alive as a pirate would mean planning and opportunity. Drawing a blade would mean you're already screwed up.

If you want to optimize your pirate to be a glorified accountant, that's valid. I personally like buckling swash.

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 02:34 PM
If you want to optimize your pirate to be a glorified accountant, that's valid. I personally like buckling swash.

And they die as a pointless combat encounter and the players will never notice any of the time or effort spent on making an "optimized" pirate. At that point just make it what it is.

*Npc that goes argh, wears an eye patch, and swings a curve sword.*
I can make that. Including it's stats, take up less than 2 lines on a page and I doubt they are worth that.


The original point is a simple one though it can be a little hard to decide. Don't play NPCs to their maximized effective ability all the time. It only has negative impact on the game. Not like the GM has a limited supply of stuff so have a few goblins break rank and run away, have a pirate who surrenders at the first sight of blood, have a dragon who is blind to false complements, and have spell casters cast the wrong spells.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 02:41 PM
And they die as a pointless combat encounter and the players will never notice any of the time or effort spent on making an "optimized" pirate. At that point just make it what it is.

*Npc that goes argh, wears an eye patch, and swings a curve sword.*
I can make that. Including it's stats, take up less than 2 lines on a page and I doubt they are worth that.

Look, trust me, there's a big different in the memorability of an encounter with a better-optimized pirate and a less-optimized one.

When running Skull and Shackles, there's a particularly optional encounter with a pirate named Gortus Svard. he is a hobgoblin pirate who uses a sword and shield (poorly). His class is something like Rogue 3/Fighter 4.

This wimp would have been rolled over by the party and forgotten about almost instantly.

Gortus+, retooled into a Slayer, with some of the actually GOOD sword and board Feats, took on most of the party solo, decapitated the Alcemist, chopped off both of the Bloodrager's arms (he got better), booted the Soulknife off the ship, and nearly managed to slay the Magus as well before being brought low.

He remained a member of the PC's NPC crew for the rest of the campaign.

JNAProductions
2023-02-14, 02:44 PM
Look, trust me, there's a big different in the memorability of an encounter with a better-optimized pirate and a less-optimized one.

When running Skull and Shackles, there's a particularly optional encounter with a pirate named Gortus Svard. he is a hobgoblin pirate who uses a sword and shield (poorly). His class is something like Rogue 3/Fighter 4.

This wimp would have been rolled over by the party and forgotten about almost instantly.

Gortus+, retooled into a Slayer, with some of the actually GOOD sword and board Feats, took on most of the party solo, decapitated the Alcemist, chopped off both of the Bloodrager's arms (he got better), booted the Soulknife off the ship, and nearly managed to slay the Magus as well before being brought low.

He remained a member of the PC's NPC crew for the rest of the campaign.

That feels like either a system failure or a module failure.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-14, 02:44 PM
That feels like either a system failure or a module failure.

Or, most likely, both.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 02:46 PM
That feels like either a system failure or a module failure.

Care to elaborate?

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 02:52 PM
Or, most likely, both.

Beat me to it.

It's a good example of tactical sinkholes. A ton of effort to fill a gap in tension and game logic frame by using the most janky part of most systems.

JNAProductions
2023-02-14, 02:53 PM
Care to elaborate?

To have a memorable encounter, you shouldn't need to spend time optimizing a foe to the nines.

Either the module messed up, and the foe was massively badly designed.
Or the system isn't good, because a typically-built NPC is a pushover.

A DM can be handling anywhere from a half-dozen to nearly three digits worth of NPCs in any given session. Obviously some NPCs need more work than others (a pirate leader deserves more effort spent on them than their mooks) but if you have to build every important NPC as an optimized PC would be... That's just plain way too much effort for hitting the baseline. You should be able to take a baseline enemy, maybe make one or two little tweaks (maximize HP, add an extra attack, maybe a Rallying Cry style ability for examples) and use them as a good enemy.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 02:54 PM
Beat me to it.

It's a good example of tactical sinkholes. A ton of effort to fill a gap in tension and gme logic frame by using the most janky part of most systems.

This is something that took me about 10 minutes and created a memorable scene at the table that my players still reference fondly about 6-7 years after the fact.

It's not really a ton of effort. A little bit of effort correctly applied can have the same effect.


To have a memorable encounter, you shouldn't need to spend time optimizing a foe to the nines.

Either the module messed up, and the foe was massively badly designed.
Or the system isn't good, because a typically-built NPC is a pushover.

A DM can be handling anywhere from a half-dozen to nearly three digits worth of NPCs in any given session. Obviously some NPCs need more work than others (a pirate leader deserves more effort spent on them than their mooks) but if you have to build every important NPC as an optimized PC would be... That's just plain way too much effort for hitting the baseline. You should be able to take a baseline enemy, maybe make one or two little tweaks (maximize HP, add an extra attack, maybe a Rallying Cry style ability for examples) and use them as a good enemy.


The character was made before most of the options I used existed, is the main thing. "Sword and board pirate with a falcata" is a sound fighting style, but the bits and bobs weren't there yet.

As an optional boss fight, I though Gortus deserved better.

Most enemies in Pathfinder APs can be 'fixed" with a few light tweaks, but occasionally you do have to rebuild major figures from the ground up to make them formidable; in the same campaign I had to do the same thing to the "big bad" of the whole campaign (who gets sidelined in book 5 of 6...I do not like book 6 of Skull and Shackles).

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 02:57 PM
This is something that took me about 10 minutes and created a memorable scene at the table that my players still reference fondly about 6-7 years after the fact.

It's not really a ton of effort. A little bit of effort correctly applied can have the same effect.

Eh. Antidotes and Cherries don't make a good case from a design perspective. You have table that reacts well to stuff like that you might as well play something like PF2 which does it for you and save the flack of needing to proof read material.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 02:59 PM
Eh. Antidotes and Cherries don't make a good case from a design perspective. You have table that reacts well to stuff like that you might as well play something like PF2 which does it for you and save the flack of needing to do it in the first place.

PF2 is one of the ****tiest systems I've ever had the displeasure of playing, so I'm not sure why you think the circumstances are comparable. I like rebuilding NPCs where appropriate because Pathfinder options are meaningful.

"Reading material" is a big part of the job of a GM. If I didn't feel like reading I'd just say "I don't feel like running this week, let's play some video games guys".

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 03:19 PM
PF2 is one of the ****tiest systems I've ever had the displeasure of playing, so I'm not sure why you think the circumstances are comparable. I like rebuilding NPCs where appropriate because Pathfinder options are meaningful.

"Reading material" is a big part of the job of a GM. If I didn't feel like reading I'd just say "I don't feel like running this week, let's play some video games guys".

Reading and prep work is very very different than proofreading material.
Needing Proofreading means that somewhere either the system or the module failed to connect and/or there is a major disconnect on what they designed and what is expected.

Rynjin
2023-02-14, 03:27 PM
Reading and prep work is very very different than proofreading material.
Needing Proofreading means that somewhere either the system or the module failed to connect and/or there is a major disconnect on what they designed and what is expected.

Nothing's perfect, especially when it comes to the "crunchiest" part of the business (adventures were by far the most frequently published item throughout PF1's entire run).

They are overall good, and some are even great, but occasionally a statblock or plot point falls short. It is definitely part of the GM's job to correct these things if they're able.

Skull and Shackles is admittedly overall one of the weaker entries though. Of the APs I've played and run it's a contender for my least favorite of the ones actually published in Pathfinder.

stoutstien
2023-02-14, 03:44 PM
Nothing's perfect, especially when it comes to the "crunchiest" part of the business (adventures were by far the most frequently published item throughout PF1's entire run).

They are overall good, and some are even great, but occasionally a statblock or plot point falls short. It is definitely part of the GM's job to correct these things if they're able.

Skull and Shackles is admittedly overall one of the weaker entries though. Of the APs I've played and run it's a contender for my least favorite of the ones actually published in Pathfinder.

Eh. I don't use published campaigns cover to cover but I have enough PF spruces to say that overall they do ok on average. You need to shop by cross referencing the primary writer and editor that you prefer.
I believe that they were better at presenting the their portfolio in this fashion they would have taken a much larger piece of the pie but maybe not. Consumers are weirdos.

Your stance does make a little bit more sense from the lens of PF. It's a system that you have to keep up with those fiddly little bits or it blows a piston or misses a gear. It's also a system that doesn't promise otherwise so it's not a problem. It's not overly concerned with maintaining a sound game world logic beyond it's meta which is why it does attract GMs like me. Actually give the system kudos for telling me exactly what it's all about.

The issue arises where systems either fail to mention this or flat out lie by using flowery GM suggestions sections that don't amount to a hill of beans.

gbaji
2023-02-14, 04:30 PM
For me, "be a fan of the players" is mostly about making sure that you're putting them in interesting situations. I don't ever really read it as "pull punches". So that's mostly in the "content-creation" mode. Though, games like AW have a different general structure, so things you'd do for them aren't, generally, things that you'd do for an OSR game.

I'll also point out that being a "fan of the players" is not the same as being a "fan of the characters". Your job as a GM is to create an enjoyable game for the players to play. Kinda the whole point. Within that constraint, you also should play the NPCs as whatever they are, and not just as "tools of the story". Which is the trickiest part IMO, because ultimately you likely actually wrote those NPCs to be tools of the story. Just don't tell the NPCs that though.


As to the Non-optimized pirate/NPC. It's something that can be done IMO. Not everything in an encounter has to be about maximizing combat effectiveness. If you are creating an encounter, you should ensure that there are sufficient NPCs with sufficient skills/powers/whatever to make the encounter interesting and fun for the players to play through, but you can also add additional things.

The "accountant pirate" is actually something that might make a lot of sense. Someone has to keep the books straight, make sure everyone's getting their fair share, negotiate prices for supplies when in port, etc. I could totally see the PCs wiping the floor with a pirate crew, only to have one surrender and then offer his services as "ship's accountant" or something. Which, for some parties (a lot of parties maybe?) might be something they really need.

Am I going to spend a ton of time building that NPC in the initial encounter though? Nope. He'll just be a wimpy guy off to the side, and if he survives, and the party decides to keep him on, then I'll decide what accountant skills he's got. There's not a lot of value to detailing something that may not ever come into play. Outline first. Detail as needed.

kyoryu
2023-02-14, 04:34 PM
I'll also point out that being a "fan of the players" is not the same as being a "fan of the characters". Your job as a GM is to create an enjoyable game for the players to play. Kinda the whole point. Within that constraint, you also should play the NPCs as whatever they are, and not just as "tools of the story". Which is the trickiest part IMO, because ultimately you likely actually wrote those NPCs to be tools of the story. Just don't tell the NPCs that though.

Yes, typo on my part.

And, exactly. And that's why we have the "levels" I talked about. The content-creator is the friendliest level, and is the one that has the fewest constraints.

Arguably, you could say there's a continuum in GM roles, in that the higher "in the stack" you go, the fewer constraints they have, but the more "on the side of the players" they should be.

As you go lower in the stack, they're more constrained, but also can drift into neutrality or even adversarial actions. But the overall GM should be on the side of the players, and remember that these neutral/adversarial roles are in service of the overall game goal of "have fun".

Tanarii
2023-02-14, 04:41 PM
I think you're confusing two very different playstyles.
The anti-neutral arbiter-ness of The Forge resulting in AW's framing of a certain concept as "be a fan of the player's characters", and the common online interpretation of that framing as meaning conceptually "do whatever it takes to further the character's success/story" may very well be one play style taking another play-styles phrasing and using it differently. As opposed to folks who are part of the play style misunderstanding what it means.

Sparky McDibben
2023-02-14, 05:41 PM
Gortus+, retooled into a Slayer, with some of the actually GOOD sword and board Feats, took on most of the party solo, decapitated the Alcemist, chopped off both of the Bloodrager's arms (he got better), booted the Soulknife off the ship, and nearly managed to slay the Magus as well before being brought low.

He remained a member of the PC's NPC crew for the rest of the campaign.

Just wanted to say that I thought this was a fun and interesting example. Thanks for sharing!


The anti-neutral arbiter-ness of The Forge resulting in AW's framing of a certain concept as "be a fan of the player's characters", and the common online interpretation of that framing as meaning conceptually "do whatever it takes to further the character's success/story" may very well be one play style taking another play-styles phrasing and using it differently. As opposed to folks who are part of the play style misunderstanding what it means.

I think DM principles ought to vary by game and campaign. I certainly don't enjoy linear campaigns as much as my regular sandbox, but they do require a different approach.

kyoryu
2023-02-14, 05:42 PM
The anti-neutral arbiter-ness of The Forge resulting in AW's framing of a certain concept as "be a fan of the player's characters", and the common online interpretation of that framing as meaning conceptually "do whatever it takes to further the character's success/story" may very well be one play style taking another play-styles phrasing and using it differently. As opposed to folks who are part of the play style misunderstanding what it means.

I'm totally uninterested in fighting the Forge Wars. Ron Edwards acts like a jerk. (Also, his ire was less at classic styles of game and sandboxes, and more at the linear, White-Wolf type stuff of the 90s and beyond)

My first exposure to "narrative" games was me calling them "roll to see how awesome you are" on this very forum. And a member of this forum told me exactly how beat up their party got (dead characters, NPCed characters, losses of allies, etc. etc.) in the course of a campaign - which was the exact opposite of what I had assumed, and was very in line with my interests (coming from a similar background as you).

And what I discovered is that most of the people playing them didn't have a predefined story, that were willing to let bad things happen, that didn't assume the PCs needed to be shown as awesome and get everything that they want.

So, I get what you're saying and where you're coming from. But I can only tell you what I saw, and what I see in those spaces directly.

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-14, 06:19 PM
Yeah I think if you're willing to not get hung up on some decade old grudges, there's some really cool stuff to find there.

Since when was wanting the PCs to have a cool story a bad thing, after all? Neutrality is a specific taste, not a default.

gbaji
2023-02-14, 07:05 PM
Yeah I think if you're willing to not get hung up on some decade old grudges, there's some really cool stuff to find there.

Since when was wanting the PCs to have a cool story a bad thing, after all? Neutrality is a specific taste, not a default.

And as Kyoryu pointed out, there are "levels" to this. Painting the whole thing with one broad (neutral or not-neutral) brush really fails to understand the whole of the picture we're trying to... um... paint.

It may be that the term "neutral" is what trips people up. Maybe a better term would be "segmented/separated/disconnected"? The GM has to separate what he's doing as a world builder and scenario writer (or editor depending), from what he's doing as a roleplayer. One of the GMs "hats/levels" is to roleplay the NPCs. But this does require that the GM separate the knowledge he has of the PCs, of other NPC activities, other events going on, etc, and play based on what this NPC right here, right now, would reasonably do.

This isn't really about being neutral though. While playing the NPC, the GM has to play that NPC as though it's a real person who wants to actually "win" (however that's defined). And while doing this, the GM has to consciously *not* include in the decision making of the NPC other factors in the setting that the GM knows but the NPC would not.

And yes. On a higher level, the GM is also balancing out various NPC groups/individuals and their presumed reasonable actions and decisions while writing a "story/adventure/scenario/whatever", hopefully in a way that the players will enjoy, and presumably as a result of challenging and engaging their PCs. So on one level, the GM is putting the NPCs in that location, at that time, with that agenda, and those abilities/items, to fill a role in a larger story, but on another, he's playing those NPCs as straight as he can. And yeah, this can be a tricky bit of mental gymnastics.

When you do it correctly, the game flows smoothly, the PCs interact with the game setting and events and NPCs in a way that feels natural, and the players don't feel like they are being jerked around by a chain, or that the NPCs are "cheating" and acting in ways they shouldn't, but while still having fun, and being able to do things they want to do (at least within their own capabilities). When you do it poorly? The players will see behind the facade. They will see the NPCs as mere tools being used by the GM to force specific story outcomes. At the best, this will feel "fake". At the worst, it'll feel like the GM is "against the players".

I once played in a game run by a GM who really felt strongly about thematic "cost". He believed that nothing was worth doing if it didn't come at some great cost, and that this somehow would make his game more "real" for the players and the PCs. The problem was that no matter what we did, how well we played, or what choices we had our PCs make, this *always* happened. Every victory was pyrrhic. We were always forced to sacrifice something to "win" anything. And that would be ok if that was just the theme of the game. But it was quite obvious that he would fudge outcomes and add new "twists" to force these painful results. Worse, the NPCs always seemed to know exactly what the vulerabilities of the PCs were and how to exploit them. We were doing too well in a fight? Magically some really ridiculously over the top opponent would appear out of nowhere and having no reason to logically be there. A PC had really good physical defenses? Always taken out with spells. The guy with high spell defences? Riddled with arrows. Every time. Even if the two characters appeared identical in terms of how their armor/gear looked and the NPCs had no reason to target them that way.

I think the absolute most absurd one was when were were in a battle with a bunch of chaotic bad guys. One of the PCs had an item that made her immune to chaotic abilities. So when one of the bad guys used an ability that allowed him to breath fire, it didn't affect her. Well, instead of assuming that maybe she just had really strong magic enhancing her physical defenses (which, you know, is totally a thing that might make you not take damage from fire breathing in this game system), or even the (rare, but possible) "she's immune to fire somehow", instead lept right past that to the (ultra rare, like she's got the one unique artifact in the game that can do this) ability to ignore chaotic abilities, so he had another minion run over with a pot of oil, dump it out where she was standing, and the firebreathing guy breathed on that, thus lighting her on fire. So yeah. That happened.

kyoryu
2023-02-15, 08:53 AM
I think a big part of neutral is really that

1. you are trying to be the highest-fidelity interface to the game world possible
2. you do not have predefined outcomes in mind

To use the old "PC insults the king" example, you could have a neutral, hostile, or "fuzzy" GM.

The hostile GM knows that the king will not take kindly to this. The players declare that they insult the king, and the GM says "okay, great, he lops off your heads." He might think he's being neutral, but he's really not - he's almost pouncing on the opportunity to punish the players.

The neutral GM knows the same thing - but also knows the players would know this. "Hey, you know that in this kingdom, that's going to result in some badness. If you're not killed outright for insolence, you'll at least be imprisoned. Is that still what you do?"

The fuzzy GM doesn't want anything bad to happen to the players, so the king just laughs it off and they're now best friends.

Ultimately, the "neutral" GM is really doing the best job IMO. They want players to make informed decisions, and they're making sure that nothing is lost in how they're presenting information. However, they're still letting the results of those decisions stand, once they know that the players are making an informed (to the level that they can be informed) decision, and that they have all the info the characters would.

At the content and system level, though, I think there's a lot of room to be pro-player. Your megadungeon is set up so that deeper=harder, and things that are extra hard in an area are telegraphed in some way, for instance. Maybe your system makes sure it has retreat encoded in it so that you can get away when things go bad. You show your pro-player stripes in the setup of the situation, making sure that it's interesting and fair and delivers whatever experience you want. But when you set the players loose, you let things play out.

At least, that's how I view it. I'm not responsible for other uses of the term.

Easy e
2023-02-15, 10:18 AM
It seems to me, that a Neutral GM is suppose to decide on the King's reaction procedurally. I.e. roll a dice on a chart with some social mods.

I.e. King Reaction Table to PCs:

1-5= Outward hostility
6-10= Icy, but will use these new tools
11-15= Not interested
16-20= Tries to ally

PCs have CHA bonus of +X and can use proficiency bonus if they have an appropriate skill. Roll for results.

That is if I understand Tanarrii correctly?

gbaji
2023-02-15, 03:26 PM
It seems to me, that a Neutral GM is suppose to decide on the King's reaction procedurally. I.e. roll a dice on a chart with some social mods.

That's not really neutral though. That's random. A neutral GM will have previously decided the personality of the king, and will roleplay the kings reaction to the players insult based on that previously determined personality. Period.

Do you roll randomly to see how your PC character responds to something? Or do you roleplay it? Same deal with the GM.

I *never* roll for NPC reactions. Like ever. I put the NPC into the game. I already know what the NPC is like, why that NPC is there, what their objectives are, how they feel about certain things, etc. For a more important character (like say a king), there may be a lot of nuance to this. For a random Orc the PCs encounter, maybe it's a more simple "fight or not fight" type thing. But at all times, I know what the NPC I'm running "wants", and play them out based on that.

That's my style of GMing though. I'm sure others may think it's more fair to just roll dice for every NPC choice. Again though, I just view that as random. And my concern with that approach is that if the players know that the NPC reactions are random, then they aren't encouraged to do much cooperative roleplaying themselves. They aren't going to do things like try to learn ahead of time what the NPC they're interacting with like or dislikes, or whether they have a sense of humor, honor, etc. They're going to treat the NPCs just like game objects, and not other people they are interacting with.


EDIT: And let me actually add, before someone goes there, that I really don't like the term "neutral" in the first place. It's not a great descriptor for what I do when I GM. When playing an NPC, I'm not "neutral". I'm running the NPC, and roleplaying it based on who that NPC is, what they know, and what they want. The NPC isn't "neutral". The NPC is very much an advocate for whatever the NPC wants. I play it that way.

kyoryu
2023-02-15, 05:28 PM
I think "neutral" is best understood as "without agenda for the resolution of the game". Like, you're not pushing towards a certain outcome besides "good game".

Tanarii
2023-02-15, 05:46 PM
If neutral bothers you, try "impartial arbiter" instead.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-15, 06:31 PM
If neutral bothers you, try "impartial arbiter" instead.

That's how I'd been interpreting it all along, and all my previous objections apply just as much. It's impossible (no one is impartial if they're a participant...by definition) and a good DM shouldn't just arbitrate externally-imposed rules--that way lies horrible experiences. That works if and only if there are two competing parties other than the DM. To impartially arbitrate requires you to be outside the game. And the DM isn't.

Since, as I see it, the DM will always be partial, the important thing is who they are partial towards and how. Trying to impose the myth of impartiality just means that the intrinsic, hidden partiality will be in control and unchecked. That route leads directly toward antagonism.

A DM has to balance multiple competing interests. Playing the characters appropriately for the established characterization and worldbuilding. Promoting good (meaning "things the table enjoys") gameplay. Adjudicating rules applications (and generally being the game engine, the machine into which the rules are but a minor set of inputs). Taking "world turns". Keeping things moving for the table as a whole. Etc. None of those require or even are aided by an attempt to be "impartial" in any significant sense.

Tanarii
2023-02-15, 09:11 PM
the myth of impartiality
Metagaming is a myth
Player-character separation is a myth
Impartiality is not

Because clearly humans can't separate in the first two, but can in the third. :smallamused:

Kymme
2023-02-16, 04:15 AM
{Scrubbed}


And to me, that's not good advice.

It's advice that works great for the game that issues it. I don't think that a game having an instruction manual is an attack against other games or the people who play them.


I've never fudged anything when playing any PbtA game, or Fate. Those games also generally don't go in with a predefined "story" that must be adhered to - the story is (like classic games) just what happens in play.

Same here. One of my favorite parts of PbtA games, which I've mentioned before, is the practice of disclaiming decision making. This is put forward in Apocalypse World as a principle, just like "be a fan of the players," and it's the most anti-fudging ruling you could make. It's such a load off of your shoulders, as a MC, to put some of the otherwise totally arbitrary rulings you'd make in most other games and put them down on the table in the form of Clock or what-have-you.

Easy e
2023-02-16, 10:40 AM
That's not really neutral though. That's random. A neutral GM will have previously decided the personality of the king, and will roleplay the kings reaction to the players insult based on that previously determined personality. Period.

I am trying to interpret what neutral or impartial means based on the definitions that Tanarii posted earlier. It felt like unless the outcomes were generated procedurally, than the GM was not impartial. Hence, an impartial GM would not determine or use GM Fiat to decide the King's reaction at all. Instead, they would roll it procedurally based on tables provided by the game.

Am I misrepresenting your thoughts in neutrality Tanarii?

kyoryu
2023-02-16, 11:17 AM
I don't see "neutral" as requiring the GM to not make decisions. That seems like a highly extreme position.

Historically, D&D used a lot of GM decision, so reading it as such in the context of old school games seems like a huge stretch.

(Offloading some of that to a die roll is a great technique when it's not obvious. But at some point the GM is pushing some "fiat" to that, or just completely running off of a single set of tables which would massively lower world consistency and interest)

Tanarii
2023-02-16, 01:08 PM
I don't see "neutral" as requiring the GM to not make decisions. That seems like a highly extreme position.
Borrowing from Principia Apocraphia, which is OSR principles laid out in the form of AW's MC moves, principles, etc, the catch phrases for an Impartial Arbiter are:

Rulings over Rules
Divest Yourself of Their Fate
Leave Preparation Flexible
Build Responsive Situations
Embrace Chaos ...
... but Uphold Logic
Let Them Off the Rails

Personally I think they went a little too vague there. Unlike AW's catch phrases (which are a very good concept and why it was copied for this OSR core principles document), these need a bunch more explanation.

But they mostly boil down to: give the PCs situations where they can express agency and creativity, they aren't being forced down a certain path/solution, and give them rope needed for them to be awesome.

Or hang themselves.

kyoryu
2023-02-16, 01:57 PM
But they mostly boil down to: give the PCs situations where they can express agency and creativity, they aren't being forced down a certain path/solution, and give them rope needed for them to be awesome.

Or hang themselves.

That's actually very, very similar to how most "narrative" folks run stuff, btw. There's some minor differences (like "what does a situation look like" and "what do we care about modeling" and "how tightly bound is a player's sphere of influence") but a lot of the goals are very similar.

Ron's issues were less with true old-school games, and more with the mid-80's-through-90s super-linear, railroad/illusionist style of play where players are going through a predetermined story.

Also, I don't see anything in there saying that GMs can't make decisions. Quite the contrary.

One interesting difference is that old-school games tend to have fairly "complete" rules in a lot of places, but encourage GMs to bend them. Meanwhile, narrative games tend to have rules with purposeful blanks in them, where generally you follow the rules where they exist, but judgement comes into play where they don't exist.

The styles are more alike than people realize in many ways (while having important differences). They are both more similar to each other than they are to the preplanned "adventure path" style of play.

Also, to be clear, I am 100% NOT a fan of Ron Edwards or his writings. I do think that some of the people around him made good games, though in many cases they diverged from his beliefs significantly.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-16, 02:03 PM
That's actually very, very similar to how most "narrative" folks run stuff, btw. There's some minor differences (like "what does a situation look like" and "what do we care about modeling" and "how tightly bound is a player's sphere of influence") but a lot of the goals are very similar.

Ron's issues were less with true old-school games, and more with the mid-80's-through-90s super-linear, railroad/illusionist style of play where players are going through a predetermined story.

Also, I don't see anything in there saying that GMs can't make decisions. Quite the contrary.

One interesting difference is that old-school games tend to have fairly "complete" rules in a lot of places, but encourage GMs to bend them. Meanwhile, narrative games tend to have rules with purposeful blanks in them, where generally you follow the rules where they exist, but judgement comes into play where they don't exist.

The styles are more alike than people realize in many ways (while having important differences). They are both more similar to each other than they are to the preplanned "adventure path" style of play.

And it should be noted (in addition to all of this true stuff) that this is about styles of play, not game systems (usually). Most games[1] can be played in several different styles. You can do the whole "OSR" style of play in 5e D&D, just like you can do a much more narrative style of play and a much more linear, adventure-path style of play. And you can even flip back and forth within a single campaign! How do I know? I do it pretty much on the regular. Some bits are linear, most of it is much more open-world-ish with a strong mix of narrative vibes and OSR vibes. Styles and such are one of many tools a good GM can choose from.

[1] sure, there are some systems that start to show cracks if you deviate very far from their chosen style of play. I'd call those fragile systems. And when the system railroads you into playing its way...it's not all that much better than when the DM railroads players into playing their story. It's a sign of a flaw, a realization that they wouldn't choose to do it willingly and have to be coerced/tricked.

kyoryu
2023-02-16, 02:06 PM
And it should be noted (in addition to all of this true stuff) that this is about styles of play, not game systems (usually). Most games[1] can be played in several different styles. You can do the whole "OSR" style of play in 5e D&D, just like you can do a much more narrative style of play and a much more linear, adventure-path style of play. And you can even flip back and forth within a single campaign! How do I know? I do it pretty much on the regular. Some bits are linear, most of it is much more open-world-ish with a strong mix of narrative vibes and OSR vibes. Styles and such are one of many tools a good GM can choose from.

[1] sure, there are some systems that start to show cracks if you deviate very far from their chosen style of play. I'd call those fragile systems. And when the system railroads you into playing its way...it's not all that much better than when the DM railroads players into playing their story. It's a sign of a flaw, a realization that they wouldn't choose to do it willingly and have to be coerced/tricked.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, necessarily.

I think some systems are more broad, and some are more narrow. I think in a lot of cases, going narrow is good becuase you can support what you're doing really, really well, while a more generic system will often be less strong in the support it gives.

It's a tradeoff, really.

See, I consider D&D of most stripes to actually be fairly narrow, mostly becuase it's assumptions don't really match my preferences.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-16, 02:13 PM
I'm not sure I'd go that far, necessarily.

I think some systems are more broad, and some are more narrow. I think in a lot of cases, going narrow is good becuase you can support what you're doing really, really well, while a more generic system will often be less strong in the support it gives.

It's a tradeoff, really.

See, I consider D&D of most stripes to actually be fairly narrow, mostly becuase it's assumptions don't really match my preferences.

There's a difference, in my mind between the following

a) a system that doesn't support playstyle X explicitly, but using it doesn't actively break things under normal conditions
b) a system that actively breaks if you employ playstyle X.

My understanding is that the PbtA games actively fall apart if you try to play them with a GM making decisions and "taking actions" or having an agenda of their own. That's case (b). 5e D&D, on the other hand, doesn't fall apart if you try to run an OSR sandbox/dungeon crawl. You need to add in a bunch of stuff to "do it right" and use variant rules, but it mostly limps along ok. That's case (a).

I don't play in any stable "style"--mine is a hybrid of a bunch of things. Too many up-front decisions and lack of neutrality for the OSR or PbtA folks (I consider myself an active participant, not an arbiter), but nothing is set in stone until it actually comes out at the table and most of the "plot" is only really visible in retrospect, with wide lattitude for player involvement/agency and no pre-determined outcomes.

It's why I'm somewhat allergic to "opinionated" systems--I know that they'll fall apart if I try to run it as I (and my parties) prefer. I want the game to adapt to me, not me to have to adapt to the game. That's a consequence of seeing the game superstructure as a UI toolkit I can pull pieces out of and apply as I desire, not as the system demands. So loosely-coupled systems work better for me. "Narrow" ones generally focus on things I'm not interested in at all OR on things I want to handle personally. They get in my way and pretend to be in charge.

gbaji
2023-02-16, 02:16 PM
I am trying to interpret what neutral or impartial means based on the definitions that Tanarii posted earlier. It felt like unless the outcomes were generated procedurally, than the GM was not impartial. Hence, an impartial GM would not determine or use GM Fiat to decide the King's reaction at all. Instead, they would roll it procedurally based on tables provided by the game.

Am I misrepresenting your thoughts in neutrality Tanarii?

I can't speak for Tanarii, but based on this previous post:


The anti-neutral arbiter-ness of The Forge resulting in AW's framing of a certain concept as "be a fan of the player's characters", and the common online interpretation of that framing as meaning conceptually "do whatever it takes to further the character's success/story" may very well be one play style taking another play-styles phrasing and using it differently. As opposed to folks who are part of the play style misunderstanding what it means.

You are probably correct.

I think both "sides" of this portrayal result in a massive excluded middle. The idea that we must either impose our own will as GMs on every player choice and action and decide results based on what's best for "our story" *or* fill in a world with random tables and charts for everything and then just let the players run through while we just roll dice, is missing a whole lot of what I actually consider "good GMing".

And if the later is the definition of "neutral", then that's not my preference at all.

I'm leaning very much in the same direction as kyoryu here. The GM plays different roles while running a game, and (if we want to do it well) should therefore keep those roles separate. When I'm creating a game setting, I'm doing so in my role as "world builder". I can build whatever world I want, with whatever theme I want. It can be gritty, fun, heroic, whatever. I can decide what genre and/or time period to put things in as well. None of that is "neutral", or "random". I'm deciding that. And I"m deciding that based on two factors: What I think the players will enjoy and what I find interesting and fun to run. When I detail that setting, filling in locations, people, plots, conflicts, backstory, etc, I'm also not neutral either. I'm doing the same thing. I'm creating an environment in which the players will play their characters. And when I further detail the portions close to where the PCs are, adventures/scenarios/etc, I'm also not being neutral or random. I'm creating "pseudo stories" here. Hooks. Plots. Schemes. All things I think are interesting and also things that I think the players may enjoy. At no point do I pull out a random generation table and roll dice. Largely because I want the lowest/closest "layer" of the game (that the players will directly interact with) to be consistent and make sense with the next highest/larger layer, and also with the theme/genre/setting of the game as a whole.

You *can* do that by populating a boatload of random tables at like step 2 or something, and fill stuff in. But then you lose the ability to inject your own creativity into the process. I think that in the pursuit of "neutrality" or "impartiality", you're losing one of the key powers a GM has: To make a fun game. A paint-by-numbers world can still be fun, in the same way that any table top game we play with randomly generated but pre-written events/cards/whatever can be fun. And a blank canvas can be intimidating. But once you start painting "from scratch" and see the results? It's totally worth it.

But yes. This does mean that when you get down to the NPC level, you must also separate those roles as well. And, honestly, it's no different than what you *should* be doing as a player. PCs should not act on player knowledge that the PC doen't have. NPCs are the same. This is probably the hardest thing to do as a GM, but if you can do it, your game will really benefit from it. It will allow you to run highlly complex interwoven plot lines, seamlessly, with the players exploring and learning along the way (and hopefully enjoying themselves), without them also feeling like they are being lead along by the nose. It will feel "natural", when done right.

It's not just a roleplaying game for the players. It's also for the GM. At least, that's how I see it.

JNAProductions
2023-02-16, 02:20 PM
There's a difference, in my mind between the following

a) a system that doesn't support playstyle X explicitly, but using it doesn't actively break things under normal conditions
b) a system that actively breaks if you employ playstyle X.

My understanding is that the PbtA games actively fall apart if you try to play them with a GM making decisions and "taking actions" or having an agenda of their own. That's case (b). 5e D&D, on the other hand, doesn't fall apart if you try to run an OSR sandbox/dungeon crawl. You need to add in a bunch of stuff to "do it right" and use variant rules, but it mostly limps along ok. That's case (a).

I don't play in any stable "style"--mine is a hybrid of a bunch of things. Too many up-front decisions and lack of neutrality for the OSR or PbtA folks (I consider myself an active participant, not an arbiter), but nothing is set in stone until it actually comes out at the table and most of the "plot" is only really visible in retrospect, with wide lattitude for player involvement/agency and no pre-determined outcomes.

It's why I'm somewhat allergic to "opinionated" systems--I know that they'll fall apart if I try to run it as I (and my parties) prefer. I want the game to adapt to me, not me to have to adapt to the game. That's a consequence of seeing the game superstructure as a UI toolkit I can pull pieces out of and apply as I desire, not as the system demands. So loosely-coupled systems work better for me. "Narrow" ones generally focus on things I'm not interested in at all OR on things I want to handle personally. They get in my way and pretend to be in charge.

I think the issue only arises if a game system requires a certain playstyle and doesn't tell you that. It's fine to not want a narrow system, but I don't think you should call them bad because they don't fit your overall GMing style-just not fit for your tables.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-16, 02:57 PM
I think the issue only arises if a game system requires a certain playstyle and doesn't tell you that. It's fine to not want a narrow system, but I don't think you should call them bad because they don't fit your overall GMing style-just not fit for your tables.

I can accept that. With the proviso that if they require a certain playstyle and pretend it's the only valid playstyle or that you're wrong for wanting a different one, those I will continue to call bad systems.

AceOfFools
2023-02-16, 03:05 PM
My understanding is that the PbtA games actively fall apart if you try to play them with a GM making decisions and "taking actions" or having an agenda of their own. That's case (b). 5e D&D, on the other hand, doesn't fall apart if you try to run an OSR sandbox/dungeon crawl. You need to add in a bunch of stuff to "do it right" and use variant rules, but it mostly limps along ok. That's case (a).

Well, you’re completely wrong there.

One thing that Monster of the Week instruct the GM is to write out the “Hours”; how things go from bad to worse to catastrophic if the PCs do nothing. It’s one of the single best ideas for running games where PCs have a hand in setting the pace.

The GM doesn’t roll dice, but NPCs still take actions in the narrative. If the PCs sit around doing nothing, the clock ticks and the GM tells them how things changed.

It’s a paradigm that fails utterly if the GM is playing to win, or if the GM only takes prescribed mechanical actions. Because, while many games, particularly DnD derivatives, allow and possibly even encourage that mindset.

kyoryu
2023-02-16, 04:21 PM
NPCs in PbtA games don't have "turns". Rather, the GM declares what they are doing and generally gives the players a chance to react.

All rolls are initiated by players. However, if players ignore a looming threat, the GM can absolutely make good on it.

NPCs can absolutely do things. They just don't have "turns" in the same way a PC does.

Example: You can absolutely say something like "You hear a knocking on your shelter door, and the voice of Boombox screaming 'I want my money, or I'm going to bust this door in and take it.' Whaddya do?"

If the player does nothing, "Okay, well, your door explodes inward and Boombox strides in, flanked by his two lieutenants. They've all got guns out and pointed in your direction. What now?"

That's the NPCs doing stuff. It's just not in the typical "turn" structure.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-16, 04:26 PM
NPCs in PbtA games don't have "turns". Rather, the GM declares what they are doing and generally gives the players a chance to react.

All rolls are initiated by players. However, if players ignore a looming threat, the GM can absolutely make good on it.

NPCs can absolutely do things. They just don't have "turns" in the same way a PC does.

Right. They only "act" in response to player actions (inaction is an action). In a fight scene, the npcs don't make separate moves; PCs "taking damage" happens in response to them "missing" (ie the GM getting to make a Move as a listed consequence of failure). That produces a very different GM-side dynamic that makes the game act really janky if they play it more like a D&D-esque.

kyoryu
2023-02-16, 04:28 PM
Right. They only "act" in response to player actions (inaction is an action). In a fight scene, the npcs don't make separate moves; PCs "taking damage" happens in response to them "missing" (ie the GM getting to make a Move as a listed consequence of failure). That produces a very different GM-side dynamic that makes the game act really janky if they play it more like a D&D-esque.

Look at it like this: PbtA games follow the basic structure of this:

GM: "This is what's going on, what do you do?"
Player: "I do this, which could be nothing."
GM: "Okay, this is the result. Now what do you do?"

The NPCs aren't ever asked "what do you do?" However, the GM can absolutely have all sorts of horrible things happen when they say "this is what's going on, what do you do?"

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-16, 04:36 PM
Look at it like this: PbtA games follow the basic structure of this:

GM: "This is what's going on, what do you do?"
Player: "I do this, which could be nothing."
GM: "Okay, this is the result. Now what do you do?"

The NPCs aren't ever asked "what do you do?" However, the GM can absolutely have all sorts of horrible things happen when they say "this is what's going on, what do you do?"

Note: that's identical to the Basic Flow of D&D 5e...with one little exception. And that's that, in 5e D&D, the DM is a player who can be asked that question on behalf of the NPCs. The "world takes a turn"--in combat, that's explicit. Out of combat, it's implicit but generally necessary.

It's a difference between what might be called active vs reactive GMing. An Active GM is actively moving pieces, actively doing things on their own timescale/"frequency". They get their own "turn" to act on behalf of the world. A Reactive GM only moves the "game loop" when the players do something (including nothing). They don't have their own "turn" to act on behalf of the world.

KorvinStarmast
2023-02-16, 04:36 PM
But they mostly boil down to: give the PCs situations where they can express agency and creativity, they aren't being forced down a certain path/solution, and give them rope needed for them to be awesome.

Or hang themselves. One of my favorite DM's, back in about 1981, is the one who taught me the "give 'em enough rope" philosophy of DMing and got me to embrace it. That gift keeps on giving.

The GM doesn’t roll dice, but NPCs still take actions in the narrative. If the PCs sit around doing nothing, the clock ticks and the GM tells them how things changed.

It’s a paradigm that fails utterly if the GM is playing to win, or if the GM only takes prescribed mechanical actions. Because, while many games, particularly DnD derivatives, allow and possibly even encourage that mindset. E.G.G. spent some ink on how important it was for the referee to keep track of time ... what you described isn't new, but it is IMO a good approach to making the game world feel more alive.

kyoryu
2023-02-16, 07:53 PM
It's a difference between what might be called active vs reactive GMing. An Active GM is actively moving pieces, actively doing things on their own timescale/"frequency". They get their own "turn" to act on behalf of the world. A Reactive GM only moves the "game loop" when the players do something (including nothing). They don't have their own "turn" to act on behalf of the world.

Their "turn" is "whenever the GM is processing the player actions".

"Okay, we scarf some pizza."
"Cool, as you're doing that, you suddenly hear your window explode as bullets come through and shoot at you."

It's more a difference in presentation than anything. NPCs can be as active as you want. But normally (outside of golden opportunities), you present what they're doing as a prompt for the players to respond.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-16, 08:07 PM
Their "turn" is "whenever the GM is processing the player actions".

"Okay, we scarf some pizza."
"Cool, as you're doing that, you suddenly hear your window explode as bullets come through and shoot at you."

It's more a difference in presentation than anything. NPCs can be as active as you want. But normally (outside of golden opportunities), you present what they're doing as a prompt for the players to respond.

At the scene level, it's fairly similar.

But at the individual action level (eg in a combat scenario) it plays out quite differently.

D&D:
Player: attacks, hits or misses, deals damage or not.
Monster: attacks, hits or misses, deals damage or not.

Possible outcome--both parties took substantial damage. Alternate possible outcome--neither party hit a darn thing.

AW (the only one I've actually read in detail):
Player decides to take an action that is resolved by a move (including the generic Go Aggro move that everyone can do). If they get a full success[1], they deal damage or even outright kill the opponent/end the conflict. On a weak success, they might take damage in return. But only sometimes. On a failure, the GM makes a hard move (usually). This might involve damage, but might not.

In D&D, the monster's success and the player's success are separate things as long as both moved. At the tactical level, they're both equal participants--they interact with the system in the same way (even if they have different abilities/are built differently). The DM is simply playing a separate set of characters, just like having a bunch of PCs.

In AW, a full success completely removes any possibility of a counter. Only on a failure of some type (including a partial failure) can there be any reprisal, and that's often not a Go Aggro (or similar) move, and on anything but a complete failure the player gets substantial agency on what the enemy does in return (usually in some form of "choose from this list a number of things based on how badly you did". The enemies have no independent existence as characters--they're just set dressing. You can substitute out for a terrain hazard without changing anything. But if you play them like they were D&D characters...bad things happen. PCs start dying right and left and the system grinds to a halt.

So a D&D-style DM, used to playing characters as characters, now has to think about things completely differently. He's thinking at the level of the scene and story, not at the level of the individual characters.

Is it a bad thing? YMMV. Is it a different thing? Absolutely. Does it fall apart if you try to run it D&D-style? Absolutely.

[1] probably getting the names wrong.

kyoryu
2023-02-17, 12:36 AM
At the scene level, it's fairly similar.

But at the individual action level (eg in a combat scenario) it plays out quite differently.

D&D:
Player: attacks, hits or misses, deals damage or not.
Monster: attacks, hits or misses, deals damage or not.

Possible outcome--both parties took substantial damage. Alternate possible outcome--neither party hit a darn thing.

AW (the only one I've actually read in detail):
Player decides to take an action that is resolved by a move (including the generic Go Aggro move that everyone can do). If they get a full success[1], they deal damage or even outright kill the opponent/end the conflict. On a weak success, they might take damage in return. But only sometimes. On a failure, the GM makes a hard move (usually). This might involve damage, but might not.

In D&D, the monster's success and the player's success are separate things as long as both moved. At the tactical level, they're both equal participants--they interact with the system in the same way (even if they have different abilities/are built differently). The DM is simply playing a separate set of characters, just like having a bunch of PCs.

In AW, a full success completely removes any possibility of a counter. Only on a failure of some type (including a partial failure) can there be any reprisal, and that's often not a Go Aggro (or similar) move, and on anything but a complete failure the player gets substantial agency on what the enemy does in return (usually in some form of "choose from this list a number of things based on how badly you did". The enemies have no independent existence as characters--they're just set dressing. You can substitute out for a terrain hazard without changing anything. But if you play them like they were D&D characters...bad things happen. PCs start dying right and left and the system grinds to a halt.

So a D&D-style DM, used to playing characters as characters, now has to think about things completely differently. He's thinking at the level of the scene and story, not at the level of the individual characters.

Is it a bad thing? YMMV. Is it a different thing? Absolutely. Does it fall apart if you try to run it D&D-style? Absolutely.

[1] probably getting the names wrong.

Have you ever played any of them? While you're kind of right from a strict reading of the rules, that's not how it plays out. You seem to be implying (correct me if I'm wrong) that the enemies have to sit around until the player does something. That's not how it works.

It's absolutely true that NPCs don't get to use player moves. That is correct. It's not correct to assume that means they're passive.

If a PC wanders into a room with a bunch of enemies, for instance, it's totally cool for the GM to start making "soft" moves - usually Announce Future Badness.

As a trivial example, take "PC and orc". "Okay, the orc charges you." This is the orc doing A Thing. The PC can then respond. They can respond by attacking back (go aggro/hack and slash/etc.), in which case one of a few things can happen (D&D equivalent in parentheses)

1. The PC hurts the orc, and the orc hurts the PC back (both characters succeed in their attacks)
2. The PC hurts the orc, but the orc doesn't hurt the PC (only the PC succeeds) (note there's a few other options for 10+, but I'm simplifying here)
3. The orc hurts the PC, but the PC doesn't hurt the orc (only the orc succeeds).

Like, it's the same thing here.

And if the PC ignores the attacking orc? Or does something that doesn't stop the orc? Then the orc just hurts the PC, straight out, no roll required.

You can also announce future badness like snipers moving to position, spells starting to get cast, things being moved in the way, caltrops being thrown, oil being spilled, whatever. About the only limitation is that, unless you've been handed a "golden opportunity" (meaning either the PCs ignored a threat or walked into a blatantly bad situation, or just missed a roll) you normally present the threat as somehting for the PC to respond to, rather than a hard move of just doing damage.

So you can really do just about anything from the NPC side in AW/PbtA games that you can in D&D. It's just presented differently.

Kymme
2023-02-17, 04:43 AM
In AW, a full success completely removes any possibility of a counter. Only on a failure of some type (including a partial failure) can there be any reprisal, and that's often not a Go Aggro (or similar) move, and on anything but a complete failure the player gets substantial agency on what the enemy does in return (usually in some form of "choose from this list a number of things based on how badly you did". The enemies have no independent existence as characters--they're just set dressing. You can substitute out for a terrain hazard without changing anything. But if you play them like they were D&D characters...bad things happen. PCs start dying right and left and the system grinds to a halt.

So a D&D-style DM, used to playing characters as characters, now has to think about things completely differently. He's thinking at the level of the scene and story, not at the level of the individual characters.

Is it a bad thing? YMMV. Is it a different thing? Absolutely. Does it fall apart if you try to run it D&D-style? Absolutely.

I think this is an incorrect read, for a few reasons. Namely, that you presuppose that Apocalypse World expects the MC to be thinking story-first, rather than at the level of individual participants in the scene. This is not true. Apocalypse World expects the MC to think fiction-first, prioritizing the in-universe circumstances over everything. They act, in the context of the game, through a system of moves along a spectrum of hardness vs softness. On the softest end you have moves that set up future action and give the players a chance to act and react. "They're charging at you, what do you do?" or "you hear footsteps around the corner, what do you do?" are examples of moves on the softer end of the spectrum, giving players more time to have their characters take actions to influence what happens next. "He charges you and tackles you to the ground, what do you do?" or "a guard rounds the corner and spots you, what do you do?" are harder moves, where the fiction is evolving faster than the PCs can react and they're suddenly put in a new circumstance.

I'd actually be very interested in what you mean by running NPCs as if they were D&D characters, cuz largely I think both systems approach them pretty similarly, outside of combat. Like kyoryu says, the presentations are just different.

kyoryu
2023-02-17, 08:05 AM
And let's be honest, "fiction-first" is kind of a bad term since it's so easily conflated with "story-first".

At this point, I'd kind of like an example of what PhoenixPhyre thinks can't be done in PbtA games, so that maybe we can show how it would actually play out (noting that, no, it probably won't be 1:1)

Tanarii
2023-02-17, 08:26 AM
At this point, I'd kind of like an example of what PhoenixPhyre thinks can't be done in PbtA games, so that maybe we can show how it would actually play out (noting that, no, it probably won't be 1:1)

Having playtested Dungeon World, it can't do something simple like a crawl.

I don't hold that against PtBA though. It looks like it'd be almost as good for say post-apocalyptic as something that can do a crawl, like Mutant Year Zero. It'd just do it ... not as a crawl. ("almost as good" assuming you think exploring the wastes is the primary goal of post-apocalyptic. If it's relationships and people, AW definitely has MYZ beat.)

Same with Blades in the Dark. It looks like it'll do heist in an urban environment far better than trying to do it with e.g. D&D in Sharn/Eberron. But I wouldn't want to use it for an urban crawl. Although in that case I don't think anything exists that does an urban crawl very well. :smallamused:

My objections to AW/PtbA are purely restricted to some of the language surrounding Vince Baker's historical attitudes and how it influenced him. He still seems to have come up with some mostly solid rules doing what he wanted to do despite that. And the important thing for this thread: he called out MC moves. That's a rock solid innovation. (Or at least it was new to me.)

Compare and contrast to Kevin Siembieda or Erick Wujcik, who both had similar historical attitudes in the 80s. But in their case, they couldn't come up with solid rules for Palladium and Amber Diceless, despite their conviction they were the absolute masters of how to properly roleplay specifically and run a style of game best for the good of the players generically.
(And of course White Wolf is infamous for the same, although I'd never personally gotten into their products.)

Zuras
2023-02-17, 09:34 AM
This is something that took me about 10 minutes and created a memorable scene at the table that my players still reference fondly about 6-7 years after the fact.

It's not really a ton of effort. A little bit of effort correctly applied can have the same effect.

This falls squarely in the camp of things DMs do because they are fun, not because they are easy or the system helps them with it.

If I remember correctly, your group mostly still plays Pathfinder 1e specifically for the crunchy bits, so your players probably enjoy it when NPCs play the optimization arms race with them.

To be memorable, though, an NPC just needs two things: some sort of interesting move that causes the characters trouble and the ability to live long enough to do it multiple times.

Obviously there are bonus points for things working together thematically and for iconic monsters doing their iconic stuff, but the system shouldn’t require systematic tweaking if it’s a good system in the first place.

In this case the system was good *for you* because you got to play the character optimization mini-game as the DM. A good system shouldn’t require this of DMs. Ideally there should also be a way to quickly add one memorable gimmick, pump up its hp and recalculate their CR/threat level, or simply dial an interesting stat-block up or down to be an appropriate challenge.

kyoryu
2023-02-17, 11:23 AM
Having playtested Dungeon World, it can't do something simple like a crawl.<snip>

Very few things do a crawl as well as old school D&D, in my books. I'd be curious what specific issues you ran into.

But, really, the point PhoenixPhyre seemed to be making is that NPCs can't be active in PbtA games, and that the GM has to be purely reactive. Which is a huge limitation, and one that I haven't seen in my experience. That's the real thing I was drilling into there.

Of course PbtA (or any other game) is going to be less suited for certain campaign structures. That's not in argument. And no, DW wouldn't be my first choice for a dungeon crawl by my definitions (again, I'd go with 1e or Moldvay/Cook, probably).

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-17, 11:57 AM
Honestly, it's been so long since I read through the AW rules (and found the GM section to be a mix of opinionated "this is the only true way and anyone doing it differently is wrong" sanctimony and useful-but-bland-and-generic advice) that I'll just abandon that point entirely.

The GM section utterly did turn me off to the whole game, however. Mostly due to presentation. The content was just not to my taste (not my style of play), but the presentation rubbed me all the wrong ways.

kyoryu
2023-02-17, 12:07 PM
For sure. The author's tone in that book turns a bunch of people off.

I don't think the advice is "this is the way to GM every game and if you're not doing this you're doing it wrong." Rather, I think it's more "this is how to GM this game, and if you're diverging a lot, you're really playing a different game."

Which, while it may be phrased poorly in some cases, is really three statements that I don't disagree with, fundamentally.

1. Different games are run differently.
2. Here's the rules for running this game
3. If you're diverging, you've changed the game experience, and it might be cool, but it's no longer really representative

(How narrow/wide this is is a separate discussion)

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-17, 12:17 PM
For sure. The author's tone in that book turns a bunch of people off.

I don't think the advice is "this is the way to GM every game and if you're not doing this you're doing it wrong." Rather, I think it's more "this is how to GM this game, and if you're diverging a lot, you're really playing a different game."

Which, while it may be phrased poorly in some cases, is really three statements that I don't disagree with, fundamentally.

1. Different games are run differently.
2. Here's the rules for running this game
3. If you're diverging, you've changed the game experience, and it might be cool, but it's no longer really representative

(How narrow/wide this is is a separate discussion)

The attitude I remember was really much more judgmental than that. Strong shades of "this is the right way to TTRPG generally. Any game that doesn't enforce this hard is bad."

And I prefer games that aren't so picky about how they're run. I want to use the system as an aide to play, not have it dictate to me how it's used. If I want to be dictated to, I'll play a board game.

gbaji
2023-02-17, 07:32 PM
Have you ever played any of them? While you're kind of right from a strict reading of the rules, that's not how it plays out. You seem to be implying (correct me if I'm wrong) that the enemies have to sit around until the player does something. That's not how it works.

It's absolutely true that NPCs don't get to use player moves. That is correct. It's not correct to assume that means they're passive.

That's my approach as well. The NPCs may not initiate moves, but they do initiate encounters. Which is more or less "moving the NPCs around in the background", but labeled a bit differently.

I've never really gotten into that whole stream of games. And yeah, largely because it's more of a "ok, why?" moment for me (they're all too encounter/action-reaction driven for me really). But sure. If I really had to, I'm confident I could contruct a pretty comprehensive environment, complete with complex NPC background activities, within any PbtA game. Again though, why?


You can also announce future badness like snipers moving to position, spells starting to get cast, things being moved in the way, caltrops being thrown, oil being spilled, whatever. About the only limitation is that, unless you've been handed a "golden opportunity" (meaning either the PCs ignored a threat or walked into a blatantly bad situation, or just missed a roll) you normally present the threat as somehting for the PC to respond to, rather than a hard move of just doing damage.

So you can really do just about anything from the NPC side in AW/PbtA games that you can in D&D. It's just presented differently.

Yup. The only real restriction is that everything the PCs intereact with is announced to them as a "thing to deal with", and only affects them based on their reaction to it. It's a bit of a different way of thinking, and I suppose does create (at least the perception of ) greater player agency, but it's just another way to spell tomato IMO. Er. But you can sneak around this a bit as a GM based on how you describe the initial triggering event in the first place, so yeah... deck chair arrangement maybe?

I will say that the one thing those games are really really good at is moving things along. Which has obvious applications in some play formats.

Tanarii
2023-02-17, 08:00 PM
The attitude I remember was really much more judgmental than that. Strong shades of "this is the right way to TTRPG generally. Any game that doesn't enforce this hard is bad."

Agreed. And I noticed it before I realized it was written by a key member of The Forge. But it certainly made sense afterwards. But in my case, I was too busy being wowed by the thought provoking ideas and innovations that the rules had to pay much attention to the tone at the time.

What it did was make me skim most of the GM advice, looking for the "hard" rules stuff. Even though you and I both agree that generally the entire content of books rules of one degree or another, I still tend to home in on the stuff that's more clearly a resolution or execution mechanic first. Like the MC moves, or explanations of how the player moves work, or threats, etc. And of course that means I'm missing the point, according to the theory behind the game design. :smallamused:

But given your experience, I highly recommend giving Blades in the Dark rules instead, if you haven't already. It doesn't really have the same tone, or at least it was to gets tuned down so much it didn't ping for me. And it's an even better use of the PbtA rules than AW in my opinion.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-17, 08:16 PM
Agreed. And I noticed it before I realized it was written by a key member of The Forge. But it certainly made sense afterwards. But in my case, I was too busy being wowed by the thought provoking ideas and innovations that the rules had to pay much attention to the tone at the time.

What it did was make me skim most of the GM advice, looking for the "hard" rules stuff. Even though you and I both agree that generally the entire content of books rules of one degree or another, I still tend to home in on the stuff that's more clearly a resolution or execution mechanic first. Like the MC moves, or explanations of how the player moves work, or threats, etc. And of course that means I'm missing the point, according to the theory behind the game design. :smallamused:

But given your experience, I highly recommend giving Blades in the Dark rules instead, if you haven't already. It doesn't really have the same tone, or at least it was to gets tuned down so much it didn't ping for me. And it's an even better use of the PbtA rules than AW in my opinion.
Blades on the dark I've heard good things about. Pity I dislike the heist genre for entirely idiosyncratic reasons. Part of it is that travel and discovery (ie what's over the hill) is most of my fun. As is world building, and bitd is very firmly attached to its setting. I've stolen the idea of progress clocks though.

Sparky McDibben
2023-02-18, 08:35 AM
Blades on the dark I've heard good things about. Pity I dislike the heist genre for entirely idiosyncratic reasons. Part of it is that travel and discovery (ie what's over the hill) is most of my fun. As is world building, and bitd is very firmly attached to its setting. I've stolen the idea of progress clocks though.

I believe Band of Blades (BitD but you're fantasy adventurers / mercenaries) might be good compromise.

Tanarii
2023-02-18, 12:41 PM
I believe Band of Blades (BitD but your fantasy adventurers / mercenaries) might be good compromise.
Sounds wildly different from Blades in the Dark:
https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/band-of-blades-a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never-do-again/

Sparky McDibben
2023-02-18, 12:57 PM
Sounds wildly different from Blades in the Dark:
https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/band-of-blades-a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never-do-again/

That's an interesting play report! Thanks!

kyoryu
2023-02-20, 11:17 AM
The attitude I remember was really much more judgmental than that. Strong shades of "this is the right way to TTRPG generally. Any game that doesn't enforce this hard is bad."

Maybe. It's definitely strong on "this is how to run AW". And it doesn't caveat that each time, but maybe it shouldn't?


There are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way
in particular. This chapter is it. Follow these as rules. The whole rest of the game is built upon this.

That definitely is a strong statement, but it also feels scoped very much to AW. It even acknowledges other ways to run games.


And I prefer games that aren't so picky about how they're run. I want to use the system as an aide to play, not have it dictate to me how it's used. If I want to be dictated to, I'll play a board game.

I feel that the strictness of it is really overstated. About the only thing it really pushes against (per the statements) is pre-planned storylines (which doesn't mean you can't have pre-planned situations).

I honestly think you've got a bad read on the game due to the tone (which is understandable, and pretty frequent. The writing is pretty.... ugh).

Doesn't mean you'd like it in any scenario, of course. It's not some perfect example of an RPG.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-20, 11:51 AM
I feel that the strictness of it is really overstated. About the only thing it really pushes against (per the statements) is pre-planned storylines (which doesn't mean you can't have pre-planned situations).

I honestly think you've got a bad read on the game due to the tone (which is understandable, and pretty frequent. The writing is pretty.... ugh).

Doesn't mean you'd like it in any scenario, of course. It's not some perfect example of an RPG.

Having to fight through smarmy tone and bad writing doesn't make me want to put in a more serious study. Or run/play the game.

And on the main topic (shocking, I know), I was reading it because people had praised it to the skies as a "must read" for all GMs of any game, as if it was holy writ. And I found it to make confidently wrong statements (about anything but AW) and the statements that were right were bland boring obvious ones. So as a GM resource, it sucks. The 4e D&D DMG's intro was exponentially better[1].

[1] a lot of which was actually carried over to the 5e DMG...but then buried by horrible organization and a bunch of other stuff. Even so, most of people's issues with actually running 5e[2] are answered in the DMG.
[2] as opposed to philosophical/play-style issues with what it does. If you don't like bounded accuracy or classes and levels (for example) or insist on having fixed tables of examples for every ability check possibility, it won't be much help.

kyoryu
2023-02-20, 05:19 PM
Having to fight through smarmy tone and bad writing doesn't make me want to put in a more serious study. Or run/play the game.

100% fair. That tone put a lot of people off of the game. It's really unnecessary.

That and the initimacy moves.


And on the main topic (shocking, I know), I was reading it because people had praised it to the skies as a "must read" for all GMs of any game, as if it was holy writ. And I found it to make confidently wrong statements (about anything but AW) and the statements that were right were bland boring obvious ones. So as a GM resource, it sucks. The 4e D&D DMG's intro was exponentially better[1].

Yeah, no. It's got some good stuff, about playing games in a particular style, but in no way is it the One True Way. Hint: there ain't one.

I'm not sure what's "confidently wrong" though.

PhoenixPhyre
2023-02-20, 06:03 PM
Yeah, no. It's got some good stuff, about playing games in a particular style, but in no way is it the One True Way. Hint: there ain't one.

I'm not sure what's "confidently wrong" though.

To be honest, I don't really remember the details. Just the impression I had. It may have been things that came across as One True Way-isms that only held for AW games.

Tanarii
2023-02-20, 07:37 PM
It may have been things that came across as One True Way-isms that only held for AW games.
No, it's got a bunch of One True Way-isms inherent in the tone with which the GM advice is delivered. Other PBTA products don't suffer from it nearly as much. In addition to BitD, Monster of the Week manage to avoid the same tone fairly well. I even went back to reread AW after re-reading BitD and reading MotW recently, thinking maybe I'd over-reacted to it, and now I was more familiar with PbtA in general it'd not rub me quite so badly. But nope, it's still loudly there.

Which is a real shame, because there's so much innovation in the game.

CarpeGuitarrem
2023-02-21, 12:27 PM
It's a must read because, even if that's not how you run games, it's a fully cohesive outline of running games that's strong and specific. No different than how to attain mastery of any other field, you have to read a wide variety of authors, some much more abrasive than others.

That's all there is to it. People don't recommend it because they see it as One True Way, they recommend it because there is something distinctive to learn from, if you have the will to analyze and apply it. To be fair, not everyone does, but I've found the ideas of AW and other PbtA to be invaluable to many games I run, once I was willing to listen with an open mind and meet them where they were at.

kyoryu
2023-02-21, 12:38 PM
It's a must read because, even if that's not how you run games, it's a fully cohesive outline of running games that's strong and specific. No different than how to attain mastery of any other field, you have to read a wide variety of authors, some much more abrasive than others.

That's all there is to it. People don't recommend it because they see it as One True Way, they recommend it because there is something distinctive to learn from, if you have the will to analyze and apply it. To be fair, not everyone does, but I've found the ideas of AW and other PbtA to be invaluable to many games I run, once I was willing to listen with an open mind and meet them where they were at.

For any non-prewritten game, I find the idea of GM moves to be invaluable. They're used differently, of course, but it's a super useful thing to have listed on a 3X5.

Tanarii
2023-02-21, 04:12 PM
, once I was willing to listen with an open mind and meet them where they were at.
Unfortunately you can't meet One True Wayists where they are at without xonverting to their One True Way entirely.

I'm sure what most people gushing about AW MCing are really gushing about is the moves. But it's once you start reading the additiinal text behind the Agenda and Principles it starts to break down rapidly.

kyoryu
2023-02-21, 05:01 PM
Unfortunately you can't meet One True Wayists where they are at without xonverting to their One True Way entirely.

I'm sure what most people gushing about AW MCing are really gushing about is the moves. But it's once you start reading the additiinal text behind the Agenda and Principles it starts to break down rapidly.

Sure, but not everyone that likes AW is a OneTrueWayist.

I like AW, and I'm not a OneTrueWayist. I find stuff of value there for AW. Stuff that's of general value (at least for certain games) and stuff that I'm not fond of. I think a OneTrueWayist of any stripe would be annoying. There's useful stuff in just about every style of game that can help in other styles of games.

I'm not sure what additional text you're talking about though.

gbaji
2023-02-21, 08:57 PM
That's fair enough, and the topic was broad enough to include "best GM section for the game rules you are reading", I suppose.

Tanarii
2023-02-22, 01:27 AM
Sure, but not everyone that likes AW is a OneTrueWayist.

I like AW, and I'm not a OneTrueWayist. I find stuff of value there for AW.
Of course they aren't. Nor are those recommending the AW MC sections. And I find stuff of value generally (concept of MC moves especially) and certainly seems to be plenty for AW specifically.