WizardThiefFighter’s Thoughts on GMing vs? Playing

#5

@Airk: I don’t think the point here is that Luka has somehow invented something new. To me it seems that @darren is suggesting that this is as good a starting point for discussion as any other. And I tend to agree. So, I guess, the question is: what framing and approach would be the right one in your mind?

@Michael: I’m not sure it’s a dig at PbtA. Classic ttrpgs often disagree in the ideal stance GM should take with respect to players. Some paint him as a friend, some as an outright adversary. I think this is the reference point. Given my spotty familiarity with Luka’s twitter I think he’s more interested in exploring the gamist niche of the hobby. But my reading of his interests can be very wrong, obviously.

As for the indie game with separate books - Trudvang Chronicles has Players Guide and Game Master Guide as separate, hardcover books. Whether it’s indie enough, I don’t know. :wink:

@Radmad I’m certain Luka is not ignorant about distributed or GM-less games. It’s what first PS in " No Masters, Only Dungeons" mentions explicitly. :slight_smile:

The self-serious answer is because an asynchronous game should have complete rules for every role

Sure but I think Luka’s point (at least that’s what I found interesting in his posts) is that just like you can have warriors and mages who are essentially players with slightly different sets of rules, players and referees are just another dimension in the “what role am I playing?” matrix. If you approach GM/player dichotomy like this, you could easily argue that there should be no separate books for players and GMs. I mean, it’s not the only way to approach a ttrpg design, but it’s one worth exploring. GM-less games and games with a distributed GM are approaching this from another angle, “everyone is a warrior” kind of angle.

This strikes me as a very Forge-esque sentence, and my soul lets out a big sigh when I see it.

Really? It don’t see this implying that as a GNS stance, rather that we do exchange info through dialogue by the table. Whatever this dialogue means is up to the game/table culture.

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#7

I don’t know. I think the “dig at Apocalypse World” was quite clear, and undermined my ability to take his “this is a starting point for discussion” seriously. Partly because at no point did I notice him saying something along the lines of “This is a starting point for discussion” and partly because his stance felt quite dismissive of the approaches people have already taken to this “issue”. (Seriously – I’m sure some people still view the GM as a “meat robot” to do only mechanical tasks, but that sounds like a minority view at best.)

Do we think there is some sort of widespread stance in games that the GM is just there for the entertainment of the players? Because that feels like a very 90s position to me, and it’s not a stance I’ve seen advocated for in any of the games I’ve read recently. Is it in D&D5? I don’t have that, so maybe that’s where this comes from? But it seems counter to the “rulings not rules” stance of the OSR movement, and it’s certainly contrary to the philosophy of the indie games I see.

#8

I don’t think Luka wrote these framed as a starting point; that was probably just my presentation. I don’t really think this is the starting point because, like I said, I think this conversation has been and is being had, like, everywhere — but it might be a useful one. What I appreciate in the series is the breakdown of everything, despite his jokey tone (which I fully understand can be a turnoff), and putting the roleplay speech acts and social functions under a microscope — especially disentangling the play responsibilities from the playtime responsibilities (e.g. adjudicate dice rolls vs. deciding on a time to meet). Again, nothing strikingly new here, but I appreciated seeing it all in one place.

As for Luka’s discussion and representation of GMs and the GM role, that can only come from his experience, which I don’t know the full extent of. Earlier in WTF there’s a very long post that’s rather against the Forge as a theoretical foundation, which does give some insight into where he’s coming from (that is, 3rd-ish edition of D&D). But I think in reading and discussing these posts from his personal blog, we can only assume he’s representing his own thoughts and experiences.

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#9

First and second article can be summarized with:

I suggest we drop the common dichotomy of dungeon master and role player, and look at what kind of things actually-existing humans do at actually-existing tables. At what kind of roles they play, if you will.

Once we have those roles in mind, we can try to figure out the needs of the different humans enjoying their roleplaytime together, and work to create toys that work for them.

From second article

In a classic tabletop roleplaying game, /…/, each session has two kinds of player. There is the player running the playtime (aka. the Referee) and there are the players running the protagonists (aka. the Runners).
/…/
Players perform multiple tasks during a roleplaytime session. Traditionally many systems bundle them together with the roles of referee …
[long list of tasks]

From third article. Needs to be read in full to follow the discussion.

#10

… and I agree with the statement, that the game master is a player with slightly different role. In my game This is Pulp, all participants have a character sheet consisting of two moves. This is how they can influence the session. One person have a sheet where they can create conflict (the traditional game master), and the others how they can overcome these conflicts. I don’t separate the roles, other than giving the one who read the rulebook a slightly different agenda.

Kagematsu works in a similar way, where the game master plays a ronin that all the other players need to interact with. The players can suggest scenes, but the person who controls the ronin gets a final say.

I really like the third article - about thinking in tasks instead of roles.

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#11

In the latest episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff they discuss the various personas a player (GM or not) speaks as during a game session. It’s not the same kind of division as looking at tasks, but it’s a similar type of breakdown of how the players act around the table.

#12

Link for those interested:

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#13

Just as a side note, for the last few years I really become disliking terms like “GM less”. Shouldn’t we address that game master is something that is on top of the game, not removed. Just like dice (dice less), it shouldn’t be assumed to be a part of a roleplaying game.

Why I dislike terms like these is that they tend to block roleplaying game designers’ mindset. This dichotomy suggested by the article(s) addresses this as well indirectly.

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#14

It’s an excellent thought shift for designers (that a GM is a tool and not a requirement). But in terms of marketing and pitching games wouldn’t a grand majority be described as “GMfull” compared to indicating those which are “GMless”?

I don’t disagree with the sentiment but it might be a bit late to try and change the common jargon.

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#15

I thought “GMfull” was “Everyone is doing GM things” as opposed to “GMless” which is “No one does GM things.”
To be fair, I’m not sure what games are really considered “GMless” by that metric, but that’s my only understanding of the term “GMfull” (As opposed to, I guess just “GM’d” games, which have a single GM?)

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#16

I usually say “GMed” or “traditional GM role” or “collaborative, GMless, game”. I don’t think there’s a standard usage. (I can see the distinction between GMless and GMful in theory, but I’m not sure it’s very practical in actual use.)

#17

I agree with you here; In theory, the distinction is clear, in practice, I’m not sure it’s actually possible to have a game with NO ONE doing any kind of “GM stuff” so I’m not sure how useful the distinction actually is.

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#18

Just to help stay on topic, maybe it would be useful to distinguish “GMed,” “GM-full” and “GM-less” in terms of task and task distribution.

If we assume “GMed” is the classic model, then there’s a (perhaps) disproportionate distribution of tasks at a table (even if that’s preferable for everyone): the GM is responsible for the setting, NPCs, rules/rolls adjudication and, possibly, organization, location, etc.
A “GM-full” table might have a more equitable distribution of tasks, yet the GM still retains authorial control — e.g., setting, NPC and adjudication are the GM’s responsibility, but perhaps other players are responsible for so-called playtime tasks.
And a “GM-less” group might almost invert the distribution. Authorial control isn’t necessarily centralized, but, even when it is, the GM looks to the other players for narrative decisions rather than being the sole arbiter (e.g. Devil’s Bargains in BitD or PbtA moves that ask the player to choose the consequence). In addition, playtime responsibilities continue to be distributed among the players, possibly looping the GM (if there is one — Belonging Outside Belonging is a great “GM-less” example, maybe) back into these responsibilities since they are not primarily responsible for authorship of the narrative.

How could using a task-based model help us clarify or define terms? Do we need to? How does this sort of work improve or hinder accessibility?

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#19

Sorry, I don’t understand your definition of GMful.

#20

It’s not a limited definition, that was meant to be an example how we could use tasks as a way to explore roles at the table, particularly granular definitions of/for facilitators. Feel free to expand, interrogate or reject it!

Reviewing the below post might help it make more sense:

#21

As I’ve continued reading, I found more articles that made me think about this thread again. In addition, I want to call in another topic from these forums, because, in my opinion, there’s an intersectionality to these discussions that, I think, can enrich the conversation.

Putting roleplaytime and roles versus tasks in conversation with these discussions of presumed setting/play style and accessibiility/inclusivity/the common ground, especially with Kyle’s exploration of what OSR and Quest are doing, gives another approach for why we might want to interrogate roles and tasks at the table. Considering the setting tasks along with mechanical tasks can help us interrogate a text, much like Kyle did with Quest and Friends at the Table’s Partizan.

So I guess I wonder if there is a distributive or equitable — perhaps more accessible — way to distribute tasks even across setting and narrative elements. The Belonging Outside Belonging system’s approach to this, by eliminating the GM entirely and assigning setting elements as if they were characters, is one answer, but, considering that there isn’t even a resource to link to what, exactly, Belonging Outside Belonging is, I don’t think that’s helpful. This is primarily problematized by what Kyle identified in the presumed settings of the OSR genre: players can come to a D&D table and know what to expect from the setting elements that the DM will reveal — that is, unless they just don’t have that presumed setting knowledge, which is what the other topic discusses (albeit from a more actionable standpoint).

https://blog.kylekukshtel.com/burden_of_worldbuilding

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#22

This is still too abstract for me to follow. Are you trying to have an OSR game where players have character moves to add setting content ? That would be a challenge !
Here’s an BoB explanation of https://itch.io/t/424217/what-is-belonging-outside-belonging . I didn’t know it was a dogma-like movement, always thought it was a game.

#23

Finished reading the two first articles and what Luka says resonates with me. I’ve gone down a similar path for the last years. It’s not a movement, it’s just the natural path a creative but lazy designer will take when they discover they have less and less time/energy to waste in prep and their group experience with different games makes them able to create, understand and adapt quickly to new, improvised house rules.

Like, I also ended up hacking microscope and coming up with my own 8-step worldbuilding procedure, brainstorming with the players in 30 min or less. I mountain-witch the players back and forth to get them come up with ideas for me. I get them to express their expectations of every choice they take, then build upon those and take it a step further. I’d also like 5e more if encounters weren’t so hard to calculate. Like, give me a list of what each monster can do and a rule to escalate them to any party level. Tell me if it’s edible, valuable, if it can be tamed and what could go wrong with that. That’s way more interesting than a bunch of statistics I can’t show the players or it will spoil their fun.

Perhaps the thing is that Luka is still, like me, trying to grasp something he can’t totally put a finger on. Whenever we explain it people tell us “GMless doesn’t work like that” and we reply “of course, what I want isn’t GMless”. Which leaves everyone as puzzled as us.

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#24

I’m not trying to come up with a game system at all nor am I necessarily concerned with labels like “OSR” and “PbtA” — it’s definitely an abstract exploration of what playing a roleplaying game is; what are its components, the variables that make up the formula? Is it useful to dismantle binaries in game settings (GM vs player) and how, then, does that affect the game itself?

I’ve seen that post about BoB, but, while that explains that theory behind it, BoB is used now to refer to a specific kind of mechanical system, like PbtA (and PbtA definitely has its theoretical underpinning, usually reproduced through principles).
BoB came from Dream Askew/Dream Apart and those games have a chapter on how to create your own BoB games, but that SRD, if you will, isn’t available outside of that product.
Basically, BoB games do not have a GM and do not have dice rolls, which eliminates the need for an GM entirely since there is no third party (i.e. random dice without agency) to interpret. This supports the theoretical foundation of BoB because it eliminates the hierarchical power structure of “traditional” RPGs and equitably (re)distributes authorial control of the narrative to all players, to include setting elements (which, for the purposes of BoB, include traditionally non-player characters).

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#25

Thank you, I can picture better where you’re at.