The GM should stop me!
Callan S.:
Gareth, I think a player treating a GM as a genius mundi is a player moderating himself - he's just using someone else as a method of moderating himself in the long run. And if he isn't moderating himself by that method, then the GM is just a glorified rubber stamp to that players desire for how things go.
Imagine someone who says they want the GM to represent that hard limit, but then whinge he's not being realistic every time it doesn't go their way. That's the same lack of self moderation as noted in the first thread.
I had an old thread called design phase and run phase - it covered the idea of self moderation, but then playing at 'full stretch' so to speak, and the need to seperate the editing phase from the play phase to facilitate both self moderation and playing at full tilt. But most traditional roleplay games blur them utterly - like in the link I talk about alignments like 'good'. What the fuck is 'good'? Well, if you seperate the design phase, the player (or the GM if you moderate yourself that way) could write up actual rules for it. Then in play you could actually play at full tilt on those rules. But traditional RPG's want you to moderate AND play at the same time. Gareth, I think you've said trying to do both at the same time doesn't work out (in any functionally FUN sense), and taking it you have said that, I agree fully.
Moreno R.:
Gareth, I would agree on this part:
Quote
it can be perfectly functional as long as appropriate expectations are shared by the participants.
But it's not always so simple. Well, from what I have seen in more than 24 years of gaming (and counting) is almost never so simple.
First: the kind of set-up we are talking about is a learned behavior. I have played many, many times with people who had never played a rpg in their life before. Sometimes for a simple one-shot, sometimes that did lead to them starting to play in our group. And this "need" you talk about (and that exist, I have seen it myself) is very, very strong on the player who started with me in the '80 and '90, with the GM style I was using at the time (a lot of illusionism based on my knowledge of the player's psychology to make them do what I wanted and keep them entertained). Some of them had a lot of difficulty to learn to play in other ways (ANY other way, from gm-less gaming to the naked gamism of Agon). Some of them weren't able to. The strongest things I noticed were a total refusal to do anything as could be associated to "GM-ing" of any kind, seen as something that would irremediably taint their fun, forever, and wanting to be "told" what they have to do. Both of these are very complex reactions, based on concept learned playing the game ("The GM"). These are people who were teached, years after years, that the GM was not "playing", that it was "less fun to be the GM", to "avoid "looking behind the screen". It's for this reason that I think that the policeman analogy is very apt: it's work that someone has to do, but most people wouldn't. And a "common citizen" has both a desire do avoid doing it himself and a sense of a "right" to have someone do it when they need it.
They need someone to do it. They don't want any part of it. It's seldom a good foundation of a good partnership. It put a lot of pressure on the single GM (the case where they rotate on the role is very different at a basic social level). It get people to play together because they NEED someone to do something, even if they don't really like the way each other play.
And it's a fully learned behavior. A created need. Because I have never. ever, had this problem in the last years with people who did not know rpg before, with new games. I have really not noticed any less "immersion" or less desire to play their character or less game enjoyment in these new players. To be blunt, it's the contrary: they usually beat my old players by a mile. I have seen a 17 years old girl in a in a demo in a library get "in the skin" or her character in a way I have never seen by "traditional" players in almost twenty years.
Returning to the part I quoted above: it's about choice. If a group, knowledgeable about many ways of role-playing, decide to play in the way I described in my first post (because in that group they have a GM who like the role of the policeman and the others like to play in that way) I suppose it will cause no problem whatsoever and they will have fully functional games. But I think that what you have a "need", that remove most of your power of choice. If you are trained for years to think that you need something that you can't give to be able to play, until that need become real, because you are not able to play in any other way anymore, then it's probable that you will try to beg, force, cajole, push other people to fulfill your need. Even if they really don't want to.
How many stories about GM who play in a way they don't like "for the good of the group", "to be able to play" or "to keep the group together" have you heard? Hundreds? I think that it's so widespread a case to be really difficult to dismiss..
contracycle:
Quote from: Callan S. on December 27, 2009, 08:06:54 PM
Gareth, I think a player treating a GM as a genius mundi is a player moderating himself - he's just using someone else as a method of moderating himself in the long run. And if he isn't moderating himself by that method, then the GM is just a glorified rubber stamp to that players desire for how things go.
Well, thats partlyu true and partly sophistry. I consent (theoretically) to the existence of a police force and being policed, even when this may be inconvenient for me. The fact that other humans are appointed to carry out this role doesn't mean I encounter it as any less of an objective reality, capable of imposing itself on me.
Your point about players complaints of lack of realism would take too long to untangle; sometimes this is really some other issue masquerading as realism, which is being appealed to because it has cachet. Sometimes it is the GM citing the impositional role as an excuse for behaviour that is functionally adversarial and persecutorial. I'm definitely not saying that such a style is never prone to various forms of breakdown, I am just pointing out that it is a real desire and valid goal.
contracycle:
Quote from: Moreno R. on December 28, 2009, 03:42:18 AM
They need someone to do it. They don't want any part of it. It's seldom a good foundation of a good partnership. It put a lot of pressure on the single GM (the case where they rotate on the role is very different at a basic social level). It get people to play together because they NEED someone to do something, even if they don't really like the way each other play.
And it's a fully learned behavior. A created need. Because I have never. ever, had this problem in the last years with people who did not know rpg before, with new games. I have really not noticed any less "immersion" or less desire to play their character or less game enjoyment in these new players. To be blunt, it's the contrary: they usually beat my old players by a mile. I have seen a 17 years old girl in a in a demo in a library get "in the skin" or her character in a way I have never seen by "traditional" players in almost twenty years.
You're taking your argument too far. Neither you nor anyone else is in a position to really determine what is going on in the heads of x many players, however many they may be, and certainly not in a position to assert that it is definnitely and universally a learned behaviour. I would point out that bulk of traditional RP carried the hobby as a whole for decades, and that suggests that it was doing something right for at least a significant proportion of the player population. And given the cargo-cult nature of many local play cultures, the idea that an RPG text could and did reach out and influence people in that consistent a manner is pretty much implausible.
I don't dispute, though, that there is a lot of extant RPG advice text which overstates and overplays the impositional role of the GM. But I do not think that therefore that this is all a mistake and that nobody ever wanted it to be that way. It certainly was, and probably remains, frustrating for people who want and wanted to play differently, and I welcome the fact that conceptions of RPG have broadened; but that doesn't mean you can simply assert that everyone would want that if only they could break free of their indoctrination. That is firstly a case of making an argument to someones psychology, which is always dubious, and secondly a case of assuming your conclusion.
I disagree that refusal to engage with co-GMing is some sort of learned behaviour, or a refusal to accept responsibility for the game. It is a different conception of what the game should be. I for one have absolutely no desire to share the GM's perspective when I act as a player, that does indeed completely undermine the point of play for me. And seeing as GMing is more usually what I do, it cannot be said that I'm phobic about the duties. I do not agree that this is tantamount to being "told what to do"; quite the opposite, when the world is outside of my control I am free to experiment and explore under my own steam. I haver no desire whatsoever to "look behind the screen" - doing so would invalidate much of the joy of play.
And, extending your policeman analogy, it may be true that its a kind of work, but its also true that we are never short of people volunteering to do it, are we? Nor or we short of writers willing to pour hundreds of hours of labour into a creation that they do not and cannot know that anyone else will appreciate. It's not a case of a burden being unwillingly borne; lots of people thrive on that sort of thing.
Callan S.:
Quote from: contracycle on December 28, 2009, 07:08:16 AM
Well, thats partlyu true and partly sophistry. I consent (theoretically) to the existence of a police force and being policed, even when this may be inconvenient for me. The fact that other humans are appointed to carry out this role doesn't mean I encounter it as any less of an objective reality, capable of imposing itself on me.
With what I'm thinking police don't match - it's not exactly taken with good grace if you don't consent to the idea of police and that idea being acted out. Indeed it's down right persecuted.
But if you wanted to stop gaming mid game - well, I suppose there would be grumbles, but you could walk away. That is socially acceptable. Since it's an actual, viable choice whether you stay or go, your moderating yourself by staying and facing the GM you assigned to play out reality. Or even if you couldn't walk away mid game, you could decline to game at all - a similar choice (although I grant in some groups social pressure to be there means they don't have this choice)
Anyway, I am getting long here - I think your describing some self moderation as well, with a series of different techniques. And I think you could have much the same problem as Filip, if people didn't take up self moderation where it's supposed (by rule structure) to be taken up.
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