GM's teach the players how to play in their game
oculusverit:
Yeah but... isn't that the whole idea of "system does matter" and all that? That if you create the rules of the game so you acknowledge that the GM is another player from the start and don't pretend they can be a neutral referee, or you only make them responsible for a certain amount of responsibilities, that you can avoid a game where that sort of thing happens in the first place, where the GM isn't "teaching you how to play in their games" because the GM isn't given that power in the first place? I mean, not to just throw out terminology, but isn't that Participationism where you acknowledge that the GM is just another player and then accept the power imbalance and play anyway? I mean if you like that sort of thing...
Then again, am I just being weird to think that shouldn't happen? Or is that an acceptable part of the game, to try to "outsmart" the GM or strategize around it knowing how the GM plays?
--Kinch
dugfromthearth:
it really depends on what you want out of the game
some people want cooperative storytelling, some people want a challenge, some want other things
there is no right or wrong
Callan S.:
Well, the physical requirements of one persons want and the physical requirements of another persons want may, through physics itself, not be compatable at all. That's wrong - not a moral wrong - a 1+1=3 wrong. So there is a right or wrong in those terms.
But as to what each person wants on these matters - none of them are right and none seem particularly wrong.
It's usually when people confuse their want for need, and their 'need' for warrant to sanction others, that things go wrong (in the other sense).
Ron Edwards:
I think everyone is making this ten times harder than it has to be.
1. The simple observation that people learn how to play a game from a single member of the group (meaning "group of people" in the ordinary physical sense, not "group" in the highly-charged gaming sense) seems obvious to me. This is the case for most social, leisure activities. One person reads the rules, then teaches others how to do it, and anyone who's interested consults the rules in a more piecemeal fashion. Occasionally, one of the receiving group feels like reading the rules as carefully as the first person presumably did, for various reasons.
I am puzzled about why you (dugfromtheearth) begin your post with a strong statement that this observation would receive objections. As I see it, the observation is simply and easily confirmed, at least as a reliable generalization or trend. An apparent exception might be when people who have already and independently learned the game come together to play, but I think that is not an exception so much as a later-stage phenomenon that is outside the scope of the original claim.
Is there some real-world instance of someone objecting to this claim which prompted your post? You speak hypothetically in the post, and without some grounding in some real-world interchange, your post is merely posing a straw man.
2. The use of the term "the GM" in the observation, as stated, is a red herring that is causing trouble in the discussion. Historically, the person playing the lead social role in reading and teaching the game is very often, perhaps overwhelmingly often, also the person who takes on the GM role in the procedures of play. However, I don't think that at its base this phenomenon is any different from the observation that the person who teaches Blackjack to some other people also usually happens to take on the Dealer role when they try it first. Same goes for Banker in Monopoly and any number of similar cases.
In our hobby, however, the term "the GM" is highly charged with implications, particularly when the article "the" is included in a particular way. It often implies a decree of control over the use of the rules which goes far beyond the reasonable implications of merely being the person who happens to have read them more fully and often than the other people. This obviously formalizd (and deceptively veiled) in the stupid abomination called the Golden Rule in many game texts, but that's not the only place, considering how often more explicit "the GM is always right" rule is verbally in place for a given group, with its textual representatives as well.
For this discussion, I suggest we parse these issues carefully.
Furthermore, and here I speak as the moderator, this thread badly needs grounding in Actual Play. In otherwise, if the point at hand arose among actual people, how are those people connected via play, and what goes on, or went on, among those people in a real game? Fictional as well as social content would help greatly.
Best, Ron
Callan S.:
Ron, I think equally you could be making this ten times more simple than it is until it fits another category entirely - the example isn't about written rules from what I've read?
Quote
Another GM describes his campaign in some fanciful and exotic terms (like x-files investigation, swashbuckling, etc) and then shortly after the game begins he switches it to be something different. He seems to think he is being clever and we should enjoy it. So I have learned to ignore his description of the campaign and make a combat heavy character as that is what the campaigns always turn into.
Unless the written rules say to describe the campaign in some fanciful and exotic terms, then shortly after change them, it's not related to written rules.
In my early roleplaying we had a GM who would have a NPC character joing the party - shortly afterward, the NPC would betray the party in some fashion. We all became aware of this repeating pattern over time, from session to session, and more importantly, from game to game. Warhammer. Shadowrun. Rifts. Same thing repeated. We'd start a session, he'd describe some NPC character joining the party and we'd all sort of know and we'd joke about it sometimes. We weren't learning the rules, we were learning the GM. Or to be more exact, learning the mechanism he repeatedly placed into play, that was his own invention (none of the game texts had rules on this, IIRC).
I think I totally agree with many games the person who knows the written rules for it teaches those written rules for others. What's making you think this is about teaching written rules? I mean even in card games you can start to build up an understanding of how the other person will play - like in the card game 'lunch money' I could start to figure what moves the other person would make. But these aren't written rules of the game?
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