Some months ago, I asked What Do Rules Ever Do For Us? Here, I’m going to ask “What do rulebooks do for us”? I’m asking not about rules (abstract things that could be just in the players’ heads) but about actual rules texts.

Rulebooks can sell

Rulebooks can start by inspiring one person to want to play. If there is a GM, it will often be this person. This was my experience with Zweihander — reading the book (and, particularly, looking at the pictures) made me want to run it. I wanted to play in that world.

Rulebooks can then help to encourage people to play. The zealot from above can wave the book at players. Those players can look at the art, read the prose, scan down lists of abilities (or insanities) and come to feel that they want to play, too.

Continue reading “What do rulebooks ever do for us?” →

I surveyed six people who’d played in several of the recent games I’ve run, asking

How much freedom you had over the major events in my various games? Did you feel you were steering, or that I was? Was it like a quad bike or like a rollercoaster? Like being a writer, or like being a reader?

Crucially, I want to know “Did it feel like you could change the major outcomes of the story being told?”

I asked them for a 1–5 rating of each game, against the following anchor points:

Continue reading “Freedom to choose your path — player survey” →

Vincent Baker says that “seed content” is important. Seed content is “You are Mormon troubleshooters moving from town to town”, it is “If you want to be a Sorcerer you must first be Scholar”, it is a standard list of beginner’s spells including Magic Missile and a very weak summoning. It is all the explicit or implied setting material that comes with a game.

Content doesn’t arise from people + creative process. It arises from people + seed content + creative process.

Why? At the time of writing (2009), Baker was seeing a lot of games that just said “work together as a group to make your own setting and then use these generic rules”. And he saw that this caused three problems:

Continue reading “Vincent Baker and the need for seed” →

Patrick Stuart spells out on his blog what he thinks when he hears “storygame”. And I am like “No! You speak ill of sacred things!”. And I nerdrage, throwing nerd-audience luxury goods out of my basement window. Or, at least, I kind of twist up inside like I’ve got a tapeworm or something.

I find this experience very informative, and issue thoughts, below.

Rage about theory can be rage about lumping

I think my nerd-not-quite-rage is that Patrick, someone I respect and think to a degree I understand, is lumping together things that I like (e.g. PBtA games, Burning Wheel, some GMless stuff) with things that I hate (railroaded “Trad” games, where the GM tells a story and you sort of act along).

I think many people who get angry online about theory are angry that a distinction that makes a big difference to their enjoyment is being obscured.

Continue reading “On the definition of “Storygame” and the problems of theory” →

1. You can houserule a game to something very different, but then you lose community support. And the communities that are available in these days of hyperconnectivity are extremely valuable (if used well i.e. if you primarily use them to learn and understand rather than to achieve the emotional benefits of human contact).
2. I’m very wary of giving a trad-role GM more power and responsibility than they have in a default trad game. E.g. 5e says to give Inspiration points for “good roleplaying”, and Zweihander encourages xp awards for the same reason. Both use the GM’s sole judgement, loosely shaped by guidance; both add more power and responsibility on top of the great amount they already have.
3. Baker’s sketch of Apocalypse World’s “concentric game design” is very interesting, and worth using as a lens for other games. Key quotes are…

Continue reading “Arbitrarily ordered thoughts and observations, issue 1” →

As I noted in a previous blog post, I think I enjoy GMing most when I think of it as running a simulation in my head that the players interact with.

There are lots of ways I can get a payoff from that. Running the model, seeing the fantasy world work, can feel very good. In running it I create it — most of the images I see come out of my unconscious, stirred from the depths by the game events. They’re as new to me as the are to the players. In this respect, it’s like a film or video game, except that it feels volitional — I am both audience and creator.

But why do I need players for that? Why don’t I just daydream, or write fiction?

Continue reading “When players treat my world as real, it magnifies my creative payoffs” →

Want to generate some random game stimulus? Try the generator at  http://dmbuce.github.io/dmtools/thinggen.html.

Don’t see how that could be useful? Watch me use it — https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/6oo28r/fantasy_thing_generator/dkk5po6/

When I think about traditional strong-GM rpgs, I instinctively think of the game as being first and foremost a simulation that runs in the GM’s head. I see the GM’s model as the canonical reality — the real imagined space. Players then get a narrow, limited channel of access to it, via which they can build up their own secondary models (in their own heads) and exert very small influences on the simulated world (via their PC’s actions). But the GM’s world is the real one, the player’s mental models only shallow, limited reflections of it.

This is, of course, very much like how player clients access the server in a multiplayer video game.

That’s not the only model of rpgs I have access to. There are others, such as Baker’s “game as conversation” model, that I can use if I make the effort. But intuitively it’s the GM’s-head-simulation model that’s natural to me. If I don’t make an effort, it’s the model I gravitate back to. It’s the default lens I view gaming through. And I think it’s the mode of GMing that I most enjoy.

Continue reading “I naturally think of strong-GM rpgs as being a simulation that runs in the GM’s head” →