Detached GMing

[benlehman]

There's this idea floating around (it's Vincent's†) that, like, there's this great way to GM where the GM comes up with awesome threats and throws them at the players but then is all impartial and disinterested when it comes to them in actual play. A lot of blah about detachment.

The interesting thing is that a lot of this comes from Vincent's experiences with D&D. Which I introduced him to. But that's not the way that I run D&D at all. When I run D&D, I love my monsters. They're awesome. I want the players to see just how awesome they are. I like watching monsters (like my goblin archer/witch on a broomstick) tear the shit of the players. I also love watching players tear the shit out of my monsters, particularly when they do it in a non-stupid way. I have zero detachment from it whatsoever. A lot more "Fuck yeah, this dungeon is going to kick your ass."

I just don't want to kick ass so much that I cheat*. That'd be missing the point. The act of cheating is basically an admission that my creation is lame.

Like, if we're playing softball call-your-own-strikes I'm not just going to call four balls every time because that will get me on base. That's cheating and its lame, and it's basically an admission that not only do my softball skills suck, I'm such a dick that I'm unwilling even to try.

I think that the whole idea of detachment is wrong-headed. The idea that a creative person (a GM) could seriously be emotionally detached from her creation (a dungeon) at the moment of its first impact with an audience (the players) is totally absurd.

* In almost all games which are not wholly mechanical (i.e. sports but not board games), there are unspoken rules about sportsmanship which transcend the rules-as-written. Hence, it is cheating to call strikes-as-balls even though I, as a player, have the authority to do so. Good RPG play also has these rules.

† Edited correction: I think I confused Vincent and John Harper. Sorry.

Comments

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure what cheating has got to do with the main point but I'm certainly not disinterested in my dungeons.

There is the authorial poiont of view that once you've written the thing, it's not yours anymore, it belongs to the audience and they can make of it what they will. That works for books, but then you're not sitting there with the reader saying 'You aren't going to believe this but the ogre isn't even scratched!' The experience depends as much on what you've written as the way you present it and interact with the players.

Given that most of my games are 3 hastily scrawled lines on the back of an envelope, I don't think the players would get far without my contribution.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

That's true, but for me, that moment is decidedly not when I first show it to an audience, particularly when I'm actually there.

It's more like 3-4 years later.

yrs--
--Ben

[lumpley.livejournal.com]

Nah, something I'm saying is hitting you wrong. Like, I haven't used the word "detachment" (I checked), but somehow what I am saying reads like emotional detachment to you. It's not! It's about outcomes, it's about (EXACTLY) playing in-bounds.

When I DMed Dogs or GM Storming the Wizard's Tower, my enthusiasm for my monsters is intense. My overwhelming drive is to give my monsters their own unique, full, glorious, and ideally terrifying expression. I don't need for them to win in order to give them that, I just need them to kick ass. I'm not attached to them winning, and that's absolutely all the detachment I have.

I think that "don't cheat" is a bad way to communicate it! "The rulebook says it's my call whether your guy has the high ground. I called it 'no.' That's not cheating, the rulebook SAYS it's my call."

[lumpley.livejournal.com]

"DMed Dogs?" I meant D&D.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

I'm totally attributing things John Harper said to you. It was because he said "I agree with you" before he said them.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that :-(

sportmanship?

[(Anonymous)]

You write:

In almost all games which are not wholly mechanical (i.e. sports but not board games), there are unspoken rules about sportsmanship which transcend the rules-as-written.


My thought on that is more in line with: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html (in short: "stop whining and start learning how to play!").

But since I know nothing about baseball, I may well be reading your "it is cheating to call strikes-as-balls" example wrong and misunderstanding your whole point, of course.


-- Rafu

Re: sportmanship?

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

The video games that Dave Sirlin plays are much more like chess (where anything to win is fine) than they are like softball. Nonetheless, I think if Dave were to, at a Street Fighter tournament, bodycheck the his opponent and then kick him (in real life here) on the ground a few times, that'd probably be bad sportsmanship, even if it wasn't in the tournament rules.

Are there any sports you are familiar with? I can do another example easy-peasy.

Mindfulness + GMing

[aumshantih.livejournal.com]

You have a good point, and certainly in such an intense GM vs the PCs game like D&D (I've been playing *way* too much 4th Edition lately..) there is the need for the GMs to feel good about their critters and making the PCs in effect "work" for their XP and loot.

It's a fine balancing act making the PCs feel good and feeling good yourself. While being detached maybe isn't the best state to be in, trying to cultivate some awareness of what your players want and expect (and when they are getting unhappy/frustrated) is really tough. And of course, all of this gets into social contract stuff going on around the table.

In any case, I'm happy to be starting up a Spirit of the Century variant for Purana, where we get to make villians organically as a troupe, and mechanistically encouraging conflict escalation.