16. GMs: abusers, control freaks or both? Best story explaining why this is so.
#INDIEGAMEaDAY2016
I was in a 4e game that went for 3-4 years, from level 1 to 30.
For the majority, we had four players. We did have a fifth, but he was excused for sniffing a girls hair. Creepy fucker. This post, though, isn't about that. Nor about how the game was foreplay for the GM and his wife, who played our ranger.
This is about controlling behavior.
About a year into it, the GM says something like "You are just about to main plot"
Which tells me:
1. We've been leveling and playing a game, all of which he considers side questions because we're not ready yet for his plot.
2. We're not playing to find out; his homework on what the game is trumps anything we do at the table.
Look back, that pointed to a fundamental difference in what we do at the table -- GM telling a story to the players versus a collaborative storytelling endeavour. I think the difficulty of building monsters made this more likely. And, heck, the focus on monsters and combat.
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I ran something sort of like that once, but I think there were some differences.
ReplyDelete1) I tell my players at the start of the game, "after half a dozen or so story arcs, we're going to start telling how the Israelites were freed from Egypt. The Aramites over here will be the slaves, and the city of Enoch will be be in the role of Egypt. So along with everything else, during the first half of the game, I want to explore everyone's ties to both cultures.
2) I'm terrible at gauging timing. We spent nearly a year of real time doing stories climbing the sacred mountain...partly because I forgot that I should be tracking progress on that front.
Jesse Cox That's very different! Discussing in advance the goals of the campaign is a virtue!
ReplyDeleteI had a code phrase with a friend for when we ran into overly controlling behavior, so we could commiserate. (Most of our GMs didn't indulge, but we had one who wanted the PCs to be bit characters/witnesses to his amaaaazing self-insert Gary Stu fanfic.)
ReplyDeleteGretchen S. Yuck!
ReplyDeleteNot that I've never done it, but its been at least ten years.
Thank you. I came to RPGs from theater, where, y'know, having a director and a script is generally assumed, so I'm aware I'm not in the same place for "play to find out." as the general gamer.
ReplyDeleteParticularly, I'm much more interested in playing to find out why something happens, than what happens.
William Nichols We were all young once. :)
ReplyDelete