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Leraika posted:roll lots of d6s and things happen sometimes, usually badly Is there something specific about your character you feel might be annoying, like a D&D character with 8 in their primary stat and no combat abilities or a Frank Miller backstory in a campy 4 colour supers game (or a campy four colour backstory in a Frank Miller game)? Is there something specific about the character that isn't hitting right with you personally?
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Jan 12, 2022 13:05
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Serf posted:To be honest, this sounds like a problem that happens with lovely people. I haven't known people to hold grudges over something as trivial as a game session not going well. Again, this is referring just to the system or the players not working the intended way. If someone is bringing the wrong energy or content to the game then that's totally understandable. I don't think anyone is framing it in the form of a grudge? It's learned behavior through reinforcement - if you do a thing, and every time you do that thing you have a bad time, then you aren't going to want to do that thing any more. It doesn't mean it personally offend you or you hold it deep at heart, it just means you got hurt before and don't want to get hurt again. If anything, willingly going back to something that has repeatedly been a negative experience for you is the surprising choice.
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Jan 12, 2022 14:53
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Splicer posted:Has anyone done or said something to make you think this? Not really, I hope not?, and not especially except this is something that happens whenever I make a character. It's not limited to this game, it's always 'no one will actually like and/or want to interact with this character' and I can tell myself it's dumb brainworms all I like but it still makes actually playing very stressful for me.
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Jan 12, 2022 14:58
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Leraika posted:Not really, I hope not?, and not especially except this is something that happens whenever I make a character. It's not limited to this game, it's always 'no one will actually like and/or want to interact with this character' and I can tell myself it's dumb brainworms all I like but it still makes actually playing very stressful for me.
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Jan 12, 2022 15:00
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Splicer posted:Well we've covered all the bases so it's dumb brain worms. Suggestion: make your next character a dumb brain worm who is convinced nobody likes them. but no one likes self-insert characters in tabletop games  This was helpful, though, thank you.
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Jan 12, 2022 15:01
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SkyeAuroline posted:I don't think anyone is framing it in the form of a grudge? It's learned behavior through reinforcement - if you do a thing, and every time you do that thing you have a bad time, then you aren't going to want to do that thing any more. It doesn't mean it personally offend you or you hold it deep at heart, it just means you got hurt before and don't want to get hurt again. If anything, willingly going back to something that has repeatedly been a negative experience for you is the surprising choice. I mean they were talking about people PMing folks to not play with certain GMs. That reads like grudge behavior to me. Also I'm not sure if I've ever felt "hurt" by a gaming session. Annoyed, maybe. But it's not that serious of an issue, at least for me. If all that went wrong was that the game system didn't click or we were having technical issues that's not something I would count against the people involved in the session.
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Jan 12, 2022 15:03
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Serf posted:I mean they were talking about people PMing folks to not play with certain GMs. That reads like grudge behavior to me. Also I'd PM a mod before I started PMing players.
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Jan 12, 2022 15:08
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Serf posted:Also I'm not sure if I've ever felt "hurt" by a gaming session. Annoyed, maybe. But it's not that serious of an issue, at least for me. If all that went wrong was that the game system didn't click or we were having technical issues that's not something I would count against the people involved in the session. Hurt isn't necessarily the right phrase. More of... If Charlie Brown keeps trying to kick the football Lucy is holding, and Lucy keeps pulling it away every time, eventually Charlie Brown's only smart option is to stop trying to kick the ball. It's still the only smart option if she isn't doing it out of malice. By the same token, if a GM keeps promising games that fail to materialize in an enjoyable way, at what point do you check out and tell yourself "I'm done"?
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Jan 12, 2022 15:11
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Splicer posted:I'd PM people to avoid a GM if they were, like, PMing me ERP scenarios or something. If I just have a lovely time then that'd be extremely weird. Exactly. If there's a personal problem with someone's behavior that's different than things just not working out. Absolutely warn people if they're doing something weird. SkyeAuroline posted:Hurt isn't necessarily the right phrase. More of... If Charlie Brown keeps trying to kick the football Lucy is holding, and Lucy keeps pulling it away every time, eventually Charlie Brown's only smart option is to stop trying to kick the ball. It's still the only smart option if she isn't doing it out of malice. By the same token, if a GM keeps promising games that fail to materialize in an enjoyable way, at what point do you check out and tell yourself "I'm done"? This is an interesting question because I genuinely don't know. I haven't had a chance to play all that much, so I'm not sure what it would take. Also I'm not the best person to answer this question because despite trying to run/play in PbP games like a dozen times now I keep thinking "but maybe this time it will work out.."
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Jan 12, 2022 15:15
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Leraika posted:What's a good way to get over this sort of thing short of bothering all the other players and going 'you don't actually hate my character, do you' What's wrong with just asking? I'm playing a shithead teen witch prodigy (divination wizard) in my friend's modern-day D&D 5e campaign and I asked everyone straight up one night if it was too much. They told me their characters didn't like her, but the players themselves did.
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Jan 12, 2022 15:55
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Serf posted:This is an interesting question because I genuinely don't know. I haven't had a chance to play all that much, so I'm not sure what it would take. And it's a combination of system and GM. I mean, in my case I think it's a deadlock of politeness on both sides. I'm not too good at improvising, and I find the thought stressful, but I can GM prewritten modules at least moderately well. But I'd like to get better, and that does mean facing that stress. The problem is that the players will not want to feel they're pushing me into doing something uncomfortable, so a group I'm part of will always offer a prewritten game as acceptable and a group I'm not part of will never push me to run one at all; and likewise, I don't want to feel I'm pushing them into something they don't enjoy as much by refusing to run one, nor do I want to feel I'm lying to new people by promising a game will be great when it probably won't be. So everything pushes towards the safe option, even when that safe option becomes frustrating (Paizo's prewrittens are.. of distinctly variable quality) hyphz fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 16:30
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hyphz posted:And it's a combination of system. So you talk to your friends and hey "hey, I want to try to push myself outside my GMing comfort zone a little by running something more improv-leaning than the prewritten modules I normally run. Are you interested? It might be a little rough in the early going, but it's a skill I want to develop and I'd really appreciate your help."
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Jan 12, 2022 16:39
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hyphz posted:And it's a combination of system. I agree with what GimpInBlack said above. The only way to improve is to work on the skill, and you gotta have people who are willing to do that with you. I generally preface every campaign (because I like to run a lot of new systems) with something like "this is my first time running this system, so things could be slow or rough to begin with. If you know something I don't, feel free to jump in" that sort of thing. And I regularly poll my players to see how they're enjoying things and ask what's working and what isn't. Also I feel you on the Paizo AP thing. I'm currently strip-mining Agents of Edgewatch for a campaign I'd like to run and whoo boy there are some choices that got made when they were writing this thing.
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Jan 12, 2022 16:51
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Serf posted:I agree with what GimpInBlack said above. The only way to improve is to work on the skill, and you gotta have people who are willing to do that with you. I generally preface every campaign (because I like to run a lot of new systems) with something like "this is my first time running this system, so things could be slow or rough to begin with. If you know something I don't, feel free to jump in" that sort of thing. And I regularly poll my players to see how they're enjoying things and ask what's working and what isn't. I've been running these stupid games for almost 50 years (Seriously. I ran my first campaign of D&D in 1975 with the original 3 books and Chainmail). Like Serf, I really enjoy learning and running new systems and I make sure that my group (some of which I've been gaming with for 40+ years) is cool with the initial sessions being a feeling out of how things work and if they figure out something, to tell me and the rest of the group.
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Jan 12, 2022 17:07
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GimpInBlack posted:So you talk to your friends and hey "hey, I want to try to push myself outside my GMing comfort zone a little by running something more improv-leaning than the prewritten modules I normally run. Are you interested? It might be a little rough in the early going, but it's a skill I want to develop and I'd really appreciate your help." I mean, they might not be, or they might not want to, but either way it doesn't help that much if I'm then stuck coming back the next week and saying "well, sorry guys but I just couldn't think of anything."
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Jan 12, 2022 18:55
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So, I don't usually like to go about diagnosing people online, but, hyphz, a lot of the headspace you're describing about GMing rings kind of familiar to me as someone with an anxiety disorder? I'm not trying to dismiss or deride the concepts you'[re bringing up, as I think there are concepts there to discuss, just that the way you talk about your own attempts at GMing show a lot of the same sort of thought patterns I've encountered in both myself and other people I've encountered during treatment for anxiety disorders. Specifically I'm seeing a recurring pattern of Overgeneralizing (In which you extrapolate a larger pattern based on a single or limited events or draw overly broad conclusions based on limited evidence) and Mind Reading (In which you believe to know what other people are thinking as objective fact rather than potential conjecture), and a lot of cases where it feels like you're putting the cart before the horse and letting hypothetical chances of failure stop you from attempting things you seem to want to do. Again, I'm not qualified to diagnose you in any respect, and I'm not trying to insinuate you actually have any kind of anxiety disorder, but I feel like maybe looking into some literature on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety or other, related disorders might be useful in getting around the problems you're experiencing with GMing? It helped me deal with similar ways of thinking in a non-tabletop context. (This is not GM advice I ever expected to be giving...)
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Jan 12, 2022 19:30
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hyphz posted:I mean, they might not be, or they might not want to, but either way it doesn't help that much if I'm then stuck coming back the next week and saying "well, sorry guys but I just couldn't think of anything." As much as I hate to admit your brain worm is right, I would be frustrated if that kept happening consistently, but only after solutions to that problem had been attempted. The solution I would go for isn't "blacklist the GM forever and yell about their crimes from the rooftops for all to hear" its "help them come up with stuff for next session" and there are a bunch of ways you can do that, the most basic of which is just asking them of they have any plans or what sort of stuff they want to get up to next. Improv is not only coming up with stuff out of nothing, even improv classes are mostly about building off of things other people say and do. Lesson 1 isn't 'come up with some poo poo' its 'say "Yes and..."' for a reason.
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Jan 12, 2022 19:44
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hyphz posted:I mean, they might not be, or they might not want to, but either way it doesn't help that much if I'm then stuck coming back the next week and saying "well, sorry guys but I just couldn't think of anything."
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Jan 12, 2022 19:52
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EthanSteele posted:As much as I hate to admit your brain worm is right, I would be frustrated if that kept happening consistently, but only after solutions to that problem had been attempted. The solution I would go for isn't "blacklist the GM forever and yell about their crimes from the rooftops for all to hear" its "help them come up with stuff for next session" and there are a bunch of ways you can do that, the most basic of which is just asking them of they have any plans or what sort of stuff they want to get up to next. Improv is not only coming up with stuff out of nothing, even improv classes are mostly about building off of things other people say and do. To build on this, as a GM one of the best things you can do is ask your players "what do you want to see?" Then use their answers! People will often tell you what they want, and then you can just give it to them. Admittedly, at the start of a game/campaign before everyone finds this their footing this will often generate less useful answers because people just don't know what they want yet. So yeah it can be a bigger ask on the GM at the start to provide stuff for the players to do, but once you're past that hump you can often just let the players tell you what to do next. For some campaigns, I'll ask people what they want to do for next session. Back when I ran 4E for my friends I'd come up with 3 possible adventures and have them decide which one sounded more interesting. Then I'd stat that thing up. Saved me a lot of work. Also, I know this GM advice is thrown out everywhere, but steal poo poo. One time recently I was struggling to think of a villain for my Sentinels players to fight and after getting my rear end handed to me by Matador in the Nocturne remaster I decided I would just make Matador their problem.
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Jan 12, 2022 19:53
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Edit: nope, gently caress it, I'm not engaging, this is not worth it.
SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 20:16
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hyphz posted:I mean, they might not be, or they might not want to, but either way it doesn't help that much if I'm then stuck coming back the next week and saying "well, sorry guys but I just couldn't think of anything." hyphz, how do you think improv works? Three reference improv clones are decanted from the tanks, singlets dripping as they blink owlishly at a world they have never seen, one of them reflexively grabs the microphone and says "grekinn polritt", the entire theater erupts in applause? People come to improv with their entire lives already in their heads and that's what they lay out on stage. Or, put another way, your "prep" for improv is your entire life. No one has lived an entire life in a fantasy world (citation needed), so when you're doing improv about the state of affairs in a fantasy world, you need to prep for it. And people have been over the AW basics of that already, right? Name the forces in your world, say what they want, why it's bad that they do/don't get it (pick either or for extra spice both!), and what they do to try to get it. Everybody's got to want something even if it's just a glass of water.
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Jan 12, 2022 21:54
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Splicer posted:Why would you do that instead of, after three/four days of not thinking of anything, hopping onto Discord and saying "Hey TG Discord hive mind pals can you help me think of where I could go with my next session?" Well there’s several reasons, but the main one is that what inevitably happens when I ask for help is: a) someone else immediately has a great idea; b) I get imposter syndrome from someone having easily done instantly what I could not do in 3/4 days; c) I can’t use the idea because inevitably it will require further development and I’ll probably be unable to do that too, especially while having imposter syndrome about having ideas. Obviously I don’t blame anyone else involved for this but it still limits the usefulness quite a lot.
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Jan 13, 2022 03:37
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Serf posted:I agree with what GimpInBlack said above. The only way to improve is to work on the skill, and you gotta have people who are willing to do that with you. I generally preface every campaign (because I like to run a lot of new systems) with something like "this is my first time running this system, so things could be slow or rough to begin with. If you know something I don't, feel free to jump in" that sort of thing. And I regularly poll my players to see how they're enjoying things and ask what's working and what isn't. i think i had something like 4-6 campaigns where i was basically flailing around and loving everything up and didn't really know what i was doing before i got passable at GMing in my defense it was a lot of different problems -- like in order it was something like total failure to maintain tone, running narrative systems too much like D&D, running D&D too freeform and making prep a nightmare, not being able to gauge whether i'd actually enjoy GMing a particular system at all, overestimating my ability to commit while also doing stuff for school, and so on most of my long-term TTRPG group stuck with me through it and now i'm not only much better at running games but also specifically have a really good idea of what they like and don't like
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Jan 13, 2022 04:57
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'd frame it as something like, "there are people who come to GMing with a goal that is incompatible with running a good game, and no amount of improving technique can help if they're not interested in implementing them correctly". For example, if someone just straight up doesn't have an interest in making a game fun or interesting for their player, such as if they just want to read their novel aloud or be pedantic about their weird hang-ups on how the world should be, then learning how to use pacing more effectively isn't going to change much. You're right, it is pretty vague. But the thing is I'm not sure I can sum up a whole list of deal breaker qualities for me any more accurately. There's probably a range of behaviours I think is incompatible with running a good game. I think aggressive railroading does it, but I think running an empty sandbox where you just sit back and expect the players to do everything and don't inject any of your own content also does it. And there's probably a bunch of other things too, depending on the system involved. Je ne sais quoi might be the best way to describe it.
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Jan 13, 2022 05:34
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hyphz posted:Well there’s several reasons, but the main one is that what inevitably happens when I ask for help is: You're acknowledging this is a "you" problem and once again the past half-week's worth of discussion is rooted in it. Like I hope you have someone IRL to talk with about this, but you know, it's very okay to not GM if you're going to be perpetually caught in cycles of overthinking and catastrophizing. These are games you should have fun with above all else. It's okay to stick to being a player so long as you're enjoying it. It's not a personal failure, even if it might mean nobody else introduces new games to the table.
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Jan 13, 2022 05:54
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hyphz posted:Well there’s several reasons, but the main one is that what inevitably happens when I ask for help is: I think it's entirely possible that someone isn't good at GMing and will never be good at GMing. If doing it doesn't bring you or the people around you joy then I think it's worth considering the possibility that maybe it just isn't for you.
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Jan 13, 2022 05:58
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hyphz posted:Well there’s several reasons, but the main one is that what inevitably happens when I ask for help is: You know one trick that you may want to try? Throw some roughly connected bullshit together - I mean, just take, like, two or three random things and throw them into the game that you're running, and suggest that they're all connected together somehow. Like, uh, weird sounds on the radio, a mysterious weapon - which is a random magic item yanked out of the DMG - a missing starlet, annnnnnnnd let's say the mayor's dog disappeared and now the mayor wants him back pretty bad. Then, come up with a location or two where the characters can just be. Just anything. Somebody phones them and tells them that the dog was seen in the parking lot of a movie theater downtown, and one of them knows that the starlet had a cabin up in the mountains. The players are going to start coming up with theories as to how this all connects. They're always right. Use their imaginations do the work for you. The dog was kidnapped because aliens are kidnapping dogs to use for some purpose? Maybe they need low-level brains to power their robots? Yep, that's what's happening. That weird weapon? One of them dropped it. The starlet? Working with them? Sure, that's plausible. It isn't my idea, but it's a useful way to let the natural human tendency towards trying to find links between unrelated phenomena write your adventure for you.
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Jan 13, 2022 06:27
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Cannibal Smiley posted:You know one trick that you may want to try? Yeah if you're good at improv, this is an excellent thing to do. I love to sit back and let the players write the adventure for me. I found it especially useful for Forged in the Dark games. I'll just sketch out 1-3 things about the job they're about to pull, and as they ask questions that lets me add obstacles for them. Super easy way to do things in a game that doesn't require a lot of prep beforehand, or if you're adept at repurposing your prep for new stuff. Gotta be careful though. In my first ever Strike! campaign I had the players meet the main antagonist of the campaign in the first session and as I was attempting to describe its weird method of flickering around I ended up saying that it looked like it was bending time. One of the players called it a "time ghost" and I liked that and went with it. And that's how my campaign became about time travel. What I learned is: don't make your game about time travel unless your players are willing to overlook the many, many problems this will cause. Mine were, it wasn't an overly serious campaign, but boy did it get out of hand quickly. Of course I didn't take my own advice and also made time travel a big part of my Masks campaign, which similarly caused a ton of headaches.
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Jan 13, 2022 14:19
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Serf posted:Yeah if you're good at improv, this is an excellent thing to do. And if you're incredibly bad at improv, like me, ans also have a failing short- and long-term memory, like me, that means you can't remember any source material to call on in the heat of the moment for inspiration or straight-up stealing? (yes, it stems from a diagnosed medical issue) Nuns with Guns posted:You're acknowledging this is a "you" problem and once again the past half-week's worth of discussion is rooted in it. Like I hope you have someone IRL to talk with about this, but you know, it's very okay to not GM if you're going to be perpetually caught in cycles of overthinking and catastrophizing. These are games you should have fun with above all else. It's okay to stick to being a player so long as you're enjoying it. It's not a personal failure, even if it might mean nobody else introduces new games to the table. Emphasis mine, these tend to be contradictory in practice. I won't speak for Hyphz, but I'm not watching this and occasionally stepping in for "vague platitudes about how it's ok to constantly fail at your favored hobby", I'm watching for anyone who has an actual answer to "ok, you keep failing at your favored hobby, now here's a step by step on how to make it work". So far it's just Cannibal Smiley and Serf doing that. (And I appreciate it, you two.)
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Jan 13, 2022 15:09
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SkyeAuroline posted:Emphasis mine, these tend to be contradictory in practice. I won't speak for Hyphz, but I'm not watching this and occasionally stepping in for "vague platitudes about how it's ok to constantly fail at your favored hobby", I'm watching for anyone who has an actual answer to "ok, you keep failing at your favored hobby, now here's a step by step on how to make it work". So far it's just Cannibal Smiley and Serf doing that. (And I appreciate it, you two.) It isn’t a failure of the loving hobby to be someone who feels more comfortable being a player. If you reach a point where you can want to try GMing you should still accept that if it’s causing you intense anxiety and trapping you in a cycle of a thinking about all the ways your friends will hate you if you gently caress up a game, you should be comfortable backing off until you feel better and probably working on yourself for a while because I can’t imagine this unhealthy thought cycle is solely confined to TTRPG GMing. Same thing with asking for advice and getting brutal levels of imposter syndrome for being unable to see that solution before. What does that say about all the advice we’ve given in the past, too? And this is a cycle. We’ve spent years talking hyphz in particular off the ledge periodically. I think he’s made a nest up there now, found a mate, and started hunting nearby pigeons at this point.
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Jan 13, 2022 16:18
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there was an entire discord made to give hyphz normal people to talk about ttrpgs with and to play games with so he could see that it is possible to play an rpg and it ended with hyphz getting banned from the discord made for him
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Jan 13, 2022 17:23
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Nuns with Guns posted:And this is a cycle. We’ve spent years talking hyphz in particular off the ledge periodically. I think he’s made a nest up there now, found a mate, and started hunting nearby pigeons at this point. Farg posted:there was an entire discord made to give hyphz normal people to talk about ttrpgs with and to play games with so he could see that it is possible to play an rpg and it ended with hyphz getting banned from the discord made for him Great. I'm not Hyphz. I have similar issues to what Hyphz has described. If we started this conversation over from the top with me laying out the issues and Hyphz just agreeing with what matches their experience, would there have been more of a constructive effort? Or is "oh, it's hyphz" just a nice cover for kicking people while they're down, and nobody but Serf and Cannibal would have had anything helpful to say in the first place? Nuns is framing things in a way that is different from my own situation, so that adds a wrinkle of "past conversations I wasn't here for", along with the aforementioned Discord server that I obviously wasn't on. But so far everything Hyphz has asked about this time around has been experiences I'm personally familiar with and I'd love the response to be constructive. I'm in the process of trying to keep my current group together and "actually being able to run a game instead of fizzling out in a session or two" would be a hell of a step in that direction.
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Jan 13, 2022 17:43
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hyphz posted:Well there’s several reasons, but the main one is that what inevitably happens when I ask for help is: This is just a corollary to another thing about improv, which is to say the obvious thing. It seems counterintuitive! Isn't everybody thinking of the obvious thing? Everybody is thinking of their own obvious thing, yes. But you are not anybody else, and so your obvious thing is not like anybody else's obvious thing. When somebody snaps off an idea that seems great and cool to you, that's just their obvious thing, and it probably seems greater and cooler to you than it does to them. It does hurt a bit when you're running in a system like most editions of D&D or Pathfinder where your improv idea gets immediately interrogated with magic, and you find yourself having to work in unexpected directions.
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Jan 13, 2022 17:53
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SkyeAuroline posted:Great. I'm not Hyphz. I have similar issues to what Hyphz has described. If we started this conversation over from the top with me laying out the issues and Hyphz just agreeing with what matches their experience, would there have been more of a constructive effort? Or is "oh, it's hyphz" just a nice cover for kicking people while they're down, and nobody but Serf and Cannibal would have had anything helpful to say in the first place? You weren’t who I was replying to. I was replying to hyphz specifically with that feedback. Other people were giving him even more input on social expectations and feedback and repeating a lot of the same things we’ve all been saying for years. You’re welcome to reply here asking for advice for your situation and get feedback, as you have before. There’s also a GM Advice thread that’s active, too, if you don’t want questions lost in this chatter. I’m trying to be nice and not reply with more long posts to every thing hyphz says because it’s a running topic a lot of people complain about in this chat thread when it drags on for days with him in specific. It’s also really feeling like wasted effort at this point when I’ve said the same things to him, as have many others. We’ve all given him advice on how to GM. I think at this point suggesting he step back and just focus on what he enjoys is important too. Every time he talks about GMing it seems to be a point of intense anxiety for him in specific. This is why I gave him that reply. It is not representative of what anyone else should do beyond a broad “please look out for your own health and happiness” message I guess.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:01
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Nuns with Guns posted:It isn’t a failure of the loving hobby to be someone who feels more comfortable being a player. If you reach a point where you can want to try GMing you should still accept that if it’s causing you intense anxiety and trapping you in a cycle of a thinking about all the ways your friends will hate you if you gently caress up a game, you should be comfortable backing off until you feel better and probably working on yourself for a while because I can’t imagine this unhealthy thought cycle is solely confined to TTRPG GMing. Same thing with asking for advice and getting brutal levels of imposter syndrome for being unable to see that solution before. What does that say about all the advice we’ve given in the past, too? This is fair, and I wasn't really intending to ask for personal advice as I know people are sick of it - I just got sidetracked onto it by people asking me questions about my experiences. And I'm contending that while whatever you might think about me isn't a failure of the hobby, it is a failure of the hobby - or at least something that could definitely be improved - that it loads all of this onto one person. That for the basic activity of the hobby to even happen, the same person has to volunteer as improv coach, referee, event organiser and marketeer, and experience at least some accountability for all of those; and that this effect is multiplied with the more experimental systems. I mean, you can say "why's it accountability when the worst that can happen is that people might not want to play that game with you again", but since the effort of being GM is such that for it to happen at all requires at least some increased excitement or other emotional investment in the game, there's going to be some backwash if it that investment turns out badly, even if there's no external consequences. Now, granted there's stuff like Fiasco that does away with the GM role, and I'll be interested to see Ariadne and Bob which seems to break it up, but the change in experience for the players is kind of dramatic for those. I mean, is there any system where there's a traditional GM/player division but there's multiple GMs? I've never heard of that outside some unusual con situations.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:07
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Colonel Cool posted:You're right, it is pretty vague. But the thing is I'm not sure I can sum up a whole list of deal breaker qualities for me any more accurately. There's probably a range of behaviours I think is incompatible with running a good game. I think aggressive railroading does it, but I think running an empty sandbox where you just sit back and expect the players to do everything and don't inject any of your own content also does it. And there's probably a bunch of other things too, depending on the system involved. Je ne sais quoi might be the best way to describe it.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:28
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hyphz posted:is there any system where there's a traditional GM/player division but there's multiple GMs? I've never heard of that outside some unusual con situations. There's a couple, Everyone is John works this way I believe? There's also examples of tables that rotate GMing each session or each substory/dungeon etc. SkyeAuroline posted:I'm watching for anyone who has an actual answer to "ok, you keep failing at your favored hobby, now here's a step by step on how to make it work". So far it's just Cannibal Smiley and Serf doing that. (And I appreciate it, you two.) The flowery way that I wrote about this problem the other day wasn't a dismissal or vague platitude. The answer to the problem of "I'm terrible at this and it's immiserating" is one of these three: -give up and be a player in other peoples games - hopefully learn their techniques, -repetition of GMing till it's no big deal to screw up and start again or -quit playing altogether. Those are the three, and the nitty-gritty beyond that is whatever works best for each step you're in. I also want you to understand that every person who's run a table can sympathize with the feeling you're loving everything up all the time. Even with old friends I still have to ask if they had fun at the end of each story. I actually hated GMing at first but felt I needed to, to get through a story I wanted to tell and I'm glad I did because now GMing is (mostly) trivial - even as I think I've hosed it all up.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:38
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If a hobby doesn't bring you joy, it's fine to do something else. Sometimes even good, people burn themselves out on their hobbies way too often. The elfgames will still be there if you ever decide to come back.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:56
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Siivola posted:If a hobby doesn't bring you joy, it's fine to do something else. Sometimes even good, people burn themselves out on their hobbies way too often. The elfgames will still be there if you ever decide to come back. Another goon talked me down last night from sticking my collection on an external hard drive I could safely "bury" and then cutting off every connection to the TTRPG sphere I've got, since nothing short of that would be enough to get me to disconnect. So, that's in mind as an option, albeit a scorched earth one. "Something else" is where the great big question mark lies, of course. And I'd rather make this work than abandon it.
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Jan 13, 2022 19:05
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hyphz posted:Now, granted there's stuff like Fiasco that does away with the GM role, and I'll be interested to see Ariadne and Bob which seems to break it up, but the change in experience for the players is kind of dramatic for those. I mean, is there any system where there's a traditional GM/player division but there's multiple GMs? I've never heard of that outside some unusual con situations. N.b. I haven't played any of these, I've just heard about them (and in some cases read the sourcebooks). Off the top of my head, Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North has multiple GMs that are each responsible for different aspects of the game, and Gone to Hell has one player and multiple GMs who are each responsible for a different antagonistic faction (typically with one of them driving each scene and the others making small contributions). Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist has three character classes who each take on some GM roles (Wishers can modify the OOC social contract, Theurgists can modify the game mechanics, and Fatalists can modify the setting lore and stat blocks), plus a "main" GM (the Weaver) that gets passed around from player to player over the course of the game -- although I'm not sure if anyone has ever successfully played a game of WTF. There's also games that have only one GM at any given time but rotate who the GM is, ranging from "at the end of each scene the GM role gets passed to the next player, and their character is absent from the scene they GM" (what counts as "next" depends on the game) to "for the purposes of resolving any individual player's actions, the player to their left describes the immediate results and the player to their right describes how the villains react", or similar. That said, as far as I know these are all much more improvisational, so if "traditional" in your question implies the sort of setup where the GM rolls in with a pile of notes about the setting, characters, and plot and runs the game based on that, I don't think any of those are really compatible with that idea. Or if they are it's probably going to make setup a lot more complicated.
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Jan 13, 2022 19:10
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