DarkLightHitomi's Untitled Campaign

Game Master DarkLightHitomi

I figure I'll start with three points today.

1) I'll be running this largely like a class with plenty of room for discussion, input, feedback, and corrections. This is because I believe that GMing a game has the same artistic capabilities as a writer, musician, filmmaker, painter, etc. Art deserves to be studied and advanced through academia and I want to start the ball rolling on a more academic view and "professional" study of the art of gamemastery. This also means that I will presenting things in regards to various styles and different ways of playing as well as examining the very notion of the different ways of playing and what they might be best suited for. This means there is neither one-true-wayism nor focusing on just what works for you in your basement. This is looking at a broad spectrum.

2) Morality. I want to make a note here. I'm not saying "you must be moral when playing!" I'm not because I don't believe that, but I do believe that habits in decision making during games will over extended time bleed into the real world and therefore should be considered carefully. Consider how younger generations that grew up with video games don't apply morality to political enemies anymore. While I can't prove it, I've been around long enough to notice that common people ceasing to apply moral worth to opposing political views has occured as video gamers grew up. And I notice how video games always present bad guys as things to fight to the death. It's not exclusively that way, but it's the default now.

There is a rumor, and I can't confirm it, but I'll tell it because it demonstrates a very big difference in thought process regarding morality between the past and now. Rumor has it, that the drow were introduced as being so completely evil in order to solve a moral problem, namely that bandits and similar were run like they were real people and therefore would run away or surrender rather than fight to the death, but then players would face a difficult moral conundrum in how to deal with the prisoners, thus, drow were supposedly introduced as completely irredeemable so players could just slaughter them without remorse and without the moral problems.

Modern players don't even consider morality at all. Quite literally you get cases like the real example below,
GM "A dark shape rises."
P1 "I shoot it with my bow."
P2 "I blast it with fire."
P3 "I stab it."
GM "It's dead. Combat over."

We didn't find out what it was, and it never took any aggressive action. The other players assumed it was evil and certainly didn't ascribe any moral value to doing anything other than outright slaughter.

This bothers me, because I see this exact same pattern in the real world, and I doubt very much that it's a coincidence that kids get habituated into seeing enemies as having no moral value and basically making a habit of ignoring morality entirely when it comes to enemies, both in the obvious expectation of slaughtering people simply because they are "bad guys" and in the fact that the opposition does the same.

I don't think it's simple, nor do I think we should simply avoid all such games, but I do think it's worth paying attention to and considering how the habits formed in playing these games express themselves in the real world.

3) And lastly, game style. This is what I expect to have major discussion about first, because anything else will be handled differently based on what style is being played.

This is also a difficult issue. I find that the more experienced a player/gm is when they first deal with drastically different styles, the more difficult it is to wrap their head around the distinctions between styles and even to understand alternative styles at all.

I call them styles because genre is unrelated. It's like how film can be anime, cartoon, 3d pixar-like, or live action, yet any genre can be done in any of them. Anime can do horror just as well as live action. But they do have their differences. I can't imagine that Helluva Boss could be done in live action to the same effect.

Styles in rpgs though are unexpected though because they have nothing to do with the mechanics. Certainly, the mechanics may be better suited for one style over another, but any mechanics can be adapted to any style. Style is about the perspective on the role of the mechanics and players in the game.

For example, in a storytelling game, the role of the players is make their character's interaction in the narrative be a good and entertaining story for the others at the table. This ia very different from what I call the "Halo" style, in which only the gm has to make a good story, the players may have some agency but they are purely audience when it comes to the main points and general structure of the narrative, and the player's mainly worry about navigating the encounters.

Now style is a spectrum and there are various ways we can divide, categorize, and name styles, but the point is that style has nothing to do with system nor genre.

This is important because how you handle things will be based on style, whether you are consciously considering it, or just operating on your personal biases.

Being conscious of style however can help in dealing with new players, or in refining how you prep, if you prep.

Sorry the delay in getting this started. I had technical issues yesterday.

I'm less convinced of the bleeding of video game morality into real-life, though it's plausible, than I am of it showing up in how people roleplay. This is simply because video games themselves have been deeply shaped by D&D and its offshoots.

I also wonder how widespread or new the behavior of people simply killing whatever they encounter to finish the encounter and rack up XP. The Dead Alewives' "I cast magic missile on the darkness" skit is from 1996, so it's not a new phenomenon. Then there's the logic of organized play, which is probably many new players' first experience with the most popular TTRPGs. In my experience, those modules very much favor an approach of checking off boxes to maximize return on XP, though they're a bit more complex than "kill anything that moves."

I would put forth that this is not really video game culture as well...we simply see it that way because that is the easiest, fastest, most prevalent player-controlled story-telling mode we have. Film, television, and books aren't interactive, and RPGs are slow. This leaves the medium of video games.

But if we go back to before video games, and before RPGs, kids still played at killing each other. Cops and robbers. Aliens and astronauts. Hunting monsters. Go back to the middle ages and beyond, and I imagine you'll find that a good portion of the play was "I kill the bad guy."

I think that there are some things we can do to help to have players act with morality and nuance at the table.

1.) Establish table rules - Tell the players from the beginning "You cannot just kill everything. There will be consequences. This gaming table and story requires handling situations with more than the point of your sword."

2.) Establish world rules - Have consequences and laws. Make them fear "You're arrested, tried and jailed" as much as death because both end the story of their characters.

3.) Establish consequences - If they still are killing NPCs they perhaps shouldn't, write in the story reasons that this bites them in the ass. They killed a family member of the person they need something from, or whatever.

4.) Show, don't tell - Have NPCs have ANY tactic other than fight to the death. And goals that are ANYTHING other than killing the PCs. When we start with every NPC wanting to kill the PCs, we're teaching them this is how the world works.

5.) Reward them - Kill an NPC and get 200 xp. Negotiate with the same NPC, and get 220 xp. And tell them. This causes power gamers to start to play a bit more like story gamers and tactical gamers, and gives many players an incentive to try something other than damage.

I think killing is easiest. Honestly, making characters is easy...and as DeJoker mentioned, making characters have a good, rounded, nuanced, 3d persona and goals and foibles are HARD. It takes work on the DM and the players' part. And story-telling is not easy, which is why we teach it in schools. It is hard for professional writers to create compelling characters and engaging stories, yet we expect gamers to do it. And many think they do (hint, most of us will never create a really solid character, and that is okay. We create a fine one with a solid character build.)

Keep it up, Professor. :D This is a good idea you have.

There is a lot of great stuff there, but I suspect you missed what I was getting at.

My comment about morality is about how it impacts the way we think and make choices.

Consider this, in a game of Cops and Robbers, would you drop a heavy rack of sharp gear onto the robber? No you wouldn't, because that would hurt your friend. This relies on your ability to see both the game and the reality at the same time, and to strategize accordingly to satisfy the goals of these different aspects at once, and prioritize or compromise to handle any conflicts between them. This is basically thinking on multiple levels at once.

Now I could go so much deeper into thinking and thought and psychology, but that would be drifting from the core of the topic.

The point is that I believe that habits about decision-making built up in games can affect at least the methods of how we make decisions in the real world. This is of course debatable, but if there is any effect at all on an individual's moral behavior in the real world, then it is certainly worth considering.

Now, as for deciding how to implement whatever you decide about it, mittean has good points, which we'll be generalizing later on to apply to far more than just morality.

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GAMEPLAY STYLE

Style is so fundamental that it is often subconscious, a thing not really thought about. This makes it hard to talk about, especially as it ties in very strongly with how we think about things. For example, some players will say that things don't need to make sense, that is part of how they think which heavily, yet subtly, shapes how they interact with the game (and the real world for that matter). Naturally, other players will need things to make sense, at least according to their own mental metrics.

It is important for GMs to understand this so they can recognize it and shape their game according to the players. It is beneficial for players to understand it, because it frees them to experience a variety of styles they otherwise wouldn't be able to even recognize much less appreciate.

Style is built on how people come to understand the situation in the game, plus how they see their role shaping the continuation of the game.

A storyteller player will see it as a player's role to make a story, as in they seek to make the events and behavior of their character to have a certain impact that makes a good story, which means focusing on having and showing character growth, entertaining moments for everyone else to enjoy, and having their characters do things that are sub-optimal but that would make for a better story (because characters always doing the optimal thing is not very often the most entertaining story). No one likes reading about Mary Sues. These players get satisfaction from feeling like they are making a great story.

A Gamist player however, might be particularly contradictory to the storyteller, as a gamist player will be looking at what is optimal. These players like "winning" and look at things like a strategy game.

Interestingly, players can split the game in two, following one style while out of combat/encounter (as opposed to being in an encounter), but as soon as a structured encounter comes, they shift style. In one game, the difference between in-combat and out-of-combat was so massive, that there was almost no connection between the character sheets and the out-of-combat characters as portrayed, like they were playing two entirely different and unrelated games and simply had a character in each game with the same name.

Now style is a vast multidimensional spectrum and how you classify it can come in many varieties. Personally I use a 5 axis spectrum. I'll describe these so they can be referenced and discussed, but as a spectrum, and the fact that players might apply different styles to different gameplay situations, these are obviously not perfect buckets to put everyone in.

The first axis is meta vs immersion. Meta is looking at the game from an external point of view, such as the storyteller and gamist examples above. It is when the player's strategy and goals are based on the fact that it is a game, such as trying to win, trying to make a story, etc. Immersion on the other hand is an internal point of view, when the player is primarily getting enjoyment from the events inside the game, for example, the player that enjoys swinging on the chandelier or completing the character's goals or experiencing things as though they are the character.

The second axis is mechanics vs milieu. I figure most people are more towards the middle of this axis, but the balance between the two can be quite different, though the extremes definitely exist. Mechanics focus is those that like the delve into mechanics and system mastery more than other parts of the game, the kick-in-the-door players. Milieu focus players engage primarily with the in-game world, the milieu.

The third axis is ordered vs chaotic. Chaotic is a bit of a misnomer perhaps, but it fits best as a single word. This axis is about player agency. Ordered games are like FPS video games and adventure paths. The players have agency in how to handle obstacles, but they have no agency in the direction of the core plotline. Chaotic however, gives players total agency in directing the story and main plotlines. If the players want to join the bbeg, that can happen in a chaotic game, but in an ordered game, that is railroaded back into fighting the bbeg since that's plotline.

The fourth axis is setting vs story. Setting games are of course based on the setting, whether that is merely following the mechanics (i.e. a kick in the door game) or based on some sort of genre feel or something else (i.e. a horror game sandbox). Story games are of course very centered around a plot, whether player chosen or GM planned.

The fifth axis is drama vs details. This is very binary. People tend to think in one of two ways, either they understand People -> Relationships/emotions -> Events -> cause & effect -> rules of the world, the direction of drama folks, and details folks go the other way, understanding the rules of the world first then going through the sections until the emotions section where the drama is. What this means is that for some people, they can enjoy drama without the circumstances making sense, for example, a hero being able to pierce tank armor with a pistol because he feels more strongly, but the details folks need the world to make sense before they can enjoy the drama because their subconscious first understands the situation on a world rules way, the pistols can't pierce tank armor stuff, before they start thinking about drama.