Rules of the Game

I've said before that I'm a big fan of games, pen and paper roleplaying games are my game of choice, though boardgames run a very close second. I've run through my gaming history before so I won't do it again here, I'll get sick of hearing myself speak on the same things. Recently I've made a somewhat seismic shift in how I play roleplaying games in terms of being a PC and a GM.

It started about 18 months ago when I started listening to two podcasts, the first is The Walking Eye and the second is The Jank Cast. Up until I started listening to these casts I had played in an almost completely mechanical sort of way, nothing wrong with this per se but it wasn't what I nor what my regular group of friends and gamers were looking for. We were playing all sort of different games, mostly of the non-indie and non-story driven variety, but we were always looking for a good story. Now I have to say that two of the regular GMs in our gaming group are masters of the epic yarn, very good with prep and great a weaving our characters into the narrative of the prep they've done. They're really great at working with the awful wrenches PCs tend to throw into plans as well. A third GM I've only had the pleasure of playing in a couple of her games but she's exceptional at building atmosphere into her scenarios through lots of research and prep beforehand.

Despite my relatively academic nature I suck at prep for roleplaying games, I've always found that the more I prep the more stilted a session will feel, I also suck at weaving big stories for people to inhabit. My strength has usually been in dealing with unexpected ideas and letting players take the lead, introducing and reintroducing vague overarching antagonists for my group. I've always felt more comfortable with this sort of GM style, I also used to love simulationist-ish games as well or gamist games with lots of balance. My need for emergent story and my love for these sorts of rulesets didn't gel overly well. I GM'ed my share of 3.x D&D and 4e, I liked the combat in 4e quite a lot in fact, but I couldn't do the prep necessary for these games to float. I GM'ed a Planescape game using Mutants and Masterminds 2e with the Warriors and Warlocks content, it worked sort of but I ended up letting it slide away, much to the chagrin of the people playing in it (sorry by the way).

Then through the above mentioned podcasts I found two pretty awesome games, the first being The Dresden  Files game using FATE, where your background and history inform the themes of the game, the group work together on world building and your traits as a character can be compelled in game to affect them. I thought this was awesome! The whole game works toward weaving a narrative inside the themes that you as a group build. Neat stuff this, but the prep side brought me down again, I love playing this game but running it doesn't really fall in my skillset as a GM, one of the other regular GMs has it down though, his game is great!

The other game and indeed system I suppose is Apocalypse World and the attached engine, basically zero prep beyond a few between game notes, pickup in an evening and begin playing inside an hour and importantly the rules and role of the GM are defined in such a way as to be an engine of creation for emergent story. The shift for me has been from trying to balance and simulate to simply pushing and prodding players into making the story for themselves. This game has already produced what have been some of the most memorable moments of GM'ing for me. I'll probably do a post on those moments later this week in fact. 

I've run over word count by quite a bit...