In my opinion, a GM section should be focused on explaining the themes of the book, illustrating how a GM can use the mechanics in total, adjudication the rules and finally, how to break mechanics apart to house-rule/create new material.

Everything else is outside the scope, unless there are necessary mechanics that directly correlate to how a session is handled, an adventure is told or the campaign is ran.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;930040This guy has the worst case of logorrhea I've seen in years.  More technically, he has diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.

(...)

Wrong.  Horribly wrong in almost every particular.

Those two statements pretty much sum up Angry GM's oeuvre: Massively redundant writing bloated with irrelevant tangents, wrapped in a bunch of flawed premises (most of which have nothing to do with the actual point being made, which is occasionally useful).

For those interested in just getting to the point, here's the edited version of the linked article:

Quote from: Angry GMBasically, there are two different Dynamics that can drive any RPG adventure. (...) GM Driven Adventures provide the players with scenes and events to react to. Player Driven Adventures provide the players with opportunities to plan and resources to use.

In a purely GM Driven plot, the players have no control over the sequence of events in the adventure. As they move from scene to scene, they don't have any freedom to choose which scenes to move to. The simplest example is the obstacle course or gauntlet adventure. The heroes in such an adventure simple deal with each obstacle in turn. Many event-based games are also GM Driven. In those adventures, certain things will happen at prescribed times or under prescribed conditions and the heroes have to deal with or prevent them.

That said, GM Driven plots aren't automatically linear. And this is a really fine distinction, but an important one. Imagine, for example, a plot which branches based on whether the heroes kill the goblin chief or whether the goblin escapes in scene 31-A. The adventure will change based on the characters' actions, it'll changed based on their choices, but that doesn't mean the players are driving the plot. The players are still taking a reactionary role to the events in the adventure.

Just because the players and their characters are changing the outcome, that doesn't mean the players are driving the plot. If the players are basically just reacting to events and outcomes, the GM is driving the plot.

On the other hand, in a purely Player Driven plot, the players have complete control over the sequence of events. The simplest example is the heist adventure. The protagonists are trying to pull off some kind of caper, like infiltrating an enemy stronghold or assassinating someone or robbing a casino. They have a motivation and there is a resolution, but the players are free to gather information, plan the operation, and execute the plan however they see fit. In such an adventure, the sequence of events and the progression of scenes are determined purely by the players. They might decide to scout the site, kidnap the security guard for interrogation, hire the expert burglar, buy a getaway horse-and-carriage, buy black powder from the dwarf to blow open the wall, and so on.

Many Player Driven plots are thus exercises in creative problem solving and the players are free to investigate the problem, determine what resources they need, acquire those resources, and execute their plan.

What's interesting though is that Player Driven plots are not necessarily any more open ended or branching than GM Driven plots.

That said, it is almost impossible to create an adventure that is PURELY Player Driven or Purely GM Driven. By the very nature of RPGs, players can almost always seize control of the plot dynamic just by making a single unexpected choice. (...) Further complicating this whole spectrum is the fact that an RPG has many different levels and each of those levels can have its own dynamic. For example, an individual scene can be GM Driven or Player Driven. When a group of orcs leap out of the underbrush and attempt to murder the PCs, that's a GM Driven scene. The players really have no choice but to react. They are trying to stop the orcs from killing them. End of story. But if the PCs come upon a group of orcs and have the element of surprise, the scene is Player Driven. The players can decide to attack the orcs in combat, assassinate the orcs, sneak past the orcs, or avoid the orcs altogether.

It's an interesting set of terminology, and the conceptual idea of, "Who's driving the session?" might be evocative for some people, but it's not really doing much for me. Both of the proposed "paradigms" are kind of a weird, ill-defined hodgepodge of disparate elements that are being grouped together in what seems to be a fairly arbitrary way. (The primary distinction seems to be reactionary vs. proactive PC actions, but even that isn't really being consistently applied.)

Part of the problem is that the Angry GM is, in general, a GM who preps his plots. He's aware of things like sandboxes and non-linear adventures, but when he tries to talk about them he often comes across like the three blind guys trying to describe an elephant -- there's a lot of groping around and then he kind of bumbles out an "explanation" of them that is virtually unrecognizable to anyone actually familiar with them because it's still so heavily infused with the assumption that they must still fundamentally involve prepping plots. (It's like a guy who's lived his entire life in a desert trying to explain the concept of a river while being fundamentally convinced that yes, rivers are different, but they're still basically made up of sand, right?)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;930089the three blind guys trying to describe an elephant

"an elephant is warm and mushy"

The article's okay. But his "rules" for which is which type of "plot" are not as clear as his main point, which is to explore the question of "who decides what to explore next?" Even so player driven just means they decide which hook to follow. The GM still has to whip of the particulars, as well as arbitrate the results, then extrapolate the consequences. Just because my character sheet has a hook on it doesn't mean I'm driving plot details. It does mean that I'm assigning a task to my GM to whip up the particulars. So, the player seems, to me, to be the producer of the show, while the GM writes the treatment, and then players and GM co-script the final episode. Play to see what happens, in other words.

Quote from: CRKrueger;930035The GM designs the world and all it's situations, so at the highest level, things are GM-Driven,
But then players choose how to interact with that world, so it's player-driven,
Then the GM, in Playing the World, dynamically adjusts what's happening, so then it's GM-driven,
then the players...etc.

If you're specifically designing for this as a GM that just means you haven't internalized it yet to where it's natural, which means, you still suck.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;930039Mean Green speaks for me.

Yeah, Green One put it quite succintly:).

I especially laughed at the assertion that there's nothing wrong with players that don't have ideas what to do unless the GM presents them with something. Not knowing what to do in the game they gathered to play means they need to learn, in my book;).
And that was ironic, given the name of his blog. I mean, since when is an "Angry GM" into giving "stars" just for turning out and not being ready to participate:D?

Still, if anyone finds the delineation he created useful, by all means use it, just don't forget that this one useful thing was indeed mixed with lots of questionable assertions.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;930089For those interested in just getting to the point, here's the edited version of the linked article:

Better, but I was hoping for bullet points.

His blog articles are too long.

There was one thing on which I agreed with the Angry GM, but he rambled on so long I forgot what it was....

I've tried a few times, but failed to want to keep reading through the whole article.

It seems clear though, as he writes himself, that this is a new concept that just dawned on him. Then his writing style (probably from school training) has him over-state his thesis, so we have someone with a new idea trying to apply logic to his new idea in an overstated way even though he knows it's not entirely accurate. He spends time exploring this new-to-him idea and trying to develop it.

So, as with most such writings, it can work if you are willing and able to stay with the way he's thinking about the idea, as far as it goes. But if you don't follow, say from your thinking (new or established) being different, then one might tend to just react with "no no no" or "huh? what? eh?". Or some mix.

Personally, I think what I managed to get through sort of makes sense, but to me it feels like he's trying to hard to define new terms and ideas and like he overstates his ideas, and he's talking about stuff that I have thought of long before and in some cases have different ideas about, so it's kind of frustrating to read, especially with an eye to them trying to comment here in a useful way about it.

Quote from: AsenRG;930111I especially laughed at the assertion that there's nothing wrong with players that don't have ideas what to do unless the GM presents them with something. Not knowing what to do in the game they gathered to play means they need to learn, in my book;).

I disagree, provisionally. I had a player who, whenever I posed the question "What does your character want to do?" would inevitably joke "Take over the world!"
It used to frustrate me a bit, until I realized that my question was really weak. There's no context or specifics for the character to grab onto. Does he want to get the fabled Sword of Kicking Ass to take over the world? Does he want to use politics and take over certain factions? Does he want to put mind-control juice into the water supply? All those ideas assume that there is a Sword, or a faction, or mind-control juice. But I haven't said that there are any such things.

Being proactive in an established setting, like Star Wars or Dragonlance, is easier in that it has a bunch of existing details that players can grab onto to start formulating plans and plots. A homemade campaign might as well, but the GM had better put that information into the game so that players can learn of them.

I don't really have any desire to read that long-ass post. But, out of curiosity: why does this guy label himself as an "Angry GM"? Frustrated geek? Likes to throw in (censored) profanity in his posts? Bitter gamer?

Quote from: K Peterson;930462I don't really have any desire to read that long-ass post. But, out of curiosity: why does this guy label himself as an "Angry GM"? Frustrated geek? Likes to throw in (censored) profanity in his posts? Bitter gamer?

Probably because "Angry GM" is shorter and edgier than "Cranky, and really long-winded Referee."

Quote from: Ratman_tf;930347I disagree, provisionally. I had a player who, whenever I posed the question "What does your character want to do?" would inevitably joke "Take over the world!"
It used to frustrate me a bit, until I realized that my question was really weak.

"OK, how do you do that?"

QuoteThere's no context or specifics for the character to grab onto. Does he want to get the fabled Sword of Kicking Ass to take over the world? Does he want to use politics and take over certain factions? Does he want to put mind-control juice into the water supply? All those ideas assume that there is a Sword, or a faction, or mind-control juice. But I haven't said that there are any such things.

Well, then you need to have established more background. That's one advantage of using a published setting:).

QuoteBeing proactive in an established setting, like Star Wars or Dragonlance, is easier in that it has a bunch of existing details that players can grab onto to start formulating plans and plots. A homemade campaign might as well, but the GM had better put that information into the game so that players can learn of them.

Yeah, but I was assuming the GM has done that already.
The only time I don't do that is when I say "it's Britain, 43 AD, and the Druids are giving you hell, you dirty Romans" or "It's China, 1674, South China Sea, but martial artists are Qi-powered, and you're martial artists". Then it might be up to the players to study the setting, or to learn it in play.

Quote from: K Peterson;930462I don't really have any desire to read that long-ass post. But, out of curiosity: why does this guy label himself as an "Angry GM"? Frustrated geek? Likes to throw in (censored) profanity in his posts? Bitter gamer?

I suspect that Sir Rantsalot was deemed too joking, or was already taken;).

Quote from: AsenRG;930494I suspect that Sir Rantsalot was deemed too joking, or was already taken;).

Sir Rantsalot. I like that. He hangs out with Sir Cumference and the rest of the Round Table knights.

Quote from: Bren;930549Sir Rantsalot. I like that. He hangs out with Sir Cumference and the rest of the Round Table knights.

And they use the Round Table to play Honour+Intrigue as a form of Sci-Fi escapism:D?