I usually end up running campaigns with settings AND systems I am new to. This can be a pain, since I addition to mastering the setting and preparing for sessions, I also struggle with the new system. I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary. This seems like a better plan for people like me.
What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?
Learning new systems and discovering them together as a group can be fun. There is of course more prep involved and mistakes on both sides of the screen are likely until everyone understands things a bit better.
The important question to answer is why are you constantly running new systems? Is it out of curiosity just to try new things or are you looking for a play experience and so far no system you have tried is giving it to you?
If it is the latter, think about your group and whether or not a new system will help out or if you and your players have wildly different expectations.
There are advantages to mastering a few systems instead of trying out dozens. Once you are very comfortable with a system then converting material into that system is a breeze and you can run with less prep time.
System mastery is a small part of good GMing.
Most GMs (good or not) settle on a particular style of GMing and lean toward systems they feel work for their style.
I'll Play just about anything... but if I'm going to run a game I've got my go-to systems and it's gonna take some doing to sell me on running something new, rather than just stealing ideas from it.
For a while I played in a group with a GM who flitted about from system to system, no more than a couple of sessions before moving on to the next new hotness. It was annoying and convinced me I don't want to play in groups that flit around like that.
Eh, I suspect that most people eventually treat the systems as tools, and find a few that they use and gravitate to.
As others have said, I think a great question is why you're trying all of these systems. If you're looking for something to 'fix' a problem, there might be non-systems answers that are more appropriate. A good GM and group can have a lot of fun in a lot of different systems, so if you continually are having bad experiences, the system might not be the first thing to look at.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary.
I think that you are right due to a coincidence - a very large part of players only ever get involved in a handful of different games, and consequently, a significant number of gamemasters do as well. Naturally, that includes both a lot of good ones as well as truly bad ones.
As far as I can tell, a good gamemaster knows well enough what he likes and what he is good at (which is most often very much the same, enthralling gamemastering is after all mostly the result of infectuous enthusiasm) to concentrate on a certain style, setting, genre or the like
for any given campaign. Not being a pushover or trying to twist and warp a campaign to accomodate the players as much as possible is not a good sign. Yes, that means that for a certain "vision" of a campaign a setting conversion is an appropriate and completely legitimate decision, but doing a good conversion is also a lot of work (trust me on that).
However, it is also not a particularly good sign to actively avoid other impressions and ideas or to assume that there is only one true way. Trying new stuff is great and educative, even if it fails (I would argue that complete disassters of a campaign can teach you more, but that doesn't make them any more enjoyable). Pretty much the worst players and gamemasters I ever met were using only one system or setting exclusively and used this narrow-mindedness as a badge of honor (
"I don't need to flitter from one system to another. My system is perfect"). And that attitude is only ever limiting and restrictive (also, only the mediocre think of themselves as perfect).
Getting interested in new stuff, if only to mine it for ideas, is not only potentially entertaining, it is also a good way to gather good ideas and implement them in any way you see fit.
Also, personal taste changes. It is quite possible to just get oversatuated or fatigued by a certain system or setting. I have run Werewolf campaigns for over a decade, including some of my best gamemastering experiences, but I cannot stand the system any longer. I could probably write a conversion from oWoD storyteller to something less nauseating (BRP/Runequest, combined with a historical campaign sounds about right), but that's a lot of work. Other games and settings seem more rewarding than that for a lot less effort.
Quote from: Beagle;848647Pretty much the worst players and gamemasters I ever met were using only one system or setting exclusively and used this narrow-mindedness as a badge of honor ("I don't need to flitter from one system to another. My system is perfect").
The worst players and gamemasters I've ever met were bad for reasons that had nothing to do with what systems they were or weren't playing. They would have been dicks if they'd been playing checkers.
We finish campaigns and people are happy with them, then sort of randomly pick anything that catches our eye. The focus usually is on setting (which may come with a system). We picked V20 cause we wanted to do vampire dark ages setting, savage Worlds because we wanted to do Accursed setting, cypher because we wanted to play in the Numenera setting etc. My players have had no complaints about systems except for Fate.
My impression is that most GMs and groups don't do this - they mostly stick with a genre, setting , etc, which means the GM gets to focus on a system.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609I usually end up running campaigns with settings AND systems I am new to. This can be a pain, since I addition to mastering the setting and preparing for sessions, I also struggle with the new system. I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary. This seems like a better plan for people like me.
What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?
It depends on if I think the new system is worth a shit or not.
I prefer
Classic Traveller and
Mongoose Traveller over
T4 and I prefer all of those over
Stars Without Number. Why? Well, I think the inclusion of a D&D style character and combat system detracts from the genre emulation of a lot of science fiction. I prefer
d6 WEG Star Wars over d20 and FFG because d6 WEG emulates the action of the Star Wars books, movies, and cartoons better. I think that
Cyberpunk 2020 is better than
Shadowrun because it has too much fantasy in the science fiction - yes, there was a Vampire and Lovecraftian Horror 3PP add-on to
Cyberpunk 2020 and yet it didn't detract from the cyberpunk vibe of the game.
Never mistake the tools for the talent.
Talent will likely have experience with different tools. That said, they will have favorites and strengths. And when the pressure is on and they have to create they will fall back on such familiar tools.
Tools are just that. Some work for certain jobs better than others. They almost always can be improvised into something else. However that usually ends up not quite hitting that sweet spot.
The magic between tools and talent is finesse. By then talent knows how to play up a tool's strength to their (the talent's) strengths. That's when you see them bend the results into ways unexpected and beautiful.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848673We finish campaigns and people are happy with them, then sort of randomly pick anything that catches our eye. The focus usually is on setting (which may come with a system). We picked V20 cause we wanted to do vampire dark ages setting, savage Worlds because we wanted to do Accursed setting, cypher because we wanted to play in the Numenera setting etc. My players have had no complaints about systems except for Fate.
My impression is that most GMs and groups don't do this - they mostly stick with a genre, setting , etc, which means the GM gets to focus on a system.
Well if you are constantly grabbing new settings and systems, why does the same person have to keep running the game? Rotate the GM position as often as you rotate games and no one person will have to learn so many systems completely.
Quote from: Simlasa;848656The worst players and gamemasters I've ever met were bad for reasons that had nothing to do with what systems they were or weren't playing. They would have been dicks if they'd been playing checkers.
+1.
I see no reason why I should ditch the expertise in GURPS I enjoy over several decades of running the game to indulge in the Phat Kewl Noo System de Jour. Even supposing the new system is ever so much superior -- something alleged an order of magnitude more often than proven -- the learning curve involved is a serious offset.
(I imagine, of course, that to those who continually flip from this system to that, the drawbacks of constantly having to learn systems aren't something they perceive. SOP and all.)
As such, I have no problems converting things. Give me an adventure written for another system? Great. Soandso NPC is a great swordswoman? I know what that looks like in GURPS. The lock on the door to the Inner Sanctum is especially tough? I know what that looks like in GURPS. The Big Bad's mooks are weak and demoralized troopers? Fair enough, I build the template on 50 rather than 100.
And so on. I expect just about any GM familiar with a system can do the same.
I just like to try different games? Learning new rules and playing with different mechanics can be fun. Or not: I only really find out through play.
I've run decades of GURPS, so it's second nature to me, and usually seems silly for me to use anything else. It's so easy and fast for me, I can translate everything into English for the players, imagine up new NPCs with appropriate stats in an instant, I understand the balance of things, and know or can fudge up rules for almost any situation.
I've tried running other games for fun or curiosity or variety, which can be interesting, but unless the game is something entirely different (like *Microscope*, or using a spaceship simulation or a wargame to resolve some military combat). I usually either don't like the lack of detail, or it doesn't seem right, or I swap in some familiar mechanics, or I just don't get the balance, and/or it doesn't make sense to me.
For example, I tried making some locations for the *Neverwinter Nights* (D&D computer game that lets you do multiplayer games with GM & players), but even though I'd played hours of it single-player, the power levels of the monsters was so weird to me that I didn't get how to populate places and have it seem to make sense to me. I couldn't get over the feeling of pointlessness of making detailed locations where a bunch of orcs and goblins would live, knowing that they could be completely outclassed and uninterestingly zero-challenge annihilated by a few PCs if they were sufficiently high-level, or in theory if any higher-level monster were there - I have a hard time understanding a world with extremely-stratified power levels with many tiers and magic with all sorts of complex high-power effects, because I like to have a grasp on what the power balance in a place is like, and I feel way out of my depth, and have no idea what would happen if it were a simulation even if I knew what all the inhabitants were like.
Sometimes I like to try another system briefly, but my interest tends to end once I've gotten familiar with the system, at which point I either want to stop playing, or convert it to GURPS. But I have limited time resources so this rarely lasts.
I fairly often take peeks at rules for other systems, but I usually pretty quickly decide I don't like the way they do things, since my taste is so far in the "I want very detailed and realistic rules and tactical combat" direction.
That's interesting. I use several different systems, and I find that I have to significantly shift my mental gears when I switch between them. Like, it's an almost tactile sensation as I switch from one mindset to the other.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?
It kinda depends on the game and the setting. Is the game THE feature? How disconnected is it to the setting.
I'll give you an example: Earthdawn. To me, the setting and system for Earthdawn go hand in hand. You can't really separate the two. Well, you could, but you'd end up doing so much work to replicate the flavor of the system in a different system that it just isn't worth it.
OTOH, look at 50 Fathoms for Savage Worlds. You could run that with DnD 5e or GURPS and still have a bang up game. That's the cool thing about SW (and DnD, too). The game system is its own thing, an other than a few assumptions its very easy to divorce the system from setting. Savage FR? No problem. DnD Sundered Skies? Why not. This doesn't always work out (Deadlands could be tricky, mainly because they've already done so much work adding the flavor of Deadlands to the SW game in those books), but usually it isn't an issue.
My current Witch Hunter campaign is pretty much a reboot of my old Savage World of Solomon Kane game with a different system and a more interwoven backstory. I'm using almost the same archvillain(s) that the players never met, the same secret history of the world, and even some of the same characters. We're coming up on the two year point with it now. I don't think it would have been worth the switch if we were only going to play a couple of sessions or even a short campaign. But for a multiyear arch, I'm glad we did.
So it's pretty much like anything else these days, with kids, family, job, commitments. You have to weigh the pros and cons of investing the time and effort into learning a new system. If the pros outweigh the cons, well there you go.
Tom
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary.
In a similar fashion, the great basketball players only excel at shooting OR defense, never both; the great composers only write for a single type of instrument; and the great writers only use words starting with T.
...
So, in other words, no. In fact, I would argue the exact opposite: Great GMs grow from having wide and diverse experiences, learning lessons from those experiences which they can then apply in other contexts.
Now, great GMs will also tend to learn what does and doesn't work for them, and they'll achieve mastery over the systems they've found that work well for them. (And that mastery, in itself, is a huge asset which is difficult to replace.)
But I suspect that the great GMs never truly stop experimenting and exploring. They'll continue to go out, play around for a bit, and then bring the lessons back home. (Although not all lessons are transferable and the truly great GMs will be able to recognize that different jobs require different tools.)
Otherwise they're like a novelist who says, "Well, that's it. I'm only reading books about unicorns for the rest of my life." They're going to rapidly stagnate.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;848867In a similar fashion, the great basketball players only excel at shooting OR defense, never both; the great composers only write for a single type of instrument; and the great writers only use words starting with T.
A less nonsensical comparison would be athletes who thrive in a variety of sports vs. concentrating on one... musicians who write across a variety of styles of music or writers who cover many different genres. They exist but most of the greats who pop to mind tended to narrow their focus a bit.
Not saying it's bad to read and play widely, it's generally good to experience new things... but when you 'bring the lessons back home' it helps to have a home to return to, rather just wandering the countryside aimlessly.
Quote from: Simlasa;848656The worst players and gamemasters I've ever met were bad for reasons that had nothing to do with what systems they were or weren't playing. They would have been dicks if they'd been playing checkers.
You are right. What I meant is a special kind of pretty bad players who were bad because they were oh so proud about their one true game. Narrow-mindedness is a particularly bad base for elitism. But there are probably many universally awful players out there, who can suck the fun out of any game they play, not just one specific game.
And I would add: I have nothing against any player who have playtested several games, found one that truly sang to him and stayed with it; if anyone is happy with this one system and/or setting for the rest of his life, and if this enthusiasm can be transfered to the rest of the players, the resulting games are probably going to be pretty good for all involved people. However, that is a different attitude in my eyes from "
you fool, why do you try all these games? There is only one game that matters, and that happens to be my favourite".
Quote from: Beagle;848872What I meant is a special kind of pretty bad players who were bad because they were oh so proud about their one true game.
I haven't met that guy, but I'd guess his attitude about his game is just a symptom of a larger problem that would probably be readily apparent even before we got around to discussing what to play.
Quote from: Simlasa;848875I haven't met that guy, but I'd guess his attitude about his game is just a symptom of a larger problem that would probably be readily apparent even before we got around to discussing what to play.
Come to that, I haven't met that guy either. I rather expect his existence is far more a case of stung feelings over refusals to system shop than that there are actually people strutting around saying "Well,
I'm a
Savage Worlds gamer, nyah nyah!"
What I
have met, by contrast, is "you fool, why do you stick to only one system? A
real gamer is one who'll drop everything familiar to try out new systems ... coincidentally, a one I just bought a copy of" people.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609I usually end up running campaigns with settings AND systems I am new to. This can be a pain, since I addition to mastering the setting and preparing for sessions, I also struggle with the new system. I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary. This seems like a better plan for people like me.
What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?
I found a system that I liked and now adapt that system to new things.
It is far easier than using many different systems that don;t do things as well, or don't do things a lot better.
If I find something in a system that does things a lot better, then I adapt that and use it in my favourite system.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848673My impression is that most GMs and groups don't do this - they mostly stick with a genre, setting , etc, which means the GM gets to focus on a system.
In my experience the GM picks a setting and puts it on offer, the players then say if they think that is great, acceptable, so-so, or no. Players might lobby for something if they care about playing something new or if they want to return to a previous game and set of characters. If enough folks are interested that's what gets run and played.
I think the GM selecting the game makes the most sense to me because the GM needs to at least be comfortable with the system and enthused about the setting. I admit I may be biased about this since I am, more often than not, the GM.
We change settings and systems when there is a desire to try something new or when enthusiasm for the current campaign has waned. Usually that is me driving the change to play something else for a while. We try to find a reasonable end spot for the current characters before we switch. I think of the campaigns much like a series of novels. They are something that always has the potential of being revisited - like a new novel written in a familiar series.
Quote from: Blusponge;848866So it's pretty much like anything else these days, with kids, family, job, commitments. You have to weigh the pros and cons of investing the time and effort into learning a new system. If the pros outweigh the cons, well there you go.
Exactly. We play multi-year campaigns, so it may be worth switching to a new system if it does something different and interesting than the old system. I'm perfectly capable of adapting existing material to a system I like. I'll shamelessly appropriate ideas or even whole adventures and convert them to a system I like.
- I switched from OD&D and D&D clone games to Runequest because the rules did something different that I found interesting and because I thought the Glorantha setting was cool.
- I added in Call of Cthulhu because the systems are very similar so rules wise the change is pretty easy and because we wanted to play something different and because quirky 1920s characters are fun.
- I switched to Star Trek because someone else wanted to run it and I like the shows. After a while I started running Star Trek as well. (We alternated Star Trek with Call of Cthulhu, in part because it makes a nice break, in part because we have a stable of characters we really like, and in part because it is my wife's favorite game.)
- I switched to Star Wars after I got tired of running Star Trek and wanted a change. The WEG D6 system is nearly perfect for running original series Rebels vs Imperials or Fringe smugglers and such. (And we continued to alternate Call of Cthulhu with Star Wars.)
- I switched to Honor+Intrigue because our Star Wars campaign had finally gotten to the point where we had a couple of characters who had become fairly powerful Jedi and the lightsaber dueling rules just didn't result in the sort of interesting battles seen in any of the movies - well that's not quite true, you could easily get a duel like that between Vader and Kenobi in A New Hope, but honestly how much fun is that for Kenobi's player and even if it is, it's a one trick pony. So I looked at Honor+Intrigue in search of a dueling system that might work for Star Wars. I liked what I saw, but decided it would be fun to run something in a Three Musketeers kind of setting. Thus the current campaign.
I'm sure someone will prevail on me to run Call of Cthulhu again. Which will occur in parallel with H+I...unless we sign up for the commitment to play a Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?
Great GMs just know what their limits are, is all. And crap GMs don't know what game mechanics are, to know which one is good.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609What do you do?
Like all great GMs, I use whichever approach I like:D.
Sometimes that means adapting, sometimes it means using the system.
QuoteWhat do the great GMs you know do?
All of them do whatever they like;).