Quote from: jeff37923;624409I'll quibble with you on this one because I have found that Players have more of an interest in the game if they have been allowed a reasonably free hand with creating their own backgrounds

I agree. I'm talking about during play.

Quote from: TristramEvans;624181Your games must be fantastically uncreative... or your masturbation extremely boring.

wrong on both counts! TOUCHE!

Quote from: VectorSigma;624218I don't get the comparison; or rather, I don't see why one would have to be so grossly formalized as compared to the other.  You can have sponsored play and shared worlds and campaign-hopping without "consistent rules".  What you can't have is competitive play, where one player or team "does better" than the others, because there's the expectation of consistency as being equivalent to fairness.  I have no expectations that two DM's campaigns will all use the same rules, requirements, house rules, etc, because I don't give a shit about 'player ranking' or whatever else is woven into some of those 'sponsored play' experiences you're talking about.

Point being, FLAILSNAILS is "open to anyone".  There's no membership card to buy to play in a game or start your own.  That's the RPGA you're thinking of.

Yes, I was thinking RPGA, and tournament play.

I am intrigued that Flailsnails manages to be so flexible.

In general, competitive play is a very different experience I find than a game centred around an ongoing campaign. I don't dislike such games, at all. Paranoia is great fun. I adore Agon. But I consider such games peripheral to "True RPGs", whatever that means. They're completely gamist, with role-playing being a secondary consideration. Kind of like the Powerpuff Girls boardgame.

Quote from: Votan;624558Yes, I was thinking RPGA, and tournament play.

I am intrigued that Flailsnails manages to be so flexible.

Just for interest's sake, here's brief mention of a Flailsnails experiment where they just went "what the hell" and everyone played characters from entirely different editions.

http://jrients.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/todays-experiment.html

Well, this thread has certainly gotten some interesting response.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;624565Just for interest's sake, here's brief mention of a Flailsnails experiment where they just went "what the hell" and everyone played characters from entirely different editions.

http://jrients.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/todays-experiment.html

That was pretty awesome.  

Numbers inflation has been a problem for a while, but I have always suspected that you could make a lot of things work in a cooperative environment for character building.  GURPS nearly requires it, and I have successfully done a campaign with it.

So RPGPundit, are you telling me that a good set of rules and procedures cannot help a GM build and maintain personal confidence, game-management and group-management skills, just so we're clear?

Quote from: Novastar;624056I tend to look at rules as tools.

I can give someone a great hammer, and they can still be a shitty carpenter.

Conversely, even a great carpenter will get frustrated with shoddy tools.

And while I can use a hammer to get a screw in, it's better for me to use a screwdriver, since it's built for the job.

That's better than what I was going to say, which was "That's better than what I was going to say".

Quote from: Blackhand;624074The Jazz thing is not a good analogy, because GM'ing is NOTHING like playing music.

Or like writing a book, or making a movie, or acting in a play, or those RPGs which aren't RPGs.

ALL analogies are inexact, but in this case the parallels with Jazz exist, as you are taking someone's creative input, interpreting it through a set of rules, and then returning it.

Quote from: Blackhand;624074It doesn't matter if the DM is good at making things up, it's the fact that he IS making things up as he goes in the first place.  The DM is a REFEREE...and if there is no material to referee...what's he doing?  Telling a story.

Man WHAT?!?

The rules are there specifically to help the GM make things up which make sense in the game. That's the point. They're a creative restraint designed to help inspire and resolve things in a way that fits a specific premise and tone. And if the GM isn't making things up, then where are all the villages and castles and orcs and dragons and black holes and... stuff an RPG consists of? Does it all have to exist in a written notebook somewhere before play? Cause that's nuts.

Quote from: Blackhand;624074In other words, if all he says all the right things to make everyone have fun and feel good, and just changes rules on the fly (most of the time in the favor of the players or his "Story" which the players must suffer through) it's like...well..

...the game will massively SUCK!

But luckily RPGs don't DO that. An RPG system is supposed to give you the tools to break consensus and push comfort zones while still providing a safe creative environment.

Quote from: Benoist;624165No, that's not actually true, because that's not how that works when you role play the world and don't have a "creative agenda" to begin with.

If your intent is to roleplay the world, then that IS a creative agenda.

Quote from: jeff37923;624264Instead of crafting rules to ensure that the GM is acting fairly, why not just create ways to train or teach or advise people to become better GMs?

These should, and can easily, be the same thing.

Quote from: jeff37923;624338So, because a single random table in an entire game can have bad results for Players it is a shit system to you? Not much earlier in this thread you were championing "let the dice fall where they may", what happened?

If by "bad results for players" you mean "total party kill from a single roll", then yes, shit system. And being a champion of "let the dice fall where they may" myself I find avoiding shit systems to be extremely important, because that allows me to rely on that philosophy.

Quote from: Looter Guy;624415wrong on both counts! TOUCHE!

As implied by your fantastically creative and masturbatory response.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;625026So RPGPundit, are you telling me that a good set of rules and procedures cannot help a GM build and maintain personal confidence, game-management and group-management skills, just so we're clear?

A set of rules? No. They can perhaps damage a nascent GM's confidence, or get in his way in other forms, but rules in and of themselves cannot make a GM a better GM.

A set of really really good GM advice (note that most RPG books that have GM advice do not have really good GM advice) can possibly help make a GM better at GMing and developing these skills.  For example, I think every GM would be helped tremendously by reading Erick Wujcik's vast and instructive advice in the Amber RPG books.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;625196A set of rules? No. They can perhaps damage a nascent GM's confidence, or get in his way in other forms, but rules in and of themselves cannot make a GM a better GM.

A set of really really good GM advice

See, as a book learner myself this would make GMing unique from every other book definable skillset. And while practice is still necessary, without a good set of procedures what you're practicing may be the wrong thing and establish bad habits which actually make you less effective, and your confidence can be undermined when you're not sure if you're doing it right.

Granted there's a jumping off point where one can transcend the rules, but that's not the same as ignoring them, as doing that still requires the framework it came from. Great artists break rules all the time, but the greatest of them understand why.

And rules, advice, suggestions...it doesn't matter what you call them. They're all the same, and the only thing that matters is if they're followed.

You grinding your "I hate story games" axe again, Pundit?

Crappy GMs are a perrenial blight upon this hobby. While players and GMs have the right to tinker, GMs can't hide behind their viking hats. These are games, games have rules, and often I've seen good rules sets trip up craps GMs who never even bothered to read the rules sets they promised to. This happened to me in Traveller, of all places, when an old gm I had wanted to arbitrarily change the charge rules. Another case was in Exalted, when a gm wanted to deny all Solar exalted use of perfect defenses. I walked in both cases, and each game collapsed a few sessions later.

Rules sets don't teach people how to gm, they're not supposed to. But GMs who refuse to read and learn rules sets and want to improvise like mad free form gamers are ones who I'm pretty sure suck. every time I've stuck around for gms who refuse to deal with players and negotiate in a reasonable manner has always turned into a massive clusterfuck of epic proportions where no one has fun and everyone walks away from the table pissed.

Bad gaming starts from a fundamental lack of respect of players and arbitrary demands of authority. This is not a trade vs story game thing. This is s not being a jerk thing.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;625455Rules sets don't teach people how to gm, they're not supposed to. But GMs who refuse to read and learn rules sets and want to improvise like mad free form gamers are ones who I'm pretty sure suck.

I've said this a lot.

It's not a popular opinion here.

I can only guess why.

A good GM should know how to run the system being played.

A great GM should be able to keep the game moving seamlessly when venturing into areas the rules don't cover.

A good system can be trusted to a point but is no substitute for common sense and good judgement. Otherwise the GM risks becoming like one of those idiots that drive into a river because thier GPS told them to.

Trust but verify.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;625434And while practice is still necessary, without a good set of procedures what you're practicing may be the wrong thing and establish bad habits which actually make you less effective, and your confidence can be undermined when you're not sure if you're doing it right.

Absolutely true--but when you get a procedure that is
- opaque
- ambiguous
- biased
practice based on that procedure gives rise to bad results, undermining confidence.

I get the feeling that one side is saying "you must trust the rules!" while the other side says "no, we do not trust the rules."

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;625434And rules, advice, suggestions...it doesn't matter what you call them. They're all the same, and the only thing that matters is if they're followed.

Rules != Advice
Rules matter and shape play because rules are a GM-imposed constraint on the players, with consequences. Advice is internalised knowledge that comes from opinions offered by a third party, based on experience. No consequences as a result of advice.

Also mentor is not the same as coach, book is not the same as teacher, self-belief is not the same as positive results (though it feels like that). They all have their place in learning and decision making, however.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;625455You grinding your "I hate story games" axe again, Pundit?

Crappy GMs are a perrenial blight upon this hobby. While players and GMs have the right to tinker, GMs can't hide behind their viking hats. These are games, games have rules, and often I've seen good rules sets trip up craps GMs who never even bothered to read the rules sets they promised to. This happened to me in Traveller, of all places, when an old gm I had wanted to arbitrarily change the charge rules. Another case was in Exalted, when a gm wanted to deny all Solar exalted use of perfect defenses. I walked in both cases, and each game collapsed a few sessions later.

Rules sets don't teach people how to gm, they're not supposed to. But GMs who refuse to read and learn rules sets and want to improvise like mad free form gamers are ones who I'm pretty sure suck. every time I've stuck around for gms who refuse to deal with players and negotiate in a reasonable manner has always turned into a massive clusterfuck of epic proportions where no one has fun and everyone walks away from the table pissed.

Bad gaming starts from a fundamental lack of respect of players and arbitrary demands of authority. This is not a trade vs story game thing. This is s not being a jerk thing.

Totally agree with you on the respect front, but it seems you've met a lot of bad GMs. Like, an order of magnitude more than I've met. It sounds like an epidemic.

On the other hand you say you have form for walking out on sessions where your favourite rules aren't applied to your satisfaction, because you feel some sort of promise has been broken or there's a lack of reasonable negotiation. There is a common denominator there...

Two questions:
1/ Isn't a slavish adherence to the rules another arbitrary demand of authority?
2/ How does one hide behind a Viking Hat? Isn't the point of the Viking Hat that players can see you and respect your autho-ro-tay?