I have been following the discussions here, but I must admit I'm quite
behind. I just finished reading the discussions on "Intuitive Continuity",
"Fudge Implementation", and "No Dice for Players". So, I realize I'm a
little late to jump in!
I just wanted to share my own experience, out of curiosity, in case any of
you feel the same way.
I think that, except for my very first adventure (which was just a dungeon
crawl), "intuitive continuity" is the way I ran games from as far back as
I can remember, and I was our group's main GM from the very first time we
began gaming. Pretty quickly after that, I remember developing an interest
in strong stories (which I felt were lacking), and I suppose I GMed for a
while as more of a "narrativist", until I realized that I tended to
railroad players directly or indirectly in my search for a great story.
This left me unsatisfied. Yes, me--not the players. Oddly enough, the
players almost never noticed, and were almost always very happy (this
probably has a lot to do with the fact that I had a regular gaming group
and could predict the players' reactions pretty well). Nevertheless, _I_
didn't like it, because it meant that I was driving the whole game and I
was missing out on potentially really interesting input from the players.
My time away from gaming led me to desire more interesting, surprising
stories. However, by that point I was dealing with more mature,
perceptive, and experienced players. They were also extremely
unpredictable! I had to change my approach to accomodate those two
elements.
Since then I lean more towards "simulationism" (although I'm in the
rules-lite camp, partially because simple rules, when properly designed,
produce fewer "unrealistic" results). I like to set up an environment, a
backstory, perhaps a conflict, and an idea of what will happen next if no
one intervenes and no unexpected changes happen in that environment.
(Sometimes, I even prefer not to know who the characters are, so I don't
write them into a narrative corner somewhere.) Then, my job as GM is to
portray the universe to the players and arbitrate the results of
conflicts. There is no preconception of what the characters will do, where
they will go, etc., although it helps to place them in a situation where
they have to react to get the ball rolling. Inevitably, what emerges from
the characters' interactions with the milieu is much more exciting than
any story I could have come up with. I suppose this approach is kind of
inspired by observations along the lines of "reality is stranger than
fiction".
In essence, while I really like the "intuitive continuity" method, I've
found myself using it less and less because it robs me of my enjoyment in
the game. As a GM, I found that trying to create a strong story led to
railroading and limited me to telling the stories that _I_ could come up
with. "Intuitive continuity" was better in some ways, but often produced
stories with more plot holes than I could bear to overlook. While things
often turned to be fairly surprising due to players' unintentional input,
I still felt that I was the one putting the story together--I had to
decide who was behind the murders, who had the secret plans, whether the
doomsday device would go off on time, etc. All this robbed me of a joy I
find fundamental in most other media--books, films, etc--the joy of
discovery, the desire to find out "what happens next". By letting the
players drive the action, I get to experience that same joy--when I come
to the game, I have no idea what is going to happen. (Granted, you
probably need the right bunch of players--with less proactive players I
might drift more to the narrativist side of things.)
Anyway, just my piece of the pie. Those of you (and it sounds like most of
you, in fact) who are GMs, what is that draws you to being GMs? What's in
it for you?
(On a side note, is the fact that most people here sound like they GM a
lot of the time indicative of any trends common to Fudge enthusiasts?
Maybe it's just that the type who would want to GM is the same type who
likes to tinker (and Fudge definitely attracts "tinkerers") and also maybe
because that same type ends up heading online and getting involved in this
sort of thing more than players do.)
Regards,
Paul T.
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