Isn’t that going to be a bit uncomfortable, considering how much stuff is shared between the GM and the players during game? You’d have to duplicate battle maps, references and such. I mean, you could just add a screen to your “GM Dome of Terror”, but I’m ready to bet that players will just look at the screen because a) you’ll still be behind it and b) they’d have to look at it in order to see the references.
It feels to me you’re just adding extra steps to something which is inevitable: the GM is as much a player at the table as anyone else, the players will look at you for what is your sphere of influence over the game world (which is huge, so it will happen more often) exactly as they look at each other when talking interacting with their respective PCs.
The heart of my advice is exactly that: accept and underline your role as just another fellow player and things will run a lot smoother for everyone.
PS: I’ve moved to another thread because I feel like we were moving past the scope of the original thread.
This might be the first time I’ve seen a good example of disagreement that stems directly from the difference between “Old” Old-School (@OSRTaliban) and “New” Old School (this post).
In my opinion, this is purely something which can be hashed out at the table. Some players might be comfortable with a ‘voice from above’ GM and fine with it. Others not.
Having tried both styles (although not at the extremes which OSRTaliban is proposing), I believe the “New” Old School style to be more effective and rewarding both for the GM and the players. In fact, I consider it another iteration of the “Old” Old School style, not a different view: if the idea is to remove focus from the GM and have the player interact with each other and the game world, just being one of them is the most effective way to get there.
In my experience, the more the GM tries to remove themselves from the table, the more they are perceived as a pivotal element of it, despite (or, in my interpretation, because) of their absence. Just being another guy with paper, pencils and dice in front of them makes the GM “fade into the background”, leaving the shared gaming world to the front.
You don’t need to share much between the referee and the players, tbh. I’d recommend giving blackbox a try to really get a picture of what it entails - I play and run several blackboxes and honestly its my preferred style (although my players love handling mechanistic bits, so I don’t do it all the time).
You don’t need to share battle maps. Since we’re referencing a technique that Gary used (the filing cabinet) its worth mentioning that Gary didn’t use battle maps. There’s also not a ton of other references you really need to share visually between the players.
I’m sure many of us learned during the pandemic lockdown that often times you could just jump onto a voice chat to run a game, or think of the structure of play-by-post games, just think of them happening in real time and with voices
Having tried both styles (although not at the extremes which OSRTaliban is proposing), I believe the “New” Old School style to be more effective and rewarding both for the GM and the players.
Definitely preferential. I like all kinds of games but I definitely side more with the traditional referee setup, when I am a referee and a player.
To further the discussion, it may also be of benefit to discuss the differences between "writing room” style play vs “GM as world” style play.
I can see echoes of a “writing room” style in @thekernelinyellow ‘s description, and the “GM as world” in @theOSRtaliban ‘s style.
Given that I do not gel with the writing room style at all (trust me, I started in Fate and tried sincerely to implement DungeonWorld) I can see how a “voice from above” can be an interesting style of play - if you lean into it.
Although generally I agree with Kernel that an opener table makes for a better experience. Advice-wise? Do what feels most comfortable for you, because if you are running a game you enjoy, others will likely share in it.
Imho the “writing room” style of play, whether you define that as games with a high degree of author/director stance, as “storygames", as games where the preferred method is to prioritize narrative logic or predetermined thematic coherency - is a distinct style of gaming separate from adventure gaming.
That’s why I think you cannot completely pose the notion that the referee is just a player in a ttrpg adventure game - it is true that they are a “player” in the sense that they have a part in playing the game, but they have distinct roles and responsibilities that must be upheld to have the game function as intended.
Fair point! Forgot a little about the TAG nature of the forum and just started talking about TTRPGs in general. Even then tho, I find the language so similar between those two playstyles that you have to acknowledge that the other exists, even here.
I should clarify, even though I don’t care to talk about it it’s fine to discuss, especially from a technique level. One thing I do want to avoid though is a problem we had on the lefty FKR server where a game or technique would be described, and a response to what would roughly be “well don’t do that, non-FKR techniques are better/funner/whatever.”
Not saying anyone is doing that right now, I’m not even sure @thekernelinyellow is discussing writing room style games. But I do want to avoid denigrating one playstyle, especially when it’s the topic of the forums.
When it comes to this I am of both worlds. It really depends on what kind of game I want to play and who I am playing it with.
It does seem like that the two described styles aim for the same thing: abstractions not getting in the way of the fictional world.
One aims to make the abstractions as transparent as possible to keep them from dominating the fiction and the other obscures or removed them as much as possible to take away their power.
The second one is much easier for me as a player the first one often feels more comfortable as a referee because I can share the responsibility with the rules or mechanics. (I think I just need more confidence/practice in high trust gaming.)
I do think that black box works better for something like diegetic/fiction primacy. Having player facing mechanics always leaves the possibility of „the rules say I can“.
The role of the GM is to run the game. How they do this is up to the GM.
For me personally it’s not as a story teller or as the almighty hand of God (except when God must intervene and smite a character for their player’s transgressions), but rather the same function a game’s engine and built in mechanics interacts with the inputs of players. The player makes a choice and the game responds in kind. If a player character dies due to bad luck, that’s X-COM Tabletop, baby.
In terms of the idea of preparing scenarios for the players and talking it through with them, I never really liked this idea outside of just a simple check of what themes they’re not comfortable encountering because I’m much more prone to just having focused sights on the players and their actions but having “the world” itself continue regardless if they interact with events or not. It’s something I attribute to growing up with X-COM and Civilization being mainstays on my computer, just because you can’t SEE the Ayyyys invading India due to lack of satellite coverage doesn’t mean they aren’t and just because you aren’t visibly interacting with Byzantium doesn’t mean it isn’t preparing and marching to war with Prussia.
Yeah, I’m not suggesting the “writing room” style. What I usually do is to recognize and clarify that I’m just another player at the table. A metaphor I use is the goalie in soccer: the GM has special rules applying to them, as the goalie, but they’re still there playing at the same table and at the same game (for example, if we’re playing D&D I’m not pulling out a deck of cards and have a side poker game with somebody else) as everyone else. They’re not the referee or the public, who are participating in an outside manner, bound by different rules and with a different scope.
Still, there’s stuff I do differently. Players manage their characters, I manage the world (and I’m impartial in this: I don’t favor the players, nor the enemies). Writing room style has this authorship component which I actively try to avoid (in fact, I’ve developed my style partially out of dissatisfaction with writing room style of play): a key part of my style is that the story we get out of the game is just byproduct which can be happily discarded, because our focus is the here and now of the game. Maybe we recount the sessions and share memorable moments with friends or strangers on the internet, but the focus is what we’re doing at the table, with no preplanned story nor expectations of a story to ever form.
In a way, I disappear as a GM, since I keep the focus on the fiction and what’s going on there and I clearly state that I’m as bound by it as the players (in fact, even more, since as a GM I react to what they do, while they act). I’m not a disembodied voice with a bunch of secret notes, but the player of Willy the Smith, Gobbutz the Goblin, Unnamed Skeleton n.128930 and of the door they’re trying to force open.
