Celebrim
Legend
I default to the GM controls the settings and the player controls only his character, but even within that there is wiggle room. A player can call for the existence of something in the setting previously not described, I just can override that claim if I think it is unreasonable. A players backstory can add all sorts of things to a setting, but again only with approval.
But I think that's just part of my default style. I am almost always the GM, so my perspective is almost always "my GMing style". I try to obey the metarule "Be the player you'd want to have if you were the GM" and "Be the GM you'd want to have if you were the player." This heavily informs my style.
Other things I default to insisting on include:
a) Social interaction between characters must be done in character.
b) Anything that the players say at the table to one another can be construed as being in character and heard by NPCs present.
c) Fortune is in the middle with a proposition->fortune->resolution cycle.
d) In so far as they are comfortable doing so, players can narrate their own actions in resolution provided they are bound by the fortune. If they aren't comfortable doing so, or the player character has involuntary consequences like "tumbled down the stairs" I will narrate in part or full for them, even if I'd prefer they do it themselves.
e) I prefer to resolve most things with a single roll but will use a set of rolls when a situation is complicated and especially if it matters when the failure occurs.
f) I try very hard to not railroad players, to the extent of requiring their permission to continue character motion that is implied to have begun. For example, if the players say, "We go to a tavern" I have a tendency to describe the outside of the tavern and then require their consent before assuming they have gone inside. Sometimes this forces me to prompt them, "Do you want to...?" Normally this is pointless, because they've implied consent and there are no negative consequences to proceeding forward, but I do it because it's really easy to use hand waves like that to take control of the PC's and I want players to understand that they are in control of their characters. I likewise try to avoid describing in narration how their characters, feel, think, behave or respond to sensory input at any voluntary level. "This is frightening to you" is therefore improper narration in my style. That's something I would have to test in some fashion, and which generally is left up to the player to decide.
g) Most scenes have a narrow-broad-narrow structure where it is assumed that you enter the scene, have relatively many options for exploration, but relatively few doors by which to exit a scene. Adventures are themselves larger narrow-broad-narrow scenarios made up of lots of smaller narrow-broad-narrow scenarios that can be thought of as a sort of map. It's OK for the larger map to be linear at times provided there is sufficient agency in exploration. Sandboxes are desirable so long as they are sufficiently detailed and filled with things to do and play with. Bare sand where you leave it up to the players to make their own fun is lazy GMing and borders on being just as dysfunctional as knocking down "sandcastles" when the players want to build one. That is to say, validate a player's creativity, goals, and desire to play, but don't require the player to do the heavy lifting in order to have fun.
h) Improvisation by the GM is both necessary and undesirable. Necessary because it's never possible to prepare for all courses of action that players may take, but undesirable because whenever the GM resorts to fiat in response to player actions the GM is inevitably biased and cannot provide fair arbitration of the players course of action because inevitably the GM has preferences. Therefore, one of the first steps I always take in preparation is establish some baseline demographics which are intended to constrain and inform how I improvise. "Quantum" or "Schrodinger's" events are to be avoided at all times except when deliberately prepared for artistic purposes. Improvisation where you are actively metagaming against the players by listening to their table talk and using it to create content is just dysfunctional GMing period and would be grounds for me leaving the table were I a player. It might also end a friendship I would be so insulted by it.
i) I tend to default to exploration leading to combat with a narrative structure and a twist to uncover that leads to the story resolution. I like somewhat literary play with mysteries and climaxes and proactive NPCs. Tracy Hickman is an extremely influential designer on my play. This style of play requires a "secret keeper" who knows the things that are not known to the reader/participant/player. The player's primary goal of play is to uncover the secret and thereby resolve the problem. As such, finding out there is no secret or that I as a player was inventing my own problems is a major beach of social contract.
j) How much I focus on character backstory, character goals, and character personality as the driving force of play depends not on the system I am running but the number of participants I have in the game. If there are few players in the game, then I default to having all the play be about that character's backstory, goals, and intentions. The game is about the character's personal story arc and growth as an individual regardless of the game system. If on the other hand I have many participants, then I default to having all the play be driven by the PCs reaction to the schemes of NPCs and group goals with respect to the setting. This is entirely independent of the game system, and to me when I read a game system that the designer insists is about player character goals then I'm inherently reading that system as limited to play in small groups or often just single players in 1v1 sessions, whereas when I read a system that is silent regarding what it is supposed to be about then I assume I can run that system for small or large groups. If I feel the designer fails to realize that, I assume they are just bad designers.
k) The game is a social game. Players are required to create characters that have a reason to cooperate with each other, and expected to play in such a way that they can find excuses to be social and play well with others. On the other hand, if your character is offending the group morality or not playing for the team, that's on you and the group is not required to make allowances for that just because they know you are a PC.
l) The game is a heroic game. All players are expected to strive to achieve things that would be deemed at least heroic if not necessarily "Good". So, if we are Vikings or Pirates or Thieves, we are still "heroic" protagonists even if we may be lacking in conventional morality. (Odysseus and Achilles are still "heroic" figures even if objectively they are pretty despicable individuals.) General expectations for what the group consider moral should be ironed out before play, with the expectation that everyone will be reasonably compatible or else find ways to negotiate the moral conflicts within the party in a constructive manner.
I am highly skeptical that diversity of style exists to the degree some claim. I know several members of the board consistently used a lot of buzzwords to describe play while describing transcripts of play that were very little different from the table norms I've experienced. I recognize ranges of games from story games where almost everything is accomplished by cooperative narration and dialogue and tactical games where in character roleplay is rare and almost all interactions are governed by dice and are probably violent, but I don't see these as differences in style so much as differences in focus. My games can vacillate between the two with the same system, setting, and players depending on the demands of the narrative. It's just that some games give you no crunch to do more tactical play and so leave you with no choices in the matter. I recognize ranges of scenario construction from highly linear games that require little improvisation to wide open sandboxes where the majority of events and locations are improvised on the fly, but I don't consider this a style matter so much as a matter of focus. My own games can vary between the two depending on the needs of the setting - a small dungeon like location can be very linear whereas exploration of a mega-city can be highly non-linear and require a ton of improvisation simply because of the scale of the setting.
But I think that's just part of my default style. I am almost always the GM, so my perspective is almost always "my GMing style". I try to obey the metarule "Be the player you'd want to have if you were the GM" and "Be the GM you'd want to have if you were the player." This heavily informs my style.
Other things I default to insisting on include:
a) Social interaction between characters must be done in character.
b) Anything that the players say at the table to one another can be construed as being in character and heard by NPCs present.
c) Fortune is in the middle with a proposition->fortune->resolution cycle.
d) In so far as they are comfortable doing so, players can narrate their own actions in resolution provided they are bound by the fortune. If they aren't comfortable doing so, or the player character has involuntary consequences like "tumbled down the stairs" I will narrate in part or full for them, even if I'd prefer they do it themselves.
e) I prefer to resolve most things with a single roll but will use a set of rolls when a situation is complicated and especially if it matters when the failure occurs.
f) I try very hard to not railroad players, to the extent of requiring their permission to continue character motion that is implied to have begun. For example, if the players say, "We go to a tavern" I have a tendency to describe the outside of the tavern and then require their consent before assuming they have gone inside. Sometimes this forces me to prompt them, "Do you want to...?" Normally this is pointless, because they've implied consent and there are no negative consequences to proceeding forward, but I do it because it's really easy to use hand waves like that to take control of the PC's and I want players to understand that they are in control of their characters. I likewise try to avoid describing in narration how their characters, feel, think, behave or respond to sensory input at any voluntary level. "This is frightening to you" is therefore improper narration in my style. That's something I would have to test in some fashion, and which generally is left up to the player to decide.
g) Most scenes have a narrow-broad-narrow structure where it is assumed that you enter the scene, have relatively many options for exploration, but relatively few doors by which to exit a scene. Adventures are themselves larger narrow-broad-narrow scenarios made up of lots of smaller narrow-broad-narrow scenarios that can be thought of as a sort of map. It's OK for the larger map to be linear at times provided there is sufficient agency in exploration. Sandboxes are desirable so long as they are sufficiently detailed and filled with things to do and play with. Bare sand where you leave it up to the players to make their own fun is lazy GMing and borders on being just as dysfunctional as knocking down "sandcastles" when the players want to build one. That is to say, validate a player's creativity, goals, and desire to play, but don't require the player to do the heavy lifting in order to have fun.
h) Improvisation by the GM is both necessary and undesirable. Necessary because it's never possible to prepare for all courses of action that players may take, but undesirable because whenever the GM resorts to fiat in response to player actions the GM is inevitably biased and cannot provide fair arbitration of the players course of action because inevitably the GM has preferences. Therefore, one of the first steps I always take in preparation is establish some baseline demographics which are intended to constrain and inform how I improvise. "Quantum" or "Schrodinger's" events are to be avoided at all times except when deliberately prepared for artistic purposes. Improvisation where you are actively metagaming against the players by listening to their table talk and using it to create content is just dysfunctional GMing period and would be grounds for me leaving the table were I a player. It might also end a friendship I would be so insulted by it.
i) I tend to default to exploration leading to combat with a narrative structure and a twist to uncover that leads to the story resolution. I like somewhat literary play with mysteries and climaxes and proactive NPCs. Tracy Hickman is an extremely influential designer on my play. This style of play requires a "secret keeper" who knows the things that are not known to the reader/participant/player. The player's primary goal of play is to uncover the secret and thereby resolve the problem. As such, finding out there is no secret or that I as a player was inventing my own problems is a major beach of social contract.
j) How much I focus on character backstory, character goals, and character personality as the driving force of play depends not on the system I am running but the number of participants I have in the game. If there are few players in the game, then I default to having all the play be about that character's backstory, goals, and intentions. The game is about the character's personal story arc and growth as an individual regardless of the game system. If on the other hand I have many participants, then I default to having all the play be driven by the PCs reaction to the schemes of NPCs and group goals with respect to the setting. This is entirely independent of the game system, and to me when I read a game system that the designer insists is about player character goals then I'm inherently reading that system as limited to play in small groups or often just single players in 1v1 sessions, whereas when I read a system that is silent regarding what it is supposed to be about then I assume I can run that system for small or large groups. If I feel the designer fails to realize that, I assume they are just bad designers.
k) The game is a social game. Players are required to create characters that have a reason to cooperate with each other, and expected to play in such a way that they can find excuses to be social and play well with others. On the other hand, if your character is offending the group morality or not playing for the team, that's on you and the group is not required to make allowances for that just because they know you are a PC.
l) The game is a heroic game. All players are expected to strive to achieve things that would be deemed at least heroic if not necessarily "Good". So, if we are Vikings or Pirates or Thieves, we are still "heroic" protagonists even if we may be lacking in conventional morality. (Odysseus and Achilles are still "heroic" figures even if objectively they are pretty despicable individuals.) General expectations for what the group consider moral should be ironed out before play, with the expectation that everyone will be reasonably compatible or else find ways to negotiate the moral conflicts within the party in a constructive manner.
I am highly skeptical that diversity of style exists to the degree some claim. I know several members of the board consistently used a lot of buzzwords to describe play while describing transcripts of play that were very little different from the table norms I've experienced. I recognize ranges of games from story games where almost everything is accomplished by cooperative narration and dialogue and tactical games where in character roleplay is rare and almost all interactions are governed by dice and are probably violent, but I don't see these as differences in style so much as differences in focus. My games can vacillate between the two with the same system, setting, and players depending on the demands of the narrative. It's just that some games give you no crunch to do more tactical play and so leave you with no choices in the matter. I recognize ranges of scenario construction from highly linear games that require little improvisation to wide open sandboxes where the majority of events and locations are improvised on the fly, but I don't consider this a style matter so much as a matter of focus. My own games can vary between the two depending on the needs of the setting - a small dungeon like location can be very linear whereas exploration of a mega-city can be highly non-linear and require a ton of improvisation simply because of the scale of the setting.
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