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Tuxedo Catfish posted:One of my biggest TTRPG design peeves (other than hating post-decision randomness It sometimes feels like the role itself needs to be meaningfully examined and played with a bit beyond the current steps forward of distributing GM duties to others at the table. Even that feels to me like admitting there's one person at the table who is doing "work", even if that work is often fun and enriching and good. I can name a handful of games that give the GM a new and interesting set of mechanics and ideas to play with, but basically every system tends to be about giving one side of the table a bunch of interesting and new tools to create new and interesting experiences, then telling one player to just do the same thing they always do but maybe with a different form they have to fill out before play
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Jan 5, 2021 04:46
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) is that GMing as a role is overloaded and that it should be broken down into components and divded among the group. There's no real reason that rules adjudication and world design should be done for the same person, for example. Rotating GMs being the standard would also be fantastic.
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:00 |
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I understand the distinction being made, but for me they don't ever seem nearly as broad or meaningful as the change a player gets in a switch between any two given games. PbTA Moves are a Thing, sure, and even minor things can help lower the bar to entry for other GMs, but even Moves mostly serve to formalize and mechanicalize an already existing set of GM Duties and expected Stuff GMs Do, they're basically designed to do that while prodding GMs toward certain vibes and genre tropes, but they don't meaningfully change the GM experience to even close to the same degree that a player's experience would change going from D&D to PbTA, to pluck an example. A GM swapping between the two is def gonna find a more streamlined, less Worky experience, but there's very few games that make me feel like I'm working with a different kind of machine altogether. Shifts in how the role works tends to be a simplification, or a democratization of a pre-existing set of assumed duties that need doing rather than, like, significant mechanical changes. Most of the changes many games make boil down to advice on How to do the role, rather than any earnest attempt to change what the role does. All that said, I do like the tools PBTA gives you, and I'm glad they changed things for the better in the industry. It's just been 10 years since then and I'd like to see further development past that. Take the experience of playing Blades in the Dark (again just picking a random game I'm familiar with from both sides of the table) - as a player you get a whole suite of unique mechanics, a base building thing, a crew management minigame, a whole thing about maintaining vices, a neat combat risk/reward thing, to say nothing about the dozens and dozens of options and choices you get to make about how your character works and interacts in the world. Compare that to what the GM gets and it's p clear where the design focus largely sits. Edit: I like how Fellowship does the Overlord role in theory, I've never gotten to try it in practice but it feels like that might lead to another kind of GMing experience vs other games, at least a little. Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 05:19
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fozzy fosbourne posted:This post seems pretty relevant to the previous conversation about designs that provide some novel GM-facing fun toys (beyond the basic act of *waves hands dramatically* creativity): Cheers for posting this, I'm familiar with a few of these but a couple I need to take a read of
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Jan 5, 2021 23:04
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I've been running The Sun King's Palace, it's not a combat heavy one by any means but if you like that kinda Weird Spooky Dreamy Surreal vibe it's got it in spades.
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May 9, 2024 15:25
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