Recently, one of the players in my Fate group asked me for advice on how to GM. She had some friends who wanted to play, but there wasn't room in my group for new members (I have a hard limit of six players plus the GM on any games I run). So instead, she decided to run a game for them herself.
I wrote her a fairly lengthy email full of advice, and it later occurred to me that it might be the sort of thing that could be useful to others. So I will adapt the information I wrote in that email into an entry, and share it with you.
I will point out that as we get further into the PinkFae archives, there will be a series of articles entitled 'Analysis of GMing,' which will have a lot of advice that will be useful to the first-time GMs. But that series isn't targeted specifically at new GMs, and it's still a couple months out (the first entry is going to be Archive #22, and we just had #17 last week, so it's going to be about four months from now). So we'll start here, and as more information comes out, it will be additional advice to add onto what you're about to read!
Showing posts with label Robin Laws. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robin Laws. Show all posts
25 August 2018
02 September 2017
PinkFae Archive #1: Lawsian Gamer Types
As I mentioned previously, the PinkFae site is essentially defunct. This makes me very sad, not just because it was a pretty neat site that had the potential to offer a lot in the way of a gaming blog, but because it had about a year worth of articles that I had written. I was quite proud of and pleased with those articles, and it would be a shame if they just vanished.
So starting today, I'm going to intersperse my normal articles with reprints of the ones I wrote for PinkFae. We start, today, with an article entitled 'Lawsian Gamer Types,' which was originally published on 3 Januay 2016.
Robin Laws, an experienced author of roleplaying books, has written an invaluable tool for GMs. It's invaluable for all gamers, although it was targeted at the GM. In it, he includes a great deal of advice on how to make your games as enjoyable as possible for all participants. It's not the stuff you'd normally find in the 'For the Game Master' section of the core rulebook or supplements like the Dungeons Master's Guide. It's more fundamental information, such as campaign design (are you running a dungeon crawl, a set-piece story, a branching story, an episodic story, etc?), suggestions on how to be spontaneous (have a list of appropriate names for when you need to ad-lib an NPC, have a box of index cards with stats for random NPCs that the players may encounter, etc), how to deal with different player types (what emotional kick is each player looking to get from the game, and how can you deliver it to them?).
One of the most important issues that he addresses in this book is the topic of Gamer Types.
So starting today, I'm going to intersperse my normal articles with reprints of the ones I wrote for PinkFae. We start, today, with an article entitled 'Lawsian Gamer Types,' which was originally published on 3 Januay 2016.
Robin Laws, an experienced author of roleplaying books, has written an invaluable tool for GMs. It's invaluable for all gamers, although it was targeted at the GM. In it, he includes a great deal of advice on how to make your games as enjoyable as possible for all participants. It's not the stuff you'd normally find in the 'For the Game Master' section of the core rulebook or supplements like the Dungeons Master's Guide. It's more fundamental information, such as campaign design (are you running a dungeon crawl, a set-piece story, a branching story, an episodic story, etc?), suggestions on how to be spontaneous (have a list of appropriate names for when you need to ad-lib an NPC, have a box of index cards with stats for random NPCs that the players may encounter, etc), how to deal with different player types (what emotional kick is each player looking to get from the game, and how can you deliver it to them?).One of the most important issues that he addresses in this book is the topic of Gamer Types.
27 September 2015
What Lawsian Gamer Type Are You?
As I prepare the Changeling campaign I'm running for a couple of friends, I turn my thoughts (as I often do) to the player types I have in my group.
Those who've been following this blog for a long time now may remember that I posted, several years ago, a description of the different player types. I always like to get an idea of the types of players for whom I'm GMing, so I can try to tailor the story to their needs and desires.
As this particular group is still so new to gaming, I imagine it will be a month or two before I start asking these questions. But to that end, I've created a survey on Google Forms that they can take when I feel the time is right to ask them to think about these things.
And then it occurs to me that it might be interesting to know what gamer types I have reading this blog.
So, to that end, I present to you the Lawsian Gamer Types survey!
Those who've been following this blog for a long time now may remember that I posted, several years ago, a description of the different player types. I always like to get an idea of the types of players for whom I'm GMing, so I can try to tailor the story to their needs and desires.
As this particular group is still so new to gaming, I imagine it will be a month or two before I start asking these questions. But to that end, I've created a survey on Google Forms that they can take when I feel the time is right to ask them to think about these things.
And then it occurs to me that it might be interesting to know what gamer types I have reading this blog.
So, to that end, I present to you the Lawsian Gamer Types survey!
01 March 2010
Success and Failure
Thanks to the glory of the Order of the Stick, I have just learned of the existence of the Edition Wars. If you, like me, are one of the few people in the gaming world that doesn't play D&D, then you won't know that apparently there are heated debates raging across the internet about which edition of D&D is better. Personally, I don't care; if I'm going to play a fantasy game, I'd rather play GURPS.
Anyway. In googling the Edition Wars to find out more about it, I encountered an argument between two players. A minor point of the argument was one debator was saying that he feels that in 'modern' gaming (as he calls it), there is too much of an assumption that the players will succeed. He feels that at no point is there consideration that the players will fail. This is a problem primarily because the players, under the belief that the GM will not allow them to be unsuccessful, enter situations that are too risky for them to handle.
This is an interesting viewpoint. I don't know if it says more about me that I've never made that assumption, or if it's just proof that I'm an 'old-school' gamer. But either way, it seems like a silly assumption to make.
Anyway. In googling the Edition Wars to find out more about it, I encountered an argument between two players. A minor point of the argument was one debator was saying that he feels that in 'modern' gaming (as he calls it), there is too much of an assumption that the players will succeed. He feels that at no point is there consideration that the players will fail. This is a problem primarily because the players, under the belief that the GM will not allow them to be unsuccessful, enter situations that are too risky for them to handle.
This is an interesting viewpoint. I don't know if it says more about me that I've never made that assumption, or if it's just proof that I'm an 'old-school' gamer. But either way, it seems like a silly assumption to make.
29 June 2008
DM of the Rings
I'm sure anyone who's ever played D&D knows that the original premise of the game was Lord of the Rings. Especially if you've ever seen the original first edition rules, which try very hard to guide everyone into following the archetypes as seen in the books. Later additions were made, expansions added, alternate ideas tacked on, and now the game is much more open than it originally was.
The focus of the game has changed as well from the original point of Tolkien's works. In the books, it was all about the battle of good vs. evil. The game became an adventure of slaying monsters and collecting treasure.
Nowhere has this been better illustrated than in the webcomic DM of the Rings by Shamus Young. He describes the point of the comic perfectly in the first strip, so I'll let his words stand for themselves.
But my point is this: so many works (both in RPGs and in literature) are so thoroughly derivative of JRR Tolkien's works that the term "fantasy" has come to be a very cliché term. Whereas it once meant "the creative imagination," or "a capricious or fantastic idea," it now means "a work of fiction involving magic that takes place in a pseudo-medieval (or, on occasion, based on other periods or places in history, such as Roman or middle-eastern) setting and often involves supernatural creatures like elves and dwarves, especially as seen in Lord of the Rings."
The focus of the game has changed as well from the original point of Tolkien's works. In the books, it was all about the battle of good vs. evil. The game became an adventure of slaying monsters and collecting treasure.
Nowhere has this been better illustrated than in the webcomic DM of the Rings by Shamus Young. He describes the point of the comic perfectly in the first strip, so I'll let his words stand for themselves.
But my point is this: so many works (both in RPGs and in literature) are so thoroughly derivative of JRR Tolkien's works that the term "fantasy" has come to be a very cliché term. Whereas it once meant "the creative imagination," or "a capricious or fantastic idea," it now means "a work of fiction involving magic that takes place in a pseudo-medieval (or, on occasion, based on other periods or places in history, such as Roman or middle-eastern) setting and often involves supernatural creatures like elves and dwarves, especially as seen in Lord of the Rings."
27 April 2008
When Players Collide
I didn't post last week. I'm very sorry. Real Life got in the way.
This week, I'm going to look at conflicting gaming styles. Specifically, I think of the reasons that GMs run games, as compared to reasons that players play in those games.
One example: I had a GM once who loved the feelings of power he got from running the game and having absolute control over what happened. He loved the look of shock and amazement when he caused something to happen that the players not only did not expect, but could not reasonably be asked to expect. He was a very dramatic gamer, and loved the exquisite timing and flow of intrigue that came from having players at his mercy. I sometimes felt as if I was a plaything for a dark and cruel god.
Another GM I played under: he was an excellent storyteller. That is, he told excellent stories, and he told them well. The only problem was that sometimes his own strengths would get in the way. He was very good at predicting how people would react to certain situations, and excelled at arranging events in such a manner that the story would go in the direction he planned by giving the players just the right stimulus to nudge them in the direction that he wanted them to go. Unfortunately, after a while, it starts to feel like the players aren't really involved in the story at all; they're just there to serve the needs of the storyteller.
This week, I'm going to look at conflicting gaming styles. Specifically, I think of the reasons that GMs run games, as compared to reasons that players play in those games.
One example: I had a GM once who loved the feelings of power he got from running the game and having absolute control over what happened. He loved the look of shock and amazement when he caused something to happen that the players not only did not expect, but could not reasonably be asked to expect. He was a very dramatic gamer, and loved the exquisite timing and flow of intrigue that came from having players at his mercy. I sometimes felt as if I was a plaything for a dark and cruel god.
Another GM I played under: he was an excellent storyteller. That is, he told excellent stories, and he told them well. The only problem was that sometimes his own strengths would get in the way. He was very good at predicting how people would react to certain situations, and excelled at arranging events in such a manner that the story would go in the direction he planned by giving the players just the right stimulus to nudge them in the direction that he wanted them to go. Unfortunately, after a while, it starts to feel like the players aren't really involved in the story at all; they're just there to serve the needs of the storyteller.
09 March 2008
Gamer Types
Greetings again to you, my faithful readers! This week, I shall discuss the Lawsian Gamer Types. A prominent creator of gaming resources in the gaming industry, named Robin Laws, wrote an amazingly useful book called Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering. Although this book is geared towards GMs, it has some very useful information for players as well.
One example of these doubly-applicable tidbits is the idea that gaming is supposed to be fun. You know, that sounds pretty obvious, but the problem is that a lot of people forget that gaming is a collaborative effort, and work hard to have fun at the other players' expense. The book suggests that everyone involved work to have fun together as a team, rather than antagonistically.
But that's not the topic of this week's rant.
Today, I thought I'd talk about Gamer Types. This was particularly useful for me, both as a GM and as a player. I'd struggled for years with the others in my gaming group, getting upset at them for ruining what I thought was an otherwise incredible game by insisting on doing nothing but killing the enemies for personal glory. It never occurred to me that different people play role-playing games for different reasons. And for that, I owe a debt to Robin Law.
One example of these doubly-applicable tidbits is the idea that gaming is supposed to be fun. You know, that sounds pretty obvious, but the problem is that a lot of people forget that gaming is a collaborative effort, and work hard to have fun at the other players' expense. The book suggests that everyone involved work to have fun together as a team, rather than antagonistically.
But that's not the topic of this week's rant.
Today, I thought I'd talk about Gamer Types. This was particularly useful for me, both as a GM and as a player. I'd struggled for years with the others in my gaming group, getting upset at them for ruining what I thought was an otherwise incredible game by insisting on doing nothing but killing the enemies for personal glory. It never occurred to me that different people play role-playing games for different reasons. And for that, I owe a debt to Robin Law.
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