Let’s Play Pretend

As I’ve already estab­lished, Fri­day is game night at my house, and has been for nearly a decade now. Look­ing back, I real­ized that last week’s Fri­day post wasn’t trans­lated for the non-gamers.  We’re play­ing Dun­geons and Drag­ons, 3.5 edi­tion (3.5E D&D), though at times we have branched out into other rule­sets and sys­tems.  D&D is basi­cally play­ing pre­tend with lots of rules, so that every­one can play pre­tend fairly with­out spoil­ing any­one else’s fun.  It’s the bound­aries around a game meant to allow a group of peo­ple to meet and allow their imag­i­na­tions to run wild. This also holds true for all pen and paper role­play­ing games, like GURPS, Para­noia, or World of Dark­ness.  The sto­ry­teller and arbiter of the game is either called the Dun­geon Mas­ter (DM), or Games Mas­ter (GM).  I tend to use GM, as it’s not spe­cific to one game sys­tem.  Player char­ac­ters are often referred to as PCs.

Today I was gear­ing up for game night, and read that Wil Wheaton is DMing his son and some friends for the first time in 4E.   4th Edi­tion is the new sys­tem, and it has some issues that our group have decided make it a poor choice for us.  I’d really be play­ing GURPS or 2nd Edi­tion if I had my druthers, but the sys­tem should be sec­ondary in a truly good cam­paign.  When every­one gets all hung up on the rules, I think that’s a sign of either a bad GM or a ter­ri­ble sys­tem.  In this article, Wil explores some thoughts after the first week of the new game. He has a lot of good advice to GMs and play­ers alike.

Every­thing is impor­tant to the PCs. Don’t men­tion it, don’t put it on the map, don’t even bring it into their minds unless you’re ready for them to do some­thing with it. Think about this from their point of view: they’re try­ing to build the world in their heads, and you never know what’s going to grab their atten­tion. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s this: they will ignore book­case you’ve spent a ton of effort stock­ing with cleverly-titled tomes of great knowl­edge and a hid­den lever that acti­vates the secret door, so they can focus with laser pre­ci­sion on the box you put in the cor­ner, because you had a cool tile with a box on it or some­thing. Of course, it’s not the end of the world when they do that; you can either nudge them toward the book­case, or sim­ply move the lever next to the box.

Really good, imag­i­na­tive play­ers will find a way to break out of every­thing the GM has planned.  They’ll answer a mul­ti­ple choice ques­tion with an essay.  At the same time, clues that should be glar­ingly obvi­ous will some­times elude the play­ers.  This does not mean the game is bro­ken.  No one should be penal­ized sim­ply for tak­ing an uncon­ven­tional approach.  I really like Wil’s note to either nudge the char­ac­ters in the right direc­tion or move the clue.  Many times I’ve been in cam­paigns that have hinged on one clue, with no other way of dis­cov­er­ing the secret.  That’s no fun.

Wil also reminds GMs:

Lis­ten to your play­ers, and they will tell you what they want to do. Even if they don’t come out and say it directly, they will reveal a lot to you with their actions, and you can tai­lor the game a lit­tle bit to make them happy.

So many GMs and play­ers don’t effec­tively do this.  The same role­play­ing game can be dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and every­one involved needs to real­ize that.  The story needs to include every­one some­how or another.  If the GM sees that half of the group is bored with the sto­ry­line, but one is fol­low­ing all the clues and cap­ti­vated, there’s a  tough bal­anc­ing act.  A great GM will read his audi­ence and real­ize when the mys­tery is just not intrigu­ing, or fight after fight after fight is just unful­fill­ing when there’s a cru­cial bit of story devel­op­ment left lan­guish­ing.   Sim­i­larly, play­ers need to be under­stand­ing of how dif­fi­cult that is, and remem­ber that their turn will come around if they’re not actively engaged.

And now, the hordes are start­ing to arrive.  After read­ing Wil’s notes, I’m actu­ally con­sid­er­ing writ­ing up the cam­paign to date for my Sat­ur­day posts. I’ll talk to the boys tonight and see what they think.   I think it’d be enter­tain­ing to read.  It also could serve as a ref­er­ence for every­one to know what hap­pened after the sugar crash caused the dwar­ven cleric to fall asleep.  Yeah, I’m look­ing at you, A.