How does a referee pick worlds for players? I've hit around on this question a few times, and everything I've been told so far seems to indicate that worlds are picked so the referee enjoys it, not the player. MJ keeps saying that he puts players in worlds that would challenge their beliefs. Is that because players are supposed to enjoy having their beliefs challenged, or is it so the referee can see what they do? Everything I've been told so far seems to tell me that worlds are picked so the referee enjoys themselves, and not the player. Tad also said that he picks worlds that would go against what the player wants. Why is that? It seems to me like the worlds are picked not so the player enjoys it, but so the referee does. That seems like kind of bass ackwards logic to me. I'm really confused by this, so if anyone would care to explain, I'd appreciate it.
How are worlds picked?
(10 posts) (5 voices)-
Tadeusz
MemberSigh. Shakes head. Rueful smile.
What we say is that the player a lot of times doesn't know what he wants really.
We also say that we don't really want to run characters in settings they know superwell. I don't want to run you in Music Wars although I'm running Ed in it. I don't want to run David in 1632 for several reasons (one is it doesn't grab me, but part of it is that he knows the setting very well).
I say that challenging a player's understanding of the Verse, or his mental and moral beliefs is a useful technique in Good Gaming. It is NOT the the End-All, and Be-All. Having that as such would be a mistake of a similar order to those who write Christian fiction, and make the Message more important than the Story. A Good Story or Good Gaming comes first.
While gaming is done so that a GM can enjoy himself (if he's not then he probably should consider stopping), its not the sadistic thing that you're making it out to be. Although some players do tempt you, especially those who keep complaining all the time. There is a lot of this for some gamemasters (and the other night when I got two fifth level characters to surrender to a bunch of second level kobolds was a nice touch....I'm going to give them a chance to escape, and if that fails.....new character time.)
Now I may disagree with MJ here, and I definitely disagree with you John, but one day you both will ascend to my wisdom. :)
Eric
Sat Nov 3 2007 7:12 pm # -
Graham
MemberQuestions like this are very hard to answer, because there is no answer. In place of answers, there are many general reasons that GMs pick worlds based upon personal experience. This is why you have MJs gigantic posts that go above and beyond the scope of the question. It's the reverse of Occam's Razor, where a complex question often needs a simple answer. In this case, a simple answer requires a complex answer.
Now that I've said why your question is hard to answer, I'll attempt to add my two cents. I started in NagaWorld. Lots of people do; it's good beginning world. The answer is as simple as that. I vaguely remember Scott asking me how I wanted my character to progress at one point during a live session. I describe a character strong in psionics and magic and what not. The next world I landed in was Men of Psience, and I loved it. The choice was, at the surface level, obvious; the world suited me, and I wanted to learn some psionics. The next world was Really Bad Eggs. This came out of the blue for me (as it should have) but I was immensely pleased. Pirates and magic and psionics? Yes please. The next world I am going to be sent to, once Scott finishes the summary, is that really cold tundra-like place where most versers "won't survive the cold and will verse out before progressing beyond the beginning point." (sorry if I spoiled the ending of the summary guys.)
The reason the world is picked doesn't really matter, it's the interaction of the player and the referee. This is an essential part of RPGs that you cannot be taught, it is learned through experience. One of the things that makes this interaction so hard is the referees obligation to the game. When I did my first GMing long, long ago it was with a basic system made from scratch that Paul and I set up. The scenarios were always based around the same principle; hack an' slash, kill the boss, loot the room. In my inexperience, I would sometimes fudge things, make things go in favor of the player like giving him a class-appropriate treasure instead of a random one. As a player, I kind of hoped for the same treatment and was taken aback when I didn't receive it. After more experience, I learned that that naive kind of interference weakened the game.
If the game isn't fun, make it fun.
As a disclaimer, if I sound bitter or ticked off, I'm not. That's just an innate personality flaw of mine that manifests in my writing and speech a lot.
Sat Nov 3 2007 9:30 pm # -
JohnA1nut
MemberYou didn't sound bitter or pissed. I just keep thinking about this. I know I probably go on and on like a broken record about some things, but that's kind of the point. This forum exists so people can ask questions and find things out. It just seems like a lot of the things MJ does are so he can find things out, not so the player can have a good time. I must just be wired completely differently than most players. I don't know. I'd really like to be sent to NagaWorld. Something completely alien to anything else I've ever seen before.
Sat Nov 3 2007 10:08 pm # -
Blue Canary
MemberJohn, if you were GMing and a player died, how would you pick the next world?
Why wouldn't the player enjoy it? If the player likes Psi and it's a high tech world, wouldn't he have fun learning about Tech too? Wouldn't the new experiences and new mysteries and new challenges be entertaining?
Mon Nov 5 2007 8:34 pm # -
How is it done?
I just came back from Ubercon, where I ran demos Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. The table was constantly packed, to the point that Adam and John never got a chance to play. (I feel a twinge of regret for that, but have promised them a game next Saturday night here, and the games at the con were really amazing in a lot of ways, so it's only a twinge.) Thus I spent my entire weekend picking "next worlds" for people I did not know from, er, Adam.
Now, that's in some ways harder and in some ways easier than what I'm doing here--harder and easier because I have a framework I use for demos and a three-level list of worlds. If you're in my home campaign, you start in NagaWorld; it's the place where everyone starts. However, some people stay in NagaWorld a very long time--I stayed for 120 forty-hour days, and played each of those in great detail. It is a world with dangers that can take you out in a snap, but which can be avoided entirely once you understand them. (I was killed by a botch on a psionic device creation experiment, not by one of the hazards of the world.) Thus I developed the Tropical Island scenario, and I use it for demo gathers, and often here on the forum, because it gives me control over the scenario such that everyone will leave that world when I've decided they have done everything useful they are going to do. This is so that I have time to introduce them to another universe, an essential element of the demo.
I have selected four universes as the "second tier", and every player character in the demo goes to one of those four places when he verses. The reason for this is that I want all of them to see the flexibility of the game, that it does so many different things at once. Thus I will send one person to Quest for the Vorgo (the Army of Darkness-like fantasy horror), one to Starship Destiny (a reasonably original space opera with something of the flavors of Star Trek and Blake's 7), one to Prisoner of Zenda (a historic adventure sort, where the verser is the double for the king), and sometimes one to Haunted House (where the poltergeist will kill you, but not until after he plays with you for a bit). Each of these worlds are fairly quick starters--you know something is up, and you very quickly have something to do--and my players are all challenged individually while simultaneously fascinated by their fellows.
This limitation is significant in my thought processes. For example, Saturday night I had an overflow crowd, six players at once. Three of them were young, high school or junior high, though, and two of these were brothers. I had already sent one of the college students to Quest for the Vorgo, and I wanted to send a middle-aged father to Starship Destiny--but then, that would leave Haunted House and Prisoner of Zenda, and I was going to have to team up the brothers so I couldn't send them to Zenda together and didn't think I wanted to run them in Haunted House (the scenario does not do well with two characters, particularly if they separate). That meant they had to go to Destiny, and the father couldn't also go to Destiny, so he became my duplicate king, going to Zenda.
O.K., so in that situation I did not send him to one world because I needed to run someone else in that world, and I needed to keep a variety of worlds going. I don't have those restraints here--and yet I do. You will not go to Zenda as long as Shawn is still in Zenda, because I will not run two players in the same gaming group in the same world if I can avoid it, unless they are together. It gets too confusing. Further, I need to keep the kinds of worlds for each player changing, but I also need to keep a kaleidescope of worlds running in the game. The more similar the worlds are, the harder it is for me to keep clear in my own mind who is doing what where and when. And while it's certain true that I could come up with millions of different worlds, at any given moment there is a finite number of worlds I am comfortable running, and a subset of that which I am comfortable running for any particular player. Worlds like Post-Sympathetic Man, The New Ice Age, The Web, Zygote Experience, Perpetual Barbecue, Farmland Alpha, Tristan's Labyrinth--well, let's just say that some worlds just would not work for some players right now, and some would not work for those players ever. I would not put an atheist in my Chronicles of Narnia series, because you have to believe the lion might actually be a god for it to work.
So whenever someone dies, I'm scrambling to come up with a world that fits them, that suits me, that works in the context of everything else I'm running. First and foremost I want it to advance their story somehow, such that they can use this to move their character forward, either in new directions or to higher degrees. However, I still must contextualize that within a lot of other factors.
I notice, incidentally, that Scott has three players, and has run them all in very different worlds. I suspect that he has done this, perhaps without recognizing it, for much the same reason--because making the worlds very different makes them easier to run simultaneously.
*****
Let me approach the question again by analogy.
I'm the chief cook in my house. I often have people living here who are professional cooks, and sometimes they cook for us and sometimes they help, but in the day-to-day drag of what's for dinner, I'm the guy who makes it. I'm also the guy who goes to the store to get whatever it is we use to make the dinners.
Now, sometimes I will ask people what they want for dinner. If it's someone's birthday, or someone will be home for a weekend who is usually not home, it will be prefaced "if you could have anything you want". That doesn't mean they'll get whatever it is they wanted; it means that I'll consider it. If someone tells me they want a shrimp souffle, they are out of luck, because I've no clue how to make a souffle. If they tell me they want my sweet & sour sausage, well, I have to run that past their mother, because she doesn't like sweet foods for dinner. Sometimes I'm just looking for ideas; sometimes I will have two or three things I think I could choose between so I'm asking which would be preferred.
Now, I have a lot more on my mind than what does this one person like for dinner. I am also considering what I made for dinner last night, and what I can make tomorrow. I'm considering how much time I have to cook, whether I have all the ingredients I need or what it will take to get them, whether there are people in the house unwilling or unable to eat certain foods (e.g., one of our occasional houseguests gets very ill if he eats mushrooms). Of course I want to serve something you like, and that might be the primary consideration--but it is not the only consideration. I'm also quite aware that I might fail--you might actually not like Macaroni and Cheese, or it might be that you love Macaroni and Cheese the way your mother makes it, which is nothing like this. That's how I learn; that's how I figure out what to feed you next time.
--M. J. Young
Tue Nov 6 2007 2:04 am # -
Tadeusz
MemberMJ,
I would not use this post exactly, but a logical description of why you have those worlds chosen, (and the next tier) as well for cons would be of use in the 'Gamemaster's Guide'. I've seen you describe the reasons behind them other times.Also, I would probably include your cooking explanation. At least for me, (primary cook in my house) it has a great deal of explanatory power.
Now for moi...
Actually, I'm surprisingly similar to MJ.
We differ in that he's way over on the right on Logic and Structure and I'm way over on the left on Improvisational and Flexibility. I've literally had five minutes to get a game together, and done it, and with no false modesty, did a really good job too. Now to some degree this is because I have ideas floating around my head all the time, and to some degree its because I've read ten kajillion books, and to some degree its because I'm a Freak of Nature.
I've probably created over a hundred worlds in sufficient detail for me to do a good job of running them. So, at a con, I'll ask the players to write down a list of their five favorite books or movies.
And then I try to gather from that something that might interest them.
And if need be, I can probably get a flash of inspiration, and run something off the top of my head.
You look at the list, and maybe at the player, and at his skills....and think of some world where he could do something, or face something that would be a challenge, but interesting at the same time.
One character I sent to my rip-off of Asimov's Robot Mysteries (like the movie I, Robot in ways) where a crazy woman kills her friend, and then wants to kill the verser without the robots figuring it out. One of the key factors was that he was an electrician. Which ended up playing a major role in the game as he used his skill to lock the crazy woman out of the electrically locked dome, and himself safely inside.
I sent a current player, Valiant to Orc Rising for a number of reasons...
1. He said he like LoTR's and The Belgariad....so fantasy is a good choice.
2. He's joined the forces of evil....he's a vampire's minion. I want to see how evil he's willing to be. Is he willing to murder a bunch of kindly, mostly gentle elves because Master says so?
3. I've long wanted to run Orc Rising. I've wanted to expand my repetoire to include the worlds MJ made up.
4. I want to see if I can convince him to turn his back on evil, because frankly evil characters are usually boring and annoying to me.And that may not sound surprisingly similar to MJ, but thats the differences. Most of the rest is like what he said.
Tue Nov 6 2007 3:43 am #
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