Support for GMs looking to Plan Right?

[davidberg]

Vincent Baker recently shared an annecdote about how designers from different corners of RPG-land publicly advocated against GMs planning outcomes in their games.

Commenter CC (I don't know his name) replied with an excellent example of a planned outcome that paid off, with the PCs deceived a second time by their hated arch-nemesis.

Here's my

Comments

Not sure those ideas are so smoothly opposed

[ext_808108]

To explain why I'll probably have to splurge a lot of stuff I've been thinking about to do with game goals

Re: Not sure those ideas are so smoothly opposed

[ext_808108]

Man, almost maxed out the comment box with my intro, but here's mainly what I was getting to

Re: Not sure those ideas are so smoothly opposed

[davidberg]

Hi Josh,

Sure, there can definitely be different types of planning (good, bad, none) by different players in one game. I didn't even intend to address players' plans for their characters here -- that's a whole new interesting topic!

I think you make some good points about the various reasons someone (a GM, for this example) might want to plan. Authorship, emulation, immersion -- for pretty much any goal someone might bring to an RPG table, there's some appeal in having control over what you get along that vector.

I suspect it's accurate to say that, though most players of games want some types of outcomes left to chance (e.g., whether that character pulls off that tricky badass feat), most players of RPGs also come in with other outcomes they don't want left to chance (e.g., I'm immersed, this game is recognizable as Star Wars, etc.).

That said, I think we do in fact have game designs that offer players and GMs guarantees of the types of outcome they'll get (immersive, Star Wars-y, etc.). We just don't have designs for

Re: Not sure those ideas are so smoothly opposed

[ext_808108]

Here's the trouble I see here, that we'll probably have to get round; most of the games we make hard-code those types of outcome, you know?

And I think that's ok going in because the creative activity isn't there. You know as GM going into a game that the game will gaurantee x, and you're off doing something different.

Like D&D 4e at it's most combatty handles monster creation and level appropriateness, and leaves spatial stuff and tactics to you.

And I wonder whether any system that encourages planning has to do the same kind of step back:

It would set up the potential to fix certain kinds of outcomes, but leave the last steps of wrestling to the GM or player, so that they actually have something to do

[davidberg]

I've followed up on this at the Forge. One thread about the general topic, another about resolution, and more to come.