My feeling is that it ought to work fairly well with GMed games as well (perhaps minus the 'Secrets' deck). A lot of it is basically trying to imitate the kind of mutual character roll-up that used to be commonplace in trad GMed tabletop RPGs. Although pregen characters are pretty much universal in freeforms, I don't think they need to be: or, at least, there is room for the player to add quite a bit of customization along these lines over a pregen skeleton.
What don't you like about GMless games, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?
What don't you like about GMless games, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?
Not at all! It's really just that they remove, for me, the mechanism that makes RPGs actually work. My character is in a room and hears running footsteps approaching from down the stairs. An archway leads out of the room to my left and on the right is the door to what I assume is the master bedroom. Over the mantlepiece in front of me is a sword. What next? And the point is, whatever I choose I am interacting with a world that already exists. The GM knows what's beyond the archway, what's behind the door, whether the sword is sharp, who's running up the stairs and what they already know about the situation. And when I make my choice, the GM can judge the results of my actions in the context of the world
( ... )
Your critique would seem to apply to prepless GMed games as well as to GMless games: am I reading that right?
Thinking about GMless vs GMed games to start with, the two are quite different kinds of activity, both of which I enjoy in different ways.
But saying that, a GMless 'game' (which is perhaps not strictly a good name for it) works better if you avoid setups which will require eg. the improvisation of NPCs on the fly, or the exploration of new areas of gameworld, as those will necessarily expose the weaknesses of the method.
An advantage of a closed scenario like the Blackpool one is that the areas within which the players are inventing stuff can be carefully chosen to minimize such awkwardnesses. ("Rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty", as Vroomfondel might have said.)
Ooh, interesting. I increasingly think this kind of middle ground between pre-genned and player-genned characters is the way to go with one-offs (including GMed ones, in disagreement with Dom's comment). I might steal some elements of this in the future!
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(I wouldn't actually want to play, but that's just because I never like GMless games much.)
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What don't you like about GMless games, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?
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Not at all! It's really just that they remove, for me, the mechanism that makes RPGs actually work. My character is in a room and hears running footsteps approaching from down the stairs. An archway leads out of the room to my left and on the right is the door to what I assume is the master bedroom. Over the mantlepiece in front of me is a sword. What next? And the point is, whatever I choose I am interacting with a world that already exists. The GM knows what's beyond the archway, what's behind the door, whether the sword is sharp, who's running up the stairs and what they already know about the situation. And when I make my choice, the GM can judge the results of my actions in the context of the world ( ... )
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Your critique would seem to apply to prepless GMed games as well as to GMless games: am I reading that right?
Thinking about GMless vs GMed games to start with, the two are quite different kinds of activity, both of which I enjoy in different ways.
But saying that, a GMless 'game' (which is perhaps not strictly a good name for it) works better if you avoid setups which will require eg. the improvisation of NPCs on the fly, or the exploration of new areas of gameworld, as those will necessarily expose the weaknesses of the method.
An advantage of a closed scenario like the Blackpool one is that the areas within which the players are inventing stuff can be carefully chosen to minimize such awkwardnesses. ("Rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty", as Vroomfondel might have said.)
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(I did actually mention your Belbin-inspired team roles idea during the dev process: the other writers were quite taken with it.)
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