Post originally by JRM at 2004-06-18 07:24:01
Converted from Phorums BB System

After reading these posts, I thought I'd throw in a few comments on the debate.

The first thing I've noticed is that communication problems keep on cropping up, often to do with terminology. There's obviously a wide difference in opinion on what terms like "Story" or "Narrative" mean in a RPG. Some posters seem to be using the jargon from roleplaying theory like the GNS model. Unfortunately, these use definitions of words like "Story" that differ from mainstream usage, which does not help the debate. The other obvious problem is posters keep assuming what the other guy said means something they didn't intend it to. There's no golden solution to either problem, but it would help if posters tried to find a common ground.

Perhaps part of this player-centric / GM-centric problem derives from the adversarial terminology some roleplaying games use. A GM should not be the Game's "Master" or the Servant ["Seneschal"] of the players, or even an impartial Referee. Thinking it over, the best analogy I came up with was that a GM is like the Host of a party and the players as the Guests. Good guests show appreciation for their host and don't scoff all the food and demand to be entertained. Good hosts don't demand their guests sit quietly and listen to them recite bad poetry for three hours. The equivalent pro- and anti-SA arguments are that SAs stop the GM tyrannising their game, or let the players turn the Seneschal into their slave. In my experience game mechanic do little to encourage good or bad game etiquette, since it’s a social issue rather than a rules one. In my experience, a far more common problem is player dilettantism, when players don't invest any commitment in the game and just view it as casual entertainment.

I think the "game as entertainment" model is fine when players show an interests, but if some of the players can't be bothered it quickly falls apart. I've had a few players who would only turn up if they felt like it, and sometimes didn't bother to tell anyone else they'd be a no-show. These blighters were worse menace than the few who went overboard on player motivation. I've had a few of those in games I've run, but they were no great problem so long as the other players got fair shares of the GMs attention.

I think Tarleon's quite correct to say RPGs should be co-operative enterprises, and many of the other posters seem to agree. Zoran Bekric's world-centric games where the PCs start out with vague motivations that grow more defined during play is an excellent approach. I must admit rather a lot of personal bias in this, since it's how I like to play / GM myself.