People need to quit being hung up on titles. The Shadowrun usage of the term Game Master is an homage to the old D&D Dungeon Master. And since "Shadow Master" sounds a little dorky...

But seriously, the "master" aspect is equal to storyteller, referee, game controller, guide, etc. Master is just a word and a word does not summarize or reflect the reality.

I disagree strongly. The title you use acts subconsciously on the way you think and act. This is why racial slur names cause the damage they do... they promote a mindset of superiority/inferiority. When Master is used to represent authority it promotes a certain mindset, subconsciously, which causes reactions not only in the person with the title, but again, subconsciously, in the people he/she interacts with.

As an aside, Shadow Master sounds infinitely less dorky than Dungeon Master with the S&M connotations that IT carries.


Isshia

ONLY when the majority is acting irresponsibly. When the stated goal is cooperation and you have mature people:

it

simply

doesn't

happen.


Inherently a group decision is more likely to fit the group than a unilateral one.

Nothing is a golden bullet. But again, if it gets thrice the mileage, is safer, responds more concisely, takes less maintenance and is less expensive, but just isn't green, then doesn't the one that out performs the other one make more sense? Even if you really like green?


Isshia

As an aside, Japanese scientists did a study where they froze water while saying negative words to it, and the crystals formed were very chaotic and, well, ugly. They then refroze the water saying nice, positive words to it and the crystals were very orderly and beautiful.

A Chinese classroom took two containers of rice and every morning said "You fool" to one and "Thank you" to the other. After a few weeks, the rice they said "you fool" to was turned completely black, whereas the "thank you" rice was still fresh.

In Sunday School, a person I know took two apples and wrote positive words on a piece of paper and taped it to one apple, and attached negative words to the other apple. The "Posi-Apple" stayed nice and fresh for more than 7 weeks, whereas the "Nega-Apple" rotted after 3.

Words are powerful things; choose them carefully. "And God said 'Let there be Light,' and there was light..."

I created a summary of the more common mistakes mentioned earlier in the thread.

The new thread can be found here at - Common Mistakes That Players Make

Great discussion everyone.

Wasn't just an apple less ripe than the other? Did you have control groups with apples with no words attached to them? Did you eliminate all confounding variables? Did you (or anyone else) try it again to see if you were able to get the same results with the same protocol?
It's not the first time I hear things like that, but I've never seen any serious scientific experiment confirm these theories. Maybe a social experiment should be done at the same time on the experimenters.

Then you have no issues. Cooperation has nothing to do with rules authority. Personal authority will, after a series of sessions that were fun, go to the GM either way. It got so strong in our group that one session can have rules applied differently than the other, depending on the GM of the given day. If I trust a friend to run a good game for me, I can sure as hell follow up on his rules calls. It is a matter of respect, if need be on effort alone.


@Blade: You are pretty good at taking stuff seriously, too. (Don´t mind if you don´t remember what exchange I´m referring to. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

Awesome. Once the pseudoscience comes out, I'm done.

That's my German side, I guess. (don't mind if that's not the exchange you're referring to (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) )

That one. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Can't you just have faith that people aren't all liars and con-artists?

Even if the hypothesis would prove to be true, the criticism of scientific method would still be true, too.

I'm still kinda hung up on this method of gaming and maybe its just that I am not seeing it function. Some individual still has to take all of these group ideas and present them to the players. Some of them get discarded and some of them are highlighted...that's just human nature.

I'm curious as to how all of these cooperative gaming ideas get incorporated into a session, assuming you are not playing wushu or such, but a "standard" role-playing game. Does someone just blurt out that such and such is this way or that, or is there a planning session where everyone discusses what adventure is going to be run and how each scenario is going to occur?

At some point, someone is "running" the game, right?

I just don't see how everyone can "just know" the same rule interpretation every single time, in 17+ gaming groups over 30 years. In my book, once someone brings up a specific rule, then you have Rules Lawyering, but yet you say that it never happens in cooperative gaming...

I just having a hard time visualizing what a session would feel like at this cooperative gaming table...

And the #1 most common mistake less-skilled roleplayers make when playing a roleplaying game?

Allowing elitist Roleplaying Pros to tell them that they are having badwrongfun, and are thus less "skilled", and then proceed to dictate to them the "One True Way"...

Dungeon Master has strong and specific SM connotations too.

Words are neutral. Positive or negative spin are placed on them by people (other than deliberate insults or slurs) and that is what causes emotional reactions. A "master" isn't any more or less of an authority figure than a referee or storyteller when taken into an RPG context. It's someone who carries a certain set of skills.

I have clients who refuse to allow certain colors in the websites I build for them. When I probe and ask why, it's due to a negative experience that's associated with said color earlier in life. It's not the color's fault, it's the client's perception of it. That's hardly an objective or reasonable way to run a re-branding campaign especially if said color fits the message perfectly. Likewise it's hardly an objective view of the word master to assume it always means "the boss" or "the guy with the whip."

Ewwwwwwwwww... Then again Dungeon Masters in orange sweaters are known for placing people in a dreadfully, precarious positions.

EDIT

I'm sorry you feel that way. My intention is to help everyone, including myself, to be a better roleplayer. If you had a negative point in particular that you wanted to make, feel free to let me know either here or at my blog. I'd be happy to address it with you.

Funny, ain't it? That stuff is all subjective, for sure. But while I agree 100% with what you are saying, its important for everyone to be aware of those types of things. I mean, I have learned early on that many DSFers have a negative perception of DnD and therefore I always replace DM with the more neutral GM, even if I was talking about some experience specific to DnD.

I think the same thing has to be done at each table. An observant person will be able to tell how Joe the Min Maxer is going to react if you drop some sweet gear into the game, whereas Bill the Roleplay Extraordinaire will be super giddy if you drop him the same statistical gear as what he has, just that is looks cool...

Okay, I wandered off on that tangent. As to using a term like "master", those of us that don't put a certain connotation on the word will not read into someone else using it. Just chalk it up to not actually knowing the person posting here and trying to use black and white logic and nit-pick word usage instead of just understanding what the poster is trying to say...(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I think the point he was trying to make is quite clear.

The original post should have included this warning.

*shrug*

I had thought that what I previously typed WAS the negative point. The very wording of the title of this thread smacks of an elitist attitude to me. This is unfortunately one of the main things I dislike about quite a lot of the hobbyists I share my passion with.

All of the arguments posted here as to what "mistakes less-skilled roleplayers make" are personal gaming style preferences, not really mistakes nor truly qualified assesments of a "skill level" in said players.

The Cooperative Game runs pretty much like the traditional ones with a few important differences.

First, when setting up a campaign overall time is spent developing tone and scale as a group, instead of the Unilateral method of the GM doing it alone ahead of time and hoping that it's a decent fit for the Players. With the Cooperative method you don't have to hope it fits, you know that it's the best compromise of what everyone wants. Yes, this requires flexibility on the part of the GM because once the broad strokes are done, he is still the details man. At least mostly.

-- You can give certain Players certain parts of the world to detail develop. No one HAS TO do this, but I've seldom found less than half the Players in a group who don't do it once they've seen how much it adds to a game. it can be in as much or as little detail as the individual wants and has time for.
-- Many (maybe most) groups have one or two Players who LOVE making characters. Great, have them go crazy on it. Get copies of them, tweak the attributes, skills and backgrounds a bit and re-add them to the mix as NPCs. Such Players can save the GM dozens of hours in the course of even a shortish campaign and still the game has a plethora of well thought out and developed characters to give depth and breadth to the game world.

As a part of this too is the discussion about what, in a rough manner, the ideal for the campaign will be. Is the idea to be "traditional Runners" who are contractual mercs in essence, or are they going to be involved in a cause or are they going to simply "grow" generically dependent upon environmental factors like real people do, or what have you? How nasty and vile do you want the baddies to be? Is it going to be gruesome, or edgy, or spooky or Pink Mohawks or does the group want an agglomeration of all of the above?

Second is rules and house rules development. This also goes to how specific types of situations get handled. Do you want free form decking or detail decking? (Both are a 3rd edition thing that is handled very differently in 4e.) How much or how little is magic going to be stressed? How about racism? Even aside from the stresses placed upon it, how accepting of magic and/or meta-humanity is humanity? These questions are rules related more than others of their sort in Shadowrun as there are game mechanics to be figured in and adjusted. Any aspect of how the game mechanically functions is discussed before the campaign itself starts, but it doesn't end there.

-- If a situation comes up in game that would usually result in an argument in a Unilateral Game it is set aside and discussed after the individual game session is over. The creative minds and inputs of everyone involved are used and a solution is found either by retention of the existing rule in Toto or by a consensus modification. Essentially it is the Unilateral GM thing but automatically arrived at by consensus. This by itself short cuts almost all rules arguments.

Third involves the Players more than the GM (which is also why I do yes, still have an issue with the idea that a DM automatically develops more "power" over time than the Players) and also handles a depth of background that few groups ever see otherwise. The Players handle their downtime, detail it as much or as little as they like, within the constraints of the system and the time they have. So, you can't simply assign yourself six new contacts or a degree in Meta-Botany, for instance, but you can and do set up the whos whys and wherefores and simply submit them.

-- For instance, Jay spends the three weeks of downtime between the end of the last run and the beginning of one of the ad hoc "day to day living situations" by spending allot of time with a couple of Boeing Corp Bodyguards he met during the last run. Initially they are listed afterwords as "casuals" (casual contacts which are like rating one contacts but less reliable and they'll want significantly more for their assistance than actual contacts) but who fall by the wayside when the relationship isn't vigorously maintained.
-- During the same period Shnorky is working for the ORC (and thus strengthening his ties to it) continuing to work on his Masters thesis in Comparitive Meta-Botanical Psycho-Therapeutic Pharmaceutical Design.
-- And Anna is simply keeping up with the SOTA line for Decking and Cyber-systems interfacing,
-- While Thadeus is working on self initiating.

Plus any on going inter-personal interactions and whatever else comes to mind, in as much or little detail as desired by the person. Usually in my experience it turns out to be allot of detail and allot of diceless role playing between the Players directly. Then they simply fill me in on what they were doing and what they see as the likeliest outcomes.


All of the above lets the GM very much off the hook for "entertaining the players" and provides SLEWS of scenario and side stroy ideas to be explored. It gets the Players VERY proactively involved in the games, gets them to take responsibility for the sessions smoothness and helps to assure that everyone both understands the rules, the house rules and how they interact with their specific characters. It also promotes deep RP and uses the hard core RPers abilities to help pull the more passive Players out of their shells a bit all without the direct need for GM input.

The second part is what prevents rules lawyering. There is no manner in which to lawyer things when you are as much judge as lawyer. When your voice is as strong in how things will work as the GMs is there is just nothing to "push against" and if the new rule you've proposed and gotten passed fails miserably because there was hidden twinkiness in it, it gets remembered and your ideas catch much closer scrutiny in the future as well as getting changed right away. Do this often enough and the group as a whole may despair of you and not invite you back. Group decisions for a group are a self regulating thing. It is only in Unilateral situations where you can really bitch about a ruling being unfair, because in the Cooperative Game it was YOU who helped design the rule.


This is a very quick thumb nail over view of some of the primary differences and why they work better. It barely scratches the surface of the surface, but it shows a direction.



Isshia



As an aside: No one is saying this is the only way, or that other ways are "badwrongfun", but rather that the traditional "it's my world and welcome to it" version of things doesn't have to be the way either and that other methods not only work, but have inherent strengths. Why running around in the gas guzzling old '76 Caddy Fleetwood with the broken AC and the bad breaks is "badwrongfun" if you like it, I don't get. I also don't get why it is important to say that this is just as efficient the '08 Mercedes E320 either, but maybe that's just me.

These are all great methods of involving a player in the game and their character. I've enjoyed using them for years, with mostly positive results. I find myself agreeing with most everything you've said here.

I strongly disagree with the mindset that there are any players that are making "mistakes" or any "less skilled" than any others in choosing, whatever it may be, their personally preferred play style, though.

Then you didn't read what I wrote very carefully, as I feel the pargraph below answers your question as specifically as such a wide ranging hypothetical situations could be:



For your additional inquiry, what if a single player puts a challenge not to me, but to the whole group. The answer is simple. They would ultimately do as I say as this is how we have agreed to do things. It is not as if I do not listen to their input, but they have appointed me to use my best judgment to arbitrate these manners, even when it goes against there wishes. Its not some crazy power-mad dick waving contest on my part, but an arrangement we have agreed upon for the good of the game.


What authority does anyone have that cannot ultimately be overridden by someone? You have some strange notion that authority has to be unequivocally absolute to be authority. This is not so. In a game a GM can have as much or as little authority as the group feels is appropriate to invest in him. As I have repeatedly stated, yes, of course this power comes from the members of the group who agree to submit to his rule. And yes, the members of this group could change this authority if they desire. But none of this changes the fact that this power exists, and is often times placed in the GM's hands.


We are in complete agreement here. There may be many right ways to have fun playing a RPG. And you make a number of good arguements why a coperative style of game may be more fun for some groups. But then you go and say this...


You have to realise that there is no objective way to measure which style is better, as you might could do with the cars in your example. What style of game produces the most 'fun' game is a subjective question, and will differ from group to group. Previously I have elaborated on some of the reasons of why a group might choose a more traditional style of game. And reasons why a coperative style of game might not be for them. But frankly the reasons are largely irrelevant. What matters is results. And if their style produces a fun game for them, and yours does not, then theirs is the correct style for them, and whatever your feelings. And there is ample testimony that this is indeed the case.

If you've sat down and agreed that this is a GM-dominated game, then you've voted on it, which makes it more of a cooperative game from the start. If it is a penis-waving contest, then you don't bother asking, you just take it.


I did. That runaway paragraph doesn't answer anything as much as say: "I don't know, it all depends". If the players all unanimously said: "We're sick of this power level, we want to increase it substantially", you'd say "Yes, unless you want panther cannons and an extra hundred karma." That's the gist of what you seem to be saying, and it doesn't make any sense to me either.


You're beginning to see my point! The GM does not require any authority to have a fun game. In fact, I daresay that the better you are as a GM, the less authority you need. As you said, the group decides as a whole exactly how much authority the GM gets. And in actuality, it's usually exactly the same as everyone else at the table. They might get a few ceremonial perks, but being the GM doesn't mean you get to decide what kind of pizza to order.

Most games are a lot more cooperative than most people realize. Discussing and voting on house rules before a begins is par for the course, nowadays. Writing character backgrounds on your own, instead of under the GM's eye or by the GM, is more-or-less expected. All these are elements of a cooperative game, and all of the are commonplace in "traditional" games.