Emphasis not mine.

You're right, I have. I've also played completely free form games that didn't have a GM, or where the the role of the GM was minimized. And I still prefer traditional games where the GM has most of the authority over the game world, because I find it to be more fun. And honestly, if you're arguing that Shadowrun gravitates towards free form because of a single sentence in an entire rulebook...well, that's kinda silly.


I'm sure now that they've read your post and have thus been enlightened by your superior knowledge, there would be tons of new threads popping up in Welcome to the Shadows looking for GMs.


See, you keep thinking that you know how people game better than they do. If someone perceives his GM as being more important for his group, I'm gonna believe him, because he probably knows a helluva lot more about his group dynamics than me, some random dude on an internet forum.

Anyways, you're confusing "a player" and "all of the players" again. The GM is most certainly not more important than all of his players combined, but he probably is more important than any single player. Sometimes games die when a player drops and does not get replaced, but most of the time they don't. Games almost always die when the GM drops and does not get replaced.

I've been in plenty of groups where everything was organized and built by the vision of one single player. That player tends to be the GM, but it doesn't always have to be. Lose that player, and you lose your game, regardless of rather or not he's the GM.

The GM is not more important than any other player. This cuts both ways, though. If a player isn't having fun, that's a sign of a problem, yes? Well, if the GM isn't having fun, that's just as much of a problem. The GM has the exact same right to have fun as any other player-- not an inch more, not an inch less.

Exactly! You're the only one who's arguing that things always have to be one way. The rest of us are just saying that sometimes it's the other way, and for us, it usually is the other way.

Psh, that's an entirely different issue altogether. No one said anything about anyone's right to have fun. You equate authority with fun, which is completely false. Writing a novel would give you complete authority over your world, but there's a reason we're playing RPGs instead of writing novels all the time.

The number one mistake I see players making...

THINKING YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE GAMEMASTER!!!!11!! eleven!

I did say YMMV back a few posts. At any event, I'm just suggesting that there's less to the GM's role than most people think.


Bingo! A GM gives up the right to have total control over the narrative, and the players take up that section of the narrative instead. I submit to you that it's not an all-or-nothing deal. It's a continuum, where each group has different levels of narrative control spread out amongst all the players, GM included. And because of that, the GM isn't nearly as important as people might suppose.

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that everyone has different experiences. I relayed mine, and my opinion on the importance of a GM will not be shaken by your say so. Our experiences differ, and as such so will our perspectives and opinions on this subject. Stop trying to browbeat everyone with your perspective.

You say it, but you don't seem to mean it. There isn't less to a GM's role than most people think. People aren't stupid. The reason they have such a belief is probably because in most of the games they play, the GM has most of the authority, and presumably, since gaming is a leisure activity, they chose those games because they like that gaming style. Saying "YMMV" means you gotta accept it when it turns out that most people's mileage does vary from yours, instead of telling people they're too dumb to know what kind of gaming style they prefer.


What if the GM doesn't want to give up control over the narrative, and the players don't want the added responsibility of narrative control? Then it's less fun to be had by all. Honestly, there are times when I want to GM, and times when I want to play, specifically because of the very distinct differences between the two roles. If they were mixed, I'll be forced to do both all the time, which kinda sucks. Of course, YMMV.

Or because it's the only game in town. Or because they don't realize that there's other ways to game.

It can be clearly demonstrated that the GM isn't as important as some people think. You can, in fact, have a game without a GM. You cannot have a game without enough players, though. As Toturi pointed out, most of the games in "Welcome to the Shadows" died because the players stopped posting, not the GM.


Then, as you put it, the Gm should stick to writing novels. No one should GM without giving up at least *some* narrative control. We have a word for that: railroading. Since no GM should be railroading, the players need to be responsible for at least some of the narrative. The precise degree of control varies from game to game, but generally even in traditional games, there's room for the players to take more initiative.

I'm pretty certain that Dumpshock is a Shadowrun discussion board. And unless there's a trick to running a Shadowrun game without a GM that I'm not aware of this whole Player vs. GM: Who's More Important? discussion is pure jibber-jabber.

Unless there is a trick to running a Shadowrun game without either a GM or a player that I'm not aware of this whole Player vs. GM: Who's More Important? discussion is pure jibber-jabber.

What he said.

Sorry, I can't see a game without a GM or players. Both account for a critical portion of the game.
Three areas I see that divide the responsibilities are:


Players: Main characters
GM: General Plot

Players: Insitigating PC/NPC interactions
GM: Referee PC/NPC interactions

Players: Deciding how to best handle the situation.
GM: Changing the plot in response to PCs actions/decisions.

The GM and the players have a symbiotic relationship, they need each other in order to function. How much responsibility, control, etc that each role has is entirely up to the individual groups.

Cain: you just love to stir the pot, don't you?

That point is absolutely irrelevant. All that proves is that players tend to be less motivated than the GM, not who has more authority. Once again, you fail to make the distinction between one player and all of the players. I have never played a game that collapsed because one player dropped out, unless he was like the only player. If the game died because of the players, it's usually because a significant percentage of them either became sluggish with their posting or decided not to play altogether.


Bah, you're not listening to the argument here. No one is saying players shouldn't be responsible for some of the narrative. Players should always be responsible for narrative involving their characters. They can be responsible for more narrative than that if they want to, but the very fact that so many people consider the GM to have so much authority means that they, as a player, don't want to share that authority. I mean, you can keep pretending that people who game differently than you is either coerced into doing so, ignorant, or stupid, but that's not really gonna get you anywhere.

I'm running my frst PbP game right now. I'm having problems with players dropping out mid-scene, such as the driver leaving the game in the middle of a chase, or the mage dropping out in the middle of a magical combat. You can NPC them for a bit, but eventually you're NPCing so many players, you may as well be telling the story yourself. Just losing the driver nearly killed my game.

I wouldn't say that they're less motivated; the first person to drop was my Co-GM, for reasons that had nothing to do with the game. Also, I don't know what you'd consider a "significant percentage", but in a four-player game, one person equals 25% of your post count. I'd call the loss of a single person a "significant percentage", wouldn't you?


Except for you, of course. Didn't you say that, as a player, you didn't want any narrative control, since that's the GM's job?


You know, you keep saying this, and I kept on ignoring it because it's such a blatant lie. Please show me where I said: "Play my way or U R Dum." I'm getting a little fed up with the Ad Hominems; so please, keep it civil.

Likewise probably the most common rookie mistake which most good Players eventually get out of their systems at some point:
THINKING YOU ARE LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE GAMEMASTER!!!!11!! eleven!


Now, if only some Game Masters would get over the absolute worst mistake that can be made as a Game Master:

THINKING YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PLAYERS!!!!11!! eleven!

...everything would be right with the world and peace and joy would rule the Earth.


Cue the Music baby!

Isshia

Okay, I think I found the source of the issue here. I can actually agree with the following statement:

Where "Players" = the sum of all participating players, then
The GM is just as important as the Players.
Without A, the game does not function. Without B, the game does not function.
You can have a game when part of B is missing (such as one or more players missing) but not when all of them are missing

Given *that* context, the statement basically works.

If, however, Cain is comparing the value of the GM to the value of each individual player, then no, in my opinion he's off base.

Nope. I've played 5 player games where 2 dropped and the rest continued along merrily to the finish of the game. To this day, I've never played a single game where the GM dropped and was not replaced and the game still reached the end.


Er, I assumed that the implication that narrative control meant narrative control beyond my character was obvious, but apparently not. Well, now you know.


Read back over each one of your posts, and count how many times you kept saying that the reason people don't play your way is either because they don't know about it or because they don't have any choice. I would quote some examples for you, but I think it's annoying when people do that, and you're a fairly literate fellow, so I'm sure you can find them yourself.

Note that I would've had no problem with your assertion if it had been "The GM may not be more important than the players depending on your play style." Instead, you made a blanket statement, assuming it to be true for everybody's table, in a thread talking about gaming mistakes, thereby implying that everyone who doesn't agree with you is wrong. Not only that, you put three exclamations points behind it. And if that wasn't enough, you had to go and put it in giant yellow capital letters.

If you don't want to be challenged, don't throw down the gauntlet.

Uh, Red.... the giant yellow letters weren't Cain's.... I tend to butt heads with him quite frequently, but don't attribute crud to him that wasn't his specifically. There's plenty of other stuff to harp on.

I know this is about players but I hate gm that fuge dice to the point where you cant radomly die.( this works sort of till the players find out) it just no fun if I know I will beat the bad guys as long as I dont do somthing dumb. without risk this is on feal of success. (all rolls that player would know about are done in open in are group does not matter the system) sure dieing sucks but not dieing sucks more.

The "the GM is/n't more important than the player" argument once again comes down to peopling using different definitions. If by "more important" we mean more deserving of fun then no the GM is no important, just like I am not inherently more or less important than you. On the flip side you don't have any say in how I decorate my house because you didn't do any of the work. While the Player/GM split isn't that harsh GMs are necessary to run the game and do more work. That give them more say in what happens. If the GM writes up all the NPCs well then they are what s/he wants. If the players are down to help craft a setting guess what they get more say. In that sense the GM is more important

I'd say the problem is with the word 'important'. The GM and the rest of the players have different and distinct responsibilities. Those change depending both on the rules of the game, and the conventions of the group.

Cain is, of course, correct in the fact that there are GM-less games, and from my understanding some of them work very well. Shadowrun isn't one of those games, and I'd argue that it wouldn't suit itself to GM-less play very well while still being Shadowrun. I'd tend to agree with WeaverMount, though, in saying the the GM's fun shouldn't take precedence over any other player's fun.

See, here is the problem. It's being likened to the GM decorating his house. This entriely misses the point of what Cain (and others) have been saying since the beginning.

You can't use that metaphor because it isn't the GMs game!

The game background is already provided and any addendums to it CAN BE shared on a nearly equal basis within the whole group! There is absolutely ZERO reason why a bunch of people who are working together to form a great game can't share the load in a very even fashion. Every bloody group I've ran for more than fifteen years now (before that I was a very authoritarian DM/GM/Keeper/Storyteller too) has been run on this basis FAR and away more successfully than they EVER were by myself or anyone else I've seen in that time with them run in the old "it's my world and welcome to it" manner that happens when the GM (or whatever) is a control fetishist.


Isshia

It's not GMless, it's shared responsibility and Shadowrun sure as Hell CAN be run that way, as I've been doing since the early mid 90's.



Isshia

Umm... you didn't read what I posted. I said that SR isn't a GMless game. I'm not arguing that you can't run it with a distinct preference toward shared responsibility. I agree that it can, and I think it does very well run that way, as I've more or less stated earlier in the thread.

Sorry, I just get cranked because I've been hearing for years, every time the shared responsibility idea is expounded, that you have to have a freak group for it to work that way, which is such utter BS it's nauseating.

Cain and others, in this htread and others, have talked about more than simply GMless games (which I think gets mixed out when the other games are referenced and then it's stated that Shadowrun isn't one...a thing we all know) but a way in which the GM can can forgo the traditional "my way or the highway" syndrome that is so very, very pervasive.


Isshia

My bad, Red, apparently I missed that one post of his. I stand corrected.

I will back off enough to say that if people think I've been browbeating them, I'm sorry. I don't apologize for my debating style, but I don't ever intend to cause hard feelings with it.

To answer Jhalisin's question, I am comparing the GM to the individual players. The most important thing about a game is that people have fun, and the GM has exactly the same right to have fun as anyone else. If the GM is not having fun, something is wrong with the game. OTOH, if only the GM is having fun, something is wrong with the game. And if everyone but one player is having fun, something is *still* wrong with the game.

The GM is not more important than the players. At the most basic level, the GM has exactly the same right to have fun as anybody else. The GM is responsible for more, but even in the most traditional of groups, the other players bring a lot to the table as well.

I suppose the best way to put it is this: Even the GM needs to bow to the will of the Group. If the Group says: "This doesn't fly at the table", then it doesn't fly, regardless of what any one individual has to say about it. And the GM is just one member of the Group, without any special rights or authority over it.

Haha, don't worry, you haven't. As much as I think you're wrong, I still consider you to be one of the more mellow denizens of the Dumpshock community.

Again, with the needed a closer read of my post. I actually mentioned the player helping to craft the setting.

So Cain,
You know how you just don't approve the day job quality? That is a valid choice made for valid reasons and is an example of the GM being more important that the other players. No other player besides the GM should be able to just unilaterally shoot down a quality like that. It is reasonable a GM to make that move because it is better for the table. Also about a GMs power to shot down rules lawyers, my table runs pretty much everything on consensus . And like everything run on consensus it's a nightmare some times. There are totally times where some one will ask to do something clever and reasonable that isn't explicitly covered in the rules. Then we all good naturedly try to figure it out. Sometime that takes so long we realize it would have been better to make any old snap judgment 15 minuets ago and get on with it. That's why you seed power a GM.

Not quite the same thing. I tell players, flat-out, that I despise the flaw, I've always despised the flaw, and that I don't know how to cope with it. If the group decides that it's still a good flaw to use, I'm overruled and I have to deal with it. Generally, it doesn't come to that. I just negotiate out what the player really wants, and work it out from there.

In one SR3 game, I had two different players come to me with that flaw on their sheets. Rather than throw down the GM banhammer, I asked each of them why they needed the flaw. One guy took it so he could take the Ninjutsu martial art, so for him, I just substituted a different flaw. The other guy wanted it to represent his character's "real job" working as a HTR pilot for DocWagon. That took a little more work; I think we ended up with a few high-rating Docwagon employees as contacts, representing his bosses and crew. We also made up a "Dependents" flaw, based on the GURPS rule, representing the people he was responsible for. Not quite easy, but everyone got what they wanted and walked away satisfied.

The important thing here is that everyone had fun. The players liked the replacements, since they got what they wanted in even more detail than before; and I didn't have to cope with that @%#&#!! flaw. 'I didn't act as if I was any more important than any other player; there was no need. I didn't have to use a GM authority throwdown of any stripe, I just used open and honest communication. I find that works much better than any amount of: "I'm the GM, and I say so."

Just tossing my two cents here, but not only do I see where Cain and TheGothFather are going with this, but I completly agree. Its not as crazy/hopeless as you guys make it seem. Also I appreciate Cain's and Goth's well thought out and polite posts, its a pleasure to read them!

So even if a GM is just facilitating consensus that still puts them in a position of power. Two characters in that game got stat-ed in ways you like better for no reason other than that you liked them better that way. I can tell you didn't cram anything down anyone's throat, and they might even like what the got more ... but that just wouldn't happen for any old player. That dynamic combine with SR needing a GM to be played at all is what people are calling "more important" however accurate the term. And those two things are very real, and not incompatible with the notion that GMs should only exercise unilateral power when the whole table is cool with that particular action, and be looking to maximize everyone's fun.

How is it a position of power? Why does there need to be a position of power?

Adjudicating the rules doesn't require power, it only requires a willingness to abide by the decisions reached; prior to review and discussion AFTER the session is over. No "power" needs to be exercised. Only a modicum of self control. Outside of a session absolutely no "power" exists, simply the desire to reach a workable consensus.

Shared responsibility games are not the GM laying down for anyone. Rather it requires the Players stepping up to take some responsibility for how the game operates as a whole themselves.

Look, I've read your posts. In essence I agree with most of what you say, but not necessarily with how you are saying it. I think the verbage caters to easily to an old worn out method that causes infinitely more problems than it solves and feel that the removal of the idea of "power" and it's exercise can go a loooooong way to alleviating the problem.


Isshia

Thanks, man!

Facilitating consensus does not require power, it requires respect. I'm going through custody mediation now, and the mediator has no power to force us to accept anything. We listen, and take into account what he says, because he occupies a position of respect. Respect is not the same thing as authority. I think you'll agree that a GM needs to earn the respect of hs group, otherwise you'll have serious problems. GM's who demand respect without earning it can cause tremendous issues.

Allrighty, let me try to settle this mathematically:

V = Value
I = Importance
P = Players
GM = Game Master

GM > P and P > GM are both wrong statements.

V(GM) does not equal P.

V(P) does not equal GM.

I(GM) is equal to I(P).

Perfect

I suppose I made a mistake in using the terms that had previously used. More specific than power, with it's connotations of the tyrannical GM, is influence. It should be obvious that if you are involved in a consensus process you have some influence over it than if you did not participate, yes? The GM is involved in more consensus processes than any other player. So they have more equal shares. Cain got a player to use a different implementation of a character concept. No other player would have a reason to influence another's character like that.

That isn't necessarily the case. In our group it is simple democratic process, majority wins. Period. And sure, we often have a Player (Peter in this case) who has tremendous input on how other characters get structured, because he knows how things run. he checks with me as to implementation for most of it, but trust and respect mean that I don't even really double check anything he does. In another type of group he'd be a rules lawyer and a pain in the ass. in this one he is a HUGE asset. So he has both reason and responsibility and right (as he is asked to participate by the other Players) to influence other characters. And it works out great.


Isshia

I think i just blushed.. :> - Well you of course can't agree on everything, but working out houserules - doing certain things during a session - reassuring the rules and such works fine if you have a player that knows the game. It really is - as Isshia said- all about respect. If the 2 persons involved respect each other - and the others opinion - it does work just smooth as silk.

That's not necessarily the case. In my current group, one of the characters is an elven supremacist. So many of the other players were human, that they asked him to tone it down a lot. He did, and things ran much smoother. I didn't get involved as a GM at all.

In the first example, I didn't do anything more than what any other player could do. I asked, I discussed options, and we found a mutually-satisfactory conclusion. You don't need authority to do that. You *do* need respect, but there's more to that than being the GM. Like Cantankerous said, sometimes you have a player who also has earned respect. There's no reason to be jealous; instead, work with him to help the other players.

See, but then you go and say ... "he checks with me as to implementation for most of it, but trust and respect mean that I don't even really double check anything he does."

You don't say ... "he checks with the group' or even 'we don't really double check".

Why does he check, or even feel that he has to check with you rather than the group as a whole?

I am working on behalf of the group, if this and that guy wants his Diving skill upped - I do it with him. I know how the rules behind it work, I just sit down, subtract the Karma - and add the skill with the Player.
We are the tinkers behind the group, mainly him being the DM of course, but OF COURSE we check with the Group if they are okay with any decision/rule he or we work(s) out!

Edit: Not every Player is interrested in Character-Creation Rules.. some just want the Char to be able to do this, this and that. Then you need people that understand the Rules to sit down and work it out. So yeah- in that procsess some Players get "excluded" - but thats because they want to be =).

No friend, not with me over others, but with me as well as others. Since I'm officiating the rules I have to be on the same page in detail...but no rule lasts longer than it's ability to withstand the group vote...too, there is the "for most of it" part. Sometimes he doesn't, because there is no need. And if there is a question we go through it. Likewise he checks with others before with me on some occasions, because I'm not there and they are. There is none the greater none the least. Period.


Edit: As an addendum, not just we two work things out in other games. In this one we are the only two who went in to re-writing rules sets, but Sandra and Fina both have been rules implementers on many occasions.

Help me to understand why you think statements like "There's no reason to be jealous; instead, work with him to help the other players. " Who do you think is being jealous?



Ok so you have an other player who is involved in all character generation. You still write up and describe all the settings, who's there, what kind of opposition the PCs face etc. And yes that could be challenged for any reason but has it? GMs set more down than anyone else that is what I'm talking about.

how do you people not see that by actually doing something that someone else doesn't, whether or not they could have, means they had more influence over the situation. Yes I've had a player/co-gm at my table come up with the core idea for a setting I ran. But the other players didn't contribute to that setting's creation so he and I had more control over the situation. It's not that anyone can't have an hand in anything they want to it's that they don't and the GM does.