Issue 357 of Roleplaying Tips features the article 9 Spheres Of Influence: My Broad RPG Planning Checklist, which ranks game planning considerations in order of importance.
Here are the first two “spheres,” the idea being that more important spheres contain and influence successively less important ones:
- GM preferences
- Player preferences
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, as the author says, “There are many exceptions to this, and if the list doesn’t reflect your group’s structure, then feel free to re-order it,” and I like the overall concept — it’s a neat framework.
On the other hand, I think the first two spheres should be reversed, with player preferences in the top spot. Without a group of interested players, it doesn’t really matter what your preferences are as a GM — your game won’t be much fun.
…Except that if you, the GM, aren’t really jazzed about the game, then there won’t be a game at all — which suggests that GM preferences are paramount, at least in some ways. This is a toughie — what do you think of the “sphere” concept, and the order of importance?
Having just come off of a record 3 straight campaigns as a player i am now returning to the DMs chair for our weekly group, and i’ve decided that for me the players preferences are most important. After all, if you aren’t running a solo campaign you’re outnumbered, and if everyone can’t have a good time what’s the point?
I feel it is the DM’s job to help the PCs tell their story and not to railroad them through what the DM wants to do. If you have a story you desperately want to tell then write it. If you let a group of PCs go anywhere near it you will find a lot of disappointment down that path. Just look at the damage any group can do to a carefully crafted encounter. Ugly. If it isn’t a story you want to run just be upfront with your group. Maybe someone else is ready to run something.
With this in mind i have reintroduced PC pre-campaign surveys and will require character based goals in their PC histories. That should allow me to keep my planning efforts in the right area to give them the most enjoyment out of our sessions.
This time around i’m looking to pour my energy into encounter preparation and running smooth exciting sessions. Let the PCs decide the plot arc they’ll follow, and i’ll find the challenges for them along the way.
I’ve always been comfortable running things ‘on the fly’, i may even be at my best when i can keep it fast and loose. So i’ll try to keep encounters versatile enough to use in a lot of situations, and make sure i have plenty of random tidbits to grab from when they go off in random directions.
Good Gaming
I respectfully submit that this information can be easily had without the necessity for a survey. Simply have the players discuss their characters — preferibly in character — and go from there. Even a brief background should tell you all you need to know.
Formalizing the process with pre-game surveys just seems so cold and calculating…the game and the character’s motivations should be more organic in nature, not plotted out to the Nth degree.
All IMO, of course.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Mutual preferences being optimal, but not always achievable, I’d have to fall on the GM preference edges out players, but only slightly.
The reason: Ultimately, someone has to negotiate the players’ preferences. The players themselves aren’t a monolithic entity. Their desires for a campaign have to be distilled, differences between them ironed out, and then the adventure itself created by the DM. Ultimately, his choices are the ones that matter, even if a large amount of player input is considered.
Player preferences were a big thing that I went over in the social contract talk for the latest game that I am running. I’ve kind of limited their character options by setting the group as a military special ops unit in a fantasy setting. That is the general framework of the game, because it is the type of game that I wanted to run. I let everyone know this before I asked them to join the game, so they all knew what they were getting into. Still I wanted to make sure they were getting what they wanted out of the game.
I made a list of things they said they wanted to see, and I plan to craft some adventures around those. I’ve also got it written down in my session flow outline that I ask what they would like to see in upcoming sessions and what direction they would like the game to take. This isn’t an approach I’ve used before but I am incredibly excited about it. I rarely paln out a session too far in advance, and getting player input means they enjoy the session a little bit more since they know what is coming up and are expecting it.
I’d just collapse them into one sphere, “Gamer Preferences,” and be done with it.
I’m with Walt C. on this. When deciding what to play, if there is a conflict between what the GM would prefer and what the players would prefer, that’s going to be a campaign that sucks for someone.
The only way out of the dilemma is to find a setting, tone, theme, etc. that satisfies players and GM preferences simultaneously — i.e., to stop the separation between those two altogether, for the purpose of this particular decision.
If the preferences of all players in the group can’t be met somehow (not *top* preferences of *everyone*, necessarily, but preferences nonetheless), then the group has deeper problems than “what do we play next”.
I think the deciding factor for me is this:
A game can survive losing some or even most of its players.
A game rarely survives losing the GM.
So I think the order makes sense to me.
Roger,
On Friday nights, I’d agree with you. On Sunday afternoons, I can’t disagree more strongly 😉
I think there’s a bit of play here because a good player (player here meaning “someone who plays the game”, thus the GM is included) should be keeping an eye out for what his fellow players like and dislike and try to include those things they like in play when and if possible while avoiding those things they dislike. Thus a GM who runs a game they like but their players (traditional) aren’t so jazzed about can still give their players a good time by including issues and hot buttons that the players enjoy. This can also be done by the players with respect to the GM by not engaging in activities that the GM doesn’t enjoy running or steering the game via their actions into the kind of conflict the GM enjoys.
I think in terms of more traditional RPGs, this is much easier for the GM to do as they have far more narrative power over the game (though the players ability to do so should not be overlooked), so in most cases, GM preference should come first. However your game is your game so your milage may varry.
In a sense, I think Walt has the right of it. It is absolutely true that without a GM psyched and excited for the game, it’s pointless. However, the players (non-GM participants) won’t play in a game they aren’t psyched about either. But rather than looking at the preferences in a prioritized way, it’s better to think about the whole process as a negotiation between all possible interested parties.
Also, part of the problem is that this comes back to the thought of do you assume your group is unchanging, or do you accept that you may gain and lose players with each campaign, possibly to the extent of effectively forming a new group for each campaign?
The whole negotiation process and whose preferences trump all others only comes into play when one insists on maintaining the same group of players no matter what.
Frank
Frank,
Not every city on Earth has a big group of players. It isn’t always that people insist on playing with the same people. Sometimes there is a very shallow gamer pool and if you want to play table top games, you have to find a way to make a static group work.
(For example, here in Poços we’ve got a couple dozen White Wolf people -which I don’t play- and maybe a dozen D&D types that I know of. Putting together a new group, or even finding new players, is next to impossible.)
GM wins. While it’s entirely possible to be a railroading rat-bastard of a GM, that doesn’t mean that the “GM is in charge” theory always works that way.
Roger gets the point pretty well, but there’s more to it than that. A playwright shouldn’t write what each member of his audience wants into a play, he should write something that he knows will appeal to the shared values of his audience.
So it’s kind of a balance. Yes, the GM comes first, but he’s got a huge responsibility to his players, so it’s not much of a lead…
Even after reading all of your comments, I’m still scratching my head over this one. I can see both sides and several aspects of the argument at the same time, and I’m still not sure what the order should be.
I think I’m coming around to the idea of the GM leading a negotiation of the entire group’s preferences (players and GM) — especially, as Cliff pointed out, when the group makeup is more or less constant.
Martin, I think that’s the right of it. Even when the group is not constant, the GM still leads negotiation. It’s just that the negotiation may be more of the form of “This is what I’m running, who wants to play?” but even then, I suspect almost all GMs would be open to “Gee that sounds cool, but can I play an X?”
But it’s also total folly to live in an absolute of “the group never changes.” You may be in a situation where new players are very hard to come by, and you will have to adjust your decision making, but eventually someone will move on, and eventually someone new will join (unless you plan on somehow all quiting gaming together, or plan on dying in a car crash together or something weird like that). Also, something HAS to give when your “constant” group includes one player who declares “I will never play D&D again!” and another player declares “I will not play anything but D&D!” Unless you give up gaming at that point, either who is in the group must change, or somehow you have to change someone’s mind. And along those lines, I do really see Ron Edward’s point that sometimes no gaming is better than bad gaming. If you really live in an area where there are exactly and only 4 other gamers available, and you can’t find something you enjoy doing with at least one of those four players, then you might as well not game. In doing so, you can perhaps instead spend energy on figuring out how to solve the problem that there are only 4 players. Perhaps there’s someone you can recruit. Or perhaps you can online game. Or perhaps you will decide that instead of spending oodles of money on more and more new games trying to find one the group will play, you will spend your money attending as many gaming cons as you can (where you will find plenty of opportunities to try new games without buying them, or you can focus on playing one or two games you really enjoy, and only buying the game books for those games).
Hmm, so here’s a thought, the order depends on whether you want to GM or play. If you want to play, player preference comes first (“This is what I want to play, I will enter negotiations drawing strength from what _I_ want.). If you want to run a game, GM preferences come first ((“This is what I want to run, I will enter negotiations drawing strength from what _I_ want.). Of course the other preferences are also important.
Frank
I should also add that since moving out to Oregon about 5 years ago, I’ve actively chosen to set aside gaming. Right now I’m doing so because of a combination of play group shrinking (though I’m pretty sure I could have 3 players if I invited the learning disabled couple back) and spending time with my fiance. The first few months out here, I got a GURPS game going, and after two sessions canned it, because it turned out not to be what I wanted to run. Eventually I started a Cold Iron campaign, but not immediately. When the Cold Iron campaign piddled out, I waited until late August to start a new campaign, being recharged by attending GenCon. When that campaign failed, we piddled around for a bit, then I decided to focus on home buying.
Every time I took a break, I found it easy to form a new group (sometimes pulling in some old players). It really helped that I had a firm idea of what I wanted to run, and was enthusiastic, because I wasn’t trying to negotiate with a player group that didn’t align well with my desires.
I suspect even without a large player base, perhaps even actually always recruiting from a small group of four or five players, that this way would still work. By taking a break, and coming back with a solid idea with enthusiasm, it will be much easier to sell it to the group of players. And if one player is totally not interested, the breaks will help that player realize all is not lost if he isn’t gaming every single week of the year. And perhaps he’ll start a 2nd campaign, with two players from your campaign who can afford to play twice a week. And perhaps after a month or two, you’ll even manage to recruit a totally new player.
The reason I chose to lump everyone together into “Gamer Preferences” is because whether GM or Players wins out is based on too many variables.
Scenario A: Gwen is reading an Eberron novel in class. Stu sees her and starts talking about a D&D group he used to play in. Fiona overhears and mentions how much she used to love playing. Gwen suggests they get together and play. When Stu asks who will be DM, Fiona eagerly volunteers.
Scenario B: My gaming group meets every Friday. We play because I actively recruited everyone. We play whatever I feel like running. If I’m having writer’s block or need a break, we simply don’t play.
Scenario C: Jason sets up a GURPS gaming group on Saturday nights. While he started GMing, Hal took over after a few months. Hal got tired, and Shiela announces that she had an idea for Star Wars. With no player objections, Shiela starts running. Two months later, Shiela’s work schedule changes and she has to leave. Hal offers to run GURPS again, but the players state that they would rather continue playing Star Wars, so Jason volunteers to retake the chair.
Hopefully, my examples model A-player preference first, B-GM preference first, and C-fluctuation.
I think it’s fair to say that, before anyone can go any further, both GM and players must (ideally) be satisfied.