I’m a gamer. My friends and I have spent a lot of time playing various table top RPG games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Mage. The amount we play has tapered off of the last few years as the group spread out, got married, had kids, became adults. We do still game, and some of those games have been running for years, other games have fallen by the wayside for various reasons.
Recently I’ve found myself thinking about gaming. I’ve never been good at the histrionics part of the game. I can find interesting ways to combine rules, feats and spells but describing the outcome is not a strong point. I’ve always felt awkward describing scenes and actions. I think this is the basis of my not running games. Much to the disappointment of my friends. In the last, 15 I think, years I’ve been gaming I’ve run twice. Once for a group and once as a solo. The group game was too long ago to remember how it went. I was told the solo was good, but it didn’t feel solid to me. Maybe I didn’t have a good enough grasp on where I wanted it to go, maybe it was something else.
The lack of description confidence is part of the reason I hang in the background in games. I’ll let the other players take the lead on quests, satisfy their personal agendas. I’ll tag along and do my bit, and sometimes come up with ideas that cause the GM to think, but don’t typically look to take the lead in games. This can, obviously, have a detrimental effect on character development. Especially after a character, played for 2-3 years, dies and you start anew. Developing the skeleton for the new character to hang off, while hanging in the shadows, is difficult.
Maybe this is an experience thing. Practice makes perfect and all that. I guess the question becomes, how to you get better at the descriptive aspects, the creative aspects, the design parts of the game?
How do you transition from a player in the background to a GM? Or, with smaller increments, a player that steps in the fore more often.
I know our main GM would love for more of the descriptive elements in the game. Hell, he’ll give XP rewards for descriptive write-ups of game content. Die modifiers if you give good descriptions of actions.
So, I ask you, gentle reader, how do you work on your descriptions, your histrionics, your character and world development? How do you make your game better?
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
I tend to fall into the same role you describe with my current group of gamers. I generally let others take the lead when it comes to quest decisions and only really speak up when I need to. Part of this is that I haven’t been gaming with this group for that long and I’m only now starting to feel like I know the others well enough to start acting as my character more often. I’ve started trying to make my character’s attitudes on important decisions known more as of late, but I’ve got a long way to go.
The other part, for me anyway, comes from insecurity. Even though everyone else is talking in character and getting into the story, part of me feels slightly embarrassed by it still, which is silly. That’s something I need to get over in order to enjoy the game even more. What’s strange is that I really enjoy acting, but it doesn’t come as naturally in a the game setting. I’m not sure why that is.
Further to the acting thing, maybe it’s just a matter of getting to know my own character more. I think I still tend to make decisions in the game a little like I would make decisions, not how the character would. Perhaps some actor character exercises would help to get to know the character more and understand his actions better…or maybe that’s too much work. :) I guess it depends how much you want to get out of it.
In terms of moving into the role of DM/GM, I think a desire to create a world and tell a story in it is the first step. Then getting past the feeling that people are going to not enjoy it is the next step. Honestly, probably the only way to do that is to just start and once you have a few sessions of fun under your belt it will come more naturally. The more you do it, the better you’ll get and the more you’ll enjoy it.
Owen
Took me a while to get here – ah, the pressing demands of the thirtysomething-recapitulating-his-twenties.
Experience is certainly a factor. As time has gone on, I can look back over earlier games from the years gone by and see what I think is obvious improvement in my skills as a DM (and, to a lesser extent, a player – I think my PC skills lag, mostly due to a lack of use, and that is a telling fact.). Yet, addressing the issues of what you’ve shorthanded as “histrionics” is less of an accumulated experience thing than a way of viewing the possibilities of the experience. Of course, mastering the mechanics and learning how to improvise comfortably is important; equally so the skill to manage and negotiate between the strong, intelligent personalities the hobby tends to attract; and equally, there is an obvious measure of self-confidence that needs be there if you’re going to present the products of your imagination to an audience of any kind – this issue is present in playing, but the fact is that as a DM one is forced to be in the spotlight constantly revealing new ideas, new characters, and new plots, and every one is under scrutiny by a diverse group of observers with refined and specific ideas of what works and what doesn’t. I get pre-game jitters pretty frequently, and usually just have to throw myself in. The main factor, however, is about an understanding of the Shared Imagined Space (SIS).
I’m borrowing this term from the theory work of Ron Edwards (who’s kind of an asshole, but a lucid theorist nonetheless), who devised the ides of dividing roleplaying games as they are played into three groups – Gamist, Simulationist and Narrativist. I’d recommend reading his essays, the introductory ones anyway, since I have found them a very clarifying lens with which to consider the game. The main thing I’m concerned with here, however, is his concept of Shared Imagined Space – the virtual, imaginary environment in which all the action of play occurs. The thing to understand about this space is that most of what it has in it we have to put there. It contains genre convention in a pre-existent way – if I say “You find yourself in a tavern.”, the players will all derive a multitude of images and expectations in their mind from that – flagons of ale, barmaids, a fireplace, a barkeep polishing glasses, liquor, stew, gambling, smoking, wood floors, roughneck loners and what have you. However, every additional detail you provide enriches the SIS. If I mention that the barkeep has a trained raven, that’s notable. If I mention that the flagons are made of gold, that’s notable. If I mention that the floors are marble and the fire burns green – well, we’re in a very different tavern.
The same applies to every aspect of description. Combat is one much discussed example – and one where I see the best application of my “stunting” rules (+2 for a description; +4 for a detailed description involving aspects of the environment; +6 for a description that forces the group to utter “That’s fuckin’ cool.”). An important aspect of these rules that they don’t always come into play – in run-of-the-mill, balanced combat (which doesn’t exist in my games), there is no need. It becomes a Gamist, mechanical deployment of dice and modifiers working towards the goal of either mere survival (i.e. continuing to play) or the reward after the econcounter (i.e. info, XP, loot, ears, whatever). But where things are tight – where the players are engaged and need to win – they suddenly have an avenue outside the baseline mechanics of the system to do so – in other words, they do cool shit to win. And since the enjoyment of everybody at the table hinges the presence of cool shit in the SIS, “stunting” aims to raise everyone’s enjoyment. Its simply more fun to hear about a swashbuckler leaping off a bannister and swinging on a chandelier to crash down on his foes than to hear someone list off a numeric report of success and failure. The combat becomes auto-telic – for its own sake – rather than directed towards something else. And description enables that, largely (though, of course, facial expressions, voicework, pacing, all these play a role). The SIS can be as rich as a good movie or novel, moreso even because it spontaneously expands to meet the needs of the narrative. The SIS is theoretically boundless.
So where should a DM get his material? I mean there’s pre-arranged stuiff and improvised stuff, but where does it come from?
Rule One is, like Indiana Jones, “Steal Reverently”. If you see something in a flick, a book, a poem, a magazine, even a game supplement, and say “That’s fuckin’ cool.”, rip it off. Put a twist on it. Change the context. Develop a storehouse of sequences and images in your mind to draw from as necessary. I just read this great line in The Road about a subterreanean animal having something like “eyes like white spider eggs”. Awesome, said me, and stole it immediately. So devour media and plunder accordingly.
Rule Two? “Think about your games.” This means past games too, experiences that were good, but also the game you’re running. Ask questions of yourself. Why is that the way it is? What is likely to be there? How would that NPC react based on what you know? How would that PC react based on what you know? Doing this in your spare time gives you an entertaining side hobby (staring out the window) but also a reservoir of details to draw on when needed.
Rule Three is “Pay attention and reward what you want to support.”. Thinsgs are being proposed by the players all the time; listen to them and you’ll absorb countless details from the wider SIS. Too many DM’s (myself included) failto do this, and they lose an invaluable resource. If you toss out descritpion, players will follow; if you reward description, players will flock. Too often the player’s try to enrich things and get shut down. The act of building up the SIS should very seldom involve the word “No”; it should obey the precepts of improv, where the sanctioned responses include “Yes; Yes, but; Okay, but how?”. Build on what they give you.If they assume the presence of something, define it for them in terms of detail.
Rule Four (with tongue firmly in cheek) is: “Learn to love the sound of your own voice.” Description is like good poetry – cultivate a desire for people to hear that poetry. Small, specific phrases; particular or unusual words. The game I ran on Saturday was a new one, for a group I’d never run for before, and soon they’ll be heading into a nearby desertarea called “The Crust”. What a great word. It immediately conjures a very specific set of associations, and will make for a unique environment within the SIS.
Rule Five: “Five senses, and Variety, Variety, Variety.” Touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight; plus the way things move and the intuitive impressions. Keep it fresh. Do new things. This is somewhat self-explanatory, but it gets too easy to fall back on habit and generic tropes. When you describe a dragon as “huge”, you aren’t doing anything new or noteworthy. When you describe its motion as “rippling”, you are. When you talk about “the stench of chlorine”, you are. When you mention “a mouth like a tar pit” or “roar like a thunderhead”, you are. When you talk about it “raising your neck hairs” or ” making your heart beat faster” you are.
The Shared Imagined Space – it is an alembic of strange alchemy, and you get out of it what you put into it, so put shit into it and see what happens.
Owen, one of the best things I’ve done to get a better handle on my characters is to write a background. Where did the character come from and why does he do what he does. This both helps me get a handle on the character and helps the GM by adding plot ideas or world features. There is a good article on character backgrounds over at Roleplaying Pro.
One of the things Anderson did in our Atlantis game is to give characters background points. You get a certain number that you can allocate to things on a scale of 1-5. 1 you have a mild interest in something, 5 you’re a fanatic and will do anything you can to advance that goal. The benefit of the points is XP, if the background is the focus of the adventure and you have 3 dots you get 3x’s the XP. (Granted, this is a game where all the leveling requirements are 10x the norm, but adjustments could be made).
The backgrounds are interesting as it makes you think about what the wants and desires of you character are and how much those things effect them. Also lets you drive the campaign a bit if you want some extra XP, heh. Or, depending on the number of points can force the campaign in different directions.
Anderson, thanks for the response. I know you’ve mentioned the GNS stuff before. Reading it over again, I’d have to say I’m probably sitting firmly in the Gamist section. Mostly focusing on what can I do to break whatever the GM is trying to throw at us.
The five rules are great, especially rule five. It’s surprising how much a good descriptive word can make a sentence pop (and now I know why my wife re-edits so many times).