How to run a Game (Part 2)

Back when I started running game sessions, we did it by instincts. If something didn't work one time, you might try to tweak it before trying it again, and if it didn't work a second time, you might abandon that idea. If something worked, you did it again, you might tweak it to make it better, or you might try to mix things up to keep players on their toes. 

Different people would build up different toolkits of techniques and ideas, and you'd know what to expect from a certain overtones games because they often used the same stories, same methods of enhancing the play experience, and same tweaks to the rules. Going to a convention made for a great crash-course in techniques and methods for running a game. It also helped to highlight some ideas that we didn't really have terminology for at the time. 

I remember being told "hey, you've really got to play one of Mr. X's games. He tells the best stories."... and then when I played one of his games,  it was super railroady. He was basically a failed novelist and anyone who deviated from his intended storyline was met by constant blockades. He did the voices and accents, he wove detailed descriptions to rival Tolkein or Robert Jordan, there were moments when you really felt the epic tale weaving around you, but there was no player agency. Either you followed his choices, or you sat back and watched... if you sat back too much, and it was your characters time to do something in his story, he'd even prompt you what to do. It wasn't the type of session I enjoyed, but when various people said he was one of the best I just thought that maybe I was doing it wrong. I later discovered that many other gamers at conventions didn't get the hype about him, and most just agreed he was one of the best, even though they'd given up playing his games because they had a lot of the same issues I did. 

(On another note, I saw some of his session notes for running a game, and they were often typed pages, with scenes laid out in order, often dozen pages per scene, with dozen of scenes to play through in a 3-4 hour convention timeslot, or dozens to run through in a multi-session story. So that was often over a hundred pages per session. These actually were novels or screenplays). 

Far more recently, I was at a home game. I never get much chance to play, so I jumped at the opportunity to play in a Pathfinder session... because that was the only game going. Similar style, with a positive factor that this time there was a little more freedom, and a negative factor that the GM didn't know the full rules but liked an antagonistic play style. Ebery time a player rolled badly, there would be nasty repercussions, and every time they rolled well there would onlybe a minor advantage generated. Every time a player tried something tricky to escape one of his traps, the whole game would lock up until he had referenced and cross referenced a dozen parts of the rules to work out a way that the player was wrong. I tried talking to some of the other players, and it was all very "Stockholm Syndrome"... they'd just tell me that this was how roleplaying games worked. They didn't particularly enjoy it, but the GM offered more freedom than a computer game. Similarly, they enjoyed watching each other's misery when they weren't currently the victim of the hour. I just had to walk away from that game. 

So I guess my first two points in the series are pretty simple...

1. Listen to your players. Be willing to follow their ideas and choices, because they are probably engaging in an RPG for a bit of escapism and some adventure that they can't find in the real world.
2. Be willing to try new things. Learn from other people's games, experiment in your own games, don't get stuck in a rut, especially one that might be annoying to your players.