Schrödinger's Gun GMing: The GM Paradigm

Welcome to the GM Paradigm article in the Schrödinger's Gun GMing series!
Disclaimer: It's dangerous when I get a little time to think.

I covered assumptions and adjustments back in Emptying Your Hypothetical Box, but we'll be diving a little deeper into Adjustment #2 here. I was thinking in the car at far-too-early AM this morning when the GM Paradigm for Schrödinger's Gun hit me.

It's all about the Ooze.

Typically in RPGs, the GM is tasked with controlling the game world. The GM takes a player's actions and provides feedback which prompts another player action, et cetera ad infinitum. Sure, GM fiat allows you to dip into the Primordial Ooze, pulling in new elements and plots and making things happen, but generally you're tied to the world.

What if you frame the GM's role using a larger scope? Try this:

A GM's job isn't about controlling the game world. It's about controlling the Primordial Ooze during play, that pile of raw creative stuff from which the game world is formed.

I can hear some of you saying, "But isn't that the game designer's job?" And you're absolutely right to a point. The game designer shapes the Primordial Ooze into the tools with which the GM and the players make the story of their game. But a toolkit doesn't contain a story, it contains the potential for many stories, each one scooped out of the Ooze and shaped by the GM and players using the provided tools. Even prepared settings only provide the backdrop for the story that the players around your table tell.

It makes no difference if the game designer produces thousands of task-specific tools, or a few flexible multitaskers, gamers can build stories using nearly anything. Personal preference colors opinions about which toolkit works better, but that discussion has no place here since we're talking about methods of GMing and not system specificity.

With this idea in mind, you can use the Ooze to make a game world for your players to explore and discover what you've created as is usually done by GMs in traditional systems. Alternately, you can decide to delegate some of your control and let your players get their hands all Oozy creating things, even during the course of play. This approach frees up options for you as GM, and it lets you spend more time on readying yourself to effectively react to whatever the players throw at you. As a GM using this paradigm, you become a producer making sure the whole story gets born far more than a director who focuses on moving characters around and the smaller details of the current scene.

Just add water.
Or better yet, creative intent.

It's the difference between the players reacting to the stimulus that the GM provides and the players taking charge of the game and having the GM make up reactions to their initiative. How this approach will work certainly depends on your group, but when you have a pile of creative types at your table, it's been my experience that they want to create more than just react.

For more on this idea of reactive vs. proactive players, check out Rob Donoghue's exploration back in August: Moving Pieces over at Some Space To Think. It's a great read and a great framework for thinking about play style. And for the record, when I think about Schrödinger's Gun GMing, I'm thinking about a system to more easily tackle play in the upper right corner of the chart, though I hope some techniques work in other quadrants as well.

Have you given your players any Primordial Ooze to shape in their character's image? Did you give them creative control over a group? A town? A country? An entire race? How did it work at your table?

Thanks for reading!

Go to the Schrödinger's Gun GMing Cover Page.

On Reading The Book In A Vacuum

This will be a wall of text, for which I apologize in advance. This blogging on my phone thing is still new to me.

So I raised an issue earlier in this very blog when it became clear to me that Rule Zero wasn't explicitly stated in the D&D 4e rule books. Some people asked what the big deal was, and that it still existed, just not in written form. After some digestion time,  I have a little more insight on why it was such a big deal to me.

I was 11 when I read Moldvay D&D. I had moved around quite a bit, and I had very few social peers that I could hang out with. D&D was new. There was nothing else like it in my life, and for me it existed in a vacuum.

The rules told me they were merely a toolbox for whatever I wanted to do with them. These are the guidelines to get you started, but after that you'll need to find your own way. That struck a chord in me and started unlocking some of the creativity in me.

For me, D&D was and is important as a creative outlet.

Sure, there are other games out there with other approaches to the rules and different advice for GMs. But I keep going back to 11 year old me, reading that staple-bound red rule book in my bedroom. And I keep asking myself if whatever game I read now can holds up on its own without all the history and unprinted guidelines and years of experience.

Yes, gaming is a social activity, but I didn't always understand that. I look for rules that will work as a first introduction to role-playing, and I respect rule books that show you ways to extend the rules into areas that nobody has ever considered.

Things are different now; I get that. I grew up before email was anything more than an annoying text-based work tool. Today's online RPG community is great, but not everybody has access to it or even knows it exists.

And for them, and for 11 year old me, I'd like to read about Rule Zero in my rulebooks.

And now you know.

Carry on!

On Path-Changing and Little Intentional Deaths

Have you ever had one of those moments when you look around and wish you could selectively re-roll parts of your life? Swap out your class and do something different? Choose a new background to reset your thinking? Move a few points around with skills to pick up something you always wanted to do but never had the time to learn?

Or do you make the character jump into the metaphysical bottomless pit, crumple up the sheet, and start from scratch? I think this is the essence of the gamer's midlife crisis. Gamers are used to playing wildly different characters in a variety of settings, so totally reinventing a life seems much less daunting than it would to a non-gamer.

The challenge comes in keeping the life essentially intact while reinventing only pieces of it to improve the character.

"But Wombat, Why Are You Thinking These Things Now?"
Last Friday I celebrated my 43rd birthday. As of last week I'm no longer the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. I haven't been able to be trusted for the past 7 years. I'm sailing through the amorphous no-man's-land in the middle of my demographic age bracket. I don't know why this birthday hit me harder than my 40th did, but I'm having thoughts of changing parts of my life more often lately.

I've made some positive changes this past year. I'm coming to grips with my job and its commute and not treating it as a temporary inconvenience. I'm earning a decent secondary income editing RPGs, something enjoyable which challenges me as I learn new methods and ideas while still sticking to a deadline. I'm reconnecting with my family. I'm discovering the sources of my frustrations and learning to control when and how they come out. I'm starting to plan again after convincing myself there's no point in even trying to fight the Cancellation Monster and his Bag of Endless Monkey Wrenches.

"Cool. What's Next?"
I have general things I want to improve. I need to start a routine to get in better shape than I am now. I could stand to lose about 20 pounds and add some muscle mass to stop the annoying creaks and pains. I have no stamina, and I blame sitting at a desk in front of a laptop for two different jobs for that. I need to carve more time out of each day to meditate. I feel guilty when I take time for myself, like I should be doing something productive instead of staring off into space or stealing a few minutes to write up a blog post like this. I know it's time spent sharpening my axe, but I still feel those pangs of should-ness. I've read a total of three pages from a book in the past few weeks. I read to feed my head, and this perceived lack of time to spend on reading makes me crazy.

These are all side projects that will make a better me. But the big question remains: Do I want to continue in my current vocation at my current workplace or should I figure out how to jump tracks before it's too late to change? Do I stick it out for a few more years in hopes of earning a feat and a few more skill points that I can put into something else?

We each get roughly 11 lifetimes. I like this idea. I hope this year will be a year of little deaths and great rebirths for me. Options spread out in front of me as far as the eye can see in Life's Intentional Buffet.

I think I may have advanced as far as I care to in my Programmer life. The question is, what do I focus on next? And how do I make ends meet during and after the transition?

Domain Game: What To Do?

Part of the Domain Game series of articles. Jump to the main page.

We've explored a simple way to describe provinces in the first article in this series. Now that you have provinces, what can you do with them? And how often?

The Domain Turn
In the original AD&D Birthright rules, a domain turn lasted a season (3 months), but you could do three actions or more during  this time. For the sake of simplicity, let's say a turn in the Domain Game lasts a month of game time.

I'll stick with the D&D 4e design philosophy for now. During a domain turn, you can perform three actions: Standard, Move, and Minor. I'll call these effort descriptors. You can use slots to perform a lesser action, so you can use your Standard slot to perform a Move or Minor action if you want.

Action Types and Scope
Different actions take different levels of effort, and some can only be done every so often to prevent a revolt. To model this, actions have a refresh descriptor: Yearly, Seasonal, or At-Will.

Every action affects a single province. If you want to expend an action to affect every province or holding type you control, raise the refresh descriptor one step (At-Will to Seasonal to Yearly). I'm thinking about requiring 2 actions of the same type in a single turn instead. That may model the extra effort better, but we'll see in playtesting.

Action List
Below is a list of actions. This is not exhaustive by any means, so if you see something missing or something that strikes you as odd, please let me know in the comments. The Domain Game is very much a work in progress, so feel free to chime in.

Actions are grouped by effort descriptor. The title is followed by the type of holding needed to initiate the action (or "Any" if its' nonspecific), then the refresh descriptor. The description covers the game effect of the action plus how it might look to a PC in the province.

"Crowning the King"
by ReptileCynrik

Standard Actions

• Claim Province (Psionic/At-Will) - Lets you take charge of a province. The previous leader will probably object, so there's a dice contest that needs to happen to see what happens. The government changes, which could be caused by a coup, or someone else assuming power, or an invasion from the country next door.
• Create Holding (Any/At-Will) - Creates a holding of score zero in the province. You charter a new group to work on your behalf in a province. PCs may see an announcement or hear about job opportunities associated with the new holding.
• Inquisition (Any/At-Will) - Uses a holding to attack and destroy a different holding. You must successfully perform this action twice in a row with the exact same holdings to destroy the target. Depending on the source you use, this action can take the form of an inquisition (Divine), a series of arrests (Martial), bankruptcy (Shadow), magical attacks (Arcane), or simply the rejection of the holding's authority (Psionic).
• Invest Authority (Any/Seasonal) - Creates a lieutenant, minister, or other named official with the authority to act on the leader's behalf. You must give control of a holding to the newly-anointed lieutenant, and the lieutenant can perform Move and Minor actions from that holding without your permission. Lieutenants give your province more actions, but too many lieutenants can lead to intrigue and rebellion.
• Oath of Fealty (Psionic/Seasonal or Yearly) - This action officially turns over power so the province is ultimately working for a different leader. It takes time to adjust to the new order, from a season for a single province to as much as a year for a larger domain.
• Redistribute Resources (Primal/Seasonal) - You can plunder natural resources or pull peasants from the fields to bolster a holding in a hurry. Permanently reduce the Primal score of a province by 1 and add 1 to any other non-Primal holding in the province. Symptoms of this action include strip mining, clear cutting forests, and crops left to rot in the fields.

Move Actions

• Muster/Train Troops (Martial/At-Will) - You can create as many units of troops as you can afford, or retrain troops with upgraded weapons and equipment, if available. This action requires plenty of money. You can muster or train only as many units as your Martial holding's score.
• Trade (Shadow/At-Will) - Removes goods from the province and ships them to a different province in exchange for different goods or money. You can trade as many trade units of goods as your Shadow holding's score. Trade caravans or wagon trains will seem common when this action happens.
• Produce Goods (Shadow/At-Will) - Takes goods and transforms it to a more finished product, like manufacturing padded armor from wool, or spears from wood and iron. Requires money and raw materials. Goods may be used to improve military units. For instance, upgrading a conscript unit to a regular infantry unit may require a trade unit of leather armor, shields, and a unit of weapons that are better than pointed sticks.
• Agitate (Divine/At-Will) - The clergy have developed the skill of influencing the emotional state of the people. Use this action to change the people's loyalty for better or worse, or to get the people on board with a particular course of action. Can cause a popular uprising if used well. PCs may notice more prevalent handbills and other propaganda on the streets, and they may hear pointed messages delivered from the pious followers of the Divine holding.
• Research (Arcane/At-Will) - Spend money and effort into finding some new knowledge, either technology like the secret of making steel, or a new magic spell. I hope to keep the technology tree very player-designed rather than a rigid structure. Different technologies will have different requirements and will require a variable number of successful Research actions to discover.
• Explore Province (Any/At-Will) - This action can uncover a wilderness's raw statistics or give you a report of all holdings in a province and who controls them. PCs may notice a survey expedition or hear people asking questions about holdings, or be counted by an official census bureaucrat.
• Harvest (Primal/Seasonal) - Gathers raw materials from the province. Most of this is food, but other resources can be developed as the province grows. You may gather one trade unit of resources per point of Primal score. Food and resources will be covered later.
• Increase Holding (Any/Seasonal) - Increases both the score of a holding and the associated score of the province. PCs may see building projects and recruitment efforts involving the holding.

Minor Actions

• Decree (Any/At-Will) - This action covers anything from holding a festival to declaring war (or peace) to bestowing honors and rewards on war heroes. Government deals with so many mundane decisions, that this action is reserved for proclamations that impact people throughout the entire province.
• Mission (Any/At-Will) - Hiring adventurers to perform a specific task. Tasks include information gathering, infiltration of a holding, stealing things, removing a military unit from active duty, sabotage, assassination, 
• Military Campaign (Martial/At-Will) - Invading a neighboring province takes at least a minor action. If the leader is present on the battlefield, it may take a Move or even a Standard action to properly execute. Defending your provinces and moving troops around to fortify or garrison defenses can be done at any time without spending an action. Moving troops into hostile territory takes some effort to defend supply lines and proceed in good order.
• Domain Magic (Usually Arcane or Divine/At-Will) - Domain Spells are large rituals that change conditions in a province. Domain Spells will have their own economy to be discussed later. Alternately, ignore Domain Magic entirely for a simpler and more realistic version of the Domain Game.

As I said, this is incomplete, but I hope it gives you a sense of the context for the Domain Game.

What actions am I missing? What actions are unclear?

The Domain Game - Main Page

Welcome to the main page for the Domain Game series of articles. If you need a lightweight way to have your PCs influence a kingdom in your game, or if you just want to play a game out of the dungeon on an international political stage, read on.

The Domain Game kicked off with the Classics Return blogfest during GenCon 2012, where bloggers took classic D&D settings and updated them to work with 4e rules. I decided to do a little something with Birthright domains, so I wrote about describing domains by giving scores to each of D&D 4e's power sources. I got some feedback that people were interested in seeing more, so I thought I'd make a cover page to collect the links to the entire series.

• Birthright Domains in 4e - Describing provinces in terms of 4e's power sources.
• What To Do? - A description of the domain turn and a breakdown of possible actions.
• Economies - How to earn money and influence from your domain.
• Trade - On gathering raw materials, making things, and trading with other provinces.