Musing About GM Philosophy

I recorded a video about a month ago, representing my first time talking to a camera in literally years. I watched Matt Colville's video about GM Style (see below), and I had a couple of ideas about stylistic axes (the plural of "axis" and not multiple wood chopping tools). Honestly, my ideas speak more to a GM's philosophy rather than style, but there's enough overlap that still feels relevant.

I wanted to mirror Matt's walk-and-talk format, though that's much more of a challenge on a busy stretch of road during the first warm day of the year in late March. Plus I have crappier equipment.

The Heroes' Story Vs. The World's Story

One of the first questions a GM struggles with (or assumes an unspoken answer to) is the question of what the characters mean in the context of the world. Are they a group of uncultured sods from the backcountry trying to make themselves relevant in a city of established customs and closed society? Or are they somehow anointed to move the very world itself and put it on a different path?

The answer may change over time as situations change and the world's people get to know the characters. With the GM playing as every other character inhabiting the world, they need a solid handle on what the heroes can ask for and/or get away with.

The heroes (player characters) obviously occupy a central position in the game (or else the GM should write a novel instead), but how does their story compare with the world's story? Do they significantly overlap, or will the heroes spill their blood and accomplish their goals in relative obscurity?

Your chosen game system and world informs this choice. A cyberpunk world contains piles of heroes who go against the corporations only to have their corpses litter a nameless landfill. Your low fantasy game could start with the heroes as conscripts, barely surviving a suicidal charge against a powerful adversary's army. The world only cares much later, after the heroes find their calling and the leverage to create change.

Fate Vs. Destiny

This particular philosophical axis examines the engine that drives the story, and most games enjoy a blend of approaches. Do the dice make the decisions, or can the players at the table override the need for rolls and declare what happens through fiat and pure storytelling? Do the game's rules overrule the fiction, or will the power of the Narrative overwrite what the dice tell us about what happens?

We start straying into age-old questions on how role-playing games are "supposed" to work when we consider this philosophical axis. "The dice say this happens, and the rules of the game govern reality!" "That makes no sense at all! Why did you even roll when that outcome goes beyond the fiction's limits that we all agreed to when we started?"

Those nearly invisible, deeply-held beliefs makes thinking about this question a little tricky, but explicitly setting expectations in advance based on the GM's position along this axis should head off these conflicts about "you're not playing right". It roughly comes down to how seriously you view the directive "Play to find out", though there are exceptions in all sorts of specific situations. In short, this one's well worth thinking about, but it's a tough nut to crack if you have players who don't think you're honoring the spirit of the game by having different beliefs about how the game should work.

This ties back to the question of Player Character centrality to the world, and it extends to GM-controlled characters in the game world. If the heroes are destined to perform some act and everyone knows it, will a series of terrible dice rolls resulting in a TPK end the story? Will some powerful in-game agent aid them in overcoming their grim fate? Or do their corpses molder in some forgotten grotto while the world suffers and starts looking for new heroes touched by prophecy?

It's reductive, but we could boil this axis down to one question: In your mind, which has more impact on what happens next, the story or the rules of the game?

The Video In Question

Here's Matt Colville's video that kicked off my thoughts.

There's more to mine and talk about in this video, but I wanted to get a couple of ideas recorded before I forgot. Maybe there's more to come later. We'll see what happens next.

Thank you for watching and reading, and please let me know what you think. I'll probably make more videos in the future, though I'm sure my output will be sporadic at best given the state of *gestures vaguely at everything*.