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Message no. 1
From: Terry Amburgey <xanth@****.UKY.EDU>
Subject: collaborative gaming
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:06:37 -0400
Eve wrote:
>
>All right, Terry, then what I think would be good to see from you would
>be a nice description of how these wonderful games of yours went. I think
>everyone who's disagreed with you has brought up some good points and some
>potential problems that would be faced when playing a system where the players
>have as much control as the GM over the world. How did you handle these in
>your game? What kinds of things happened? What were some of the characters
>like? How, exactly, did these things run? Was everything pre-written and no-one
>ever "cheated", and if the climatic battle was over in the first five
minutes
>of the game, then so be it? How about a short sample of a scene, with the parts
>"done" by both players and GM's marked? I'm actually interested.
>
I'll use the fourth campaign I played in as an example. It was AD&D, right
at the time the Greyhawk Boxed set came out from TSR. 6 people; at the
beginning, 3 experienced gamers and 3 novices to rpgs. We decided to use the
greyhawk materials for a common world, to rotate dm duties among the 3
experienced people while the novices got a feel for gaming. When the novices
felt ready, they got their feet wet using published modules. The initial 3
dm's did their own stuff most of the time. The 3 experienced gamers agreed
to stick to published rules and jointly decide how to handle situations not
covered in the published rules. The 3 novices weren't really sure what we
were talking about but liked the notion of using the rules in the books
they'd purchased. We also decided to use the rules/guidelines for awarding
treasure and experience points.

Everyone created 3 characters [over 2 nights as I recall] using the same
rules for generation. We decided that, to ease introductions, everyone
[regardless of origins] lived in the city of greyhawk. The first 2 or 3
adventures were low level urban things just to give the pc's a chance to get
to know each other, or at least know someone who knew someone else. Then
there was a 'pool' of player characters who could get together to form a
party for a given adventure.

The referee for a given adventure would 'out of game' let everyone know if
there were any 'special requirements' to keep in mind for an adventure -
"Might want to have a druid or a ranger in the party, they come in handy
outdoors". If the players decided to bag the druid/ranger so that a paladin
could get the experience points needed to go up a level, they got to live
with the consequences.

What sort of problems did we have? Disparity in 'length' among adventures.
Some would take 2 sessions, another would take 4. This led to imbalances in
'workload' and playing time. Differences in 'style'. I for example like
'hardball' games with high adrenaline levels, others like lighthearted,
games with more grins than grimaces. We had 'alignment' problems [lawful
good vs neutral evil] but I've seen that in every game with alignments. Once
characters started reaching 'name' level we had some problems with the
mechanics of party construction [We need Fred Fighter but his stronghold is
on the other side of Furyondy, how do we get him here fast?].

We didn't have cheating. We didn't have dice fudging [I have a long list of
characters with cause of death=stupidity and a shorter list of characters
with cause of deathºd dice rolls]. We didn't have problems of player
knowledge/character knowledge [sure I know where the grandfather of
assassins lives, that is irrelevant to the fire giants I'm fighting now that
Doug is the referee]. We did not have 'house rule' problems. When something
came up we took a short break decided what we thought should happen & that
was it. And I mean a short break; I can't recall any time we had any serious
disagreements. The fact that everyone had to live with all the house rules
as both player and referee eased things considerably.

Maybe I'm more obtuse than I realize, but I fail to see the problems. Is
this approach to gaming really that bizarre? Apparently some believe that
without a 'strong' gm to control the game it will just disolve into chaos. I
guess I just have a divergent view on authoritarian versus collaborative gaming.

I've tried to give a semi-concrete example of MY preferences. Could you
explain to me where it won't work and why your preferences work better?

Terry L. Amburgey Office: 606-257-7726
Associate Professor Home: 606-224-0636
College of Business & Economics Fax: 606-257-3577
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506
Message no. 2
From: Eve Forward <lutra@******.COM>
Subject: Re: collaborative gaming
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 16:00:10 -0700
>>I've tried to give a semi-concrete example of MY preferences. Could you
explain to me where it won't work and why your preferences work better?
<<

I think this is where it comes down to it, is preferences. I prefer
-not- to know everything that's going on in the game world; I like surprises.
The "problems" of knowing what's happening that you're explaining aren't the
ones I mean; I don't use "player" knowledge either; even though I know
Harlequin is a guy from ED, my characters just think he's a powerful and
obnoxious twit. I like having mysteries and challenges created for me by the
GM; for example, in our game right now I'm pinned down in a swamp by some
heavy battle tanks, and the people who -should- be hunting me don't seem to
be, and instead it's someone else, I think, or is it just a ploy, or what?
If I already -knew- who it was, I wouldn't be thinking "What the hell is
going on!?" I'd be thinking, "Well, how can I logically allow my character
to stumble onto this fact? He can't just -know- it; that's cheating. But if
there's enough clues, he might know it, and I can't make him be in the dark
if he would have known it by now, and...."
If it's a preferences issue, then it's not a question of "working
better." If you like doing it your way, then, it "works better" for you. It
-won't- work if the players don't want it that way, or if the GM doesn't
want it that way. For example, I would not want to either run or play in a
game like yours. It just wouldn't appeal to me. I have seen a similar game,
now that I see your example; I don't exactly remember the name of it but
it was called Mage or Ars Magica or something, and all the charcters were
kept track of on index cards (at least in the game I saw) and apparently
the players all were refs or something... I don't know since I never saw
the game played because it took them several hours to try and explain it to
the new people. That didn't appeal to me either. Wargaming doesn't appeal
to me; neither does playing Magic: The Addiction. It's not saying that those
games don't "work"; they just don't sound like my idea of "fun".
My objection to your point is you are saying that your way is the
only way that is not allowing the GM to be a bestial egomaniac playerhating
*sshole. I don't belive my style of gaming = bad GMs. I think that your game
style certainly depends upon; players who are mature, players who all know
each other very well, players who can all be trusted, and players who all
have the same ideals of fairness and fun. You can't always find this, which
is probably why you haven't had as much luck as I guess you would like since.
One munchkin could wreak utter havoc in such a system. I have already mentioned
the lack of suspense. I think it would work much better in a game like **&*,
which is much less plot-deception-darkness based than Shadowrun. It also
removes some of the feel of "reality" in gaming; how many of us do get a chance
to play God with the world, instead of merely living in it? I prefer to be
a character living in the world when I'm playing, and when I'm GM'ing, I'm
not "in character", I'm helping make a story. A -good- story. I wouldn't allow
a character to be killed just because of a bad die roll if it messed up
the story; you can call that cheating if you like. I like happy endings, though,
or at least properly dramatic endings that leave players and GM's both feeling
satisfied. If I was playing in a game where the dice ruled and the story didn't
matter, I'd have to say I wouldn't enjoy it. I'd object just as much to the
tyrannical dice as you seem to object to your mythical "tyrant GM". If there's
no fun in it for me, then I have to say that system doesn't "work" for me.
But I have that feeling of arguing with a Fundie again. If you're still
convinced that all GM's are evil egomaniacs, then I guess I'm just butting
my head against your "preferences". And you can butt against mine for all I
care. I don't agree with you, and I've explained why, but we're not getting
anywhere because you have some fundamental beliefs (like a Fundamentalist)
that I just don't buy into, so we can't even get on the same wavelength. Oh
well. It provided an interesting if somewhat repetitive discussion for a
few posts.

-E
Message no. 3
From: Mika Nikolic <MNik@***.COM>
Subject: Re: collaborative gaming
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 05:18:23 -0400
this is too big of a letter just cut out the important things not the whole
fragging letter.
Message no. 4
From: Cugel the Clever <cugel@**.NET>
Subject: Re: collaborative gaming
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 00:24:42 +01.0
On 23 Aug 95 at 12:06, Terry Amburgey wrote:

[example of collaborative gaming]
[chopped not because it wasn't interesting :)]
>. Then there was a 'pool' of player characters
> who could get together to form a party for a given adventure.

Just a question which has nothing to do with the thread, but could
you indentify yourself with your characters? I asking this because we
tried a character-pool once in SR, but it didn't work out. My players
started to use the characters as tools and not as real persons. They
complained to me about that, and they prefered to play the same
characters all the time so we ditched this.
More comments on this after this:

> If the players decided to bag the
> druid/ranger so that a paladin could get the experience points
> needed to go up a level, they got to live with the consequences.

Well there's another problem I had with this system, apart from
the reason to choose a character just because of the XP needed
(but lets not go into that :), character continuality and realism: my
characters are as far as I'm concerned "real" persons. They don't
stay away from a run, just because the other team members choose to
take a decker with them this time instead of the sammie. "Frag you,
I'm going with you! Don't ya think I've to pay the bills also? And
you call yourselfs friends??!!".

> What sort of problems did we have? Disparity in 'length' among
> adventures. Some would take 2 sessions, another would take 4. This
> led to imbalances in 'workload' and playing time. Differences in
> 'style'. I for example like 'hardball' games with high adrenaline
> levels, others like lighthearted, games with more grins than
> grimaces.

Okay, if I get you right you GM-ed a campaign with three alternating
GM's, all knowing the complete background of the campaign? If it
works for you, fine, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. I'll
be a hell of a job to differentiate between character and your own
knowledge, and frankly I don't believe it's possible. There are
allways these small things that you think your character knows, but
in real you picked up as a GM.
I'm "only" playing for 13-14 years, and now we play SR with two
GM's, each playing his own campaign with different characters, but
even there it's easy to use GM-knowledge as a player, without intending
it. Many times I did try to use a contact in Seattle that I only knew
because I was GM, or did the other GM refer to a source book he shouldn't
know about (BugCity).

Fore-knowledge about a campaign you'll be playing also ruins the game
(at least for the most of us IMHO); the suprises are gone, the quest
for information has a hollow ring to it and the mayor-NPC's aren't as
mysterious or evil as they should be, just because somewhere in the
back of your head a small voice is saying: "he isn't a yakuza boss,
it's only a wannabe, the real one lives in Auburn where I planned him"
or "Look here should be a street doc somewhere".
I'm talking from experience here, I cannot recommend your kind of
game to anyone. Walking around as a player in your own GM-world
is a real lame experience...

> We didn't have cheating. We didn't have dice fudging [I have a long
> list of characters with cause of death=stupidity and a shorter list
> of characters with cause of deathºd dice rolls].

Welllll, you most certainly picked the right game-system for it. A$&$
is very forgiving once you reach level 5 and up. One hit - one kill
situations are not very common, so an error doesn't have to be
lethal. In SR a nervous lady with a streetline can kill you if the
dice don't like you (and the GM's dice like the GM, but that goes
without saying, dice always like the GM ;).
If you don't use a character pool *and* your game-system is very
lethal (read Shadowrun) then a bit of dice fudging can save the day.

You didn't really react to the question we had about that, and I
for one would certainly want to hear it...

> We didn't have
> problems of player knowledge/character knowledge [sure I know where
> the grandfather of assassins lives, that is irrelevant to the fire
> giants I'm fighting now that Doug is the referee].

Like I said, good for you, but I think you're a rare breed of
roleplayers.

> We did not have 'house rule' problems. The fact that everyone had
> to live with all the house rules as both player and referee eased things
> considerably.

Like I've said before, you don't need multiple GM's to have a
democratic approach to house rules. And I agree with you on this
point that new rules should be agreed upon by the whole group (or at
least those with enough knowledge of the rules to oversee the
consequences).

> Maybe I'm more obtuse than I realize, but I fail to see the
> problems. Is this approach to gaming really that bizarre? Apparently
> some believe that without a 'strong' gm to control the game it will
> just disolve into chaos. I guess I just have a divergent view on
> authoritarian versus collaborative gaming.

Well in fact your game could also be seen as a authoritarian game,
only in this case it was not a "dictator-model" (gawd, how I hate
this analogy of you!) but a "triumvirate-model"; three dictators
instead of one.
The "strong-GM" are your words, if you read our replies you can
see that we are dependant on our players for input and creativity,
and do not strictly rule, but more or less guide the game.

> I've tried to give a semi-concrete example of MY preferences. Could
> you explain to me where it won't work and why your preferences work
> better?

I think I did, but you've still left a lot of questions unanswered...

Maybe I can give the total opposite of your system and let you see
this can also work very well:
I'm currently playing as a PC (actually I'm playing myself) in a
Mythus campaign. The GM totally controls the game; we don't know a
thing about the rules or the world, and the rules are mostly house
rules, the guy has rewritten about half the book. I also bought the
complete set, but didn't read it on request from the GM (actually
I hate the whole system, so this has something to do with it also).

I didn't think I would like it, but it's great! You're completely free as
a player, you can concentrate fully upon playing instead of
calculating what your chances are and how much karma you'll need for
your next skill increase.

There are a lot of ways you can GM, some are better than others and
some only work for certain persons, but don't start calling them
dictators or Gods just because you like a different type of game.

Martin Steffens (Cugel@**.net / bdi05626@***.rhij.nl)
Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me
because I've got magic aaargh." (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
Geek Code v3.0:
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PE- Y+ PGP t+(--) 5? X++ R+(++) tv b+++ DI? D++ G+ e++ h+(!) r y+
Message no. 5
From: "John R. Wicker II" <jrwick00@***.UKY.EDU>
Subject: Collaborative Gaming
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 16:44:17 -0400
On Fri, 25 August, Cugel the Clever <cugel@**.NET> wrote:

>Okay, if I get you right you GM-ed a campaign with three alternating
>GM's, all knowing the complete background of the campaign? If it
>works for you, fine, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. I'll
>be a hell of a job to differentiate between character and your own
>knowledge, and frankly I don't believe it's possible. There are
>allways these small things that you think your character knows, but
>in real you picked up as a GM.

Think it through, though. Terry and I have both run Shadowrun for
our group, and our games haven't really overlapped. The reason for this is
that different characters were used, but you know what happened? When the
characters wound up in Puyallup a few sessions ago, they found themselves
talking to one of Terry's NPC's (she also happened to be a member of my
character's gang, so I knew her pretty well). It wasn't a life threatening
event, and it didn't shatter the walls of game reality. One of my players
just happened to sell her a hot car, and then moved on.
Everyone seemed to have gotten a kick out of meeting Party Girl
(Terry's NPC) for a second time, and no one used knowledge from one
character while they were playing the other character.
Terry's world and my world sit right on top of each other, without
either of us having any idea of what the other is up to in terms of
plotlines and NPC's and all that "sacred GM stuff". He runs plotlines for
one set of characters, and I run plotlines for the others. If someone needs
a handy Lone Star cop, or a fixer, what's the big deal if a familiar name
comes up. We're not talking about running someone else's adventure idea
here, we're talking about a campaign setting that is richer for having *two*
people cranking out NPC's and places.

>the mayor-NPC's aren't asmysterious or evil as they should be, just because
>somewhere in theback of your head a small voice is saying: "he isn't a
yakuza >boss,it's only a wannabe, the real one lives in Auburn where I
planned him"
> or "Look here should be a street doc somewhere".
>I'm talking from experience here, I cannot recommend your kind of
>game to anyone.

This would happen right off if you used the Major NPC's from one GM
to another, but the characters would probably be doing completely different
things under different GM's, and wouldn't have an opportunity to meet up
with the other bad guys...

>> [Terry wrote:] We didn't have
>> problems of player knowledge/character knowledge [sure I know where
>> the grandfather of assassins lives, that is irrelevant to the fire
>> giants I'm fighting now that Doug is the referee].
>
>Like I said, good for you, but I think you're a rare breed of
>roleplayers.

You've missed this one entirely- He wasn't worried about a
grandfather of assasins, he was worried about something else entirely.
Therefore, any knowledge he possessed as a GM was useless to him as a player.
If Terry's group of players is chopping away at thrill gangs in
Puyallup and my group of players is fighting with Humanis, how will it help
me to know where the secret HQ is when I'm going to a meet with the Silent P's?
Personally, I think Terry's system has a great deal of potential. I
might just talk to him about tonight when he comes over to play...


"If you aren't living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
Embrace the revolution!"
-A found poem, 1995

This mail brought to you by: John R. Wicker II
Free lance writer, Full time student, Founder: "Generation X, Inc."
Home Phone: 268-1385 BBS Number: 266-2416
E-mail: jrwick00@***.uky.edu
Message no. 6
From: Cugel the Clever <cugel@**.NET>
Subject: Re: Collaborative Gaming
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 01:23:38 +01.0
First of all, thanks for the answer, it cleared up a lot of questions
I still had about Terry's post.

On 25 Aug 95 at 16:44, John R. Wicker II wrote:

> Terry's world and my world sit right on top of each other, without
> either of us having any idea of what the other is up to in terms of
> plotlines and NPC's and all that "sacred GM stuff". He runs
> plotlines for one set of characters, and I run plotlines for the
> others. If someone needs a handy Lone Star cop, or a fixer, what's
> the big deal if a familiar name comes up. We're not talking about
> running someone else's adventure idea here, we're talking about a
> campaign setting that is richer for having *two* people cranking out
> NPC's and places.

Aha, that explains it. From Terry's post I deducted that you ran
/one/ campaign with three GM's, alternatively running the game.
This is actually a good idea, it relieves the burden from the GM by
creating a pool of minor NPC's like in the 'contacts' book, or
creating something like additions to the city sourcebooks made by
more people. As long as your players can resist making NPC's like dr.
Bob with his Ares-Firelance-Cyberarm-for-0.1-essence-and-500Y like
someone else posted, they might add some in the pool to.

> >the mayor-NPC's aren't asmysterious or evil as they should be, just
> >because somewhere in theback of your head a small voice is saying:
> >"he isn't a yakuza boss,it's only a wannabe, the real one lives in
> > Auburn where I planned him"

> This would happen right off if you used the Major NPC's from one GM
> to another, but the characters would probably be doing completely
> different things under different GM's, and wouldn't have an
> opportunity to meet up with the other bad guys...

Sorry but Terry didn't say it that way, so I assumed you /did/ use
eachothers mayor NPC's. But then I have another question:
How do you take the interaction between your and Terry's NPC's into
account? Lets say you have a Yakuza Oyabun and Terry's Mafia don
makes an incursion into the Oyabun's turf, how do you deal with that,
without telling the other to much about the plans of your NPC?
We decided to split our world completely, I'm "doing" Denver and he
"takes" Seattle to avoid this after a bad start.

> >> [Terry wrote:] We didn't have
> >> problems of player knowledge/character knowledge [sure I know
> >> where the grandfather of assassins lives, that is irrelevant to
> >> the fire giants I'm fighting now that Doug is the referee].

> >Like I said, good for you, but I think you're a rare breed of
> >roleplayers.

> You've missed this one entirely- He wasn't worried about a
> grandfather of assasins, he was worried about something else
> entirely. Therefore, any knowledge he possessed as a GM was useless
> to him as a player.

I didn't miss the point, I forgot to enlighten my remark by an
example. You might not have to worry about the grandfather when
you're fighting the giants, but when you're in the city where gramps
lives then this piece of knowledge might come in handy. I'm not
saying you'll be using GM-knowledge on purpose, but I know for myself
that when we both GM-ed in Seattle, I forgot how I got the knowledge,
and just remember that I have it. When a campaign is running for over
a year and has interrupts which lasts as long as a month, as it did in my
case, you forget a lot of things, both as GM and player. And as a GM
you cannot keep notes of every-one your players have met and where
and how the meet went. I know that in a couple of cases I just used a
contact or adress that as a player I shouldn't have known.


From your other post:
> I would just like to point out to the both of you that Terry *never*
>named *anyone* in one of his posts. All he has done is talk about a generic
>GM, using that person as an example of what he sees as a problem with
>role-playing in general, and Shadowrun in specific.

He didn't name anyone but accused all GM's in general (instead of
a generic GM), /that's/ why I reacted the way I did. If he would have
said something insulting about the Dutch, I would have reacted in the
same way; maybe he didn't name me, but I'm Dutch just as I am a GM.
I leave the other two remarks from your side as they are, reacting to
that wouldn't serve any purpose.

Greetings,

Martin Steffens (Cugel@**.net / bdi05626@***.rhij.nl)
Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me
because I've got magic aaargh." (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
Geek Code v3.0:
GLS d-(+) s+:+ a?(26) C+(++) U P? L? E? W+ N++ K? w+ O- M- V? PS+
PE- Y+ PGP t+(--) 5? X++ R+(++) tv b+++ DI? D++ G+ e++ h+(!) r y+

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about collaborative gaming, you may also be interested in:

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