Who’s in Charge?

Roleplaying can be a stressful pursuit at times with power struggles, ego trips and personality clashes spreading across any gamers table. Mark Newbold examines the possible pitfalls and pratfalls of the beautiful game…

“There can be only one.” Connor MacCloud, Highlander, 1986.

But to what was the great Scottish Immortal referring? Eternal life? The number of World Heavyweight Champions at any one time? The amount of genetalia handed out to any one person to use in any one lifetime?

No.

He was, in fact, referring to the correct amount of people who wield the ultimate power at a gamer’s table. And it’s a singular number.

One. Half of two. As in, “There can be only one.”

Now, to the average inhabitant of a modern democracy this may seem extreme, hard-line and unreasonable. But, from the point-of-view of the average gamer (i.e. – me) this is a fair and sensible way of continuing with proceedings. Why? Well as they say, too many cooks spoil the broth. And too many people shouting the rules at a gaming table can be equally bad. The occasional rules clarification or correction – that’s fine. Any GM worth his salt will readily accept a rule correction if he’s proved wrong (unless he can think on his feet and come up with a reason why it’s right). Imagine six lawyers seated around a table, all arguing individual cases, and five of them deferring to one of the others…

You can’t can you?

Well, this is why we have a GM. He (or indeed she) is `The ultimate power in the universe.’ Their every word and whim should be catered for and obeyed. Dictums passed down from on high must be followed to the letter (unless it’s something mundane like `Do us a favour and, make another cup of tea, will you?’) It’s a galactic constant – follow the leader and you won’t get lost.

…but…

In an instance like this, who exactly are we playing the game for?

It’s all very well following the GM through his/her pre-planned jaunt to the darkest depths of the Alorean jungle, or traipsing across the red sands of Janos or hiding out from vicious bounty hunters in the mazes of Chancai, but why are you even there? Are you there to play out the GM’s story or are you there to progress your character?

I liken this dilemma to the eternal argument between screenplay writers and movie producers. The writer (gamer) has a screenplay with vital character moments, moments that will advance the character, build his relationships with other characters and generally involve the character in the story.

This stuff takes up sixty minutes of a two-hour film.

The producer (GM) wants to ditch all the drippy character stuff and add a car chase, three sex scenes and a Mexican standoff.

This takes up ninety minutes of a two-hour film.

Somewhere along the line there should be a compromise. But, as everyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the cinema knows, the producer is king. There will be car chases, sex scenes and Mexican standoffs. And to hell with the characterisations. Unless you’re a Spielberg or a Lucas, who produces and writes, then you’re leaving Hollywood with a bitter taste in your mouth. This is a similar scenario to the relationship between gamer and GM.

A gamer rolls his dice and the results are down to 100% fate - good luck, bad luck nothing else. A GM’s dice rolls, usually made behind a screen, are subject to a whole different set of variables and interpretations. Some arbitrary rolls are made, percentage dice and the like, some rolls are made without explaining what they are for. This differs with every GM, depending on their particular style and procedure, but the gamers lot never changes. If the GM decides to have a Rancor appear just when your character decides to admit to his partner that he’s been sleeping with his mechanic, then there’s not an awful lot he/she can do. It’s either run very fast and talk later or be bloody-minded, tell the story and become a toothpick in record time.

Some choice.

Unless you actually tell the GM what you want from a game you are totally at their mercy, as you should be. But surely this negates the whole point of the game, knowing what’s going to happen. Awkward huh? Obviously after a time, any good GM will be able to mix it up and give gamers various styles of scenario, or know when to slow the pace and let the characters talk. Some GM’s love it when you hardly roll a dice during a four-hour scenario (Jonathan Hicks would regularly run games when we would do nothing but have our characters talk their way through situations – my personal favourite kind of game). Louis Turfrey preferred the action games, which very much fitted in with his style of gaming – powerful characters with a preference for action. Paul Squire enjoyed mixing his games up in a very similar style to Jonathan, and usually made the effort to move the focal point of the game away from Amagad and get us around the sector. Jason Brown’s style was to follow a pre-planned story plot, describing in infinite detail every move, building, person, blade of grass and oxygen molecule along the way. Again, his own unique style.

But us gamers had the same obstacles to manoeuvre around in each game. Speaking for myself, I prefer a good mix, lots of story threads and references. With our games taking place in the Setnin Sector (and with the massive amounts of information available to us – see the guides section of this site) we never had a shortage of people and places to go and interact with. So if I had a game where it was continual crisis I didn’t get much enjoyment from it. And as we used to have a rotational system of GM’s, if the die was cast for a scenario and you didn’t like it you knew that you were stuck with it for four or five weeks.

So again the question – who are the games for? GM’s to make us act out their stories, or gamers to make GM’s build a framework for the characters. I’d have to say it’s a mixture of both.

If GM’s feel they are only there to service the characters then it’s a waste of their time planning a story. They may as well make it up on the spot (and believe me – I know a few GM’s who could pull this off brilliantly, and some who would attempt it disastrously.) By the same token if a gamer feels that he/she’s only there to act out the GM’s storylines then it’s no fun either.

So, what to do?

Roll the dice, save your characters points and always show your best poker face.