Open communication and what we want from play

Bankuei, on his blog, [[http://bankuei.blogspot.com/|Deep In the Game]], recently posted on GM burnout.

I'm not so concerned about the burnout bit, but he mentions something that can lead to GM burnout, and it's that something I want to discuss…

Even more, add in the usual "Land of Broken Wheels" style of gaming- where no one at the table will openly communicate about what it is they really want out of play. You supposed to read the minds of the players, figure out what they want, and then make sure they're having fun? For months, maybe even years of campaign play? No wonder people burn out.

I don't read The Forge much, but I get the impression that this is a common thread… supposedly, players and GMs don't communicate well enough to convey what it is they really want to do.

I have, more than once, asked my players where they'd like to see our current superhero campaign ("In the Shadow of the Blood-Red King") go. They don't have any answers for me. Either they don't know what they want, they can't put what they want into words, or they don't want to tell me.

I suspect that they have answers… but they may not be fully conscious of them. They assume that what I deliver will be what they want, because they assume, more or less, that we all want the same thing out of the game. Which is exactly what Bankuei is talking about.

In some ways, I see some of the indie games as "training grounds" for learning new ways of playing. I'm sure many of these games' authors' don't see them that way, but I think that's the purpose they may be able to serve for me. A game like Polaris may help players learn to take more ownership in the story, a skill or style of play they can take back to a more traditional game.

I think the thing I want to see in my games here is a more pro-active player, willing to suggest scenes or directions for the game. Players do a certain amount of this inadvertantly… "I bet this guy doesn't even realize that he's being mind-controlled by the pod-people." This wasn't what I had in mind, but it's interesting and I can run with it. Players and GMs do this all the time, where the GM is making things up as he goes, stealing half of the ideas that the players throw out as speculation.

But I'd like to be able to be more deliberate about players helping craft the story at the meta-game level. I don't want rules for it, and I don't think we really need rules for it, but the players do have to change modes and get out of the habit of being relatively passive outside of their characters' direct actions.

In my experience, players often set up some neat things in their character background that hint at a potential story. But they often don't say anything about that potential story. "I'm carrying this mysterious amulet I inherited from my father. I don't know what it does." But this isn't followed up with, "I think it would be neat if the amulet was recognized by the villain of the campaign as belonging to his family." That part seems kind of assumed, and the GM has to guess at what kind of things the player would like the amulet to lead to.

And I think that's what Bankuei is getting at. Players have something they want involved in the game, but telling the GM exactly how and what they want seems somehow to be cheating. I don't want the players to dictate all aspects of the story ("…and while I'm having lunch with the President, an assassin pops out and I dive to save the President, taking the bullet myself. While I'm recovering in the hospital, the President sends me an offer to name any reward I want!"), but I do want the players to suggest scenes and story directions.

Take Magma, aka William F Johnson III, wealthy playboy by day, hot-blooded crimefighter by night. He pretty much lets his multi-billion dollar empire run itself. But say Chris, Magma's player, wanted the responsibilities of his wealth to stir up trouble. He could suggest to me, "I'd like something in my financial empire to cause me grief," and leave it up to me to figure something out. And I could… but would a sub-division of electronics division secretly developing weapons and selling them to criminals be what he was looking for? But if he were to say, "I'd like to have a scene in which I confront the CEO of Johnson Enterprise with evidence of his mismanaging the company for personal gain "? Well, that's totally different than what I came up with, and, since the player suggested it, just what he was wanting.

And if you merge it with the fudge points ideas I put forth the other day (still no comments from my players!), this scene and the sub-plot surrounding it would earn him fudge points. Funny how Bankuei's comment meshes so well with what I've been moving toward.