Someone posted a short while ago about using a coin to remind them whether they were in GM mode or Player mode. Does anyone else have suggestions for how to be more impartial in your switching back and forth between playing as the player and refereeing your player as the GM?
Recently for me, I have switched from Conjecture GME to Mythic. Before, any high or low roll on the loom of fate would give me an unexpected twist or turn. With fewer unexpectedly results, I find that the game is more steady, but the game spins its wheels now and again. After the character's dream force vision, I was finding myself at a loss for a long time how to decide if the GM would throw the player a bone, so to speak, and allow the character to act on his force vision without the pollution of out of character knowledge/metagaming.
I finally decided that I would make use of the chaos rating to mix things up a bit. If I felt like the game is dragging to a halt, I'll roll a D10 vs. the current chaos rating. If I roll above the chaos rating, the GM is feeling benevolent and might throw the character a bone to move the story along or plant an adventure seed. If I roll below the chaos rating, the GM may try to mix things up by having something bad happen, or as I've read in another game: When in doubt, have someone kick in the door and start shooting! (Which will increase chaos for the next check.)
Ah, the age old dilemma of solo RPG...
ReplyDeleteIronsworn has a nice mechanic for this in the Momentum stat. If you have it built up, you can expend it to cancel out a bad result and turn it into a success. Then you must work at rebuilding it again, so you can't simply overturn result after result.
Your "GM roll" doesn't seem like a bad idea. If you're bogged down or worked into a corner, you need something to get the ball rolling again, even if it's not in the direction of the main thread. Or, you can always backtrack to where things might have went sour and make a clean break -- it's your game and it should be fun and interesting for you!
I have a basic rule of thumb that I play as a GM whenever I have knowledge that the player character(s) don’t. I may switch back to player mode when I know only as much or less than the character would.
ReplyDeleteThis requires you to give up control of the character, though, if in GM mode.
Check some of my AARs on my blog (linked on my profile). I try to be very explicit about every single Mythic roll I make, so you can see the balance I find between GM and player.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently working on a long post in which I allow the oracular questions to drive the action much more heavily.
sorry if I'm gonna say something a bit heretic for the solo rpg community but... do you really think that is so vital to separate the GM/PC turns so clearly?
ReplyDeletelino pang
ReplyDeleteI don't know if vital is the right word. But, my sense of fair play beckons me to try my best to separate at least my character, if not the player from metagame knowledge. Additionally, since I'm using a Game Master Emulator, technically I'm only the player, and my book is the GM, but there are ways to "cheat the system" so to speak, which I'm trying not to do.
Chris Campbell 1)do you think that a token or something similar can avoid metagaming?
ReplyDelete2)are you tempted to cheat the system?
1) No, not really. I guess I was just wondering if anyone else has ways that they handle it. I force my character to roll his knowledge skills for everything, which helps me to decide whether he has a clue about it or not.
ReplyDelete2) I don't think I'm tempted to, there are times when the GM Emulator can be far too generous with a simple yes/no reply. Like when a character of mine ended up with 10 million credits worth of military hardware just rolling on random tables. But, he's had to fight tooth and nail to try and get to a planet with a working black market to sell it. So I suppose the emulator giveth and taketh away. LoL
Charles Swann
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestion, I'll check out one of your blog entries when I get some time. :)
Chris Campbell I have found that "putting on the GM hat" style play is less important when you have a predetermined focus for an adventure. The PCs need to know what they're doing and why, and you need to be prepared to do something else if that isn't working. Ie., a lull in the action is usually a result of a lack of firm grounding for a quest. Even if the PCs don't know where to go, enterprising PCs could find a sage to ask, seek out a patron, etc., to pursue their ends, as long as THEY know what they're doing.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy using the chaos factor for Mythic, but I do not use its as-written aspect where it changes the odds for oracular questions (only for random event odds).
EDIT: Basically, I ONLY play as the PCs except when the DM's choices are either (a) obvious or (b) irrelevant. I'll wing the number of people in a room or the size of a house or the direction of an exit in a chamber, but I'm not usually throwing in new important PCs or random events without cause.
EDIT2: If you read one of mine, I think the Pits and Perils "Wizard Thief" campaign is a short, relatively complete adventure that proceeds clearly from start to finish without me ever having to introduce DM action without any precedent, although you'll see plenty of times where I act as DM with the action guided directly by the Oracle or the prior PC actions.
I find that Knowlege skills go a long way if you're worried about acting on out-of-character knowledge. Failing that, asking the Oracle about what your PC does can pick up the slack (though this is something that I usually only do for newer PCs; once their personalities gel it's usually obvious what they do/know).
ReplyDeleteWhe the generators fail me and I don't want to rely on GM-fiat, I find that simple tables of 1d6 or so possible outcomes get things back on track. For starters, it's a little creative exercise, and it also allows me to step back and consider all possible directions a situation could go without having to worry about overly advantaging the PCs.
But sometimes GM-fiat is just fine. For me, it's usually stuff like deciding that the random monster encounter is skeletons (because they're my favourite) or knocking a couple zeroes off the end of the treasure value because the dice were overly-generous. Sometimes it's just a flash of inspiration that I can't ignore. This is usually to the detriment of the PCs, because that makes for more interesting gaming, but every once in a while the most interesting thing to do is to turn the PC's expectations upside down, like making an enemy into a friend. There can still be plenty of tension from their former relationship, and of course pretending to be an ally might be a ruse... but that can be determined later.
Gerard Nerval
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points. I think part of the problem that I'm having is that I'm playing a character outside of my normal comfort zone as a Player. So I'm trying to stay true to the character and because it's an atypical choice for me, I'm having a small bit of trouble having the character drive the story more from the player's side. Generally for the first several sessions, I tend to immediately go for adventure seeds planted by the GM, until my character's personality has been developed to a point where I have an idea who I'm playing and what his goals are and how he intends to achieve them.
I'm only on the second chapter of my current game, and the first was a canned adventure, which was a lot of fun. Now my character is in a sandbox sector of space, and I'm not entirely sure where to take him. He has a couple of goals from character creation, but they're lofty enough that he has no chance of achieving them in his present state.
My other game which has managed to progress is about 7 chapters in now, and I have a pretty good idea of his personality and what his goals are at the moment, so it's much easier for me to drive the story onward. The first intro chapter was something I just kinda kicked off of the top of my head, but it fit in several adventure hooks rather easily which gave him time to grow into a steady driving force.
So, maybe what I need to do is find another canned adventure to send him on which takes a lot of the guesswork out as a player and just play the module to the best of my ability.
ReplyDeleteI’ve never really thought about this but now that you pose the question I think that I am “always” more or less in player mode. When actually in GM mode at least in my mind it is my characters interacting with a system that I don’t “know” and isn’t me. Hard to explain.
ReplyDeleteI tend to create a sequence of play for my solo sessions and part of that is to account for time passing but also to make sure that the system (AKA that other participant, the GM) gets a word in.
lino pang I don’t ever think about it in these terms, no. It’s all from player perspective as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes there is more or less surprise/predetermination/control over what happens next, that’s all.
ReplyDelete