The Illusion of Control not Control of the Illusion part II
In the first part of this article, I explained how to put on your ‘gamemastering cap’ and look at the complications in your game. This time I’ll talk about how to manage those complications deliberately…to have fun!
Life is So Complicated
Forget micro-managing your game or its complications. The players are going to throw things at you faster than you can handle. Why? Because there are more of them than there are of you and they are just as interesting and creative as you are. They can’t help but come up with more stuff than you.
Don’t worry about it.
Part of the illusion of control is the illusion of creativity. (Control isn’t just about directing things to go where you want.) You know you can’t create more things than your players; so don’t try. Here’s the secret: let them do all the work; just don’t let them know that they’re the ones doing it. Your tool is cliché. Cap on; think about the complications you want to work with in terms of the clichés that they represent. If you start most descriptions with what sounds like a cliché and pause (just a teensy bit little longer than seems comfortable), someone will often jump in with more detail. (If not, keep trying; they’ll learn to do it.)
What appears to be creativity is when and where you break with cliché, where you break with convention. A dragon in his lair…with a sense of humor. A gang of streetwise mobsters…who want you to lead them. Take any cliché and twist off just one of the knobs and everyone will think about how creative you are. This way, you cut down on the creative ‘work’ of gamemastering without losing the illusion of creativity or the illusion of control. (Besides, if you look confident, players will assume you know what you’re doing.) Don’t forget to grab a hold of the clichés that the players are offering; take those and embellish! (I did say to let them do the work.)
With this you can create just about anything you need. How do you know what you need? I’m glad you asked. Think about the game you imagined running before it all got started. Was there anything particularly cool you wanted to run? There was? Okay, now try to divide it up into the complications involved with going through it. Don’t worry, you won’t need that many; the players will create more than enough on their own. (In fact, the true art of managing play is bypassing or assimilating some of the less relevant complications that players take on by themselves without cheating them.)
Proper Characterization
Now don’t forget your players. Imagine each of their characters in turn; just thinking about the player and character, what are they just begging for? This is not the things they designed their character to be good at, but the problems the character, in their archetype, was meant to solve. Don’t think about the superhero’s powers, but what kind of crime they beg to face. Set up these complications in such a way so that, in play, you could simply say, “Hey, you asked for it!”
When you have ideas of what each character ‘begs for’, now consider the group, in their circumstances with their relationships and abilities, what are they ‘begging for’. Is it internal strife? External strife? Being on the run? Chasing something on the run? Finding problems? Solving other people’s problems? Having problems dumped upon them? Try imagining the group of characters as a ‘character’ itself and do like the last paragraph says.
An Embarrassment of Riches
By now you probably have too many ideas to use. That’s normal; in fact, added to all the problems the players will get themselves into, this should be more than anyone could run (before coming up with even more ideas during play). If not, go read a book, see a movie or do whatever inspires you and come back; I’ll wait.
How do you choose what to use? Well, the best complications come from something the players have already done. If you want it to be ‘fresh’ think more about the unintended consequences of previous encounters or leftover complications that weren’t cleanly solved. Of course, you can’t live on bread alone, so here are a few other good filters for your ideas. They will help you decide what you need to run and what to downplay.
Think about the overall game in general. What kind of genre is it? What does that particular genre mean to you? If you heard of a movie or book in this genre, what things would you imagine happening that wouldn’t make it into the trailers or reviews. What kinds of minor complications would come up? What places would the characters have to go to, to solve their problems? More importantly, what happens in those places that complicate the characters’ lives? Which of the complications you came up with fit these? Do some of them stand out? Are there any that could wind up being the ‘ultimate’ complication?
Lastly, you need to consider the overall ‘movement’ of the game so far. Where is it going? Who are becoming the biggest complications in the players’ play? (Hint: some of these will grow up to be your ‘big bad’ in the ‘ultimate conflict’.) The best trick and a good choice for complications that fit your game is in guiding where the game is ‘going’. If your genre always has a big confrontation near the end, you know you’re going to have to do that with your game. This takes a little preparation, but when you put your cap on, the prep isn’t hard. Look for signs of who the players hate the most; these make great recurring villains. Make sure you keep bringing back these kinds of characters; the players like that kinda stuff. And if they soundly resolve such a character complication, consider who might notice them now.
One iron clad rule you have to follow is: Let the players pick their bad guy. This is a very hard and fast rule. You will no doubt have your favorite characters too, but that is a very bad reason to make them into recurring complications. Think about it; that’s taking away control! Avoid it. You are the manager of play, not the person who sets the agenda. You are there to ‘keep the ball in play’; not to coach. I can’t stress this enough.
When Too Much is Too Much
Now that you’ve got all these complications and directions going, you might feel a little overwhelmed. That means it’s time to trim away the fat. Here’s a simple rule: if it isn’t a complication, don’t run it. Seriously! Don’t do ’set up’ scenes; avoid soliloquy; kill any ‘travel’ scenes; just don’t do it. These scenes don’t call upon the players to do anything. As much as you think these are necessary, stay away. The fact is, these kinds of embellishments actually pop up in the players’ imaginations without any prompting. Let them fill in the blanks.
Why nothing else? Because, the only thing in play that matters (to the players) are the choices the players make that affect things. If a situation comes up where the outcome is obvious or of no significance, just gloss over it. Even better, skip it before it starts. Player imagination is a fantastic place; they will fill any insignificant void without slowing down or even noticing. If you cut back ‘the fat’ well enough, the players will find that they are constantly bombarded with complications that take constant attention and ‘action’. That’s exactly how you want it. It’s more bang for their buck. More fun for everyone’s time invested.
The converse will help you choose ‘how big’ of complications to be using. When things feel like the game is dragging or the current complication seems to be ‘taking too long’, gloss the rest of that complication and get to a bigger or better one. Another good trick is merging a few ‘little’ complications into a larger more engaging one.
Riffing Complications Rather than Inventing Them ‘Off the Cuff’
When you bring this all together, cliché bending creativity, milieu expectations, character obligation and the gang of players as ’single character’, and when you filter it through consequences, genre conventions, direction of play-flow, the path to confrontation, trimming away the fat and keeping things moving, then you have a wealth of complications ready for play. The main reason you manage complications is so that you never have to improvise ‘off the cuff’. Thus you always appear to have control in any situation.
Using this technique never lets the players get the sense that the game is in a quandary or ‘lost’. They won’t worry that what their doing will be pointless. You’ll also seem totally prepared for anything. The players will know they can just sit back and play like the dickens. Ready gamemasters mean ready players, which is the fastest way to the fun!
Three Final Notes
When you put these complications into play, you’ll be called upon to create a lot of detail. There are two important ways to do this. First, make stuff up! Once you know what’s important (in the complications), you’ll know that most detail in the players’ minds is spun off of a few choice words from you. Don’t sweat these details; the complication will tell you what you need to remember.
If you’re ever totally stuck, roll some dice (or whatever is appropriate for your system). Dice aren’t just there to resolve tension points; they make a great way to generate some detail and make it look official. Remember those old ‘wandering monster’ lists? That’s what I’m talking about.
Finally, the most important complications to any player are their relationships. Most of the time any complication is fine, but if you really need a ‘kick’ use one that involves a relationship to one or more of the players’ characters. However you affect the relationship, you’ll know you have that player’s undivided attention.
And that’s exactly what you want.
2 Responses to “The Illusion of Control not Control of the Illusion part II”
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September 9th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Great article! This caused me to fire up the GM Guide for my RPG system and add a note about this exact topic.
I’m increasingly realizing that there are a couple levels of GM mastery:
1. Organizing and preparing your materials
2. Creating three-dimensional NPCs
3. Analyzing your players’ choices and reacting with a gratifying result
September 9th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Wow…thanks!
Somewhere down the line I’ll get to your number two; there are still so many basics to cover!
Fang