Unfettered or Fettered: GMing styles and modules

"Before I learned how to play and GM with gamebooks and RPGs, playing pretend was testing whether you could deal with X, and ALSO was telling a story, AND the story had to make sense - that includes not violating what I know of munitiae like sword swings and your state of mind when someone is trying to push a blade into your skull*.
When I learned gamebooks, and later RPGs, I discovered the Three-fold theories (both of them!), and suddenly the game EITHER was about what you do to deal with X, OR about telling a story, OR about respecting and exploring munitiae like sword swings or conversational tactics, or whatever.
Now I understood Unfettered GMing, also known as Lazy GMing, and I'm just running a game that explores the munitae of details, and that produces a story, and people at the table treat it as a game."
Asen R. G., your host

Ok, that was a rather clumsy way to paraphrase well-known sentence ("Before I learned martial arts, a punch was just a punch and a kick was just a kick. When I studied martial arts, a punch was no longer just a punch and a kick was no longer just a kick. Now I understand martial arts, and a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick." - Bruce Lee, who was in turn paraphrasing Takuan Soho, AFAICT).
Anyway...
After reading Ron Edwards's Sorcerer (the annotated edition), I noticed that he's saying the campaign when he was "just playing the NPCs, and this generated the narrative" as one of his most successful ones).
I'm doing the exact same thing "the father on Narrativism" recommends - although I consider myself a Simulationist. Then again, I've heard the same advice from mainly Gamist players.
Yeah, the divisions in the RPG hobby are mostly BS, indeed.
I had discovered the "just play the NPCs" GMing approach in, more or less, the same fashion as Ron Edwards. I was running a game; the game was set up with interesting characters from both sides of the screen. There were conflicts and alliances between them to give a pause to any Vampire chronicle.
So I just asked myself "why the hell should I prepare it in advance, if the players aren't going to do what I expect anyway - and I find it fun to catch this kind of surprise shots and return them?"
The answer was "no fucking reason in Hell", and so I ran the next session... two hours after the one that had just finished.
At the end, I had more material than I had before, because no PC ran from conflicts. The players laughed, and cried - for real, not roleplaying - and were exhilarated.
Years later, I almost got a beating when I announced ending the campaign...
But all of this was because the players knew that risking your character is fun. To the PCs, that's no doubt the analogue of playing extreme sports...but then most PCs should be extreme sports enthusiasts.

The end conclusion is, to me: You need to teach unfettered roleplaying to the players, if it doesn't come naturally to them. After that, you can be the Unfettered GM.

Most books teach you to be the Fettered GM. Take an adventure, self-made or not. Start the PCs so and so, says the adventure. X happens... After that, Y happens. After that, Z happens (and hopefully, that means you get to meet Zorro). That's how I began running games, too.
But right now, I only need a setting book and easily applicable rules. Everything else, including genre supplements? Yeah, nice, but largely unnecessary. "Just play the NPCs", and if it needed to be said, make them interesting. (Nobody is completely uninteresting in real life, either. If you didn't learn that in English classes, learn it now, and practice. Talk with a boring guy and find something that makes him non-boring).
I mean, the guy that makes your accounts might be a Combat Sambo champion (yes, I know such a guy!) The plumber next door might be an ex-convict, or just having had an interesting youth. You** probably have a hobby that's out of the ordinary for your profession - namely, roleplaying. And you're reading RPG-related blogs! In your FREE time! Seriously, do you have any idea how obscure that is to everyone else? (I guess you have an idea, indeed).
Yeah. People with no unexpected interests and skills are so rare, this makes them interesting. So, yes, it's impossible by definition to be boring.
Don't be afraid your sessions would be boring - just make them interesting.
You don't need pre-planned adventures for that. You just need to have the GMing tools internalised, too. And that means "playing the NPCs as logically as you'd play a PC".
And if your playing PCs is lacking, you should work on that.

Or maybe I should just write a module the way I imagine it should be done.

*Yes, that's for the kind of first-hand experience that I haven't asked for.
**The "you" that's reading an RPG-related blog.

OK, it's final! "Schools" are more misleading than useful.

I was just wondering what games I like, whether I prefer old school or new school, or something in-between.
After some deliberation, I was surprised at the number of OSR and old school games that are among my favourites.
Scarlet Heroes and DCC take the lead. Then we follow, probably, with Spears of the Dawn, ACKS, Epées et Sorcellerie, Spellcraft and Swordplay, Backswords and Bucklers, Stars Without Numbers, and arguably even Crimson Blades and Lamentations of the Flame Princess should be there.
If we include old-school games in general, we add Grunts (Fantasy Fucking Vietnam minus the fantasy part) and 43 AD/Warband/Zenobia right next to Scarlet Heroes. And arguably any edition of Traveller, BRP, Flashing Blades and Dogtown should be right there as well. And Dragon Warriors, which I happen to like, even if the system could be improved.

And then we go forFates Worse Than Death and Hoodoo Blues, which are old-school in a good way. And my wife is younger than Pendragon, so the game definitely counts as old-school to me, as far as games go!

Okay, maybe I'm an old-school guy, reading the above...
Except I love WotG and LotW, Sorcerer, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Gods of Gondwane, TBZ, Houses of the Blooded, Enemy Gods, Fate and Shahida just as much, all of them being New School par excellence!
But I also like GURPS, RQ6, Savage Worlds, Artesia, Volant, TRoS, Seeker and Blue Planet, which are some kind of a middle-school. And Celestial Warriors, which is new-school in a different way. And post-GMC nWoD, which is also "middle school" in its own way...

In theory, I'm either the happy guy that can play everything (hah! Good luck getting me to play PF, just to name the example I turn down most often)...
...or we can conclude the distinction between "schools" to be absolute BS. In theory, my tastes should clash with at least some of these games, just on virtue of liking their polar opposites!
In practice, I like each of them for what they do well.
So, this is my conclusion for today. Find a game that does well whatever it does. Play it in a way that would make it shine. Laugh heartily at the idea that games come in "generations". Seriously, there is no difference, except in what was modern at the time!

Seems like I'll be playing narrative games for a while...

I just realised that when reviewing the list of games our group is planning to run...
Nights of the Crusades is the closest we're planning to get to a simulationist game. Most of the others are explicitly story-games. FATE Core/Tianxia and Kausao, Cat, Blood&Honor (maybe, and re-skinned if we do), Sorcerer.
Nothing weird, it just struck me as something I didn't expect.


End of tonight's update.

Finished Sorcerer... Next: the Sorcerer supplements

That's just a quick note about what I'm reading. I mean, what are blogs for?
So, just finished Sorcerer by +Ron Edwards (delays did, well, delay me from reading it - and the annotated edition requires critical analysis).
I've only got three notes.
1) At least, now I know what to recommend to new GMs, if I want to get them to run games I like. I call this "The Unfettered GMing style" or "Lazy GMing".
2) I'm continuing with the Sorcerer supplements without delay. And that's an achievement for the author, whether he knows it or not.
3) It's curious how similar the themes and even some mechanics are between Sorcerer, Unknown Armies, and Better Angels - and yet, they differ in subtle but important ways.

And no, don't tell me "how would you run Exalted with this". Because I'm thinking more and more about it...

Anyway.
Off to reading!

Reading Sorcerer RPG: does it work as a manual for simulationist GMs?

I purchased recently Sorcerer RPG by +Ron Edwards from Adept press. It was in a Bundle of Holding, or I might not have bothered.
Then I started reading and went "wow" (not as in the notorious MMORPG - it was more of "wow, that's what I'm trying to tell my friends - the ones I'm teaching GMing"). Because, well, that's what I call Simulationist play. As in, "pretend to be the character to the point that you only bother with what the character is thinking - no story arcs, no pre-planned plots, no nothing".
And that's almost word-for-word what +Ron Edwards is advising you to do as part of his "Narrativist" game. Even more, that's THE game for narrativist players - AFAICT, storygames started with it!
Still, so far, I only disagree with one sentence in his advice. "Don't play the setting". Well, no, you can't do that if you need to play the NPCs...because the setting is an NPC, too (just like any other organisation)! But that's ONE sentence.
I usually disagree with half the GMing chapter in "traditional" games. Seriously, guys... ONE sentence? That might as well be written by me (no, I'm NOT claiming credit-I discovered my current GMing style long after Sorcerer has been written. I just haven't read it, for various reasons that are kinda besides the point).
And then I remembered that the OSR advice has similar points, where I'm nodding my head in agreement.
The only other games where I agree with the GMing chapter to such an extent? Atomic Highway, Fates Worse Than Death, Crimson Exodus/Fantasy Dice RPG, Legends of the Wulin, Apocalypse World/Monsterhearts. Runequest 6 also comes close. But that's not even 10% of the games I own...
Still, all of these games are from wildly differing "schools". Seems like good GMing is good GMing, no matter who's doing it. (Well, if it's "open-ended" GMing, at least. I've run games that were going against this, and the players were still happy. So it might be called "good" GMing - although I'd consider my current style to be far superior both in terms of simulation and in terms of story - but it would be wildly different).
Just food for thought.

And in the meantime, I purchased the Sorcerer supplements, and I'm looking into other games by the same author, too. He's got a KS campaign for his "S/Lay w/ Me" game (which I discovered the day after buying the PDF). Of course, I'm now a backer.
The only other KS I'm currently backing is the one by +Levi Kornelsen for his zombie apocalypse game. But that's another story and should be told in another blog post.

Naked went the gamer

Nothing so new and original today.
I bought the newest Bundle of Holding.
From there, I noticed I now own Sorcerer. Which was good, since Sorcerer and Burning Wheel are two games I keep getting recommendations for...and since Luke Crane refuses to put BWG on a PDF sale site, I'm not likely to try it any time soon.
But then I decided to check Sorcerer. And from there I wnet to Ron Edwards' site to download some char sheet.
And there I read Naked Went The Gamer.
I think everyone of us should read it - hopefully, again. There are many things I disagree with Ron Edwards about.
This article isn't one of them. In fact, much of what he describes about "old school" mirrors my own experience with other games. Make of this what you wish - just think about it.


In a way, I already got more than I bargained for from the Bundle of Holding. I went to buy books, and I got a reason to think about society. If that's old news to you and you're working against the things RE is writing about, congratulations. I had...slipped.
So, I think I should add a link to the Bundle of Holding website.

That's all the post I'm going to write for tonight. I've got more things to think about, since I notice with great displeasure that I had been going with the current for a while.