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Excellent article, Scott.

It's been very interesting, reading your article and thinking about my own group. We have those "discovery conversations" just about every time we get together. It helps that we're all very opinionated, and very interested in art, especially narrative art. It also helps that we're fairly well read, composed of I think three English majors, a Theater major, and a Science major (who is Lorthyne, actually). So we really can't help ourselves, and reference the games quite often in terms of what we enjoy or don't in storytelling. It gets very literary, though, as always with great art, still very primal. I think that this tendency to think in literary terms is to a great extent why our games since forming this group have been uniformly awesome - we are all trying to tell a story and are aware of what makes a good story.

I also quite liked what you were talking about as far as breaking out of genre conventions (I hate all fantasy races, generally lol). One great thing about our group is that we don't tend to run long campaigns. I've discussed this before, but I find it really useful. Lorthyne and I in particular tend to get a little twitchy after a while and get ideas for new things, plus a desire to either run or play in a game again. So we go by "seasons" like a television show. We wrap up a particular plot arc over the course of 8-12 sessions, then put down the GM stick for a while, letting whomever run their particular game. Over the course of the last year, I ran season one of my gangster game, then Lorthyne has been running a fantasy game, and now another member will be doing his first stint as GM running a dark fantasy setting. Once the newbie has finished his game, I'll run season two of my gangster game. This keeps them all fresh and interesting and doesn't allow us to tire one out. It also gives our GMs some rest and keeps the GMing dynamic as everyone's style is different and we switch them around. But what it does best is it automatically keeps you from being trapped in a genre, like Scott mentioned. You can't play a dwarf in 1920s Boston. You can play an Irish clanner with a deep connection to the homeland and strong familial bonds with an equally strong sense of duty and honor, however. It forces us to evaluate what's interesting emotionally and thematically, and then apply that to the setting. For instance, when I finished my game and we picked up Lorthyne's (which we just finished in awesome fashion, if anyone's curious) we had to make new characters, think about what was interesting in his idea and setting and carve our own place in it, thematically. It helps to give us that buy in.

Speaking of which, there's one great way to give the players buy in - have them write the campaign. For instance, when both Lorthyne and I started our games, we only gave the players a framework, which they then filled. With my game, I told my players that we're doing a gangster game, and they have to be part of the same gang at the start. That's it. Then we talked about the game, what they wanted to do and began to build it. They decided they wanted to be Irish gangsters, in Boston, in Prohibition. Just by making those decisions, before even making characters, they had buy in. They decided what they were interested in, and that's what we played. Similarly for Matt, though a bit tighter in focus. Matt gave us his world, said he wanted us to be a small ship's crew that helped protect merchant vessels on dangerous fantasy waters, and then let us run with it. We built everything, families, enemies, former crewmates, captains, lost friends, camaraderie, etc. That, I've learned is how to establish buy in. Everybody is interested in what they create, without question. So let them create it, let them tell you the story. From my experience, great GMing is nodding like the good doctor, then later saying, "Oh, really?" Everything else the players will give you.

That's my two cents, anyway.

Lol @ Tzuriel accidentally using my forum handle and my real name interchangeably in his post. For clarity, when he talks about "Matt," that's me. :)

It seems to me that we all pretty much approach this the same way. I'm curious about how sustaining a story works in the longer term campaign, since I'm mostly accustomed to shorter ones. I've heard a lot of GMs talking about writing an enormous, nuanced, complex plot before the campaign ever starts, and I have a hard time believing that such a plot could even be carried out unless the player characters are nothing more than silent participants in the story, which I'm not interested in at all. I just finished what I consider to be the best game I've ever run, and without hesitation I will say that every single moment of significance within that story has its conceptual roots firmly planted in something that a player did, and not of any particular brilliance on my part. Typically, after the game themes and characters have been established, I'll look at what the players have given me, and paint some very vague, very broad strokes for the direction of the campaign, and then focus on planning stuff one or two sessions at a time. Is that how you "long haul" folks do it, or is there another method?

One of the most beautiful (and most challenging) parts about roleplaying is striking the balance between preparation and improvisation. Literature, poetry, film, television, and recorded music are almost entirely preparation based, in that they are created (either by an individual or a group), packaged, and delivered. Theater and other live acting, live music, dance, and other performance art are both preparation and performance based, in that there is an established score, script, or choreography, but the execution is as much a part of the art as the execution. Roleplaying is much more similar to performance art in this way, because all GM's know that the execution is so often very different than the script.

At the same time, I feel like roleplaying is incredibly different than any other form of collaborative art, because in every other form of art of which I am aware, the script/score/choreography is laid out on the table. Improvisational comedy, with which roleplaying is often compared, is still different in that way, because there in improv, there is no script, only rules of the game. Within a roleplaying game, each person at the table brings their own script, unshared with anyone else. The experience of a roleplaying game is the combined experience of everyone sharing their script at the same time. In most RPGs, it's determined in advance that the GM has the primary script, and has the final authority in weaving all of the other scripts into a single tapestry of story. In other words, the preparation happens separately with each person at the table before the game, and then the execution period is identical with the collaborative creation period, with all of the discarded ideas and "could have beens" simply cease to be a part of the work.

I recently was talking with a member of our gaming group about the experience of first attempts at GMing. She is a relatively new player and has no experience GMing, and we were talking about this within the context of another newer player who has decided to try on the GM's hat for the first time. I compared the experience of roleplaying to a group standing in a small room. As a player, you're intrigued by the new environment and interested in exploring its bounds. As a first time GM, you find yourself standing on the other side of the walls, and you realize for the first time that these walls are paper-thin. You stand there, terrified because, in their good-natured exploration, the players are punching their hands and feet through the paper walls of your room, and you're worried they'll all discover how truly fragile everything is. As you gain more experience, that terror slowly fades. I think it's less about having a better construction in your room and more about realizing that it doesn't matter how thin the walls are, because the players want to stay in the room. You eventually learn that most of the time, a player punching through the wall only reveals that the room's dimensions had been far greater than you ever thought they were, and that when they uncover something unseemly, the players will politely withdraw and even help you patch the hole.

"There's a second script though, one that even many players are not aware they carried in with them. It's crucial as a gamemaster to know what the second script says and it can be challenging to get the player to realize it even exists. Every player has a reason they made that specific character and it's important to identify what that reason is. Essentially, there's the character's story (the first script) and then there's the player's story that they are trying to tell with the character (the second script)."

I absolutely agree. One my favorite characters was an old man who had spent his youth living as a hermit as a way to run from guilt and responsibility. As a result of sheer necessity of circumstance, he was forced to bear a heroes burden on his weak shoulders. His story (the first script) was about accepting heroism in the face of fear, a lifetime of unresolved guilt, and overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. The "second script," my story, was really about discovering heroism in difficulty, in a reluctant fashion, because I was trying to break out of my character rut of stoic, unflinching, triumphant heroes. I was interested in the idea of heroism as a breaking force, that doing the right thing would, of necessity, cost everything, and I even told the GM that I wanted my character to die heroically at some point in the middle of the campaign. The refusal of other players to take the "lead" role so my character could take my desired place in the background (along with some other factors) was initially frustrating unwittingly added to that dynamic, but looking back, it was actually the perfect circumstance to place him in. At a point during the campaign (which fell apart before it came to a satisfying conclusion), I told my GM that I was done with this character's story and that I wanted him to die heroically. Due to another character death in the group, our character dynamic was in shambles, and another death would have put it in the coffin, so I was never able to reach the place I wanted to with him.

Any thoughts or tips on how to uncover the hidden "second script" in players or, even harder, in ourselves?

Jeez, you get busy for a few days and everybody goes nuts.

This is all awesome stuff. It's funny, because almost all of my characters are first conceived in terms of the second script and then fleshed out as the first. I'm always looking at some thematic concern in every game, whether it's one I'm running or playing. For example, in Lorthyne's game we had a fantasy setting where everybody was religious and everybody agreed as to the nature of that religion. It was just an accepted part of that world, kind of like gravity. Lorthyne is a fairly religious guy and was playing with religious themes as part of the world. Myself and another player in our group are the resident loud-mouth atheists, and we decided, per the second script, to go against type and play very religious characters. He played a wizard who was part of a race that felt it had a religious mandate to control magical activity in the world, and the entirety of his story circled around personal conflicts with the hard-line nature of that race. Turns out the player himself was less interested in the religion than in struggling with origins, a coming of age story if you will. I played a lizard man who'd one day had an awakening of sorts and wandered off from his race, like a baby, almost. Long story short, he becomes a part of society and becomes very religious, finding in the religion some sort of salvation. This came out of my second script in that I knew we were playing in a world that didn't really have room for epistemological doubt, and so I created a character whose main thrust was self-creation. A literal baptism, if you will, coming out an entirely new creature. What was interesting was self-doubt, and growing self-awareness, and how that interacted with the larger religious concerns of the world. I tend to make themes, and then give them faces, even when GMing lol.

I think finding the deeper script is a very intuitive thing. The players are constantly trying to tell you as GM what it is, you just have to tune your ears to listening. In particular, any time a player breaks character and can't decide what to do next, looking around the table for thoughts, they are attempting to find that second script themselves. We all need it, to keep us interested. One thing that's very useful about my style as a GM is that it lends itself to this particular thing. Don't get me wrong, I have many a weakness, but I tend to think on this level storytelling-wise, which helps here. I always focus on character moments, and devote more time to those than anything else in my campaigns. These moments are ideal for bringing out the second script, because these moments are designed exclusively for that, even in other mediums of storytelling. In my last campaign, I once spent about an hour with a player detailing a developing romance. I let him carry that hour, as it was his character's moment. Through this character's conversation with this girl, the player was able to bring in what interested him, which he hadn't been able to play up as much yet - guilt. This being a mob game, the initial thought on his character was an ambitious hitman, trying to move up the ladder. Turns out, revealed through this and other scenes, this player wanted to actually talk about something else. He wanted to talk about humanity in extremity. Just how much violence could his character exist in before he lost his soul?

This is awesome stuff, guys. Classic gamegrene goodness.

It can be great. Just that most of the time it sucks, because it's obviously what it is - a plot device. What makes it work in Star Wars, for instance, is that it's given actual emotional weight. There's a great part where Luke finds his uncle and aunt's corpses before he agrees to leave with Kenobi. That scene really sums up his feelings on his home and what's happening to it, the mixed emotions that are working through him the entire film. Most of the time, it is not given that weight, and comes off as clumsy and obvious.

Generally, though, I avoid this device, but that's just because the hometown is more interesting to me than the frontier.