Early
on when you start to referee your own (or someone else’s) games, you learn
pretty quickly that nothing ever really goes to plan and that not every
contingency can be provided against. In military terms there’s an old expression
which covers it: “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. Of course, everyone
in your game is a friend, otherwise
they wouldn’t be sitting around a table with you, but some Keepers start to
feel that, because every time you all get together something goes horribly
wrong with your finely-crafted narrative, that your so-called ‘friends’ have
truly become the enemy, Hell-bent on overturning your game for their own
amusement.
It’s
time to step back and take a long, deep, breath.
Firstly,
your players are only one part of the equation here, but they’re a big part of
it. Objectively speaking, the only reason that all of you are doing this is for
your mutual enjoyment – if they didn’t show up, you wouldn’t have a story to
tell; if you didn’t write your story, you’d all be sitting in front of your
respective service providers each Saturday night, chugging chips and cola in
your underwear. The thing to realise is that this is a consensual exercise; all
of you contribute and all of you enjoy.
Given
that epiphany, you might start to think that the amount of work involved in
getting this to work is unfairly skewed towards the Keeper’s detriment. Damn’
players, you might think; I do all of this preparation and they just sit there
rattling dice and bitching about subtracting hit points! Don’t they understand
the effort I’ve taken? Well, no, in fact; they do not. From their perspective,
your wonderful adventure might well have dropped – fully-formed – into your lap
from passing space aliens, and you’re as in the dark as they are about what’s
coming up. Keepers have a tendency to play things close to their chests. They
clam up; become secretive, paranoid. They scuttle about the sidelines like
Peter Lorre, clutching a stack of cross-referenced binders and dog-eared rules
books and jumping hysterically when asked “so, what can I see?”
The
thing is this secretive approach to the game goads players into breaking it.
What they experience is mainly a wall of silence – between them and the Keeper
is a quivering zone of expectation and every attempt to move beyond it gets
thwarted or dismissed. Players don’t like to be hemmed in and eventually they
will start to push back against the limitations. Sometimes their frustration
becomes so extreme that they push really hard and the damage that they do to the game soon becomes irreparable. Then come the resentment, the arguments, the
recrimination and that’s it for your Saturday night games session. Back to your
service provider and the coke and chips.
Before
things get this bad, you need to stop and think hard about your workload. The
story is yours to provide and yes, it’s not that interesting if the players
know beforehand what it involves and where it’s heading – there has to be a
certain level of confidentiality or there’s no surprise. However, think about
what the players are bringing to the table – their characters. For them, their
story personae are like shiny new cars – they want to take them out onto the
road and see what they will do, and they also want you and their fellow players
to see that too. This is fine; this is, in fact, the whole point of the
exercise. However, the players’ characters don’t just begin and end with a
marked-up piece of paper.
Is
the player’s character a member of a London club? If so, which one? Do they have
friends there? If so, how many and what are their details? Do the characters
all live in the same town or village? If so, which one? Does it have a church?
Of which denomination? Is there a police station? What are the officers’ names
and backgrounds? Who else lives there, and perhaps the party members might take
the time to note down some NPC statistics for them...?
The
players’ contribution to your game is not just their characters, but everything about and around their characters.
If they want to drive a certain make of car, or aeroplane, or if they want a
special type of weapon, have them go out and do the leg-work. When was that car
first made? What were the engine specifications of that aeroplane? How
available was that type of gun? This type of research also applies to how your player wants their character to look, to eat and to explore their world. None
of this information will impact upon your story to any great degree (although
you never know!) and none of it is worth your time to organise. Have your
players do it. Insist that you check it before signing off on it, but let them
do the hard work. Your effort is better spent elsewhere.
This
also applies to setting the mood while you play. Let your players find
appropriate music for the session: this means you will have to reveal certain
aspects of the game – that it’s set in Egypt; or that we’re going to a
suspicious speakeasy in Harlem – but if your game is moving as it should, this
information should be a fait accompli
anyway. Is one of your players a good cook? Have them make an appropriate light
meal, or snacks. Have one of the players bring candles if they’re keen, or
incense if they really keen. Let the
players work the ambience and this is yet another thing you don’t have to worry
about.
Pretty
soon, your players will be coming to you with all kinds of ideas about their
characters and the world in which they live. As long as you’re open to them
embroidering the tapestry of your universe, they will feel as if they’re
connected to it, not just blindfolded victims standing against a wall. As a
bonus, they’ll be generating all the “Long-Lost Friends” and back-up characters
that you’ll all need to keep the campaign ticking over.
Remember:
this is a mutual activity; it’s not all about you. Make sure everyone is
involved, the work will be shared and it will feel less onerous...
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