Tales from the Rocket House
Your Mileage May Vary, It’s Just a Game, and It’s All Good As Long As Everyone’s Having Fun.
Based on my own experience, however, I’ll add one more:
It’s All Fun and Games Until Somebody Gets Hurt.
A History of Adversarial GMing
Adversarial GMing began, or so I have read, back in the early days of D&D (we didn’t play this way in my group, but I’m at least 10 years too young to know anything about the true early days of D&D), when it was expected that the DM would design adventures to test the players’ skill and wits, and to test the player characters’ abilities as well. There was, as I have read, a certain expectation of character death, in much the same way that it’s expected in computer and console-type RPGs and MMO’s today.
The legendary Tomb of Horrors was perhaps the apex of this type of play. As Gary Gygax himself said in a 1998 interview with Bruce Cordell, “there were several very expert players in my campaign, and this [Tomb of Horrors] was meant as yet another challenge to their skill.”
I never had the opportunity to play with a group like this, but honestly, it sounds kind of fun, so long as the game play style was clear to everyone up front. Clearly, some part of the game style is fueling the enthusiasm of the Old School Renaissance movement.
Of course, that type of play didn’t encourage detailed character histories and backgrounds, immersive play, or intricate dramatic plots, so the PC was generally a token or avatar, as in video games. While a player might grow very attached to an advanced PC that had been played for many months or years, going from level 1 to level whatever, the starting (level 1) character was not expected to bring a lot of complex backstory to the table. Likewise, while a group will doubtless have its own stories, in-jokes, and even jargon, this develops in the course of play (one of the PC’s that Tomb of Horrors was written to challenge was Tenser, of Tenser’s Floating Disk and Tenser’s Transformation fame), this develops over the course of play, and losing a starting character is more of an annoyance than a heartbreak of lost opportunities.
And then there was DRAMA
Over time, games became less gamey, affected by the ‘but that’s not realistic’ school of thought. Later editions of D&D made greater attempts at world building. Other games took it farther (Glorantha, for example). In those games, adversarial GMing mostly just felt pedantic. Sometimes arguments would break down over what is and isn’t ‘realistic,’ especially since many of the game systems were still pretty wargamey. In many game systems, by the “Rules As Written,” a character could put a gun to his head, pull the trigger, and suffer no actual impairment (they’d just lose a few hit points). At this point, many RPGs were trying to be both game-y, in the old sense, and realistic or simulation-y, without a clear idea of the distinction between the two or the tradeoffs involved.
In a strictly simulationist game (to use the rec.games.frp.advocacy ‘threefold’ model definition), there was no room for an adversarial GM, just as there was no room for script immunity. The world was to be kept free of collusion or intentional manipulation. NPC’s did what they did, PC’s did what they did, and the chips fell where they may (not everyone likes this style, but I can tell you, it’s a lot of fun and it can create some excellent stories – and the crowning moments of awesome feel even more powerful because nobody tried to create them. On the other hand, if you have players who expect to be herded toward the story, it’s going to be a long, boring session. But I digress). PC motivations and player agency were paramount: the reluctant hero isn’t going to be dragged into heroing by the convenient plot, and the PC’s will generally have the opportunity to pursue, if not achieve, their motivations and goals.
But then, something else rose to prominence, something new, something that was popularized, though surely not invented, by White Wolf’s games: DRAMA.
In these games, it was much more expected that characters have a detailed backstory, that they have motivations, natures, demeanors, goals, contacts, enemies, etc. . . . and that these factors would play a role in the ongoing game . . . and, moreover, that the GM would make it a point to make sure these factors played a role in the ongoing game.
Don’t get me wrong; I think the rise of dramatic-type games was good even for the more gamist and simulationist players, because it gave them a chance to theorize and untangle things and figure out what they liked. It led to the threefold model and the Forge models, and those of us who care about RPG theory got a clearer idea in our own heads of what we were doing. And of course, as the game designs progressed, you had correctives for the railroading tendencies, such as FATE and Spirit of the Century’s mechanics that put more of the narrative control in the players’ hands. But it wasn’t all wine and roses.
This type of game play can be a lot of fun, IF the GM knows what she’s doing. But we’ve all got our “worst GM” stories, and in my experience, a huge proportion of which involve these types of games (often World of Darkness games, at that). You know the kind: the GM ends up railroading the PCs, removing all player agency, and effectively telling a story. I actually heard a GM ask, “Whose story is this?” Well, since it’s a roleplaying game, I was under the impression that it belonged to all of us, but thanks for clearing that up…
But in my opinion, there is a type of dramatic GM that’s far worse than the railroader: the adversarial GM. Dramatic games bring with them an expectation of greater emotional involvement with the PC from the word go, more intricate plots, and backstory such that a beginning character is not really the tabula rasa first level beginner of olden days, but a more fully-formed character with a past.
In this style of play, adversarial GM’s stopped being the opponent across the chessboard and became more like a hostile god, able to attack not only physical well-being of the PC’s, but their family bonds, belief systems, and even character concepts.
Is the PC a dedicated follower of The Order of the Silver Dragon? Transform (often retroactively) The Order of the Silver Dragon into a corrupt of hypocritical sham, destroying the PC’s beliefs and even the character concept! Force him to either become evil or betray all of his colleagues and friends outside the PC group (if the PC’s are even friends and not enemies forced to work together by an outside plot). It’s HIGH DRAMA!!™
Does the PC love his family above all else? Kill some of them (off-screen, so he can’t do anything about it), threaten others, maybe rape a few (DRAMA allows for grim and gritty, ‘mature’ things that other play styles may back away from, dontcha know), brainwash some (and send them to kill the PC, of course), and reveal that his father (or mother) was the big bad all along. It’s HIGH DRAMA!!™
As you may have noticed, all of this is as “no saving throw” as a Sphere of Annihilation in a statue’s mouth.
Now, if you (the GM) are sure that everyone at the table is on board for this particularly masoschistic breed of drama then go ahead … but be sure.
If you’re going to feature captivity, brainwashing, and torture extensively, even if it’s only with one of the PC’s away from the rest of the group, you should probably clear it with the rest of the players first, or you may find out that it ends up ruining their fun as well. If not, you can run a separate solo game with that player and a new PC, or an expy/clone/alt of the original PC, without dragging that PC away from the group, making the rest of the PC’s (and by extension, players) feel stressed, weak, and stupid for not stopping one of their own from being ripped away (again, player-GM fiat has no saving throw).
Yeah, taking away player agency and ripping up character concepts are pet peeves of mine … can you tell? They’re also first-line GMing tricks to increase drama. Can you see why I prefer to GM rather than play?
The truth is, a lot of players feel the same way. As was discussed in the “Trenchcoat and Katana” thread in the Tabletop Open forum, making a cold-blooded loner with no family and no allegiances is sometimes a healthy response to this GMing style. If the GM takes everything that humanizes the PCs and uses it torture them (and indirectly, the players), what else is a player to do?
So how do we avoid this? Communication is key. The GM should know exactly where the players’ boundaries are, both for their own PC’s and for things that happen in the course of the game they’re in (the two may be different).
The GM should also know what exactly is vital to the character concept. If you destroy or undermine the things that are key to the character concept, you destroy the player’s ability to play the character he or she wants to play.
Finally, the GM should respect player agency and freedom. This is not the GM’s story, and the players’ contributions shouldn’t be their reaction to having their characters’ hearts ripped out. If you want drama, build it together.
