When writting a story you have a lot of time to construct it. You can go back and rewrite areas of it. You can change the earlier parts so they lead up to new sections properly.
When you run a game you are doing something more spontaneous and you
dont know what the long term implications are. Often you are faced
with several possibilities. You dont have the luxury of thinking them
over for a day and deciding which has the most interesting
possibilities,
nor which one is 'right' for the story. You just have to pick one
quickly
and the dice are usefull to help you decide.
To what extent you allow the dice to influence you depends on the sort
of
game that you and your players want, its a very flexible media. You can
use the dice for everything and stick carefully to the rules - this
gives you more of a wargame. You can decide what you want to happen and
scrap the dice - this gives you more of a story.
My personal preference is to decide broadly what should happen and then use dice to flavour it. But I try to stay open to being overruled by chance sometimes and the dice are good for this. I tend to ignore minor differences but try to go with the major ones.
> Dice in RPG's are problematic. Essentially, player free will in
anygiven
> story is
> essentially illusion. However, in order to tell a good
> story, the GM must stridently maintain the *Illusion* of player free
If it _was_ only a story then player free will would be an illusion. But
taken to this extreme it would not be a roleplaying game. I am guessing
(from the paragraphs that followed) that you dont mean this as strongly
as
this quote suggests and have some some other way of negotiating
outcomes with players that allows the whole group to steer the progress
of the story.
Player involvement is the special extra that a roleplaying game has over
a story. To work well the player must be immersed in the story which
means
the mechanics must be down played. However at the same time the player:
- - must believe that there is risk of a given action succeeding or
failing;
- - must believe he can get some sort of handle on the likelyhood of
success
and failure, which means he must be presented with a self consistent
environment where the odds one day appear to match the odds the next;
- - must believe that he can influence events (the storyline) as much as
the
referee.
As a player I am sensitive to railroading and exclusion from the
dynamics
of the game. The dice provide physical indicators to the player that
there is
an underlying system to ensure consistency and fairness. And even though
the
player may not be party to what the exact mechanics are, I think that
helps
by symbolising the balance of power between player and referee.
Desperation can be the mother of invention. One of the most pleasing
aspects of refereeing is the feeling of suprised satisfaction that comes
after a game in which you made up a story and pulled together plot
elements you had had no time to think about and had to create from
somewhere inside with little time for your concious mind to plan.
But thats a risky business because you could end up sitting infront of
your players and no inspiration could come.
Speaking as a control freak I would be unlikely to go down this risky
path
if I did not allow the dice to prompt me from time to time.
So to say
> I refuse to entrust my joint creation (with the players) to be
dictated by
> the toss of dice
is understandable; but its not the only way of getting to pleasing
conclusion.
At the end of the day the dice are only tools, there to help with the
game.
Like most tools there is a time to use them and a time not to.
They are agents of chance, sometimes helpful sometimes disruptive. This
is the role of the Trickster. The Trickster does not create, but he is a
catalyst who has to be there for the process of creation to take place.
Dice used properly are a springboard from which your view of the story
can
be challenged and taken in directions you would never have reached
without
them.
+---------------------------------------------------- + Nick H
+---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------
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