* (1:19) An upcoming, cross-show contest.

* (2:37) The expiration date on spoilers.

* (16:28) As a Game Master, knowing what you truly want out of a game. Trying to get what you want while still taking into account the players’ wants and needs. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Around 34:50, Pat makes a comment about being able to do what you want, just like Spider-Man. That’s an inside joke referring to this video. FYI, it contains strong language.)

* (39:00) Identifying what you want as a player and getting that from a game without being uncompromising.

Hosts: Dan, Pat, Wayne

Great episode. A great question from players to ask their GM, "What are you looking for out of the game?" Too many times it is the GM asking that of the players. If players would ask it of their GMs more often, there would be long campaigns.

To be honest, I tend to set things up a bit differently. I start with a campaign, pretty much like what Dan talks about, and then step up to the plate and announce that I have something I want to run. When I'm done, someone else in the group will step up next. By and large, at least in my current group, we're pretty willing to play in the DM's sandbox, trusting that whatever the DM creates will be fun.

So, when I pitched a really theme based SF game, we played that for a while. Then we switched over to something else. Then an Eberron game, then a 4e homebrew, currently a Dark Sun game. But, at the end of the day, we've been pretty willing to see whatever the DM wants to do and go along with that.

I've never really been in a group that works to cater to the players like the hosts talk about. Wayne mentions making the characters first and then building the campaign that way. I've never really done that. Sounds like fun, but, I'm not sure I could do it. Maybe in a much, much lighter system than D&D. That Weird West game (which I did pick up) would probably work that way for me.

But, honestly, I've never been in a group that would tell the DM, "No, sorry, we don't like that campaign." At least, not any campaign that has gone past the elevator pitch stage. If the DM has invested any real time in the campaign, I'm pretty willing to see where he wants to go with it.

The various Skype groups that I'm part of span that spectrum.

Savage Fringeworthy is very traditional in that GM does a ton of prep and has established encounters and the like. But, due to the nature of Fringeworthy, it's pretty easy to jump ship and end up in a place that has a totally different feel (and possibly even different laws of nature.)

Porcelain Llama Theater is very much, pitch the theme, build the campaign, and create characters [QAGS: Strangers, GURPS: Halo, and several focused one shots or mini-arcs.]

Sunday Skypers tends to be more herd of kittens driven and someone will mention a system and then a party of characters will fall into place and the GM runs with that. [Spirit of the Century, Zorceror of Zo, Hardwired Hinterland + Yesterday's Tomorrow]

Of course, MonkeyCon tends to be set piece. 'Winging it' at a convention is tricky, you don't have the luxury of time. But given the rise in popularity of play set driven games (Fiasco and a handful of indie games), I could see someone saying we're going to play Fiasco or The Trouble with Rose and the players present will choose the play set to run.

I guess I'm a have my cake and eat it kind of guy since I can roll with and enjoy both styles.
--
TAZ

It's funny that I caught this episode this morning, because tonight I'm going to test some rules that I wrote to address this very issue.

Tonight I'm recording a video playtest of my game, Feed, in which the first step is to write a Story Profile. The Story Profile is like a book-jacket blurb expressing the campaign's premise and feel. The whole group writes the Story Profile together, which gets everybody talking about what would be fun and what wouldn't.

Then, when it's time to create characters (and to create a Strain of vampirism, which is a distinctive Feed thing) everybody makes a character pitch based on the Story Profile. The rest of the group has to approve your character pitch before you can build the character. This, I hope, will cut down on the number of river dragons in Feed.

My groups used to run pretty much like Hussar's, but I've moved in the direction of more player input over time, which is why I built it into Feed. Even if the GM's got a killer idea that he knows he wants to run, player input tends to increase buy-in and add positive elements to the game. A mature group can run a game like a three-ring circus -- even if not everybody's into everything, there's some part of each session to engage each player, so everybody goes home happy.

Coolness, keep us posted on how that turns out.
--
TAZ

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

Fantastic episode, guys!

I've been struggling with this myself for the past year or so. Both allowing the players to change the entire feel of the game as well as my own inability to pin down something for the long term.

As mentioned up-thread, I ran a video playtest on Friday night. If you want to see a gaming group hashing out a campaign from scratch, in contrast to the GM-centric approach that some of you use, here it is:


I was pretty happy with the results. I think we ended up with consensus about how the campaign should play, and as the GM, I now know what elements of the game excite each player. Character creation helped even more with that, but that video's not posted yet.

(By the way, ignore my talk about contributing to Feed at the beginning of the video. I'm recording all of this for a Kickstarter that isn't live yet.)

Wayne,

I feel your pain about the spoiler tags. I really do. I read most of my forum stuff on my Nook Tablet, and you can't really highlight on the web browser on that thing, so it's a pain in the ass. But the nice thing is I can say things like Vader is Luke's father, Snape killed Dumbledore, Soilent Green is people, who River Song really is, who dies at the end of Hunger Games, and that Joseph Gordon Levitt is Robin, bitches, and it is nobody's fault by their own for having read it.

And that is the meaning of life.

River Song is just Melody Pond, no big deal.