I often hear from gamers about how much "work" it is to GM or that elements not actually prescribed by the game system we're playing is "the GM's job." Still others point to this "work" as a means of entitling them to increasing amounts of control over player choice or behavior or the creation of new information. In practice, I see this as causing players to disengage from the game in many ways including trying to undermine it, causing GMs who are already defensive about their creations to get even more defensive. Choice is presumed so as to preserve the prep and choices players make that don't fall into those presumptions are often blocked, negated, or denied (e.g. saying "No" or "Yes, but..." or engaging in illusionism). Since any approach can work with buy-in, this method is just as valid as any other approach where the group is bought into that paradigm; however, I see it as a vicious cycle of increasing amounts of work by the GM and less and less engagement by players. I've been down this road myself. I'm going to tell you now how to break that cycle by reducing your prep and using more of what your players give you. Reducing your prep means you have less to protect and less reason to block. It also means gaming more if your schedule permits. Soliciting the players for ideas and then using them is the fastest way to player engagement as well, as opposed to blocking them. This is the first of what I'm sure will be many posts in this thread discussing this and related techniques. Let's keep it civil and informative and ask honest questions instead of making dishonest assumptions. While GM styles are not equal, they are all valid with the group's buy-in. Below is the GM style called " No Myth Roleplaying ." This approach very neatly describes the style that some of us espouse for hosting roleplaying games. It stands in pretty stark contrast to the traditional "world controller GM" mode (as it has been recently coined in GMA) so I wanted to get opinions on it or see if anyone has any questions or additions to make. A link to the source document is at the end of this post. (For the record, it was not written by me. I adopted these techniques and have been refining them for some years and only stumbled across this all nicely spelled out after a recent Twitter exchange. I wish I had seen it a long time ago!) What is No Myth? The premise, and the reason it's called No Myth, is this: nothing you haven't said to the group exists. "You", in this case, includes the GM as well as the other players. The other half of this premise is "the [non-GM] players are the protagonists of the story." The result of this is that if the characters are mob enforcers and they go into a bar, something cool happens. Maybe they see the stoolie they're looking for in there, maybe there's an ambush in the bar by a rival mob, maybe the bartender's looking nervous because it turns out he's in default on his "loan". Whatever — the point is, there's something cool as a result of their action, because the goal of the system is for the GM to facilitate cool stuff happening. Note that this is not saying that the players get to say what happens when they go into the bar — the story is still being "run" by the GM — nor is it saying that player actions are meaningless or that their effects are arbitrarily decided by the GM — the effects are directly based on genre, the characters' previous actions, and what would be cool to have happen. No Myth and genre definition The overall goal here is pretty simple: make more cool stuff happen per unit time. This system (at least in theory) facilitates that, with the cost that it relies on having a clear understanding of the genre you're working in. That means two things: they have to understand the common elements of the genre, and they have to understand the rules by which they interact. For instance, a game where the PCs are mob enforcers probably has elements like scenes in Italian restaurants and barbershops, car chases, stick-ups, double-crosses, a suitcase full of cash or gold bars, leg-breaking, protection money, gambling, and the old don saying "Listen, Vinnie, the boys want to have a little talk with you". But along with the elements, the players have to know the rules of the world. If things get to the point where the don says that to you, you're probably going to die. If the player is envisioning more of a heroic swashbuckly game, they might say "Well, I drop down suddenly and roll across the floor, firing shots at the don's bodyguard to keep them back until I make it to the door." — only to be disappointed if the GM says that's not particularly realistic, applies heavy penalties to the roll and the bodyguard shoots the PC as they're still trying to get their pistol from its holster. For another example, if the PCs are at the edge of a cliff with the bad guys closing in, they need to know what's likely to happen if they jump off. Can PCs die if they do something stupid, or (assuming jumping off a cliff is stupid) would they fall onto some branches partway up? Or would they be rescued by a friendly hermit at the bottom of the cliff after they land, having broken a bunch of bones in the fall, and be laid up for months? Or (if we're talking something more nobilis-level) do they land on their feet at the bottom and keep on running? To take another example, if the players had gotten captured by the bad guys, would the bad guys kill them? Or would they tell the PCs their secret plan and then put them into some kind of crazy death trap? Is it reasonable for a player to create an anti-hero PC? Or are they all supposed to be basically good guys? If the party splits up, do they get picked off one by one, or do they search the spooky mansion faster that way? Are PCs basically witty and talkative, so the combat-heavy mercenary is an unpleasant thug, or are they special-forces agents and the one diplomat is a dangerous liability? I don't think all the rules and elements need to be ironed out, but without at least a basic premise being agreed upon, there's going to be confusion. Because of this, No Myth works better with strongly defined genres. "SF", say, would be a lousy setting since you don't know if there's AI and how powerful it is, whether there's nanotech, if FTL exists, and so on. "Star Trek", on the other hand, answers all those questions, and also includes a sense of who the characters are, what sorts of things they do, what the overall morality/philosophy of the universe is, and so on. I think that people make movies or write adventure books about are well-suited for this kind of game: pirates, musketeers, superheroes, Westerns, mobsters, sword and sorcery, Robin Hood, heist caper, Star Wars, that sort of thing (although many of these genres require pinning things down more before you start — do you want your Western to be "We got to get the cattle to Sun Valley by May!" or "You left me for dead, Black Pete, and now I'm back for blood"). Practical Techniques The previous section was all theory, which I feel like I have a pretty good handle on. But applying the theory to real games is something I am much less clear on. Still, I think there are some principles of play that can be stated: Nothing about the world or the storyline is sacred. The GM must not cheat to keep important NPCs alive or to ensure some specific scene happens. This is pretty much the most important rule. The only addenda here are that this doesn't mean the GM can't use system-defined methods for helping NPCs (eg, drama dice in 7th Sea), and PCs may play by different rules (this would depend on the particular genre being used, but rules like "PCs may not die except by their player's consent" or "PCs will suffer no permanent harm except through losing a conflict where they knew what stakes they were putting up" are entirely reasonable). There is no preset plot; there are preset genre expectations. This is actually fairly important to get worked out, although I don't have a good feel for the level of detail that it needs to be done in. I talk about genre in more detail up above. Boring bits can (and should) be fast-forwarded through. Sometimes this means the player has to say "Back when we were in town I bought new shoes and a pet monkey." This is fine. If the flashback doesn't seem reasonable or if the GM thinks it would likely have gotten complicated, it can actually be played out. In the Forge glossary, this technique is known as Scene Framing. The GM should handle all PC actions by agreeing that they succeed, or working out a conflict with the PC that they can roll dice for. This is the standard never-say-no rule, but it's good to keep in mind. Every die roll should be significant. As a complement to the previous item, the dice should only be rolled for conflicts that are actually interesting. This applies to requests that are just for color and have no game-effect, but — and here is where it gets to be hard to remember to do it — also to any conflict where it isn't the case that both success and failure will be interesting. If the PCs are trying to find a secret door, and the adventure can't proceed until they do, then failure is not interesting; this shouldn't be rolled for. If the story calls for the PCs to be made prisoners so they'll fight in the arena, then success in resisting the guards sent to capture them isn't interesting; this shouldn't be rolled for either. Of course, these sorts of GM-fiat things are effectively scene framing as mentioned above, and it's probably a bad idea to assert them without getting (at least implicit) player consent. Every die roll should have a goal and/or something at stake. This is effectively saying the players should be doing conflict resolution and not task resolution. In another sense, it's saying the same thing as the previous: every die roll should be significant, because there's something at stake for the player to win or lose depending on whether they make the roll, and because the GM promises the roll's outcome will have a concrete effect on the story. Note also that this can be used to help protagonize the player (ie, make the character act in the world more like how the player wants them to act). If Conan fails a conflict with the goal of "avoid being captured by the guards", it's perfectly reasonable for this to be narrated as "Conan swings his mighty sword around, slaying guard after guard as they charge him. But then he looks up to see one of the guards has grabbed the princess and has a dagger to her throat! "Drop your weapon, Conan, or the girl gets it!" the guard calls, and Conan is forced to submit to arm-shackles." In other words, Conan is still cool and still behaves in a Conan-like manner (ie, kicking ass), there are just forces out of his control. And the counterpoint here is that if the goal is "avoid being captured by the guards" and Conan wins the conflict, the GM can't then pull out the hostage thing — Conan won the conflict, so he doesn't get captured, period. Time should be spent on situations in direct proportion to how interesting they are. Or, in other words, conflicts should be handled at the right scale. This is again a combination of previous techniques. It means that scene framing should be used to skip past things that aren't interesting at all, and less important things should be handled by fewer die rolls than more important things. One way to do the latter is for the player and GM to agree on bigger goals for the less important things: "defeat these guards and break out of prison" or "climb the cliff in time to catch up with the kidnappers" vs "back McGraw into a position that'll hamper his swordfighting". A related way to handle it would be to have the same big goals for important conflicts, but then introduce subgoals, and have some system where accomplishing the subgoals leads to completing the big goal. Players should try things. This seems obvious, but it can go directly against habits from other technique systems. Because the point of this all is to make an interesting story from player actions, it requires the players to initiate some of the actions. The GM has to throw up story hooks that are the right scale for the players to interact with, and then the players have to interact with them. Note that a few of the techniques I listed aren't technically No Myth things; they're stuff I pulled in from elsewhere because I like them, and because they're compatible with the No Myth mindset. Additional information can be found at the original link .
