While reading The Forge, I ran across a post from Ron Edwards that managed to neatly summarize one of the main reasons that I started looking for new games to play, new gamers to play with, and eventually just stopped roleplaying entirely. It’s long, so I’ll pick out the most relevant portion:

OK, now I want to talk about this trend (and as you can see, it’s definitely not the only way to play Champs, or even a textually-supported one, but it is very common): very formal rules-specific fight scenes, embedded in totally dialogue-driven, totally GM-verbally-managed interaction and “go here do this” scenes.

Although Ron’s talking about Champions, my big frustration was with D&D. In any case, what he describes is utterly familiar. Fights were conducted like a tactical miniatures wargame. Everything outside of fighting was “just roleplay it” and the GM ultimately decides what happens. It was understood (though never spoken aloud) that you were never to try to diverge from the GM’s plan.

I want to emphasize that I was a master of such GMing. The players could say “we do X” and “we do Y,” and wouldn’t you know it, because I could frame the scenes and because I could run the NPCs as reacting how I wanted, the scenes would proceed one by one … and we’d always end up at the set-pieces that I had planned.

When I was running Feng Shui, I quickly learned how to do this. My preparation method for a session pretty much required it. Games were built around three or four set-piece fights, so it was absolutely mandatory that players move from A to B to C to D. I didn’t realize that by setting things up this way I was removing any opportunity for the players to make meaningful choices about the events occurring in the game. I was under the impression that what I was doing was “how it should be done.”

And you know what? It didn’t matter either what happened in each fight. Maybe they’ll beat on someone, maybe they’ll get beaten on. Champs is wonderfully predictable for combat, as combat mainly involves grinding down opponents’ considerable resources. And here’s the dirty secret of such GMing … if the heroes do manage to pull off a cool combination and knock out someone important, you can always transfer the “important stuff” (the secret of the master plan, etc) to someone else who got away.

So the fights become set-pieces which are just plain fun to run when everyone knows the rules, and players can work out little grudges against this-or-that villain, and buildings can get blown up. But the story or sequence the GM is working through can proceed as planned, pretty much no matter what. With a GM this experienced, he will never have to worry about stomping the characters into the dirt, except when he wants to, or about them totally stifling the Master Plan too early. You guys get to play your characters, he gets to write/present his story, you get to appreciate the story, and … and, that’s it.

This was the feeling that led me to write reams of forum posts about how I never wanted to play fantasy games again because I was tired of them. I’m just now getting to the point where I can stand to consider playing a fantasy game, as long as it’s miles and miles away from D&D or anything else remotely traditional.

What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t tired of fantasy, or even tired of D&D, really. I was tired of being railroaded and tired of the thin illusion of control. I was tired of watching while the GM’s story plays out in front of me while I have no real impact on what happens. Tired of a situation that I can’t really win or lose because the outcome is already written up in the GM’s notes.

Two things are crucial to preserving this sort of play, over time, which I used to do and which you guys are obviously doing as well.

1. Out-of-combat, interactive skill use is flat out. The GM uses these features on your sheets as fiat methods, period, and if they can’t work because it doesn’t suit his plans, he ignores them. Your character is smart? Oh – well, not that smart. The master illusionist is just smarter, OK?

This is crucial because this approach to play requires managing those out-of-combat scene framing events, managing the necessary interactions (”they’ve gotta really hate this guy”), and managing the information flow from scene to scene. All this must be under one man’s helm, or all will become chaos.

2. In-character dialogue, “if you say it he said it,” and character-only knowledge are also crucial, not because of any aesthetic values they have (the usual justification), but because they fiercely limit your (the real person’s) ability to influence these scenes either. “Wait, doesn’t that mean Bat-Shriek is really Killjoy’s brother?” “Hey! You’re not there!” The flow of information, revelation, insight, and judgment is under that helm too. You guys, you’re there to appreciate the SIS through the GM, and such interjections smack too much direct contact with it, and contact with each other about it.

These techniques were not only common, they were considered to be the correct and proper way to play. Suggesting anything outside these practices was written off as “rollplaying, not roleplaying” or “metagaming” or some other similar dismissal.

All right, I’m not really trying to bust on your GMs. I do understand the kind of play that’s going on … but long experience leads me to think that you, right this minute, are at the cusp of realizing that somehow … everything seems to be becoming …repetitive. Are you really having a blast with each spotlight? You qualified it, when you said so. Is warping the very fabric of space and time actually as fun as stopping a bank robbery was, back when your character had only 272 points? I mean, you guys are turning to alternate futures and pasts … what next? When do the situations collapse under their own escalating weight?

This sums it all up. Repetitive was my watchword. Every game felt like every other game. I no longer had fun even when the spotlight was shining (on me or on us as a group) because I felt like though the dialog wasn’t scripted, everything else was. All roads lead to Rome. The only part where I really felt free to do something interesting was during combat, which grew more and more cumbersome as we increased in levels and added on more modifiers and equipment and conflicting spells and abilities.

At the time I didn’t quite know what the problem was, I just knew I was getting bored and tired and unsatisfied.

With the help of guys like Ron over at The Forge, I understand now what was making me so unsatisfied and what it was that I wanted instead. I know how to get it. Right now my biggest limiter is trying to find the time for a regular game.