Thoughts on GMing Theory, Part 1--Quest, Rules-Light Games, and GM Restraints

This was going to be a review of Quest, the new hotness in the tabletop RPG scene in the last month or so.  Quest is a game that takes a number of big swings, biggest of which is having the designer announce that their goal was to "overtake D&D" as the ttrpg fantasy leader.  And, having reviewed the rules (which are mostly available under a Creative Commons License), I came pretty quickly to the conclusion that Quest is a game that very effectively and skillfully creates a play experience that I am not particularly interested in.  It's here, on the level of goals, on the level of what this game is trying to do and why it is trying to do it, that I think Quest is incredibly interesting, notwithstanding my personal tastes.  And so, rather than review Quest in the normal way, I would like to use it as a jumping off point to talk about the design theory that it embodies.

The first thing you see immediately in looking at Quest is how rules light it is.  There are no attributes and no skills, and all checks are resolved using a single die roll that is read according to a fixed chart that is reminiscent of Powered by the Apocalypse games, with added "critical success and failure" levels tacked on to either end.  There are classes and a list of powers that drive play, but that's more or less it--the combat rules in the CC License doc is, by a generous count, two pages long with lots of white space between the columns.  I wracked my brain to think of a lighter game system than Quest, and the only thing I could come up with John Harper's Lasers and Feelings.  It truly pegs the meter on the light-weight side.

What interests me about this is what the designer, TC Sottek, is saying about ttrpgs by and through Quest.  If you make a game this light, and you say that your goal is to overtake D&D, what you are saying is that you think the overwhelming majority of that rules structure in D&D is unnecessary and should, or at least could, be discarded.  What's interesting about this claim is that, at least to some degree, the designers of 5th Edition D&D agree, or at least identify with the sentiment behind it.  Here's what Mike Mearls said about the design goals of 5th Edition:

“D&D’s 3.5 and 4th editions were very much driven by an anxiety about controlling the experience of the game, leaving as little as possible to chance,” Mearls explained in a Twitter thread. “The designers aimed for consistency of play from campaign to campaign, and table to table. The fear was that an obnoxious player or DM would ruin the game, and that would drive people away from it. The thinking was that if we made things as procedural as possible, people would just follow the rules and have fun regardless of who they played with.” . . .

“With fifth edition,” Mearls explained, “We assumed that the DM was there to have a good time, put on an engaging performance, and keep the group interested, excited, and happy. It’s a huge change, because we no longer expect you to turn to the book for an answer. We expect the DM to do that.”

The design team referred to the goal as “DM empowerment.” The phrase may be misleading, because the goal of DM empowerment is not to tickle a DM’s power fantasies. DM empowerment lets DMs fill gaps in the rules—and sometimes override the rules with their own judgement. DM empowerment lets your wizard use spells outside of combat, among other things.

In other words, having a robust rules-set, and especially having a robust set of rules that bind the GM, hamstrings the ability of the GM to run the game, tell a fun story, and have a good time at the table.  And there is no question that the wrong sort of rules can be an impediment to all of those things.  But, as I think about my experience of running games of late, and looking at some systems that push in the opposite direction, I think this line of thinking is misguided.  I don't think fewer rules and more "DM empowerment" leads to a better play experience, perhaps counter-intuitively especially for the GM.

What do I mean by that?  Let's start with the experience of playing a board game.  In this context, it doesn't matter whether it is a competitive board game like Monopoly or Twilight Imperium, or a cooperative style game like Pandemic or Gloomhaven--the basic experience of play is that each person is trying to achieve the best outcome possible as seen from the perspective of the posture that the game puts them in, within the constraints imposed by the rules.  So, if I am a player in Twilight Imperium, I am attempting to achieve ten Victory Points (or 14, if we are all masochists) for my Faction before any other Faction gets ten VP, according to the structures the game establishes for how VP are earned in play.  Getting the best outcome I can under the rules is where the "game" part of playing a game lies, and is where the fun of the game is found, distinct from the social enjoyment and other externalities of playing a board game.

Now apply that to a tabletop RPG.  The same basic framework, at least at this extremely high level of generality, works for the players of a ttrpg--I want to succeed at my objectives as I define them, within the constraints of the rules, limited perhaps only by the (often unspoken) caveat that I must work and play well with my fellow players.  But, for the GM, it doesn't translate at all.  If a GM approached his or her job the way you are supposed to approach a game of Twilight Imperium, the game would break down almost immediately.  This is because, in large measure, the GM is wholly unconstrained in terms of what game play elements he or she can introduce into the narrative of the game.  "Rocks falls, everyone dies," is a cliche of GM dickery, but it's not against the rules.

On the other hand, this unconstrained ability of the GM to introduce narrative elements is the thing that makes ttprgs so interesting, and is the thing that can't be replicated in other game forms.  You don't need a fixed scenario, because you have a live person behind the screen that can react dynamically to what happens as the game goes forward.  If you constrain that freedom of action of the GM too much, then you might as well play Gloomhaven, and let the GM have the fun of being a player.  There is, and their needs to be, a power imbalance in ttrpgs, at least those that use a GM.  

[As an aside, I think this discussion of power imbalance is separate from the important conversation about safety at the ttrpg table.  It is certainly the case that GMs can use the inherent power imbalance as part of creating an abusive situation, but even GMs are perfectly respectful to the players at all times still have a measure of power that the players don't have.  I think this is important to say, because Quest puts the safety issues at the forefront of its presentation, and nothing I am saying here is a criticism of those efforts.]

So, the GM needs the freedom to design the world, but you don't want the GM to be a jerk and blow up the play experience by trying to "win" in the normal way.  What do you do?  Well, in a sense, the GM plays with his or her hands behind the back, crafting an play experience that is not about "winning" in the normal way, but one that rides the line of challenging the players while keeping the game going.  That is, or at least can be, a very fun experience for the GM on its own merits.  But it is not really the same experience as "playing a game" in the way that playing Twilight Imperium is, or even the experience of being a player in a ttrpg is.  Rather than think about "playing the game," the GM in this context is more of a "story concierge" for the rest of the table.  Notice the way Mearls frames it: "We assumed that the DM was there to have a good time, put on an engaging performance, and keep the group interested, excited, and happy."  Other than "have a good time," which is undefined here, all of the other elements are player-facing and service oriented--the job of the GM is to do stuff for the players, not for himself or herself.

Again, being a "story concierge" can be a lot of fun.  But so is playing a game.  And while you don't want to constrain the GM's freedom of action altogether, one way to maintain the experience of playing the game for the GM is to constrain the GM's freedom of action in certain respects.  Yes, the GM can decide which monsters to put into an encounter (constrained by story concierge considerations), but once that decision is made the way the monsters play in the fight is constrained by the rules.  I tie my hand behind my back by only selecting level-appropriate enemies to oppose the PCs, but having done so I now do everything within the rules to play those enemies for maximum challenge.  Once the pieces are on the board, it is a game between the GM and the players in the context of the particular combat.  And that's fun.

All of which filters back to why I think the Mearls quote is wrong-headed.  Not all restrictions on the freedom of action of the GM are good, but the good ones create space to allow the GM to "let loose" and play a game.  Conversely, taking away all of the restrictions and giving the GM unlimited creative freedom force the GM into 24/7 story concierge mode.  If you want to say that the way 3rd and 4th edition tried to constrain GM freedom of action via rules didn't work, then I get that.  But I think the idea that restrictions on the GM imposed via rules are a bad thing to be avoided in toto is one I can't agree with.  Restricting the GM with rules can make the game more fun, especially for the GM, because it makes it more like a game.  

But that of course leads to the question of what sort of constraints on the GM are good ones, ones that make the game fun for the GM will still holding on to enough narrative freedom to make the game work.  There are many examples across the different game systems, but in the next post I want to talk about three of them that I really like and I think are really interesting--Modiphius's 2d20 system (Conan, Star Trek Adventures, and Infinity are the games in that series I am familiar with), Torg and Torg: Eternity (more specifically the Drama Deck), and the neo-OSR experience of Forbidden Lands.