Put your books and your syllabusi away, kids. Don’t worry about taking notes. Forget about your homework.

Let’s talk.

Yeah, this is the right place. This is the True Game Mastery lecture hall. I know I’m acting weird. I didn’t even call you dumbasses or anything.

Calm down. I’m not dying and your mom and I aren’t getting a divorce.

It’s just that I’ve been reading the feedback I’ve been getting and lurking in your out-of-class discussions and I’m kinda worried about jumping into the next couple of lessons. The ones about Resolving Sneaky Infiltration and Resolving Social Interaction. I think some of you are in for a struggle and that’s because you’re still struggling with some things I said months ago. Or because you’re just refusing to accept things I said as true. And because of that, I don’t think you’ve got a good grasp on the relationship between players, player-characters, Game Masters, non-player-characters, roleplaying, and game mechanics.

I blame myself. I should have done a whole thing about non-player characters. Not on how to make good ones or portray them right, but on how they work. How you run them at the table.

Infiltration and Interaction rely heavily on the interplay between the player-characters and any non-player-characters in the scene. So we’ve got to get this right.

For the next two class sessions — the second of which I’ll post in under a week — I’m zooming out to the 30,000-foot perspective to talk again about this whole Game Mastering thing. I’m going to use that perspective to help you grok the relationship between True Game Masters and their NPCs. And because that relationship’s almost exactly the opposite one the players have with their characters, I want to dig into that relationship first. Because some of you are still fighting me on that shit.

If you can accept and understand what I tell you in these next two lessons, you can run any encounter with NPCs at all. If you can’t, you can’t.

That’s the game plan. Let’s get to it. Zooming out…

It’s Only a Game

Long ago, I told you that roleplaying games are, in fact, games. And lots of you still don’t like that. Or you refuse to accept it. Or you reject the ramifications thereof. This here represents the last time I’m trying to get this through your skull. If, after today, you still claim roleplaying games are anything but games or that they can be anything to anyone, you need another mentor. Nothing I can teach you will do you any good.

You’re a Game Master. You’re running a game. And that means things.

Goals, Rules, and Obstacles

Let’s review this shit quickly. I’ve already said it more times than I want to.

Games have goals. The players must be trying to achieve something. Something in the game. There must be a finish line. Something that signifies victory, or at least progress. In the case of tabletop roleplaying games, the goals come not from the game’s rule system but from the specific adventures, quests, scenarios, modules, campaigns, or whatevers.

Motivations aren’t goals. Playing to have fun isn’t a goal. It’s a thing that happens while you pursue the goal.

Games have rules. The rules establish how the players interact with the game. In the case of tabletop roleplaying games, the Game Master is part of the rules. The GM’s judgment calls and declarations are all part of the rules. As much a part of the rules as anything written in any book. You, the Game Master, are a game mechanic. You’re part of the game.

Games have obstacles. The players have to overcome things to win.

These are true statements. If you disagree with them, you’re not a True Game Master. And you never will be.

Tests of Strategy

Games challenge players to act within the rules to overcome obstacles and thereby achieve goals. Games, thus, test their players. Different games test different abilities. Sports test physical abilities. Video games test lots of different abilities, but many test manual dexterity and reaction time along with any other abilities they test. Roleplaying games can’t test physical abilities by their nature. They only test mental abilities like resource management, problem-solving, deductive reasoning, and social interaction skills.

Games that test player abilities allow players to affect the outcome and reward players for building their skills through play.

Players who struggle with certain abilities will find games that test those abilities more challenging. But players will also strengthen their abilities over time and through play. Some games will be inaccessible to players who are lacking in the appropriate abilities and who have no interest in improving or testing those abilities. This isn’t gatekeeping; this is life.

Noodlearmed weaklings who don’t care to build their muscles and hate getting sweaty won’t like wrestling. That’s not wrestling’s fault. It’s not the weakling’s fault. It’s no one’s fault. There’s no injustice. No one has been wronged. It’s just a fact of life. Wrestling ain’t for noodle-armed weaklings who don’t care to get stronger and hate getting sweaty.

At their most basic, roleplaying games test strategic problem-solving, deductive reasoning, social interaction, resource management, and teamwork. Your job as Game Master is to test your players’ abilities in those areas. And also many others that vary from game to game and system to system.

These are factually true statements.

Simulated Expertise

Roleplaying games promise players the chance to experience adventures as someone else and to take on challenges unlike those the players face in their real lives. And that makes designing and running such games really tricky. Roleplaying games must present experiences such that non-expert players can learn and master them and which feel sufficiently like the experience in question to give the players the illusion of being an expert.

Take combat, for instance. Most players have never held a sword, let alone used it to fight off a warband of marauding orc savages. If you want the best-damned role-playing experience you can get that’ll really make you feel like a warrior, you just need to spend a few years mastering swordplay and then battle other similarly trained swordsmen dressed as orcs. That’d do it. But that’s a big ask.

Games use lots of tricks to dumb down the sword fighting experience, as it were, to let players feel like swordfighters without actually spending years of training. One common abstraction in video games is the choice between a light attack — a quick, low-damage attack that’s hard to interrupt but won’t penetrate any serious defense — and a heavy attack — a slow, high-damage attack that powers through enemy defenses but is prone to disruption. That’s an approachable choice and players can learn the best situations for each attack, learn to read opponents and recognize the proper openings for each, and so on. Thus, they’re making decisions like the decisions swordfighters make, but they’re not actual swordfighters, and there’s plenty of room for strategic and tactical thinking.

Such abstractions are compromises. They’re trade-offs. They’re replacing an experience with mechanics in the hopes of getting close enough. Game designers must do everything in their power to minimize those compromises and abstractions lest the game they’re designing feel nothing like the experience it represents. Or lest they remove the player’s power to make strategic and tactical decisions. Which is worse.

That stuff? All true. Suck it up.

Unpredictable Outcomes

Games’ outcomes are unpredictable. They’re not wholly unpredictable. They’re not completely and totally random, but they are not set in stone. You can’t know how a game turns out until you play the final turn or roll the final roll or whatever. Tabletop roleplaying games rely on random chance, unintended consequences, and incomplete information to keep players guessing about the outcome. The key phrase there being players. You, the Game Master, are not a player. You don’t always get to be surprised. You’re part of the game’s mechanics. Sorry.

Obviously, that random chance thing is why we have all those dice. But dice aren’t the most important element here, they’re the least.

Unintended consequences arise from the Game Master evolving the world in response to the players’ actions. The Game Master is the perfect game mechanic for this because the human brain is so good at inventing logical — or at least reasonable — outcomes given just about any situation, no matter how ridiculous.

Incomplete information relies on the fact that players only know as much as their characters can perceive and they don’t know it with perfect accuracy. As a GM, you can hide anything and everything the players shouldn’t know, and you can translate perfectly quantified mechanical statistics into prose narration.

Random chance, unintended consequences, and incomplete information are vital Game Mastering tools. That’s also a fact.

Why Play Games?

Take everything I said above and file it under the definition of games. They are true of all games — except the things I said are true only of roleplaying games specifically or the stuff I said is generally or usually true or whatever; use your reading comprehension skills for fuck’s sake before you pick a fight with me — they’re true of all games and if there is a thing about which they are not true, that thing is not a game. The thing might be a fun activity — it might be totally worth doing; you might like it more than you like games — but it isn’t a game. And I’m teaching people about roleplaying games here.

Games are distinct from hobbies, activities, puzzles, diversions, and all other interactive and noninteractive pursuits you might pursue. Why are they distinct? How are they distinct? That’s hard to answer. It’s down to psychology. And the jury is still out.

Many Motivational Models

Psychologists know that people have unique psychological responses to games. They engage with games differently from other activities. And most people — and many social animals — seek out gameplay experiences. We’re wired to play games just like we’re wired to tell stories.

Psychologists also know that, while there are common responses to gameplay in all human brains, specific individuals seek specific kinds of games and some games satisfy some people more than others. And there have been numerous attempts to break this shit down into categories to help designers build better games and to help marketers label games so people can more easily find the games they’re most likely to enjoy.

The Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics Model

My favorite breakdown of gamer motivations comes from a 2004 paper called MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. It lists eight broad motivations that drive most gamers’ engagements: Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression, and Submission. But there’s a lot more to the paper than that list and I highly recommend giving it a read. It’s not that long.

The Quantic Foundry Gamer Motivation Model

Market research firm Quantic Foundry made their own gamer motivation model and they’ve published it along with a bunch of tools for game designers and gamers on their website. I really like their model too. Though I should say models as they’ve got two: one for video gamers and one for board gamers. I personally find the video game model more closely translates to roleplaying gamers.

Their model also provides a list of common gamer motivations. They’ve got six major motivations and each is divided into two submotivations. Action includes Excitement and Destruction, Social includes Competition and Community, Mastery includes Challenge and Strategy, Achievement includes Completion and Power, Immersion includes Fantasy and Story, and Creativity includes Design and Discovery. And yes, there’s a lot of overlap between their model and the MDA model.

The Quantic Foundry website is a ton of fun to explore. You can get a gamer motivation profile, get game recommendations, and take a deep dive into their research and data-gathering methodology. Check it out.

Confusing What and Why

I love and hate sharing this gamer motivation shit. I love it because it’s fascinating to me. But I hate it because Game Masters always misuse it. And that often stems from confusing motivation with definition.

Games have goals, rules, and obstacles; they test players; they have unpredictable outcomes. That’s a definition. A minimal one. That’s what a game is.

The models I shared are built by psychologists and marketers trying to figure out why people like games so much and why people choose some games over others.

If a thing doesn’t test players’ abilities to overcome obstacles and achieve goals, it ain’t a game. Games challenge players. But that’s distinct from the Challenge motivation described in the MDA and Quantic Foundry models. All games challenge players. Some players love games for their challenges. Some players love being challenged for other reasons. And some players are only into being challenged so much.

And that brings me to another way people always misuse this shit.

Missing the Forest for the Trees

Mix goals, rules, tests, and unpredictability together and you’ve got a game. Assuming you do it right. That game has the potential to satisfy a bunch of different motivations. To some degree, every game can satisfy every motivation spelled out in your model of choice. Every game provides a Challenge, every game tells a Story, every game has something to Discover, and so on. Some games are really lacking in certain motivational elements, though. Solo games, for example, don’t provide much of a Social payoff, but they do actually provide a tiny little trickling bit — believe it or not — because of how humans see themselves in relation to communities and shared experiences.

My point is that every game does something for every motivation. Every game just blends them up differently. Hardcore single-player action games provide satisfying Challenges but almost no Fellowship in addition to providing Immersion and Narrative and all that other crap. And every game offers the chance to Express yourself even if just by choosing one action or strategy over another. And that’s good because every gamer is, to some extent, after every motivation. No one’s looking for pure experiences. If they are, they shouldn’t be playing games. Pure Narrative experiences are better found in movies and books. Pure Expression experiences are better found in learning to draw or write. Pure Social Interaction is best found over a cup of coffee or a cocktail with friends.

Motivations are ingredients and games are cakes. There are lots of ways to make a cake and lots of varieties of cake and lots of cake preferences too. But you can’t distill a cake down to just sweetness or just fluffiness or just prettiness and still have a cake. Part of what defines the cake-eating experience is eating something that’s sweet and fluffy and pretty to look at even if you like sweetness the best.

Any perspective that boils roleplaying games down to just one aspect of gamer motivation is total horseshit. The GNS model? Horseshit. Saying players are either gamists, narrativists, or simulationists is the equivalent of saying people eat cake for either sweetness, fluffiness, or prettiness and each would be happier with raw sugar, soap foam, or pastel-colored plastic flowers. And the same is true of idiots who say roleplaying games are collaborative storytelling experiences or exist purely so players can express themselves or immerse themselves in a world. That’s more raw sugar and plastic flower bullshit.

But Don’t Sweat It

Fortunately, all this gamer motivation crap is just that; it’s crap. You don’t need to sweat it. It really doesn’t help designers as much as it helps psychologists and marketers. It’s an attempt to understand quantifiably why games work and why some games work better for some people. Most of the best game designers just build games for people to play. And they get better at building games by building games. Obsessing over this shit just gets in your way.

But that gamer motivation crap and that true-and-correct-definition-of-all-games-ever is why I told you months ago something lots of you didn’t want to hear or believe. Apparently. It’s why I said…

Players Choose; Characters Act

I induced a lot of strokes when I said that players choose while characters act months ago. And then more when I explained the ramifications thereof. But I promise you it follows from everything I said above. If you accept that games are what they are and gamers seek them for the synthesis of motivations described in those various models, then the best way to run a great game for as many players as possible is to follow the rule that players choose and characters act.

I need you to both get this and accept it or else you’re going to have a stroke when I tell you that NPCs work exactly the opposite way. And you need to get that and accept it if you ever want to use an NPC for anything more complicated than a fight scene.

Players Choose…

Players must choose their character’s actions. And the driving forces behind those choices are way more complicated than you think. In general, five forces influence — or should influence — every player’s action choices: in-game goals, character personality, player motivations, character abilities, and social dynamics.

In-Game Goals

All else being equal, players choose actions for their characters to maximize the odds they’ll accomplish whatever in-game goals they’re pursuing. That’s why goals are such an important piece of the game-design puzzle. If the players have nothing to shoot for, they’re missing a key motivation for choosing actions.

Character Personality

Roleplaying is about projecting yourself into a role. It’s imagining yourself as someone else and trying to act as that person or thing. Part of every choice is reflecting the personality, motivations, hopes, and fears of your in-game persona.

Player Motivations

Players game for reasons. And they’re driven to satisfy their wants, needs, and desires as they play games. Explorers will explore, challengers will throw themselves at challenges, socialites will interact with their fellow players and the world, and so on. People don’t like to admit this because it doesn’t feel like true roleplaying and some Game Masters even think players acting per their own play motivations is immoral or incorrect. Those Game Masters are idiots. You run games for humans and humans gonna human.

Character Abilities and Resources

Every character has skills, abilities, talents, and resources that equip them for handling certain tasks or taking certain approaches. Players will make choices based on their characters’ strengths and weaknesses. And they absolutely should. That’s human.

Social Dynamics

Roleplaying games are cooperative, social games. And people are influenced — consciously and unconsciously — by the social situations they’re in. This ain’t just about teamwork — but teamwork is a part of it — it’s about how social dynamics affect behavior. For example, most players understand — implicitly — that the party has to stay a party. Parties can split up for a little while, but they can’t break up and go their separate ways without breaking the game. So most players won’t even consider actions that would permanently break the group up. Likewise, most players don’t consider their teammates  to be targets or competition. And so many players have blind spots here. They can’t even see certain options — or certain threats — because of the social dynamic. And that’s good. It’s part of the game.

Of course, shared goals give teams something to rally around and work toward, and so, again, in-game goals are a hugely important part of tabletop roleplaying games.

Meaningful Choice and Play Style

In games, as in life, you can’t always get what you want. At least, you can’t get everything you want. And when you can’t, the choice you make reveals the person you are inside. An extreme example is the heroic choice to suffer loss, injury, or death rather than do something you consider morally wrong or ignore someone in harm’s way. In that situation, you face a choice between living long and living right, so which do you choose?

How each player balances those five forces in each and every situation — because every situation requires a unique calculus and universal rules don’t work — defines — or reflects — their play style. It’s what makes some players compatible with others, some players more likable than others, and some players a pain in the ass to run for.

Remember this shit. It’ll be important in September.

Meanwhile, those choices are also the essence of roleplaying. The single most Expressive thing any player can do is to choose their character’s next action. It’s also, quite literally, the only thing in the players’ control at the roleplaying game table. It’s the only place where the game tests the player. Which you gotta have.

You can’t remove the balancing act every player must perform when choosing actions based on in-game goals, character personality, player motivation, character skill, and social dynamics without also removing the game from itself.

… And Characters Act

If you aren’t making your players make deliberate choices, you’re destroying the things that make roleplaying games roleplaying games. Without deliberate choices to reveal both the character and the player, there’s no roleplaying. And without testing the player, there’s no game. So what the hell are you even doing at the table at that point?

But you also can’t take the character’s statistics from the equation. Just because the player’s smart enough to say the perfect thing at the perfect time, that doesn’t mean they deserve the win. When choosing actions, players must consider their character’s abilities as much as they consider anything else. If your character’s a social moron with chronic foot-in-mouth disease and you decide to deliver an inspiring and impassioned speech, you’re taking a gamble. You’re hoping your brilliant speech is enough to overcome your character’s piss-poor charisma. It’s a valid choice to make — it’s like throwing yourself in the water to save a drowning kid even though you can barely swim — but it ain’t a sure thing. It can’t be.

Meaningful choice comes down to how you resolve conflicts. On the one hand, you want to give this brilliant speech — a player motivation — that you think can resolve the situation — helping the party toward their shared in-game goal — but, on the other hand, your character sucks at this kind of thing — your character lacks the abilities. The choice to take a chance on the dice is a meaningful one. If the GM said, “Great speech; have a win” — and if you knew your GM was the kind of GM to do that shit — your action wouldn’t mean anything. It’d just be the optimal choice.

Part of playing the game is considering what your character can and can’t do. It’s part of the test.

That’s why the game’s rules always get a say. Players don’t just get a win for declaring clever-enough actions. They declare clever actions and that cleverness is factored in when you, the Game Master, determine the outcome. Because you are the rules. When you decide whether an action can succeed and whether it can fail and whether it’s worth rolling for? That is the game’s rules having a say. And to do it right, you must weigh everything about every unique situation to make the right call. This is why I rail against online Game Masters making hypothetical calls about imaginary situations away from the table. That ain’t how True Game Masters do it.

When one of my players does the impassioned speech thing, I consider the character’s Charisma and social skills when asking myself, “Can this work?” and “Can it fail?” A silver-tongued bard saying just the right thing to just the right person? That’s so unlikely to fail it ain’t worth rolling for. But the same speech coming from an idiot who can misspeak anything into an insult? He can fail whenever he opens his mouth.

For fuck’s sake, don’t even ask because I don’t do any math or compare any numbers or anything like that. I just make a call. That’s how True Game Masters do it.

This Is How It Is

Everything I’ve said in True Game Mastery to this point derives from everything I explained above about what games are and why people play them. You might not be able to see the logical progression from these words to every point, but it’s there. And technically, I’m breaking the rules I set at the start of this series by justifying myself with this long-ass speech. But I need you to either get on board or get off the dock because we’re in for some rough waters ahead. If you can’t accept the adage that Players Choose and Characters Act — and everything it entails — you can’t run an NPC.

Why?

I’ll tell you next time.