28th Class: Unraveling the Presentation Problem

With this class, we're going to discuss the first "insolvable" problem of role-playing:  "How do we verbally, personally and effectively present the game so that players are impressed and interested?"

It would seem that the aim of the question is clear, and that is how it is understood by thousands of DMs and would-be DMs who ask themselves and who ask others, or who search endlessly for the book on the shelf that will include the crucial pages in its binding that will answer the question.  The question I've asked in the paragraph above isn't quite the question that is in our heads.  That question is more commonly asked, "How do 'I' run the game?"  The use of the "we" above is understood to mean all the DMs grouped together.

Let's put that on a shelf for a moment.

Very well.  How do you run the game?  You're looking for that quality of bringing your direct and instant involvement with anything the players might do, or anything you might initiate.  You wish to promote a sense of urgency and excitement.  You want the game to flow.  You want to know precisely what set of thoughts, actions, ideas and processes must take place in your brain so you can make that happen.  And you want me to give it to you, now, so that you can widen your eyes and let the new truth fill you, enabling you to find a game, right now, and run that game like a superstar.

We've been waiting for that reveal.  To learn what DMing Is.  First, however, we have to realize that "DMing" isn't the same as "DMing well."  Pure DMing, stripped of its quality, stripped of the flash and the enigmatic belief, is providing necessary information to the players.  Describe what the players see, touch, hear, taste and smell ... and when necessary, add more detail.  When time becomes a factor, or multiple actions are taken by group of entities too large to be sourced by a crowd, such as a combat, the DM identifies who moves, when.

Understand, I'm not offering this as an ideal.  But as I explained at the start of the course, the first step in seeing the problem is ridding the problem or extraneous details.  Excitement, immediacy, instant involvement ... these are not actually necessary to DMing.  So when we ask, ",,, so that players are impressed and interested," we are NOT asking, how do we DM?  "How to DM?" is not the problem.  We want to know how to do it well.

The distinction is important.  There are other activities that make this same distinction; and that, thank goodness for us, have a considerable legacy of scholarship attached to the same questions we want to ask about DMing.

In David Mamet's book, True and False, he speaks of the process of learning how to act.  The question facing Mamet is parallel to the question facing us.  Acting as a thing is easy.  I stand on the stage, I say my lines, I step off the stage.  Simple.

But it is obviously not.  In fact, we would agree that the process of acting, and of DMing, is not eased in the least sense by the concrete facts of the problem.  There was not one person here in this class that, earlier, appreciated my pointing out the hard, brutal simplicity of "DMing."  We all want more.  We want it so bad it hurts.

Here is what Mamet says about actors in his book:

"As actors, we spend most of our time nauseated, confused, guilty.  We are lost and ashamed of it; confused because we don't know what to do and we have too much information, none of which can be acted upon; and guilty because we feel we are not doing our job.  We feel we have not learned our job well enough; we feel others know their job but we have failed.  The good we do seems to be through chance: if only that agent would notice me; if only that producer had come on Tuesday night when I was good rather htan on Wednesday night when I was off; if only the script allowed me to do more this and less that; if only the audience had been better; if only we had not gone up five minutes late ~ as a consequence of which I lost my concentration."

There are so few words I have to change in the above to make the context work.  If only the adventure had been better.  If only I hadn't thrown that pack of wolves at the party earlier.  If only I had used my orange dice instead of my green dice.

We watch others smoothly manage and control the DMing process and we feel envious, in awe, miserable at ourselves, driven to figure this out and ultimately lacking any sort of real action.  If only we could do something clear and concrete that would make us better DMs.  Then we could just start doing that thing day and night until we got good at it.  We could get out of this rut and then really enjoy this game.

DMing is a craft, like acting is a craft.  We would prefer it was more like a chairmaker's craft or a wheelwright's craft, but that's wishful thinking.  And we would do well to remember that a great many DMs will never care at all about this craft; they have small interest in the quality of their DMing, save that it relates to their ability to please themselves or make better Saturday evenings than a drudge of multiple, less flavourful activities.  In fact, there's much squabbling from this quarter whether DMing is a craft, or if it ought to be.  They'll argue, familiarly, "it's only a game."

But such admonitions do not assuage our temperament when the moment of gameplay approaches, when we know in a few hours that we're going to have the burden of running thrust upon us.  Or that hard feeling in the stomach as we worry if the puzzle we've designed is going to work or if the players will be interested or bored.  Arguably, if it isn't a craft, that mixture of feeling nauseated, confused and guilty will cause us to believe that it gawddamned well ought to be, if only it would mean we could start a running without worrying about our prep this week.

Clearly, acting is a craft.  No one disputes that.  Hundreds of thousands of amateur actors will take the stage this week across the world for no pay and for very little applause, for the fun of it, and no one feels the need to remind any of these participants that it is "only a play."  The brutal reality of standing under lights, in front of an audience, whether made up of strangers or family and friends (and there are fears about both) makes it damnably clear to professional and amateur alike that it is not "just" a play.

I put it to you that the difference between the craftsman DM and the frivolous DM is the amount of respect the presenter has for his or her "audience," or players.  If a DM feels so certain that complete abject failure to run the game well will bring neither consequence nor meaningful judgment, then the DM is certainly free to not care what the players feel about his or her ability as DM.  But if a DM does care; if the respect of one's peers or friends matters; if one's self-respect matters in terms of a standard that the self will vie to achieve; then ability as a DM matters.  It matters every bit as much as Edgar's performance as King Lear at the Little Wichita Community Theatre matters to Edgar.

All this, just to establish that a thing exists as a craft.  We would appear to have a long way to go.

Let's return to the question: How do I, or you, run the game well?

This question arises from a misapprehension, one that I've fraudulently accepted up until this moment.  The flaw is in the belief that if the game goes well, if the "magic moment" occurs, that you or I as DM are the one's responsible ... and that the act of DMing well is something that we can achieve merely through addressing our own issues, as though DMing were something that we presented to caged monkeys or white mice or rubber dolls.  The originally worded question, how do "we" present the game, is the accurately worded question.  Our imagined belief, that it is our job to create these magical moments, is a delusion.  We need to realize that all we can do is bring ourselves to the event in optimum condition, to participate in the session in our role, as assigned by agreement.  It is "my setting," in the sense that I created it, but as a DM it is not, "my game."  It is our game.  And the quality of that game depends upon all the participants, playing and striving, designing and problem-solving, while teaching each other and learning, week by week, that brings a poor game forward into the genesis of a good game.

Our job as DM is, as I said, easily definable.  There are exercises that apply to every DM that are as clear-cut and direct as making chairs and wheels.  Develop a strong, resonant voice, by whatever method is necessary.  Take a class.  Join a performance group.  Stand in a field and shout.  Be brave.  Recognize your shortcomings, then devote yourself to correct those shortcomings within your control.  Work through the seven forms of preparation that we discussed at the beginning of this course.  Research.  Learn to estimate.  Plan.  Find resources.  Educate yourself and others.  Practice.  Rehearse. 

Most of all, know what your job is.  Don't seek to overstep it, don't take on the whole burden of the game session when it is not all yours to take.  Patiently reach out to others and help them see how each of those things I've just named apply to them as players as much as they apply to the DM.  Players should research.  Players should address their shortcomings.  Players should develop a strong, resonant voice.  Players should educate themselves and others.

And like a play, that is created through actors, technical people, support staff, directors and a host of others, if someone isn't pulling their weight ... explain their role in this process and make them understand why it is just as important for them to fulfill that role as you fill yours.  And if they won't act, if they won't learn, if they won't prepare, if they won't add their commitment to the "magic," then they don't belong.

We tend to approach the process of "finding players" as though these are fruit that we would pick if only we could find a tree.  And once we find them, we perceive them as audience members that we must entertain, or they will abandon us; which they almost invariably do.  The players are looking for us as dearly as we are looking for the players.  And like any random sampling of DMs, there will be those who see it as a craft and those who do not.  We should not be interested in "finding" players ... we should very definitely be auditioning players.  As DMs, we should have a clear vision as to what players we want to play with; and not waste our time with those who can't or won't convince us they're craftsmen.

Put craftsmen together, build a magic factory, give the participants free rein to act within the shape and fabric of the factory floor, and there will be no question whatsoever of presentation being an "insolvable" problem.

You, personally, won't solve it.  Ever.  Because for you, working alone, it is frankly insolvable.  But for the right team, acting in concert, employing themselves as presenters, all together will make the game flow and everyone will be a superstar.  And new players will walk over glass to be part of that game.

The question in your minds just now should be this: are the "insolvable" problems of inventing a narrative and creating a world insolvable.  We will have to see.

Until the next class.

My kind of factory.