It should of course be “a very *low* hourly wage”.

Now, I’ve tried various types of games that simply weren’t fun to run, and a lot that were great.
In my opinion, inactivity as a gm is a killer for the gm, if not the players, but even a high degree of activity can make the experience dull.
Consider these opposites: A fairly standard intrigue scenario, where you, the gm, spends some time setting the scene, but then has nothing to do because all the intrigue is within the group of player characters.Thus, once the scene is set, it’s completely up to the players to resolve the conflict. It’s basically a locked room with the gm on the outside. I’ve tried this in practice and actually left the room for six hours. The players had a great time, and only came to find me to have me make up a solution to the murder that was the basis of the conflict, and nowhere in the scenario had the author given any hints as to whom the culprit might be.
My opposite example was a horror/investigation scenario that had so many clues to reveal and npc’s to play that keeping track of them all was a full-time job, leaving no time to actually focus on the story being told or enjoying interacting with the player characters as an npc because of constantly having to consider the next three moves in advance.

In the first example, the trouble could have been avoided by having a gm-controlled character who could directly influence the game and the player’s characters. Even though this would have “reduced” the gm to the status of the player, the gm would easily have been able to drop in and out of the role.

In the second example, the KISS principle would have solved everything.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that playing a game is basically meant to be entertaining, for all involved parties. That doesn’t mean it can’t be educational, deep or complex, but no participant should ever be uninvolved.

Now, I know that this is about immersion, and whether or not it can be damaging for the gm’ing experience. It can, if the scenario does not include a way for the gm to be immersed in the game along with the players. The author needs to make those tools available, and they’re often absent.

The absense of tools for the gm to be an active part of the game is almost a trend these days.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if the absense of these tools is a bad thing in itself. What I do know for certain is that not warning the gm before he or she volunteers to run a game is very bad. It leads to a bad experienc for the gm, and greatly lowers the chance for said gm to volunteer again.

Yes I was great! I had a lot of fun and it was a pleasure meeting so many cool people – not only from the Czech Rep., but also from the Slovak Rep.

Next time we play your game!

The Nørwegian Style site just rocked my day. I’ll have a closer look at the games (a lot!!!) one of these days. Tell more people.

Getting back to the us-sc debate, the real problem is exactly that: Lack of empirical evidence. Only a few people that I know of have actually played with americans. But, based on my limited knowledge of US gaming culture, it seems as if there is a difference in play-style or play-preference. Why is Jason Morningstar surprised of our play-style (listen here)?

It’s cool that Jeepform is getting a lot of international love these days, and the Italians seem to be very ready for international impulses.

In Norway there seems to be a movement towards, I don’t know what to call it, semi-immersionist collective storytelling? Games that assume that players are capable of storytelling and cooperation, that we know what a good story is. You should check out some of the games at Nørwegian Style, they’re pretty representative of an emerging trend.

- tell me more about this!

I am writing a longer essay about this, in the meantime try to give this podcast a listen. I am being interviewed by Per Fischer on exact this topic.

Oh, and the picture galleries, they’re the first stop for anyone. Lord Max is so cool!!!!

I will be there at “a nice evening with the family”, so see you and Francesco there, and perhaps even at Modcon also! Got something to pick up in Italy…

F!

Frederik, I’d love to get an English version of ModCon’s website, but that’s not so easy… ModCon’s organization is a leviathan, and we Donkeys are only a small part in it. What I have done is creating a page at http://www.geocities.com/radagast1975/ils.htm where non-Italian speaking people can get an idea about the international part of ModCon, and then of course there is also http://sic.treemme.org/evento.php?id=108&action=show (that you have suggested already). Both pages are updated on a day-by-day basis. I strongly suggest a visit to the pictures galleries: a pictures says more than a thousand words.

I hope to see several of you at ModCon (and at “A nice evening with the family”, or course)! Cheers!

/Kristo

Everyone knows women have a different sort of evil from men. They have Breast Evil. We have Penis Evil.

Ciao
Lorenzo Trenti