“We are an improv troop and the DM is the audience who have just shouted out that we are in a dentist’s office with a chicken and fear of clouds.”

Also, I’ll add another reason why it pays off not to think as a director, and why comparisons with novels usually don’t work either. I once played with a friend who hadn’t GM’ed in a while, but he had this great idea for a campaign, based on a novel he had read.

If you think as a writer or a director, you will start to have ideas about what should happen. That is not fun.

You are not making a story, the players are.

Keep coming with the great discussions.

Also, to all those producers out there: I don’t want to give the impression that a producer’s job is necessarily one of “set it up and step back”. Most producers are up to their elbows in the production from start to finish.

@LesInk – I definitely could have expounded on it, but your “heroic anthill” example is where the “giving things a nudge or two when they need it” comes in.

At some times, this can include the producer, director, writer, gaffer, craft service (if ordering pizza counts ).

However, I do agree that facilitating is much more important than direction in the average game.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

Now there only remains the problem of casting – hopefully the players are the leads. However, some are only interested in being supporting characters, there is usually an unfortunate bit-player and, of course, there is the (hopefully) infrequent disgruntled cast-member that wants their own spin-off series in which they are the only star.

Let’s just leave the Producer who feels their FX Monster is the real star of the show and the cast is just around as gloriously bloody victims out of this conversation.

And remember, any monkey can direct. There’s plenty of proof out there demonstrating the fact. It takes GM brilliance to produce.

That’s alot of power. I agree that as the GM of the ‘rest of the world’ it is so easy to slide into controlling the adventure instead of facilitating the adventure. However, for those still sorting out the difference, perhaps another way to think about it is by asking, “How would the world react to what the players just did or are doing?” In other words, action generates reaction.

That reaction should be in scale of the action. If a player kicks over an ant hill (real one), well, the ants scury about and nothing much happens. If he goes and steals a holy relic from the Church of Yo-Ho-Ho, the yohohoians are going to come scrambling after that player.

The problem for me seems to come when the players are just dawdling around kicking over ant hills when we want something heroic to happen. As GM, its your job to put out there opportunities to pull the player into a series of events where the player *might* become a hero. Its the player’s choice on which opportunities to take and which to leave behind — and some of those choices aren’t going to be ones leading to success. But its their choice, good or bad.

Oh, and finally, providing only one opportunity is not a choice. The party should be in control of their actions.