thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-07-13, Zebediah wrote:
There's one clear reason for games with proceduralized story structure to be anti-correlated with games that encourage a strong GM.
It's similar to how groups that put a lot of focus on their constitution or charter tend to be anti-correlated with groups that are run by the leader's force of personality.
There's a limited amount of power at the table. Power may not be exercised, and thus the net power at the table may decrease, but you can't go up past a certain point.
Procedure plot takes the plot-framing power and puts it in the hands of, usually, the players, mediated through mechanics.
Strong GM systems tend to trust that the GM knows better than the system, and can do things well that the system can't, or can only do clunkily.
It's fundamentally feature of the social contract which way a group leans—from democracy to plutocracy (for some resource) to autocracy to constitutional monarchy.
