thread: 2011-02-21 : Into the Unknown?
On 2011-02-22, David Berg wrote:
"Audience isn't seizing?" Should they, at this point? I guess it'd make me feel good, but I certainly wasn't expecting it... (Must... holster... marketing strategy questions...!)
As for designing the link, yes! It is confounding me. The techniques I'm familiar with to support "being there" play are to overwork the GM, and I refuse to do that. Trying to iron out the most important GM tasks and make those as easy and fun as possible... well, I've been slowly progressing on that in fits and starts for a long time now.
So, solving. The short answer is that the players need to be involved in the solving process, but that they only rarely will invent a solution. A common outcome is that the GM invents a solution, drops bits and pieces of it into the fiction, and the players assemble those bits and pieces.
There are other acceptable outcomes too. The only two that aren't acceptable:
1) "Great, the GM just told us what to do, now we go through the motions."
2) "We have no basis for anything to even try. We'll either give up or just try random stuff and cross our fingers."
As GM, I've managed to avoid these 99% of the time. How I've done so is one of the things I'm trying to systematize.
I hope that answers your question. At cons, I say, "This isn't a game where you have to be brilliant or you die. But I try not to completely hand you everything in an obvious fashion either. I customize this to taste, though. So if y'all want me to really force you to earn it, let me know. Or if you'd rather just follow my lead, let me know that too." Thus far, no one's opted for either extreme.
