thread: 2006-03-08 : Between-session Activity
On 2006-03-09, Joshua Kronengold wrote:
1. I think that decentralizing the GM role also means decentralizing any required (or desired) prep. This is obvious. By the same token, any -need- for prep is a barrier to the GM role, possibliy an unnecessary one.
2. I think prep can be very valuable, which is why, when talking about un-owned play I felt the need to add an ownership mechanicsm back in—because I think that pre-game work should be priveledged over in-game work where this is reasonable. The breakdown points for this can lead to deprotagonization and other badness, but it's hard to get some kinds of revelation, continuity, and repeated themes without prep.
3. Prep isn't play. But it -does- follow a system, can be fun on its own (see CCG designers who come up with endless decks, or scenario writers, or people who write characters up for the fun of it), and gains validity as play once it enters the game.
4. Prep is valid for play in direct purportion to ownership. If I own my character's history, I've got full freedom to write that history up in any way I want, with it more or less immediately entering play...unless I create a new country (can interfere with the GM's place-ownership), involve another PC or known NPC (interferes with the onwership of the players in question), or do something another player find objectioanble (interferes with shared ownership). If I, as GM, detail the villain's stronghold and plans, that's usually cool (entirely within my purview), but if I start planning out the sequence of scenes for the entire session, I'm not only interfereing with the players' character ownership—I'm also interfereing with their partial session- and plot-ownership.
Sub-group play is something different.
