As an Author - you are in full command and control. You decide what each character is doing and what he or she think and feel. You dictate how they respond to situations and can use your amazing powers to make storylines meet and arcs come together. The characters can be clueless and miss things that your audience catches, or they can be intelligent and make the wise move in a sea of bad ones.
As a Gamemaster (also known as Dungeon Master or DM) you are in ... some command and control. You are the storyteller, responsible for the plot and keeping things moving. Responsible for giving players a reason and incentive to keep playing and providing them with stories, characters, and antagonists to interact with and react to, so that they continue to develop and grow and play the game. You lose control of a set number of characters that are played by the others in the game, those feelings and emotions and actions are controlled by the players and you just have to go with it and have the world react and bend to them. Being a GM (gamemaster for those who got lost) that tries to make the players bend to the world generally just leads to frustration for both sides and a very short game. It is much tougher to be a DM, but in some ways it is easier because some of the content is generated by others and you don't have to decide every single decision and dictate every single action.
I am trying to do both, at the very same time -- in the very same world.
While I enjoy the aspect of creating a world for Novels at
the same time as being the storyteller or gamemaster for a RPG in that game… it
does lead to a lot of headache and effort that I just can’t seem to summon
lately.
The weekly arguments with players who want to rule the world
without effort and to endlessly defeat any bad guy they run across is a
constant drain. It is absolutely insane how I can go from thinking that I am
best gamemaster on the planet for my slick storytelling and way that I got the
entire party involved to the next week wanting to be done with it all and never
have to try to please these stinking selfish players every again.
It doesn’t matter how many times you tell a player that the
world is harsh and mean that most people die at a young age and that they are
already overpowered and have the best armor and weapons and skills and stats
compared to anyone in the world --- they still want more! At heart, every gamer
plays just to win. That is the driving force behind why we play in the first
place, so we always try to find the cleverest best way to defeat a situation
and we must always win and come out on top.
It is funny how playing a console game never brings the
level of frustration that a tabletop RPG elicits, in the latter it always seems
like it is our own ideas that are being shot down- not just a command we chose
out of a generated list of possibilities.
To my current players - bear with me. I have to change the world often as you veer off in unknown directions and disrupt my carefully placed applecart. And please understand that the world sometimes won't just stop and let you have what you want when you want - I haven't experienced that in life and our current game is based on reality and not strictly fantasy (like Dungeons and Dragons or some other games that come to mind).
To my readers - join in and encourage me. It helps so much to hear ideas from my friends and those who read what I write. I may tease and joke when you do mention something, but inside it helps so much.
To the future!
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