To involve the players ... or not?!

The last post is something of an object lesson.

A lesson I will never learn.

In the last post I asked for feedback from my readers. I know I don't have many readers. I have a couple of ways of measuring my readership and they all tell me that I don't really have a readership. Mostly, I have a few friends who check this site because they are bored or the RSS feed tells them there is something new or a search engine brings me yet another hapless victim.

But, I asked for feedback anyway. In eleven days I got a total of one reader, my best friend, Max, telling me he reads the site. That's it. The other 5 to 10 of my readers couldn't be bothered to put up a "Me, too." It's the holidays and this isn't the most popular site in the world. So, I got about what I expected.

But what the smeg does this have to do with gaming?

Aha! You didn't think I could pull this back to topic, did you? Never underestimate my power to follow a trail of bread crumbs in the exact direction I want it to go!

Several times in the past I have made the same mistake. Either I am starting a game or am already running a game, and I turn to my players and say: what would you like to see in the game? Where would you like the game to go? I can run just about anything (except Super Heroes) here are dozens of options, choose what you want.

In nearly every case, my players looked back at me with blank stares. They had no clue. Wasn't I, as the GM/DM, supposed to do all this creative stuff? They were in no way prepared to add to my creation, other than to play it.

Now, none of my players were stupid. Most were highly creative people. But, it seems like most of us see RPGs as entertainment and we are all so used to having our entertainment pushed to us, from the page or the monitor or the screen, that we feel we have no creative bond to the work in front of us.

I have a very large collection of game books. Most are GURPS, but there are several others and it grows every year. A few years ago, we got a group together. The thought was to play D&D, but, it was agreed that we would entertain other ideas. I showed up, laid down a GURPS Basic Book and about twenty different, wild and interesting world books. I said I would happily run any of those worlds, or any combo of those worlds. No picked up a book, even to just look at its cover. The group opted for D&D. It ended up being a great game, but it just amazed me what a grip the known has on us. Everybody knows D&D. No one was prepared for me to run GURPS Ice Age Mecha!

Yet, I have been able to get groups to play other games, things that were not D&D. But, my trick was that I showed up with a game already ready already. No input from the players.

What happens to us? We had this co-creative ability as children. I have seen many people compare playing RPGs to playing that classic children's game "Let's Pretend". I disagree. In Let's Pretend, the game was about co-creation. Everyone involved added to the world. Sure, it was disorganized, the rules changed at a whim, but it was fun to see where it went. A game might start out as Astronauts in the Planet of the Sand Box, change to Astronauts at War and end up as Astronauts in the ER. But everyone participated.

So, my goal these days is to show up with a game in hand and give the players only limited creative room. If you play in a well known setting, say Star Wars, you don't have to give the players much creative room at all.

And, yet, with all of this in mind, I recently found myself plotting a possible Star Wars game, giving the players a ton of options up front. I can't seem to learn the lesson: players want to be entertained via push. Anything else is a waste of the GM's time.

So, I didn't really want or need your feedback. I will do with this blog as I wish and I hope to entertain you all. I also encourage you to go out and find new games, new worlds and every now and then, go out of your way to entertain your GM!