A lot is made of the role of the GM in a game, but what is the role of the player?
The role of a player can vary, I think, depending on the needs of the game (and the game system), but most of the time it is to collaborate with the GM and fellow players in the creation of a story that most of them will find worth telling most of the time.
Obviously there are players out there who think that they only need to make themselves happy, whether the GM and the rest of the players like it or not, but that’s more a matter of the selfishness of a particular player than any true reflection of the roles players should play in a game.
I do think though that the most important thing to remember is that the role of the players will vary from group to group, and, as long as it keeps most (if not all) of the people in the group happy, there’s no wrong way to do it. No one solution is going to work for everyone.
December 16th, 2003 at 12:23 pm
Some players _like_ to be the supporting roles and don’t need large swaths of spotlight playing over them. I’m not sure all GMs are aware of this.
Most players crave that limelight, but some of us don’t. (And we savor it all the more when the character does get a bit of it, because then it tends to truly be character driven and not some arbitrary ‘give this person ten uninterupted minutes of my time, move on to the next person…’)
December 20th, 2003 at 12:01 pm
The Player’s role….hmmm.
I have come to feel that a good player is one who wants to see the game succeed as a whole, as well as advance the story of their own character. I’ll admit that as a player I *like* to have the spotlight, and feel frustrated when the GM is spotlighting someone who doesn’t want it or doesn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it now that (s)he has it.
One problem that sometimes comes up, however, is when a player declares “that’s what my character would do” regardless of what that action will do to the game. I’ve GM’d games where PC actions have essentially destroyed the story to date, and invalidated lots of things that the other characters have done up until that time.
I have a problem with this, and personally have trouble buying into the “player as slave to the character” model. While it is a good thing to have a sense of what the character is about and how they would act, it’s YOUR character, not the other way around. It is the players responsibility (IMHO) to find a way to balance the nature of the character with the needs of the game.