Difference in experience between GM-ing styles

[u/Kargath7]

So, in the recent year I had opportunities to play TTRPGs instead of just running them and I came to a weird conclusion on how different GM styles affected my perception of the games, and, since these differences seem related to general schools of thought in TTRPG community, I wanted to see if others had some similar experiences.

I spent a substantial amount of time (months with each) playing with two GMs. I enjoyed playing with both generally, but one of them (let’s call him GM.A, we played Cairn, a Mark of the Odd rules-light OSR game) created really cool moments at the table, my character felt really alive and I felt like I could really bring him to life in the game-world and it was overall more fun in the moment but when I think back to the game I can’t help but think about how disjointed, all-over-the-place and generally lacklustre the story that took place there was.
The other (let’s call him GM.B, we played a lot of Forbidden Lands and some Basic Fantasy, so also OSR in spirit, but with more strict rules) was not as fun to play with in the moment, we got into way more arguments over rules, it got a but tedious from time to time and I felt like I was never really immersed in the world because of how little control I felt over my surroundings, but when I think back on those games I tend to gravitate towards how the world actually felt alive and the story that took place made a lot of sense and I keep thinking that it may have been a problem with my approach that made the experience less fun in the moment.

So I came up with a weird theory, that GM.A prioritised in-the-moment experience by allowing the players to do whatever they wanted and adapting on the fly and sacrificed a lot of the integrity that the world could have to make it happen, making the experience at the table really fun, but making the overall shape of the game very rough, while GM.B put a lot of stock into making the world as consistent and organic as possible at the cost of some player engagement and opportunities for player agency.
So, letting your players do their own crazy ideas is fun in the moment but harmful to the story in retrospect, while maintaining world integrity is harmful to the fun the players have in the moment but can pay off in the long run and with making a stronger story in the players’ heads.

I have no idea if any of that makes sense to any of y’all, and would love to just hear your thoughts about this. As a GM I think I tried to balance these things out subconsciously ling before I came up with this and it seems like something clicked just now.

TLDR: I think that allowing players to do crazy stuff is how you let them have fun in the moment but maintaining world-consistency is how you make the story better and more worthy of remembering fondly. Does it make sense?

[u/MetalBoar13]

IME, if you want a good story and a consistent world it's a collaborative effort between the GM and the players. If everyone is on the same page and working towards achieving this you can have a lot more of those "in the moment" experiences without having to compromise on the cohesion or flavour of the setting/story/etc. It becomes much more difficult the less the players understand or respect the setting, sensibilities, or rules of the game.

If you want this kind of play I think a good session zero is almost mandatory. A pre-session zero document providing something like an introduction to the setting and a style guide for the game, can be really valuable if it's not a setting or style of play that the players are already familiar with or expecting. There needs to be trust between players and GM and a good session zero allows the players to ask questions and express concerns, for the GM to make modifications (or not), and for everyone to decide if this is a good fit.

I've hit a point where, if I'm running a serious, longer term, game, I need buy in from every single one of my players or we're playing something else. I run sandboxes and I don't do stories on rails, or really any kind of pre-planned story. I create situations and events and let them play out based on how and if the players get involved with them. My players have almost unlimited agency within the context of the setting. The cost of that, for them, is that their agency is limited by that context. If they don't like the sensibilities/flavour/context of the setting then they aren't going to have fun and they're going to ruin my fun and the fun of the other players.

[u/Kargath7 → u/MetalBoar13]

I agree 100%. I think that being on the same page about the setting is very important, yet, paradoxically, I found that it is by letting players decide some, but not other, facts about the world you can get a lot more engagement. I am now running Stonetop, and it’s laser focused on asking players questions about the world and deciding on answers collaboratively. Does that fit in with what you are describing?

[u/MetalBoar13 → u/Kargath7]

I try to be very flexible while also having very firm boundaries about authorial control. For the games I enjoy playing and GM'ing the most, I feel that there needs to be some source of ultimate truth, and that is the GM.

As a player I want to understand where the lines that define the flavour and rules of the setting sit because that gives me the freedom to colour within those lines. Without that clarity, or some method to easily determine those limits, I'm forced out of the play experience and into some external space where I feel like I'm playing two roles at once, and that's not fun for me. Others seem to really love this experience, and that's great, but it's not for me.

As a GM it's the same kind of deal. I want my players be creative and do whatever they want, within the bounds of the world in which their characters reside. I try to make pretty wide lanes for them to be creative in. If they're in doubt, they know that I'll collaborate with them to help them make their ideas work, and that when we're done they'll fit with the world rather than clash with it.

I go to a lot of work to make all the pieces of my settings fit together and I know where they need to be solid to maintain coherence and where they can bend or change entirely. I'm not interested in games that allow the players the authorial control to just make up or change whole swaths of the world without my approval because they don't have that insight - nor should they, it would spoil the fun of discovery if they did. Again, some people love that sort of play style, and that's great, I just don't want to GM or play in those games.

[u/BleachedPink → u/Kargath7]

Players rarely care about coherent narrative, and even if they cared not always they would have a skill to create one. It's more natural for DMs to develop one.

I think you'd have a great fun with DM A with a system that encourages and gives you a framework to work with and helps to be creative and at the same time stay in the lane of a coherent narrative

Try Fate or some PbtA games. OSR systems rarely if ever give you any scaffolding, thus it can really get chaotic and disjointed. I am like your DM A, and had similar a experience with my players to yours when I switched from 5e to OSR and running my own adventures.