Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Lenses: A Great Underused GMing Device

Fri. October 13, 2006 

Lenses are an idea I first saw put into practice in the Amber Diceless RPG, which presents several versions of each of the major canon NPCs. This allows the GM to choose which lens to view Corwin through (just how much of a bastard is he?), for example — and just like taking off or putting on a pair of glasses changes what you see, which Corwin the GM uses makes a big difference in the game.

This same idea is used throughout GURPS Illuminati, which offers up different big picture explanations for every major conspiracy. Is the Priory protecting the bloodline of Christ, or aliens who are secretly living among us? It depends on which lens the GM chooses, which is awesome for keeping your players on their toes.

More games should use lenses. In fact, I’d argue that every RPG that features a central storyline of any sort should offer a variety of ways to approach the major elements of that story.

But is this concept useful in home games, too? Twisting it around a bit, I can see presenting multiple views about a major NPC (through in-game events and other NPCs) and letting the PCs decide how to approach them — but that’s not precisely the same thing. What do you think?

More posts about: Approaches and Techniques

Comments

4 Responses to “Lenses: A Great Underused GMing Device”

  1. Jeff Rients on October 13th, 2006 6:47 am

    I’ve heard of troupe-style groups who get major mileage out of a lens approach. When a player introduces a recurring NPC each of the other GMs builds their own version of that NPC, which becomes the version they use when their turn to GM comes up.

  2. ScottM on October 13th, 2006 8:55 am

    Hmmm, in a game with one GM, I’d probably try to put all the lenses introduced in play together, giving me one vision of the NPC as a more complex person. I wouldn’t think that there were different versions of the same character… that’d be weird. (An alternate universes/parallel dimensions game would be an exception to the rule.)

    If there were multiple GMs who played the same NPC differently, I’d assume poor coordination or disagreement behind the scenes.

    I guess that means that if you’re going to use multiple lenses, I’d need to know– or I’d try and find a deeper pattern, or just dismiss your characterization as inconsistent.

  3. panster on October 16th, 2006 12:28 am

    I agree that the concept is a great one for roleplaying supplements.
    A lot of nWoD books implicitly use a similar technique.

    I’m not sure –how- much knowledge you can get out of it as a DM of a “normal” game. Generally standard RPGs (DnD, etc) have a set reality that the rules system refers to (x creature has so many hit points, etc).
    While it’s good to have a few complex characters who can easily be viewed multiple ways I think that you’d have difficulty playing around with stats too much.

  4. Martin on October 17th, 2006 10:24 am

    The idea of NPC who changes on the fly, perhaps dramatically, is definitely an add one. That seems like it would be jarring — “Oh, wait, Ron’s GMing. That means Gandalf can cast fireball.”