What does Veeky Forums think of this one ?

What does Veeky Forums think of this one ?
I just finished reading it and think it is full of great advice for GMs who want to run narrative games and make table RPG a deep medium that leaves a mark on people like great works of art do.
It's also way better than the first one, which was almost useless for people who didn't want to play long-ass campaigns with close friends with a lot of exsperience in RPG. This one contains advice for short scenarios as well as a whole chapter about GMing at conventions.

Give examples

The first one was the worst advice you could ever give a GM put to paper, and I doubt this imporved anything.

Examples of what ? Advice ?

>your purpose is for them to have fun, so ask them what they want and give it to them
>always say "yes". you can say "yes but...", "yes if..." but never say categorically "no"
>don't be their enemy, be their antagonist. the difference may sound small but it is crucial : an enemy is someone you must take down, an antagonist is what creates obstacles ofr the protagonist to overcome through effort, pain and change.

Also he makes a lot of comparisons using professional wrestling, which I like.

It is better and in it he fully admits he has changed his mind about a lot of stuff during 15 years.

for* the protagonist god fucking dammit

That’s interesting then because his advice before was the direct opposite of what you lost here, which is pretty standard GM advice.

It's shit.
>narrative campaigns
>make table RPGs a deep medium
>like works of art
Bait desu.

It's pretty standard on the surface but the ways he uses them is original.

For example, he suggests that no player should have secrets for other players. Of course this means no meta gaming in the group (but seriously if you play with people who do this, stop), but it also means the players are involved in the story of each character.
Their character may not know about the dead wife of their partner but since the player knows, he WILL finally get those subtle gestures or this melancholy his friend's character has. He will be interested by the story and may even suggests things that could help their characters grow and evolve in an interesting way.

He is also the first GM I heard/read to recommend taking away the character sheets for horror games. If the player can't remember exactly what his bonus was, he can still throw the dice, not being certain of what result he must have in order to achieve what he wants to do. He doesn't have his HP bar to confort himself with "Oh I still have three HP left I can still go another round", he will only have the GM's description of the broken white bone coming out of his leg, of the unbearable pain his character feels and how urgent his survival now seems.

I guess it is true that most people don't understand what he writes.

>He is also the first GM I heard/read to recommend taking away the character sheets for horror games. If the player can't remember exactly what his bonus was, he can still throw the dice, not being certain of what result he must have in order to achieve what he wants to do.

That seems...kinda shitty.

It doesn't to me. Makes sense.
The sheet is sort of a protection for the player : I know what my chances are, I know how healthy I am and how the rules protect me from danger.
If you take it away, he is lost. He is like his character : his character doesn't have little numbers telling him how he his and what he can do, he only knows that yeah, he can shoot with a rifle because he hunts sometimes. If the player doesn't have the sheet, he looses the impression of safety it brings.

You should be able to play any game without having the sheet at hand. It's just that it makes the GM job easier that each if the players keeps track of their shit. But if you need to check your bonuses before deciding what to do you are not roleplay.

2/2 shit advice. Great track, John WIck!

>If you take it away, he is lost. He is like his character : his character doesn't have little numbers telling him how he his and what he can do, he only knows that yeah, he can shoot with a rifle because he hunts sometimes. If the player doesn't have the sheet, he looses the impression of safety it brings.

He also loses a lot of the impression about what he can do. People don't know their character as well as their own abilities, especially for horror games which are generally short run games.

Since Halloween is approaching, I might actually do something like this for a one-shot. But instead of leaving them completely blind, give each player an index card with what they're good at. That way they have an idea what they're capable of, but otherwise won't have an exact number to rely on.

>your purpose is for them to have fun
Literally wrong right off the bat. Especially if you're trying to elevate RPGs to the level of "art"
>so ask them what they want and give it to them
Okay? This is vague advice, nothing new, and has zero value.
>always say "yes". you can say "yes but...", "yes if..." but never say categorically "no"
That's retarded.
"Can I jump to the moon on a pogo stick?"
"Well.... yeah! If you roll a natural 20! Cause I can't say no, can I?"
Fuck off, sometimes characters try to do stupid shit and you should shut them down.
>Also he makes a lot of comparisons using professional wrestling, which I like.
Again, literally valueless.

You can make TTRPGs a "deep" medium. When I was locked in a basement with my friends doing RP of a post-apocalyptic game with actual characters that I spent a ton of time thinking about because it was my personal baby setting, we got really sucked into it, like a good movie. And when certain things happened, the players actually looked somewhat upset by it. It was a rare experience but a good one.

I doubt John Wick has experienced any of that. The best he's gotten is a feeling of deep sadistic satisfaction for "rocks fall" murdering a character who did something that pissed him off (what was it, murdering a guard?). Your job as a GM is to simulate a world (drop the "realistic" association with simulate because it is untrue here), and if that world has just-world-fallacy karma bullshit, that better fit the setting you are running or else it's bullshit.

That's a kind of clever idea, IF it is run well and the GM uses the sheet to remind players vaguely what they can do. If a player is at 3/10 hp, he is hurt pretty bad. If John Wick says "lol u feel fine", he is being a deceptive piece of shit. Kind of like that 16 hp dragon essay, where the only reason the characters probably ran off is because the DM outright lied about how hurt the dragon looked, even though it was well below 50% hp

John Wick's a hack. Play Dirty 1 especially is full of wall-to-wall horrible advice, and gives you a real good look into why the games he designed (early L5R, 7th Sea, etc) have the giant mechanical traps they do: because he put them there, on purpose, to fuck over players who played ways he didn't like.

He specifically advises that if a player does something that ruffles your slim jims, that you mercilessly shit on them in-game, without pause, forever, until they give up or express regret. This can include things like taking a flaw that's uncommon but interesting - suddenly, everyone in the universe that hates you knows you're allergic to bees, and there's a beehive in every house you visit, and every wandering encounter is giant bees with knives coated in bee venom, and MAYBE YOU'LL PICK A MORE INTERESTING FLAW NEXT TIME, STEVE, YOU FUCKING PLEB

Seriously, go back and reread L5R and 7th Sea and you will see Wick's fingerprints all over the mechanics. He was the sort of DM who asks about your backstory, and if you specify you have any loved ones, they're all gonna get threatened/tortured/turned evil and try to kill you, if you say you have a master or any sort of obligations he'll immediately put you in a no-win situation where you're gonna probably be forced to commit seppuku, and if you play with his ass long enough to be smart enough to say that you're, oh, say, a ronin, he will make it his personal mission to bury you.

I'd trust random grogs on Veeky Forums to give me better advice than Wick.

Less in-game, but a categorical "no" is absolutely essential during chargen.

Y'all obviously never read anything Wick wrote.
Or didn't understand any of it.
Either way, if a GM opposing real threats and obstacles for a character to overcome is so bad for you, go back to playing D&D, that will suit you well.

Ya’ll postin in a bait thread.

>Y'all obviously never read anything Wick wrote.
>Or didn't understand any of it.
Then explain it you fucking piece of shit. Stop. You are just like the Dungeon World, GURPS, and Eclipse Phase faggots on this board who go "YOU JUST DIDN'T READ IT."
Either clearly explain one piece of advice he gives, and why it's good, or get the fuck out. You worthless shills need to stop doing this.

No, we're posting in a thread started by Wick, trying to sell more copies of his book cause no one will buy it.

>He specifically advises that if a player does something that ruffles your slim jims, that you mercilessly shit on them in-game, without pause, forever, until they give up or express regret.
This is retarded. Let me repost something from the other John Wick shill thread from last night.

I ran a post apocalyptic campaign in which the characters first adventure was to venture into the ruined city to find medicine for their village. After fighting some weird creatures they reach the hospital which is held by a group of "bandits" (not really bandits but I called them such because that's the generic term). They fought their way inside after negotiations broke down, and found the leader, who was a twenty year old girl. After beating her unconscious, one of the characters found a sterilized scalpel and severed her spine near the bottom. He rolled the D&D equivalent of a 35 on the check, too.

Yeah, that's fucked. But did I powrkill his character as revenge for crippling my NPC waifu? No. They keep her as a prisoner and dragged her around in a wheelchair. I described her sobbing and all the pain she was in, constantly, making sure they were acutely aware what they did to her, having to clean up from her and watch her slowly die of a spinal infection. I took all their edge and turned it back on them to the point one of the players handed me a note saying he apologizes to her, and after that they stopped wanting to play the campaign. That's how you teach edgelords. Not this rocks fall shit. John Wick is just a salty power-tripping GM who probably has never run a decent game in his entire existence.

This is some excellent bait.

But she didn't die before the guy who severed her spine did a whole bunch of weird fetish shit, didn't he?
Because that's where the "original" copypasta goes, and if I remember correctly, it was the GM, not the player who didn't wanna play any more.

Honestly, the art alone baits me personally.

The most egregious thing was that, at least in play dirty 1, he didn't even advise punishing edgelords, just players in general. I vaguely remember the example of a superhero setting where he forced one player to do something that was detrimental to his grandmother because "drama".
Now, if anyone has a lick of experience with narrative games, drama is great... but it's in control of the players. This is just being a dick.

That's nothing compared to that faggoty shit he's so fucking proud of where he "turned" a character's disease immunity "against them" by infecting them with a disease, you know, a thing they're fucking immune to, then said their "immunity" made them immune to the cure. But not the disease. Done in by the thing they're specifically immune to, and can't be cured because of disease immunity. Disease immunity. As in immune to diseases.

I love John Wick's settings, but I really hate his systems. There is only one decent system he's made so far that I know - Wilderness of Mirrors - and several separate nice mechanics in Wield, All the Days..., and Houses of the Blooded. And no games with really cool mechanics. His settings are better than the games he made for them,

>The players want to have fun
>This is wrong
Stop playing tabletop games with other people user.

>What does Veeky Forums think of this one ?
Keanu did a great job playing him in the biopic

Players looking at the character sheets to see what they can do is cancer anyways.

>player thinking a disadvantage is just free XP and must not carry any actual disadvantage at all
Please fuck off

Quick reminder that anyone who thinks Role Playing GAMES' purpose is not to have fun has his head stuck so far up his ass the one to take it out shall be called King Arthur.

Anyone have both of these?