Players that just don't *get* the genre

[DrunkonDuty]

The Paranoia stories above reminded me of this one:

About a year ago I was playing in a con game of Paranoia with a friend. He'd never played Paranoia before. The game is the usual frantic mess of treason, explosions, death and hilarity.

At the end of the game my friend says smugly "Heh, I was the only one who got through that game without losing a single clone."

I patted him on the shoulder in a sympathetic way and said (even more smugly) "Don't worry. If you play it a bit more you'll get the hang of it."

 

[pawsplay]

The Paranoia stories above reminded me of this one:

About a year ago I was playing in a con game of Paranoia with a friend. He'd never played Paranoia before. The game is the usual frantic mess of treason, explosions, death and hilarity.

At the end of the game my friend says smugly "Heh, I was the only one who got through that game without losing a single clone."

I patted him on the shoulder in a sympathetic way and said (even more smugly) "Don't worry. If you play it a bit more you'll get the hang of it."

The last time I played, I managed to get five clones killed before getting out of our mission briefing, and lost the sixth not long after, in a heated dispute of whether ketchup was, in fact, a form of paint. Ah, good times.

 

[Starfox]

Oh, absolutely. Its not like I've ever refused to play a supers (or any other) game, or even that I wouldn't enjoy it. But like watching 'bad sf movies', which I also enjoy, I feel perfectly entitled to point out the absurdities. Then we usually all laugh and shake our heads, and get on with the game. Or watching the movie.

My experience is that the stupidity tolerance is markedly lower in RPGs than in media, even among the same group of people. I think the reason is that in RPGs you have to make reasonable assumprions about the world in order to come up with clever solutions. And if the world is too unreasonably set up or just too stupid, that becomes very hard to do.

 

[jimmifett]

That's stoploss, not a draft.

I believe ensign Ro Laren was given the choice of star fleet or prison.

 

[Elf Witch]

I believe ensign Ro Laren was given the choice of star fleet or prison.

Not exactly she was a Starfleet officer and was imprisoned for disobeying orders.

Picard was forced to give her a second chance.

 

[greatamericanfolkher]

...and a guy who gained his "fabric powers" from a "freak textile plant accident." After some massaging, I allowed "fabric powers..."

I remember reading about that over at the atomic think tank. I still love the very silver age idea of a "freak textile mill accident."

 

[Doug McCrae]

I still love the very silver age idea of a "freak textile mill accident."

Shades of Brother Power the Geek, the tailor's dummy who came to life when he was struck by lightning.

 

[El Mahdi]

I just had an hour-long conversation about this just the other day about a long-term Ravenloft game I have been running.

Ravenloft is supposed to be a game of gothic horror. Emphasis on the horror part. In order for this to work, the characters must actually experience emotions like fear, horror, revulsion and the like. One of my players keeps running her character as trope The Jaded Professional, a la the original Van Helsing in Dracula. Nothing fazes her character, and when one character is utterly unconcerned, the other players/characters tend to relax, and then NO ONE is fazed and things run much like a normal DND game. This totally destroys the mood I am trying to create and turns my "horror" game into little more than monster bashing.

I have been struggling with this a lot lately and I'm not sure how to get things back on track.

Maybe try enlisting the player as your ally in helping to set the mood. They can keep playing the character as nonplussed, but they need to help you set the mood by saying something completely horrific in a nonplussed, dispasionate manner.

Like after seeing some tentacled horror, they act nonplussed but say something disturbing like: "No big deal. If we don't deal with this we'll simply be turned inside out and kept in agonizing pain for the rest of Eternity while it feeds on our entrails... It's dinner time, anyone hungry???"

Make it their responsibility to help set the mood as the price of the character concept. Besides, it's good GM'ing practice for them.

Players that just don't *get* the genre

In Soviet Russia, Genre gets you.

*sorry, had to be said*

 

[fanboy2000]

Wasn't the chakotay in voyager effectively drafted? I seem to remember him being handed an ultimatum that he sign up as first officer or else...

No he chose to serve as Voyager's first officer after his ship was destroyed.

Paris had been in prison and was given the choice of helping Voyager track down a missing Maquis ship. He was just supposed to be an adviser but after the ship got pulled into the Delta Quadrant and the pilot killed he was offered a commission.

One of the interesting things about LUG's Star Trek RPGs was that they had a different game for each series. So TNG, DS9, and the Original Series all had not only their own books with complete rule sets. They didn't get to Voyager because Wizards bought Last Unicorn and Paramount revoked the rights.

A GM could use that to differentiate between the various series. On one hand, they all share the same universe, but they all had different emphasis.

TNG, being created by Rodenbery himself, is much more idealistic. The crew members have fewer flaws (those that do, like Ensign Ro, were introduced after he passed away) than DS9 characters. The perfection of Earth is played up as a paradise. Enlisted members are virtually non-existant. (I find it notable that TNG's one major enlisted recurring character is sent over to a new series.)

In retrospect, my friend's idea isn't as out of place in DS9 (which shows the Federation's dark side a bit more). But I'd want to suggest to him that he be Bajorian or some such.

 

[xipetotec]

Have you had a Player who just doesn't *get* the genre for the game you're playing? What kind of mistakes did they make? Did they ever come around to getting the idea? Did the whole game/campaign suffer for the Player's misunderstanding?

For instance:

I've seen a Player not understand how superheroes in the [Marvel] genre don't kill. They especially don't slaughter or execute bad guys. And then the Player complained about never gaining karma.

I've seen more than one Player loot defeated enemies in modern-genre games. They don't understand how that takes a scenario from "self defense" to "murder and robbery". It's especially funny to hear a private investigator explain to the police detective why the dead man has no weapon: "I took it." (...and his wallet, and his car keys.) Players don't like having their PC arrested for looting enemies.

Bullgrit

I don't know if this counts ( or has been mentioned already ). But when I first killed off my son in Call of Cthulhu, he was pretty upset at the inability to DO anything about it... ( He came from a D&D and SW Saga background ). This was after I had explained to the group that in THIS world... players die. a lot.