You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Hussar]

To be fair JC, if you were absolutely rocking the scene, in all likelihood, if you're playing with like minded people, you're probably not engaging in a scene that anyone hates enough to skip. Yes, it could happen, but, IMO, it's pretty unlikely.

What is more likely is that you have a scene that the group is fairly ambivalent to and one person hates. Actually, IMO, what is most likely is you have a scene that the DM thinks is pretty cool, the group is reasonably ambivalent - they'd play through it, and one player wants to skip things. Which is where the problem generally comes in.

 

[JamesonCourage]

To be fair JC, if you were absolutely rocking the scene, in all likelihood, if you're playing with like minded people, you're probably not engaging in a scene that anyone hates enough to skip. Yes, it could happen, but, IMO, it's pretty unlikely.

This is generally true, but we're talking about outliers. You know, when you need that nuclear option.

What is more likely is that you have a scene that the group is fairly ambivalent to and one person hates. Actually, IMO, what is most likely is you have a scene that the DM thinks is pretty cool, the group is reasonably ambivalent - they'd play through it, and one player wants to skip things. Which is where the problem generally comes in.

This doesn't really happen in my group, so it might be more specific to yours. I'm generally engaged in most scenes (but not all), but my individual players get very engaged in different types of scenes. One loves combat and seeing how it plays out (though he's been branching away towards exploring frail, disturbed spellcasters lately), while another loves NPC interaction and development (and enjoys combat, but doesn't like it when there's no real reason for it).

These two players are good friends, and get along fine, but can enjoy drastically different things in-play. The second player can go for hours talking to NPCs about their philosophical or religious beliefs, their history, etc., and it all matters to him. When he first signed up for the Hand of Dawn (a knightly order), he talked to someone about stuff for about an hour. The other PCs weren't involved, and the other players basically waited while he did this. The involved player, however, found the scene incredibly important (big character concept change for him followed).

Now, if the other players were very bored, they'd likely voice it, but they didn't; they watched and listened, and chipped in occasionally. If they had, however, I would have cut the discussion and religious experience to, probably, about 10-15 minutes, rather than a little over an hour. I'd've sped through it, but I'd've still let the player that was involved experience this thing he had been waiting for, out-of-game, for a couple months.

Just like you, we value the fun the other players are having, we just deal with it differently. I was just wondering how you reconciled your "I don't put my fun ahead of others" statement with "if I don't like this scene, I should be able to skip it [seemingly even if others are having fun]". Which is why I brought it up.

But, it's all outliers anyways; like you said, it's the nuclear option. In the end, it won't come up much, and even if I can't wrap my head around your statement making sense, I don't have a problem with you playing that way. As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

You've put a really big emphasis on how you do things differently, but you've mostly protested in the abstract without a lot of concrete examples.

I linked upthred to about a dozen actual play posts from my 4e game.

Once again, Here are some links to some actual play reports that I have posted from that game.

How different is my GMing from anyone else's? How am I meant to tell from message board posts alone? What I do know is that on this particular thread I find Hussar's response to the desert and hireling scenes completely unremarkable and of a piece with how I would react, and I see hm describing a way of GMing that I have experienced and would never wish to emulate. Whereas I read other posters, including you unless I've radically misread you, explaining how Hussar is wrong in his approach and how the GM was quite likely doing something worthwhile.

There are also other things you have said about your own GMing approach - including your approach to prep, your world design preferences (that was in another thread), your approach to alignment (I think that was in the BW thread) - that make me think that you GM in quite a different fashion from me.

You say you GM 'No Myth', but then in your example you have pretty clear 'Myth' involved. You say you allow players to scene frame, but it’s pretty clear in your example you overruled the player's suggested scene and countered with one of your own.

I've never said that I GM strictly No Myth. I have talked about the usefulness of No Myth techniques - treating the backstory as flexible in light of evinced player interests and concerns. (This also came up in the BW thread, in a post by [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION].)

Whereas you have indicated a strong hostily to extemporaneous generation of backstory or of scene. (Upthread you said extemporaneous GMing would be a good reason for you to think about quitting a game.)

I've also never said that I allow players to frame scenes. Here, for instance, is what I said upthread in post 177:

In a scene-framed RPG the GM frames scenes that (i) pick up on player signals as to what is interesting and engaging, and (ii) will challenge the players in their resolution.

<snip>

Once the scene has been framed, it is resolved by deploying the action resolution mechanics. Given that in mnay (most? all?) systems this will require the GM to make choices, such as which monster attacks which PC, the GM needs guidelines on how to make those choices. In scene-framing play, the most important guideline is make choices that will keep the scene alive, keep the scene engaging, and keep the presssure up to the players.

<snip>

The "say yes or roll the dice" approach is <one widespread> approach to having only interesting stuff figure in play. You free-narrate over the other stuff, where nothing is at stake and the only puprose is to addd or reinforce a bit of colour.

<snip>

the player "veto" is informal, and the game is designed to avoid the need for the exercise of any veto by including elements in PC building that allow the players to signal their interests, so that the GM can then frame situations around those interest in the way that Eero Tuovinen describes in the blog I linked to upthread.

And I more-or-less repeated this in my most recent posts (383, 384):

I prefer an approach (of the sort put forward in BW, epecially the Adventure Burner, and also in HeroQuest revised) which emphasises the role of player leads/flags in settling the question of how to frame.

My preferred approach is one in which the GM does the job of scene framing following the cues sent by the players. Those cues may be formal and/or informal, depending on circumstances and system.

The reason for following player cues is to ensure a player-driven game. The reason for giving the GM the actual job is to allow the GM to bring various elements of backstory, foreshadowing etc into the scene which the players aren't in the same position to do (because it is hard to frame a challenge for yourself, or to pose to yourself a question with a secret answer).

my own experience is that once the GM has established a reliable ability to frame scenes having regard to player-flagged stakes, the players will be willing to enter a scene with the stakes perhaps a little less clear at the start. Of course, if such a scene ends up falling flat because the GM misjudged things, that's mostly on the GM's head.

I personally don't think there's anything very radical about my approach. But then I don't think there's anything radical about what Hussar has said either.

You say you shouldn't frame scenes without clear up front stakes player initiated stakes, but then you fudge that by suggesting that since players trust their GM you don't really have to do that.

I didn't say "since players trust their GM". I said "once the GM has established a reliable ability to frame scenes having regard to player-flagged stakes" - and I also said that if such a scene falls flat it's going to be mostly on the GM's head. In my view this is entirely consistent with Hussar's take on his desert and hireling experiences - he's saying that the scenes fell flat, and that it's on the GM's head that they did so given there was no clarity of stakes in relation to player flags ("Do stuff in City B"; "Get revenge on that grell"), and doubly so given that the GM didn't pull the plug when the flatness became obvious.

You've offered up as a resolution running lengthy scenes as brief 'skill challenges', something not at all outside the scope of what I consider effective scene framing and entirely different than letting players choose to skip complications if they aren't interested.

That's one technique. "Say yes" is another. Which one to use, or when to shift from one to the other - pulling the plug if things aren't working, or conversely amping things up mechanically if the players show an unexpected interest in what you as GM took to be mere free narration - is a key GM skill. Repated errors of judgement in that respect are part of what can make for bad GMing.

In short, you've done a lot of protesting, and a lot of referencing texts in a very loose indefinite way, but I've seen very little indication that how you run your table is really all that incompatible with how I run my table. Can we get more specific examples perhaps where your DMing philosophy was leading you to make choices contrary to how I would - or how at least you think I would - run the same scene? Don't just tell me how you do it different. Show me.

The first of the links above is to a scenario that I ran deliberately as an exploration-heavy scenario (it was in the context of a range of sandboxing threads on ENworld at the time).

It explains in detail how I selected a scenario, how I tweaked it in advance, how I introduced backstory in the course of play No Myth style, and how I introduced complications in response to various player-expressed interests in the course of play.

Maybe you also run your game that way, but to me that wouldn't seem to fit with your hostility to extemoraneousness and your expressed desires in relation to worldbuilding. (Your example of how to run a horse purchase is also not much like how I would handle that in 4e. Unless a player raised it, the issue of lameness is not something I would turn my mind to until it became relevant as part of the resolution of a skill challenge.)

 

[pemerton]

And if you want to visit the city across the desert, travel across the desert seems a reasonable expectation to me. If you want to hire people who are going to kill or die for you, speaking with them also seems a reasonable expectation.

The point is not that it doesn't happen in the fiction. The point is that it dones't need to be played out at the table.

You go looking for whatever the heck you were looking for in the city, but you need something in order to get in there. That something, on investigation, leads to a trail that ends at the desert border. Are you going to go search the desert for this thing you need, as the desert has now become relevant, or bitch and moan that the GM is just forcing us to interact with his setting wank desert to get even with you for your brilliant “avoid the desert” strategy?

I want to know a bit more, but as a player this would tend to irritate me, yes. If the players have made it pretty clear that they're not interested in desert shenanigans, why is the GM bringing things back to the desert?

It's not as if, at the beginning of creation, it was deemed that this particular RPG group must play out a desert scenario. The GM, in your example, has control over backstory - so why not put forward a backstory that speaks to the players' interests rather than contradicts them?

The worst example of the sort of GMing you're describing (and apparently endorsing) that I have personally experienced involved a 2nd ed AD&D game 15 or so years ago. The group was fairly large (6 or 7 players) and had well-established characters with a lot of intraparty relationships based on various forms of connection to the gameworld, including a prophecy that the GM was in control of and that seemed to be the focus of the game.

Around 8th or 9th level the GM, without any foreshadowing within the fiction, nor any out-of-game discussion, moved the whole game 100 years into the future, via some sort of temporal teleport. Suddenly all the relationships that the players had built up between their PCs and the gameworld, and all the work we had done trying to make sense of the prophecy in relation to our PCs and the gameworld and those relationships, was invalidated.

I left the game not long after, and I don't believe that it lasted much longer after that. In effect, the GM killed it off. My impression is that he had lost his sense of control over his own backstory, but wasn't prepared to follow the players' leads, and so in effect "rebooted" things so he could start with a blank slate.

The GM shifting a game in which the players are clearly invested in City B, to one where the desert that the players clearly are not interested in becomes the main focus, seems to me to be a (perhaps lesser) version of the same bad GMing.

Of course, it could play out differently. Perhaps the players don't really care about City B, but rather about something in City B - say Item X. A good GM might be able to adjudicate the City B action, and let the players learn that Item X is really to be found in the desert, in a way that leads the players to become invested in the desert because it is the receptacle of Item X. Being able to pitch the players' concerns back to them in unexpected ways is a key GM skill. But it takes more than simply laying a trail of breacrumbs (to borrow [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s phrase).

Let’s flesh it out, because right now, my answer is “it depends”. Did I ask if the player wanted to examine the possible purchases and make some Handle Animal checks? If he responded with “I want a horse, I want it immediately and I don’t want to screw around with your lame NPC characterizations and minutia rolls.”, then I get the sense the PC is rushing the deal and having him buy a lame horse may be a reasonable result.

Once again you are conflating "effort at the table" with "effort in the gameworld". That's one way to play, but not the only way.

It also depends on the character – if he’s a Ranger with the Horse Lord archetype and a +15 Handle Animal check, it seems unlikely he would fail to notice the horse was lame under most circumstances.

Now this is interesting!

Does the player with the Horse Lord Ranger have to spend more time at the table doing horse-y stuff to get the benefits? Or is one benefit of being a Horse Lord Ranger that you get good horses without having to spend time at the table? I think different groups have different views.

Hussar has been prettly clear that, by summoning the centipede, he's trying to get the benefits of a desert crossing (ie being in City B) with less rather than more table time. I say, in those circumstances, give it to him! It's not as if there are no complications to throw at the players that they are interested in, such that we have to fill our play time resolving situations that they're not interested in!

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm reluctant to even bother here as there has been an absurd amount of words already sacrificed on the alter of attempted clarity such that any further bloodshed seems pointless. But I guess here I go anyway.

I like running exploration challenges. I know how to make them work and I know what is necessary to make them provocative and relevant with respect to my table's creative agenda. Stakes were brought up before and its poignant that there are two creative agendas/approaches at tension here:

1) Serial, exploratory play that respects (as much as possible) granular accounting for time. The stakes here are not expressly (sometimes they may...but its not mandated) about continuity with (a) what just occurred, (b) what is happening right now, (c) what is on the line and (d) what is clearly and transparently necessary to resolve the rising conflict. The stakes here are pretty much about maintaining the sense of wonderment of being an adventurer exploring a setting; the scenery, the dangers, the depth and breadth of a given source material, and the twists and turns that may or may not be coherent with respect to the rising conflict at the center of the adventure. That open world, serial exploration agenda is aided by coherency with respect for that accounting of time...and it needs some incoherency with respect to focus on the rising conflict of the moment (some "other stuff going on" while the PCs chase their quest) to reinforce the backdrop of a "living, breathing world." A desert trek is warranted because (a) its there, (b) causal logic says you need to get across to continue onward, (c) some fun, interesting, dangerous stuff might happen (that may or may not be relevant to the rising conflict), and (d) these things reinforce the sense of wonderment of exploring "a living, breathing world." That is the guiding premise of play.

2) Scene-based play is in many ways the inverse of that creative agenda. It is an action movie. It is a comic book. Here, instant, clear continuity with respect to stakes needs to be established to legitimize a scene's existence. If it can't pass that litmus test then it gets cut on the editing room floor. There is no serial exploration of a "living, breathing world" and there is no granular accounting for time. There is a series of vignettes with a rising conflict that is the tie that binds. Coherency of theme or stakes within that rising conflict is paramount. Any exploration "for exploration's sake" does not establish the immersive wonderment inherent to open-world exploration...any "other stuff going on" to establish a "living, breathing world" detracts from the focused pace toward resolution of the rising conflict. Because immersive wonderment is not the point. The continuity and progression of rising conflict and its climax is the point. A desert trek is warranted when it is underwritten by continuity with (a) what just occurred, (b) what is happening right now, (c) what is on the line and (d) its clearly and transparently necessary resolve the rising conflict. That is the guiding premise of play.

1 is just a different game than 2. The people at table 1 want a different playing experience and should expect the GM and the game's pacing and system impetus (resources and schemes that are in-world/causal logic driven, granular resource accounting, objective DCs for task resolution, "other stuff going on" to simulate "a living, breathing world") to produce that. Same thing goes for table 2. Its a bad idea to have those two creative agendas at the same table at the same time. They do not mix well. And its a bad idea to try to shoehorn a serial, open-world exploration creative agenda that assumes PCs remain in 1st person actor stance into a system that mechanically supports closed-system, scene-based conflict resolution (with the context of genre logic guiding the way rather than causal logic) and doesn't just assume, but promotes PCs vacillation from actor to author to director stance. Some games can be drifted, hacked or "forced", primarily because their mechanics are relatively agnostic (they might be simple, versatile, or outright incoherent), but its much more difficult when the mechanics are stridently one or the other. The same goes for players. Its simple. Hussar should be playing in a group filled with folks in the latter camp (and a system that reflects that playstyle).

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], that looks right to me.

What I'm puzzled by is the apparent denial by some posters in this thread that your (2) is actually viable, or interestingly different from your (1).

 

[Hussar]

Let’s flesh it out, because right now, my answer is “it depends”. Did I ask if the player wanted to examine the possible purchases and make some Handle Animal checks? If he responded with “I want a horse, I want it immediately and I don’t want to screw around with your lame NPC characterizations and minutia rolls.”, then I get the sense the PC is rushing the deal and having him buy a lame horse may be a reasonable result.

And, this, right there, in a nutshell is exactly what I mean by punishing the players for not jumping through the DM's hoops. The DM automatically takes the worst possible interpretation and punishes the players by having his horse be lame. It's not even a die roll, where you could at least argue for impartiality. No, instead, the player is automatically cheated by the horse trader.

If the player did check the horse, and succeeded, would it still be lame? I doubt it. If the player played through the DM's checks, the horse would be perfectly fine. The only reason that the horse is lame is because the DM wants to force the player to play through whatever the DM wants him to play through.

Why is there no chance that the hurried player gets lucky and buys a really great horse? N'raac, would you ever give a better than average horse to a player who skipped over your checks?

This is why I get "shirty" about this sort of thing. The DM will always choose the most punishing interpretation whenever the player doesn't jump through the DM forced hoops. "Oh, you didn't check out the desert, so now you fail at the city despite having no knowledge that what you needed was in the desert in the first place. I guess next time you'll play the way I want to play won't you?" says this style of DMing.

 

[Eldarain]

That's actually a really good point. The best games seem to be when the path the GM thought things were going to go down, gets altered into something no one expected based on Player choice.

 

[Manbearcat]

@pemerton I know. It is puzzling. The "interestingly different" is more puzzling than the "viable" because "viable" may just be someone saying "I don't find this fun therefore it isn't viable." Whereas "interestingly different" can be empirically observed. If "interestingly different" didn't exist then how is it we have an edition war premised upon 4e being off the reservation from folks' position that "standard D&D" is causal-logic-driven, open-world, exploratory, strategic play?

Beyond that, I cannot imagine trying to reproduce a game of Classic Traveler with MHRP (or vice versa). System matters. Creative agenda matters.

 

[Celebrim]

This is why I get "shirty" about this sort of thing. The DM will always choose the most punishing interpretation whenever the player doesn't jump through the DM forced hoops. "Oh, you didn't check out the desert, so now you fail at the city despite having no knowledge that what you needed was in the desert in the first place. I guess next time you'll play the way I want to play won't you?" says this style of DMing.

The only person I see choosing the most punishing interpretation of everything is you.

I can't speak for N'raac, but we seem to have mostly agreed on things. This is my statement on the horse deal:

As you note however, the key here is being fair to the character. If a player initiates buying a horse, I always give the character the benefit of the doubt. They'll always try to appraise the horse or horses available and get the best deal possible. I would never play ‘gotcha’ with a player and tell him, “You forgot to ask for an appraise/diplomacy/sense motive check, so I assumed you failed.”

N'raac's example is a bit strained, because he proposes a ludricrously extreme example of a player initiating the purchase of a horse but then demanding no IC time resource be spent on it and deliberately forgoing his skill check to appraise a horse. But even then, N'raac doesn't suggest that the player automatically gets a lame horse, only that in this case a lame horse might be a reasonable result.