Fear of natural consequences is more valuable than player intention, in D&D-type adventure games. IMO an important question is how to combine that fear with the desired level of actual risk of death. IME it works to have the risk be very low, but it has to be non-zero.
How to deal with death in RPG?
- Thread starter Growbacca
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Fear of natural consequences is more valuable than player intention, in D&D-type adventure games. IMO an important question is how to combine that fear with the desired level of actual risk of death. IME it works to have the risk be very low, but it has to be non-zero.
Okay, so, if you never experience this, you probably want to listen more, and try to advise less.
I mean, really - how mansplainy is it to suggest solutions when you have never actually knowingly dealt with the problem?
DMZ2112
Chaotic Looseleaf
::whistles:: That is definitely a disconnect.
That, in my opinion, is a failure state. I don't mean to imply that I always avoid it, just that I always try.
That is a perfectly valid opinion, but if your players disagree and you cling to your principles over their desires you are shooting yourself in the foot.
...Why do I feel like we have swapped chairs?
I disagree - IME 99%+ of players want a risk of death. The other >1% should go play somewhere else. I'm not shooting myself in the foot by not running something I don't enjoy.
Well, I want my players to have fun, that adds to my fun, but all I can do is provide the opportunity. I can't guarantee fun. Maybe they just weren't in the mood that night. Maybe their idea of fun is incompatible with that of the other players.
It's not happened in many years, but back when I started running 3e in public in 2008 I did have a couple players complain when their PCs died. One guy (who turned up one session with his 4 hp wizard-1 & got chopped up by a bone golem in 'Rahasia') was so traumatised I saw him talking about it on a message board 5-6 years later as a paradigm example of bad DMing! But set against that are many hundreds of very happy players and many campaigns often lasting many years. Anyway I'm a better GM now and I run a better ruleset, so not much of that kind of thing.
(Are you not Men?!)
There's plenty of good advice out there in Blogland on how to run a good game - I recommend
Monsters & Manuals, The Alexandrian, and DMDavid.
Matt Colville's Youtube also good.
[MENTION=78752]DMZ2112[/MENTION]
I'm posting that I don't have disappointing sessions. You either seem to not believe me, or . . . be angry about it? (I'm not sure.)
I'm sure my players have some sessions that they enjoy more than others. I have sessions that I enjoy more than others. For instance, I enjoyed my second-to-last Classic Traveller session more than my last one. But neither was disappointing.
I play with my friends - depending exactly how you measure same group it's been the same group for either ten or twenty years. Most of us in the group started playing with Moldvay Basic in the early 80s. One started playing with Rolemaster, in our group, in the late 90s.
There are some things you have posted about GMing that don't describe my approach to RPGing. Whether or not they have any bearing on my failure to have disappointing sessions I don't know:
I don't see my job as GM as storyteller. That's a term I assocate with the White Wolf/2nd ed AD&D style of RPGing, which is my least favourite approach. The biggest textual influence on my GMing approach is Luke Crane's stuff written for Burning Wheel.
I don't construct a play experience. I participate with my players in playing the game - I frame scenes that I believe will be interesting, relying on player cues and genre presuppositions to help with that. When the players succeed on checks, events go the way they intended. When they fail, I try and establish interesting consequences. If a particular scene or situation seems not to be engaging (I'm lucky that that's not too common, but sometimes it happens) then I adjust or move on.
It's not uncommon in my game for PCs to oppose one another. Sometimes it comes to blows, but more often it plays out through other forms of conflict. My players are consscius of the need to manage group tensions, and are sensitive also to whether or not the game depends on "party" play (see eg 4e D&D, which is, vs Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy, which is not). The most recent conflict was in our last session, a Dying Earth game, in which one PC was recruited by an NPC to help humiliate the other PC, who had one-uppped that NPC in the opening sequence of the session. The most recent before that that I recall was the same two players playing PCs in Prince Valiant who were rivals for the hand of a noble lady.
Since 1990 I've GMed a session weekly for about 10 years, then fortnightly or so since then, and I've never had a player come to the session with the intention of negating the play of the game, or wrecking it. I put that in the same category as someone who goes to a chess club and then knocks over the board if s/he is losing. I'm aware that such players exist, from my times playing in a club, but I regard them as toxic.
I have played with GMs who may have regarded me (and fellow players) as "disruptive" or "negaters" because the GM had a preconception of the events that would unfold in the session, and we wanted to declare and play out actions for our PCs that involved different things from what the GM had in mind. I've walked away from two such GMs (once in the early and once in the late 90s). Those GMs were using an approach that I didn't use then, don't use now, and personally don't think gets the best out of the RPG medium.
I'm posting that I don't have disappointing sessions. You either seem to not believe me, or . . . be angry about it? (I'm not sure.)
I'm sure my players have some sessions that they enjoy more than others. I have sessions that I enjoy more than others. For instance, I enjoyed my second-to-last Classic Traveller session more than my last one. But neither was disappointing.
I play with my friends - depending exactly how you measure same group it's been the same group for either ten or twenty years. Most of us in the group started playing with Moldvay Basic in the early 80s. One started playing with Rolemaster, in our group, in the late 90s.
There are some things you have posted about GMing that don't describe my approach to RPGing. Whether or not they have any bearing on my failure to have disappointing sessions I don't know:
I don't see my job as GM as storyteller. That's a term I assocate with the White Wolf/2nd ed AD&D style of RPGing, which is my least favourite approach. The biggest textual influence on my GMing approach is Luke Crane's stuff written for Burning Wheel.
I don't construct a play experience. I participate with my players in playing the game - I frame scenes that I believe will be interesting, relying on player cues and genre presuppositions to help with that. When the players succeed on checks, events go the way they intended. When they fail, I try and establish interesting consequences. If a particular scene or situation seems not to be engaging (I'm lucky that that's not too common, but sometimes it happens) then I adjust or move on.
It's not uncommon in my game for PCs to oppose one another. Sometimes it comes to blows, but more often it plays out through other forms of conflict. My players are consscius of the need to manage group tensions, and are sensitive also to whether or not the game depends on "party" play (see eg 4e D&D, which is, vs Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy, which is not). The most recent conflict was in our last session, a Dying Earth game, in which one PC was recruited by an NPC to help humiliate the other PC, who had one-uppped that NPC in the opening sequence of the session. The most recent before that that I recall was the same two players playing PCs in Prince Valiant who were rivals for the hand of a noble lady.
Since 1990 I've GMed a session weekly for about 10 years, then fortnightly or so since then, and I've never had a player come to the session with the intention of negating the play of the game, or wrecking it. I put that in the same category as someone who goes to a chess club and then knocks over the board if s/he is losing. I'm aware that such players exist, from my times playing in a club, but I regard them as toxic.
I have played with GMs who may have regarded me (and fellow players) as "disruptive" or "negaters" because the GM had a preconception of the events that would unfold in the session, and we wanted to declare and play out actions for our PCs that involved different things from what the GM had in mind. I've walked away from two such GMs (once in the early and once in the late 90s). Those GMs were using an approach that I didn't use then, don't use now, and personally don't think gets the best out of the RPG medium.
Look, two things:
[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] posted that he doesn't have disappointing sessions, a couple of other posters expressed surprise/incredulity, and I posted that my experience is like S'mon's. And I posted a couple of reasons that I think explain why I and my players enjoy our sessions.
Lots of other people post accounts of how they run games and how they think that's good/bad (eg I see dozens of posts thse days about "session zero" - is that now "mansplaining"?). For my part, when I have things I want to improve in my game I read stuff by other people who have achieved in their play what I'm looking for.
The other thing: I've seen tables, back in my club days, which have players who do some of what has been described upthread. And I think that the stuff that [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] and I have posted is relevant to what I've seen ar those tables. In particular, I think framing the GM's role as storyteller in any literal sense puts the burden for a "fun" session on the weakest rather than the strongest part of RPGing as an activity.
The main things I recognise there is The Alexandr4ian, which I personally would not recommend!
Of online stuff on RPGing, I've learned the most from stuff at The Forge (some Paul Czege and Ron Edwards posts in particular have really honed in on some key things for me) and from Vincent Baker's blog.
My GMing has certainly improved over the years/decades.
And ruleset is also crucial, which is one thing I posted upthread. I remember one post on these boards where a poster had run a 5e/D&D next (I think?) scenario involving a food critic as a quest-giver, and the players hadn't engaged, and s/he was puzzled as to why? Whereas the question basciallly answers itself.
Whereas run a version of that scenario in The Dying Earth, and your game would be on fire!
He did some stuff I really liked, eg on anti-railroading - but I remember he has a big hate on for 4e D&D so not really your cup of tea Mr P.
Of those I recommended, DMDavid is consistently great.Similar Threads
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