You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Hussar]

But, to answer the spirit of the question (I'm I okay if someone is bored and is obviously expressing it), I can only repeat what I've already said; I'll feel for them. I have a lot of empathy for people in general, and especially my friends. I'd try to hurry through the scene, but, yes, I'd want to play it out, if I consider it important. I regret that he doesn't find it interesting, but if it's important (in ways I've expressed in this post and my past two, I believe), then I'd just do my best to hurry through, while getting what I can out of it.

So, why is your enjoyment more important? Why do I get treated differently? You will put your enjoyment of the game in front of others and that's perfectly acceptable. But, when I apparently do it, I'm being selfish.

My point is, why the double standard? It's okay to force the guy sitting beside you to endure your favorite scene, even though he's obviously not enjoying it, but, it's not okay for me to move things ahead?

 

[Celebrim]

My point is, why the double standard? It's okay to force the guy sitting beside you to endure your favorite scene, even though he's obviously not enjoying it, but, it's not okay for me to move things ahead?

There is no double standard. The point is you can have a situation where two players have incompatible needs, and can't both be perfectly happy at the same time. What disappoints one will make the other happy, and what makes the other happy disappoints the first. The point is what we do about that is not an individual player's call to make. It's the GMs job to balance the needs and happiness of his players. At most, the player can - if he's been unhappy - ask the rest of the table for a favor and put it to a vote, but even that is risky because often people will suppress their disappointment or frustration to avoid causing conflict so you don't really always get a great result. Players exherting force on a table to get their own way is just a recipe for a total break down of the social contract. Fact is, sometimes you buck it up, take an audience stance, and try to enjoy what other people are doing in the game. Hopefully if you got a good GM, he's going to see your engagement/happiness has tapered off and he's going to try to move things along and put some spotlight back on you but frankly if something important is happening there is only so much rushing you can do that won't come back to bite you in the long run. Hopefully you play with fellow players who are entertaining RPers and you can relax and enjoy the show sometimes. And yes, bad sessions happen for tables as a whole and for individuals especially. Not every session is just totally awesome, even when you have a good GM.

 

[pemerton]

My "preferred approach", then, is not to have the full details of each and every encounter laid out before me in advance so I may decide whether it has sufficient relevance to satisfy me that it is worthy of being played out.

That's not my preferred approach either. There's a big difference between "full details" and "clear stakes".

Also, 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 don't need to know whether the fellow in front of me with a crossbow is likely to slay my character should he refuse the orders being given to him (high stakes indeed) or will inflict trivial damage, then fall to my blade (low stakes) to decide how my character will proceed.

I don't understand the sense in which you are using the word "stakes".

Until you've told me what the crossbowman is doing, and what orders are being given, I don't have any sense of the stakes at all. You haven't framed an engaging scene.

This moves my "cards on the board" analogy away from even having information on the underside of the card - I know up front exactly what my odds are and the results of success or failure. A "choose your own adventure" book becomes more exciting.

Again, I don't know what sort of process you are envisaging here, nor what connection it bears to GMing D&D or any other game.

In D&D, for instance, you frequently know what the odds are in a fight - if the AD&D orc you're facing is wearing studded leather and wielding a spear, and if you have cast Detect Magic and know none is present, then you know the orc is AC 7, has a THACO of (from memory) 19, and does 1d6 damage on a hit.

As to results of success and failure, they may or may not be known, depending on the details of the situation - if what we're testing is your save against an 88 hp dragon breath, for instance, then the results are pretty clear - take 44 or 88 hp of damage, depending on the results of your save.

The comment of yours that I responded to was "relevance having crystal clarity". You're now restating that back to me as "odds and results known in advance". But the two things are barely related. In the orc or dragon breath example the odds and results might be crystal clear, but I still have no idea of why it's relevant to the game.

Conversely, if my PC spots an NPC in the distance and then suddenly recognises her as his long-lost mother, the relevance is obvious even though the upshot of the scene is completely up for grabs.

If there is, for example, a haughty guard who will seek to deny me access to the Duke, he is relevant to the assassination if he is inside the castle, but not if he strides out to challenge me before I can gain entry to the castle?

Tell me more about the situation, the players' goals, the table expectations based on past play, etc. Until you tell me all that how am I meant to know?

But here's one way in which the two scenarios could be importantly different. If the guard challenges me at the castle doorway, then a range of options is available: jumping over the guard, giving the guard the password, distracting the guard while my invisible friend sneaks past, etc. Other options are open to the GM, too - for instance, if I fight the guard and the guard is winning, or wins, I might end up jumping or falling into the moat - and from there have the opportunity to find another way into the castle.

Whereas if the GM frames the challenge from the guard away from the castle entrance, then the range of options open to both players and GM is quite different. And potentially - depending, as I said, on a range of contextual factors - more narrow or less interesting relative to the known set of player concerns.

So how is it impossible to have situations outside the castle which would be equally exciting, and relevant to the assassination, to situations within the castle?

It's not, in general, impossible. But for this table, here and now, it may well be - for the reasons I gave above.

The simple fact that the GM plays out the tavern encounter is, frankly, a tip off to the players that "something relevant this way comes", unless your group plays out every stay at a tavern (which would become trivial and boring very quickly). To me, the game is not enhanced by the GM spelling out exactly why this scene is relevant.

I don't understand how you're envisaging the scene.

Suppose it starts like this "As you guys are taking your kit from the stables up to your rooms, you see two furtive figures talking in a corner of the inn. Silverleaf, with your keen elven hearing you think you hear one of the saying something about the duke riding out of the castle alone tomorrow night."

At that point the relevance is clear, and assuming the GM hasn't completely misjudged his/her players engagement will follow.

"Guys, I think it is important that you not just skip over this section, because there's a character in here who is very important going forward - here's all his backstory and future potential involvement. So can we please NOT skip the travel through the Goblin King's territory, as I have now shown you it has relevance" What do we end up with? Relevant characters walk up to the campfire with their resume in hand so the players can judge whether interaction will be relevant?

The bit in quotes is the worst form of railroading. It's the complete opposite of what I'm talking about - which is the GM taking the players' hooks, not players taking the GM's hook.

As for relevant characters walking up - probably not, but tell me more about the context and the game rules (for instance, if the PC is a name level fighter or ranger who hasn't yet gained any followers, then perhaps that is what should happen). But in AD&D the standard mechanism is a combination of GM fiat ("Are hirelings available") plus (optionally) an offer and a reaction roll, plus the deduction of the relevant money from the PC's pile of loot. A 90 minute interview is nowhere mandated or even hinted at in any edition of D&D I'm familiar with as the appropriate way to resolve the taking on of mercenary soldiers.

I see...so the Grell recruiting an ally to fight the PC's is an exciting and relevant complication, but the PC's recruiting an ally to fight the Grell is a low stakes, boring, irrellevant waste of time.

Not the Grell recruiting - the Grell having an ally.

The PCs having allies is interesting too. But recruiting them is not.

So why did the players choose to recruit allies? Did they want to make the game dull and boring? Hussar tells me these spearmen were very important to their rematch with the Grell - it seems that would provide their recruitment with some stakes.

Are you saying that you don't see the difference between having mercenaries, and the process of recruitingmercenaries? The first can be important to the game without the second being important. Just as being at full hit points might be important, but the actual process of healing might not be, which is why some groups use various devices to make healing itself take next-to-no-time at thet table.

You just made the recruitment high stakes and relevant, contrary to how you classified it above.

You are referring to my example of the GM having a hireling show his/her cowardice, or tendency towards aberration-worship, when the grell is confronted. That doesn't make the recruitment high stakes - the recruiting will already have taken place when this happens. It makes the confrontation with the grell, and the use of hirelings in that process, high stakes - but that's what the players wanted.

(There are other issues around the GMing of cowardice or treachery by hirelings - it's particularly important, in my view, to use a light rather than a heavy touch here, and to be open to the players turning things around, eg via Intimidate or Diplomacy checks against the hireling - but that's orthogonal to the basic point about getting the scene framing right.)

So who decides which of:
- travel to the Duke's city
- determining the lay of the land with its people
- finding a way to gain access to the castle;
- once inside, finding a means of confronting the Duke at a time and place where we can pull off the assassination;
- the actual assassination
- the escape from the location where he was assassinated
- the escape from the castle itself
- the escape from the city
- subsequent efforts to capture the PC's and/or avenge the Duke?

It seems like your/Hussar's vision is one of either unanimous group consensus, or one player's preference (depending on whether the single player or the group as a whole decides how we will proceed).

There is no general answer. 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).

On my preferred approach, to frame a desert crossing scene in circumstances where no player has expressed any particular interest in such a scene, and in which the players have expressed clear interest in getting to City B, would be bad GMing.

Semantics. By the same phrasing, the desert, the road to the Duke and the spearcarrier recruiting are also situations.

They're not situations - they have no conflict. They are not emotionally laden.

why is it assumed that the desert travel will just be a bunch of tedious and low-stakes scenes, but once we get to City B, the game will turn from grainy B&W to high def 3d glorious technicolour?

Because that's where the action is. That's where the players want to be.

Of course, the GM might do a bad job of City B. That's always a risk. But then there's no reason to think that a GM who does a bad job of City B was going to do a better job of anything else. (Unless the GM has a blind spot for city scenarios in general. In which case s/he should be taking steps to avoid them. I take steps in my own GMing to try to avoid having to frame and adjudicate scenes at which I know I'm not very good - mass combats are one example of that.)

So, once we have agreed on which of these aspects should or should not be played out, I'd think the GM now has to break so he can write the adventure

On my preferred approach the GM doesn't "write an adventure". The GM has some notes on backstory, some ideas or possible lines of development sketched out, and the tools - monster lists, standard action resolution guidelines etc - to come up with mechanically detailed stuff as needed.

I also prepare particular encounter outlines - maps, antagonist descriptions, etc - to drop in at appropriate points.

You seem to be confusing "action" with "plot". Keep on the Borderlands has three settings.

<snip>

There is no story. There is a setting (including a few sub-settings, occupants both friend and foe, etc.) with which the PC's interact (generally meaning "kill and loot", but sometimes "spend loot"). Any plot is added by the GM, but is not inherent in the module.

I don’t have my copy ready to hand, but from memory the Chaotic priest in the Keep will takes steps to infiltrate the party and thereby betray and kill the PCs.

Also, I think the hermit will give the PCs certain information, won’t he.

Both these are situation – or, at least, have situation inherent in them. The module also clearly envisages the GM creating situation around the material (eg so-and-so has been kidnapped by the orcs and needs rescuing). I think whether GMs and groups approach the Keep primarily from the point of view of setting, or from the point of view of situation, probably varies from table to table just as much as everything else about playstyle does.

Actually, there is evidence to the contrary in that you are still gaming, which leads me to believe the snippets we get here do not tell the whole story - and they rarely, if ever, do.

Are you suggesting the fact that Hussar is still gaming is evidence that he must be misdescribing his approach here? Frankly I find that bizarre – but maybe I’ve misunderstood you.

Hussar’s approach, set out in this thread, makes perfect sense to me, and sounds like the sort of person I would like to play with or GM for. I don’t find it at all bizarre that such a person should be still gaming.

I have still seen no examples of what you would consider a great, well run session.

I’m not Hussar, but upthread I posted links to a range of sessions that I’ve run, and that I consider reasonably well run (in some of those posts I point to issues or difficulties I had). Hussar has also replied in at least one of those threads.

So at least as far as I am concerned, it shouldn’t mysterious to you what I am looking for in a game. What I am still puzzled by is what you are trying to show in your posts. Are you trying to show you have different play preferences from me or Hussar? That’s not in dispute.

Or are you trying to show that a playstyle different from your preferred on is impossible? That is in dispute, and frankly experience has taught me that it is not true.

 

[pemerton]

if the DM has some more complicated ideas, then he has every right to frame the scene without that sort of summation.

I personally don't think in terms of "rights" here, but if I'm obliged to put it in those terms than I don't think the GM has that right. 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.

in most games, if the DM introduces complications that involve the outcome of player choice without actually ever having allowed for that choice in some manner, the player is going to be upset.

It depends a lot on the details, I think.

Suppose the PC buys a new horse, then not long after I (as GM) narrate that it loses a shoe and becomes lame. The PC investigates, and I explain to the player that the horse hadn't been properly shoed, and on close inspection seems to have had a previous weakness in its leg. Is that permissible introduction of retrospective facts into the game? I think a lot depends on group expectations, mechanics in play, etc.

For instance, if upon buying the horse the PC did a Handle Animal check and succeeded, subsequently introducing the lameness complication would seem pretty poor to me. But if the player didn't both to make the check, what then - is the burden on the player to call for checks (potentially grinding the game to a halt in the same style as checking every square with a 10' pole), or is the burden on the GM to call for checks (leading to the well-known problem of signalling all possible complications in advance by calling for checks), or is all this stuff to be handled via some other tecnique, such as no checks being made until the horse is actually being ridden, and then skill challenge failures get narrated into retropsective facts ("Schroedinger's horseshoes")?

Different tables and different systems look for solutions in different places, with various balances of responsibility and power across mechancis, free narration/fiat, etc.

In the hireling case, if the players just want to hire the hirelings and clearly aren't interested in playing that out in any detail, I would let them get the hirelings without anything but (depending a bit on system) a reaction roll or something similar to settle price. Whether I then introduced a cowardice or abberation-loyalty complication downstream would depend on all sorts of questions of judgement that can't be reduced to a simple formula. But at that point the role of Sense Motive or something similar to see the treachery/cowardice coming becomes crucial - that's where you can both allow the players to leverage their PCs' resources, and allow them to make choices that will shape the outcome of the situation.

 

[JamesonCourage]

So, why is your enjoyment more important? Why do I get treated differently? You will put your enjoyment of the game in front of others and that's perfectly acceptable. But, when I apparently do it, I'm being selfish.

First, dude, chill. Of everyone here, I haven't attacked you. I've explicitly said I'm just asking, and not arguing.

Second, my enjoyment is assumably more important than yours for the same reason yours is more important than mine; we both want to get enjoyment out of the game. I am not willing to be unhappy for a prolonged period of time (the majority of my play time, or a substantial portion of the minority) in the long term. You are not willing to be unhappy at all.

There's nothing inherently wrong with either; I consider mine a lot more flexible (I can let my friends play through that awesome scene they enjoy, even if I have zero interest in it), but there's nothing wrong with you looking for a group that fits your needs almost perfectly. That's cool; my friends are a really good fit with my wants, and we have great games because of it.

My point is, why the double standard? It's okay to force the guy sitting beside you to endure your favorite scene, even though he's obviously not enjoying it, but, it's not okay for me to move things ahead?

I think you're seeing a double standard where none exists. I've never claimed that I'm putting everyone's fun equally, even though I do (I just go about it differently). What I'm okay with is spotlight rotation; this is a well-tread topic, and obviously a play style preference. It's cool that it's not your thing, but it's perfectly okay for me.

If the player is outright objecting to the scene because he's been offended (the game touches on material a little too close to home, or there's actual player friction because of it), then I'll probably work on skipping it and making everyone but him unhappy. We're all friends, and if this friend is genuinely upset, his feelings are more important than the game.

However, if he's just bored while me or my players really enjoy this game, then he can wait. I don't mind powering through the scene, but I'm not going to skip it for him. And, when the situation is reversed, I won't skip it for them. There's no double standard here. It's give and take. Again, I feel for people that are bored, but I won't actively make a decision that makes the other players unhappy for that one guy.

I might, if the entire group had one mind on most issues. But, as close as my players are (all friends for 12-14 years, best man at one's wedding, etc.), they each have stuff they prefer when they play game. And I'll let them explore those areas, and even if one is disinterested during part of it, he'll pay attention, contribute out-of-game, and be okay watching his friend be happy. If one is super bored and expresses it (likely openly; we're that kind of group of friends), then we'll likely wrap up the scene, using rolls to get it done faster if need be.

I guess I just don't see the double standard you're describing. You're saying I see my fun as more important, but I see it as pretty much the other way around. However, you can't seem to be happy enough that your friends are having fun to just let them hurry through something they enjoy; it has to move on to something you like right now. Maybe it's me, but that doesn't line up with the "I don't put my fun ahead of theirs" statement you made. Again, I might be missing something, which is why I asked. You just seem to be explicitly saying the opposite. As always, play what you like

 

[N'raac]

If you are going to assassinate the Duke, what would be fairly reasonable to expect? Guards? Yup. Castle or some sort of stronghold where the Duke is? I'd think so. Various traps and possible secret entrances? I could see that.

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.

So, how is your guard irrelevant?

I don’t believe he is irrelevant – but I have been told by a player that we must skip to the castle because nothing outside the castle is relevant.

As a player, you wouldn't find that terribly contrived? We just happened to meet the architect on the road to the Duke's castle? We weren't looking for him. We didn't even know he existed until the DM parachuted him in. That, to me, is far, far worse for the game than any amount of scene skipping. Deus Ex Machina at its finest. Earlier I called this railroading and that was a mistake. It's not really railroading. But it is terribly contrived.

Sure it is. And I’m sure we could come up with much more subtle occurrences on the road, or anywhere else. The simple point is that it is easily possible for relevant encounters to also happen on the road.

No, you are missing the point. Why did we engage those desert nomads? We had no interest in engaging them. We engaged them because the DM put them there and had them attack us. Again, totally contrived. And the prisoner just happens to have the plot keys that we need?

OK, so you get to the city in a fingersnap because your centipede cannot be stopped or slowed by man or Gods alike. 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?

If you wanted us to have that information, why not just give it to us? Or, better yet, let us know before hand that there is someone that would possibly be very helpful for us to get to know and then let us decide whether or not we think it's important?

Yes, that’s how the source material always works, isn’t it?

I get that you want a strongly DM presented and driven game. That's groovy. But, for some of us, we'd rather that the players drive the game to a much larger degree. The players decide whether it's worth it to rescue that guy from the desert nomads, not the DM.

Then don’t complain when the guy subsequently turns out to have some importance, but in the intervening time the situation has changed (the nomads moved on, formed alliances, killed the prisoner, whatever).

Sigh. You might actually want to go back and read what was said.

OK, let’s do so…

Yeah, I get rather grouchy when DM's pull the rug out when I do something like this, so, I'm very, very careful not to do it to my players.
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I've never understood why DM's feel they have to make every single challenge a challenge.
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So, I called a Huge Monstrous Centipede, mounted up the party, and crossed the wasteland Fremen style. I thought it was kinda cool.


The DM was very much in a snit, because the centipede has a climb speed, meaning that virtually any wasteland barrier was no longer a barrier as it could simply climb down and up any crevasses or things like that, and, because I could simply call another one when the first one died, I could make it forced march until it died and then summon another one and repeat. Our journey, which was supposed to last several days, with multiple encounters, lasted about two days with pretty much no encounters because we could out run pretty much anything.

So, from that post, we see you “get rather grouchy” when the DM “pulls the rug out” from under your creative ideas. I see that as “accept my solutions or I will cop an attitude”.

We then see some discussion of why this plan may be neither as simple nor as 100% effective as you seem to think. That is, perhaps it’s not that easy for a party of humanoids to ride up a verticle slope clinging to the back of an enormous centipede, and maybe it’s movement rate is not so stellar that it can evade anything else in the desert. So…

See, I tend to get a bit... shirty when DM's start doing this.

The only real reason that the checks are being forced is because you want me to "slog my way through the desert". And, the DM will simply rule against the party until the checks are made.

Immediate assumption: the only reason for the GM to challenge my brilliant solution is that he’s going to force the issue. It is impossible my plan could be less than 100% successful.

The fact that I've come up with a way to hand wave our way across the desert should be a giant glowing neon sign that I don't want to piss about slogging across the desert. We have a goal.

My point was never that the DM must immediately accept an idea. It was that it's better to not bother with a bunch of pointless crap that the players have no investment in, just to make the DM happy.

It sure looks like your point was that the GM was a poor sport and a poor GM because he had the gall to decide your plan was less than 100% foolproof. That may not be what you wanted to say, but it’s sure what I see when I read the words. I can’t read your mind, so I’m stuck with what you post.

Again, why am I interacting with these hirelings? They are there for a single purpose. When you hire some workmen to paint your house, do you spend half an hour interviewing each one and getting their life story? Or do you call up House Painters Inc. and tell them what you want and that's about the long and the short of your interaction?

I think, again, that it depends. How much am I planning on spending? Am I letting these guys have access to my house, and my possessions, in my absence? I think we have a lot more options here in the 21st century world. I might go online and search for house painters. I’d probably nose around at work and see if anyone has a recommendation based on their own experiences. I might contact the Better Business Bureau. And I may just rely on modern contract law and the existence of a solid judiciary to defend me if things go wrong.

I don’t think I’ll be hiring mercenaries to guide me on a hunt through the jungle to bag a Rhino without doing a little fact checking first (but then, I’m unlikely to do so at all).

The getting shirty comment, if you go back and read, was in response to Celebrim's comments that he would add in a bunch of skill checks and whatnot to, in my view, roadblock the PC's and force them to interact with the desert.

I think Celebrim said that, seeing the players engaged in a creative means of crossing the desert, he would invest the time to assess the implications, and allow them to demonstrate their skills, expertise and creativity in determining how best to achieve the goal, within the constraints of the plan. And, by implication, that he would not just call your solution an autosuccess without assessing it. You are the one who decided that the sole reason he could have for anything short of saying “Your brilliance is awe inspiring – you arrive at the other side of the desert with no problems” can be attributed only to mean-spirtited, heavy handed GM roadblocking,

Yup, after this one time, I never, ever tried to hire hirelings with this DM again. Because, after this one time, having it drag out over an hour, I couldn't be bothered ever again.p

Perhaps that’s why it so seldom happens in the fiction or in other games. But let’s go on…

Again, I was the one doing the interviewing, because I was the one who came up with the plan.

So what were the other players doing? Did they not buy into your plan? It seems we never get to hear about what the rest of the group did.

And, as I recall, the DM had an old man and his young grandson show up first, which were rejected, a dwarf and a couple of others came later. After the old man and the dwarf, I just threw up my hands and took them all.

So it was not possible, in your view, that anyone would show up for a hastily written ad for mercenary killers who was not perfectly suited for the job you had in mind? And how does it take 90 minutes for you to say “you’re hired” to the next six in the door? Actually, what would likely bug me more is that the hirelings actually did the job if you just grabbed the first six guys through the door.

You missed the hobgoblin being killed? Go back in the thread a bit. I was interogating the hobgoblin and the other player ganked it in mid sentence. His reason was exactly the same as mine. The DM was road blocking and he wanted to move things along. But, that's not quite what you're asking for.

Funny – from your initial description, I got the sense you had interrogated the hobgoblin, made your intimidate check and had some back & forth discussion before the other player killed it. That is, the scene had player out, not been cut from its inception.

On the interview thing - why can't we assume that the PCs are doing adequate interviews, background checks etc but have it all be handled quickly and mechanically? Eg the player of the hiring PC rolls a Sense Motive check: success means no problems, excellent success means you've really found your way into the hearts of these hirelings (+1 morale), failure means the GM has license to introduce some treasury/cowardice-style complication at a key point in the Grell battle.

don't know where you are seeing that. However, things that have important present or future implications for the character if they are skipped basically didn't happen - and this can lead to future problems and logical inconsistancies if you aren't careful. Most importantly, in most games, if the DM introduces complications that involve the outcome of player choice without actually ever having allowed for that choice in some manner, the player is going to be upset. I dare say Hussar would fall in that category.

OK, let’s throw that back into Hussar’s court. Assuming the game played at the time had these mechanics (or the GM proposed something similar), would you be OK with cutting the scene short on the basis that a single roll is made for each hireling in turn. Based on that roll, for each recruit, your character either makes a good call (hires someone reliable or dismisses an aberration worshipper or a guy hoping to kill you after the grell and loot both), or a bad call (dismissing a reliable recruit with similar goals; hiring someone who wants you dead more than the Grell). The results then play out in combat.

Or would betrayal by a hireling or two indicate the GM is just punishing the players for refusing to find his brilliant NPC design and characterization engaging enough to spend a few hours on?

Suppose the PC buys a new horse, then not long after I (as GM) narrate that it loses a shoe and becomes lame. The PC investigates, and I explain to the player that the horse hadn't been properly shoed, and on close inspection seems to have had a previous weakness in its leg. Is that permissible introduction of retrospective facts into the game? I think a lot depends on group expectations, mechanics in play, etc.

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.

Did I presuppose he did so and roll for him and **oops** he picked the lame one (maybe with a Bluff roll from the salesman)? Depends on the table’s style, but it still seems a reasonable result, on the assumption that the player did not indicate he was taking any special precautions, nor that he was especially rushed. 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.

Or have all the players routinely bought riding animals in the past with no issues, but this player just did something that ticked the GM off?

Second, my enjoyment is assumably more important than yours for the same reason yours is more important than mine; we both want to get enjoyment out of the game. I am not willing to be unhappy for a prolonged period of time (the majority of my play time, or a substantial portion of the minority) in the long term. You are not willing to be unhappy at all.

That seems like the differentiation to me as well.

I guess I just don't see the double standard you're describing. You're saying I see my fun as more important, but I see it as pretty much the other way around. However, you can't seem to be happy enough that your friends are having fun to just let them hurry through something they enjoy; it has to move on to something you like right now. Maybe it's me, but that doesn't line up with the "I don't put my fun ahead of theirs" statement you made. Again, I might be missing something, which is why I asked. You just seem to be explicitly saying the opposite. As always, play what you like

I see the same – “I don’t care how much fun everyone else is having, move on to what I want immediately” does not seem consistent with “I put everyone else’s fun on the same level as my own”. Add the recent comment that it’s up to them to ask to cut the scene, which seems quite different to prior claims that “I’m not having fun if my buddy is bored”, and that impression becomes stronger.

 

[Celebrim]

I personally don't think in terms of "rights" here, but if I'm obliged to put it in those terms than I don't think the GM has that right. 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.

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. The one concrete example you've provided of your GMing style didn't seem to me to line up with your claims about your GMing style, and instead showed you to be a pretty standard DM doing pretty standard things that well accord with my understanding of how to GM. 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. Indeed, it's clear from your example that the player had no expectation he could frame a scene. 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. 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.

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.

It depends a lot on the details, I think.

Obviously.

Suppose the PC buys a new horse..

Not a terribly great example. If the player proposes that they buy a horse, then the player has blessed that course of action. What I meant was more like, banging to a scene where the player is thrown from his horse because his horse threw a shoe and shied, and the player hasn't even bought a horse, and you the DM say, "Yeah, you did that off stage. I didn't think shopping was important, but mark off 25 g.p." However, we'll run with your scene anyway.

then not long after I (as GM) narrate that it loses a shoe and becomes lame. The PC investigates, and I explain to the player that the horse hadn't been properly shoed, and on close inspection seems to have had a previous weakness in its leg. Is that permissible introduction of retrospective facts into the game? I think a lot depends on group expectations, mechanics in play, etc.

Provided the player initiated the purchasing of the horse, it's completely normal to presume that there may be secret information. Often a DM exercises his right to withhold information from a player by rolling skill checks/saving throws/etc. secretly, and then recording the information. Even if the DM doesn't do this, and its consider 'dodgy' under the groups social contract, if players throw dice that could lead to knowing meta-information not available to their PC's then the expectation is usually that the player play as if he doesn't know that information. At my table, I generally roll secretly, because I prefer it that way and over the years I've discovered that my players generally prefer that I roll the dice secretly as well because its burdensome to have to pretend you don't know something that in fact you do (and also, table conflict results if one player believes the other is meta-gaming improperly).

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.”

How detailed I’d make the skill test and how much I would play it out would depend on many factors – how many players are in the campaign, how important is a good quality horse to the scene, how reasonable is it that there are at least some good horses readily available for purchase?

A sample medium complexity resolution would be:

a) I assign some chance that an exceptional quality horse is available, and determine if the PC found something special based on the size of the area and its fame in horse flesh.
b) I make an appraise check for the player to determine if he can find a good horse (or the best horse). He gets a +2 bonus if he’s trained in Ride or a +6 bonus if he has at least 5 ranks, per my house rules. Depending on the result, I describe giving accurate or inaccurate information the sorts of horses available.
c) I randomly assign an appraise check to the merchant, and let the merchant appraise the horse. Depending on the result, I make assumptions about what the merchant is willing to sell the horse for. (The merchant thinks his bad horse is good, or good horse is bad.)
d) I determine the price the merchant is willing to part with the horse based on a diplomacy check on behalf of the player and any special social modifiers that might impact that (disadvantages like misanthrope, clueless, or second class citizen, visible mutations from a sorcerous bloodline, social rank, relationship to the merchant, xenophobia modifiers, etc.).
e) Player agrees to pay the price on a particular horse of a particular quality. You now have a horse.

That should take about two minutes. For a more complex scene, I might play out several merchants do actual IC role-play and assign chances that a merchant is dishonest and is deliberately trying to conceal the horse’s quality, this involves sense motive to note the dishonest demeanor and additional opposed skill test to determine the fraud. However, I’m generally never going to do that unless I only have 1 or 2 players and I know that they are of a more thespian bent, because it’s too boring to the other players to listen to this sort of low stake drama for more than a minute or two. For large groups, 6 players or more and a journey of no particularly pressing importance, I’ll probably do simple resolution by assuming an average horse and making a single check to determine price – moving the scene along with minimal fuss.

In the hireling case, if the players just want to hire the hirelings and clearly aren't interested in playing that out in any detail, I would let them get the hirelings without anything but (depending a bit on system) a reaction roll or something similar to settle price.

Agreed. However, I’d always essentially offer to play this out in detail. The player would need to indicate IC that he clearly wasn’t interested, at which point we do a simple resolution and generally speaking I’m going to assume you’ve accepted the risks. Also note that I consider NPC’s generally far more important than horses, and I’m generally going to lavish more detail on any NPC than I am a horse unless I know with certainty that the player is looking to treat the horse as an NPC (maybe the character is a mounted specialist or the player has explicitly made his close relationship with animals part of his beliefs/interests). Thus it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to assume ‘average NPCs’, especially when by definition anyone willing to go into spooky places and fight Grell is not average.

As an aside, ordinary mercenaries in my campaign world just will not do that for any price for what I consider really obvious reasons, even in the unlikely case that they’d be willing to work for the PC’s at all (the PC’s would essentially need to have local reputations and high social standing to recruit a mercenary company, and the commander would more or less demand equal standing with the PC’s and the right to retain command of his people even then.) Even a King bloody well can’t recruit mercenaries to fight a dragon, and the captain of the company would politely as possible tell the King he was daft and ask if the king was really willing to try to arrest the company for refusing to accept contract, and politely note that he might have a hard time hiring mercenaries in the future if word of this sort of treatment gets around which he’s sure it would, because the church of Hastophal the Valiant – which he happens to be in good standing with – is going to find out and make sure word gets around. There is only one mercenary company in my canon as it stands – The Blackswords – that willingly do ‘hero work’, and they’ve been in the sole employ of the Grand Duke of Harlund for better than 400 years now to the extent that for all intents and purposes they are a regular army unit – household troops of the Grand Duke. That isn’t to say that you can’t hire spear carriers to fight a Grell, but they won’t be ‘ordinary’ soldiers unless you can make a pretty epic diplomacy check (with expectation of at least some IC speech making). However, even hiring spear carriers is illegal in most locals unless you’ve obtained a license to form a mercenary company from the local authorities. Most magistrates frown on forming private armies without their permission, or putting armed parties on the roads or in to the wilderness where they might be mistaken for bandits – and possibly with good cause. That issue is usually settled well before players start hiring small armies though, either because a PC has knowledge (law) or because the first random encounter with a Knight of the Road has them getting a stern lecture on travelling the King’s road armed without a license and how if they didn’t seem honorable men and he hadn’t heard good things about them, they’d certainly be facing the gallows for banditry right now. And in some locales, that men’s the PC party better think about paying up with the local Mercenary Guild and/or temple of Hastophal (whose church basically runs the in world equivalent of the Red Cross/United Nations/Geneva Convention) before taking certain sorts of jobs, or there are going to be some really ticked off mercs complaining about scabs.

And as a further aside, ‘Adventurers’ as a concept doesn’t really exist in my campaign world. Groups like the PC’s are once a century sort of things. You tell someone you are ‘adventurers’ and they’ll think they mean you are rich tourists. You tell someone that you are a mercenary company that slays dragons, and they’ll assume (usually rightly I might add) that you are Heroes in the full ancient Greek usage of the word and that the gods must be up to something. “Oh, you guys are the Argonauts… I’ve heard of you.”

My point being that, “We hire some disposable spear carriers off of a price list with the same stake and expediency that we buy rations or ammunition.”, just doesn’t work for me period, and to a large extent that has nothing to do with ‘player stakes’ or ‘scene framing’ and has nothing at all to do in my opinion with a conflict between setting and story goals. I reject the whole notion that the story exists independent of setting, or that hiring mercenaries is somehow an inherently drama/story goal. Even if the character had the belief, “I will get others to do my dirty work for me”, it isn’t implied that player is free to not explore that and it just all works out. Even if I do some sort of medium complexity resolution in under two minutes with player tacit acceptance of risk, the NPCs will be NPCs with personalities and agendas of their own. This is NOT by my understanding in any fashion antagonistic of a narrative agenda, although the particular way you might conduct the interviews could be (ei, raise a narrative stake as a DM and then don't follow through with it).

 

[Hussar]

First, dude, chill. Of everyone here, I haven't attacked you. I've explicitly said I'm just asking, and not arguing.

Sorry, that came across wrong. My point was that everyone else had been jumping up and down and accusing me of bad play for doing exactly the same thing as you advocate.

I guess I just don't see the double standard you're describing. You're saying I see my fun as more important, but I see it as pretty much the other way around. However, you can't seem to be happy enough that your friends are having fun to just let them hurry through something they enjoy; it has to move on to something you like right now. Maybe it's me, but that doesn't line up with the "I don't put my fun ahead of theirs" statement you made. Again, I might be missing something, which is why I asked. You just seem to be explicitly saying the opposite. As always, play what you like

So, it's perfectly okay to you that your enjoyment trumps your friend's enjoyment, and that's more flexible - forcing your friends to sit through scenes they are not enjoying, but, apparently skipping scenes that people at the table hate is somehow different?

I'm sorry, not seeing much of a difference here. "I'll play what I want to play and screw everyone else at the table" is the extreme of what you're talking about. Same as, "I'll play what I want to play and everyone else should skip to what I want" is the extreme of my position.

I have a feeling that neither of us is taking that position though.

There is no double standard. The point is you can have a situation where two players have incompatible needs, and can't both be perfectly happy at the same time. What disappoints one will make the other happy, and what makes the other happy disappoints the first. The point is what we do about that is not an individual player's call to make. It's the GMs job to balance the needs and happiness of his players.

(bold mine) /snip

And that's where we differ. No, I do not believe that that's the GM's job. That is the table's job. It is certainly something I expect from all of my players. I am not a babysitter. I am not standing on top of the pyramid doling out enjoyment packets to the masses. I believe in a much, much more democratic table.

That's what this is all about, not conflicting needs. It's that some GM's need to assert their authority over the table to a degree I do not find enjoyable. Again, it's not a bad thing. Many groups play this way.

But, rolling this back to player creativity, I see this type of authoritative GMing as stifling creativity. The players know that the GM will take any creative idea and force a number of restrictions on it, forcing the table to spend considerable time resolving a creative idea. Players quickly learn not to bother because they aren't interested in wasting that much table time. The cost/benefit ratio is not high enough to justify the attempt.

If I know that the DM is going to spend an hour or more when I try to hire hirelings, I'm not going to try to hire hirelings. If I know that the DM is going to drop in stuff that we will need later then I will not try to bypass his breadcrumb trail because doing so will simply result in failure. Players will take the path of least resistance. They'll explore the desert, not because they are particularly engaged in the desert, but because they know that if they don't, the DM will simply punish them later by making tasks much more difficult/impossible and they'll just have to backtrack any way.

 

[Hussar]

(the PC’s would essentially need to have local reputations and high social standing to recruit a mercenary company, and the commander would more or less demand equal standing with the PC’s and the right to retain command of his people even then.)

How did we go from getting 6 commoner or warrior 1's to hiring a mercenary company? How did we go from recruiting a posse to hiring a company?

 

[JamesonCourage]

Sorry, that came across wrong. My point was that everyone else had been jumping up and down and accusing me of bad play for doing exactly the same thing as you advocate.

It's cool. I'm trying not to do that, while still trying to reply and express my opinion / observation. I'm not trying to jump on you for you expressing your opinion.

So, it's perfectly okay to you that your enjoyment trumps your friend's enjoyment, and that's more flexible - forcing your friends to sit through scenes they are not enjoying, but, apparently skipping scenes that people at the table hate is somehow different?

Well, yes. To me, it's different. In my take on things, my friends are willing to sit through something that isn't awesome for them so that I can play out something awesome to me, and I have enough empathy to speed through it depending on how un-awesome it is for them. And of course, I'd sit through stuff while they played out their awesome stuff.

In your take, it seems like my friends would skip my awesome, no matter how awesome I found it. And, I would do the same for them, skipping what they think is potentially awesome. And, I get that it's a "nuclear" option, but when 3-5 players (not counting the GM) can do it, I expect it to get used. And, I don't consider what you skipped "one scene", since there might be multiple scenes or possibilities that we don't play out because we don't explore this scene.

I get the play style difference, and that's fine, but I definitely see a difference, and see my style as more flexible.

I'm sorry, not seeing much of a difference here. "I'll play what I want to play and screw everyone else at the table" is the extreme of what you're talking about. Same as, "I'll play what I want to play and everyone else should skip to what I want" is the extreme of my position.

I have a feeling that neither of us is taking that position though.

Right, to a degree. I'll speed through mine, though, out of empathy for my friends. You feel the need to skip it (and the implications that come with that), even if it makes the rest of the session (or campaign?) less enjoyable for your friends. That's why I asked about the "not putting my fun ahead of them" thing. As always, play what you like