You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[innerdude]

I can totally agree with the gaming advice bit. This is about as far from Gygaxian D&D as you can get. Honestly, and I'm not trying to start anything resembling an edition war here, I think this is why the 4e DMG resonates with me. The advice like, "skip over the gate guards" makes perfect sense to me. But, looking at this thread, I can see why it annoyed the crap out of others.

Actually, Hussar, I understand your viewpoint much, much better having gone through the back-end of this thread. It's not "powergaming," in the sense that I'm used to from a couple of long time gaming associates, it's just a desire to only focus on "thematically relevant" material. In my new Savage Worlds group, my best friend from high school falls into this line of thinking, from my observation so far. He likes having a "good" mechanical character, but he's more interested in seeing his character "in play," both in terms of conflict resolution and theme.

It also makes COMPLETE sense now why you're a staunch defender of 4e's brand of "narrativist drift," with scene framing and encounter-based resource management. It's fairly different from my own preferred play style, but I get it.

Interesting.

That said, I also don't think [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] is entirely off base in his line of questioning--without a solid social contract in place, with mature players and a good GM, fighting over which scenes to "frame" can become a case of "appease the whiniest member of the group just to keep the peace." I don't think YOU are encouraging this type of play, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], but taken to a certain end-point this could DEFINITELY be the result for some groups, without some specific agreements about negotiating "fun" at the table.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Quick question for @Hussar : How would you have reacted if the DM had asked for knowledge checks of the wasteland area and then determined you guys knew of something? Would any of it have been interesting to you right there, or would you have preferred getting the information before being dropped there by Plane Shift?

 

[pemerton]

I do describe that as "heavy-handed GMing", however, but I definitely don't use the negative terms that I use for railroading (my RPG says "Heavy-handed GMing forces decisions").

You can be very heavy-handed (by my book's definition) without railroading the players. And, you'd probably need to, if you're going to attempt your "all drama / tension, all the time" play style.

I guess I don't self-consciously think of my GMing as heavy-handed, but it's certainly not light touch! When I describe a situation to my players as they are coming into it (be it geographic, or social, or combative, or whatever) they are expecting pressure. Sometimes they might be surprised about where the pressure comes from - for instance, in the Torog cleric negotiation the pressure ended up being sourced not in some external story element, but in the conflicting values of the PCs themselves, as the PCs ended up being bound by a promise that the feckless ones had intended insincerely and that they upright one (in whose name the promise had been given, and so whom insisted on it being kept) would never himself have given. But they never surprised that it's there.

JC, I know you don't especially care for indents but others may be following along too. The idea of "heavy-handed" or "decision-forcing" GMing is pretty inherent in my preferred approach. It's front-and-centre in Eero Tuovinen's blog on the standard narrativistic model:

One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . . by introducing complications. . .

[O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . . The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. . .

The GM . . . needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences.​

The idea of the GM deliberately applying pressure is also inherent in this Paul Czege quote which I think is a great description of my preferred approach (and I think it has a lot of application outside the sort of highbrow, avant-garde games that Czege himself is interested in):

Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. . .

[W]hen I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . .

I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. . . [T]he outcome of the scene is not preconceived.​

Compared to Czege's "firehose of adversity and situation" my game is somewhat more like a garden hose, but the basic technique still applies. For isntance, in the case of the Torog cleric negotiation, I didn't have any prior sense of the captured cleric as manipulative or not, but it came out in the course of the interrogation as a natural way to amp up the pressure on the players and lead them into the situation that eventuated, of being bound by a promise that none of the PCs wanted.

The biggest problem with these sorts of scene frames is if they become reutine, the players will just sit back in the train car and enjoy the ride until they get to the next stop.

I don't understand how you think this is going to happen. If the players just sit back, the "train car" won't go anywhere. There is no "next stop".

pemerton IMO continues to use a bunch of terms from narrative art to describe loose simulationist play.

I don't understand in what sense my play is simulationist. I'm following No Myth conventions on backstory (ie nothing is settled until it emerges in play). Much of the backstory is made up on the spot to interlink with things the players are having their PCs do, or are otherwise interested in (as per the exploration scenario described above). Consequences and complications are adjudicated on the basis of "going where the action is" and turning a [garden] hose of "adversity and situation" on the PCs (and thereby putting pressure on the players).

Matters of ingame causal logic are not driving scene framing; not driving complication framing; not driving consequence-application.

Also, evaluation and moral/thematic commentary is provided by the players and not the setting or system, as per this:

In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world, and even its shifts occur along defined, engine-driven parameters. The GM and players buy into this framework in order to play at all. . .

[A] character in Narrativist play is by definition a thematic time-bomb . . . when you-as-player get proactive about an emotional thematic issue, poof, you're out of Sim.​

In the example of the interrogation of the Torog cleric, one important point of the way I played the NPC was to force the players to get proactive about an emotinal thematic issue, namely, the giving and keeping of a promise.

Maybe you're using "simulation" and "narrativism" in some non-Forge sense, I don't know. But in the standard Forge terminology, my game is what a thematically light, mechanically vanilla narrativist game of D&D looks like. (Mechanically vanilla in so far as all the player flags stuff is informal. 4e does have certain mechanically significant features that support narrativist play by avoiding putting a range of traditional obstacles in the way.)

 

[pemerton]

That said, I also don't think N'raac is entirely off base in his line of questioning--without a solid social contract in place, with mature players and a good GM, fighting over which scenes to "frame" can become a case of "appease the whiniest member of the group just to keep the peace."

This is true, but a more GM-centred approach has its own risks too - boring or uninspiring play, GM power-tripping etc.

Isn't the solution to the problem you raise not to play with immature whiners?

 

[Jackinthegreen]

This is true, but a more GM-centred approach has its own risks too - boring or uninspiring play, GM power-tripping etc.

Isn't the solution to the problem you raise not to play with immature whiners?

Sometimes that's difficult to work with. Pretty much everyone has something that will set them off into a whiny state, so I suppose the trick would be to see whether the player is consistently going to be immature and whiny in the campaign. And then there's the issue of "the player has been strung along so booting them is kind of a douche move." I hope most DMs have a probationary period for the iffy people, or for everyone if it's something like a heavy roleplay/moral experience such as playing as evil, or Exalted Good, or with mature themes in general.

 

[pemerton]

over a long enough span of time, "sometimes" becomes always. Not every time, of course. But, it will happen.

Which means that the players have to treat every time as "this" time.

<snip>

So, play grinds to a crawl because we have to treat every situation as being potentially hostile.

<snip>

Even if I buy five horses no problem, I still have to play through every single time, because I have no idea when the "lame horse" complication is going to happen.

The "fail forward"/"conflict resolution" approach to action resolution is meant to help with this.

Instead of play grinding to a halt in the way you say, in order to avoid that one time which is always possible, the laming of your horse is confined to a complication narrated in response to a failed check which is itself tirggered at the metagame level (eg in the course of a skill challenge), and not by the mere thought on the GM's part that "Hey, your horse might be lame. Give us an animal handling check."

Now if you don't want laming as your complication, you can still check your new horse for lameness (or, in BW, you might have an instinct "Alway check the health of horses before buying them"). But that won't reduce the likelihood of suffering complications - it just means that the GM will narrate something other than lamenesss when you fail a check - and so there is no general incentive to cover every base, and therefore to grind play to a halt in the way you rightly express concern about.

There is still the possibility of too many checks - for instance, BW allows you to augment your Ride check with a prior Animal Husbandry check, which can reopen the problem you're worried about. BW's way of trying to reduce this is to give players a mechanical incentive to not always roll as big a dice pool as they could - because if you always roll the biggest possible dice pool your PC won't advance.

In 4e, the solution that was adopted (as I see it) is to opt for broad skills with consequently only limited scope for chaining augments that encourage a lot of fiddly anticipatory rolling. And feats, skill powers etc that augment your rolls are things the system encourages you to use now, in the crunch of resolution, rather than in advance in the fiddly way you're objecting to.

And in both systems you know that the GM is adjudicating failures and introducing complications in a "fail forward" style that means that, even if your horse is lamed, it's not game over. There will be other paths forward.

The players had no way of prediciting what the results of their actions would be, whether success or failure. There are almost comicly large and unpredictable consequences to success or failure. A failed ride check leads to a ravine appearing in the universe. A failed spot check led to the ground opening them up and swallowing them. So far as I can tell, you didn't let the players set the stakes. The players didn't express what would happen on success or failure, only their proposition. You ran this as a skill challenge, but 'on failure' neither you nor the players knew what would happen until you improvised it. Indeed, since the universe is morphic, 'on success' wouldn't have necessarily led to anything predictable either. So these desicions aren't really meaningful. It might be a fun ride on a roller coaster, but the players are on rails.

<snip>

another problem I have with the resolution, and that's that it's pretty much entirely luck. Player decisions aren't just meaningless because they don't know and can't control the stakes, but they are meaningless because creative decisions don't determine how quickly or well the challenge is overcome since they are locked into the "skill challenge" format that forces them to overcome a certain number of arbitrary tests.

The universe in [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s game (or in mine, for that mater) is not "morphic". But the description of it isn't known in advance by the participants in the game.

That to one side, it's not entirely luck, or even "pretty much" entirely luck. The details of task declaration on the part of the player shape the parameters for the GM's narration. They also settle the mechanical resources the player can bring to bear on the check (depending what is described, one skill or another may be rolled, with this or that modifier), and hence the likelihood of success or failure.

As to the stakes, in a skill challenge the overall stakes will have been set at the start of the challenge (in Manbearcat's example, they are "escape with the idol"), but the mechancial stakes that than govern the internal resolution dynamics are set by the system: N successes before 3 failures at the given level of difficulty. Hence the player confronted by the ravine knows what, mechanically, is required to succeed at the next check and hence to head towards success. The challenge is leveraging the fiction to generate the required check, and trading off mechanical advantage against fictional positioning - in the ravine case, that may be as simple as saying "I dismount and climb down the side of ravine, doing my best to keep out of sight from anyone at the top." Test Athletics and Stealth, but lose your horse.

Or perhaps the player decides to have the PC back up and try to jump the ravine - in which case test Nature and then test your horse's Athletics, probably a Hard test for the latter. But if you succeed you've kept your horse! (Perhaps if you fail, you and your horse clear the ravine but you drop the idol.)

(This combination of mechanically determined difficulty and pacing with GM reframing of the scene in response to checks is different from Intent and Task in Burning Wheel, which is used, in conjunction with Let it Ride, to turn task resolution into conflict resolution. It's a bit more like a BW Duel of Wits, and very much like a HeroWars/Quest extended contest.)

And contrary to your assertion, players' creative decisions have a huge impact on how things unfold. Especially when they start to iterate back on the stakes of the overall challenge. I linked upthread to an example of this: the dinner party at which the PCs had to dine with their nemesis while not upsetting their Baron host. At the start of the challenge their goal was to get through the evening without embarassing the Baron by triggering a fight with their nemesis; by the end of the challenge, their goal had become one of goading their nemesis into attacking them, so that he would be the one who embarassed the Baron by revealing his own perfidy.

It's not Gygaxian "skilled" play, of course. The players aren't making success mechanicallly easier via their cleverness (at least, not in general - on occasion they may do so). They're changing the content of the fiction via their cleverness, locking down some things (because checks are being made and hence the challenge coming to its conclusion) and opening up others (by creating new fictional positioning, and finding new ways to leverage it, and forcing the GM to engaged with it because the challenge isn't finished yet). That's pretty much the point of narrativist play.

 

[N'raac]

I don't think that's an adequate characterisation of what happened. Hussar didn't want a "hiring mercenaries" scene. He wanted a "vengeance on grell" scene.

He wanted to hire mercenaries to assist in obtaining vengeance on the grell. He has made the mercenary hiring a precondition of that vengeance scene. The question now becomes whether that scene is as simple as “we part with some coin and we now have the precise six hirelings we desired or whether complications consistent with the desire to hire mercenaries arise.

No. He doesn't want a centipede scene. He is not suggesting how that scene should resolve. He is suggesting that there should be no such scene. Likewise the mercenaries.

“Riding across the desert Fremen style” was specifically noted as the desired “cool scene” outcome. Summoning the centipede created the centipede scene. He wanted, however, a centipede scene that resolved with no complications, having the precise results he envisioned, with no deviations or complications

I've repeatedly indicated that this was not the problem.

How many times a statement is made does not change its basic accuracy. You have also said that the removal of the trappings on which the PC’s had built up their intra-paty role play destroyed the game. I don’t believe something whose removal destroys the game can reasonably be considered unimportant.

I am not projecting. I'm reporting. Hussar is not projecting. He's reporting.

OK, I said you project on every real or hypothetical scenario presented. Please tell me how either of you can report on a scenario that has never occurred.

How did he know? Because the desert was not City B, which is where the action was!

He believe that City B was where the action is, without setting foot in the desert. Unless he has read the entire scenario (the AP in this case, plus any modifications the GM may have made), he has no way of knowing where the action is. Neither he PC’s nor the players are omniscient.

Umm, no? What I am suggesting is that adding in a bunch of completely irrelavent material is not something I want.

As I see it, you also want the ability to decide what is irrelevant material unilaterally. Let’s break it down. You want to hire mercenaries. That, to me, makes the mercenaries relevant. So, is it acceptable for the GM to incorporate any of the following:

1. You selecting between a choice of possible hires? From your comments, I’d have to say no;
2. The mercenaries negotiating their terms of service (how long; how much you will pay them; their exposure to danger; provision of equipment; etc.);
3. In the Grell Battle, the mercenaries taking actions other than those you wish (potentially siding with the Grell, but seems unlikely; not risking their necks to protect the PC’s from attacks; hesitating or fleeing the battle)
4. After the Grell Battle, the mercenaries taking actions other than those you wish (demanding a share of the Grell’s treasure; negotiating for continued employment having “proved their value”; threatening the PC’s, now in their wounded state, to extort further pay; at the extreme, turning bandit to slay the PC’s and take their loot)

The sense I get is that you wanted to pull open a game book, pluck a price for services, receive precisely the warriors you wanted and have them unquestioningly take exactly the actions you envisions, no if’s and’s or but’s from that GM.

Umm, no? I want the centipede scene not to consist of an endless string of pointless skill checks that have no relevance to achieving our goal. All the rest of it, you added in later.

You also indicated you felt that this should allow you to avoid any encounter which could possibly have arisen otherwise in the desert. If the sole issue you would object to is a bunch of skill checks to determine whether you arrive at the other side of the desert sitting pretty on the centipede, bruised and dusty from numerous falls, tied to the centipede or tied and dragged behind it, with no impact on the fact that you arrive, all resources intact, when I agree that is a waste of time. And if your GM felt that was all that would be added by not cutting scene to the other side of the desert, I agree 100% with cutting to the other side of the desert.

And I keep telling you that it doesn't matter. Unless you favor your fun over someone at the table expressly stating that they are not enjoying what you are doing. At which time I can excuse myself from the table.

No question, you have been 100% forthright that it is your enjoyment that is the concern, and that you are the one who did not wish to spend time on the scene. My comments are directed at Pemerton, who seems quite insistent that all the players, not just you, were bored to tears, and the GM kept forcing these meaningless, boring scenes be played out. That puts the situation in a very different light than one player being bored, and the rest of the table being willing, or even wishing to, play out the scene.

In that case, I think your decision that you’re a poor fit for the table’s style and leaving is the mature approach (obviously, based on more than a single scene).

Frankly, I’d be less offended by the scenes lacking immediate or even long-relevance than by the scenes being boring. However relevant, I don’t game with the objective of being bored, and I expect you would agree. The difference is that you consider “relevant” essential to not being boring.

Perhaps. However, what difference does it make, even if I'm wrong. You keep ignoring the fact that we had a goal here. What's wrong with wanting to cut to the goal? Actually, scratch that question. I WANT TO CUT TO THE GOAL. Can I state that any clearer? Is there any room for misunderstanding there.

I know – you want a short game where you say “this is my goal” and we immediately cut to your goal. I disagree that this makes for a good game. I disagree that “there can never be anything between us and the endgame we want or it is a bad game”. And I believe that the social contract typically provides the GM some leeway to present a series of scenes, not necessarily in the exact order the player may desire.

I’m currently playing a Zeitgeist game [I will try to avoid any spoilers], and we are investigating a murder. There is a specific NPC whose name keeps coming up, and I think he has answers. I (the player, not just the character) want to find this guy and question him. I routinely mention the contacts I am asking to keep an ear to the ground, checking in on my sources, etc. and asking if there has been any sign of him. For several sessions, there has been no word. But I’m not sitting around doing nothing – other situations and other lines of investigation present themselves, and we’re dealing with them. At least one of which I have no current reason to believe is related, other than some geographic proximity. But I trust the GM to run an entertaining game, and that we will either eventually find this mystery NPC or that the situation will be resolved and he will be proven a red herring. It doesn’t have to be the next scene to make me happy. Apparently, it does need to be the next scene to make you happy.

And, even in a very tightly focused game such as the one you favour, I am not in a position to differentiate between “A BUNCH OF EXTRANEOUS STUFF” and “a bunch of relevant stuff whose relevance is not immediately clear to me”, even if I were 100% opposed to anything ever happening which is not 100% linear related to the immediate goal.

Yeah, and this would be the crux of the strawman. If I was doing this every scene? Sure, I'm a problem. But, when every single suggestion, every single player initiated action, leads to endless strings of play that I do not enjoy? Yeah, it's time for me to leave the table.

And somewhere between these two extremes lies reality. If the GM decides that, because Hussar gets shirty when we have NPC’s with personalities, we will just have cut-outs so he does not have to waste his precious time interacting with them, and we will skip over scenes he has no interest in, regardless of the interests of the rest of the table, that may signal that it’s time for one of us to leave the table.

And, again, recognition that your style differs from the table, and bowing out rather than trying to force a change, would be my definition of the mature gamer choice. Getting shirty because the GM does not acquiesce to your wishes to dictate how a scene plays out would not.

Yup. No problems whatsoever with this style of game. This would make me pretty happy. I thought we'd actually covered this some time back. But, yeah, far more episodic in nature.

That seems like a significant difference between your and Celebrim’s style in and of itself. It also seems like you may not have enjoyed the game Pemerton discusses, prior to the time shunt. That’s informative to me, so I appreciate the straightfoward answr. Sorry if I made you repeat yourself.

 

[N'raac]

Fun. Interaction with a "real" world. Makin contacts that you might use later.

Hussar is going to tell us “not for me”; “don’t care”; “don’t care”. So his playstyle differs. However, I doubt the GM decided that the hirelings would have personalities and the hiring should be played out in a vacuum. I suspect, rather, that this is the kind of thing other players at the table enjoyed, and GM projected that on Hussar, just as Hussar projects the “do it my way or get screwed over” attitude on every GM.

It does not escape me, however, that making those contacts should make it much easier to locate and recruit mercenaries in future. However, Hussar will never try to recruit again because he was not assumed to get those benefits from the outset.

Really, you seem to think the GM is out to get you.

An issue that seems to permeate the discussion, I agree.

The GMs you say that to seem to be saying that good things and bad things can happen, and you seem to be saying "then bad things will always happen." No, they won't. They will sometimes, though. But hey, that's a lot of fun for some groups to explore. Why put it in the worst possible light?

Often, the bad things ad more to the game then the good things. Death of a PC is pretty high up on the “bad things” chart in my books, and that is what moved the Grell from “just another encounter” to “target of Holy Revenge”.

In my "Running a Game" chapter of my RPG, I describe railroading as "when your players arrive at the same destination regardless of the choices they make."

Agreed. And this is the case whether the GM does so by crushing or facilitating the players’ creativity.

But, see, this last part? DON'T CARE. I don't want to. That's something that keeps getting left out of the discussion. I don't want to do this. And, before the strawmen start coming out, by "this" I mean this particular scene. I do not want to talk to these people. I would not interact with these NPC's in any way, if I didn't have to. Learning their life story is not part of anything. I simply do not care.

As expected, and that’s your choice. But we have already noted that you have options. “Screw this – those six are hired.” There is a basic disconnect in that you do not want this particular aspect of the world to have any depth. The only solution is to find a group that wants the same, right?

But you have also suggested that including those personalities was bad Gming. Here I disagree. If all the other players wanted the same cardboard mercenaries, then it is bad GMing for that group, and the GM may need to find a group whose style is a better fit. But if the group as a whole wants that depth and personality, and it’s just you who wants to skip past it, then including this is not bad GMing for the group, even if you are unhappy. In his case, you are the bad player, not in general but for that group. In exactly the same way that, if everyone but me is happy with vending machine mercenaries and I whine and moan about how the NPC’s should have personalities and we should interact with them, then I am the bad player for that group.

But, IME (YEMV), groups are rarely that homogenous. They include players with different tastes, and ensuring everyone gets their favourites on occasion means others must tolerate their “not so favourites” on occasion as well.

Fair enough. But, why are you forcing me into play that I don't want? Why are you adding complications when there are already things to do in the game? If I was just hiring camp guards and then bringing them along for an extended period? Ok, fine. There's all sorts of ways to add in the interactions. But, in this specific example, they are there for a specific reason. Why add in a bunch of extraneous stuff when it's not needed, and, if the players have their way, will never actually come up in play?

By the same token, what gives you the right to force the rest of the table into play they don’t want – which can, IMO, include NOT playing out scenes they find entertaining and enjoyable (and which, IMO again, MAKES THOSE SCENES RELEVANT to the players, even if not to the PC’s).

Forcing a player to skip scenes he wants to play out is not moral high ground over forcing a player to play out scenes he wants to skip. To be clear, forcing a player to play out scenes he wants to skip is not moral high ground over forcing a player to skip scenes he wants to play out either. But you classify the former as “bad GM’ing”. Despite all your protests of style differences and “live and let live” and “play what you like”, you keep coming back to “the GM who does not play my way is a bad GM”.

Yes, they will. Because, over a long enough span of time, "sometimes" becomes always. Not every time, of course. But, it will happen.

FLASHBACK:

by "this" I mean this particular scene.

Over a long enough span of time, “sometimes” becomes always when you are criticizing the GM’s actions, but not when you are supporting your “sometimes” the player should be allowed to skip a scene. Why? How is it that you will use any narrative power wisely, but others will not?

Which means that the players have to treat every time as "this" time. Because, if they don't, then the sometimes will come up and bite them on the ass.

And the GM must ensure that the game can survive, easily, the loss of each and every scene, since he has to treat every scene as the one a single player may decide to skip "this" time. Because, if he doesn't, then the sometimes will come up and bite them on the ass.

Again, I do not see how your judgment is automatically so superior to everyone else’s judgment

Say that a bad thing will happen sometimes. The first three times we hire hirelings, nothing bad happens. So, we don't check. We don't bother playing through a bunch of pointless interactions, because the last three times we did, it was pointless because there was nothing to find. Then the fourth time, we miss the doppleganger and the entire party dies in their sleep. Or the thief steals our stuff. Or the spy reports on us. Whatever. The point is, unless we treat EVERY situation as the "sometimes" situation, we're going to have problems.

Kind of like real life. Most people hire house painters, movers, etc. and nothing bad happens. So they don’t take every paranoid problem. And then they unpack at their new home and can’t find a watch, or jewelry, or some other possession that disappeared in transit.

So the realistic answer is likely “we don’t interview the hirelings in depth, and sometimes that blows up in our faces”. But the players don’t like it when things go wrong, so they insist that the PC’s take every paranoid precaution to avoid any such risk. This leaves the GM’s choices as “nothing ever goes wrong – you get exactly what you expect each and every single time” or “paranoid players have a 685 page “standard operating procedures manual” to apply on every occasion. “OK, Step 7623 of NPC Encounter Protocol – sprinkle him with Holy Water in case he is Undead. Nothing? OK, Step 7624, shackle him in silver in case he is a lycanthrope.”

So, play grinds to a crawl because we have to treat every situation as being potentially hostile. At some point, the players are simply going to stop bothering trying things like this because they get tired of playing pixelbitching games with the DM where they have to "find the complication".

Or players accept that sometimes things will go wrong, and plugging every possibility is neither practical nor enjoyable. Now, if the GM is adversarial and springs every “goes wrong” issue as “a HA-GOTCHA – you forgot Step 7437 – touch him with cold iron” moment, and things pretty much ALWAYS go wrong, that, to me, is bad GMing. But if the players insist on such paranoid precautions to eliminate the slightest possibility things may go wrong, because hey, once in 10 years of gaming, we were ambushed by a creature that is allergic to parmesan cheese, so now all of my characters sprinkle everyone they meet with parmesan cheese as Item 9735 on the Standard NPC Encounter Protocol, then the player is the problem, not the GM.

And if any failure of the PC’s to detect, by the most extreme and exhaustive tests, anything that could possibly go wrong spells death for the PC’s then we are back to bad GMing.

So, yes, this is why I feel that the GM is forcing people to do this. And nothing in this thread has convinced me of anything different. When GM's interpret "best" as hiring someone who will kill me in my sleep? Yeah, that's about as antagonistic as it gets.

Agreed. However, I suspect most players would not just accept “and you camp, and in the night your hireling slits all your throats. Make new characters” with “ok, you got us, nice one – pass me a character sheet”. I’d be looking for a new table. Maybe someone would enjoy that. Not me.

But if, on occasion, a hireling turns out to be less than 100% loyal, and that adds complexity without being unfairly lethal? I can accept that as just part of the game. Take reasonable precautions – maybe we don’t go to sleep with new hirelings on watch with no PC supervision. But we also don’t shackle the hirelings to a tree very night so they can’t do anything we would be unhappy with.

A bad GM can certainly make the game suck. So can bad players. So what? That doesn’t mean I assume every GM will be looking for any excuse to screw the PC’s and players over, nor do I assume every player will be a paranoid idiot. I’ll deal with the rare exceptions when they arise.

When I get a lame horse if I don't play through buying a horse? Even if I buy five horses no problem, I still have to play through every single time, because I have no idea when the "lame horse" complication is going to happen. When I am going to miss necessary resources if I don't mine every scene, despite having no actual connection to or interest in the scene? Because if I don't mine every scene, I'm going to have to come back later and do it anyway.

If every other horse is lame, I think that’s a problem. If there is a slight possibility, and I insist on playing like a paranoid lunatic to eliminate that slight possibility, I think the problem isn’t the GM any more. Sometimes, bad things will happen to my character. I trust the GM to make those into entertaining challenges, not death sentences for any PC who doesn’t make Howard Hughes look like a naïve trusting extrovert.

 

[N'raac]

A later thought. ((Maybe I'm thinking too much about this thread. ))

Can I agree that at least two of us might be – and you aren’t the one I’m most certain of?

Take the example of hiring the hirelings and getting a wanted criminal. Now, the DM adds in the complication of the wanted criminal. But, this complication is completely separate from the players' stated goals. In fact, this complication does nothing to further these goals whatsoever and can only serve to delay or distract from their goals. At best it's a wash and the players don't interact with it. At worst, significant table time is spent on a sidebar complication that is not relevant.

My advice to DM's is, don't do this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with adding in complications. But, do so with the goals of the players in mind.

Again, I come back to the dual possibilities that something not directly relevant can still add to the game, and that it may not be immediately obvious when something has relevance.

Compare the two desert city examples - the city is under siege and there are desert bandits. Now, in the city siege example, the DM has added a complication that is directly related to our goals. Obviously we cannot simply walk into a city under siege. Additionally, if the siege is successful, maybe our goals will be lost - thus adding a nice, possible, time pressure.

If there is some time pressure involved in the desired activity in the city, then any delay in the desert also places the PC goals at risk, does it not? That makes a “desert distraction” equally relevant if we accept that reasoning. “Dealing with these nomads will slow us down, so just Fireball them out of the way!” “But they are just trying to survive in this desert – what gives us the right to slaughter them for our own convenience? We should negotiate safe passage past their oasis.”

As an added bonus, the siege might actually be turned into a resource - the PC's could potentially join the siege and help break into the city in order to reach their goal. It's possible and presents the players with a broad range of choices for achieving their goals. Great.

Or the GM uses it as a roadblock. I don’t see either one as inherently superior. The use of the encounters by the GM can make them relevant or irrelevant, interesting or boring, etc.

Now take the desert nomads example with a prisoner. In order for this to become relevant to the players, they must first interact with the nomads, presumably defeating them in some manner

Why is the only possible reaction to the nomads fighting them, but other alternatives exist for dealing with the besieging force? Why can’t the encounter with the nomads be a peaceful negotiation to allowing access to “their” oasis to replenish our water supplies? Why is it impossible that the only resolution the GM will consider to the siege is defeating the enemy forces? You are choosing to set one above the other because you want to assert one is more relevant than the other, but it ain’t necessarily so.

I don't know about you, but, I find that incredibly frustrating as a player. Note, also, that the desert nomads example can go seriously badly. If the prisoner is killed, if the players choose not to interact with the nomads, if the players interact with the nomads for some time and then give up and go on - all of these invalidate any relevance the scenario has for the players.

And yet it is impossible that the siege results in the destruction of the city (or the death of the occupant you wanted to find, or the owner of the object you seek fleeing – I’m sure whatever your goal, it could plausibly become unattainable due to the siege)? The players can’t choose not to interact with he invaders, or interact for a while then give up, or just attack a clearly superior force and get wiped out? Blasted GM – he knew we wanted to get into City B to do whatever we wanted to do that was hugely important to me as a player but that I can’t even recall, so he put that siege there KNOWING we would tell the commander he’s just a no-account NPC and get out of our way, so he could pretend killing off the PC’s was justified.

I've been asked repeatedly how I know that the desert isn't relevant. It's not relevant because there is nothing prepared beforehand to make it relevant. All of the relevance is invested in the goal - the city. Why would I interact with the nomads? I have no particular reason for doing so. At best, again, it's a distraction and a delay.

So is the besieging force. The difference is that you assume you can easily go around the nomads, but not the besieging force.

 

[N'raac]

This is true, but a more GM-centred approach has its own risks too - boring or uninspiring play, GM power-tripping etc.p

Acceptance that a GM centred approach has risks does not make a player centred approach with equal risks superior.

Isn't the solution to the problem you raise not to play with immature whiners?

Sure – but this thread seems to indicate we don’t all agree on who those are. And:

Sometimes that's difficult to work with. Pretty much everyone has something that will set them off into a whiny state, so I suppose the trick would be to see whether the player is consistently going to be immature and whiny in the campaign. And then there's the issue of "the player has been strung along so booting them is kind of a douche move." I hope most DMs have a probationary period for the iffy people, or for everyone if it's something like a heavy roleplay/moral experience such as playing as evil, or Exalted Good, or with mature themes in general.

If a new player, in his first session, insists that his “creative tactic” should override the game, and follows up by stating that he has no interest in playing out the scenes set, then gets shirty when his desires are not implemented over the desires of the res of the group, should he be invited for a second session

The "fail forward"/"conflict resolution" approach to action resolution is meant to help with this.

While I don’t need the “special label”, I agree that he PLAYER’s reaction to CHARACTER adversity should not b universally negative. The PC is not thrilled with a lame horse. The player faces some form of challenge as a consequence which may make the game enjoyable. The PC would probably prefer all his goals achieved with limited or no danger, adversity, difficulty, delay or negative consequence. The player would likely find that game pretty dull.

A GM placing complications in the way is not, as a consequence, “the enemy” of the players. Assuming an adversary is one of the issues this thread seems to keep coming back to – treating complications as “punishing” the players is one example of this.

The universe in @Manbearcat's game (or in mine, for that mater) is not "morphic". But the description of it isn't known in advance by the participants in the game.

If my critical fail on a Ride puts a ravine in the way of my fellow PC’s, who made their checks, I’m seeing a morphic universe. Maybe my PC has KS: Geography and should have had some idea there was a ravine in that direction – if I make my check, will the ravine close up again? To me, the Ride check does not determine whether my horse was lame (it might cause it to become lame) or whether there is a ravine in the area. It determines how skilled my riding of my horse was.

And contrary to your assertion, players' creative decisions have a huge impact on how things unfold. Especially when they start to iterate back on the stakes of the overall challenge. I linked upthread to an example of this: the dinner party at which the PCs had to dine with their nemesis while not upsetting their Baron host. At the start of the challenge their goal was to get through the evening without embarassing the Baron by triggering a fight with their nemesis; by the end of the challenge, their goal had become one of goading their nemesis into attacking them, so that he would be the one who embarassed the Baron by revealing his own perfidy.

So what happens if a player instead says “I want the final confrontation with our nemesis – that is my one and only goal. I don’t want to play out the dinner party – skip over it”? Why do I “have to” play out dining with our nemesis?

I like the solution of converting this to an opportunity to bring down our nemesis much better than being so focused on a final duel that all other possibilities, and any possible delay or distraction, are dismissed as “irrelevant”.

Now, let’s take it one step further. We’re looking for that nemesis when we get the invite from the Baron. Over the protests of a player who does not want to take time off from activity against that Nemesis, we decide getting in good with the Baron is also a worthwhile goal, albeit one we were not currently focused on, so we go. And discover our nemesis in the foyer, twirling his moustache, on our arrival.

We did not know the dinner invitation was relevant. Is this “bad GMing”? If we decide not to attend, not realizing our nemesis is there, and the consequence is that our nemesis advances in the Baron’s favour, is that a complication arising from our decisions, or is it the GM punishing us for refusing to play out his dinner party? And don’t tell me “bad things” happen to those refusing an invitation from the Baron – that’s just railroading us into playing the scenario your way, you abusive GM, you! How dare you force us to interact with your NPC’s when we don’t want to?