Am I a cruel DM?

[fusangite]

I really like swrushing's ideas on how the story could have been improved.

But what if that variant on the story didn't please Noelani either? Based on swrushing's reasoning, her not being happy would still be 100% his fault.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

But it is impossible for them to misinterpret or react unreasonably to anything you do.

Not what i said, but thats getting common in your posts.

This was what I was saying. Sorry I phrased it poorly. This is where you and I completely disagree. The idea that it is impossible, under any circumstances whatsoever, for a player to reach an unreasonable unjustified conclusion about something you as the GM have done strikes me as bizarre in the extreme. What it says to me is that you believe that all players in all RPGs are reasonable and rational 100% of the time.

Which is, of course, not what i said, but thats fine. Its fits your pattern.

You seem to believe that your behaviour as GM, alone, disregarding all other factors in a player's life is in complete and sole control over whether your players are having fun during your game.

Ok, now this is getting silly. DIDn't i start by listing at least two situations where they left unhappy that weren't GM issues? geesh.

I don't know whether you have noticed this but the GM is having a dispute with only one person in his game: his fiancee. Everyone else we have heard from thinks he acted reasonably -- everyone else's account is congruent with his. But his fiancee has significantly different views not only about whether he acted reasonably in this session but about how he acted in all the previous sessions.

His initial post indicated the mood at the end of the session. "Overall, the tone at the end of the game was mostly melancholy, though a few of the players are, understandably, quite upset."

Thats not what i would paint as a good result. YMMV. His didn't.

But what if that variant on the story didn't please Noelani either? Based on swrushing's reasoning, her not being happy would still be 100% his fault.

Again, a misinterpretation.

But, hey, making an onoging series of "slightly off to the extreme side" reiterations of someone else's points is a pattern I recognize, and I think I know how to handle it.

if you don't see the merits in my points, thats cool. If you do, thats cool too. But i really doubt I can change your mind, but clearly others have been listening, so all is good.

Enjoy your games, both on and off the forums.

 

[fusangite]

Before I get to responding specifically to Hong, I have to begin by asking those people who feel games always must end on a high note and that suffering a severe setback in your quest is equivalent to it being ruined whether they think the last chapter of the The Two Towers would have been a bad thing for a GM to do. (If you've only seen the movie, don't answer this question -- the movie ends at a different point than the book.)

Each of these options is plausible, but they lead to different challenges for the DM to handle, and have vastly different consequences if the DM doesn't get things right. Since the choice of which path to follow is ultimately up to the DM, it's also their responsibility to make sure they can handle the potential fallout. It's simple risk management: if you don't think you can handle something, don't do it.

I think it's abundantly clear that the GM did not anticipate this "fallout." So the point you're trying to make here doesn't make any sense.

IME, players tend to retain a lot less information from one session to the next, than the DM does. The DM is immersed in this all the time, in planning each adventure, keeping track of NPCs, figuring out how various organisations react to events, and so on. The players turn up each week, kill monsters, angst about their misfortunes, and go home. If they're particularly committed players, they might also write fanfics about their characters' exploits, or search for new crunchy bits that will allow them to cause even more mayhem. However, that comes nowhere near the volume of information that the DM is going to have.

I'm not talking about remembering whether an NPC has a mole on his left cheek; I'm talking about recalling who people are that you have had multiple interactions with. Every player in this game remembered who the gnomes were. So why are you arguing that it was unreasonable for the GM to expect them to recall this? Clearly it was reasonable for him to expect this because they all did.

As for your movie-campaign comparison, you're now making a completely different argument than you were in the previous post and are accusing me of making the one you were. I suppose I could spend 15 minutes clipping and quoting here but as I've succeeded in getting you to change your position, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

And yes, as a general rule there should be a climax (read: big fight) at the end of each session (although like all general rules, deviating from it occasionally is fine -- just don't make a habit of it). It would appear that your sense of dramatic pacing needs work.

Yes. But you were arguing that the dungeon battle where they recovered the artifact was the climax of the campaign. We're not discussing pacing internal to episodes (or at least we weren't until you shifted your position again). You argued that it was without a doubt true that the battle they had with the possessors of the artifact was the climax of the campaign. I produced strong evidence to the contrary. You then argued that this wasn't what you were talking about at all.

That constitutes the NEXT plot arc. I guess it's a good thing you're not a storytelling DM.

Oh yeah -- my players will all confirm I never tell stories. Whereas your description of the last episode you ran seems o so story-oriented. The climax of LOTR is in Return of the King; there are climactic moments in the other two books but the campaign/story has the one actual climax.

Getting back to this particular scenario, everything about events up to this moment had pointed to the immediate storyline being finished. The party went into the dungeon, killed the bad guys, and got the artifact. In 99% of D&D games, that would have constituted a successful completion of an episode/storyline/adventure/whatever you want to call it. The logical next step would have been to start on getting the artifact repaired, and that would constitute another episode/storyline/adventure.

So, in your view Return of the King is a totally separate storyline from The Two Towers. The Two Towers should end on a high note because the reader deserves a payoff, right? Hong, I'm not going to belabour this argument any further because your shifting positions and terminology make you too much of a moving target. To produce an equivalent of the nonsense you just spewed in the above paragraph, let me offer some roughtly comparable phrasing.

"Of course they've been waiting too long; obviously an hour/week/month/whatever you want to call it is too long a time to wait." Episodes, storylines, campaigns and adventures are all actually different things. In order to establish what the hell you are talking about, you have to decide which thing you are referring to. One moment, the unit of time under discussion is 35 episodes; the next, it's 1; the next, it's 50. I don't know what to do here.

Was there any hint from the DM that things might not yet be complete, in terms of retrieving the artifact? No. Was there any hint from the DM that they shouldn't think of repairing the artifact yet? No. COULD the DM have provided such hints, if he'd thought to do so at the time? Yes.

Yes. It's so important to prevent players from being surprised. God they hate that. Some people actually come to games because they enjoy surprising and unexpected things happening. Now maybe that's not what your players are into but I'd hazard a guess that the majority of D&D players kind of like it when there are plot twists and surprises.

Therefore, can the DM complain if the players get pissed off at having to start all over again? No.

Right -- because when people lose the object of their quest, they "always" have to start over again. Hong, could you please name ONE story about a quest where people lose the object of the quest and are forced to "start all over again." I've now provided 5 different examples of the genre convention of people losing the object of their quest near the climax -- you have not provided one single counter-example.

Are you finished putting up those strawmen yet? Gawd, I hope not.

On that subject Hong, tell me: how many times have Ambrus or I suggested that the players are going to be "starting all over again"?

However, do continue attempting to justify a blatant anticlimax in narrative terms, if you wish. Next step: proving that black is white, and then getting yourself killed at a zebra crossing.

So, you feel that it is a wrong and peculiar thing in a narrative for the protagonist to suffer a major setback? What kinds of stories do you read?

I see absolutely no reason to believe that their reactions were anything other than what should have been expected.

You mean the reactions of the 3 players who agreed with the GM? Yes. That was quite a reasonable thing to anticipate.

 

[hong]

But it is impossible for them to misinterpret or react unreasonably to anything you do.

This post was brought to you by the letters W, T and F.

This was what I was saying. Sorry I phrased it poorly. This is where you and I completely disagree. The idea that it is impossible, under any circumstances whatsoever, for a player to reach an unreasonable unjustified conclusion about something you as the GM have done strikes me as bizarre in the extreme. What it says to me is that you believe that all players in all RPGs are reasonable and rational 100% of the time.

Welcome to Chip on the Shoulder Hour with Foosie!

Nobody ever said that it's impossible for players to be wrong or unreasonable. A DM who uses that as their starting assumption when things go wrong, however, is a DM with an overrated sense of self. In particular, a DM who continues to hold to that assumption despite all indications to the contrary is a DM who is clearly compensating for one too many beatings in the school playground as a child.

Has it occurred to you that what we are witnessing here is a relationship dispute sublimated into the game?

Has it occurred to you that you are reaching?

 

[Raven Crowking]

The Title of this Thread

What rot! Of course the DM's enjoyment of the game is relevant to whether people enjoyed it. The DM is not a standup comic. He's not a paid actor. He's a person trying to enjoy the game too. The fact that he has a different job in the game doesn't make his enjoyment of it any more or less important.

True. However, neither the title of the thread nor Ambrus' first post suggested that this was the question at hand.

Moreover, while they might have altered their position later, Ambrus' first post makes it clear that there was more than one player dissatisfied.


RC

 

[fusangite]

Obviously, a player can leave unhappy for any number of reasons. It could be they left because of a misunderstanding with another player. It could be they left unhappy because of an unfortunate emergency call. There are any number of reasons they could leave unhappy...

If a player leaves a game i run unhappy with ME, the GM, then i do conclude that I have made an error

Nobody ever said that it's impossible for players to be wrong or unreasonable.

Most people would only conclude that they had made an error if they considered their player's unhappiness with their conduct to be reasonable and rational.

So, apparently I'm putting words in people's mouths now. swrushing, hong, how was I to interpret the swrushing quote to which I was responding other than in the way that I did? swrushing gave two examples of a player leaving unhappy -- in neither example did the player blame the GM for his unhappiness. He then made an unqualified statement that if the player left unhappy with him, this unhappiness must have been caused by an error on his part.

swrushing, perhaps you would like to qualify the above statement to which I responded in my previous posts. The position you clearly articulated in your previous post was that if a player blamed you for how the game went, that blame was correctly applied. If you are now abandoning that position or feel that I have misinterpreted your language, I'm very pleased. And if so, I would like you to answer the following question:

How would you go about determining if a player was blaming you unreasonably or unjustifiably for their not enjoying the game?

His initial post indicated the mood at the end of the session. "Overall, the tone at the end of the game was mostly melancholy, though a few of the players are, understandably, quite upset."

Thats not what i would paint as a good result. YMMV. His didn't.

If you think an episode ending on a sombre note is the equivalent of a failed episode, that is really unfortunate. It must limit your ability to tell an emotionally compelling story. The Two Towers ends on a sombre note; but this sombre note is part of the larger structure of a great narrative that deepens one's commitment to the story and makes the climax more fulfilling. So the idea that one episode ending on a sombre note is equal to a narrative failure is really problematic if you're interested in story telling.

 

[fusangite]

True. However, neither the title of the thread nor Ambrus' first post suggested that this was the question at hand.

Yes. But if you yourself are not enjoying your own game, that also makes you a bad DM.

Moreover, while they might have altered their position later, Ambrus' first post makes it clear that there was more than one player dissatisfied.

Ambrus, in his first post, feared that his other players had the same opinion as the one he lived with. Turns out that fear wasn't founded.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

swrushing, perhaps you would like to qualify the above statement to which I responded in my previous posts.

In case i wasn't clear... i am done with responding to your repeated misrepresentations of others' positions. Misinterpreting to the extreme side others' positions is a classic trolling bait and i feel i have made myself clear enough to everyone who was really listening.

If you think an episode ending on a sombre note is the equivalent of a failed episode, that is really unfortunate. It must limit your ability to tell an emotionally compelling story. The Two Towers ends on a sombre note; but this sombre note is part of the larger structure of a great narrative that deepens one's commitment to the story and makes the climax more fulfilling. So the idea that one episode ending on a sombre note is equal to a narrative failure is really problematic if you're interested in story telling.

LOTR was originally one novel, split into three sections by thepublisher iirc.

Whats the difference between TT ending that way and a scenario ending that way?

First, when i finish LOTR: TT I pick up the next book or i turn the page and I proceed with the continuation. I do nto sit and stew in my own juices for a period of time. This is very different from ending a game session on such a note where the players wait until next week or whenever the next session begins.

Second, the dark end in LOTR was not handled as a failure BY ME, the reader, but merely a dark turn in the story. I never made the decisions to enter Shelob's lair. In the game in question, the session ended with them "in defeat" and that defeat painted as "by their own hands" so to speak. It did not end with "Oh crap, frodo is in a fix" but with "oh crap, we screwed up" at best or "oh crap, you hosed us" at worst. You, or at least I, do not want to end a session and let things fester on those terms.

Again, i think i described the benefits and possibilities of having a planned and well thought out reversal occur in mid or early session launching immediately into the dramatic follow ups well enough for anyone who was willing to consider it in my earlier post.

The Gm seemed unhappy or at least unsettled at having his session end so negatively as well.

 

[hong]

Before I get to responding specifically to Hong, I have to begin by asking those people who feel games always must end on a high note and that suffering a severe setback in your quest is equivalent to it being ruined whether they think the last chapter of the The Two Towers would have been a bad thing for a GM to do.

There is a parody thread on these forums pointing out the ways in which LotR would have been different if it was a D&D campaign. Hint 3: all good parody contains a kernel of truth.

I think it's abundantly clear that the GM did not anticipate this "fallout." So the point you're trying to make here doesn't make any sense.

Oh dear.

As for your movie-campaign comparison, you're now making a completely different argument than you were in the previous post and are accusing me of making the one you were. I suppose I could spend 15 minutes clipping and quoting here but as I've succeeded in getting you to change your position, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Yes, yes. "My evidence is my refusal to show my evidence"; they all get to that point eventually. I think you missed a step in the middle, though, viz: "I can't understand you, so you must be wrong". Oh, my mistake, you didn't.

Yes. But you were arguing that the dungeon battle where they recovered the artifact was the climax of the campaign.

I was? OH YES, I WAS. FOOSIE SAID IT, SO IT MUST BE TRUE.

You seem to have trouble understanding how an overarching storyline can be composed of multiple underlying plot arcs. Why is this?

We're not discussing pacing internal to episodes (or at least we weren't until you shifted your position again). You argued that it was without a doubt true that the battle they had with the possessors of the artifact was the climax of the campaign. I produced strong evidence to the contrary. You then argued that this wasn't what you were talking about at all.

No, Foosie. You produced strong evidence to knock down your strawman, as is your wont. This being the climax to that specific plot arc in no way invalidates the possibility of there being a subsequent plot arc, all contributing to an overall storyline. It's called an episodic campaign structure, and is something that fits seamlessly into the usual D&D scheme of things, so much so that most players expect it (or something like it) without even thinking about it. You know this, yes?

So, in your view Return of the King is a totally separate storyline from The Two Towers. The Two Towers should end on a high note because the reader deserves a payoff, right?

Does it often take you several months to finish reading The Two Towers?

Hong, I'm not going to belabour this argument any further because your shifting positions and terminology make you too much of a moving target. To produce an equivalent of the nonsense you just spewed in the above paragraph, let me offer some roughtly comparable phrasing.

"Of course they've been waiting too long; obviously an hour/week/month/whatever you want to call it is too long a time to wait." Episodes, storylines, campaigns and adventures are all actually different things. In order to establish what the hell you are talking about, you have to decide which thing you are referring to. One moment, the unit of time under discussion is 35 episodes; the next, it's 1; the next, it's 50. I don't know what to do here.

Your predilection for overcomplicating matters by turning simple English words into jargon is your problem, not mine. However, I'll use small words because I'm JUST THAT NICE.

Campaign is long. Long campaign with story is like work. Having story is fun, but still work. Work is good, if succeed at the end. Succeeded at the end, but DM then take success away. No good.

It really is that simple. The players felt they had finally achieved the objective of several previous sessions (up to 35) of adventuring, only to have it snatched away from them after they'd put in all that effort.

INHERENTLY, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH TAKING THE MACGUFFIN AWAY. HOWEVER, it's not something a DM should do without thinking through all the possible consequences, and also structuring the flow of events so that players don't feel discouraged if/when it happens. A DM who doesn't do their homework is a careless DM, as I might have said before.

Perhaps you'd like to turn that into a strawman as well, assuming there's that much straw in Toronto.

Yes. It's so important to prevent players from being surprised. God they hate that. Some people actually come to games because they enjoy surprising and unexpected things happening. Now maybe that's not what your players are into but I'd hazard a guess that the majority of D&D players kind of like it when there are plot twists and surprises.

You seem to have trouble distinguishing between a surprise that grabs people's attention and makes them more interested in continuing the game, and one that simply makes them annoyed. This is despite swrushing, among others, explaining the difference to you in very clear terms, along with ways of ensuring a positive outcome rather than a negative one. Why is this?

Right -- because when people lose the object of their quest, they "always" have to start over again. Hong, could you please name ONE story about a quest where people lose the object of the quest and are forced to "start all over again." I've now provided 5 different examples of the genre convention of people losing the object of their quest near the climax -- you have not provided one single counter-example.

You keep saying "near the climax". I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

On that subject Hong, tell me: how many times have Ambrus or I suggested that the players are going to be "starting all over again"?

So why do you think they were feeling down? Flat beer?

So, you feel that it is a wrong and peculiar thing in a narrative for the protagonist to suffer a major setback?

Which part of

NPCs can and will betray the party in any campaign.

and

That doesn't mean it's something that happens without making damn sure you know what you're doing.

did we fail to understand? Furthermore, which part of

If you mean that I'm suggesting the DM must always follow genre, then of course not.

and

However, it does put an onus on the DM to plan ahead if he's doing things differently, because unless clear information is given to the contrary, then the players will be expecting something other than what actually transpires.

did we also fail to understand? (That was referring to staging climaxes at the end of a session, but the general point still holds.)

What kinds of stories do you read?

Good ones. More to the point, what kinds of stories do you tell?

You mean the reactions of the 3 players who agreed with the GM? Yes. That was quite a reasonable thing to anticipate.

Which part of

Overall, the tone at the end of the game was mostly melancholy

and

It really sucks,

did we fail to understand? Or am I to suppose you have now decided that Ambrus really decided to come here to complain about a great ending to the session, and how all his players bar one liked it? Looks like it, seeing how you've already started banging on the "Ambrus has issues with his fiance" drum.

Yes, most of the players are willing to give the DM a break. Bully for them. That speaks volumes for their reasonableness (and Ambrus's; if he really was a crap DM, no doubt they'd be less generous), but it doesn't change the fact that things could have been handled much better.

 

[hong]

How would you go about determining if a player was blaming you unreasonably or unjustifiably for their not enjoying the game?

By looking at the reactions of the other people around the table.

By reexamining what emotional kicks (to use Robin Laws' terminology) that player likes (or says they like), and whether I'm providing them.

By talking to them, between sessions. Very often, just giving someone the chance to express their concerns is enough to take the heat out of the immediate situation.

By going over past events in the time we've gamed together, how much they've complained before, and the outcomes in each instance.

By looking at whether that person tends to be a stubborn, argumentative type in the first place. Some people are naturally more high-maintenance than others, although they may be a stellar player in most other respects.