Am I a cruel DM?

[fusangite]

if I ended a session with players in the mood and even one player who had been gaming with me for a long time, who i knew well, leaving with that much ill feelings about not only my game but specifically me running it... I would feel i had done something wrong.

I'm glad I asked the question I asked. It has allowed us to cut through a lot of technical stuff that I correctly assumed was masking the real issue.

Am I oversimplifying then if I frame your position as follows: If any player leaves the game unhappy, it can automatically be concluded that the GM has made an error and is solely responsible for how this person feels?

If so, I don't think we can go anywhere from here. Your basic assumptions about human relations are so completely alien to me (and I would hope most ENWorlders) that I don't think we have anything left to discuss.

 

[FireLance]

I'm glad I asked the question I asked. It has allowed us to cut through a lot of technical stuff that I correctly assumed was masking the real issue.

Am I oversimplifying then if I frame your position as follows: If any player leaves the game unhappy, it can automatically be concluded that the GM has made an error and is solely responsible for how this person feels?

If so, I don't think we can go anywhere from here. Your basic assumptions about human relations are so completely alien to me (and I would hope most ENWorlders) that I don't think we have anything left to discuss.

Well, this is one ENWorlder that understands where he is coming from.

My basic philosophy of DMing is that the game has to be fun. Of course, fun is subjective, so I tend to play to the common ground as far as possible. Fortunately, I have never had to DM for a group of players whose tastes are no diverse that there is no common ground. I would probably have to split the group if that ever occured to me.

The distinction between "fun" and "not fun" can be very fine. What one player finds to be an interesting and challenging plot twist, another player may see as a deliberate attempt by the DM to snatch away a hard-fought victory. Whether or not it was planned or spur-of-the moment, intended or inadvertent, is beside the point - the fact is that the session ends on a sour note.

That could be why my preferred method of pacing is to end my sessions on a high note and leave major plot twists to the next session.

 

[NPC]

I'm with FireLance on this one.

You can't please all the players all the time, but you sure can try as hard as you can to reach that goal!

If a player of mine was mad, actually mad, at the end of a session, or frustrated over the course of a campaign, I'd feel like I'd bear some of the responsibility for that.

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

 

[swrushing]

Am I oversimplifying then if I frame your position as follows: If any player leaves the game unhappy, it can automatically be concluded that the GM has made an error and is solely responsible for how this person feels?

you seem to have a real bent on putting easily refutable positions into others' mouths, or perhaps fingers.

No.

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.

My position...

If a player leaves a game i run unhappy with ME, the GM, then i do conclude that I have made an error and my first and immediate focus is on figuring out two things.

1. how best to proceed with that player. Damage control.
2. What i could have done better. What can i do to avoid repeating my mistake.

Now, its entirely possible that, if this is a new player, that my error was in player selection. perhaps i allowed a player into my game who was ill matched for my game. This would obviously not be the case for someone with whom i had been gaming for a year.

But, again, the first thing i look at critically is ME, my performance, my choices, my role so as to see how I can do better next time. Only once i have figured out my failings do i then look critically at others.

I have found this approach improves my results immensly. heck it should produce great results if only for one reason, problems i identiofy in my own actions I can try and correct directly, whereas getting others to correct their problems is a much bigger deal.

See, this goes back to me being the info source for everything.

if all my players miss something and make what would be percieved as a bonehead move (as many seem to indicate they think happened here) I don't start off with "how stupid they were" but instead start off with "what miscommunication did I do to lead my gang of very smart players to all jump to the same outlandishly wrong judgement?"

As i have stated elsewhere, its hard to get all my players to agree on wehat are in fact good decisions, so if they all agree on a bad one, then something somewhere got communicated wrong. Since i am the voice for everything they can know, that communication lack comes back and barfs up its lunch in my lap, not theirs.

hope that clears it up for you.
hope its not so alien to you.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Wow. Big Thread...

It seems that this thread has become quite popular, and like all worthy topics, has polarized people.

So why not add one more opinion to the general cacophony?

Based on the bits of this thread that I have read, I have come to this conclusion regarding your game, Ambrus.

You are not a cruel DM. You are meerly a DM that encountered a game conflict that happens from time to time to many DM's. Do you roleplay NPC's in a fashion that will maintain the integrity of the game, keeping them inteligent and believable? Or do you roleplay them in a fashion that keeps the game entertaining for the players? If you err towards the first one too often, your players will get frustrated / angry. If you err towards the other, the game becomes a farce.

In this instance, you simply musjudged your players reactions.

However, if you drop a glass on a concrete floor, its still broken, even if you did not mean to drop it. So it appears that regardless of your intentions, you still have a mess to clean up.

And with this many people chiming in on the subject, I think that sheer volume of advice may do more harm then good.

So instead of also adding advice on how to clean up the mess, I leave that to you to figure out. Because,we all know how much better it is to have a random 3rd party just voice an opinion instead of offering constructive advice. Besides, you asked if you were a cruel DM, not how to clean up a mess.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[hong]

Why would the DM need to tell them this again? As has already been clearly established, the past relationship with the gnomes has been rocky to the point of the characters killing some of the gnomes. Why would it be surprising that some members of a group that you have violently attacked in the recent past might not like you?

Because it clearly wasn't appropriate in the context of immediate past events in that game. For anyone who doesn't think of D&D only in narrow terms of world simulation (and that's the vast majority of people), that's a real and valid concern. As such, it's something the DM should take into account, unless they have players with much more focused tastes, or they actually derive pleasure from cleaning up messes at regular intervals.

You seem not to realise that verisimilitude can be achieved in lots and lots of ways. It's entirely believable that the gnomes might betray the party. So effin' what?

- It's also entirely believable that the gnomes might NOT have betrayed the party (maybe the leadership figured that the PCs were so badass it was better to suck up to them, rather than risking their wrath).

- It's also entirely believable that the gnomes might have refused to deal with them (the gnomes don't want the PCs as an enemy, but past bad blood means they won't help them either).

- It's also entirely believable that the gnomes might have attacked them on sight ("revenge for our dead!")

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.

Hong, you're lapsing back into this belief in telepathic Diplomacy checks that I think I've pretty conclusively disproved. Just to reiterate,

DIPLOMACY CHECKS CAN ONLY AFFECT PEOPLE WHO ARE THERE!!!!!!!

Your ability to use formatting tags is interesting, but does not help your argument.

Hint 2: nobody ever said anything about the Diplomacy check affecting people who weren't there. You can continue bashing down this strawman if you like, but it died three pages ago.

Swrushing has already pointed out one way to handle it, which would have produced far better end results than what actually transpired, and not required anything in the way of Diplomacy-at-a-distance. Clearly, swrushing is a good DM.

I guess you run very very different games than I do. But for me, remembering that you have had a violent confrontation with a particular group of NPCs in the past is a pretty basic requirement of competent RPG play where I come from. If a party cannot be expected to recall who the NPCs are from session to session, what is the point of running a campaign?

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.

When we were doing the RttToH, in one session we got a password that would enable us to get past a locked door. Two sessions later (a month in real time), we got to that locked door, and none of us could remember we'd even found the password, let alone what it was: the DM had to remind us. And no, we're hardly lazy players.

Of the many completely ridiculous things you have said in this post, I think this ranks first.

Oh dear.

1) Movie is short.

2) Campaign is long.

3) "Movie" == "campaign" works not.

Is it so hard to comprehend that the different storytelling frameworks involved mean that treating an entire campaign as equivalent to one, abbreviated storyline, is a nonstarter? We're not talking about a one-shot or even a short campaign. We're talking about a plot arc that's run for 35 sessions already.

If you are making a direct equivalency between the amount of time it takes to resolve things in movies and the amount of time it takes to resolve things in RPG play, there should be two complete stories (climax and all) per episode.

Try one, because the inherently messy nature of roleplaying means that you tend to get a lot less done in a session than you would in an equivalent amount of time in a movie or TV episode. 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.

So all that stuff about the quest specifically mandating that the characters repair the artifact and return it to the gods has nothing to do with a story arc?

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

Or is it that you believe that a genre convention of all D&D adventures requires that the climax be a big fight in a dungeon regardless of what the GM thinks?

If you mean that I'm suggesting the DM must always follow genre, then of course not. 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. Failing to meet expectations is a great way to cause a trainwreck, and not doing his homework is a sign of a careless DM.

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.

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.

WOULD such hints, delivered properly, have been detrimental to believability? No.

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

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

By any standards other than the completely absurd genre convention you may be attempting to introduce, it is abundantly clear that the climax of the game has not yet happened.

The climax of THAT PARTICULAR ADVENTURE, namely going into the dungeon, killing the bad guys, and finding the artifact, had occurred. Even if you don't believe me, the evidence of the players' reactions, who were the immediate audience for this narrative, is more than sufficient to demonstrate this. 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.

Hong, for people who think that remembering what happened last week is a requirement of being an effective player, this is not "out of the blue."

As you said yourself, they remembered quite well what happened last week. You can continue arguing with yourself if you wish; however,

1) given no indication (direct or indirect) that the gnomes might betray them (and don't start on that "Diplomacy doesn't work on the others" whine again, because it's absolutely irrelevant);

2) given no indication that their expectations that the current plot arc was over might be wrong;

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

 

[Darkness]

... my preferred method of pacing is to end my sessions on a high note and leave major plot twists to the next session.

I like cliffhangers and shocking revelations at the end of a session, and trying to clean up the resulting mess in the next session. Of course, many of my campaigns are horror and even those that aren't tend to be dark.

 

[Berandor]

In my experience, when people have been newly convinced of something, it does not occur to them that others like them will not be easily convinced thereof. You are expecting that the gnomes who have just been bamboozled by the characters are going to immediately think through how the characters' plan could go wrong.

When you have been very successfully charmed by someone, you do not think "Oh -- I've just been convinced of this because this person is so damned charming," you think "Those arguments are so sensible and convincing." I therefore see no way, aside from the NPCs actually being conscious of how the Diplomacy skill mechanic works, for the gnomes not to anticipate these highly persuasive arguments wouldn't be equally effective on the other gnomes.

I just wanted to reiterate that because I think you are right, but applied to situation still wrong.

Yes, people tend to think very highy of arguments that convinced them of a new opinion. Yes, people newly conviced might have unreasonable expectations of these arguments.

However, people working in a hierarchical organization also keep said hierarchy in mind. In my job, I have heard more than one very sensible suggestion by a customer, so much so that I felt his suggestion was logical and should be okayed. Still, knowing that I had no power to accept the suggestion, I have always said, "That sounds reasonable to me, Sir, but I'll have to speak with my superior first."
Or, the other way round, "Yes, Boss, I think that's a good idea, but I'll have to run it past the client first."

So, the gnomes should have said, "Guys, I think we should try our best to help you. We could transport the artifact for you. But I can't promise anything before I've talked to the Head Gnome. I'm sure he'll agree, though."

As to why the gnomes didn't say something like this, see other posts, especially swrushing.

 

[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.

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

If a player leaves a game i run unhappy with ME, the GM, then i do conclude that I have made an error and my first and immediate focus is on figuring out two things.

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.

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. It's as though you believe that you can suspend normal human psychology for the duration of the games you run. You can only control (and this to a more limited extent than you think) what goes into a player's ears; you cannot control what happens inside their heads.

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.

Now, look at what the first thing is that she objected to in her post: it wasn't how the gnomes behaved; it was the fact that he identified her as his girlfriend instead of his fiancee. Has it occurred to you that what we are witnessing here is a relationship dispute sublimated into the game?

If a couple is having a fight and it spills over into the game, it cannot be automatically inferred that the GM has failed as a GM; he may have failed as a fiance but that's a separate issue.

 

[fusangite]

However, people working in a hierarchical organization also keep said hierarchy in mind.

How do you infer the gnomes have a hierarchical organization? All we know is that the gnomes with whom the characters interacted did not have sole decision-making power. It may be that the gnomes were non-hierarchical collective that democratically over-ruled these individuals.