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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6838872" data-attributes="member: 2656">Player and/or referee frustration can be a big problem if it builds up over time without being communicated or addressed successfully. Players can feel that everything they try fails, even when they change things up and try and be careful. If anything it's worse when a referee is frustrated, as it is highly likely to bleed into the game and result in more negative judgements against the players, which is highly unlikely to be appreciated.So, if you feel the frustration building up in you, it may be better to mention it *diplomatically* outside the game, before it blows up inside the game . Just mention you are getting increasingly frustrated with the game, give some particulars, and ask for some OOC advice on how to reduce the frustration factor. While there's the risk that you will discover that your expectations are effectively incompatible with the other participants, it's better to discover this as soon as possible and amend things or find a more compatible game.Referees need to run the game for the players they have, not some ideal player concept. If the referee doesn't sufficiently enjoy the players interaction with the current game, either lower your standards, or change to a game that's a better fit for your players, or get new players. Players need to know the referee's expectations, which is much more difficult than it needs to be if the referee doesn't tell them. Starving the players of information is an excellent way to build up player frustration. This is a subjective issue, but it's a problem if the players think they aren't getting enough information even if the referee disagrees with them, maybe especially if the referee disagrees with them. Players who aren't getting enough information probably play reactively and try and gather enough information that they can risk being more proactive. I have seen many, many games where the players get too little information, whereas there almost isn't such a thing as too much information (which is a completely different issue to being spoonfed). Things are never as clear to the players as they are to the referee in a conventional game, if you want the players to pick up on particular topics you need multiple references, both subtle and direct. Even so, if the players aren't hooked by a topic they may not follow it up. From one perspective it may seen logical for the PCs to suffer because the players didn't follow up on a topic the referee values, but from another it's an abuse of authority to punish the players for their choices and condition them to slavishly follow the referee's lines of interest. Always remember the players can't see the whole picture, but they will notice a pattern of being treated unfairly.</blockquote>

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