Chumming the dungeon

[darjr]

Celebrim, I have a couple of questions.

Have you ever done anything like this?

If so did it ever turn out good?

Have you never had a moment when a player said some awesome thing that would be great in the game?

 

[Pbartender]

The recalcitrant stance I'm taking in this thread is with respect to the OP's and others in the thread apparant desire to label this as some sort of artful DMing style that should be emulated and encouraged in others. I think it should be on a relatively high shelf and carefully labelled, "Use with caution.", and not at all part of the DM's regular tool set.

This is something we don't really disagree on.

In fact, I'd posit that most DMing tricks like this should be up on that shelf. As I said earlier, using these sorts of tricks poorly (and this is the sort of trick that requires a good deal of skill on the DM's part to pull off) or too often can do more harm than good. The trick becomes predictable and obvious, and loses all of its usefulness.

I'd consider the original assumption -- that you use the players own ideas to screw them over -- distasteful, underhanded and just plain mean. It's on par with the DMs who purposefully load all their adventures with undead, constructs and elementals just to nerf the player who tricked out his rogue for sneak attacking.

 

[Umbran]

Let me tell you what's really going on here.

How about you let me tell you what's really going on here: rudeness.

You've stepped beyond feeling strongly about the topic, and have stepped into berating other posters. Please take it down a couple notches.

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim, I have a couple of questions.

Have you ever done anything like this?

No, in my recollection, I've never done it. That's not because I'm a perfect DM by any stretch of the imagination. It's because the first X times I encountered this technique was as a PC and it blew chunks, and on the general rule that I should always strive to be the DM I would like to have I never touched the idea. I admit to being tempted from time to time. I understand the temptation to do it, but I generally resist it by saying to myself, "That would make a pretty cool twist. I'll have to remember to use that twist in the future in a future adventure or campaign. However, I've got a cool twist now, so lets concentrate on doing what I can to make this idea work."

One other thing I've learned over the years is that when you do screw up as a DM, it helps to admit it and work out with the players how they would like to fix the screw up. So I'm not even sure that my recommendation to use this as a kludge fix in rare cases is good advice. My gut says that it might be worth the risk, but I would even advise caution even in that case.

Have you never had a moment when a player said some awesome thing that would be great in the game?

Sure. It happens. But equally often, if you stick with your plans and you have decent plans, you are going to get serendipitous synergies as well. That running gag that the player is making about buying various NPC a fish is going unexpectedly turn really funny when the player asks an NPC what sort of gift that another NPC would appreciate, and you can deadpan the answer, "Well, she has a fondness for fish." (Minor example from my most recent session.) In the same way that you get players unexpectedly off on red herrings and off the path, you are going to get players unexpectedly finding paths and unexpectedly reinforcing your themes and narratives. And that's great, and as DM would trade those experiences for anything. About the only thing better than that vicariously experiencing the player's wonder at something you created. That's like internal high-five self moments. You never are going to get there if you don't trust yourself some.

One of the biggest problems I have as a DM is playing scared and not trusting myself. One of the most important DM skills is maintaining your composure and your faith in the story and yourself to get through any problems. It comes with experience. It comes with doing it every week or every other week for years. I really have to try hard to avoid the temptation to explain myself to the players when they look confused, when the game is momentarily stuck, or when something inexplicable is going on you get this urge to lift the curtain for a while and show them the clockwork and say, "See, it really does all make sense." Because yeah, you want the player to think well of you. But there is always a better way in my experience. You got to be able to push through the fear, and if you do, then not only do you encourage yourself to trust yourself, but you start building that trust between you and the players where they know that even though things are wierd right now, its all going work out in the end if they just stay in character and keep struggling.

Just for a second, remove the assumption that you can hide your 'chumming' from the players and get away with it. Players of RPGs in my experience are very clever people, and all the assumptions about fudging behind the screen seem to assume you can just get away with it (with an adult audience). But really, you aren't going to hide this for long, especially if you think you are being really clever by doing so. You may think you are getting away with fudging dice, or railroading, or nerfing challenges, or chumming, but most of the time the player has just agreed to along with the illusionism for the same reasons that alot of players make the unspoken agreement with the DM to always bite the hook. But think for a moment what you are communicating when you 'chum' like this, both to yourself and to the players, and I think you'll see why I think nothing really good can come of it being done with any regularity.

 

[Kingreaper]

Celebrim: To what extent do you plan EVERYTHING in your campaign world?

Do you really have every NPCs motives planned out, in detail, along with their tastes, their favourite colour, their personal code of honour, the names of all their relatives, etc. BEFORE you introduce them?

Do you have the complete contents of every room detailed (ie. you always know if there's a pen, a paperclip, or a stapler, in any given room in a modern setting)?

Because you seem to expect others to do so, with your dismissive attitude towards winging things. But, see, that takes a lot of preparation. And for many GMs, there's no fun to be had in that extra preparation.

Whereas, many GMs can deadpan "he has a fondness for fish" based on the fact that the person started buying fish, and, well, someone's going to have a fondness for fish surely?

 

[darjr]

One thing. This isn't to cover up a screwup. It's to take that one thing you heard and use it. I think this is an essential difference.

In fact, if you took that twist mentioned and used it in another adventure with the same players then you have done it.

Play the adventure exactly as written and use the feared or hopeful utterances of your players for future as yet unplanned for things, it's done.

Would that be a cover-up for a screw-up? I don't think so.

The fish event, did you have the NPC already written as a connoisseur of fish? If not then you've done it, right there.

If you had it prewritten then that is cool, but imagine if you had not. Imagine if you had serendipitously scribbled down in your notes 'likes fish' upon first hearing the running joke by the players. Imagine that you then said the same thing in answer to the PC's queries? Would that have broken the trust? Are you saying that it would have been a bad thing? Would it have broken the game?

I understand the issues with the railroad. This isn't that. It's a tool that could be used to force users on the track, but in and of itself it isn't railroading. I think it could be used to do exactly the opposite.

Don't get me wrong. I'm absolutely not dismissing your DM style. Not one bit. What I'm failing to see eye to eye with is the sense that you seem to say that others only use such a thing to paper over some mistake or that it is somehow, even used lightly or just once, a break of the trust between DM and players.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Rob Heinsoo - Chumming the Dungeon

How often do you get to do this. How often do GM's zing off in the direction mentioned by the players during the game.

I intentionally do this ever since I ran my Supers:1900 game back in Austin: it was a superheroic game set in the world of Space: 1889, with a liberal dose of other influences of my own choosing.

And my decision to have the PCs be part of an organization that had an "in-house newsletter" that I printed up and posted after every session, recounting previous events and whatever dominoes got toppled as a result of PCs actions (or inactions), along with other current events in the world spawned so much table talk that I had a never-ending source of good ideas that I mined more than once.

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim: To what extent do you plan EVERYTHING in your campaign world?

Say, 60-70% of the time I'm either on the expected track, on a contingency plan, or at least on the map where I've some sort of plan. The rest of the time I'm winging it.

Do you really have every NPCs motives planned out, in detail...

The major ones, yes. If you know nothing else about an NPC, at least know a name and their motive. Stat blocks are far less important, because you can wing a stat block easier than you can a personality and a plan.

along with their tastes, their favourite colour, their personal code of honour, the names of all their relatives, etc. BEFORE you introduce them?

No, I don't need any of those things. But if you are speaking of how I knew that an NPC liked fish, it's because I knew that she had a ... pet.. yes, pet is probably the best word here named 'Fishbandit'.

Do you have the complete contents of every room detailed (ie. you always know if there's a pen, a paperclip, or a stapler, in any given room in a modern setting)?

No, you don't need to go that far. I would recommend for 'dungeon' environments (which might include haunted house in a modern setting) having a short list of things found in the event of a search check, even if those things are trivial. You can condense it into a resuable dungeon wide table and get alot of mileage out of that.

Because you seem to expect others to do so, with your dismissive attitude towards winging things. But, see, that takes a lot of preparation. And for many GMs, there's no fun to be had in that extra preparation.

And for many players, there isn't alot of fun to be had unless the DM has made at least some preparation. I'm sure there are DMs out there that could run a game as well as I could or even better with no more notes that I have for my starting outline. But in estimation, they are few and far between.

Whereas, many GMs can deadpan "he has a fondness for fish" based on the fact that the person started buying fish, and, well, someone's going to have a fondness for fish surely?

Yeah, sure, but they don't necessarily make that choice have any particular meaning.

 

[Celebrim]

In fact, if you took that twist mentioned and used it in another adventure with the same players then you have done it.

I don't know why you keep insisting I've done it. I've sadly never been in a position where I stayed in one area long enough to run two campaigns for the same group. One of the reasons I've never gone much beyond 12th level or so in any edition is I'm not even around long enough usually to bring a campaign to a complete close. I've moved around maybe 11 or 12 times in 36 years.

The fish event, did you have the NPC already written as a connoisseur of fish? If not then you've done it, right there.

With the name of an NPC being 'Fishbandit', it really wasn't much of a stretch.

Would that have broken the trust? Are you saying that it would have been a bad thing? Would it have broken the game?

As something that has no real bearing on the games structure or balance, then probably not. One very important difference, I'd be writing into open undetailed space. I'd also be making arbitrary and roughly trivial choices. And as I've said, winging it on a blank page doesn't strike me as being the same class of thing as changing your ideas on the basis of what you overhear the PC's saying.

I think you are veering out of the thread by extending the idea to things other than 'chumming'. If a player says, "I want to find a dealer in furs, is there a furrier in this town?", and I've made no decision on that, then either answer is acceptable provided that I make that decision in a neutral referee stance and not adversarially. There is no 'chumming' involved in this, and if I think to myself, "This is an area that likely has alot of fur bearing creatures, it would make sense for there to be a fur industry in the area.", I'm not 'chumming' in the sense it is being used elsewhere in the thread. But if for whatever bizarre reason I've made the decision that there is or is not a furrier in town, then the answer had better be whatever I'd previously decided because the only reason I could possibly have for changing my mind is some sort of metagame one. And any time you start changing things for metagame reasons, beware.

While I haven't fudged in this way, I have fudged before and every time I do it, no matter how good I think my reasons are, I find I almost always have cause to regret it later.

Now, compare these trivial matters we've veered off into with the selling point provided by the OP, and the writers he quoted, and at least half the people in the thread. The inspiration for the very name 'chumming' is 'blood in the water'. The idea behind chumming, the very reason it is being recommended, is the DM gets to use the players devious, scheming, dastardly speculations against them. The metaphor is the DM as the bloodthristy shark, chasing down the players and shredding them. If you can't see how that is an adversarial metagame stance, then I don't know why I've bothered saying anything in this thread.

Don't get me wrong. I'm absolutely not dismissing your DM style. Not one bit. What I'm failing to see eye to eye with is the sense that you seem to say that others only use such a thing to paper over some mistake or that it is somehow, even used lightly or just once, a break of the trust between DM and players.

I think every time the DM retcons something he prepared, he risks breaking the trust of the players. I think this falls into the broad category of 'DM fudging', which includes railroading, fudging dice roles, having NPC's suddenly suffer drops in IQ to keep players alive, and what we are now calling 'chumming'. Every kind of DM fudging depends to a certain extent on maintaining the pretence that it isn't happening. For example, there are times when I might pull a railroad out of my toolbag. An example would be I have this hexcrawl exploration game going on, but there is something on the map which I always no matter what want the PC's to find. I might decide that the best way to handle this is to not put it on the map. Instead, I might decide that the encounter is always on the third day of exploration. That might be a good idea to balance the pure simulationist game I'm doing with some sort of narrative consideration to give structure to those players who want more story and clearer hooks. But I'm also risking breaking faith with the players, who have a reasonable belief that when they turn right that choice will result in something different than if they turn left. So, I'd recommend pulling out a railroad very rarely as well.

Pretty much anything that requires you to engage in a high level of illusionism or out of game deception is not something I'd recommend as your normal and expected method as a game master. You won't break trust with your players every time you chum and there might even be times when its the right thing to do, but I don't think it should be upheld as some sort of clever 'best practice'.

 

[darjr]

I am the OP.

I'm pretty sure the topic we were discussing now was interjected by your first post in this thread. I do think, and would agree, that the thread starting changing almost immediately.

Anyway

Which isn't to say that you can't invent things in midstream. In my current campaign I inadvertantly created a new red herring improvising a scene I hadn't anticipated, and it's a good one and some of the PC's are already lured by it. I briefly considered completely changing who the main villain is. However, I realized that while its a good idea with lots of play potential, it's also a sterotypical one and would be completely unsurprising. I'm not going to change the story to put it on the new path, but I probably will develop contingencies along that path in case the players end up chasing the story in that direction.

The players let you know that they were interested in a certain thread by following it and in response, you, probably, will flesh it out. That, in a nutshell, is it.

The above isn't an example of a dangerous idea being used, no, not exactly. And maybe that is the essence of the idea and I've missed that.