FORKED - Game Fundamentals - Player Trust, Your GM, and Cake

[awesomeocalypse]

I think the point is that most of us simply don't have the choice of who to play with. There may only be 5 gamers that want to play the particular system you want to play on the nights you have free.

I also think that you miss the point slightly. The rules aren't in place to cater to those who seek to ruin the fun of others. They are there to create a more even playing field between two different types of gamers, both of whom don't want to ruin the fun of others at all.

I agree with the premise of the OP. Recent systems have been designed around increasing trust between the GM, the players, and the rules. The players can more readily trust that the rules will put them on an equal footing with the other players and will guide the GM to making decisions that make the game more fun for all player types. The GM can trust that the rules will allow him to keep easier control of his game and allow him to more easily predict the result of things he plans.

There may be no game system that can eliminate the effect of someone wanting to be a total turd. But there is one that can minimize the effect of the player who sits down with the rules and says "I want the best bonus to hit the game allows me to take, and I will find every rules item that gives me a bonus to that and take it." In some game systems, this will end up with a character who cannot possibly miss anything. In other game systems, this will end up with a character who is maybe 10-20% better than his peers.

If you have the type of players whose fun will be ruined by being completely outclassed by the other PCs, this will prevent that from happening without necessarily labeling one player as attempting to ruin anyone else's fun.

I think this is exactly right. Turd-proofing a game system is probably futile and certainly pointless. But even well-intentioned gamers and DM can run into problems if they have different playstyles or are looking for different things out of the game.

Obviously some level of incompatability is unbridgeable, for example, if one players want to play a detailed hotal management simulation set in an intraplanar way station, and another wants to play a wuxia-army of darkness hybrid set in a fantasy analogue to ancient china, it seems unlikely that they will arrive at a middle ground that satisfies both of them, or that a system could be designed which could fully cater to both in a satisfying way.

But I don't think that is particularly common, especially when playing D&D. But a much less extreme scenario, which I think is very common, is for many players to be on the same page in terms of wanting to play more or less traditional heroic high fantasy/sword and sorcerery adventures, but to simply have different ideas about what that entails and how that should be accomplished. So you have guys who, very reasonably, imagine primarily that their heroic adventurer is a grade A badass and want to represent him as such, so they try to build him in such a way that he can kick as much ass as possible (e.g. by hitting a lot, and hitting very hard). And you have other players who, also very reasonably, want their heroic adventurer to be effective in combat, but have other non-combat related aspects of his persona which they consider just as crucial.

These are different (and both pretty common) approaches to playing D&D, but in the right system, they don't have to yield such vastly different results that these two players can't play with each other and have fun together. If the guys who want to play super badasses can build characters who hit somewhat more often and somewhat harder than other characters, while never truly eclipsing less combat-oriented characters; and if the less combat oriented characters have options to flesh out their character in ways that are interesting to them without being turned into an inneffectual gimp, then I think in many cases these two players can arrive at a happy medium in which they're both getting some of what they want out of the system, without breaking other people's fun or making the DM's life hell.

This is more or less the goal of 4e. I think there are legitimate arguments as to whether it succeeds (I enjoy it, but I know many people who find its less granular approach to skills and non-mechanical approach to character quirks and non-adventuring abilities to be unsatisfying), but I don't think that you can simply say 4e is a result of attempting to proof the game against jerks out to intentionally ruin other people's fun. Good people and legitimate playstyles can still end up running into problems if the system isn't built to accomodate them all.

 

[billd91]

Do people find this trust issue crop up in other RPGs?

Sure. But we hear about it for D&D so often because of its ubiquity. If another game were as dominant as D&D, we'd hear about trust issues between GM and player in that game.

 

[howandwhy99]

Ego gaming is a horrible monikor for people who like to play games with objectives other than "participate". If you've ever wondered why baseball gamers prefer baseball over the game catch, it is because they are ego gamers.

They want to win. And would rather play a game where winning can happen rather than one where it cannot.

 

[Woas]

Sure. But we hear about it for D&D so often because of its ubiquity. If another game were as dominant as D&D, we'd hear about trust issues between GM and player in that game.

What other games would you say suffer from 'trust' issues? Are there any games that incorporate or address the issue, that you know of? Are there any games that don't?

 

[Nifft]

What other games would you say suffer from 'trust' issues?

I think his point is: pretty much all RPGs can suffer from "trust" issues, no more and no less because of the specific game. It's just that we see these issues surface when playing D&D because we (collectively) spend so much time playing D&D.

Cheers, -- N

 

[pemerton]

This is a very intelligent analysis, imo.

Doug, it's very kind of you to say so. Thanks.

With the acquisition of a stronghold and a small fighting force at name level in OD&D and 1e it almost seems the idea is to start off as a rpg and become a wargame.

I think you are right about this - I don't have the play experience or historical knowledge to speak from much experience, but that's certainly how it reads to me. I also like your comparison to LoTR. The one time when I did GM high level AD&D, I found it hard to integrate the whole castle-and-army thing with play which continued to focus on the PCs and their action-hero exploits.

I haven't seen Warhammer 3rd ed, but from reviews I've read it has at least some resemblance to 4e - an attempt to preserve elements of traditional fantasy RPGing, like frequent combat and a strong focus on party play, while at the same time using modern design techniques to further reduce the overlap with wargaming, such as fewer non-rules-mediated tactical considerations and a greater emphasis on using the mechanics as a scaffold on which to hang the narration. Does anyone know whether Warhammer 3rd ed reduces the likelihood of PC death in the way 4e does?

 

[pemerton]

Trust and rules design

I think there might be at least one factor which pehaps makes D&D and Rift more prone to trust issues than (for example) Call of Cthulhu.

D&D or Rifts play is more likely (not always, but often) to focus on the players - using their PCs as their vehicles - overcoming obstacles which have been set by the GM, and which the GM then has to referee. There are, therefore, a lot of points at which things can come unstuck: unfair obstacles, biased refereeing, inadvertant errors or differences of opinion (eg the GM and the players have very different pictures of where things are and how they are interacting in the imaginary space).

Call of Cthulhu is typically focused on the PC's descent into (near-)madness as they narrowly thwart some event that would shatter the sanity of the rest of humanity. The challenge element is much less, and the exploration of the mythos and each character's inner psychic workings is much higher. The GM still has a heavy workload in terms of writing and running a compelling adventure, and the game will suck if the GM can't do this well - in fact, personally I would probably rather play D&D than CoC with a GM whose imaginative and story-spinning skills are only mediocre.

But CoC doesn't really have the refereeing element to the same extent as D&D or Rifts. And I think it is the refereeing element that is more relevant to player trust.

Can a game be designed to make refereeing easier? I think the answer is yes. I don't have a lot of sophisticated examples to point to, but in D&D terms one that I would point to is alignment. In AD&D, and even 3E judging from the continuation of paladin debates into the 21st century, alignment is a big issue for a lot of games. In my view, this results from (i) making controversial moral descriptions inherent to the action resolution and character build mechanics, and (ii) requiring GMs to make real-time refereeing decisions that involve making moral judgements and applying them via those mechanical systems. In my opinion, this is a recipe for disaster in any group whose players share a diversity of moral opinions. One way to strengthen trust is to eliminate the need for this sort of refereeing, which is almost guaranteed to threaten trust time after time after time.

One obvious feature of 4e relative to 3E, and of 3E relative to AD&D, is the reduction in those aspects of the game where the GM is expected to make a call on the physical difficulty of a task (opening a door, jumping a pit, whatever). Basic D&D, for example, sugggests assigning percentage difficulties. 3E sets skill DCs. 4e not only sets skill DCs, but codifies them by level. Is their a rationale for this in terms of trust? Well, in Basic D&D the players will be hosed if they try things that they think are easy, but the GM thinks are hard (eg how hard is it to jump a 10' wide pit while wearing full plate for a moderatley strong person? I don't have an obvious percentage difficulty ready to hand) - especially if the GM only tells them the percentage chance once they already commit their PC to the attempt. Later rules designs reduce this potential element of contention (and in a game like CoC, where life-threatening physical challenges loom much less large, these sorts of things are less likely to come up).

Of course there is a potential cost to giving up alignment, or locking in level-relative DCs via the mechanics - as this thread indicates, it makes a certain style of play (Gygaxian "skillful play") much harder to achieve.

But I think it is a mistake to think that such changes aren't relevant to the issue of trust.

 

[I'm A Banana]

3E didn't kill trust in the DM, people on the internet did.

Actually, bad DMing did this loooooooooooooong before the internets did.

Bad DMing has been chasing people away from D&D probably since the moment someone other than Arneson or Gygax DM'd.

Hell, the Grand Old Fathers themselves may have pushed some players with a different style preference away.

It's not so much about the system -- any system can rock with a good DM because any system is subject to house rules and/or the emotional energy in the room itself during play. Any system can suck with a DM who is on an ego trip.

Heck, like we saw with the Robot Chicken "videotaped session" event, how good or bad a DM may be is a very subjective, vacillating thing. Some people would have rankled under a DM who forbid you to use your power on a door, some people would just shrug and move on, and there's no good way to predict this before it happens.

EVERYONE has some Bad DM stories. The Internet let us all share them, but they existed before the Internet, and they'll exist after the Apocalypse, assuming at least one PHB survives. If we exist as pure beings of networked energy, there will probably still be Bad DM stories.

We need to train good DMs. The 4e DMG is the best D&D book so far for that purpose. We also need to train tolerant players. The earlier editions were generally better at this (3e and 4e tend toward a "why not?" approach).

If we could meet somewhere in the middle, that'd be stupendous.

 

[Nifft]

Actually, bad DMing did this loooooooooooooong before the internets did.

Sure, but before the internet came along, we couldn't discuss the issues intelligently, because there just wasn't enough data accessible to see the patterns. Not enough for me to see the patterns, anyway. Only after reading about a lot of other people's experiences do I feel like I can discuss what it means to be a good DM.

It's not so much about the system -- any system can rock with a good DM because any system is subject to house rules and/or the emotional energy in the room itself during play. Any system can suck with a DM who is on an ego trip.

Agreed.

We need to train good DMs. The 4e DMG is the best D&D book so far for that purpose. We also need to train tolerant players. The earlier editions were generally better at this (3e and 4e tend toward a "why not?" approach).

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the only surefire way to create a good DM is to have a thoughtful yet motivated player suffer through one or more bad DMs, and come out the other end with his desire to RP intact.

Cheers, -- N

 

[MichaelSomething]

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the only surefire way to create a good DM is to have a thoughtful yet motivated player suffer through one or more bad DMs, and come out the other end with his desire to RP intact.

I imagine there are plenty of ways to generate good DMs. The question is whether the community itself is willing to take the steps necessary to do so.

What if you were gonna play a new game with a guy named "Bob." What if you could go to a website and check out Bob's DMing profile? What if it had detailed statics of his DMing career?

For example...

BOB

Ran over 234 hours of D&D
100 hours of 4th Edition
54 hours of Pathfinder
80 hours of G.U.R.P.S.
80 sessions

Bob has ran games for 24 people total
15 players had played only one session wit him
6 had played in over 20 sessions
3 have played in over 60 sessions.

1 character death every 3 sessions

The following attributes can be used to describe Bob's DMing preferences...

Old School
Treasure Lite
Simulationist leanings

Bob had received 7 ratings, averaging 3.78 out of 5.


The advantage of this would be that it would be easy to see if a DM was right for you. The problems would include all the data gathering needed to build a profile, developing a profiling system, and ensuring that that people could understand the system and be willing to use it.


Another option would be that only people with a special Licensee would be allowed to run games. This would ensure some level of quality control. The problems are that it would require a organization to test and issue lincesees as well as enforce the rules. The majority of people would not welcome such strict control over who can or cannot DM.


Perhaps a mentor ship program where experienced DMs can tutor newbies into the good ways of DMing? Good luck recruiting people for that venture.


Then again, maybe you are right about how to make good DMs...