How do you get your players to creatively describe their combat actions?

[SnowleopardVK]

Your friend helps you move, you buy him some beer. Positive Reinforcement.

Somebody tries to rob you in the parking lot, you shoot him. Negative Reinforcement.

Your friend helps you hide a body, you buy him a car. Positive Reinforcement.

Your friend jokes about telling his wife about the body, you smack him upside the head. Negative Reinforcement.

I'm pretty sure those are all positive actually. They all involve giving the other person something (a beer, a bullet, a car, and a smack respectively). The ones you identified as negative reinforcement would actually be positive punishment; giving a stimulation to encourage a behavior to stop.

Negative reinforcement would involve taking away a factor that the players don't like as a reward for doing something the reinforcing person wanted them to do. For example overlooking a rule saying they can't actually kill something in the way they intend to as a reward for making their method sound really cool.

 

[Crothian]

that's a puzzling comment.

I'm pretty sure using Negative Reinforcement isn't a great idea to use on your friends.

Actually, it works quite well. I DM with dice in one hand and a taser in the other!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Actually, it works quite well. I DM with dice in one hand and a taser in the other!

A taser? What kind of a soft, Candyland game are you running there? I take my queue from Reservoir Dogs.....

Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.​

 

[Pentius]

Out of curiosity, how would hooking up a player with a bonus lead to an argument?

It looks something like this:

Bill: "Alright, I smash the orc's face in with mah big ol' hammer! +1 bonus for good description?"
Me: "I-I don't really think that deserves a bonus. It was a one-liner, and not terribly witty or even that descriptive."
Bill: "What? I should totally get a bonus for that! Bob got a bonus for his attack and his description was way lamer than mine."
Tim: "Lay off Bob. He's gotta come up with a different insult every round for Vicious Mockery!"

Basically, in my experience, you either give bonuses to every description, no matter how lame, or else you give them out only to good ones, and put yourself in the position where your subjective opinion of the roleplay has hard mechanical benefits. It is a situation I am not fond of being in.

 

[howandwhy99]

I tell them "This game includes everything you can possibly express to me. If you can say it, write it, draw it, paint it, or sculpt it, then - to the degree to which I can understand your expression - it is in the game (barring anything censored by table rules)."

I also tell them that we will be treating all of this like a game, i.e. strategically as a code you are all attempting to crack.

They will never absolutely know this code (I never reveal it from behind the screen), but they do learn and master it as we go along.

It is definitely in their best interest to be as descriptive and creative in their attempted actions as possible. Their greater detailed attempts enable me to relay more information with the results.

Being descriptive can be a drawback though, to the degree it overrides others playing time, but they can work together on this. In fact, it's encouraged. The game rewards social cohesion as well as creativity, a nice complement.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Out of curiosity, how would hooking up a player with a bonus lead to an argument?

Mainly it comes down to the person(s) who didn't get a bonus even if all they did was say "I swing my sword". Players often, ime, want everything everyone else is getting regardless of effort. Annoying I know but that has been my experience. Often accusation of favourtism and coddling get thrown around especially if the player in question is the DMs SO.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Ah, right on. That's a great example and I understand now.

Now, I don't mean to be contrary, but I have never had this experience. I think the reason why is because I only game with friends; people I trust. The kind of people I invite over for Christmases, birthdays, or just a night out on the town.

I know that not every group is like this, and so my advice would be to slowly but surely cultivate an arena of DM and player trust. If you lay the foundation of what you expect from players and what they can expect from you, I would surmise that challenges to a DM's authority would be less common.

Bringing this back to whether a DM allows players to describe actions or not, in my games, I tell players that bonus anythings that I give out are solely at my discretion. Because of the trust I've built with my players, they know I won't be capricious with such boons, but instead fair and balanced.

I don't mean to sound like a Benetol ad... I just truly believe that groups built from a solid foundation of friendship, trust, and mutual respect can overcome many of the problems I've read about recently on EN World.

I do game with friends - people whom I have known for years. And they can change a great deal when playing RPGs. Think of it like Jeykll and Hyde if Mr.. Hyde was obsessed with magic items and XP.

 

[Pentius]

Ah, right on. That's a great example and I understand now.

Now, I don't mean to be contrary, but I have never had this experience. I think the reason why is because I only game with friends; people I trust. The kind of people I invite over for Christmases, birthdays, or just a night out on the town.

I know that not every group is like this, and so my advice would be to slowly but surely cultivate an arena of DM and player trust. If you lay the foundation of what you expect from players and what they can expect from you, I would surmise that challenges to a DM's authority would be less common.

Bringing this back to whether a DM allows players to describe actions or not, in my games, I tell players that bonus anythings that I give out are solely at my discretion. Because of the trust I've built with my players, they know I won't be capricious with such boons, but instead fair and balanced.

I don't mean to sound like a Benetol ad... I just truly believe that groups built from a solid foundation of friendship, trust, and mutual respect can overcome many of the problems I've read about recently on EN World.

To game only with good friends, that not only are trusted and respected, but live up to the expectations that respect and trust would seem to imply, this would be a great and wonderful thing, I agree. However, if I were to only game in such circumstances, I would be waiting for my first game still. Every group I've ever played in has had someone who won't live up to these expectations, be it a longtime friend and normally fair DM who just can't bring himself to say no to a woman, a young newbie who is honestly a good kid but still inexperienced enough to make mistakes(mechanical and social), or
simply an average player who can only be reasonably trusted so far, no matter how good his intentions.

Basically, yeah, if you're riding a unicorn you can go bareback and reinless and possibly pantsless. Most of us, though, have got to ride horses if we want to ride at all, and we'll stick to saddles and pants.

 

[Water Bob]

However, if I were to only game in such circumstances, I would be waiting for my first game still. Every group I've ever played in has had someone who won't live up to these expectations, be it a longtime friend and normally fair DM who just can't bring himself to say no to a woman, a young newbie who is honestly a good kid but still inexperienced enough to make mistakes(mechanical and social), or
simply an average player who can only be reasonably trusted so far, no matter how good his intentions.

Yessir. I'd give you XP on this, but it looks like I can't until I give some to someone else because I tapped on you earlier today.

I've got a good friend in my current group. He's a fantastic roleplayer. And, I've known him since 4th grade (over three decades now).

I do like gaming with him 75% of the time, but the poor guy, for whatever reason, will argue with a sign post if the post would talk back.

Just yesterday, in our game, I was handing out experience points, and he thought I short-changed him a bit. I didn't feel like I did--someone has to get the "least" amount in the group, and that time, it was him. But, he made some rational points in his defense, and so I asked him what he thought he deserved. He gave me a number, and I agreed. Right there in front of everyone.

But, even as I was giving him what he wanted, he continued to bitch. I even gave him a little more than he wanted, and he was still bitching--bitching about how I should have given him this amount in the first place.

I just puffed my cheeks, raised my eyebrows, and blew out the hot air before I said something that would turn his bitching in a full-fledged argument that would disrupt the game (it takes two to argue, and it was only him). The other two players were rolling their eyes at him.

Other than that, he and I are good friends.

It amazes me how so much of playing this game is actually about managing people and the differing personalities for a GM.

This type of thing actually helps me be a better manager in real life!

 

[Quickleaf]

I play 4e, and would love to get the players to get more creative in describing their actions in combat. They're all grognards, been playing since the 80s, but for some reason getting them to roleplay in combat is like squeezing blood from a stone.

It's either just saying the power name and rolling the dice, or when I have tried to get them to elaborate, they just read off the power card flavor text.

Any suggestions?

Have they always been like that, or is it a change that came with adopting 4e? And is this lack of creativity and inspiration endemic to other parts of the game besides combat?

One trick that helped with the group I DMed was to add terrain powers with cool effects or other creative elements I'd prepped for my fights. It took some leading description to get them to realize it, but when they had that first moment of manipulating a magic fog to their advantage they rest of the players went "woah, that's cool!"

Unfortunately, the group would slip into power card reading as the evening wore on and they tired. Or simply to speed up combat.


On a related note, I've been thinking about the way most groups seem to run this sort of thing. A player gives a really cool description and if their actions succeeds great! But if it fails, the player feels like the description was not worth it, and their next round they are much less creative. Now, not every player is like that, but it's definitely a phenomenon I saw at my table. As DM, I tried to counteract this by having well-described attacks have some additional effect hit or miss. But maybe we've been doing it backwards - should the dice be rolled first then the action narrated? I dunno. Food for thought.