In your RPGing, who chooses the antagonists/opposition - players or GM?

[TwoSix]

Yes, I have. I consider the way I write and the way I think to be a flaw (not a character flaw...but an operational flaw). I've tried to repair it many times, but I can't make the repair stick. I've also had this conversation on here with other people who do exactly what you did above. I didn't take offense for challenging my integrity or self-awareness and not also not being kind/considerate enough to PM me directly about it then! And I won't do so with you now! And I'm sure I'll have to do this again with another poster down the road!

Honestly, I just you wish could use some more sesquipedalian words. We have an elitist reputation to maintain here, after all.

 

[Hriston]

In my current D&D 5E game, I think I (as DM) have introduced most (if not all) of the antagonism. I make a reaction roll whenever I introduce an encounter with a monster/NPC with an Intelligence higher than 1, and a result of hostile on the roll indicates the creature is antagonistic to the PCs’ goals. An example of this was a powerful tribal chief who wouldn't allow a PC to pass by his village to rejoin the party after he had been out foraging. The PC was looking for information about his missing wife, and the result of a failed Charisma check was that the PC learned some unwelcome truths from the chief about why his wife left him. (edit: Now that I think of it, the unwelcome truths themselves were something that the player had authored into his character's backstory.)

Non-intelligent (INT 1) creatures just act however they're supposed to, which is usually to attack on sight. I've introduced a few encounters like this. The tables I use to generate encounters (from the 1E DMG) seem skewed towards non-intelligent creatures.

Another form of antagonism is when the players decide to attack a creature, I will have it become antagonistic to that effort. This came into play when the players had their PCs take it upon themselves to rid the bog of giant toads. I still see this as me introducing the antagonists because I told the players there were giant toads out in the bog eating people.

One source of antagonism has been some weather I introduced. I established early in the campaign that it was winter, which I had determined randomly. One morning when the PCs were journeying home from the bog, it was extremely cold and windy, and the wind-chill threatened to force the PCs into a state of exhaustion, which they overcame through perseverance.

The only time so far in this campaign that I think is slightly close to the players introducing their own source of antagonism is when they decided to go to the city council to establish a patronage relationship after having been successful at killing some toads out in the bog. The council was something I had mentioned when describing the city, including that it was led by a reeve, so they were elements of the fiction I had introduced, but not to provide opposition -- merely to give the city some depth. I decided to treat their visit as a social encounter, however, and upon their audience with the reeve in the council chamber, I rolled a hostile reaction, making the attempt to secure the council's patronage quite difficult. When the party druid's Charisma check failed to convince the council that the party's services were needed, the reeve proposed that instead of supporting the PCs in continuing to rid the bog of monsters that they instead be sent into a dungeon below the city where they could find treasure with which to support themselves. Strangely, the players had their PCs agree to this.

 

[Shiroiken]

I generally design the major NPCs and their plots, many of which are villainous, while the players often decide which NPCs are worth opposing.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Most RPGing involves conflict and opposition as a crucial component of the fiction: the player characters are trying to overcome some sort of opposition or antagonism.

Not all RPGing is all antagonism all the time - eg if a group spends an hour settling equipment lists for the PCs that is more likely to involve referring to lists and transcribing information than engaging with antagonism in a shared fiction; or if a group spends an hour in which the players all, in character, speak to one another about their recent deeds and make plans for future deeds, there may not be much confronting of opposition in that episdoe of play.

Still, I think it's fair to say that opposition/antagonism is pretty important to most RPGing, although of course it comes in different forms: opposed people/creatures who want to thwart the PCs' goals; people/creatures who have goals that the PCs are opposed to; places that the PCs wish to enter or pass through but that are not easily navigated (due to geography, or architecture, or fixtures like traps, etc); and no doubt many other forms too.

Because the opposition/antagonism is a component of a fiction, someone has to come up with it. And because it is related to the PCs in a hostile fashion - it is at odds with what they want - someone has to establish that relationship, of PC wants as a component of the fiction to this other, oppositional, component of the fiction.

In your RPGing, who does all this? And how is it done?

Can you give an example of a game where this authoring of antagonism is expected to be mostly (if not entirely) on the players, but that still has a GM? Most of the games I'm aware of are either "GM authors everything", or a balance between GM and players. Nothing is coming to mind for me as for what a pure "players author everything" game would look like outside of GMless games, so I want to see what that would look like, as a contrast to the more common "GM authors everything".

 

[Imaro]

In my game players are free to author antagonists as part of their backstory or goals before the campaign begins, but once play starts I as GM, barring extraordinary circumstances, will author the antagonists... though the players are free to choose antagonists from the fictional elements within the game by the choices they make.

 

[pemerton]

@Hriston, thanks for that detailed post - the example of the city council and the interplay between GM backstory, player's foregrounding it, and then the random roll, is an interesting one.

I think things that look broadly like that are very common in RPGing, and managing the "balance of power"/"ownership" issues that it gives rise to is a real GM skill that I don't think I often see discussed. An overly-possessive GM in those contexts can really shut down play and give it a railroad-y feel. I think the random roll is one way to help break out of that over-possessiveness but no doubt not the only way.

 

[pemerton]

Can you give an example of a game where this authoring of antagonism is expected to be mostly (if not entirely) on the players, but that still has a GM? Most of the games I'm aware of are either "GM authors everything", or a balance between GM and players. Nothing is coming to mind for me as for what a pure "players author everything" game would look like outside of GMless games, so I want to see what that would look like, as a contrast to the more common "GM authors everything".

I don't know of a game that is pure player authorship of antagonism and that has a GM. Burning Wheel leans towards the players establishing, through backstory or subsequent action declaration, the basic identity and fictional context of their antagonists, but it is on the GM to manage the introduction of that antagonism into any particular fictional situation.

 

[Umbran]

Perhaps as much as you considered your audience when you decided to (a) put this confrontational element that is pretty much a thinly veiled attack on either my integrity or my self-awareness

Dude, a leading question that you might want to consider if you want to phrase things to be more accessible to a broader audience is not "an attack". It is advice. Which you are free to take, or not.

And, having seen that reaction, I guess I have to remind you that accusing folks who ask questions you don't like of "attacking" is not an acceptable rhetorical technique. Slow that roll, please.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Dude, a leading question that you might want to consider if you want to phrase things to be more accessible to a broader audience is not "an attack". It is advice. Which you are free to take, or not.

Nah, it was snippy and unhelpful. Socratic questioning that aims to correct behavior is going to be, at best, close to an attack, because it directly invites comparison to poor behavior. If your intent is to suggest that @Manbearcat could use less dense verbiage, there are plenty of less confrontation ways to do this rather than asking leading questions. I mean, leading questions are generally frowned upon unless you're teaching, and the very fact that it appears that you're trying to "teach" here is insulting.

And, having seen that reaction, I guess I have to remind you that accusing folks who ask questions you don't like of "attacking" is not an acceptable rhetorical technique. Slow that roll, please.

Sorry, but did you just, in large words, turn what @Manbearcat said into an attack because he said something you didn't like? And paired it with a semi-mod warning?

 

[Hriston]

@Hriston, thanks for that detailed post - the example of the city council and the interplay between GM backstory, player's foregrounding it, and then the random roll, is an interesting one.

I think things that look broadly like that are very common in RPGing, and managing the "balance of power"/"ownership" issues that it gives rise to is a real GM skill that I don't think I often see discussed. An overly-possessive GM in those contexts can really shut down play and give it a railroad-y feel. I think the random roll is one way to help break out of that over-possessiveness but no doubt not the only way.

I'd say it was the most pivotal encounter of the campaign so far. It came at the end of the game's first "adventuring day" which, because we're using a rest variant, was about three in-game days of actual adventuring. I think it was an attempt by (some of) the players who may have been more comfortable or familiar with a patron-given quest type scenario to parlay the party's successes out in the bog into such a relationship for the party. Their ask was basically for material support for their self-appointed mission, and I wanted them to have a chance of succeeding with this. I think when the reeve wasn't particularly receptive to entering in to this type of relationship and made her counter-proposal to the council, there was a little bit of a turtling effect as if the players felt they had made the "wrong" move by going to the council in the first place, and they didn't press their case resulting in the reeve's proposal being carried. Not wanting to railroad the players, I had made counteroffer contingent upon the party's acceptance because it would have them abandoning, at least temporarily, their goal of ridding the bog of monsters. They accepted, however, which, in hindsight, I think they may have felt some metagame pressure to do because they were still seeing the reeve as an NPC quest giver even though I had no desire to exert that kind of pressure on the game myself.