Joyful GMing: Fun, Factual, and Fair Rulings

Referee Football Helping - Free photo on Pixabay​

Being a GM is a lot like putting down railroad tracks while the train is already moving behind you. You have to work hard, move fast, and be ready to improvise. Making rulings is a core skill of GMs that set RPGs apart from computers and board games. GMs can interpret and with player input act to move the story forward. Here are three ways to make rulings on the fly to keep the players engaged and the game moving.

What Are Rulings?​

Rulings include the GM filling in the blanks for situations that rules don’t cover. However, rulings are bigger than that. The entire game a GM runs is a series of rulings, one after the other. Leaning on rules from rulebooks can help with the fairness of rulings, but the rules of the RPG are not the actual game or campaign. The game is the players making decisions based on GM description and the GM making rulings on how to determine the results of those decisions based on the shared situation. Rules inform this process, but the GM guides the process and makes the final judgment.

Fun​

The PCs strive to achieve goals and no one knows if they will succeed or not. Will this ruling make the game more enjoyable for everyone? This principle is trickier than it sounds. A PC missing an attack may not sound fun. Or a PC or entire party getting killed may not sound fun. So what is fun?

Running and playing RPGs takes effort to achieve positive results. Without that effort, the game is not fun. In normal games, the effort is a contest between two players or teams. In an RPG, that effort is a struggle by the PCs to achieve their goals in an indifferent and sometimes hostile world. What is fun is the PCs striving to achieve goals and no one knowing if they will succeed or not. Rulings should take this principle into account.

The opposite is true as well. If every one of your players hates puzzles, pull all puzzles out of your game. If using a rule would never be fun, avoid the situation that calls for that particular rule.

Factual​

The game world has its own reality. Each RPG has a unique take on the world the game takes place in. In early editions of D&D combat is deadly and achieving goals requires planning, guile, and the right gear. Later editions of D&D involve a lot more combat with rewards focused on defeating monsters. A ruling needs to reflect the reality of the game world itself. As a default, use an understanding our own Earth to make a ruling. Modify to take into account the world of the PCs.

I recently ran Amazing Adventures and a PC was shot by a rifle. Getting shot nearly killed the PC. However, AA is pulp and PCs have Fate Points as they are destined for greater things. I reminded the player of their character being destined by Fate for great things and the player chose to spend a Fate Point and the shot he thought was taking him down actually passed through his sleeve without harming him. In a gritty game, the PC would have been down and likely bleeding out instead. The game would have still moved forward, but in a different direction.

Fair​

When the outcome matters and is uncertain, let the dice decide. Don’t roll dice unless you need to. If I was GMing for a player of a ranger tracking a deer in a forest, I would never make the player roll to succeed. Track orcs across rocky ground with a three day head start? Then the dice come out. How do you know if the dice are needed? The first two principles should help you decide. If in doubt, ask the player what he thinks and take that into account as well.

Once you determine the PC wants to do something that may or may not succeed and the results matter, you need to make a ruling. First, ask the player exactly what his character is attempting to do. The rules can guide you and may have a ready-made solution.

If not, involve the player and ask him what abilities his character might be able to use. If the player can’t come up with something but you think it should be possible, you can always use the 50% rule. It happens 50% of the time. You can mix this up a bit and have the player roll and try to get evens or call out three numbers on a die six and the player tries to roll that number to succeed.

If you involve the player and the player understands the stakes, the ruling will be fair whether it succeeds, fails, or falls somewhere in between and regardless of the final roll. However, the roll itself will add interesting tension and the player will be invested in the result.

Future Results​

If a player wants their character to do something and the GM makes a ruling that is fun, factual, and fair that group is well on its way to participating in a balanced games with rulings the players will appreciate. If the GM involves the players in determining how to make rulings, that GM will be both making both his job easier and helping the players shape the action and the possible outcomes of the campaign which is exactly what a GM wants. A player learning to be part of rulings may even decide to become a GM one day.

 

[Celebrim]

What I mean by “discussing what’s happening” is the difference between “I hit…three points of damage” and “(The GM, after player rolls partial success): The deck of the ship lurches violently as you swing, knocking you off balance; roll damage at -2.”

I'm all for cinematic narration and emersion, but I find that has very little to do with degree of success vs. pass fail and a lot to do with whether the system has touch points that players can engage with situationally to accomplish goals, or conversely which encourages the GM to mess with the players to up the challenge, and perhaps even more so the experience level and personality of the participants

There are a lot of systems that try to encourage cinematic narration in a straightforward fashion. I think of say Exalted with its attempt at rewarding the player for creative narration about how they attack. The intent is nice but it fails utterly in my opinion because tactics is not about creativity alone, but creativity applied to terrain and tools. Creative attacks on an empty stage quickly become boring and repetitive and performative and are often cringey the first time. But as you note in your example, combat on the deck of a violently lurching ship creates tactical novelty and necessity and opportunity all on its own, leading to actual creative stunts. So really this is about encounter design and whether your system has something more interesting going on than advantage/disadvantage to inspire both players and referees. You don't need partial success; you just need something in the system to leverage to represent all those opportunities to engage with the imagined setting. "Maybe in this situation a push attack really is more interesting and useful than a standard attack, so let's try that!"

How the game reaches that point is less interesting than it can reach that point and gives advice to the GM on how to handle it.

 

[Hussar]

If they "hate" puzzles, yeah. If they just don't like puzzles, I wonder if the fun could be significantly increased, knowing the players succeeded in the face of un-fun. It might be like turning the last page of a Harry Potter book. Ah, sweet relief!

As someone who truly, truly LOATHES puzzes in an RPG, let me just say no. Fun is not increased by introducing puzzles in the game. At least, my fun is not. The rest of the group can do whatever they please. But, when puzzles get introduced into the game, I give it my best shot for about ten minutes. If the puzzle has not be solved by then, I just fade into the background. I stop participating, I completely check out of the game. Often, it's my time to go for a bathroom break. Maybe make some snacks for everyone. Whatever.

But, and I cannot stress this enough, if your player has told you that they don't like X, STOP ADDING X TO THE GAME in the expectation that if they just do it enough, they'll learn to like it.l

 

[Hussar]

The worst though is "What would be fun to have happen now?" I'll leave a table where that becomes a discussion. If I wanted to collaborate on a screen play and have that experience, I'd just do that instead of playing an RPG.

Heh. I've recently taken a break from D&D to play Ironsworn, which is a PbtA game where you absolutely have the discussion of "what would be fun to have happen now?". I'm absolutely loving it. Everyone is so engaged. Ironsworn also has the Oracle mechanic - a random die roll that answers yes/no questions (there's more, but, that's the gist). I've used it lots of times to create the next challenge. We fail on an exploration check and something bad happens. I asked the Oracle "is it hostile?" no, "Is it supernatural" no, "Is it alive?" no.

Ok, so, we got lost and need to make checks to get unlost, resulting in various shenanigans.

OTOH, I tried the same system with a different group, and their reaction was exactly like @Celebrim's here. So, it REALLY depends on what the group likes.

 

[GMMichael]

But, when puzzles get introduced into the game, I give it my best shot for about ten minutes. If the puzzle has not be solved by then, I just fade into the background.

So let me ask, if you solve it in five minutes or less, does that make it more fun? What if it's obvious from the get-go?

 

[Hussar]

So let me ask, if you solve it in five minutes or less, does that make it more fun? What if it's obvious from the get-go?

It’s never really fun. It’s something to be endured. I truly loathe puzzles and riddles in the game. Far, far too much pixel bitching. Mysteries? That’s different because mysteries are grounded in events in the game. But puzzles are just arbitrary challenges created to roadblock the flow of the game that is meant to directly speak to the player and not the in game reality.

I meet a monster? I have a shopping list of things my character can do in the game to resolve that. I want to explore an area? Depending on the system that’s still got lots of support.

Substitution code to resolve the words on the map? Bugger that.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

When the outcome matters and is uncertain, let the dice decide. Don’t roll dice unless you need to. If I was GMing for a player of a ranger tracking a deer in a forest, I would never make the player roll to succeed. Track orcs across rocky ground with a three day head start? Then the dice come out.

So this is a straight simulationist definition of fairness. It says that the closer the ruling is to the way the "real" world would work, the fairer it is. It is certainly one way to play.

Personally, I'm more in favor of a version of fairness which is based on every player having an equal amount of fun. That can often conflict with a simulationist basis of fairness. As an example, if some characters are melee combatants, and some are ranged snipers, the simulationist POV says that the melee fighters will die way more often than the ranged ones.

This is bit like the difference between equality and equity. Simualtionism emphasizes equality -- the same rules apply to everyone equally and if that penalizes a certain style of play and makes the players who like that style of play have less fun, then so be it. For me, I prefer to make rulings that are less about "how would the physics work" and more "does his make the game more fun for all".

Following on from my example of ranged versus melee, I would tend to make rulings that penalize ranged combat more than melee (e.g. increasing range penalties, making armor resist piercing more than was historical, ...) Nothing huge, but rather than the proposed method of only considering what makes the most accurate simulation, and hoping that that makes the game joyful (an excellent goal!) I prefer to cut out the middle goal and go straight for a ruling that makes the game more fun for everyone.

So:
"Track orcs across rocky ground with a three day head start?"
A low level ranger will almost certainly fail. So a simulationist approach sets the difficulty so high it auto-fails, or just says 'no'. The goal would then be to have fun by fining another way to achieve the goal. My approach would generally be to rule it much easier than it actually is, because my players will have more joy getting to the orcs immediately than searching around for other methods.

"a ranger tracking a deer in a forest"
If there is joyful outcome to failure, sure, roll! Again, the same criterion as above. If the fun is finding the deer and dealing with it, go right there. If not, roll and if there's a failure, find the fun in alternative options.

In general, I look first for the fun (the joy) and then see if a purely simulationist ruling fits that. If so, great, because equality is easier to remember and implement than equity. But if not, I'll tweak the rule, because equity is a better end goal than equality.

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“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

― Anatole France

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

So this is a straight simulationist definition of fairness.

No.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

<edit: Deleted as Pointless>