Players, GMs, and "My character"...

[Dausuul]

So tell me, is that wrong in your opinion?

It depends on how you react when one of the players says, "No, my PC wouldn't do that. Here's what I think he'd do."

 

[Celebrim]

My games benefit significantly when I provide some narration that helps frame the upcoming session and glosses over stuff that would take a long time to play out during the session in minute detail and would, ultimately, not be very engaging for the group as a whole.

I'm not saying you can't jump to a 'Bang'. I'm just saying you have to take care that you aren't playing the PC's as you do it.

Let me give an example of what I'm talking about to see if I'm really at odds with most of the posters in this thread:

Good idea.

"Over the course of the next week you grow familiar with Stinkport. You had already indicated that you were fine to stay at the Barnacled Anchor Inn because the innkeeper, Belik, regarded you as heroes for slaying so many of the accursed Lizardmen that slew his brother. As such he's cutting you a low rate on your rooms.

He's also cutting Grongar a low rate on ale, which Grongar proceeds to consume in large quantities. Grongar is also cutting a swath of conquest through most of the serving wenches as the week progresses. Belik is fairly tolerant of Grongar's behavior in general as many other patrons are coming into the Anchor to hear his tales from the swamp. Amid the debauchery, Grongar hears from some of the wenches that it's been a while since they were "with a proper man since the sailors don't seem to come to town much anymore". He also picks up from some of the other patrons that the Coast Road to Kingsport across the border with Faldren is dangerous and trade is light.

Meanwhile Tricksy has been at the Temple of Shaldra, Goddess of Knowledge. There he meets the head archivist, a female elf name Kaella. After stumbling over their initial meeting she points Tricksy to a cramped room crammed with maps and books, which he dives into with relish. Among other things he finds some documents referring to the new king of Faldren who ascended the throne a couple of years ago. It seems that since that time the area has been beset by more pirates than usual. A look through some of the maps shows a multitude of small islands located off the coast within a couple days sail of Stinkport.

Snevish spends the majority of his time meandering through the Merchant Quarter and the Docks looking for a place to sell some of the Drake Blood that he collected in the Swamp. He is told that there is little market for it here but there might be at the University in Kingsport or at the College of Arcanum on the island of Skyfall. But the prices he is quoted here are terribly low. When he asks further about that he's told that the merchants traveling the Coast Road have high overhead because they must hire large numbers of guards. The ship captains are clearly afraid to venture west toward Skyfall due to an increase in piracy. Both the merchant caravans and the ship captains seem interested in hiring the party as protection for their respective ventures.

I consider the bolded sections problimatic. In those sections you are narrating player action. In my experience, when you do this you are often going to cause players to feel like they are mere observers in the game, and you are eventually going to run up into a situation where the player is going to say, "My character would never do that." And with some player personalities that's going to happen sooner rather than later.

Critiquing the specific example further, while I don't have a problem with the general approach of a text dump to set the scene or with a text dump occuring in an email for the sake of avoiding slow sessions, I don't think you've achieved enough here to justify the overall approach. I don't think you can justify from the example the risk involved in narrating player action. Despite the text dump, you haven't actually cut to a bang. If I'm your player, when the session starts, I'm going to want to continue investigating the very things you've glossed over. If I'm Grongar, I'm going to want to enter a conversation with a wench I've just bedded to see if I can get details that are missing in your summary. If I'm Tricksy, I'm going to want to initiate an RP with Kaella to try to smooth over what you've described as a somewhat rocky relationship in the hopes of obtaining a stronger ally, and I'm going to want to more information about this king of Faldren. And if I'm Snevish I'm going to think you completely gypped my character by providing him less RP oppurtunities and chances to develop alliances than you have the other two characters, so I'm probably going to try to see if I can't make up for that by finding something more profitable to do than what you made me do. So, all the stuff that you glossed over (with the exception of the details of Grognar's intimacies) are stuff you'll likely have to redo in session anyway.

An, equally important, we are still no closer to an exciting story element than before even if we don't. What you've actually cut to isn't a 'bang', but rather a something that is at best going to be an in character conversation between the player's as they try to hash out what they want to do next and which at worst is going to be an out of character argument. This isn't a 'bang'. So, if all you've achieved from a text wall is a bit of artful setting description leading to a player inquiry or decision, why not just limit yourself to a setting description? What do you actually gain here by including player action in the setting description?

You've made reasonable assumptions about the likely path of play, and if your players are nice guys and have no real pet peeve with the DM playing their characters, this will likely get passed over. But you can get into big trouble making assumptions about how characters will behave because what seems reasonable to you might not seem reasonable to the player and this will be particularly true if you decide anything that the character did based on your assumptions will have any real consequence. If Grognar finds he's acquired a social disease or made some wench pregnant, I wouldn't be surprised if Grognar's player finds your decisions having consequences that effect him to be unfair.

 

[Rel]

It depends on how you react when one of the players says, "No, my PC wouldn't do that. Here's what I think he'd do."

It's pretty rare that one of my players says, "No, my PC wouldn't do that. Here's what I think he'd do." More often they will says, "Ok, and also I do this..."

But, when it happens, I pretty much always say, "Ok that sounds fine." Sometimes I'll say, "I felt it was a reasonable assumption based on *personality trait X*. For future reference, can you clarify *personality trait X* so that I can create opportunities for you to roleplay that?"

 

[ExploderWizard]

So tell me, is that wrong in your opinion?

No, because..........

1) This is happening outside of active play.

2) The player can respond to and address anything they might have an issue with before the next session right?


I would probably send a blanket message asking how each of their characters spent the week in Stinkport and give them the essential info based on that or just make it up like you did if I didn't get any answers.

 

[ExploderWizard]

To try and clarify a bit, in the end, I just don't see any real difference between saying:

1) Sorry, Joe, your character has to find a reason to go on the adventure to save the princess; vs
2) Sure, Joe, you don't have to go save the princess! But if you don't, you can't play.

Easy.

1) = you WILL play my way.

2)= If you cannot accept what the rest of the group wants to to you are free to pass on this adventure.

What I do NOT agree with is the idea that the DM is obligated to entertain special snowflakes when such players are too selfish to consider the rest of the group.

 

[Rel]

An, equally important, we are still no closer to an exciting story element than before even if we don't. What you've actually cut to isn't a 'bang', but rather a something that is at best going to be an in character conversation between the player's as they try to hash out what they want to do next and which at worst is going to be an out of character argument. This isn't a 'bang'. So, if all you've achieved from a text wall is a bit of artful setting description leading to a player inquiry or decision, why not just limit yourself to a setting description? What do you actually gain here by including player action in the setting description?

Well first, this theoretical e-mail would not exist in a vacuum. I'm assuming that there will be follow up e-mails that will have the players asking questions and otherwise fleshing out the bare bones agendas that I've assumed for them. The point is to get them to make a decision about what they plan to do next in terms of adventuring since that's what will require more preparation on my part.

What I gain is that I'm jump starting the roleplaying and cutting out loads of (IMO) extraneous "town exploration" stuff that is probably going to take a lot of time and ultimately not be terribly interesting. My experience is that in situations where the party can split up and pursue individual agendas that we can get bogged down with each person taking time to have lengthy conversations with NPC's that are not terribly engaging for the rest of the group. So I'm covering part of that in broad strokes and moved them along the path toward something more interesting.

You've made reasonable assumptions about the likely path of play, and if your players are nice guys and have no real pet peeve with the DM playing their characters, this will likely get passed over. But you can get into big trouble making assumptions about how characters will behave because what seems reasonable to you might not seem reasonable to the player and this will be particularly true if you decide anything that the character did based on your assumptions will have any real consequence. If Grognar finds he's acquired a social disease or made some wench pregnant, I wouldn't be surprised if Grognar's player finds your decisions having consequences that effect him to be unfair.

I do indeed have "nice guys" as players and they don't seem to have any pet peeves about me making assumptions regarding what their characters would do. I think that the reason they are tolerant of it is because I don't abuse that authority. It probably helps that we've been gaming together for upwards of 15 years and so we just kind of "get" each other.

As for there being consequences for actions the players undertook while I narrated them, I promise that Grongar got the Half-Orc Clap before he ever set foot in Stinkport!

I've been GMing for a long, long time and I guess I've just never seen a problem with a bit of exposition to move things along, provided that I do so with the understanding that if a player flat out says, "My character wouldn't do that." then I'm willing to back off. I think that for situations like this it's a lesser evil than to have much of the group bored while a subset of the group painstakingly asks every question they can conceive of from some NPC that they met on the street.

 

[MrMyth]

Easy.

1) = you WILL play my way.

2)= If you cannot accept what the rest of the group wants to to you are free to pass on this adventure.

Well yeah, but isn't "you can walk away from this table" equally a choice in the first example as well? Even if I don't announce it out loud, when I say, "Seriously, Joe, your character needs to find a reason to go on this adventure", I'm not threatening to tie Joe to a chair and forcibly narrate his character's actions. I'm saying that if he doesn't do that, he doesn't participate in the adventure. The fact that he can go ahead and leave is pretty much just understood.

 

[Lanefan]

Two ways to handle this;
1) Let the PC's work it out. If they insist on fighting each other let the other players know that the time spent on their personal squabble will detract from the overall adventure time actually earning XP and loot. Other players may implement internal sanctions against this kind of behavior up to and including fragging the instigator.

Ayup.

I say just let 'em fight if they want to...but with a strong caveat that you have to have the right players for this to work; players who are capable of separating in-game actions (after lengthy plotting, Jane's character just assassinated Joe's character) from out-of-game emotions (Jane and Joe are laughing about it and are still good friends).

Eventually, the adventuring gets done...and in the meantime, I get lots of free entertainment I don't have to design. Benefits all round...

Lanefan

 

[Celebrim]

Well first, this theoretical e-mail would not exist in a vacuum. I'm assuming that there will be follow up e-mails that will have the players asking questions and otherwise fleshing out the bare bones agendas that I've assumed for them.

At this point though, you are practically doing 'play by post'. If we have the assumption here of a give and take exchange of information prior to the session, why not send out an initial email describing the town and ask the player's what their agenda will be rather than assuming for them? What do you actually gain by setting the agenda?

What I gain is that I'm jump starting the roleplaying and cutting out loads of (IMO) extraneous "town exploration" stuff that is probably going to take a lot of time and ultimately not be terribly interesting.

I get that you are cutting out some small drama town exploration stuff that your group doesn't find that interesting. I don't get how you see that as also 'jump starting the role playing'. Sure the point is to short cut past alot of role playing that you don't find all that terribly interesting in favor of something else?

My experience is that in situations where the party can split up and pursue individual agendas that we can get bogged down with each person taking time to have lengthy conversations with NPC's that are not terribly engaging for the rest of the group. So I'm covering part of that in broad strokes and moved them along the path toward something more interesting.

Ok, sure, I understand cutting to the bang. And, I understand handling invididual one on one RP in a format outside that of the group session. I still don't get how you gain any advantage by making assumptions about the player's actions and agenda when it would be so easy to either just not make that assumption or to prompt the players for their actual agenda at the start of the 'play by post' session you describe.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Well yeah, but isn't "you can walk away from this table" equally a choice in the first example as well? Even if I don't announce it out loud, when I say, "Seriously, Joe, your character needs to find a reason to go on this adventure", I'm not threatening to tie Joe to a chair and forcibly narrate his character's actions. I'm saying that if he doesn't do that, he doesn't participate in the adventure. The fact that he can go ahead and leave is pretty much just understood.

In that sense yes it boils down to the same thing-one person decides that it is up to everyone else to entertain him/her in a desired manner and is unwilling to consider the desires of anyone else. These are player types the group is better off without.


At one time long ago a new person joined our local gaming club and ran a campaign for us. It was very heavy handed and at one point he actually addressed the group and said: " This is my campaign and you will do exactly as I say!!"

This was followed by the sounds of dice being put away and the rest of us getting up and leaving the table. The DM eventually learned how to get along with people better and became a good friend but that game was toast.