Unpopular opinions go here

[soviet]

Restating the same unpopular opinions multiple times isnt necessary.

You keep saying this

 

[Jd Smith1]

As would I, as the player had by then established reloading as a SOP.

Had that SOP not been established, however, I-as-GM wouldn't assume anything.

I'm the same way. Jot the policy down on your sheet, and its never a problem. Player SOPs, Party SOPs, they cut out a lot of drudgery while keeping useful detail in the game.

I should note that in my 30+ years as a police officer, I lost count of the times I've inspected my officers and found unloaded weapons. Or a round not in the chamber of a sidearm, backup, or patrol rifle. Or mags only half-full. Or when I commanded investigators, the times they forgot their sidearm at home.

 

[Hussar]

Last time I ran a game at my FLGS, Deadlands, one of the players would go out of their way to tell me he was reloading his pistol at the end of every encounter. After he did this the third time, I told him it was unnecessary. "Your character is a professional gunfighter, and I will always assume he reloads his weapons once a fight has ended." I can only assume he's had a GM who would say, "Hur! Hur! You didn't say your reloaded."

I’d say that this sort of thing is really common. It’s not the player being a dick. Nor is the dm.

But because of prior experience, people internalize certain play behaviour and think it’s normal. Which leads to all sorts of disconnects when changing tables.

One I particularly notice is players being very coy about their goals. They’ll break down their actions into tiny steps and then laboriously walk through every step because they presume that the dm will “challenge” their plans because dms are supposed to provide the challenge, right?

Which tends to slam right up against my preference of “yes and” where I just tell you you succeed and then build on that. You want to scout the enemy camp? Any plan you come up with that’s even halfway reasonable will automatically work. Go for it. I’ll let you know what you find and now you can make informed plans.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I call this "Zipper GMing."

"You never specified you zipped up your zipper when you got dressed, so when you hit the dirt you skinned your dinkie and you now have -2 on all rolls."

Opinion: a skinned dinkie would add up to much more than -2.

 

[MGibster]

I’d say that this sort of thing is really common. It’s not the player being a dick. Nor is the dm.

Oh, no. I didn't mean to imply the player at my table was being a dick. Whatever DM instilled in him a need to specifically make sure I knew he was reloading between fights was the dick.

Which tends to slam right up against my preference of “yes and” where I just tell you you succeed and then build on that. You want to scout the enemy camp? Any plan you come up with that’s even halfway reasonable will automatically work. Go for it. I’ll let you know what you find and now you can make informed plans.

Same here. I can't remember the last time a player tried to weaponize yes, and? so I just roll with it.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Most RPGs don’t stand up to rigid scrutiny out of the box with regard to verisimilitude and consistency; those that do are not that fun.

Breathing life into the game is the responsibility of the players. Disparate groups will have disparate results with the game. This is not the whole of it; but the players and their expectations account for a ton of variance.

 

[Pedantic]

I’d say that this sort of thing is really common. It’s not the player being a dick. Nor is the dm.

But because of prior experience, people internalize certain play behaviour and think it’s normal. Which leads to all sorts of disconnects when changing tables.

One I particularly notice is players being very coy about their goals. They’ll break down their actions into tiny steps and then laboriously walk through every step because they presume that the dm will “challenge” their plans because dms are supposed to provide the challenge, right?

Which tends to slam right up against my preference of “yes and” where I just tell you you succeed and then build on that. You want to scout the enemy camp? Any plan you come up with that’s even halfway reasonable will automatically work. Go for it. I’ll let you know what you find and now you can make informed plans.

My tastes and preferences as a GM and a player diverge significantly here. On the one hand, reloading isn't interesting to me and I'd file pretty neatly under assumed competence, and the sort of thing you're suggesting is frankly mostly what I do when I'm running games, because it's what the players expect. I haven't managed to boil down my gaming manifesto to a distributable leaflet that can be internalized effectively during session zero yet, so I find it easier to deliver what the players seem to want.

On the other hand, when I'm a player, I don't generally want a DM to affirm my planning as you're proposing, and if I'm honest, I'd much prefer not to tell my GM the entirety of "what I'm trying to achieve." Not for a fundamental reason of trust, just because I don't particularly want the entirety of the plan to have any impact on the adjudication thereof. Te revelation of my intent should be recognized in my success, or in ruefully explaining I'd been trying to achieve this, and will now have to improvise.

 

[Guest 7042500]

Opinion: a skinned dinkie would add up to much more than -2.

Unpopular opinion: my dinkie is mightier than yours.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

On the other hand, when I'm a player, I don't generally want a DM to affirm my planning as you're proposing, and if I'm honest, I'd much prefer not to tell my GM the entirety of "what I'm trying to achieve." Not for a fundamental reason of trust, just because I don't particularly want the entirety of the plan to have any impact on the adjudication thereof. Te revelation of my intent should be recognized in my success, or in ruefully explaining I'd been trying to achieve this, and will now have to improvise.

I can think of 2-3 times in my decades of GMing- and a couple times as a player- where I can say players spilling the beans ahead of time very possibly could have affected the outcome, and DEFINITELY would have diminished the impact of the moment as they occurred in real time.

So I agree that sharing info piecemeal is sometimes the absolute best way to handle things.

 

[Guest 7042500]

But sometimes you want to be straightforward. It's much easier for me to answer "is there someplace to hide" versus "what's in the room," assuming you're trying to hide.