Waibel's Rule of Interpretation (aka "How to Interpret the Rules")

The only CORRECT interpretation is the one I say!

The sooner the rest of the world gets that, the sooner we can all sit down and have fun...and end all fantasy rpg forum arguments everywhere.

heheheh.

[Seliousry though, nice chart. ]

 

[GMforPowergamers]

First, I'm not even sure that is possible for a DM to be wrong about this.

any person can be wrong... including the DM (IN A COOP GAME LIKE OURS)

If most manticores live in the desert, it doesn't imply they all do.

no but the DM made a mistake and did not know that....

Secondly, you are missing the point. The biggest problem with the player behavior is that they actually never considered whether or not they had any way to evaluate whether or not the DM was wrong, but considered it their prerogative to question it anyway.

my friends are free to question me when ever they like...

The biggest problem was that a player with actual skill as a player would probably have never been able to discover you'd made a mistake, but would instead have been left with a minor mystery - "Why is there a manticore in the forest?" You as the GM would have only been able to pick up on the player confusion through character activity, and only been able to infer that the player thought that manticore's were unusual in the forest by the sort of propositions that the player was making on behalf of the character.

whoa.... in a thread where I keep being told I am being to know it alley and telling people how to game where do you come off commenting on any player skill with no info?

a player with actual skill as a player

What my example is intended to show is the player failing to engage the setting,

no he only failed to do so the way your group does it... by my standard it was fine...

This is a player that literally knows everything about RPGs but is repeatedly demonstrating that the don't know how to play an RPG.

read that again... and realize you are talking about a fellow gamer you have never met nor did you even see what happened, and to make things worse the only side you have for learning info admits HE not the player made a mistake....

They have a lot of experience manipulating RPG metagames, although even then, not artfully or respectfully but crudely and rudely, but never really show any desire to actually play the RPG.

where are you getting this from??!?!?!!?

If a player is fishing to determine whether the DM is improving or using prepared ideas, that itself is poor play on the part of the player.

And it's poor play on the part of the GM if you can as a player actually reliably detect the difference.

you just openly insulted me and my players, and a dozen other people I know...

FULL STOP...

WHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE SUCH JUDGMENTS???

Good improv feels and seems a solid as prepared text, because otherwise it's very hard to avoid the game being disrupted by metagaming.

and some times that distracs and sometimes it rocks...

if in the middle of my game I stall for a moment and say something silly like "When you finish or need more help come find me I have a job for you"
and one of my players jokes "Oh, is it on my mini map as a mission now?" we can all joke for a moment then keep going...

This is particularly important when mysteries are to be solved. For example, you don't want the gardener to be revealed as having no information of importance and no relation to a crime because it's clear that the gardener is an unnamed PC you forgot to make notes on.)

sometimes I just openly say things like that... and my PC love my games for it.

during mystery....

PC1 "Hey, I bet the gardner saw something, lets go question him..."
Me "To be honest I didn't think of a gardner at all, so you go question him, he knows nothing and then..."
PC1 "OK, then lets try..."

I don't make my players waste time on every false lead they invent... sometimes it's ok or fun, and sometimes it's just easier to say "Oops"

In other words, good players aren't trying to trip the GM up in the metagame because they want to experience the joy of the game itself and have learned to value and enjoy the game itself. The 'Luke' player in my example, just can't.

so maybe the GM could talk to the luke player like a grown adult and friend and ask "Why don't you get where I'm going?" or just come out and say "Trust me this is leading somewhere..."

He can't let go of the metagame. It's probably for that hypothetical player, the whole of the game.

well I can't address your hypothetical player I can give you many good examples that are similar if you want to talk about real people... I can even tell you what made me snap at a dark sun game once and literally (no really literally) bang my head on the table.

[sblock]we started in a caravan pulled by horses with wagons he described as ones they gypsys in ravonloft use... three of them and ten men going two weeks through the desert. One of the first encounters we had was with kobolds(it might have been the 3rd or 4th but it was early), and the very next encounter was with a gnome illusionist... when I asked why he was so open about his magic (I was a defiler and hideing it at the time) he said he didn't know why he would hide it. The final straw was that night when we set down to camp and I said my rations were low... the DM said "Yea I don't track that stuff you always have just enough water and food no matter what..." thud my head hit the table as another player asked him if he had ever read anything on darksun...[/sblock]

And as a DM, with a player that only enjoys the metagame, you are deprived of one the greatest joys of GMing - watching your players play.

except I have never met anyone like this player you describe, and as a DM who runs for players that not only am I ok with questioning me, but I actively incourage new players to do so, I think maybe you have built a strawman...

Not only that, but in all my experience, a person that defaults to metagame play also defaults to manipulating you as a person in order to solve problems, rather than defaulting to manipulating the shared imaginary space. And I have to say, dealing with a person that is all the time trying to bully me, brow beat me, rules lawyer me, cheat the dice, read me, get me to explain IC things OOC, wheedle me, conjole me, and so forth is just plain tiring.

and again you have read into our examples things not there... no one said anyone did half that, the Player asked a damn question...

No, he was wrong. If you the DM don't care what the Monster Manual says about manticore habitat, it's simply not operable. Manticores live wherever you want them to live. That's the actual rules. Favored terrain isn't a binding contract. It isn't steam rolling a player to say he found a manticore in a forest. It would be steam rolling a player to tell him he hated manticores and therefore had to fight the manticore, or anything else to do with his player. But an attempt to tell a DM that Manticores aren't found in forests is steam rolling a DM, and a DM resisting that is not rolling over his players but just avoiding being rolled over.

the steam rolling was not acknowledging a fellow rpg fan's feelings and interests and instead just push past it...

Again, the problem here isn't players speaking up. I welcome players speaking up. The problem is in this case, the player has no way to evaluate that this is an oversight and even if they suspect it might be an oversight, a skilled player's first instincts are going to be to determine if it makes sense for some unknown reason. A monster located outside its favored terrain isn't 'wrong' and certainly not '100% wrong'.

but you have no idea what motivated the player to bring it up, all you know is the DM blames himself for his reaction... so how can you know if it was a good bring up or a bad one??

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Hussar wants to make a contrast between speaking up and challenging the GM and passively consuming the GM's game. For me, the biggest tragedy of drawing that contrast isn't just that it's wrong and unnecessary, but that it's entirely got the problem reversed. Actually playing the game is the opposite of passive consumption of the game, but the most engaged you can possibly be in the game. Challenging the GM about whether manticores ought to appear in a forest is absolute and complete failure to be engaged in the game. You didn't just miss the bull's eye. You missed the whole barn.

maybe you don't get it...

have you ever been in a game with open dialog out of game where the DM not only listens to player input but actively encourages it? Have you ever been in a game where when the player speaks up and says "But X says Y not what you said." the DM says "Thanks, I forgot that, your right." and keeps going?

I have been, and those games are great too

 

[BryonD]

FULL STOP...

WHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE SUCH JUDGMENTS???

Based on my years of experience and frequent compliments from numerous players past, I hereby give Celebrim the right to make this judgement regarding how to make the overall game experience better.

 

[BryonD]

maybe you don't get it...

have you ever been in a game with open dialog out of game where the DM not only listens to player input but actively encourages it? Have you ever been in a game where when the player speaks up and says "But X says Y not what you said." the DM says "Thanks, I forgot that, your right." and keeps going?

I have been, and those games are great too

So... the manticore stayed in the forest then.

cool

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So... the manticore stayed in the forest then.

cool

well that wasn't my story, but I could go either way with it...


edit: if a player really cared enough about any monster that he really wanted to use the default fluff I would not mind taking a minute or two to recast my fight...

 

[Sacrosanct]

all I know is if I as the DM put a manticore in the forest because I thought it was cool, and a player engaged in, and I quote, "lengthy argument" to prove how I was wrong on something as minor as that, using metaknowledge to boot, that's not having an open discussion. That's them being an

AFAIC, it shouldn't have gone any further than this:

"I thought manticores only lived in deserts?"
"no, they don't, and that would be player knowledge anyway."
"OK"

in fact, I would go so far as to say such behavior goes against the spirit of the game. In fact, I know so because that was explicitly addressed in the 1e DMG

 

[Celebrim]

any person can be wrong... including the DM (IN A COOP GAME LIKE OURS)

Yes, certainly, but in this case the action was one which I don't think it is possible for a GM to be wrong about. We're not even dealing of a case of a red dragon in a room with no exits big enough to let the red dragon out, which is unartful when it happens by accident, but is certainly never wrong. A manticore not in a desert by accident isn't even bad DMing.

no but the DM made a mistake and did not know that....

So? Not knowing what the favored terrain of a monster happens to be does not make placing that monster outside of that favored terrain wrong.

my friends are free to question me when ever they like...

Sure. But I don't see your point. Sometimes questioning is good. Sometimes it is not. This particular case seems pretty clearly in the not category. To illustrate my point so people could tell the difference between the two, I wrote a little script intended to be humorous, showing how - even if you have the right to question a GM, and even if your information is correct - you can still be wrong.

whoa.... in a thread where I keep being told I am being to know it alley and telling people how to game where do you come off commenting on any player skill with no info?

Well, I don't recall saying anything to you personally, but yes, I think I can evaluate skill in a RPer just as I can evaluate skill in a singer or a painter. As for no info, I certainly wouldn't be commenting on the situation if someone hadn't described it.

no he only failed to do so the way your group does it... by my standard it was fine...

No comment then.

read that again... and realize you are talking about a fellow gamer you have never met nor did you even see what happened, and to make things worse the only side you have for learning info admits HE not the player made a mistake....

Read that again, and realize you are talking about me talking about the fictional player of 'Luke' in my example intend to illustrate how questioning the GM could be poor play. That's the example where I have enough information to draw the conclusions I made regarding the player's behavior.

where are you getting this from??!?!?!!?

From the example I wrote.

you just openly insulted me and my players, and a dozen other people I know...

FULL STOP...

So, you're telling me that as players you are all the time trying to wheedle out of a GM whether he made something up on the spot or whether he had planned it ahead of time, and that conversely as the GM you never see any reason to hide this information? And your insulted because I see that as poor play, full stop? There isn't much I can do about that.

WHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE SUCH JUDGMENTS???

You are of the mistaken impression that someone has to grant me the right.

After blowing your top though with all your big capital letters, you just get a little bit weird.

if in the middle of my game I stall for a moment and say something silly like "When you finish or need more help come find me I have a job for you"
and one of my players jokes "Oh, is it on my mini map as a mission now?" we can all joke for a moment then keep going...

sometimes I just openly say things like that... and my PC love my games for it.

during mystery....

PC1 "Hey, I bet the gardner saw something, lets go question him..."
Me "To be honest I didn't think of a gardner at all, so you go question him, he knows nothing and then..."
PC1 "OK, then lets try..."

I don't make my players waste time on every false lead they invent... sometimes it's ok or fun, and sometimes it's just easier to say "Oops"

so maybe the GM could talk to the luke player like a grown adult and friend and ask "Why don't you get where I'm going?" or just come out and say "Trust me this is leading somewhere..."

To begin with, a lot these suggestions you are making you'll find me utilizing in my posts or my example script as a way to try to deal with situations that are going wrong and put them back on the right track. What you are missing is that you shouldn't have to tell your grown up adult friend, "Trust me this is leading somewhere." Your grown up adult friend if he's really adult friend shouldn't be such a whiny baby that needs his hand held and explicit reassurance all the time. I mean it's great and all that you have the patience to keep patting his hand every time he doesn't know where this is going, but you know, maybe it would be great if you demanded as much maturity from the players as you are insisting is there from the DM. Unless you think the example Luke is exhibiting good form and manners, in which case, again, I have no response I can make to that.

I can even tell you what made me snap at a dark sun game once and literally (no really literally) bang my head on the table.

Yeah, speaking of maturity from the players... what exact conclusions do you want me to draw from that? I'm sorry your bad experiences with DMs make you 'snap' and force you to do things that my nine year olds would get a scolding for doing. I hope you have better experiences in the future.

except I have never met anyone like this player you describe

Ok...

the steam rolling was not acknowledging a fellow rpg fan's feelings and interests and instead just push past it...

He has feelings about manticores showing up in the desert that can't be smoothed over by any of the dozens of plausible explanations for why he's observed a manticore outside the desert, and further those feelings compel him to bluntly challenge DM's placement of the monster??? Seriously? It doesn't matter what compelled the player to bring it up. I don't know how much more obvious it can be that responding to what the DM describes by challenging his right to describe it and demanding he retract it is not functional or attractive play by the player, nor can I imagine a more trivial example to illustrate the point than the one Hussar provided me with of a player demanding that manticore's not appear in forests because their favored terrain is desert. The powers of my imagination couldn't have come up with such a straw man example. If I'd imagined it, I would have rejected it as too absurd to believe. There is another thread about whether RPGs are watchable. Well, if this happened during a big formal podcast with an audience in the room, I'd hang my head in shame to be involved with. As a member of the audience, my feelings would provoke a desire for me to leave the room in embarrassment for the people on the stage. It's worst sort of example of rules lawyerish play, worthy of appearing in a comedy movie.

Sorry you find that opinion insulting, but I suspect I'm not going to prove to be all that unique in that regard to this judgment. Please if you are invited to perform a role-playing game for a large audience, for your sake, don't hold in your mind that this sort of rules lawyering and challenging the DM is an example of skillful play by a player at a table.

 

[BryonD]

well that wasn't my story, but I could go either way with it...


edit: if a player really cared enough about any monster that he really wanted to use the default fluff I would not mind taking a minute or two to recast my fight...

So the rest of the players sit around for one or two minutes so that they can play something you threw together in one or two minutes instead of what you had ready

or

the rest of the players sit around for however long it actually takes



Seriously, I realize it wasn't your story, but you are taking great offense to replies that strongly lean on that specific example.
You have moved the goal posts to something that suggests "no my AC is 17" "Oh. it did miss then, my bad" ...keep going.... from fundamental changes to the narrative. It is a complete forfeit on the existing conversation.

 

[Hussar]

Good DMing 101 would still say: Take the mistake and make something AWESOME out of it.
It would also say: Don't let a player drag down the game over a silly mistake.


It seems to be going over your head that we get it. We understand that in this specific case it was a mistake. It doesn't matter.

/snip
Again, just WOW.
Who said anything about "covering it up?"
That is a really sad perspective.


All I can say it is obvious to me that you truly have no idea what you are missing out on.

So be it.

Umm, you said to cover it up. The bolded bit in the quote is saying you should take a mistake and instead of simply admitting a mistake, you should "make something AWESOME out of it."

But, whether or not I'm missing out on something is just another example of you trying to tell me that I'm doing it wrong. Again, I've been very careful to not talk about anyone else's table and ONLY talk about what I want. That you apparently can't simply accept that I have a great time doing it differently is your problem, not mine.

 

[BryonD]

Umm, you said to cover it up. The bolded bit in the quote is saying you should take a mistake and instead of simply admitting a mistake, you should "make something AWESOME out of it."

But, whether or not I'm missing out on something is just another example of you trying to tell me that I'm doing it wrong.

Yep you are missing something

You are missing something very important.

Again, I've been very careful to not talk about anyone else's table and ONLY talk about what I want. That you apparently can't simply accept that I have a great time doing it differently is your problem, not mine.

I'm sorry, why are you in the conversation then?
As I have already pointed out you have provided TWO examples (in this thread alone) of negative experiences. So it is not reasonable to frame yourself as an authority on avoiding them.

There is a question at hand regarding how to not have those experiences.
So if you are not an authority on avoiding them and you are not interested in methods that do, why are you participating in a conversation on avoiding them?