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aldantefax posted:If you’re playing with folks who have wide swings in condition from one session to another and also people aren’t able to talk openly about how they’re feeling in the moment, then that is beyond the scope of game rules constructs; that is, again, a social construct type issue. I mean, ok, but I'm not sure that if you're talking about "learning to play TTRPGs" you can equate that with "learning the rules of a TTRPG". The social side is part of the hobby, and the odd social dynamics it can create are distinct enough from regular social interaction that I'm not sure it's valid to shunt them to the side. As you can see from "LARP-lifers", people can put a lot more investment into an TTRPG than they will regular social interaction, in part because of the promise of being able to escape their own social limits. Ironically, these are also the limits that RPGs are worst at allowing escape from, because you need to already have them to make the TTRPG happen. (My words over Nathan Pyle's art..)  quote:It also is not to be taken as a universal constant for every table. Assuming that it is, and then taking that assumption and not having a conversation is, in my opinion, foul play. I mean, I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but "have a conversation" just sounds like a threat when used this way, in the same way that your boss asks to have a conversation if things aren't going well. Because it's very predictable how that conversation will go: you will be asked what your problem is, no-one else in the group will share that problem or admit to it, and you will be told that you cannot expect everyone else to change for you and thus to either put up and shut up or leave. This is pretty much something everyone's already learned in school. quote:It is worth asking, sincerely and openly: why do people come to a table to play at all? If they can’t answer that question honestly, then how can anybody expect to be able to have any kind of enduring, quality social experience? That’s a serious question to think about. We all would have much better experiences at the table, learn, and play much better if that conversation was constantly revisited and refreshed with care and respect. Except that nobody would want to hear the actual answers, which is that there's always a ton of social compromise going on, because there's social compromise in every social situation and the first rule of Everything Club is that you don't mention it. Heck, that's likely why D&D 5e took the step of becoming more vague and generic: it didn't try to be a distinct system like 4e did, it just became the thing that's easiest to compromise on. But until we get to the day when a group can actually accept players saying "I'm just playing because you guys play and I want to keep in contact with you", "I'm just playing 5e until this campaign ends because I might get to run Werewolf next" (I had this in mind because there was an extremely relevant rant about it posted on Reddit) without drama then that conversation probably can't happen.
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May 3, 2023 20:57
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Those are matters of personal perception and opinion, and projections of what based on some outside factors the actual situation is without having a meaningful conversation. To your last example, during enforced lockdown when nobody locally could go anywhere in person or do anything, I did in fact run games where people were very clear it was an in-between until things became safer and their regular groups could resume in-person gameplay, and when that time came, those people left the group. Similarly, I have also had conversations with humans who are there purely for the social experience and they like playing because it's a social activity to stay in contact with. Those groups already exist. "It's very predictable about how a conversation will go" is not leveraging the principles of Nonviolent Communication, which I recommend you (hyphz) consider reading. When I have conversations, they don't sound like threats to people that I have said conversations with - they are honest and open and respectful of their privacy to understand what their needs are for that moment in time. At tables that I play and run in, often I prioritize the safety of the individual social experience and also the group social experience. This does indeed sound like a cultural thing, but is fairly widespread. People are conflict-averse and also vulnerability-averse because to show emotional vulnerability is often shunned by wider society. To be clear, the social dynamics of people having recurring external issues and then being unable to communicate vulnerabilities and needs and also come to the table disengaged is the thing that no amount of rules can have direct control over. You need to be able to have explicit and clear conversations about these kinds of things, and if this is a terrifying prospect for a social group, again, that is something that a game itself would be hard pressed to provide an easy answer for. The social dynamics of a group coming together to do any kind of intimate activity for a meaningful amount of time together is not unique to TTRPGs. To invert what you yourself mention, hyphz: if people are willing to escape their social limitations inside of the game but also carry forward an external social expectation that nobody will be able to handle talking with one another, then they're not really successful at escaping those limitations. To my eyes, this is a perception that is deep-seated and not in good faith - it does not respect the people at the table to brush aside this sentiment. Yes, it does take some amount of sincerity, courage, respect, and tact to be able to have a healthy conversation about how someone is feeling on a regular basis, particularly if you're playing with them for long periods of time. However, this is again something that is speaking to a broader "how do you get humans to actually be open with one another in a social context" rather than specifically TTRPGs - replace it with a game of soccer or basketball, or a knitting club, or watching movies together, and you will find the same kinds of social issues. If, as a fellow participant in that social experience, everybody does want to encourage better social safety mechanisms, the tools to do so at the table are available, but they are not TTRPG specific and matter more with the people you're having any kind of social experience with. I've mentioned already a few non-specific tools regarding TTRPGs including Nonviolent Communication, and more specific narrative tools like Kutt, X-Card, Lines and Veils, and also putting in intentional checkpoints in longer form play can all be used generally, rather than specifically to TTRPGs. I would respectfully and openly provide a challenge for anybody who shares this kind of perception that hyphz details to try having more conversations in a non-threatening way not just in a TTRPG context, but in general for social engagements. If the underlying topics that Nuns with Guns originally posited were "learn how to play well, and play well with one another" are still relevant to this conversation, then this is something to work on in the present and moving forward.
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May 3, 2023 22:18
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aldantefax posted:However, this is again something that is speaking to a broader "how do you get humans to actually be open with one another in a social context" rather than specifically TTRPGs - replace it with a game of soccer or basketball, or a knitting club, or watching movies together, and you will find the same kinds of social issues. Again I'm not sure why this is being treated as a diagnostic issue. Yes, better communication would help, but I didn't think this thread was about diagnostics, but about the question of how the behaviour was actually learned in the first place. And that's not just game rules, since a ton of the learning involved in playing and GMing is about those social aspects, and is unique to TTRPGs. Plenty of RPGs describe spotlight sharing, but that can't be described in a way that's absolute enough not to require a ton of social learning to be able to interpret. Most people learn pretty quickly from high school that complaining about dissatisfication or omission in a social group will have no effect other than giving an excuse to the group to omit you some more. So how do we learn where the line is between complaining about the game side of a social game and complaining about the social side? And that's without getting into the "cat herding" aspect that's almost entirely social And yes, I see groups where the players' actions make it obvious they're not enjoying the game, but everybody denies it when asked, and the GM carries on as normal, just considering players spending most of the session playing Runeterra on their phones being a normal part of the hobby because who can really compete with that? Apparently that's been learned at some point from some part of the experience. You can't do that in a soccer game. hyphz fucked around with this message at 02:19 on May 4, 2023 |
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May 4, 2023 02:16
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hyphz posted:Again I'm not sure why this is being treated as a diagnostic issue. Yes, better communication would help, but I didn't think this thread was about diagnostics, but about the question of how the behaviour was actually learned in the first place. And that's not just game rules, since a ton of the learning involved in playing and GMing is about those social aspects, and is unique to TTRPGs. Plenty of RPGs describe spotlight sharing, but that can't be described in a way that's absolute enough not to require a ton of social learning to be able to interpret. Most people learn pretty quickly from high school that complaining about dissatisfication or omission in a social group will have no effect other than giving an excuse to the group to omit you some more. So how do we learn where the line is between complaining about the game side of a social game and complaining about the social side? And that's without getting into the "cat herding" aspect that's almost entirely social Jesus christ dude.
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May 4, 2023 02:28
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hyphz posted:Again I'm not sure why this is being treated as a diagnostic issue. Yes, better communication would help, but I didn't think this thread was about diagnostics, but about the question of how the behaviour was actually learned in the first place. And that's not just game rules, since a ton of the learning involved in playing and GMing is about those social aspects, and is unique to TTRPGs. Plenty of RPGs describe spotlight sharing, but that can't be described in a way that's absolute enough not to require a ton of social learning to be able to interpret. Most people learn pretty quickly from high school that complaining about dissatisfication or omission in a social group will have no effect other than giving an excuse to the group to omit you some more. So how do we learn where the line is between complaining about the game side of a social game and complaining about the social side? And that's without getting into the "cat herding" aspect that's almost entirely social In the past I've had success with garnering feedback on the Call of Cthulhu campaigns I've run with anonymous Google surveys. And honestly, I feel that I could probably trust my group to be honest with me to my face but making things anonymous removes the chance that a person might hold back their opinions for fear of some kind of retribution (which I think is silly but everyone approaches these things differently). Most of the feedback basically boiled down to stuff like "oh that time we blew up the cruise ship was awesome" or "I loved how you handled so and so's insanity when they became phobic of teeth and removed their own one at a time over the course of a few sessions". If GMs really are that afraid of open communication with their group, this sort of thing can make it easier to get the feedback you want.
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May 4, 2023 16:23
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Giggle Goose posted:In the past I've had success with garnering feedback on the Call of Cthulhu campaigns I've run with anonymous Google surveys. And honestly, I feel that I could probably trust my group to be honest with me to my face but making things anonymous removes the chance that a person might hold back their opinions for fear of some kind of retribution (which I think is silly but everyone approaches these things differently). Most of the feedback basically boiled down to stuff like "oh that time we blew up the cruise ship was awesome" or "I loved how you handled so and so's insanity when they became phobic of teeth and removed their own one at a time over the course of a few sessions". Ok, I'm going to break off this thread because I don't intend to crap it and I was in a terrible mood last night making the previous post. But again I think it has to be made clear, the question is not how to solve or diagnose the negative behaviour, the question is how it was learned in the first place.
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May 4, 2023 17:01
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hyphz, I'm not trying to be mean - as you know, I have recognized before that you're unfailingly polite and calm about your posting which I really appreciate - but this thread and TG in general isn't here for you to hash out your eternally unsolvable and very personal problems with every game, and with gaming itself. I think you're right that you need a break from this thread, and you should consider when you see similar conversations in the future about "how games work" whether you're able to be receptive to what others are saying or if you're going to just stick doggedly to your "games don't work" mantra. Aldantefax has recommended some useful resources for improving communication and social skills and I think you could avail yourself of them as an alternative to seeking answers here. While your own experiences are valid, it should be abundantly clear by now, after years of these recurring dialogues in TG, that they're your experiences and not universal. When you make declarations of universality about them, you're projecting. Your fellow TG posters actually do, for real, have good fun fulfilling gaming experiences with people they enjoy being with and the games they play actually function and work and facilitate those experiences. They're not lying when they say so. Mods are going to have to start using probations to curb that behavior when we see it in the future, because everyone is exhausted by your Eeyore routine.
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May 4, 2023 17:18
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Well, it's not really a documented assumption in most RPGs, but there really is no such thing as a trustless RPG. You need to be able to have a good-faith conversation with everybody at the table just as a prerequisite of play, because nothing in the rules of an RPG can stop someone who engages in bad faith from ruining the game for other people. And it's not really something RPGs bother to cover, which leads to the perennial thing: "Hey, this player is playing the game in a way that's ruining it for the rest of us, how can we use in-game methods to address this?" "You can't address an out-of-game motivation with in-game methods, have a good-faith conversation with them." It's important that the RPG itself doesn't try to create scenarios where players can't trust each other - this happens maybe not so much in the rules proper but definitely in adventure modules, particularly ones from early in the hobby's history. Advice to the GM to present a predetermined course of action and pretend there's some way out the players aren't smart enough to figure out. Boxed text the GM is instructed to read word-for-word that hints for secrets where no secrets exist. But I don't think it's really within the power of an RPG to teach people how to trust each other.
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May 6, 2023 02:43
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Yeah I think a lot of this stuff can vary wildly with people depending on if they are playing online with strangers, online with friends, randos at a game store, or your buddies around the kitchen table. I know the way I play has been called out as somewhat controversial in this thread, but for people who know me in real life, they know exactly what they are getting into. Like, people can expect some sort of 16th century gothic splatterpunk body horror grossout lethal game at my house because they already know I'm a history teacher who's really into John Carpenter's The Thing and procedural simulation stuff like Rimworld and XCOM. Someone coming in completely blind expecting Ren-Faire Tank-Healer-DPS Warcraft style stuff would absolutely have a bad time, but no one walks in with those expectations because I'm only playing with people who already know me and have requested to join. I think the Expectations out there in the wild can be all over the place and Human Stuff can really throw a wrench into what is supposed to be just a fun game.
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May 6, 2023 03:57
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Glazius posted:But I don't think it's really within the power of an RPG to teach people how to trust each other. That’s kind of interesting. A lot of corporate training is bullshit, but one of the things that turns up in the better stuff is trust. There are worked exercises where you talk everyone into showing vulnerability and make sure people get rewarded for it; it’s not magic but it’s a foundation. See also Robin Dreeke, who spent a lot of his life as a counter-intelligence agent and then went off and wrote books about how to gain trust in business. Not exactly the same thing — sales is adversarial — but maybe applicable.
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May 6, 2023 05:05
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Ideally sales isn’t adversarial. You should have a product that helps people, an idea of its value, and a way of qualifying if the person is the right fit for the product now.
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May 6, 2023 17:24
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Golden Bee posted:Ideally sales isn’t adversarial. You should have a product that helps people, an idea of its value, and a way of qualifying if the person is the right fit for the product now. You're never going to maximize shareholder value with that sort of defeatist thinking. Your ideal product is valueless(and thus extremely cheap), helps no one(because if it fixed a problem people might no longer need to buy more of it) and every person can be convinced that they're the fight fit for it at every point in time. Thanlis posted:That’s kind of interesting. A lot of corporate training is bullshit, but one of the things that turns up in the better stuff is trust. There are worked exercises where you talk everyone into showing vulnerability and make sure people get rewarded for it; it’s not magic but it’s a foundation. The problem with corporate emotions is that they're used as a replacement for actual rewards, corporate only wants you feeling good things if they can pay you in those good feelings rather than money, so I wouldn't really hold them up as a "good example" of teaching people "trust" when said "trust" exists to make employees easier marks for getting ripped off.
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May 6, 2023 17:35
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PurpleXVI posted:The problem with corporate emotions is that they're used as a replacement for actual rewards, corporate only wants you feeling good things if they can pay you in those good feelings rather than money, so I wouldn't really hold them up as a "good example" of teaching people "trust" when said "trust" exists to make employees easier marks for getting ripped off. That’s a very easy take and one that’s true much of the time, yes.
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May 6, 2023 19:12
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Glazius posted:Well, it's not really a documented assumption in most RPGs, but there really is no such thing as a trustless RPG. You need to be able to have a good-faith conversation with everybody at the table just as a prerequisite of play, because nothing in the rules of an RPG can stop someone who engages in bad faith from ruining the game for other people. Using in-game methods in an attempt to address interpersonal issues of trust has questionable results unless the in-game method says "talk to the person out of the game" in really explicit terms. RPGs can intentionally create double-dealing type situations among players all the time and also have players be adversarial to one another. Infinity RPG used a system that was referred to as the Wilderness of Mirrors which gave each player sub-objectives to do while on a mission that could change the parameters of the entire situation entirely and put them in opposition to one another. Of course, there are other games whereby trust is not required and the RPG is more competitive in nature. Trust is a relational thing that is developed and earned through in and out of game methods. By spending time together and listening to one another, trust comes by a little easier. Games can provide frameworks for building trust but I think it is probably an agreement that most games are not about explicitly building trust, that is a thing that happens if people are working together towards a common goal, which is a quality social experience rather than the specific in-game objectives they might be trying to achieve.
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May 9, 2023 05:45
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Clearly we won't have a trustless RPG system until we put RPG's on the blockchain.
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May 9, 2023 07:20
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aldantefax posted:Using in-game methods in an attempt to address interpersonal issues of trust has questionable results unless the in-game method says "talk to the person out of the game" in really explicit terms. Related to that, I like slipping players sub-objectives in my CoC games from time to time. The degree of suspicion that it builds between players over a campaign is pretty amusing and it fits well with the theme of the game. I don't know that there are any explicit rules about doing that though, I just started doing it to spice things up a bit. Its weird because I feel that there is a high degree of trust between players despite this to play the game "the right way", which in our particular case is RPing stuff to the hilt. It sucks to say it but as has already been said, trust at the table is as much about people's real world social skills as it is about anything else.
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May 10, 2023 16:25
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aldantefax posted:Using in-game methods in an attempt to address interpersonal issues of trust has questionable results unless the in-game method says "talk to the person out of the game" in really explicit terms. I think there have been shifts in "trust" in multiple ways across the decades in TTRPGs. Old school D&D was maybe not "untrustworthy" but you could "trust" the DM was setting everything in motion and often working against your interest or exploiting any openings they saw to harm or attack a character. More recent games often tell the GM on some level to be "a fan" of the player, which doesn't mean to hand everything to them, but still to challenge them in ways where they come out on top in a satisfying resolution. Similarly, a "trust" in the narrative burden of a lot of games has shifted, with things like Fate and Powered By the Apocalypse giving more agency in constructing the word and the story directly to the players. It's especially notable when you look at something like Numenera, which borrows a lot of "modern" game conceits from game like Fate, but every abstract or challenging bit of both rules and narrative arbitration always come with a rules rider stapled on saying "At the GM's discretion..."
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May 13, 2023 01:52
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I believe it depends on the group whether or not truly adversarial play was at the heart of gameplay. Implicitly, sure, there are things which are hostile to players, but hostility itself can take many forms other than the highly reductive “fight to the death” that most people tend to equate. I tend to use the term referee because it implies a certain neutrality of play from the person orchestrating the game world (also recognized as the game master or dungeon master, storyteller etc) - being a fan of the players is a somewhat ambiguous term that should be defined at a table level. Tabletop games don’t necessarily build trust when it is otherwise not there. However, part of the reason it has some appeal as a team building exercise is that there need to be problems that require the team to work together to solve. Cooperation generally requires a certain level of trust, even for just that play session and experience. Players and the referee need to have some level of trust they are willing to offer to the table and each other including if the social experience is adversarial in nature (as in Call of Cthulhu). Some games that do recognize trust building as an implicit activity may find that they attract people who make the assumption that the game will solve their intrinsic issues of trust coming into the game, which is unfortunately not true from what I’ve experienced at many tables. People who come in with bad or no faith in this aspect - that is, they don’t trust in the game, the social experience, or the people surrounding them - will find rapidly that game table is not for them. Tables with sufficient amount of trust already built up may end up ousting such a person simply by nature of exclusion, or it may be actual out and out ostracism, which tends to be very unfortunate in and of itself and reinforces the ‘bad behavior’ that some have referenced in this thread. If there is some trust offered to the table and to the play experience, though, this will, I believe, create for stronger and more meaningful play. Being able to introduce and leverage tools of trust whether they be a mechanical construct (the dice dictate what happens) or a social construct (using a tool such as the “X-Card” to call for a hard stop of a scene) is inherent to every game that has rules. GM fiat, then, has to come from a place of trust based on the social experience. If there isn’t sufficient trust built among the table then if the referee does something that somehow damages that trust (which could be fragile to start) then it can have potentially catstrophic consequences - not just of the play experience, but people can seriously be hurt psychologically and emotionally as a result. This gray zone is where I believe a large part of the bad learned behavior tends to stem: a ruling or judgment is made by the referee that is interpreted as “GM fiat” that violates the trust of people at the table, and it may not be easily forgiven, if at all. Rather than attempting to extend more trust, the first instinct of most players in that circumstance is, unfortunately, to punish whoever is responsible for violating that trust. This comes from a non-TTRPG conversation that I had recently. We live in a carceral society where punishment and vengeance is often the only solution to people who have done wrong is to shut the perpetrator down completely and utterly. The person being punished and judged, rather than learning from whatever mistake might be made, may end up repeating their behavior and perpetuating harmful play. This raises the question of “how much trust should a table be afforded”? Since the structures of play have a certain amount of trust to start with, this must be recognized and nurtured over time while recognizing the fragility of that trust. If there are no tools in the rules framework, then introducing safety tools should be discussed right away. As trust (both of other people and of someone internally of themselves) is better learned, reinforced, and qualified, then there should also be conversations about rehabilitation and remediation if those trust boundaries have been violated. aldantefax fucked around with this message at 01:30 on May 14, 2023 |
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May 14, 2023 01:23
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aldantefax posted:I believe it depends on the group whether or not truly adversarial play was at the heart of gameplay. Oh, no, I'm talking about explicit instructions from the game to run adversarially. Like this absolute gem from the "Scourge of the Slavelords" re-release in 1986: "At some point on the journey between Elredd and Highport, the player characters run afoul of the slave lords and are captured! This is an essential part of the adventure, and as referee, you should make every effort to ensure the player characters do not escape the traps of the slave lords. [...] "This liquid is a powerful anaesthetic which quickly evaporates into the air. Any sleeping characters are unconscious for the rest of the night. If characters are awake, pretend to roll a secret saving throw and ask the player if he has any bonuses to poison. The character falls unconscious regardless of the die roll, but the player should never be told this. [...] "Remember, you do want to capture the player characters, but in a way that seems fair. You have succeeded if, when all is done, the players look back and see ways they could have avoided the trap." And, yes, "a good GM" can call BS on that because it'll wreck what they've built up with the party, but a GM who's trying to follow the module as written will lie, cheat, and steal like it's going out of style.
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May 14, 2023 09:07
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It feels like a very obvious rule of GMing for most games is that you don't directly lie to the players. You cam omit, you can misrepresent, and you can certainly have characters lie, but part of the deal to me has always been that you are dealing fair with the party.
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May 14, 2023 09:37
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Glazius posted:Oh, no, I'm talking about explicit instructions from the game to run adversarially. Like this absolute gem from the "Scourge of the Slavelords" re-release in 1986: There are three types of trust that I think take place at the table: external, mechanical, and internal. External trust is for the group and each other; mechanical is the rules and module; internal is for the self and also acceptance of the others. In the example provided, there is more trust placed in the mechanical portion than the external group. Since the module would fall apart because of the way it was written, then it must make an authoritative statement to make everything else work. The group might agree with being led along like that (and it could in fact be part of the setup before actual play), or not and view that as a trust violation. Similarly, the referee might not trust themselves to adapt to the unknown and dig in harder to the module. This could be resolved by trusting in the social experience - “this is what’s prepared and if we go another direction, that’s cool, but I don’t have anything for it tonight” is actually totally okay to say. This also feeds back to what I mention on a recurring basis to have a healthy disrespect for the rules. It’s my belief that the internal and social experience comes first before the rules, because without people connecting for the game you have no game.
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May 14, 2023 14:02
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Glazius posted:Oh, no, I'm talking about explicit instructions from the game to run adversarially. Like this absolute gem from the "Scourge of the Slavelords" re-release in 1986: I was about to say that the first paragraph reminds me of a lot of stuff from later modules, but then it just keeps going downhill. At least those others are pretty upfront about being aggressive railroading, rather than trying to gaslight the players.
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May 14, 2023 16:21
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There’s no point in truly adversarial play in most RPGs. The power dynamic is such that even an unskilled GM can always win. I don’t know if adversarial is the right word?
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May 14, 2023 16:37
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PurpleXVI posted:I was about to say that the first paragraph reminds me of a lot of stuff from later modules, but then it just keeps going downhill. At least those others are pretty upfront about being aggressive railroading, rather than trying to gaslight the players. The second one seems unnecessary anyway, as the module could simply give the poison a save DC of 50 or whatever arbitrarily high number. But I'm not sure any of these are adverserial in a true sense, they're just symptoms of the older model of "the GM tries to impose a narrative, the players try to win". It's not necessarily a good model but I'm not quite sure that applying it goes as far as being a social trust issue.
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May 14, 2023 17:09
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hyphz posted:But I'm not sure any of these are adverserial in a true sense, they're just symptoms of the older model of "the GM tries to impose a narrative, the players try to win". It's not necessarily a good model but I'm not quite sure that applying it goes as far as being a social trust issue. Well in the sense that the PC's and GM have opposed goals that they work towards, in that sense, it's absolutely adversarial, as opposed to games where both players and GM have a shared goal of "have fun, tell story" and no one has to lose for someone else to win.
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May 14, 2023 17:16
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PurpleXVI posted:Well in the sense that the PC's and GM have opposed goals that they work towards, in that sense, it's absolutely adversarial, as opposed to games where both players and GM have a shared goal of "have fun, tell story" and no one has to lose for someone else to win. But do they? In this kind of module, it's not as if the follow-up is that after the slave lords capture the PCs they kill them and then the adventure is over and the GM wins. If the PCs are getting captured it's because it's going to turn out that it gives them just the right opportunity to overthrow the slave lords from the inside. And I'm pretty sure that all but the most experienced players know that. Yet you're quite right that players do see this as adversarial, and it'd be interesting to be able to know why.
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May 14, 2023 18:48
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hyphz posted:But do they? In this kind of module, it's not as if the follow-up is that after the slave lords capture the PCs they kill them and then the adventure is over and the GM wins. If the PCs are getting captured it's because it's going to turn out that it gives them just the right opportunity to overthrow the slave lords from the inside. And I'm pretty sure that all but the most experienced players know that. Yet you're quite right that players do see this as adversarial, and it'd be interesting to be able to know why. I'm stuck on this one because I don't see how it could be not adversarial? It more or less goes: "Alright champ, we were idiots and couldn't think of a way to make this module work without the players being captured. Now, don't worry, you won't have to step down to their level and ask if they're up for a module that starts with their getting taken captive. Instead, you're going to pretend everything is normal and they still have agency, here are some ways you can fool them to think that you aren't railroading them, it's working best if they feel like idiots for falling for it, thinking they had any way out." It regards the players as annoying obstacles to the GM getting to do his dramatic, theatrical flourishes rather than co-conspirators. It regards players having agency and ideas as troublesome, rather than something to enjoy and work with. I can't see why any players would explicitly see overthrowing the slave lords from the inside as the only thing to do, and if they did... why not put the reins in the players' hands? Have someone hire them(or plead with them, if they seem likely to be interested in doing it entirely on moral/ethical grounds), someone who wants to overthrow the slave lords, and needs the players on the inside to foment a rebellion, sabotage defenses and slit a few throats to get things rolling, who'll ensure they get their gear(or at least some gear) passed to them at the right moment. That way, they'll play along, and feel like they're cool conspirators, rather than just being bullied along, and they'll feel some level of trust that the GM isn't just yoinking away their Doomswords, Scrolls of Air To Wood and Amulets of Krangling that they've spent a lot of hours assembling. Hell, that way the players can even do a bit of roleplaying, pretending to be slaves on the auction block and deciding when to stop resisting the slavers and surrender so it looks good, etc.
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May 14, 2023 19:08
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PurpleXVI posted:That way, they'll play along, and feel like they're cool conspirators, rather than just being bullied along, and they'll feel some level of trust Just wanted to say that I love this description of the relationship between the players, the GM, and the GM's NPCs. The players and the GM are conspiring together to come up with a cool story.
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May 14, 2023 19:39
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ActingPower posted:Just wanted to say that I love this description of the relationship between the players, the GM, and the GM's NPCs. The players and the GM are conspiring together to come up with a cool story. This is really what the social experience is about to me as well, but since it seems so obvious to a lot of people it’s very rapidly glossed over even if explicitly stated, which then leads to some absurdity as a result.
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May 14, 2023 19:54
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm stuck on this one because I don't see how it could be not adversarial? Well, because in the long term it's not acting against the players' interests. I don't think I've ever seen a module that pulled this kind of thing and then had it ultimately turn out bad for the players or PCs. If the module is called "Slave Lords of Emanysatnaf" then getting captured is part of how the PCs will defeat the slave lords. If the module is called something else then in the process of getting captured and escaping they will gain information or meet someone or find something or even just gain XP that helps with their eventual goal. You're right that in terms of the narrative, it's a fudge, but it's a fudge that authors use across the sphere. James Bond getting captured and escaping to then gain access to the interior of the bad guy's lair is pretty cheesy, but it's done because the bad guy screwing up in that regard is easier to suspend disbelief over than most other errors that they'd make in their defenses. "Dr Bad really believed that Bond would have no way of escaping this time" is easier to believe than "Dr Bad really believed that nobody would ever hijack one of the delivery trucks." quote:It regards the players as annoying obstacles to the GM getting to do his dramatic, theatrical flourishes rather than co-conspirators. It regards players having agency and ideas as troublesome, rather than something to enjoy and work with. Well, that being "adversarial" depends on what the contest is? Is the objective for the PC to defeat the slave lords (or whatever goal there is), or for the emitted story of how the PCs defeat the slave lords to have narrative properties, or for it to contain the maximum amount of player contributed material, or.. well, what the heck is "agency" in an RPG anyway? quote:That way, they'll play along, and feel like they're cool conspirators, rather than just being bullied along, and they'll feel some level of trust that the GM isn't just yoinking away their Doomswords, Scrolls of Air To Wood and Amulets of Krangling that they've spent a lot of hours assembling. Again, in every adventure where this has happened, there's been some room a few nodes away from where the players end up, with the note "the PCs find all their missing equipment here". It doesn't take much experience to trust that this is going to happen. If there's a trust issue there it's over something else, but I'm not sure what that "something else" is. And if the players are consciously helping create the story, it's not really a "conspiracy" anymore, is it? There's no-one to hide from. (That doesn't mean it's bad, it just seems a strange choice of word.)
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May 14, 2023 21:03
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hyphz posted:Well, because in the long term it's not acting against the players' interests. I don't think I've ever seen a module that pulled this kind of thing and then had it ultimately turn out bad for the players or PCs. If the module is called "Slave Lords of Emanysatnaf" then getting captured is part of how the PCs will defeat the slave lords. If the module is called something else then in the process of getting captured and escaping they will gain information or meet someone or find something or even just gain XP that helps with their eventual goal. That is a very odd assumption, that anything about the Slave Lords would involve the PC's being enslaved with no way out of it. Like... the Slave Lords could just be villains who need to be dunked on to liberate the slaves? hyphz posted:Again, in every adventure where this has happened, there's been some room a few nodes away from where the players end up, with the note "the PCs find all their missing equipment here". It doesn't take much experience to trust that this is going to happen. If there's a trust issue there it's over something else, but I'm not sure what that "something else" is. and lol, lmao. I invite you to read some more published modules because assuming that ANY of them will not screw the PC's over with permanent losses or potential instadeath at the drop of a hat is pretty funny to me considering some of the poo poo I'm reviewing right now.
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May 14, 2023 21:05
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PurpleXVI posted:That is a very odd assumption, that anything about the Slave Lords would involve the PC's being enslaved with no way out of it. Like... the Slave Lords could just be villains who need to be dunked on to liberate the slaves? I mean, that's just it. If the PCs end up captured or enslaved, you wouldn't ever assume there would be no way out, and so therefore you will assume (almost certainly correctly) that there is a way out. And so the GM having the PCs enslaved isn't really much of an adversarial move when there's certain to be a way out that will be of net benefit to them. quote:and lol, lmao. I invite you to read some more published modules because assuming that ANY of them will not screw the PC's over with permanent losses or potential instadeath at the drop of a hat is pretty funny to me considering some of the poo poo I'm reviewing right now. Sure, they exist, but they aren't at the end of those railroads*. Return To The Tomb of Horrors might have the dreaded "and if you open the cabinet with the light in it then you instantly die" but it doesn't say "and the main door won't open until someone has opened the cabinet" or "the GM should try as hard as possible to have a PC open the cabinet". In fact in OSR adventures if someone forces you into the Cave of Dread then it's probably going to be much safer in there than if you go in there on your own. *Except The Unity. But The Unity can gently caress right off.
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May 14, 2023 21:42
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hyphz posted:I mean, that's just it. If the PCs end up captured or enslaved, you wouldn't ever assume there would be no way out, and so therefore you will assume (almost certainly correctly) that there is a way out. And so the GM having the PCs enslaved isn't really much of an adversarial move when there's certain to be a way out that will be of net benefit to them. It's not about assuming that there's no way out, but that it's the only way in, accompanied by the strange assumption that what appears to be the result of the players loving up, making wrong choices or playing "poorly" won't result in their losing, say, a chunk of their gear or whatever, when that's not uncommong in modules as a result of the players screwing up. I would never assume that the only way to progress an adventure was to "lose," as you say, and I would assume that "losing" would have consequences, unless the GM made it abundantly clear otherwise. But in this case the GM is supposed to indicate that there were other ways and that the players did gently caress up, even if there weren't.
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May 14, 2023 21:53
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I guess I'm of the opinion that if your narrative requires a no-win scenario (the ship crashes, the party are all arrested, etc) then the honest way to do that is to make those parts narrative rather than to make it seem like play but with a predetermined outcome. Even when they accept it, people tend not to enjoy the feeling of losing.
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May 14, 2023 22:05
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PurpleXVI posted:I would never assume that the only way to progress an adventure was to "lose," as you say, and I would assume that "losing" would have consequences, unless the GM made it abundantly clear otherwise. But in this case the GM is supposed to indicate that there were other ways and that the players did gently caress up, even if there weren't. So the adversarial act isn't putting the PCs in a temporary no-win situation that leads to greater wins, but falsely implying to the players that it wasn't a no-win situation so that they can't trust they have plot armor?
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May 14, 2023 22:06
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hyphz posted:So the adversarial act isn't putting the PCs in a temporary no-win situation that leads to greater wins, but falsely implying to the players that it wasn't a no-win situation so that they can't trust they have plot armor? More to the point, the adversarial act is teaching GMs that they should hit players with a mechanical stick to make them go to the specific thing they have planned, and it's presented as the assumed default. If this random adventure from the mid-80s had a frank discussion of how getting captured so you can break out of prison yourselves is a key part of this adventure and hitting them with the DC 50 superdrug is one option among many that could work best with your group's playstyle, we wouldn't be discussing it like this.
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May 14, 2023 22:17
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hyphz posted:So the adversarial act isn't putting the PCs in a temporary no-win situation that leads to greater wins, but falsely implying to the players that it wasn't a no-win situation so that they can't trust they have plot armor? A better example is, if the GM wants to run a prison break adventure, just talk to your group. Saying "Hey guys, I have a great idea for a prison break adventure. How about we come up with some crimes you did and the fat payoff waiting for you if you get out, then cut to the sentencing?" is much more healthy than saying "Ok, you all were drugged in your last meal and wake up in jail. Don't worry, I rolled all of your saves and you failed."
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May 14, 2023 22:43
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Yeah I think "adversarial" is a problem word because it's misleading. When I play chess, my adversary is an opponent who I can win lose or draw to, but every move either of us make is intended to try to get to the best possible outcome for ourselves and necessarily the worst for the opponent. A truly "adversarial" GM experience with the above definition would require the GM to be constrained by some hard rules they can't cheat about : because "rocks fall, everyone dies" is the usual assumed privilege of an RPG GM, even if it's also obviously the joke we tell about the worst sorts of GMs and/or the situations where players are so frustrating the GM decides in a fit of pique to TPK the party. I think instead what we are talking about are situations where the assumptions underlying play are being subverted by the GM in a way that the players have no access to, and which - in the moment at least, if not in the long run - "hurt" them in some way. This is in contrast to simply "presenting a challenge", in which it's presumed that through play - by creativity, use of resources, pure luck, or some combination of those - the players can "succeed" or avoid the hurt/setback etc. A combat encounter is a typical example. If the players engage in battle, the default assumption is that they have at least a chance of defeating the foes. That default may not apply in some games, but in those games, the players are supposed to be aware that the situation is different - the examples given earlier by Mr. Grapes are germane here, in that their players have been explicitly described as aware that some combats may be "unwinnable" and therefore the chance in play that the characters have includes pre-combat play to try to avoid the fight or modify their odds or whatever. The slavery example is "unfair" because the players are playing in the default manner in which the normal assumptions of possibility are, uh, reasonably assumed. They assume that they can avoid being captured by the slavers, and that assumption is reinforced by the act of rolling dice - can they not roll a nat 20 and crit? What system is this? In some systems I suppose you may roll dice even when all results are the same outcome but perhaps that fact isn't known to the players. But the players should know that this is a possibility during play, so that it's not a "lie." The unfairness then is essentially a form of cheating, and the "adversarial" part is that it's not that sort of cheating GMs may do to give the characters a free hidden boost. We discussed this previously, Mr. Grapes wanted to die but his character wasn't allowed, because the GM was cheating to keep him alive. Turned out for him that was sort of meta-adversarial in that it was blocking the outcome he as a player wanted, but I have done this in my own GMing, especially as a young and new GM, often to try to compensate for what I thought at the time was errors in preparation myself but since learned were just a mismatch between my expectations and the game's default mechanics. To put that more clearly: the game, it's designers intent or not, was lethally dangerous and I didn't know that and wanted the characters to survive what I considered intermediate encounters on the way to the adventure's goal. There are surely other examples than combat. It is "adversarial" of the GM to notice that a character has been built for strong social skill rolls and intentionally make all the social situations they'll interact with have super high difficulties, so that they'll still fail a lot. Unless they discussed this with the player and the player said that even though they concentrated character build resources into social skills they actually wanted to fail at social rolls a lot. That is probably uncommon. Players usually specialize so that their character will appear to be very good at their specialty. It is "adversarial" of the GM to try to make their story happen when the players clearly have a different story in mind. OK, sure, as the GM you may be dictating outside events that are bigger than the party - perhaps there is war brewing and the low-level characters can't actually stop that war, no matter what they do... but that means the adventure or campaign is probably "about" something else, and the GM has a responsibility to work with the players on communication so that everyone understands what the game is nominally "about." But the players may also have a responsibility in this effort to find common ground - if the GM says "hey look I said there's war brewing, but we're all here to play a treasure hunting game, right? That's what we talked about session 1, in terms of theme? OK, in that case, I can understand you're intrigued by the possibility of trying to stop a war, but that's not really what I prepared or how we specced characters." What would kind of suck is if the players all agree to this premise and then insist on ignoring the treasure map and the rumors of treasure etc. etc. This goes back to what fax was talking about with trust. If we have an agreement - on how these rules work, on whether combats are sometimes certain death, on what the campaign is focused on - and either the GM or the players start subverting the stated agreements, regardless of what their motivation is, that's a breach of that trust that risks hard feelings if/when it comes out. The GM perhaps has more power or opportunity to breach trust because they usually do a lot of stuff in secret, behind the screen.
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May 14, 2023 22:46
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Worth noting that both Tomb of Horrors and the Slave Lords series started out as convention tournaments. I think that changes the framework of contemporary reactions and expectations. At the same time, it’s interesting that they have had very long lifespans outside that context, such that the meta-expectations for D&D modules are perhaps shaped by weird convention tournament structures more than one might expect.
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May 14, 2023 22:47
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Thanlis posted:Worth noting that both Tomb of Horrors and the Slave Lords series started out as convention tournaments. I think that changes the framework of contemporary reactions and expectations. At the same time, it’s interesting that they have had very long lifespans outside that context, such that the meta-expectations for D&D modules are perhaps shaped by weird convention tournament structures more than one might expect. That's even weirder to me, because a tournament should be able to say, "Here's the scenario you find yourself in. Have fun!"
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May 14, 2023 23:01
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