And the winner is…

This guy I’ll call Bob. Bob was a good gamer, he liked to play and he liked to adventure. The problem was, he also liked to win.

I never felt that Bob ever got away from the games of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Dark Future we used to play, games with a sense of winning and achievement through defeating your enemy. Bob was an old school wargamer and got into roleplaying for lack of any other wargamers in the area. He was a good roleplayer, don’t get me wrong, and we had fun, but he never shook that ‘me against you’ attitude.

Bob was a good wargamer and beat me every time, but in a roleplaying game he’d get a little lost, especially outside of combat. We never used to use miniatures that much but while Bob was in the game we had to so that he knew what was going on, and he would decide actions to the smallest detail. The problem was, if anything went against him outside of combat he would argue that he had been defeated at the whim of the GM and didn’t have any control over the fate of his PC. In short, he would accuse the GM of ‘cheating’ every time he was unsuccessful with anything that didn’t involve hitting anything with a sword.

This came to a head, and effectively ended Bob’s involvement in roleplaying (with me, at any rate), with a single roll he was asked to make. He rolled, not knowing the difficulty number, and the GM declared he had failed. It wasn’t a game-breaking failure, but Bob didn’t like the fact that he had made a roll and the GM had seemingly ruled a failure regardless. He demanded to know what the difficulty number was. The GM gave him a number higher than what he had rolled. And, quite simply, Bob didn’t believe him. The game played out, Bob left, and he never attended again.

Now, you may think that Bob had a point and that the GM should have declared the difficulty number before he asked for the roll, and I’d agree with you to a certain extent, but the fact is that I don’t think it had anything to do with that. Bob, in his mind, had ‘lost’ the game. And Bob hated to lose, especially to what he saw as GM fiat. He had no direct control over every aspect of the game the way he had with boardgames and wargames, and so hated not being able to make judgements based on the rules as they were set out, clear and concise and covering just about every combat angle as in a wargaming manual. He enjoyed the games, I enjoyed playing with him, but he couldn’t get past the competitive angle. It really was Players-vs-GM to him. No matter how many times we told him this wasn’t the case, that was always at the forefront of his mind.

I remember feeling this way about the game in the 1980s when I first started but this was mainly due to the fact that we were new to tabletop roleplaying games and didn’t really know any better. By the time we got to the games with Bob we were all experienced in the hobby and knew the no-such-thing-as-winners mantra and that the enjoyment came from a cooperative experience but couldn’t convince Bob that this was how the game was played. He saw it as a detailed wargame; if it had dice, rules and miniatures then it was a wargame. That was it. And that was a massive shame.

I think the only thing I learned from this, as an observing player in the group, that all you can do is try, and keep explaining the game. You can’t change the nature of the game to suit one player, unless that’s what the group wants to try, and you can’t change a person’s unwavering perception of how the game should be played.

That awkward moment when…

…you realise that the new guy you invited to the game isn’t a nice bloke at all. In fact, he’s a nasty piece of work.

I’m going back to the late 1990s, here, and I was at the height of a huge Warhammer FRP campaign. It had begun with a single player, then another player who was a friend of mine had joined and he suggested I allow a gamer he knew from university to join as he was looking for an epic game. Without asking any more about this person I said yes, he came along, we quickly talked him through the game and helped him with a PC, and we got stuck in.

The games started to go downhill very, very quickly. This new player – I’ll call him Roger – didn’t seem to care about what other people thought of him. This first became apparent with his foul mouth, eating habits and uncomfortable sense of humour. I’ve talked before about how certain jokes at the table make me feel uncomfortable, and this guy had an entire plethora of bad, inappropriate jokes to share, primarily of a sexual nature. In the game he was even worse. First and foremost he was rude. A comment he made that sticks in my head was, ‘If you do that then you’re a fucking idiot’, in response to another player’s idea. ‘Is your PC saying that?’ I asked. ‘No’, he said, ‘I’m saying that.’ And it was pretty much downhill from there.

If things didn’t go his way he would get angry – I mean, spitting angry. More than once Roger launched his dice across the room or snapped a pencil. In one instance he jumped up and kicked over a chair as he stormed out to the bathroom. He’d let other players explain their actions before snorting through his nose or berating them, and if anyone, and I mean anyone, disagreed with a plan of his, his first words were, ‘What’s your problem?’ as if the player was insulting his parentage. I never thought for an instant it would ever become physical – I’ll save that story for another blog entry – as he was all piss and wind, but he was highly offensive and spent all his time complaining or getting upset. He had no interest in roleplaying and took great delight in killing NPCs in a variety of ways, whether they deserved it or not.

I noticed, after this single session, that the guy who introduced him to my game suddenly couldn’t make it anymore. I found out he was playing in another game on another night, and I knew that Roger had been in that group, so I got the impression that he’d been dumped on us to rid the other group of his presence, like they’d found him another game to play in so that they could get rid of him. He was bloody obnoxious and I can fully understand why they wanted shot of him. I hoped things would improve in the second session but they didn’t. After the second session I declared I was taking a break and that I’d be in touch when the games began again, and he was fine with that. Of course, I never got in touch and I never heard from Roger again.

What amazed me the most was the fact that he acted this way in front of complete strangers from the very first minute he met them and thought it was okay. That’s some serious social dysfunction, I have no qualms in saying that, and I can only assume that he had very few interpersonal skills. What am I saying, there’s nothing to assume; he had no social skills at all. I guess he was in his early twenties, and to throw such tantrums and talk in such a way, well… it’s simply not acceptable. I have no idea what he thought he was getting out of the game acting this way.

These days I screen potential new gamers for two reasons; One, to avoid this kind of thing ever again and two, it’s nice to meet people outside the game first so that you can get to know them as non-gamers. It’s a simple meetup at the pub or cafe, a few drinks and a chat and we can get to know each other as a gaming group before we get into the game proper. I’m not being rude meeting up with people like this, I think it’s only fair, to them and to me. What if they don’t like the way I or my group do things? It’s an opportunity to find out if you all click without going through the trauma of being involved with a disastrous game and is the best thing for everyone.

That’s what I should have done with Roger. It would have certainly saved me the pain of having to go through those games, that for sure.

Food, glorious food

Do you know what I hate at the gaming table? Chewy sweets. In fact, lots and lots of food can be an absolute pain the backside. But surely, the bringing of snacks is an integral part of the gaming experience? Yes, snacks are important, but I like to weigh up the necessity of snacks with the number of times I’ve had crumbs sprayed in my face or over my table by people trying to talk and eat at the same time.

Recently I’ve been completely thrown out of an intense combat situation in a Pathfinder game because the GM has been trying to explain the situation while trying to jam as many biscuits into his mouth as possible, and declaring my action while trying to decipher the words, ‘Ee hags ad oo wim umind o berd, ats oor amoass?’ kind of ruins the moment. As did the carbonated drinks; entire bottles consumed in minutes and then sentences are interrupted by belches. Funny the first time, maybe, not so much during the more intense parts of the game.

It’s quite simple; don’t do it. Eat as much as you like during downtime or slower, more thoughtful parts of the game, but when the action kicks off it can be frustrating waiting for someone to bite, chew and swallow. Just move it out the way, or take a bite while you’re waiting for your turn. Don’t fill your mouth with toffee and then wonder why everyone is staring at you expectantly, or asking you to repeat yourself, especially if you’re the GM. It’s only a little thing, easily addressed, but it can be just as annoying as any other interruption.

Who the hell do you think you are?

Players sometimes go to a lot of trouble to design a PC that they can really delve into. This can take the form of a detailed history on multiple sheets of paper, a drawing, a short story; any and all of these things can give the player character depth and a player can take great pleasure in playing the PC and exploring their character further.

With small groups, I tend to create games based around what the players have created, on the characterisations and personalities that the players have spent considerable time designing in and out of the game. So it gets somewhat frustrating, then, when the personality of the character changes suddenly, or the player turns up with a completely different character to the one you catered for in your adventure design.

I was setting up a game of mystery and suspense in a Call of Cthulhu game set in the 1930s and the two player characters taking part were both university professors. They were learned men, in their forties and very well educated and both had been designed with the idea that they had travelled the world and experienced all kinds of things that drove them to learn more. The game was set in the jungles of middle Africa and was going to be a game of travel, exploration and mystery. I designed the NPCs around that, with low combat skills and high knowledge skills. It was going to be a fun, investigative game. I was pretty shocked, then, when the game became an Indiana Jones-style escapade and instead of communicating with the NPCs the players simply beat their way through them, got into fistfights to obtain information and hacked their way through the jungle with machetes and Thompson machine guns. In the intervening time between creating the characters and turning up for the game the players had completely changed their minds about what kind of characters, even what kind of game, they wanted to play. The only problem with their change of mind was that they had neglected to inform me of their decision and I was totally unprepared for it. To be fair, I managed to run a fun action-orientated game but my heart wasn’t in it as I was in the mood for mystery and suspense, and this came across in the session. We never continued that campaign after that one game, so that was a lot wasted work for everyone.

These days, I tend to create games with two different versions of the same NPC – the combat and non-combat versions. If the playing style of the game swings towards either action or mystery then I’m mostly ready for it but there’s nothing I can do about what mood I’m in. It’s easy to have NPCs prepped for different kinds of games but being in the correct frame of mind, that’s a whole different thing entirely. If a game’s atmosphere is disrupted by the GM being on a separate level of expectation, or even a couple of players out of the whole group, then the session will suffer.

When players create PCs, when they detail the characters in both history and personality, and they hand them over for the GM to agree on then they have to realise that the chances are that GM will design a game based around what kind of PC they have designed. Players have the right to change their minds, of course – they may have a better idea of what they want to do with the PC the very next day - but it helps to give the GM notice of this change so that he can plan accordingly. The same sort of thing applies to the GM; if the players create investigative PCs and the GM throws them into high-adventure battles that the players are unprepared for then the game will collapse due to either expectations not being met or PCs biting the bullet.

Decide on a style of game and try to stick to it. If anyone has a change of mind about their game or their PC then make sure that everyone knows what it is they want to do. The whole game doesn’t have to change but at least these changes will be expected and catered for.

He Who Must Not Be Named

In other words, the Gamemaster.

Look, I’m a GM and I was guilty of this twenty years ago: being a condescending dick because the players can’t figure out your puzzles or get past your bad guys doesn’t do much for the group. There isn’t a player in the world, not even one desperate for a game and has nowhere else to go, who will sit at a gaming table and be basically laughed at for not figuring out what the GM has put up against them. GMs create the adventure and the dangers but that doesn’t mean that he’s against the players. It doesn’t mean that the players are in the game to beat what he has created, and therefore ‘win’ the game. And what’s worse is a GM that not only ‘wins’ but makes sure that the players know that he’s beaten them.

And it’s not just ‘I beat you with my dungeon!’ GMs, it’s GMs who use the game to bolster their egos, playing Mary/Gary Sue GMPCs that are the definition of what the GM thinks a perfect PC should be. The GMPC holds their hands, babysits, and is untouchable due to GM fiat. These GMPCs are the most annoying, crass and downright unlikeable types of character because they not only make you feel inferior, they’re basically communicating to you how the GM feels about your progress in the game; ie, you’re all rubbish at what you do and they can do it much better.

If you’re a GM and even slightly glancing down this route, I implore you – don’t do it. You will do irreversible damage to the gaming group and lose any trust the players may have had in you. This way of gaming leads to a false sense of achievement for the GM and miserable, downbeat players who will drift away. If you run a fun, fair session, you’ll have more chance of having the players shake your hand and commend you on your game.

I don’t know of any evenings that have ended with, ‘Hey! Your GMPC certainly showed us that we’re idiots! And we all died trying to get through your awesome killer dungeon! See you next week!’

Ralph McQuarrie

When I was a kid, there were three people who bought me Star Wars: George Lucas, Ralph McQuarrie and John Williams. In the historic days before the internet us Star Wars fans had access to very little in the way of media, or at least we could only afford so much as children, and for me it was always the music and the art books. I had the albums on vinyl and cassette and I had the novelisation and, most importantly, I had books with lots and lots of pictures in them.

Invariably, the illustrations were by the amazing Ralph McQuarrie, an artist who was most likely the very reason George Lucas got the original film made, illustrating his vision the way he did. My favourite possessions will always be the portfolios of the original trilogy I bought, with large widescreen-style prints of his greatest work. I’m no art critic, and no doubt my view of the work is slightly skewed by my youthful exuberance and joy for the original movies, but there was always a lot of energy in the illustrations, and there was always a sense that Ralph was illustrating the things that you didn’t see in the films, such as a tauntaun being chased by Imperial walkers or Rebel troops freezing in the trenches of Hoth. The original concepts were just as amazing as what appeared on screen and more often than not I’d find myself wondering what it would have been like if this had looked like that, or how much better it would have been if it had looked like it’s original design.

Ralph McQuarrie inspired people of all kinds; his work inspired artists, his designs inspired writers such as myself, his imagination inspired filmmakers. He has a lasting legacy that will be felt for decades to come and his ideas and talent will be the benchmark for the following generations of artists and filmmakers.

Ralph McQuarrie passed away on March 3rd and his passing has left a huge hole where that part of my childhood was, but it’s not a problem. You see, Ralph left such a huge body of work for so many different movies and shows – Star Trek, E.T., Coccoon, Battlestar Galactica – that there’s plenty of material to soak up and marvel at, and in turn allow my creative mind to flourish. The more I look at his pieces the more the hole will be filled.

So rest in peace, Mr McQuarrie. I never met you, but I will mourn for you as if I had.

REVENGE IS MINE! MU-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Indeed.

Players shouldn’t take in-character events so personally. I think, however, that this can’t be avoided, especially when it’s player-versus-player. If a random GM NPC gets the better of a player character then the player generally accepts that as failure against an element of the game (unless of course, the GM is playing a Mary/Gary Sue GMPC, but that’s a different matter entirely). But if another player gets the better of them then things can get pretty colourful.

I was running a Star Wars game many moons ago in which a player created a character working against the other players, an Imperial spy feeding information back to his superiors. He had to make rolls to make sure he sent this information out without being discovered but I did not tell him if he failed or not. In fact, I was rolling secretly for the other players and once they beat his roll I let them know, secretly, what he was up to. It was up to them to decide whether to confront him or feed him false information. In short order they set him up, confronted him and then, after a failed escape attempt on his part, they dealt with him. One dead traitor PC and two very satisfied PCs.

The player in question wasn’t happy about being found out and killed so quickly – even though it was him that wanted to create a PC to work against the players and make himself an enemy – and it made it even worse in the fact that he had been found out and stopped not by an NPC but the other players. He quickly created a new character. In the very next game, the first chance he got, he dropped the other players into trouble and tried to kill them. For no reason. At all. There was nothing about the character that would justify such an action, and he put all his dice into combat skills to make him incredibly tough to beat. He simply created a combat-heavy PC so that he could kill the other PCs for stopping his previous character from doing his nefarious deeds.

I can understand players being upset with other players if they obstruct, kill, loot and otherwise annoy their PC simply to be annoying. God knows I’ve seen enough of that at the gaming table. But some people take it too far, take it very personally even if the events and actions in the game are justified based on decisions and actions, and they let it colour their perception of the game for a long time. In fact, the games with this player broke down very quickly after his assassination attempt because no matter what characters they played or what game they played in they simply couldn’t trust him not to make an attempt on their lives at some point. Their in-game decisions weren’t based on the characters they were playing but on what kind of mood this particular player was in. That’s not a game, that’s a joke.

Keeping the feelings of the player separate from the player character is a definite in my book. You can get emotionally involved with the PC, that’s for sure, but when the game is over then the game is over, and harbouring resentment against other players isn’t the way to go. If the player is being a total dick and is simply out to get you then that’s a justified complaint but it should still be dealt with outside the game. ‘Hey, mate, I’m not really enjoying that and it’s kind of ruining the game for me. Can you not?’ It’s as simple as that. But getting revenge for some imagined slight by plotting and scheming and trying to kill a PC that another player may have spent months investing their time in, and in turn derailing the game to pursue personal vendettas – that’s not great.

Just remember, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary it’s not personal, it’s roleplaying. And if you set yourself up as the bad guy, working against the rest of the group, don’t be surprised if they stick a targeting signal transmitter in your backpack and then bomb you from orbit.

Certain points of view

Or: you should never count on being able to run a fully successful game in a setting you love, because people may see it differently than you do.

A game I have always wanted to run is Star Trek, set in either the current Next Generation era ,post-Dominion War, or the classic movie era around the time of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - I like the atmosphere of the Next Generation setting and the adventure-come-combat of Trek II, and even Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I like me some Star Trek and I love the idea of adventuring in the setting. I’m playing the recently turned free-to-play ‘Star Trek: Online’ at the moment and I’m really enjoying it. I’ve even taken the character sheet and some of the rules of Task Force Games ‘Prime Directive’ and converted them to West End Games D6 System, utilising the rules of the first edition of ‘Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game’. It’s a great game and plays really well. My problem is that I like Star Trek but know little about the larger setting and how it fully operates and only take my cues from the films and TV shows. Gaming with players who know more about it than I do – true Trek aficionados – proved difficult as the slightest detail I got wrong was corrected and ideas were formed using words an terminology I didn’t have the slightest clue about. In these cases I let the dice decide but on a failed roll there was a long conversation, almost an argument, as to how they as Federation characters and members of Star Fleet would know how to do that or would have access to certain kinds of equipment. A basic case of Player knowledge versus Character Knowledge with not much chance of an amicable settlement because the player knew so much more about Star Trek than I did.

I had the same problem as a player in a Middle-Earth Role Playing game. It was set during the War of the Ring and we were Gondorian soldiers scouting the north and I knew the GM was wrong about the location of The Lonely Mountain. I can’t remember why it made so much difference to the game, maybe it didn’t, but the GM did not want to hear my corrections. He even had me roll to see what my PC did know, and when I failed the roll he told me that as far as my character was concerned it was where he said it was. I remember being incredibly annoyed and a bit flustered about it and my argument at the time was, ‘But I’ve been reading Tolkien for more than a decade!’

Certain popular settings are easier than others. Playing in the Star Wars universe is easy. Everyone knows where they stand. Good guys are heroes, bad guys are villains, and nobody cares how things work or where things are – they’re just there and they do what you need them to do and with no defined ‘this is how it all hangs together’ you can pretty much wing because, hey – everyone loves Star Wars. It’s all about adventure on a pulp scale. But a richer setting, such as Star Trek or Middle-Earth, has so much more detail and history that parts of that can affect gameplay, or at least people’s perceptions of it. These settings can be several things at once – adventure, combat, exploration, character driven, emotional, intriguing, mysterious, lots of things – and in some cases a player’s view of the setting will be vastly different to how someone else views it. Attitudes to how the game should be played will differ, and the amount that a single person knows about the setting will differ from the amount another knows, and these levels of knowledge might bring about disagreements. How do I know that a PC can get out of trouble with the Andorians on the planet Flexagarble VII by using an inverted tri-phase resonator on the transponders they use for the transporter room? What does that even mean? How do I know that the player isn’t simply making it up – like I did just then - knowing that I know far less than he does about the setting?

These days I leave it to the dice. Unless there’s something specific in the rules that addresses this particular problem, a ruling that’ll give me something to make a decision about how to handle the situation no matter what the player has to say about it, then I’ll just match what they want to do to with the closest skill on their sheet and ask them to roll, maybe modify it depending on how plausible their argument sounds. That has to be the fairest way so that everyone comes away without feeling cheated. In these possible situations I’ll make sure this kind of ruling is going to be implemented before the game starts so that everyone knows where they stand. I realise they know more than me but I have to make rulings based on what sounds plausible and not based on what some random character in Season 5 Episode 4 did or said, or what it says in Book 3 on Page 244 Paragraph 2 of The Epic series. I don’t know these things and the players should have respect for that, the same way I’ll have respect for their breadth of knowledge by making modifiers to rolls depending on how they make their case.

It’s certainly better than simply saying or hearing, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, you can’t do that’.

Learning from mistakes

One of my biggest failings as a GM when I first started out running games was the fact that I felt, as the controller of the game, I not only had control over the direction the game took but I also had control over the fate and the even the decisions of the players.

I think this was borne out of two things; Firstly, I felt that as I was in charge and I had designed the story of the game then the game should progress as I saw fit. Secondly, I felt that the players were there to be entertained by me and so it was up to me to talk them through something that I thought they would find entertaining. It was both a misconception and a conceit, and my first games suffered terribly for it.

This approach to GMing stripped away any control the players may have had, or even wanted. I didn’t simply railroad them, I forced them onto the train and strapped them to the seats. I was literally narrating a story, telling them what was happening and in some cases what they were doing, and I only stopped and asked for their input at certain points, such as when a fight was about to take place or a situation/puzzle needed to be solved. Looking back on it now nearly thirty years later I can’t even fathom why it is I never noticed the looks of sheer boredom on the faces of the players. It’s actually embarrassing to remember it. I was so wrapped up in the powers that I had been given - or that I had granted to myself – I didn’t even realise that players were the other 50% of the game. I was the GM and I had The Power! I can simply put this down to inexperience but it amazed me, years later, when I took part in games where the apparently experienced GM was running the games in exactly the same vein. I played in groups where this way of gaming was the norm for the GM and the players sat back and let the GM go on and on and on. It was incredibly strange to experience, especially since I already knew these people and didn’t expect it from them.

GMs do not have The Power in the literal sense. They have the reins but they don’t have full control of the bolting horse. In fact, if anyone has The Power it’s the players, as it’s their decisions and actions that drive the game forward and result in an enjoyable fulfilling experience for everyone. It took me a while to realise that – and I realised it on my own, it wasn’t pointed out to me – and now I feel my games are better for it.

TPK

I had my first ever Total Party Kill as a GM last night, and it was during the very last fight with the bad guy at the end of a short Dragon Warriors campaign I’ve been running since the beginning of the year.

I feel bad that the PCs were killed, but I don’t feel guilty about it. The thing is, during the last few weeks I dropped plenty of hints, clues and even showed them the effect of certain things against demonic creations, and they never caught on. I think they were distracted by trying to outdo each other in the jokes department, talked about other stuff whilst I was explaining or describing things and basically didn’t pay attention. At the very end of the adventure, just before the TPK, they let one of their party die while they all fought a single opponent – they could have quite easily saved him with a healing tonic that they all had, the very same healing tonics they didn’t use during the final fight - and didn’t work together as a team. I didn’t set out to kill them, it was just a case of very bad forward planning on their part and some incredibly unlucky dice rolls.

After the event, I asked the question, ‘Where do you think you went wrong?’ The answers they gave me told me that they knew what they should have done and how they should have done it – they just didn’t do it.

I’m honestly baffled.