I have a very nice group and we all have a lot of fun running the Iron Kingdoms RPG using pathfinder, we have completed the entire Witchfire Trilogy and are now building upon that.
What has been getting under my skin is the mentalities they have about me as a DM.
The Omnipotent God:
One thinks I am the God of this world so I should know every small detail of every rule and interactions and does not do much to help new players look things up or bother having a solid understanding of the rules. So in bringing in his girlfriend's character looks nothing up for her, just keeps wanting to waste playing time to do what he could have worked out himself.
The Badguy:
I control the badguys in the game so I am the head boss badguy and you need to watch out what you say to me because I will use everything against you to mess with you. The city is in shambles now cursed with darkness and unhallow and the dead have risen in our story. I ask him out of game where do you plan on going to next. "I don't have to tell you!" is the response. I say you do if you want anything to be there when you get there, or it could just be burned to the ground, that is easier to prep for.
Also any time something goes poorly for their character it is because I set it up to kill them off and make things impossible. Blah.
The Unfair DM:
In the conversion to Pathfinder many things needed to be changed from the IKRPG this has been a difficult task to deal with but these players
This campaign is my second major one (it has lasted over a year now) and when I began it I made some mistakes that I needed to correct. Every change I make is just to screw them over as this mentality see it.
I used a stat generation system that was absolutely bonkers that I borrowed from one of the players. Roll 4 dice, reroll 1s and 2s drop the lowest, fill out a 6 x 6 grid, choose any column or row or diagonal, and swap one stat out and one in. Their stats were atrocious, but I rolled with it for a long time trying to adjust the CR level to meet them but the balance was terrible off, either a joke encounter, or my god why are you out to kill my character in one shot. I figured time to fix it, bye bye all of your stats, hello pathfinder 25 point buy system. Oh the laments!
Also the rules lawyer to boot. I do not like to stop combat to rifle trough books looking for interactions of things so I play it fast make a ruling and look it up later most of them time. I have tried looking up every little thing, it kills the combat. Here is an example that is not clear in the rules:
A tiny sized beetle that eats flesh lands on their friends neck and begins to burrow into its flesh (not considered a grapple). Player 1 wants to shoot it with his sling. I say don't miss or you could hit your friend. He misses and rocks the small boy in the neck. I figured if it was a close miss (within 5 numbers) it would hit the boy. You never told me that, that's not in the rules that's not fair!
* * * *
Anyway, again I like my group, I just hate their mentalities on DMs. All of them have DMed before, and I can say none of them are perfect, we all have a lot more fun in my game and it is the one everyone demands to play as much as possible (over any other campaigns). I am sure people have encountered this and other negative mentalities. I have tried to talk to them about it and tell them that when you act like this it makes the game not fun for me to play, and if it is not fun I am not going to do it. But these mentalities keep popping up.
Has anyone been able to fix it? I really like the people I play with and the game is a whole mess of fun most of the time, so I am not ready to give up, but I would like to know what you guys have done that has worked.
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Gently remind your players that you are as much a player as they are.
RE: Omnipotent God
Remind them that their main responsibility is to be aware of their own characters capabilities. They should own a copy of any rules they are using (or at least have the relevant sections marked for ease of reference). Being an omnipotent god is hard work, and requires that you pay attention to little things like the current dungeon or other PCs.
RE: The Badguys
Just like the players you often have to separate in character knowledge from out of character knowledge. Furthermore if they insist on keeping you on the backfoot, the players are only punishing themselves. You'll be forced to improvise and that makes balancing encounters or creating interesting NPCs to interact with difficult. Inform them that giving you information about their future plans allows you to clear a space for those plans in the world. If they seriously want to play in a world that has a string of non-memorable NPCs begging them to do fetchquests while you try to come up with something more interesting to do then they may need another DM.
RE: The Unfair DM
Point out to them that their stats were making encounters very difficult to build. The harder you have to work, the less often they'll get to play. Point out that if there's a near impossible fight coming you'll flag it for them, and that sometimes discretion is the better part of valour. Remind them also that the most memorable encounters are the ones that pushed them to their limits and they came out the other side victorious. Having monstrously high stats might seem fun at first, but if monsters are all push-overs then the game just becomes a series of dice-rolls rather than hard-won battles.
That being said, if you're going to do something that isn't RAW (such as your example above) then clearly inform the players of the rule you're likely to use (i.e. hitting soft cover) and how it'll interact with their attack roll. Part of the game is risks vs. rewards and your job is to let them know the consequences for failure so they can make informed decisions. If the PC had a terrible ranged attack with the sling he may have chosen another weapon, or even a different action. Be reasonable, but be firm your word supercedes the books during the game when the rules are unclear or take too long to look up. After the game feel free to look up the relevant rules and be sure to implement them in a way that feels most fair to you and your players in the future.
Hope that helps,
Dudemeister.
Maybe you need to help him with his theology, particularly, the assumption that the Omnipotent God is his personal butler. More smiting the character of such a player might prove effective...
Welcome to the club. :)
ROCKS FALL EVERYBODY DIES!
Works for me every time. ;-P
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I feel your pain, I really do.
We actually started an "off-week" game, since I was getting burnt out.
Now, I get to play, the others get to play in my game, and someone gets more dm experience as we go.
All in all, it works out. Also, the extra week gets nice when you have to create your own stuff.
-t
Maybe you need to help him with his theology, particularly, the assumption that the Omnipotent God is his personal butler. More smiting the character of such a player might prove effective...
LMFAO - thanks!
tfad
Puts me in mind of a player i had back in the good old days of 2E..playing with all the bells and whistles of the Players options( yeh I know ..I was asking for it wasn't I).
The Character was a Lawful good Justicar..basically a Warrior Cleric who had to stick pretty close to a code not to unlike a Paladins.
The player proposed an act I considered against his alingement..I warned him..he proposed a second similar act..I sent him a dream from his diety warning him.He ignored it..I sent him a second stronger dream showing the world being destroyed by his actions..he ignored it..then finally I had him whisked off to a one on one with his diety..he promised to be a good boy and then promptly went back on his word..I stripped him of his powers and then was subjected to a tirade of abuse at the end off which he walked out of the game.
His Character became the BBEG in my game towards the end..in fact the heroes had to flee the world as his evil monotheistic racist followers began to take over everywhere..it left a world without magic and good non humans. Pretty much the destruction his diety had foretold.
Assuming you're not already doing any of the things you're being accused of, you could try actually becoming the omnipotent god/baguy/unfair DM they already think you are for a session.
Roll behind the screen for no reason at odd moments, and chuckle evilly.
Make nonsense rulings for no reason, and insist they be followed because "I'm the DM, and you're not!"
Assign effects from a homemade random damage table.
Plunge the players into encounters they truly have no chance of leaving alive, and look like you're enjoying it.
If the group (not the party) survives the evening, maybe they'll see they have it good right now, and stop complaining all the time.
My friends and I rotate games and the GM'ing chair, and for the most part we trust each other not to screw over everyone (as someone said earlier in the thread, we're all here to have fun), but the GM had the alternate title of Games Operations Director (or G.O.D. for short) for a reason. Sometimes you just have to trust that the guy in the big chair knows what he's doing, or at the least, is doing his best.
What, none of your players considers you to be an XBox DM - Players show up, press the button to turn on the box, and then expect to be entertained for several hours while making absolutely no effort on their parts?
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What, none of your players considers you to be an XBox DM - Players show up, press the button to turn on the box, and then expect to be entertained for several hours while making absolutely no effort on their parts?
....
That is unnecessary and a false assumption. It is possible to become just as mentally fatigued playing an Xbox as if you were playing DnD/PF. For those that can read the sarcasm in posts like this, and like video games as much as DnD/PF, the way you chose to compare the two is insulting. If you could even call it a comparison.
But I understand your point, and I tend to think of the DM as more of a movie directer, with only an outline for the script. The players/actors get to do a little improvisation!And then it's the DM's turn.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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I make it a point when I start DMing with a new group to take an hour and discuss expectations for what I feel my role is as a DM. The I let them tell me what they think I ought to be doing and what they'd like to see out of the game and out of the experience. We cover stuff like lethality, reality vs MAGIC!, gaming times, absenteeism and how we deal with it, and immersion vs casual gaming. It usually helps to alleviate a lot of the misconceptions and cross-conceptions that your players seem to have. And it gives them the option of talking to me about their concerns instead of bottling them up and having them pop out in anger later. It seems touchy-feelie, but it works.
And then I kill them and take their stuff. Wait, I didn't mean to say that out loud. Curses!
It seems touchy-feelie, but it works.
Actually, far from seeming touchie-feelie, I'd say this was the neglected art of game preparation.
I used to encounter a similiar situation when people became aware I liked Heavy Metal - 'hey, my brother/girlfriend/next door neighbour likes metal, you should get together' - and then they turn out to listen to something I'd strangle a kitten to get away from.
People want different things out of games, and without finding out what that is first, you are storing up problems later on IMO, or people will get bored and leave.
I recently started running a pbp for the first time and got 2 out of a group of 3 who were also new players. I made a specific point of asking them what sort of game they wanted beforehand and tried to tell them what I was hoping from my side of the table. They seemed happy with what I proposed, and each other, and so far (touch wood) the game is still going.
**Note to players: the GM wants to have fun too!***
I almost walked away from a face to face game a few weeks back because the players basically wanted me to be some sort of Everquest/Wow-bot given human form.
'This game I'm running; how do you feel about:'
- Roleplaying? Nah
- Problem solving? Only if it leads to us getting stuff
- Political Intrigue? Nope, we just want to kill things.
Bunch of 15 year old players? Nope, 2 degree educated people, 1 of whom also uttered the immortal line 'I love to play Chaotic Neutral cos then I can do what I want', and who, as soon as the first session finished, asked 'how many XPs do we get?' and were busy telling me what they were going to do when they levelled.
On the pbp front, how often do we see someone jump in and offer to run, and unless it's 'I'm running Adventure Path X', gives no details. Prospective players jump all over recruitment threads, and yet in my short time pbp-ing, I've had games where people reply, create a PC and then NEVER POST or give up within days. Why? Why would you do that?! Because the game isn't what you wanted it to be?
So, yes, work with people to get a game everyone wants to play.
If every GM had to know every rule, there would be a sight less GMs…and they are already an endangered species. Does your friend want to wait a year while you go to GM nightschool and get a degree in rules or does he want to play now and wing it?
GM vs. Characters, Characters loose. Let us just ignore, for the moment, the 'your character has a heart attack/rock falls/night falls/roll on the random damage chart' fun and look at the unlimited resources available to the GM. "I don't have to tell you why the ancient red dragon doesn't like you. He just doesn't." It is a cooperative experience. If your friend doesn't want to cooperate, why should you?
A GM who makes a rule that a player does not like does not automatically mean the GM is unfair. This is playground stuff. Srsly.
Would you put up with this if you were playing poker? Your friends owe it to you not to ruin your fun. You owe it to yourself not to let them.
Funny I do play poker with these same friends and none of them have any of these negative mentalities then. We might talk about what a bad beat it was, but we shrug and say that's how the game goes. I wish I could cultivate that in my game.
I do have one player who gets really grumpy (who often sees me as the unfair DM) and turns into Eeyore when random things do not go his way. He has been on a bad rolling streak for 3 game sessions now and pouts and slams his dice rolls on the table. They were great sessions though, one experienced D and D player told me it was the most fun he had ever had with D and D, but this attitude is making him not want to play.
I have talked to him about keeping a positive atmosphere for everyones benefit and how it is not fun to DM when this happens but he feels that his luck is soooooo bad that it warrents the response.
Funny thing is that this player is also my best role player and invests himself in the plot the most and seeks to give directions and make plans when others do not. He is also the one that cleans up on the extra role playing exp when others take the role of the lump.
So I don't know what to do, perhaps another talk. This also happens in other games with him, Magic, Warmachine, Hordes and I tell him every time but the bad luck justifies his actions he feels (even when time and time again he comes out and wins the game in spite of the bad luck).
@James I think this is a really good idea to talk it out in a group, perhaps we can start on email and bring up points about what we want in a game. Do any of you have other things to add to the list of things to go over to make the game work more smoothly?
Absenteeism -(I have covered, my policy is to never NPC a PC nor let anyone use them. I have a magic cursed item that sucks up the absent player and spits them back out next time they show up.)
Role-playing
Lethality
Problem Solving
Political intrigue
Perhaps you could explain what you talk about with these last two:
Reality vs. magic
Casual vs. Immersion
I tend to let my players do what they want.
ALMOST whatever they want.
I've got a guy on Sundays who wants to lead the goblins in a revolt and topple their orcish masters. He can do it in my game, and he's been working towards it. Once enough time is devoted, then we both know that his plotline can begin.
Another character, who is an elf, may have to return to his homeland (Which he left due to the culture leaving a poor taste in his mouth) to receive his arcane archer training. Something out of his control? Yes. But something that he can develop his character with? Also yes. Can he train outside of the isles? Yep, but finding a teacher is going to be a pain and a half.
I haven't gotten a complaint from my buddies who play, and people I've never met before who've played my games tend to really enjoy them. Addendum, I have gotten one complaint, but the guy had just lost half his project, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was just so many harsh words (Especially since the object of the complaint was roleplaying, and he's had a great deal of fun with the roleplaying in my game before).
I hate to toot my own horn but it seems the stuff I've been doing is something a lot of people enjoy. Just let them do things that they want to do without making it too easy is my best advice. Oh, and display that you yourself are willing to break the rules. I commonly would call a rule out at the table ("Oh by the way, you're unconscious, but you can still make a reflex save. I don't know why either. This book is wrong. Let's not just listen to everything it says blindly.").
Another BIG BIG issue is respect. Once your players respect you and you respect them, the two of you can do a lot more together.
One thing that might help is not looking up anything during game sessions, but just winging it. Tell your players that if they want to discuss rules with you, they can do it after the game, preferably individually.
My experience as a DM is that looking up lots of rules during sessions slows down the game to a crawl. It often results in people getting bored and noticing even more things they think you are doing wrong, so you have to look up even more, etc. etc.
If on the other hand you do not look up things during your session (except perhaps in life-and-death situations) the game pace increases, the tension increases and everyone gets so immersed in the game that they forget to bicker about rules.
I have one such player. He knows the rules worst of all, but he thinks he knows best. So at least once every session he questions my judgement. In the past I always looked up the rule (and usually turned out to be right), which resulted in bored players. Now I just waive away his comments and play on. Which leads to exciting fights, and at the end of the evening he does not even remember asking. And if he still does, I take him apart and we solve it together. At least then it is not me against the whole group.
In case of lots of rules discussions I usually do the same: pick up the pace of the adventure.
Another thing that helps is to write down every rule you invent on the spot. Make a computer file with all those rules and regularly send it to your players. Keep this file short. A lot of extra rules will only confuse things.
I hope these tips are useful to you. They have been to me in the past.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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Sure, happy to help!
Reality vs. magic: This refers to how fantastical a fantasy setting you want to play in. In the scale from grim and gritty to talking horses, where do you fall? This helps avoid the player who shakes his head when time travel is brought up because that's not the sort of thing he expects to see in his fantasy.
Casual vs. Immersion: In college I played in a game that was all about the immersion aspect of gaming: six-eight straight hours of playing, no stopping, no tangents, all plot and voices and props. I now play in a game where we do as much time joking around, talking about our wives, comparing stupid college stories and general geekery as we do actually playing. Knowing where the balance is really helps me plan out games. For example, I used to be able to run entire adventures in one sitting in college, but now I plot out a couple key encounters at a time because that's about how many we'll get through.
Generally it's also important to know what makes a game fun for people. Discussing that is important so you know how to hit the happy spots for your players. I've found that if I can throw each player a bone every 30-60 minutes, I can generally keep their attention, even if the current moment isn't exactly their cup o'tea.
God luck on starting the conversation. I hope it helps and you can end up with a better game experience!
That is unnecessary and a false assumption. It is possible to become just as mentally fatigued playing an Xbox as if you were playing DnD/PF.
Having mentally fatigued players is one thing. Having a DM who ends up getting the Red Ring of (Campaign) Death because his players don't notice he's burning out is another!
I do have one player who gets really grumpy (who often sees me as the unfair DM) and turns into Eeyore when random things do not go his way. He has been on a bad rolling streak for 3 game sessions now and pouts and slams his dice rolls on the table. They were great sessions though, one experienced D and D player told me it was the most fun he had ever had with D and D, but this attitude is making him not want to play.
I have talked to him about keeping a positive atmosphere for everyones benefit and how it is not fun to DM when this happens but he feels that his luck is soooooo bad that it warrents the response.
Funny thing is that this player is also my best role player and invests himself in the plot the most and seeks to give directions and make plans when others do not. He is also the one that cleans up on the extra role playing exp when others take the role of the lump.
Dude I feel ya, I have a friend who is this exact guy, REALLY gets into the roleplay immersion, can't roll good to save his life, and gets very angry. He talks all suave, gives big speeches, rolls nat 1 on attack/diplomacy/Bluff... Man I feel for him, but he gets riled up...
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Dude I feel ya, I have a friend who is this exact guy, REALLY gets into the roleplay immersion, can't roll good to save his life, and gets very angry. He talks all suave, gives big speeches, rolls nat 1 on attack/diplomacy/Bluff... Man I feel for him, but he gets riled up...
I'm that guy. It utterly kills my desire to role-play when I give a speech worthy of Churchill, detailing a plan that will make the other guy fabulously rich and successful if he just cooperates with us against a third party, and the DM rolls a die and says, 'He got bored halfway through and attacks.'
Screw it. If everything is gonna come down to that damn die, just roll it, I'm gonna sit here and read a comic book.
We've begun using action points / hero points for that sort of thing, so that once a night (roughly) someone can say, 'Nuh uh, I *hit*!'
Dude I feel ya, I have a friend who is this exact guy, REALLY gets into the roleplay immersion, can't roll good to save his life, and gets very angry. He talks all suave, gives big speeches, rolls nat 1 on attack/diplomacy/Bluff... Man I feel for him, but he gets riled up...I'm that guy. It utterly kills my desire to role-play when I give a speech worthy of Churchill, detailing a plan that will make the other guy fabulously rich and successful if he just cooperates with us against a third party, and the DM rolls a die and says, 'He got bored halfway through and attacks.'
Screw it. If everything is gonna come down to that damn die, just roll it, I'm gonna sit here and read a comic book.
We've begun using action points / hero points for that sort of thing, so that once a night (roughly) someone can say, 'Nuh uh, I *hit*!'
My method for dealing with that has been to have the players roll first, and then roleplay out what happened.