I love a bit of in-game banter. Humor is one of my primary gateways into the hobby, and zippy one-liners are usually session highlights for me. However, there's one thing that grinds my gears: other players suggesting "funny" outcomes for your rolls before the GM can.
“You rolled a natural one? Ha! I bet you hit yourself in the nards! You probably vomit and fall over into a puddle of your own sick!”
So here's my question. Is it ever appropriate for another player to preempt a GM like this? And if you do have a disruptive player at the table, how do you shut them down without being branded a humorless jerk?
I love a bit of in-game banter. Humor is one of my primary gateways into the hobby, and zippy one-liners are usually session highlights for me. However, there's one thing that grinds my gears: other players suggesting "funny" outcomes for your rolls before the GM can.
“You rolled a natural one? Ha! I bet you hit yourself in the nards! You probably vomit and fall over into a puddle of your own sick!”
So here's my question. Is it ever appropriate for another player to preempt a GM like this? And if you do have a disruptive player at the table, how do you shut them down without being branded a humorless jerk?
Don't play Crit fails is the easiest solution
Or whenever someone does roll a Nat 1 you temper your decision until they come to the realization that their ideas are not within the realm of the world that you are playing in.
Is it ever appropriate? Yes. Just take a look at all the games that emphasize the collaborative aspect of storytelling games. If you can run a whole campaign without a GM, other players can certainly offer up their own creative world-building and adjudication.
...in the right circumstances. But in many more, I would have to agree: it's obnoxious and presumptuous and disrespectful. I think it takes a lot of trust and evidence of sound judgement for a GM to let their players have some control over the game beyond their characters.
As to the second question, I usually lay it all out on Session Zero. My word is the last word, I put a lot of time and work into this so I expect some respect, etc, etc, etc. And I have been branded a humorless jerk (and much worse) on several occasions. But I have no regrets. None of my critics could have run a game anywhere near the level I provided for them, so either they're nitpicking at me because there's nothing more substantial to criticize, or they're doing it out of spite. Either way, it's not something I waste my time agonizing over. I think players need to seriously appreciate their GM's, and I see so many cases where they just don't, because they think they're somehow entitled to a good time without making an effort to ensure that the others at the table do, too.
I could use less of my GM describing in detail how my acid spells always seem to hit in the face and trigger Raiders of the Lost Ark levels of face-melting.
On the other hand, one thing I like to do is explain something in terms of something else that just happened. "Let's see. Yeah, nothin' doin' there. Your swing was so telegraphed that the bandit had time to dance a jig. Too bad for him, though, because he was too busy taunting you to avoid a clean Force Slash from your Spiritual Ally. And with flanking, that's a crit! Nicely done!"
Just a quick example.
The players at my table catch on pretty quick as to what hits and what misses, so they usually describe their own misses in the same way they describe their hits. Having each player describe what they are actually doing helps it be more than just a bunch of dice rolls, each being its own success or failure.
The TWF Rogue brings one blade across the neck in a devestating slash, as the second blade goes for the belly but bounces off their target's armor.
The archer unleashes a volley of arrows... the first arrow shatters against the target's shield, the second arrow kills it, and the third arrow pins the lifeless body to the wall behind it.
The players know that not meeting the target's AC does not equate to missing entirely... so blades bouncing off of breastplates is just part of the narrative/story.
Nobody volunteers to drop their weapon when they roll a Natural 1, so I am not going to make them drop it... nor am I going to allow other players to tell them they should drop their weapon because it would be hilarious to someone else. They know that a 1 probably misses and they move on.
Combat takes long enough already, which is funny because it's always over so "soon". Lol. Can spend 8 hours on each named NPC, 2 nights on designing the actual encounter/battlefield, a few hours searching for the perfect piece of magical nonsense to drop as loot (but in this encounter it really helps whatever NPC or their pet or whatever), another couple hours prerolling NPC attacks/damages/initiatives/perceptions/etc... combat lasts 4 rounds.
Sure, those 4 rounds take over an hour, but ultimately all that work behind the scenes amounted to 24 seconds of combat. Within a minute of arriving, the party is casually looting the dead, finishing the half-eaten ham-and-cheese sandwich on dead dude's plate, pocketing dead dude's magical ring like it ain't no thing.
I don't play with critical decks, but I don't have a problem with them. Drawing a card from a deck on a critical fail isn't going to be too distracting because everyone knows the card is deciding the outcome... it's not obnoxious Monster-drinking Kyle saying you hitting yourself in the nards would be hilarious.
yes I find this annoying, because almost always its a cheap laugh at another players expense and not something clever, inventive, related to the current conflict or in anyway drives the story or game forward. It's exactly as the OP describes; "HAHA you crap your pants and then fall face first into the dead orc's butt!"
Jesus Bradley, are you five?
Don't play Crit fails is the easiest solution
It's not a crit fail system. It's just straight up narrative "suggestions" from fellow players rather than the GM.
Blades in the Dark and other narrative first games tend to handle this in a more clear and straightforward way, I generally take a page from their playbooks...
Is it ever appropriate for another player to preempt a GM like this?
In a humorous game where the failure doesn't have consequences and goofign around is teh main purpose, it could be fine depending on the group, but in an ordinary Pathfinder game, if the player said it to have the other PC suffer consequences, it's a major dick move that voilates the very nature of the game and thus the reason the group has come together to play.
When you get together with others to play a Pathfinder campaign, you form a sort of unwritten social contract that you're playing so that everyone has fun, that you're going to follow the rules, that you won't cheat, and so on. The behaviour you described voilates multiple aspects of this agreement, namely that the game is cooperative, that the rules are to be followed, that the player gets to play their character, and that the GM handles the interactions between PCs and the world.
And if you do have a disruptive player at the table, how do you shut them down without being branded a humorless jerk?
I would explain to them that I signed up for a cooperative game of Pathfinder, not for "make up stuff to screw up the other PCs so you can draw schadenfreude from that". You might even open it up with outright saying "what you're doing is destroying my fun".
This happens all the time and it's welcomed at our table tbh, because it's usually funny, we all laugh and giggle, and then we listen to whatever the GM has decided "happens". I imagine that if you're playing at a Game Store with a group that you're unfamiliar with, then this would be a faux pas, but if you're playing at a table where everyone is okay with cutting-up every few minutes then it's fine.
I'll second this, but I have played exclusively in home games for years.
A bit of a tangent, but I'm beginning to wonder if there's a way to set up forum posts that could take this sort of thing into account. A lot of our preferences as gamers are shaped by venue (digital vs. in-person vs. play-by-post) and circumstance (school game club vs. home game vs. organized play). I'm imagining a short "poster stats" sort of setup so we're all on the same page in terms of assumptions.