Forum RPG Question, Maybe Advice

[clehrich]

Now, I wrote this out normally, and Sealboy Kahless had the next post and said 'I will distract the apparition!' (even though his character shouldn't have known anything about it), and he proceeds to fire three grenade rounds (he was near the circle of protection which nullified the no-combustion field) into the ground floor, then proceeded to hose the ground floor with his M-60 as well, heh. A distraction, he called it.

This circle of protection, that's an occult thing, right?  Or that's the inhibitor fungus?  I'm lost.

It occurs to me that you might think hard about Fang's concept of "No Myth."  I don't mean you have to run this way, as such, but remember: anything that isn't in play, that is anything that hasn't been stated explicitly, does not exist.  So it doesn't matter whether the inhibitor was invented before or after the SEAL's grenades; the SEAL will perceive it as a response, and rightly so, because the inhibitor didn't exist until after the SEAL did.

But do they really know the rules of this inhibitor and the circle of protection?  I mean, they don't know squat about the mythos, and they don't know squat about the occult, so they probably don't have a lot of clue about this circle.  Let's suppose, for a minute, that if you allow objects to rest crossing the lines, it weakens the force of the circle.  Has this been disproven yet?  Okay, so have they even noticed that some of the debris from all that shooting has landed on the circle a bit?  Or maybe some of the shells from all those rounds?

This guy sounds like a raving weenie to me, albeit not perhaps a hopeless one.  I like the direction you're going, where you're making the group pay the consequences of the SEAL's violence.  Keep doing so, and hope that eventually the whole group will start jumping on the guy to put the guns down.  I could totally see a situation where the other characters start treating this guy as a nutcase, and every time something unusual happens their first reaction is, "Ack!  Jump on the SEAL before he shoots someone!  Somebody, inject the tranquilizers!  Okay, so now what do we do about the actual situation?"

Keep us posted....

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, like Chris said, the way to get this guy is not to antoagonize him at all. In fact you should reward him, but jut in lame ways. That is, reward everyone playing, but just make his reward so much less cool and interesting that he sees that his way isn't the only way to play.

That was what my post was about. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Always let him win as long as it's about something that doesn't matter. Only resstrict him from doing anything that's really relevant to the plot. :-)

Anyhow, what Chris said is true about the "No Myth" play. What he means is that you can make up anything you want. This should be really easy with PBeM play as they can't possibly tell when you're improvising. Thew only time that the twink will get suspicious is if things seem to show up out of nowhere to hose him.

Like I said, don't do that. Make him think he's playing well. Just have it be that all his good work is irrelevant to who looks like the hero at the end.

I'd like to say, again, and for the record, that this is all against common sense, and good judgement. Open communication is really the best answer.

But I'm realy having fun waiting to see what happens using the unserhanded method. It's like waiting for a car wreck at a nascar race. :-)

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I find this entire discussion horrifying. It seems very clear to me that one rather excellent, thoughtful role-player has already been driven away (cited "outside constraints" being the usual fog-screen), and that one extremely manipulative, butt-headed player is making the GM dance to his tune as he has no doubt done many times before.

This isn't a GNS issue. It's a Social Contract issue. I can't imagine why the SEAL-character player was permitted to participate in the first place, and it's painfully clear what the endgame and coda to this all-too-familiar situation is going to be.

Best,
Ron

[Bruce Baugh]

I'm with Ron on this one. I'd say "I'm sorry, but what you're looking for in a game right now is way far removed from what I am. We'll talk about future opportunities; this one just isn't working at all. I'd like you to step down from this one." I wish that I'd started doing that earlier in my life, since in retrospect I wasted a lot of time and effort in many contexts trying to placate the one hard case who in the end wasn't going to cooperate anyway. Now my priority is the people who are making a real effort to work with me and each other, and I deal with fringes only insofar as I feel like it.

[clehrich]

Look, Mike and I (I think) are totally in agreement that the correct answer here was never to have let this happen in the first place.  Now that it has, what now?

I'm advocating finding out whether this SEAL-dude has potential, if challenged, to be a good player.  If not, the hell with him.  But I say make use of the opportunity to play tricks and learn something in the process.  If it produces nothing, it produces nothing but a good learning experience for the GM.  But bailing now produces nothing for nobody.

Is there a way to make this guy consider the rashness of his actions?  Is there a way to make the other players join in on the effort?

Look, suppose we end up with a character whose problem is that he's a f---ing nutcase.  Okay, so the other characters need to deal with this.  Now if the players are all going with it, and good gaming is happening because we've transmuted "twink power-gamer" into "problem character for the party," sounds like a good thing to me.  

I think, frankly, that there is too much talk around here about how to deal with great players and make wonderful games out of wonderfulness.  That's overstated, but here you've got a desperate situation.  Should the GM run away because it doesn't work?  NO!  The GM should try to make it all into a useful and enjoyable experience for all.  If he can't, he can't.  But he came in asking if he could, and I say yes.  And, yes, it's going to take desperate measures.  So what?  What's the worst that can happen?  Bad gaming, sucky time for everyone.  Okay, he's got that, but people seem to be making it a little better than that.  So why not push for all he can get out of it?  If he gets one player who says, "Hey, that was a really cool way to deal with a really horrible situation, I like you and your gaming," then hasn't he "won"?  And if the SEAL guy comes out saying, "You know what?  Next time I'm playing a 50 year-old fat dude with a limp and a lot of memories," how is this not also a "win"?

Gaming isn't about perfection, or about greatness.  It's about playing the hand you're dealt, and making the best of it.  If that's great, great; if it's terrible, you try to make a decent game out of it.

[Nev the Deranged]

I agree with Chleric.  Dr. V should have made it clear what he wanted at the beginning, yes; but he didn't.  Now he's IN THE GAME, with players, some of which presumably are enjoying themselves (including the SEAL guy, which is not unimportant).  Bailing on the game, or kicking someone out of it, is the wuss out answer.

Some great (and less great but still viable) suggestions have been given in this thread, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Dr. V quoted them all in his response, because it meant he go the full benefit of all the advice everyone was posting.  I hadn't even realized I was holding my breath, but as someone who has participated in such trainwreck PBP storytelling, it was really cathartic to see him take everything into consideration and decide what to DO rather than how to cop out.  Especially since in the situation I was in, I copped out.  Admittedly I wasn't the DM and was highly outnumbered by twinkies, but that's all beside the point.

NEXT TIME, Dr. V needs to set a better social contract *before* the game.  THIS TIME, I think he's doing a splendid job with a simple concept that Freeform RPers have been using for ever:

ICA = ICC.

In character actions equal in character consequences.  If you fire a rocket launcher into a cabin... everyone in the cabin dies, the cabin and everything in it is destroyed, there is a high likelihood of a serious forest fire, which could potentially grow to be as big a threat as the big baddie.

Of course in this case the grenades, which were OUTSIDE the COP when they struck, wouldn't have exploded.  Too late for that now, although you might want to think about coming up with a reason why they worked.

To me, that's one of the fun parts about FFRP, "justification after the fact".  Taking seemingly unrelated tidbits of actions and plot twists, and then weaving backwards (or forwards) to cohere them, presents an enjoyable mental and creative challenge for the storyteller, and can result in some pretty nifty ideas being worked out.  Which is cool, because now the players' actions are unintentionally synergizing with the storyteller's creativity to generate surprises FOR THE STORYTELLER as well as the players.  Which is, in my opinion, a lot of fun.  I get a kick out of that kind of thing, maybe it's just me.

And remember, you're the GM, the storyteller, the guide, the loremaster- but you're a *player* too.  Not a PC, but a player- in that your role includes reacting to the game just as the PCs must.  

Dr. V, I think you're doing great, keep up the dispatches so we'll know how this experiment turns out... just don't end the game prematurely unless you absolutely MUST.  Don't let anybody here, no matter who they are, tell you "the game can't go on".. the game MUST go on!

[Bruce Baugh]

I object to "wuss out" and such. I don't know about others, but the folks I play and talk about gaming with generallly have very busy and often demanding lives. Suckitude can come on in waves, and none of us are getting any younger, and being a responsible worker, spouse, parent and so on takes a lot of energy. Gaming is supposed to be entertainment, unless someone's actually engaged in job-related stuff like playtesting a commercial design, and I don't see any duty at all to put up with unpleasant and unrewarding nuisances.

If the GM wants to put more effort into salvage, fine. But I think there's no duty to do so, and in my experience telling people that they ought to keep trying and trying to salvage things is a prescription for GM burnout a lot more often than it is for annoying players redeemed and happy play restored.

I'm not on the spot, and it's always hard to assess the tradeoffs from a distance. I just think that very often the right answer in terms of enhancing the fun of a recreational activity for most of the participants is to go ahead and bail on the source of trouble. When extra duties get piled on, the real point gets lost. This is not fundamentally a responsibility to society at large or a moral duty. It's a hobby, a pasttime. We work to make our rules and settings fun, we should work to make the process of play fun, too.

[Ron Edwards]

Different outlooks, eh? I think we all agree regarding the situation, more or less. The difference seems to be about "what we do." That's fair, don't you think?

Dr. V, Bruce is right - no one is on the spot for that but you and the other people in the game. One person has clearly voted with her feet already.

you've received some pretty good input, I think. If you look closely at the [Nev] and [Bruce & me] advice, you'll see one thing absolutely staring at you - it does depend on whether anyone is having fun besides Seal-boy, including yourself. If so, rockity-rock; if not, well ... I wouldn't stick around. But the decision is yours, not mine.

Best,
Ron

[Dr. Velocity]

Once again, though it doesn't do any of you credit, I'm surprised to have this many responses again.

Bruce and Ron, I totally agree with you, and again I also will be the first to stay the game started going queer due to my neglect of putting forward a finite and strict social contract, but as I said, this is playtesting, I wanted to see *how* everyone would play, and how far it would go, if it would cause enough trouble that a forum-rpg wasnt doable. I feel a forum rpg IS doable, as long as, as mentioned, the social contract is there, probably (as much as I hate it), including simple stats and equipment choosing, so there will be no nebulous 'available stuff' for munchkins to abuse, and also just so everyone feels on a level playing field of being able to pick precisely what they have with them, and not feel shorted, etc.

But I have to go with the others on this and say that I do not feel that simply dumping the game, thus far, is the best choice, for myself or the players. If there is enough complaint or in-game griping or people quitting, etc, thats one thing, but so far, only the farmer character has quit, and she has been on the forums before and goes through long periods of non-posting anyway, so her case, while *possibly* a result of not liking the turn of events, can not with certainty be ascribed to that.

Now, if it was around a table with friends, yes, maybe, because we would be there for the express purpose and I'd go 'hey, this isn't working, lets try this direction', and everyone would roll up new chars. But this is a forum and these people have all adjusted their normal net time and routines to try to post in here at least once a day, and are valiantly playing and developing characters and trying to move the game along, even the SEAL, intuiting clever ideas to overcome obstacles, pre-set and player-created, and I've been trying to keep it interesting and fair.

For example, the Indiana Jones type that showed up grabbed the NPC lodgekeeper after SHE grabbed the SEAL, berated her with a 'look what you've done!' exclamation. I honestly didnt expect that, since he was miffed at the SEAL too, but he's working on being in character and keeping the group cohesive, which is a good sign. The SEAL seemed a bit upset, either at his poor choice of distraction, or maybe just being called on it to face the consequences, so there is thought behind ALL of the actions; it just seems to be taking a while for different people. My plan is to throw the ghosts in some more, with more obvious signs directing everyone to the cave, where the monster is doing its monsterly thing with the bones or whatever, and the firefight commences, they find the NPC occultist/monster-hunter and maybe figure out how to banish the thing, etc. So they're right there on the brink, I just need to get them over this hump they're at right now, where they know the cabin is safe, and know theres symbols and weird crap all over it, and the occupant is gone but was reading weird books... they just don't seem to be getting a concensus of 'hey, lets go find him'.

[Bruce Baugh]

Well, I can speak to the issue of playtesting.

In every playtest I've ever run, there's been at least one person or group I've had to say, "Sorry, but what you keep demanding is so at odds with the fundamentals of what we're doing that it just doesn't matter at all. Thank you for your time and effort, but you don't need to make any more reports. We can't use this input, because we're not going to re-design the game from the ground up." I've also had to say, "I see you understand what we're trying to do, but addressing the concerns you raise at the level you'd like would take space that we really prefer to use for something else. We can put in brief warnings but not the extensive details you're looking for." And like that for various other cases.

Sometimes the answer from playtest is "This isn't your game."

[Nev the Deranged]

Hey, yeah... I apologize for not making that totally clear, although I do think I hinted at it.  I should have said The Game Must Go On... IF Most of the Players (including the GM) Are Having Fun (more than they're having problems).  

Alright, that's a really clumsy way of putting it, but yeah, the fun is obviously a major issue, and if I made it seem like continuing the game AT ALL COSTS was more important than continuing the game IF IT'S FUN, then that was my mistake.

Sowwy ^_^ My bad!

[Dr. Velocity]

"Like I said, they will hold in orbit away from the area. If we need to retreat, we will have to clear out away from this crap. The fighters can drop bombs from above the rain deck. 10 minutes until the air arives. "

Ah I love that SEAL. =/

Anyway, I'm *trying* to lead the 'healer' off after the little ghost girl, so he can find the save, disrupt the gate ritual, whatever.

Currently the Navy SEAL, since I let the radios work in the cabin and he heard that local law enforcement choppers are coming, posted that he was going to call in an air strike. *sigh* I dunno WHAT this guy does, he knows a LOT about military stuff but now his cargo hold is full of C4, and he apparently has the authority to call in airstrikes on a populated domestic civilian area with no other clearance. Instead of finagling out of that in the game, I posted OOC and flatly told him that was rejected. I hated to do it but there just doesn't seem to be any way to get through to him but to announce that I'm disallowing some of his ridiculously powerful actions; we may have him quit yet, though I HOPE he kinda 'gets it' and can get into the flow of the game.

I think he just has NOT done anything BUT freeform roleplaying and so he's lost, I don't think he understood when I posted for the signup about using a 'role-playing SYSTEM'. But as has been discussed, its playtesting, plus he started his own rpg thread so I'll have to check it out and see how that goes.

But in the game, all thats really left is letting him hose the monsters, and maybe get the other players to find the cave, etc. Its going ok and I've called for some random number choosing for my version of the 'sanity roll', so we'll see how THAT goes too. Heh. Thank again for all your comments.

[Dr. Velocity]

Hello, I know some of you probably don't even remember, but I appreciated the help and advice so much, I wanted to have some closure with this whole munchkin-forum-rpg thing, so here is how it went down.

A few days after my last post here, the SEAL attempted his most spectacular trick yet, which I might have mentioned already - he attempted to call in a full airstrike, using whatever fictitious ranking he was under the impression he possessed, using obscure words like "ETA, radius effect zone, and ... rain deck". I bluntly said NO. Well a day later, he finally caught me on AIM, and I later found had also posted, to the effect of the expected "I'm really getting pissed off - everything I have, you're trying to neutralize". Prepared for this, mostly due to the feedback here, I explained what I did here, and went with his NAVY Seal idea and Star Trek, since he's quite a Trekkie, and gave lost of compare and constrasts about PLANNING, tactics, improvisation, overcoming unexpected obstacles, debating with him over weapons and explosive transportation and licensing laws, etc.

After about 45 minutes of admittedly very uneasy bantering and one trying to make a point to the other about this or that, we somehow met on a mid-level and most of the tension sort of dissolved, and he confided in me, "you know, the sealed ammo don't work - I bought some and damned if every single one wasn't a dud" - we went on to tell me about checking it, and where he got it from, and all this and how even if moisture HAD gotten in it, it STILL wouldn't account for it simply going *pffft*, even though he'd gotten this same ammo before from this same place and had no problem - he had absolutely no idea why it didn't work. Well, that really was irrelevant but he finally seemed to understand more or less the idea of the way the forum game was supposed to work, and I relented on some things, and gave him his time in the spotlight to unleash the firepower - he even posted in the forums with a bit more openness and leaving room for me to insert the dreaded, "However, as he attempts to do this..." and noted "NOW we're getting somewhere!", out of character,  heh.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't peaches and sunshine, and he remained the forum equivelant of the Terminator, who deigned to allow the others to accompany him, but they enjoyed working on more character development anyway, and I wrote them into some good spots and usefulness when they weren't quite in a position, and posted faithfully.

Obviously it WAS good for the ones that kept with it, as the healer, the rather generic archer with dubious luck, and the Seal (the Indiana Jones guy disappeared and STILL hasn't been online, but this is a strange bunch and they all do that from time to time) - sometimes they would post twice a day; I honestly had trouble keeping up with them, and after I ended it and wrote up the probably too long epilogue, explaining what happened, what else they could have done, what worked well, and what ultimately happened to their characters (the SEAL became a Man In Black - the weird kind, not the Tommy Lee Jones kind) - they all said it was really good and they enjoyed it a lot, and all asked me when I was going to do the next one (!!!) - *sigh* Heh.

So, with some extra work on my part (a bit more than I expected but really not ALL that much) and flexibility on the part of the players, even the SEAL, it turned out really to be a decent playtest, unanimously agreed upon by the players - so I guess I can't complain too much, though we're a fairly close knit little web-based group, almost a "game clan", so I guess they'd be more forgiving than just some random person who wandered in to play a forum game - but still, final alaysis: probably a little weak, with some definite obstacles, but successful with some interesting playing and creativity on everyone's part. It still might have been quicker and easier to simply have ended it early and said "this isn't working" but they all seemed relatively open (stubborn, but open) to trying to make it work, and turns out, a measure of extra patience saw the game through to its end - if I had it to do over again, I probably would still choose to try to finish the game, maybe its more misplaced faith or naievete, but if so, I'm willing to live with that.

So thanks to all of you who gave feedback and ideas, in one form or another, I probably used ALL of them in one situation or the next, as they were ALL sort of integral. Thumbs up. =)

[Mike Holmes]

How did it end? I gotta know. Did the other players get to play their pivotal roles?

Kudos on your committment and fortitude. Combine that with a bit better preplanning, and I think you're in for a lot of fun.

Mike

[Dr. Velocity]

Well, as I said, it was kinda weak. The pivotal roles weren't that pivotal, in the grand scheme of things, but I afforded the characters their times in the spotlight when I could, taking out cultists this way or that way, following the little ghost girl to the cultists' cave, etc.

Stephen, the healer, chose as his 'one cool thing', a horse, Cheyenne - so I made sure to write all of his sections and results with her in mind as I posted, he really seemed to appreciate it, and kept that theme going, and only reluctantly left her aboveground to descend into the lair.

Urak, the rather generic 'guy with a bow', is much more used to totally insane freeform so his posts were sort of cautiously 'supportive' and never seemed to really be able to get into a rhythm or flow, he never lead anything or caused any reactions, etc - but he liked the bow, even though he didn't write it in as a 'cool thing' - he just mentioned he was 'okay with it' - hard to do much with a character who really just sort of 'is there' but I did what I could, and he seemed to be inexplicably happy with the results...

Kahless, due to the obstacles I faced, was de facto the leader and I pretty much gave him the forefront, which didn't seem to bother the others - they refused to use firearms, which irritated him to no end, which I thought was hilarious, as he kept picking up grenades and 9mms and carrying them around "just in case". I gave him his explosives, auto shotguns and finally his airstrike on the cave, as I realized from another thread in this forum, that he was an 'abused player' so I opted for the lopsided 'main character' option, since I knew the other two would be amiable and this was just a playtest, and he wouldn't feel ripped off.

I would link you or post my epilogue but really, as you can tell, I write FAR too much and it takes two mousewheel scrolls to get near the bottom of it, so in summary, while a police copter got caught in the no-combustion zone and crashed in to an already injured Star Spawn, they followed the little girl to the cave. They took out hooden cultists, grabbed their little symbols, which they used to get past the ghouls, infiltrated the big ritual, set explosives (and met a doe-eyed red-haired innocent cultist girl), got past the guards to the leader, I put a fake nazi-double agent in as an anti-cult agent and an international conspiracy undercurrent - I put in an ogre of sorts, a shuggoth in the floor about to be freed, a Hound of Tindalos and a dimensional rift when the leader summoned a ... I had no real idea of what, just something with lots of tentacles to impress upon them they wouldnt be able to do anything from inside...

Long story short, enough local griping and military satellite info, and catelyzed by the seal's earlier aborted transmit, brought in Da Gubment, who arrived just in time to airlift the uncsoncious or insane NPCs (Bessie and Julian), the inactive PC (the Indy type) and the players, allowing the Marine commander to see some of the monstrosities below and give the signal for a massive bombardment. I wrote up a few fake paper articles about the military conducting 'training exercises' without warning the town first, and writing off local tales of strange sounds and happenings as 'typical conspiracy stories'. Stephen and Urak, while not being punished, would find later stories about ghosts, one of a little girl, in the area (since they didnt FIND that part of the cave before it was blown), and I wrote the seal into being drafted into being a Man In Black. Summing it up, I wrote that years later, a new owner of Beautiful Springs Plateau (used to be a mountain before the "exercises") bought the property and put in a new hotel, and although occasional ghost stories abound, the owner, the now-older red-haired cultist girl from the cave, remarked its the disappearances, like some of which even get reported in this very area, she feels is the 'spookiest' thing because its just other mentally unbalanced or malign normal people...

Not on even Lovecraft's level by any means, I wanted a lot more 'spooky' Lovecraftian stuff in it but none of them seemed to mesh or take to it well so I kept it sort of in the periphery; given my own poor preperation and melding with the players, rotating players and the quirky variable of the Abused Player Munchkin SEAL, it really turned out a lot better than I was expecting and as I mentioned, everyone else seemed moderately or more pleased with the session overall. Naturally, I am not that forgiving of myself and it could have gone better but I think no matter what, you can only get certain results from certain components, and so all in all, I think it turned out about the only way it could, given the variables and constants in existance, and so while I would have liked to have been able to work on the other characters involvement more and portray the Mythos better, I really don't feel any regret over being able to tie the mess together fairly successfully, and have all the players ask for more. I don't think, however, I will GIVE them more - not in a session THAT open-ended - I do think I have learned the INVALUABLE lesson of REALLY understanding SOCIAL CONTRACT.