Turtle player - advice?

[dalek_of_god]

Your turtle reminds me of a friend I used to play DnD and Vampire with back in the day. I was co-GM in a game where he was a player, and it seemed to me that he had a bad case of "make-problem-go-away-now" syndrome. He had a lot of plans that seemed rather strange to me, and a tendency to ignore advice we gave him through his NPC contacts. Of course, after ignoring this advice, he would be doubly convinced that we were screwing him over. Not only did the situation not make any sense, his contacts were totally useless.

In hindsight I've come to a the following conclusion: Hints don't work. At all. Well, perhaps for some people but you can't count on someone taking the hint. In the game I was helping to run we had far to many grand and mysterious plans for our own good. The players really needed to know what we had planned - we should have trusted them not to abuse this knowledge. Actually, we should have framed in-character advise from NPC contacts in a more out-of-character way. Rather than have the NPC state some "Cool New Concept", we should have explicitly explained that we (as GMs) have inserted "Cool New Concept" into the game, and this NPC is why we can tell you and not anybody else. A little out-of-character knowledge should be able to go a long way - unless the player refuses to let you tell him for certain that he really can trust his contact.

The paranoia situation seems to be at the heart of this. It seems to me that the player doesn't trust you or the other GM not to screw his character over. So he doesn't do anything without double and triple checking first. If you've been explicit (no hints, remember) that certain actions (like scrying) are counterproductive, and he still persists you could probably take that to mean he wants his character to get caught. I doubt that this is the case. You mentioned that he doesn't "speak in character". He may be a very "My Guy" sort of player, but conversely you may be reluctant to provide information at the meta-game level. Maybe he does trust you as a GM but he doesn't trust your NPCs. Your description is of a suspiscious player who sees risk in everything - a balor in a goblin warren? Kinda paranoid. Maybe he wants to see the balor, but more likely he just suspects everything is a trap. If the situation had been described more along the lines of "there's a goblin trying to escape through that door" rather than "there's a goblin trying to open that door" very little out-of-character knowledge would have been introduced, but probably enough to defuse the paranoia.

Of course that's just based on your description. It could be that your poor turtle truely is paranoid and no amount of outside knowledge will convince him that he is not a target. He doesn't seem to distance his enjoyment of the game from his character's success/survival. I think it can be fun for my character to be royally screwed - but I doubt he'd agree with me.

[Bill Cook]

Hm, not sure what you are referring to here. I obviously cut back and forth between individual PCs' or subgroups' scenes when the party splits up - is that what you mean?

Yes.

(BTW, my ideas about picking this guy like a lock, while not without value, may not be the best long term model; I also think it's good to de-pressurize and consider the possibility of one's own bias.)

I ended up running 75% of the session with one player, who had his PC run around talking to people trying to figure out what was going on and getting some success, even though it was the other two who had all the pertinent information to solve the mystery!

This is really telling, to me. I've suffered immensely as a player, being disconnected from the process of discovering intrigue, where that was the focus of play. It's a real campaign rite of passage, to establish your ability to impact the SIS; although, I concede, it sounds like you're describing petulant behavior. Then again, there're three sides to every story.

An opposite to this end could be that the most important play happens wherever whoever goes. (e.g. If Luke stays on Dagoba, then Han has the duel with Vader and founds out he's his dad.)

I'm currently getting ready to run a scenario the turtle player requested btw, as I posted earlier, and after putting some work in to make it fun for me and potentially meaningful for the other players, am looking forward to running it.

Best wishes.

[Walt Freitag]

Misunderstanding. Big time.

You are jumping to conclusions thinking about a GMing style you probably have encountered in your gaming - it's got nothing to do with my style.

[Followed by tons of supporting evidence and detail.]

Well, so much for that theory. But the additional info and examples are certainly interesting; I'm glad you presented them, though, I think they benefit the case study. And I wasn't completely wrong about the boundaries being there, it's just that there's no evidence that the problem has anything to do with the player rejecting those boundaries.

I'm still curious about what would happen if sometime you went ahead and said, "Hey, whadday you know, you were right, it was a balor all along" as the fearsome demon unfolded itself from the tiny passageway behind the wooden door. But that's not because I think it's a good idea, it would just be fun (for me as a distant observer, that is) to find out how everyone would react.

From your description of the incident, it sounds like this player has a problem interpreting feedback or "tells" on a purely social level. You describe him suggesting the balor as if in jest, and then convincing himself that it might -- or must -- be really so. Normally, it happens numerous times in play that someone suggests an unlikely possibility as a joke or an idle thought, gets feedback (usually including subtle cues from the GM) that says, "nah, that's not likely," and drops the idea. Or the reverse -- someone suggests a seemingly unlikely possibility, gets feedback that says, "you know, that's worth considering," and starts putting more thought into it. It's as if this player were interpreting negative feedback, especially from the GM, in reverse, turning it into an inadvertent positive feedback loop that turns the original idle idea into a momentary obsession. The same general pattern appears to apply to the scrying incident as well.

How frustrating for all concerned, if that is indeed the general pattern. I have to ask, is there any trace of anything similar happening with this person outside of play? Like, if he suggests ordering pizza with broccoli, and the rest of you say "yuck," does he insist on it even more?

- Walt

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Your turtle reminds me of a friend I used to play DnD and Vampire with back in the day. I was co-GM in a game where he was a player, and it seemed to me that he had a bad case of "make-problem-go-away-now" syndrome. He had a lot of plans that seemed rather strange to me, and a tendency to ignore advice we gave him through his NPC contacts. Of course, after ignoring this advice, he would be doubly convinced that we were screwing him over. Not only did the situation not make any sense, his contacts were totally useless.

Yes, Exactly like that.  It's uncanny how this appears to be a type of player rather than an individual problem.  

In hindsight I've come to a the following conclusion: Hints don't work. At all.

Hm, very good point actually. He seems to spring into action when he has a crystal-clear way to go - I'll have to keep that in mind.  I'm not going to change my entire presentation style for him, weaving information into the setting is integral to how I present a game environment and make it come alive for players, but I might have to make concessions for him occasionally.  I'm perfectly willing to accommodate other players to help them play up to their strengths and work around their weaknesses, so why not him?  

Well, perhaps for some people but you can't count on someone taking the hint. In the game I was helping to run we had far to many grand and mysterious plans for our own good. The players really needed to know what we had planned - we should have trusted them not to abuse this knowledge. Actually, we should have framed in-character advise from NPC contacts in a more out-of-character way. Rather than have the NPC state some "Cool New Concept", we should have explicitly explained that we (as GMs) have inserted "Cool New Concept" into the game, and this NPC is why we can tell you and not anybody else.

Yes, that's my general experience as well.  If you absolutely need players to know something - tell them.  My style leans more towards not having any grand and mysterious plans, at least not ones the players will have to ever find out about to enjoy my game.  

A little out-of-character knowledge should be able to go a long way - unless the player refuses to let you tell him for certain that he really can trust his contact.

The paranoia situation seems to be at the heart of this. It seems to me that the player doesn't trust you or the other GM not to screw his character over. So he doesn't do anything without double and triple checking first.

Yup.  I'm still hoping that he might very gradually open up, but I fear his tendency towards paranoia (sadly, apparent in RL as well) may prevent that.  He has told me that he considers me a "very fair and balanced GM"; in fact that was the one positive thing I ever heard from him about my game, until recently when he started saying he has fun playing in my sessions.  

If you've been explicit (no hints, remember) that certain actions (like scrying) are counterproductive, and he still persists you could probably take that to mean he wants his character to get caught. I doubt that this is the case. You mentioned that he doesn't "speak in character". He may be a very "My Guy" sort of player, but conversely you may be reluctant to provide information at the meta-game level. Maybe he does trust you as a GM but he doesn't trust your NPCs.

I'm happy to talk about campaign world stuff away from the table, all players are free to ask questions, most of which I'll answer.  Some ask more questions than others, and I can't remember the turtle ever asking me metagame questions about the game world, NPCs or such.  

Your description is of a suspiscious player who sees risk in everything - a balor in a goblin warren? Kinda paranoid. Maybe he wants to see the balor, but more likely he just suspects everything is a trap. If the situation had been described more along the lines of "there's a goblin trying to escape through that door" rather than "there's a goblin trying to open that door" very little out-of-character knowledge would have been introduced, but probably enough to defuse the paranoia.

Hm, more likely the paranoia would have found an outlet somewhere else. AIR that poor little goblin struggling with the huge door bolt was only one snippet of many the GM was scattering all over the place to set the scene and keep some dramatic dynamic during that big, long battle.  

Of course that's just based on your description. It could be that your poor turtle truely is paranoid and no amount of outside knowledge will convince him that he is not a target. He doesn't seem to distance his enjoyment of the game from his character's success/survival.

That's what it looks like, yes.  That's the terrible and tragic thing about paranoia:  no amount of outside knowledge can heal it.

The bad thing about that for my game is that he isn't a quiet sort of paranoid, he's a persuasive sort of paranoid.  He has an uncanny way of spreading his skewed view of things around the table - uncanny because even though by now we all agree that he has some kind of 'Jedi powers' drawing others into his mad thought circles, the Jedi powers still work.  

I think it can be fun for my character to be royally screwed - but I doubt he'd agree with me.

Agreed, on both counts.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

This is really telling, to me. I've suffered immensely as a player, being disconnected from the process of discovering intrigue, where that was the focus of play.

Has happened to me, too. I felt left out of some pretty good bits of an otherwise highly enjoyable game I played in for months and never found access to those bits.  So I see his occasional frustration and think I can understand it to some extent.  I'd like to offer some way for him out of that frustrated place... but I guess I'll have to make sure the path for him is straight, safe, and brightly lit.  :)  

It's a real campaign rite of passage, to establish your ability to impact the SIS; although, I concede, it sounds like you're describing petulant behavior. Then again, there're three sides to every story.

Of course. I've been trying to understand what drives him to play in my game - obviously communication between us hasn't been too good in the past. Apparently he only recently understood that I was thinking about whether players have fun in my games... since then he's started giving me feedback - general, vagueish feedback, but it's a start.  

An opposite to this end could be that the most important play happens wherever whoever goes. (e.g. If Luke stays on Dagoba, then Han has the duel with Vader and founds out he's his dad.)

To some extent this is what's happening in my game.  Two PCs are star-type characters, a third is cool through his magic and dedication to the group (player wants to play a sidekick character);  but the Turtle's PCs have been kinda left out because of his own avoidance mindset.  

Best wishes.

Thanks!

[Kerstin Schmidt]

...I wasn't completely wrong about the boundaries being there, it's just that there's no evidence that the problem has anything to do with the player rejecting those boundaries.

Would you mind explaining what boundaries you see?  I'd say I'm as open-minded about players thinking out of the box as any other GM I've experienced - but maybe you see something else?

It's as if this player were interpreting negative feedback, especially from the GM, in reverse, turning it into an inadvertent positive feedback loop that turns the original idle idea into a momentary obsession. The same general pattern appears to apply to the scrying incident as well.

He doesn't twist feedback, he ignores it. That combined with his 'Jedi powers' makes for very harmful impact on a game.  

He makes up his own 'facts'... and spreads them around the table.  I've never seen anything like it.  As a GM, you sit there and see your game fall apart, it's like it's being overgrown and eaten up by some extremely rapidly spreading fungus as you watch.   One moment everyone is enthusiastic, pretty much in character and raring to go .... the next moment people sit around dejected, with their faces screwed up as they torture their brains trying to outthink the outthinker.  

How frustrating for all concerned, if that is indeed the general pattern. I have to ask, is there any trace of anything similar happening with this person outside of play? Like, if he suggests ordering pizza with broccoli, and the rest of you say "yuck," does he insist on it even more?

Not sure how your example relates to our case.  Why would he stop ordering his pizza the way he likes it merely because someone else doesn't?  :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

SB, I have a suggestion: trust Walt. He has a lot of experience in dealing with stuff like this. If you answer his questions instead of asking "why would you ask that," then the result might surprise you. Then if you still wonder why, you can ask.

This isn't a moderator post, but rather some experienced advice.

Best,
Ron

[Walt Freitag]

I appreciate Ron's confidence, but I'm not claiming any special prescience in this particular case. The case strikes me as unusual, something I haven't experienced directly myself. I agree that it's classic "turtle syndrome" in its broad outlines, but appears to go beyond it in some ways, making we wonder whether the usual causes (which usually amount to the player having been heavily, though inadvertently, rewarded for that behavior in past play) actually apply here.

Not sure how your example relates to our case. Why would he stop ordering his pizza the way he likes it merely because someone else doesn't? :)

Because when ordering pizza for a group, assuming that the number of pizzas being ordered is significantly smaller than the number of people participating in the meal, compromise is required, and social feedback is part of the process of reaching that compromise. (Please note that most of my pizza-ordering experience pre-dates such innovations as 4-quadrant square pizzas with separate toppings on each quadrant. Let's assume that we're talking about pizza-availability circumstances that do require group agreement and compromise, and I'm sorry if that wasn't clear before.) So, when suggesting a pizza topping, there's more involved than just stating your own desires; you make a proposal that others might or might not accept. There's nothing wrong with starting out with your personal best case -- "I'm really in the mood for broccoli" -- but if the reaction from everyone else is "yuck," it's socially dysfunctional to keep insisting on it. (Generally speaking, that is. You could make a good case for "Hey, come on, we've had meat the last two times and you know I like veggies better, I should get a turn to choose." Or "I'm paying so I get to choose." But that's all negotiation and compromise too.)

How does it relate to your case? I think I can show that by echoing your own question: Why should he stop insisting on scrying the assassination target in advance, if that's what he wants to do, merely because the other participants don't want to do it that way?

The answer should be, because he's getting signals from the other participants that the group is not agreeable to that approach. I have no reason to believe that those signals aren't being sent, so he must be either not perceiving them, incapable of perceiving them, ignoring them, or misunderstanding them.

And here's the thing: to fix the problem, you have to know which it is. If he's not perceiving the signals, then you have to make them stronger. But if he's incapable of perceiving them, then sending stronger signals is like shouting louder at a totally deaf person; if he's ignoring them, then sending stronger signals is nagging him and likely increasing his resentment; and if he's misunderstanding them, then sending stronger signals is like pulling harder on a door that won't open, when the sign says "push." So, questions about how he interacts with groups in other aspects of life outside of gaming are intended to sort out exactly where the feedback process is going wrong, so that it has a chance of being remedied.

He doesn't twist feedback, he ignores it.

If this is the considered result of careful analysis on your part, then I'll accept it. You have a lot more data to go on than I do. But the balor example in particular sounds to me like negative feedback is increasing his resolve for a particular belief or course of action when it should be decreasing it:

I believe he said that in jest at first, but quickly got into believing it (rather like a child terrifying himself with his own ghost story)

If misinterpreting the feedback were what is going on, it would look a whole lot like he was suddenly getting the idea fixed in his head all by himself, while at the same time ignoring the other participants' feedback. (Imagine if someone sabotaged your car by reversing the action of the brake and accelerator pedals, so that the brake pedal accelerates the car. After the inevitable crash, wouldn't you likely describe what happened as, "the car suddenly and for no reason accelerated, and it ignored the brake pedal"?)

I'm far from certain that's the case, but it's a possibility that must be considered carefully, along with the other three.

Would you mind explaining what boundaries you see? I'd say I'm as open-minded about players thinking out of the box as any other GM I've experienced - but maybe you see something else?

Well, there are boundaries that you've openly admitted to. I'm not saying they're not reasonable, but they are boundaries.

It means that once I've prepared what I call a "world bubble", ie a bit of environment to play in, it's easy for me to run with players' crazy on-the-spot ideas ... but when they would ask me to prep A and I agree, and they then come to the table suddenly wanting C or X instead with no advance warning, I wouldn't be willing to sit down and wing it all. Fortunately my group and I are in agreement on that.

We sit down to play, I start the session, the turtle interrupts with one of his typical "Before we do this, can I just...?". He turns to another player and suggests a different course of action that would take place seomewhere else.

In character the other player couldn't possibly refuse, his PC would have been desperate to do what had just been suggested (rather than what had been agreed beforehand)...

It was sad really. He had a brilliant suggestion, but entirely the wrong timing - simply because he never expected anyone to take him up on it. He's just not on the same wavelength as the rest of us. It feels almost as if he's blind to a whole dimension of my game.

So, everyone agrees that the turtle's suggested action was reasonable in-game, in fact at least one player found it strongly preferable and you describe it as "brilliant." So what was wrong with it? It transgressed a boundary you'd established, in this case a boundary on the timing of when player-character decisions can be made.

Outlandish-solution example from the same game: We were getting ready to assassinate one of the big movers and shakers of the region, an extremely powerful guy with a powerful artifact sword. We knew he'd be likely to kill a few PCs before we could bring him down, and would probably wipe the floor with us if we weren't very smart in our approach. We decided that everything depended on the right opportunity.
The turtle's idea was to scry (magically spy on) the target for about two weeks on a daily basis, so establish his patterns and then strike when he'd be most likely to be vulnerable. Outlandish? In the circumstances, yes. First, under DnD rules scrying can be noticed, and defended against, by the target. Second, we had all reason to expect the target to be unaware of our existence or plans, so we might catch him at a vulnerable moment if lucky - not a chance of that once he'd noticed he was under scrying surveillance, obviously.

I'm aware that this example wasn't from your own game, but it's illustrative of an outside-of-game-world boundary created by prior expectations that come across to me as rather arbitrary. Some players wanted to be certain of the element of surprise (at the cost of going in with incomplete knowledge of the target), while the turtle wanted to gather intelligence and base a plan on that (at the cost of likely alerting the target). Both plans sound viable to me, and the second no more risky than the first. If the target were already aware of the possibility of assassination, then a detected scrying attempt might do little harm. If he's one of the world's powerful movers and shakers, then perhaps attempts to scry him for many different reasons are fairly frequent (are clairvoyance/clairaudience still third level spells?), and wouldn't particularly alert him. If the target had taken security measures you weren't aware of, then any attempt to attack at "a vulnerable moment" would likely fail catastrophically.

It sound to me like once again the problem wasn't with his idea, but with the timing. The group had already decided to do it one way, so his suggestion to do it another way wasn't welcome. I infer the boundaries from the timing and the situation as described. Apparently, no action had been taken yet on the plan (how could it have, if the plan was "attack and hope the attack happens to come at a vulnerable moment?"), there was no way to know what complications or setbacks might occur once you began to act, and yet it was regarded as too late to consider a different course of action. This says to me that a whole lot of planning ahead was going on, on both sides of the GM screen, with shared expectations that the broad outlines of plans will be adhered to, in order to allow play to continue. Those expectations establish boundaries.

Again, not saying those boundaries are bad or anything. But they're there, and they're causing problems when the turtle transgresses them.

I said I didn't think this was the main issue, though, because so far the evidence doesn't appear to show that he's deliberately charging into the boundaries just because they're there (my original theory); more like he's blundering into the boundaries because his social compass is out of whack. That's why the issue of how he handles social feedback seems, to me, important.

- Walt

[Kerstin Schmidt]

I appreciate Ron's confidence, but I'm not claiming any special prescience in this particular case. The case strikes me as unusual, something I haven't experienced directly myself. I agree that it's classic "turtle syndrome" in its broad outlines, but appears to go beyond it in some ways, making we wonder whether the usual causes (which usually amount to the player having been heavily, though inadvertently, rewarded for that behavior in past play) actually apply here.

Perhaps if you were to share examples of your experience with more "usual" turtles and how you dealt with them, it would help me understand where you are coming from and describe our situation more clearly?  

...assuming that the number of pizzas being ordered is significantly smaller than the number of people participating ...

Ah, pizza sharing,  I see now - where I come from people will usually order their own, so your question puzzled me.  

No, he wouldn't. He wouldn't insist on anything that people clearly and forcefully object to.  

In fact he'd be most likely not to ask for any specific toppings to suit his taste at all, but would let other people decide ... Or to try and simulate orur typical game situation with that pizza sharing situation, he'd turn around and ask people, "So what do you want to have on the pizza?" He'd discuss possibilities and options, likely would mention sundry concerns that some toppings might be bad for your health, possibly might start a list of toppings and check and double-check it with people, and whenever something like a clear "pizza plan" threatened to emerge, he'd throw in a new thought:  "Or... or, I don't know whether that would work, but instead of mozzarella-broccoli-tomato we couldhave tuna-egg-artichoke instead? Or..."  
And people would be more likely than not to fall silent and listen to his new idea religiously, regardless of now many previous pizza ideas he'd already brought up.
He wouldn't try to manipulate people into ordering the pizza toppings he likes best, mind you.  He'd just be trying to prolong the delicious process of pizza planning without proceeding to the dangerous and unpredictable stage of actually ordering one.  

That's just one fact of the problem we have with him in our games, but it's a major one.  He bogs things down to an insufferable degree, partly because he likes discussions and partly because anything but sitting there discussing seems to out-of-proportion frightening that he can't or won't do it.  

How does it relate to your case? I think I can show that by echoing your own question: Why should he stop insisting on scrying the assassination target in advance, if that's what he wants to do, merely because the other participants don't want to do it that way?

Well, in the scrying situation the GM thought it was a bad idea, but in accordance with our style didn't interfere. Letting players work out their own tactics is very much a part of both our games the turtle plays in.

I was positive it was a bad idea (partly because I have some grasp of what the risks/gains of protracted surveillance are in real life, and knew that the GM runs a reasonably 'real'-feeling game environment) and ended up shouting the turtle down.  As always when someone, whether GM or player, forcefully provides a clear lead and dictates proceedings, the turtle shut up and trailed along.  
The other players weren't thinking clearly or hadn't bothered to think about plans.  If I hadn't interfered, we'd have sat there planning for hours and then scried that plan to death.  (It's happened before.)  

Just to make it clear: I'm not proud of what I did there.  Dictating the group's tactics single-handed is not much less dysfunctional IMO than sitting down and playing chain-and-ball to the group and talk them into paralysis.  Unfortunately, it was the only workaround I have ever been able to find as a player:  if you don't shout and push on, if you leave people only a moment to consider, the turtle will turn around and throw his net of paranoia and paralysis over them.  


In my own game, the state of things was much similar: one player ended up taking the lead and pushing on much of the time because it was the only way to get anything done at all.  

That's not good for creativity, it's not good for giving less forceful players room to contribute and expand creatively into the game.  But it works marginally better than doing nothing at all and letting ourselves get wrapped up in strings and webs of paranoia.  

I'm not sure what makes him so persuasive, except he's a salesman, and I think a successful one. But that can't be all there is to it.  He admits that he is "a bit paranoid";  but claims he has no intention whatsoever to dominate the game or prevent other people from acting when he doesn't want to act.  

The answer should be, because he's getting signals from the other participants that the group is not agreeable to that approach. I have no reason to believe that those signals aren't being sent, so he must be either not perceiving them, incapable of perceiving them, ignoring them, or misunderstanding them.

Sometimes signals aren't sent because of GM restraint, see above.

Sometimes signals aren't sent because the other players haven't started thinking about things consciously, they are immersed in the game.  Actually, that might partly explain his 'success' in influencing others:  when one person starts throwing theories and plans out, however wild and outlandish they may be, those who are in 'creative mode' may have no defences up against him and may be more receptive to suggestive talk and behaviour than they would be if they were thinking straight.  

Sometimes he doesn't perceive signals - playing in the same group with him, I always felt I had no voice at all unless I was shouting (preferably in anger, which shocks and dismays him and breask his spell on other players).  

Some signals he's incapable of perceiving I think - he shows signs of slight paranoia not only in his gaming habits but also in real life.  This means that when he's convinced himself of some "terrible thought" (his usual words), evidence to the contrary won't get through anymore.

And here's the thing: to fix the problem, you have to know which it is.

That's part of the problem, yup.

But the balor example in particular sounds to me like negative feedback is increasing his resolve for a particular belief or course of action when it should be decreasing it:

Well, in the balor example the GM didn't comment either way - could have been either GM's restraint (see above), or GM's attention focussed elsewhere.  Running DnD combat tactical wargame style with many participants is challenging, and the battlemat was crowded during that combat.  

If misinterpreting the feedback were what is going on, it would look a whole lot like he was suddenly getting the idea fixed in his head all by himself, while at the same time ignoring the other participants' feedback.

I'm far from certain that's the case, but it's a possibility that must be considered carefully, along with the other three.

In all my discussions with him, I have never heard any evidence that he regards the GM as trustworthy. It's difficult to find out what he really thinks because he won't criticise me to my face even when asked for specific feedback, and he has by now pretty much stopped criticising the other GM in my hearing because he assumes that we will exchange information.

It was sad really. He had a brilliant suggestion, but entirely the wrong timing - simply because he never expected anyone to take him up on it. He's just not on the same wavelength as the rest of us. It feels almost as if he's blind to a whole dimension of my game.

So, everyone agrees that the turtle's suggested action was reasonable in-game, in fact at least one player found it strongly preferable and you describe it as "brilliant." So what was wrong with it? It transgressed a boundary you'd established, in this case a boundary on the timing of when player-character decisions can be made.

No! What was so sadly wrong with it was that he never expected to be taken up on it.  He didn't think it was a brilliant contribution, in fact he was rather peeved when he realised that the other PC's player wanted to follow his suggestion and that I intended to run with that, rather than go ahead with what was originally planned.  

As it was, his remark was merely throwing a hammer in the works of the game.  He didn't think it was brilliant, he didn't expect anyone to act on the basis of it, and in any case he told us that his PC wouldn't even think of going with the other PC if the other PC decided to follow his suggestion because he thought it would be much too dangerous.  Basically (I paraphrase, he didn't speak in character of course):  

[pointing to undead-inhabited ruins on next hill to the north] "Well, why don't you go back there and search for the way back to your home? Maybe that mysterious time gate will still be there? Meanwhile, farewell, I now have to flee that way" [pointing across the hills to the south-west] "to escape being killed by the orcish armies who'll be here soon."


This behaviour made all the less sense as I'd started to set the scene (which he interrupted to make his remark) a considerable chunk further in time.  If he never expected to act on his own suggestion, and didn't anyone else to want to do so, why insist to go back in time just to say it?  I've asked him that and he said, he had only "just" thought of it, three days before the game.  


Re scrying:

It sound to me like once again the problem wasn't with his idea, but with the timing. The group had already decided to do it one way, so his suggestion to do it another way wasn't welcome.

No.  No plan yet - but we had intel suggesting that the NPC didn't feel vulnerable and prob wsn't taking many general precautions.  Also an earlier assassination attempt on another target had gone horribly wrong with several PC deaths due to the turtle's plan which involved extended surveillance to a ridiculous degree.  Ironically enough, in that scenario the turtle had decided at the last instant that the whole affair was too suicidal to be involved in, so his PC didn't go and never was in any danger.  The fact that the other assassination failed because of the turtle's 'dithering tactic' was common knowledge in the group - yet they would have done exactly the same thing again.  

I infer the boundaries from the timing and the situation as described.

Apparently, no action had been taken yet on the plan (how could it have, if the plan was "attack and hope the attack happens to come at a vulnerable moment?"), there was no way to know what complications or setbacks might occur once you began to act, and yet it was regarded as too late to consider a different course of action. This says to me that a whole lot of planning ahead was going on, on both sides of the GM screen, with shared expectations that the broad outlines of plans will be adhered to, in order to allow play to continue. Those expectations establish boundaries.

Again, not saying those boundaries are bad or anything. But they're there, and they're causing problems when the turtle transgresses them.

Nope, another misunderstanding here. No planning ahead, in fact AIR the possibility of going for the target came up only during the course of a session, and we decided on the spur of the moment (after hours of turtle talking, that is) what to do.  

more like he's blundering into the boundaries because his social compass is out of whack.

Doesn't ring true to me.  

IMO his problem with the scrying situation was that, as a slightly paranoid person will do, he was determined to know everything there was to know, whatever the cost - and before that he wasn't going to move an inch.  He also wasted hours of time elaborating on what kind of new allies and powers he imagined (without any foundation in fact whatsoever) the target might have gained since we last encountered him.  
If we had succeeded in scrying him (which in the event didn't happen) and sat back to analyse our findings, he wouldn't have processed the facts learnt from the scrying and got ready to act on that basis - he'd have used them as seeds for even crazier conjecturing of possibilities.  

That's what he usually does:  unless the lead is crystal clear, he sits down and refuses to do anything at all except discuss his "terrible thoughts".  Unfortunately, something about "discussing terrible thoughts" has an unhealthy attraction to other players.  It doesn't lead anywhere, it's tedious, it gives you a headache, and if you aren't careful the session time is over before you've even settled on what to do, if anything.  But still, once he starts on it, players respond, despite themselves.

Perhaps if I could find a way to lessen this kind of harmful impact he has on my game, it would be a big step forward.  I've talked to the players and we basically all agree that his 'Jedi powers' aren't a good thing - yet, we all continue to fall for them, despite ourselves.

That's why the issue of how he handles social feedback seems, to me, important.

The whole feedback issue is difficult with him, partly because he shies away from straightforward communication.  The easiest way and in the end IMO the only way to understand somebody's responses to feedback is to talk to them and find out.  But he won't tell you.  Maybe he doesn't trust you far enough, I don't know.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Re boundaries again:  We may be on to something here.  

On the whole I don't agree with your interpretation that it is the turtle transgressing them.  But I agree that boundaries play an important part in our problem with him. Let me try to explain my thought (which woke me in the middle of the night and kept me awake, so it had better be a stroke of genius).

Of course if you give 'boundaries' a sufficiently abstract definition, then every time anyone does something that you don't want them to do, or
does not do something you'd like them to do could be defined as that person transgressing boundaries.  You and I could keep shouting Yes! - No! - Yes! - No! here until bandwidth on this server runs out, but that's not what either of us is trying to do.  What we are trying to do here I think is establish communication on a complex human situation, which I have experienced, discussed and analysed in great detail but am currently unable to resolve, while you are trying to reach conclusions and (I hope) come up with suggestions for a practical solution, but can't glean facts except from what you read in and infer from my posts.  So no wonder there's a bit of back and forth here. If this were a simple and straightforward situation, my fellow GM, the players, the turtle (maybe) and I would probably have realised that by now and resolved it.  

So let my try to take a step back and feel my way back into the situation and try to define where to my feeling the differences between the turtle and me are re boundaries.  The reason why I keep saying your assumption that the turtle transgresses boundaries is incorrect is this:

Boundaries are certainly a major part of the problem here - but not, I think, so much in the sense of the turtle transgressing them.  On the contrary: my experience is that the turtle loves boundaries.  Needs boundaries.  Worships boundaries, almost.  The troble is that his take on boundaries and mine aren't always conicident or even easily compatible.

For example, when I make a house rule, I only have to state it once. For the turtle, I wouldn't even have to put it in writing somewhere:  once the GM states a rule, that's how it is - he makes a point of always having all house rules at the tips of his fingers. It's uncanny almost how my words seem branded into his brain when a rule is concerned.  
He may not like certain house rules, sometimes a rule may turn out not to work too well in play, in which case it needs to be dropped or adjusted. However, he would never 'presume' to approach a GM over this, or even answer a GM's question for feedback honestly.  "The DM is always right. The player can always walk," is all that you are likely to get out of him.  That's one boundary he imposes on himself... or rather a boundary he imposes on the GM. It feels more like an "As a player, I have a right to remain silent" stance.


In his suggestion for 'another scenario', he was appalled and shocked that the player he made the suggestion to wanted to take him up on it, and even more shocked and unsettled when he realised that I, the GM, the Keeper of Boundaries, intended to run with it - and worse, intended to break the Holy Rule of Always Providing the Promised Entertainment to Your Players by calling off that night's session.

I've told you about the bit of our game contract that says that I'll gladly listen to players about what scenarios they'd like to do and run with it, and that I'll run with any solution (or non-solution, like sitting around discussing plans and then giving up because the scenario seems too suicidal or unsolvable), but that when at the end of a session we agree where the party wishes to go next, they will actually go there at the beginning of the next session.

My impression was that the turtle honestly couldn't so much as think outside those boundaries. Once we'd agreed that the group would return to shelter in the forest and would take the new, time-travelling PC along with it (rather than help her search for a way home), that was what was going to happen no matter what. He was disappointed and I think disgusted that when he came up with his brilliant new idea that immdiately clicked with the player concerned and with me, I didn't observe that boundary, but allowed the time-travelling player to stray across it onto greener fields instead.  It was almost as if he expected to be completely safe to do a bit of suggesting and conjecturing because nothing was going to come out of it anyway. When contrary to his expectation it did, he seemed to feel cheated.

What made it worse for him, and that's where I feel for him, was that the next scenario in line (the one that we'd have played that night if he hadn't come up with a better alternative plan) was one that he had in effect chosen.  It had been one of a long list of tedious local 'cleaning up the area' missions that he thought the group should do before they moved on to more interesting things.  No one else was thrilled by the idea of working our way all the way through that checklist, so I told the players if the PCs dropped suggestions with the right NPCs, NPC groups would be able to take care of most of those clean-up missions and the players might just choose one from that list, whatever appealed most to them, and I'd offer an opportunity for them to do it and make sure that it proved worth doing.  No one was too bothered (or enthusiastic) about which one to choose, so the turtle got to say which one'd most like to do.  I'm still meaning to run 'his' scenario and I'm hoping I've added dimensions to it that will make it interesting and rewarding for all the characters and players to deal with, because of the turtle's own brilliant suggestion, it's on the back burner for now.

So in effect his suggestion, which I've called a brilliant if sadly mistimed idea, was a disaster from his point of view.  Not only did it lead to all sorts of holy boundaries being broken, but also it resulted in him not getting a game that night for incomprehensible reasons, and 'his' clean-up scenario isn't coming up next in line as he had expected.  

(Oh. Expectations are a big deal with him, too, perhaps that isn't as obvious from my previous descriptions of him as I thought.  He's extremely flexible when others in the group forcefully state preferences - but he hates surprises.  Once he comes to expect something, he feels ownership in it happening as he expects.)


His standard tactic of sitting down, talking and doing nothing is a matter of keeping within a boundary, too. Again, it's a self-inflicted boundary or at least one that he brings to the group.  
He's played in the other GM's game for two years now and in mine for a bit over half a year. Nothing in either of our two games suggests that sitting around doing nothing is a tactic that's going to be rewarded. On the contrary, both GMs are much more likely to reward players for stepping on up to the challenge.  I've said that on one level our games are very Gamist.
For the turtle, however, every challenge that isn't thrust on the group without any control on the players' side seems a Big Delectable Thing, better to be observed from all sides and flirted with from a distance than actually engaged. He can't seem to bring himself to cross the threshold into actual adventure.  I think he's turned that threshold into a Big Boundary that he likes to take cover behind (hoping that if only he does nothing, the challenge won't dare cross the boundary and come find him) to watch and think "terrible thoughts" about in safety and at leisure.


And another boundary on his part, this one inherent in traditional DnD play and to some extent rooted in the system:  According to what I can tell from talking to him about my games and other games he plays in, the turtle is convinced that the only chance you have as a player to "succeed" in a DnD game is by exploiting all the rules and tactical conventions of the DnD rules, especially by having a wizard (not other arcane spellcasting clases, they don't count) in the party and having tons of magic items.  The Midnight setting doesn't have wizards, it has its own spellcasting class, and magic items are very rare.  To him this means that the party is doomed to fail sooner or later.  That is nonsense of course, with our partly Gamist slant no one in our group particularly wants to play a game doomed to failure.  But when my fellow GM asked the turtle the other day where he sees his Midnight PC in 10 further levels, he said dryly, "Dead."

He hates being deprived of his habitual manifold layers of magic security in my game and even after half a year of play isn't getting into it. Why does he still play? Claims he enjoys it.  What it is he enjoys is hard to make out because he either can't or won't tell.  


Which leads to yet another boundary inherent in traditional DnD play that I stretch and transgress again and again, much to his discomfort:  I don't run a purely Gamist game, I try to give players room to invest in their PCs, develop their personalities and come out of pawn stance.  My fellow GM and one other player are with me, as I've said earlier a third player is beginning to wake up to it a bit.  We're feeling our way, learning by trial and error. On the whole it's an exciting and rewarding process.  But to someone with DnD play traditions hardwired into his brain, it's disconcerting and disorienting.  He sees me break the boundaries of 'proper play' time and again (of course in his view what players do doesn't count, he'll see me as responsible for allowing them their actions like a good little DnD DM should be), and just can't seem to wrap his head around what other boundaries might be there that would help him find his feet again.

I've tried suggesting to him to think of his PC as a protagonist in a story. I've suggested to him to think in chapters or scenes. "Scenes?" he said and the corners of his mouth turned down.  Like in a movie, or novel, I suggested. He slightly shook his head and clammed up. He does read genre novels and he does watch genre films... he just can't seem to see any connection between characters even in a DnD novel (which for some strange reason he enjoys reading) and characters in a DnD game.
We've told him that we think of his PC as played by certain movie actors in the "movie of our game". He smiled (not unhappily) at Humphrey Bogart and seemed to like Max von Sydow a lot.  But it's not giving him any boundaries to work with, and I don't think he can get anywhere further without clear boundaries to follow.  

Does that make any sense? :)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

And I just remembered why I keep thinking that there may be a way through to the turtle player.  It's to do with a scenario I ran about three or four months ago, in which I as the GM transgressed all sorts of boundaries and rules of your group's game contract, by throwing the players into not only a scenario I'd prepared without telling them a word about, but in one sense into different characters as well.  I took a big risk doing that, if my players had resented it (as they might well have been in their right to), it could have seriously damaged GM-player trust at my table.  As things played out, it mostly worked out.  I succeeded to draw everyone in, most importantly (for our present purpose here) and for the first time the turtle as well.  

At the time I had five players, all of them 'inherited' from the other GM, who was running a heavy-Gamist high-level DnD game with lots of cool challenging combat and some (mostly abstracted) politics, but (at the time) hardly any in-character roleplay at the table.  I'd been running my game for maybe three months and was getting frustrated. I'd been doing my best to offer the group tactical combat challenges, which on the whole was working nicely although PC casualties were too high for my taste. The group zoomed through my scenarios at top Gamist speed, interlaced with situations where the turtle bogged them down to discuss 'terrible thoughts' of his. At the tactical level, I was thrilled at being challenged as a GM like I'd never been before.  But there was something missing.

I was missing in-character interaction.  Some of the PCs had clear star potential, and as I gradually found out, two of my players (one of them the other GM with the then heavy-Gamist game) were as keen on in-character roleplay as I was.  On the few occasions I dared offer roleplaying opportunities and challenges to the group (with a deep breath and almost chickening out of it every time), incredible scenes were created.  That was the good bit.  The not so good bit was that the other three players were left out.  Completely.  At one point one guy sat there flicking through books while roleplaying was going on, and another kept checking his phone for text messages.  The turtle player AIR just sat there staring into space. According to him he was making a point of not listening to any of the roleplaying because his PC wasn't there.  

I decided I had had enough.  I had been thinking of introducing some form of dream/time travel to the campaign, but hadn't yet discussed it with the group.  My ideas on how it would work or how important it might become to the game were pretty inchoate, but I had a vision of a first scenario to try it out, a massacre between elves and humans thousands of years ago when a diplomatic meeting just after a bloody and protracted war had gone horribly wrong.  So I sketched a rough idea of how I thought the massacre might have been started, did rudimentary DND stats for my NPCs in case of combat (which I didn't really expect, but you never know), and created an NPC escort for the young prince of a human nation travelling into the elven forest to meet with his elven bride.  
I made each escort an 'echo' of a PC:  a character that would work with the PC's stats, had the PC's name and a station at the court that 'felt right' to me - right in view of the PC the player had created, and what I felt they might enjoy playing. I typed and printed a brief paragraph for each NPC to offer each player a bit of backstory and a motivation in the scenario to use if they wanted.

I also asked each player to give me an idea for a "waking-up moment", which described as the most powerful emotion or memory that they could think of for their PC. All players gave me some kind of suggestion. The turtle actually e-mailed a nightmarish, chilling scene about being pulled from a heap of corpses by an ugly orc when he was a young boy.  He was reluctant at first to let the other players read it, but posted it on our campaign boards after I encouraged him and awarded him story XP for it. (The way he wrote it, it seemed to indicate that the scene ended just as the orc was proceeding to rape the boy, but he doesn't appear to have intended that.)  

When the players arrived I told them I'd determine seating arrangements that night because I was "going to be evil".  What I most wanted to achieve with this was break up the two 'factions' at my table to help break habitual patterns.  Usually the in-character roleplayers had drifted together at the left end and non-roleplayers at the right end of my table.  Also of course, having read my Machiavelli, I knew that those unsettled are more easily led...

Everyone took their allotted seats like good little GM-led players, each rolled one Will save as I asked, and without further explanation I started my intro with the sun setting behind the trees and "'the servants" setting up "the prince's tent" and rolling out carpets in a nice spot by the brook to sit on for dinner.   There hadn't been any servants or princes apparent in the campaign region up to that point, in fact as far ass anyone knew there might not be any left in the world because human lands had been overrun by orcs several generations ago and the few free humans left were hiding away in refugee camps in the Elven forest;  but no one objected or said anything.  Everyone was sitting completely still as they listened.  I told them what year it was, that the war against the elves had justed ended, who each of them were, told them to use their PCs's stats and handed out their character notes.
There were a few minutes of utter, stunned silence from the players, during which I had the prince appear and provide some irrelevant dinner chatter and then retire.  During this I had the prince 'put his foot in it' on two occasions, triggering glimpses of visions in two NPC-PCs that were actually fragments of memory of the real PCs.  When one of the players responded and played her NPC's unrequited love for the prince (who the NPC had grown up with), I let her experience her full waking-up moment and gave her a choice:  "You are hovering on the brink.  You can remain in this pleasant dream, or you can return to much darker, more painful, but real world."  She decided to return.  

An inaudible sigh rippled around the table.  Suddenly people felt they knew what was going on.  From that instant on, roleplaying erupted. People were getting into character, first their NPC-PC and then, as other PCs helped them remember, decided whether or not to be "awakened" - in fact, two of them decided their PCs would prefer to stay in the less harrowing dream than face the grim reality of their own lives again.  

In that session, no one was left out of the roleplaying, and no one wanted to sit and discuss 'terrible thoughts'.  The turtle played his role as the prince's bodyguard religiously, hovered around him, evacuated him when things between two "awakened" PCs and their hot-headed elven NPC-PC friend grew tense and was every inch a noble, dedicated bodyguard.

He has loved playing the role that I assigned him - he did ignore half of my typed notes on the NPC "because I didn't like them", he said;  but that's perfectly fine with me, in fact it's great:  that night it felt like he made the game his own, and he enjoyed it and contributed to everyone's fun.  

He has had a similar, more highly profiled scene as the prince's bodyguard in the scenario we last played - that's the scene I posted about earlier. That scene was set about ten years in time before the elven-massacre scenario I'm describing in this post:  the prince was still a little boy and the war with the elves was on.  The way the turtle played that scene and wrote about it later in his character's chronicles of the scenario, it laid the basis for the loyal, eternally patient bodyguard somewhat jaded by the young adult prince's continuous lightheaded chatter that the NPC-PC would have grown into ten years later and that he'd played before.  

It was almost as if by dictating a character he should play, and by sending the group back into their own past, so to speak, I was taking the load of responsibility and risk off him and allowed him to expand and be creative and actually roleplay.  
This last bit is my interpretation of things and I may be horribly wrong, as I've said it's difficult to talk to him about his views and wishes.  But it makes me kind of hopeful that we may yet develop a common frame of reference that will allow him to expand into my game and do stuff he enjoys that we others can live and play with, rather than sit around refusing to engage and talk "terrible thoughts".

In any case it convinces me that the way to solve our common problem, if there is one, isn't ignoring him and isn't merely stifling his bog-down tactics.
I can stifle his planning to some extent by setting time limits for player planning discussions (which players would agree to because our bi-weekly game time slot is only about 3 hours, and which he'd accept anyway because he thinks that as GM I have that kind of right), but it isn't good for the atmosphere at the table: I want to be able to relax control to invite players' creativity, not increase control.   In order to be able to rely control, I feel I have to offer the turtle ways of doing other stuff he enjoys: distract him and invite him, rather than curb him.  The more he is involved in actually playing, the less time I'm hoping he'll need to spend sitting behind his non-risk boundary fence caught in his own game of 'terrible thoughts', and catching other players in it.

[Walt Freitag]

Cool, you've given me a lot of new information to digest and it sounds like in the process you're starting to come up with ideas of your own.

A lot of this is starting to sound more like classic Turtle after all. Instead of saying "I do [my character does] nothing," your turtle is doing nothing by virtue of never being satisfied with a proposed ccourse of action. Which is even worse, because as you say it drags others into inertia in the process.

Teasing out the cause and effect would be interesting, if you could figure out how to do it. Is he perpetually delaying actions because he keeps thinking of alternatives and can't get them out of his mind? Or is he afraid of making decisions, and just using thinking of additional alternatives as a way of delaying or avoiding doing so? Several details (such as that he's able and willing to act when clear guidelines are in place) suggest the latter. That this behavior affects his pizza-ordering as well as gaming suggests that the ultimate cause does not stem from gaming (such as bad experiences in past games), unlike the classic "turtle" syndrome.

However, indecision is also something we all experience at times and can all sympathize with. You might want to look into some of the recent research on decision-making (I'll help you track it down if you want; I heard of it from reports in the general news media) that appears to show that after a certain point, adding more options to choose from not only make the choice harder (obviously), but they also make the chooser less satisfied with the choice once it's been made, which goes against the common notion that more choices always leads to more satisfaction from getting to "have it your way." I mention this to suggest that if your turtle is affected by this more than most people, it might be worthwhile to consider how he reacts when decisions between limited alternatives. This is to say, choosing A, B, or C rather than "what do you want to do now."

None of this, though, explains the balor incident, which is why I went off on a tangent looking for another theory in my previous post. You've given a lot of information and I'll have to think it over some more to see what other suggestions I can come up with. Thanks for all the data, and stay tuned!

- Walt

[hix]

The turtle actually e-mailed a nightmarish, chilling scene.... He was reluctant at first to let the other players read it, but posted it on our campaign boards after I encouraged him and awarded him story XP for it.

This suggested a weird idea. Buy a stop watch. When analysis begins, you click the stop-watch on and give them five minutes (or three or one, whatever).  If they make a decision and act on it within that time limit, immediately give them an XP award of 1000, say. Decrease the XP by 100 for every minute of talking after that.

[Adjust time and award size to taste.]

If it's XP that your player values, maybe this'll provide an incentive. And in a way, it models how more experienced heroes would make quicker decisions.[/Dr Phil Mode]

[JamesSterrett]

I've been debating posting a similar mechanic.  I ran a game for a group, many years ago, who were fountains of ideas - to the point of bringing play to a halt as they debated courses of action.  I told them I was going to assign time limits, and that when the limit expired, events would simply begin to take place, with or without their actions.

Fortunately, they were happy with this (recognizing the problem of endless debate), helped me keep an eye on the clock, and everything worked well.

However, I'm not sure if a time limit would constitute extra pressure on Mr. Turtle in a manner that would help him break out of his shell, as opposed to in a manner that would leave him yet more defensive  - "I hunker down out of the way because I haven't had time to prepare for every possibility", instead of "I know I cannot foresee every possibility so I'll act and se how it comes out".

[hix]

Good point, James ... and stalkingblue actually mentioned earlier that the player would be uncomfortable with time pressures. The mechanic I suggested doesn't need to be used so forcefully. You could play it that there's no in-game consequence to taking longer to decide - just a reward for quicker decisions.

From there it's up to the players to come up with their own balancing point that they're comfortable with.