Being a Game's Therapist

[Judd]

A friend of you e-mails and says their game isn't working.  Something's wrong.

Consider it an RPG intake call.  What is it you ask?

Whose playing and what are their relationships?

What are you playing and how do you think it added or took away from the problem?

Do the other people sitting around the table even see a problem or are they happy while you are not?[/list:u]

My question and direction for this thread is what we do and how we do it when we're trying to help friends wrestle through a bad gaming experience and tackle a problem that's making their time at the table less enjoyable.

It could be a game that entirely imploded and self-destructed or a wrinkle in an already working game.  

Thoughts?

I wasn't sure if this should be here or in RPG Theory but thought it applied to Actual Play more, since that is largely what we do here, other than cheering on the games that do work.

[Nathan P.]

I would ask Why are you playing. Because if it's something like "I want to play something, and the only thing anyone will run is GURPS, so I thought I'd give it a shot", thats a problem right there.

Or maybe Why are you playing, and are the others playing for similar reasons?. I remember my freshman year at college, I started playing in a D&D game cuz a) I hadn't actually played an RPG for years, just GMed and b) I had a really cool character concept. Everyone else was playing cuz they actually enjoyed D&D.

Just a couple things to add.

[Bill Cook]

Walk me through a vision of successful play. People who are frustrated need to vent, and that's appropriate. Afterwards, this exercise can help construct solutions.

Qualify player neglect. Would you describe play as being more pointless (i.e. who cares; nothing I do matters, anyway) or overwhelming (i.e. this much pressure is not any fun)? What should play be focused on? Clearly, you're not comfortable with x (e.g. speaking in character). What kind of input are you comfortable providing?

[beingfrank]

What might make things better?  What sorts of change, possible or impossible, would improve things for you?

Because if they can't imagine things being better than they are, they're stuck.  They think that the game not working is how things should be.  That's a different, and possibly trickier problem.  There's no point in working out what's wrong with the game and coming up with ways they could improve things, if the notion of a better game simply doesn't exist for them.