[LoL] Too sensitive or not sensitive enough?

[dindenver]

Hi!
  So, something happened last Friday and I'm not sure what to do...

  Tom loves punk music and lives the punk lifestyle as much as he is able. But he is a good player and I can always trust him to suppport the story or try something different and not dork it up.

  The campaign is a mystery. To avoid railroading or whatever, I set up jump points where once characters do "X", "Y" happens. So, I was able to kick off the game and haven;lt gone out of my way to spoon feed the clues. I am letting the players do it at their own speed.

  And one of the players finally got a good idea and went to talk to someone who had somde clues as to what was going on. It was going pretty well, but it became clear that one of the PCs had a secret they wouldn't reveal while another NPC was still in the room...

  This is a semi-serious campaign and most of the characters are all serious in tone.

  Then this happened:
<Dave_M> - Again, she deems to be hiding something and keeps eyeing Baurel who has been standing at attention near the door
<Cheryl> - /ooc can't you use pursuade on her?
<Dave_M> - /ooc Anhyone here could if they wanted
<Cheryl> - /ooc I only have a +5, how about you 2?
<Eric> - /ooc i got 0
<Cheryl> - //ooc tora, what do you have in persuade?
<Tom> - -2
<Cheryl> - /ooc ok I guess I will try then
<Dave_M> - You guys rolled high enough on your Intuition to know she will never reveal whatever it is they are hiding as long as Baurel is in the room
<Cheryl> - oh, ok, never mind
<Eric> - Baurel...could you give us some privacy please
<Dave_M> - Baurel, "Um, whatever you have to say to the Priestess, you can say to me, I am responsible for this village"
<Tom> - i walk up to baurel, what does he have on his person?
<Eric> -  I Would chat with Latrica on private matters...between oracle and mystic
<Dave_M> - What do you mean? He is just dressed in workers clothes, maybe a mix of wool and light leather to protect from cuts from flying rock pieces
<Tom> - can i grab his belt off his waist?
<Dave_M> - Sure, if you can make a unarmed or grapple roll
<Tom> - grappling +2
*** 2d6 = 7 *** <Tom>
<Tom> - 9
<Dave_M> - His Def is 6
<Dave_M> - Baurel: "Hey, what is the meaning of this?
<Tom> - i run away cackling and lughing
<Dave_M> - Latricia stands up, "Unhand him immediately!"
<Dave_M> - He chases of course
<Dave_M> - Latricia, "Perhaps you all should leave..."
<Cheryl> - I whisper, we should leave, like now
<Eric> - Oracle...I would ask you to forgive our young companion..he
is full of mischief...he will return the belt even if he isn't caught
<Dave_M> - Latricia: Well, I should hope so!
<Eric> - Oracle..what is it that you were reluctant to tell us while
Baurel was here?
<Tom> - i start chasing baurel and snapping him on the butt with
his belt, but not too hard
<Cheryl> - kinky
<Eric> - lol
<Dave_M> - Well, he is chasing you, so if you are chasing him, you
guys will run into each other, no?
<Tom> - well i figure after i snap him once or twice he might start running
<Dave_M> - He's more interested in getting his belt back, and you
<Tom> - i try to jump on his back to get a piggy back ride
<Dave_M> - This guy is the equivalent of the mayor, when he leaves, he
bringing whatever warriors are in town with him, FYI
<Dave_M> - His back is not facing you...
<Tom> - i drop his belt and run behind him
<Dave_M> - Well, he keeps turning so you are not behind him, he seems
not to trust you anymore
<Tom> - i tell him "you're no fun" then i stick my tongue out at him
<Dave_M> - He says, "Please leave our village, I only hope you
recover your senses before you encouter these raiders..."
<Cheryl> - Ok, lets go you guys (before we end up in jail or worse)
<Tom> - they havent built a jail that can hold me
<Dave_M> - lol
<Tom> - what did the old lady say?
<Dave_M> - She says, "leave"
<Eric> - Oracle...is there anything we can do for you before we leave
<Dave_M> - No, get out of here now!
<Cheryl> - come on you crazies
<Eric> - Oracle...I thank you for you time and wish you well
<Dave_M> - Please leave now
<Eric> - Let's head out of town
<Tom> - i get my horse
<Cheryl> - Good idea
<Eric> - Tom how sneaky are you?
<Dave_M> - I take it we are headed to the Tin mine?
<Tom> - stealth +14 pick pocket +11
<Eric> - would you be able to break into the sanctuary and poke around tonight
<Eric> - I really want to know what the Oracle is hiding
<Dave_M> - There ar eothers that know the secret
<Dave_M> - She didn;t seem all the concerned with Briggo snooping
around, so it is probably not physical evidence
<Eric> - I guess we should head to the tin mine...hope for better luck there
<Dave_M> - Tom, next time you wanna make a distraction int a temple,
try starting an argument
<Dave_M> - Thenyou'll be dismissed from the temple for being noisey
along with whoeer you are arguing with
<Tom> - i am not good at talking
<Dave_M> - You don;t have to be, you just have to be annoying, lol
<Cheryl> - I thnk you can handle that :)
<Dave_M> - But stealoing from the foreman of the mines is bad juju, lol
<Eric> - it was fun though
<Tom> - i just borrowed his belt
<Dave_M> - lol
<Tom> - i didnt even bite his nose
<Dave_M> - lol

  So, what do you guys think? Did I spoil a good comic moment? Did he spoil a good chance to pick up a good clue? Is this a sign of a problem or..?

[joepub]

<Eric> - would you be able to break into the sanctuary and poke around tonight
<Eric> - I really want to know what the Oracle is hiding
<Dave_M> - There ar eothers that know the secret
<Dave_M> - She didn;t seem all the concerned with Briggo snooping
around, so it is probably not physical evidence

As far as railroading goes, you seemed to do that here a little?

Also - why was taking the belt and humiliating him and running necessarily a bad idea?
You yourself said that she would never talk with Baurel in the room...
Didn't your player effectively pull Baurel out of the room, and leave the others to question the Oracle?


The major question is: Did your player spoil anything with his fairly silly behaviour?

It looks like no, because:
-The Oracle wouldn't talk with Baurel in the room
-Baurel wouldn't leave without the Oracle
-There was no physical proof in the room

It seems like you fed them the message "there is nothing here for you unless you get Baurel to leave, and that would be hard to do."

[dindenver]

Hi Joe!
  They already knew Baurel was a respected member of the community, I just RP'd him "in character."
  I feel like it would have been fairly easy to maneuver him out of there. I didn't have a set solution in mind, I just played it "au naturale" but somehow, in my mind, it went wonky.
  I did pretty much raiulroad them about going back for two reasons: one, to move the story along and two, to prevent the them from becoming raving criminals!

  But I guess that's what I want ot focus on. Should I have gone with "the flow" and let the scene get all comic, or should I have tried to keep the setting consistant?

[Callan S.]

I don't think your being honest with yourself about not having a solution in mind.

<Dave_M> - Tom, next time you wanna make a distraction int a temple,
try starting an argument
<Dave_M> - Thenyou'll be dismissed from the temple for being noisey
along with whoeer you are arguing with

The game didn't go all comic - the player just didn't do actions which fitted within how you image the game world to work (ie, revered mayors remain reveared).

I really don't think he was in play to produce some beutifully syncronised dream with you. I see an agenda clash so far, but would like more info.

Even if there isn't an agenda clash and he really wanted to produce a dream with you - I really think you just don't want his contributions. It's your world and yours alone, not your world with an occasional spurt of light hearted roguery added to the dream by him...because your not letting him add.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  That's what I am trying to get at Cal. More or less this is all in my head. And I am trying to sort out how to handle it better next time.

  As to solution. I didn't consciously think of that until right before I typed it. When I started asking myself "why did he do that?" and "how could I have done it better?"

I really don't think he was in play to produce some beutifully syncronised dream with you.

I don't know what that statement means exactly.

  As to agenda conflict, I don't "think" so. When he GMs his games aren't substantially different from mine. We both pretty much view setting, Simulationism and gamism with about the same esteem.

  In the past, he has always tried to insert a little comedy into our sessions (IRL games and on-line games), but usually they are appropriately timed (e.g., drunken outbursts in taverns, OOC gags, etc.). This was the first time it happened during a more serious/critical scene.

  So, did I shoot him down unjustly, how would you have handled it?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Are these actual transcripts of an online session? In other words, am I seeing exactly what your players saw?

I have a couple of thoughts, but first, let me ask a few questions to make sure I'm reading this right. Please bear with me, I have a point! (Sometimes....).

...<Dave_M> - You guys rolled high enough on your Intuition to know she will never reveal whatever it is they are hiding as long as Baurel is in the room

Did you have a specific target number for this roll?
Did you just wing it and say "close enough"?
What would've happened if they'd failed this roll -- would they have been "stuck," unable to get any information from this source, or would there have been some other way to either (a) get something out of this person or (b) get the same clue from someone else?
Or were you going to give them the information regardless of what they rolled (in which case, why roll)?

<Dave_M> - Latricia stands up, "Unhand him immediately!"
...<Eric> - Oracle...is there anything we can do for you before we leave
<Dave_M> - No, get out of here now!

Did you roll some kind of social skills check or reaction check for this?
If you did, why didn't you tell the players what you were rolling?
If you didn't, why did you have them roll Intuition before and then do this as a judgment call?
Latricia's reaction to the stealing-the-belt incident seems every bit as important as Latricia's unwillingness to speak with someone else in the room -- either potentially ended the scene and made Latricia useless as a source -- so it seems odd to do one as a GM judgment call and one as a die roll, if that's actually what you were doing.

<Dave_M> - Tom, next time you wanna make a distraction int a temple,
try starting an argument
<Dave_M> - Thenyou'll be dismissed from the temple for being noisey
along with whoeer you are arguing with

Why didn't you tell Tom this before he had his character steal the belt? Couldn't you have let me him make another of those Intuition rolls, at least, to get a chance to realize that he'd piss Latricia off?

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Yeah, it's an on-line game, and this is everything including die rolls. Here's your answers to the other questions:

Did you have a specific target number for this roll? Did you just wing it and say "close enough"?

No, I didn't bother, there was enough people rolling that someone would have rolled high enough...

What would've happened if they'd failed this roll -- would they have been "stuck," unable to get any information from this source, or would there have been some other way to either (a) get something out of this person or (b) get the same clue from someone else?

Every Oracle knows what this Oracle knows. So, it wouldn't have been too hard for them to learn what they needed.

Or were you going to give them the information regardless of what they rolled (in which case, why roll)?

The adventure is setup on checkpoints, so the main NPC willl keep acting the same until they learn it all. I'm not going to force feed them, so they'll just have to look for clues on their own.

Did you roll some kind of social skills check or reaction check for this?

The interpersonal skill rules says don't roll unless the outcome is unknown. in this case, I didn't feel a roll is required. I think if Tom had narrated leaving the area, I would have let the other players try and mollify the Oracle and maybe get more info. But he hung around trying more gags. So, I was kinda stuck...

If you didn't, why did you have them roll Intuition before and then do this as a judgment call?

Well, I could have typed in the Oracle being evasive and everything, but I wanted to show how Intuition is used in an active capacity.

Why didn't you tell Tom this before he had his character steal the belt?

Well, honestly, I hadn't thought of it.

Couldn't you have let me him make another of those Intuition rolls, at least, to get a chance to realize that he'd piss Latricia off?

Alright, I probably should have done that. I just panicked because I wasn't expecting this from Tom at this time.

  These are good Questions Sydney, thanks for taking the time with this post.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Okay, I think I understand this better, now.

And here's the silent killer:

The interpersonal skill rules says don't roll unless the outcome is unknown.

"Unknown" to whom? To the gamemaster, right?

Okay, that's a problem, right there. Because that means your real rule in practice is something like

- If the gamemaster knows what's supposed to happen, and you do what the gamemaster wants you to, don't roll, or only pretend to roll: it automatically works. (This is the initial Intuition check: You wanted them to see Latricia wouldn't talk with the other guy around, so you made sure they noticed).
- If the gamemaster knows what's supposed to happen, and you do something different from what the gamemaster wants you to do, don't roll, or only pretend to roll: it automatically fails. (This is the "steal the belt" gimmick: You wanted them to use some social cleverness to get Latricia alone, like in a detective story, and instead someone pulls a silly prank, so you shut them all down, fast, and punish them by making the "wrong" way not only not work, but also ruin any chance with this source ever. You also wanted to do this with the "scam the casino" thing in the other game, I recall, but you couldn't because you weren't GM, so they could keep playing when you left the room for a minute).
- If the gamemaster doesn't know what's supposed to happen, then you get to roll for real, but it doesn't really matter, because if it did matter, the GM would care enough to have decided for you!

Compare Dogs in the Vineyard, where the explicit rule for the GM is, "say yes or roll dice": In other words, if it's not worth arguing about, or if everyone really wants it to happen and no one thinks it'd be fun if it didn't work, then of course, yes, it happens. But if the real people playing (not the characters! the real people!) disagree about what should happen, or if someone thinks it might be cool if things went wrong, then let the dice decide.

I'm being harsh here, and maybe this isn't you, but I've seen it so many times in so many games and "actual play" reports that I know it's a common pattern. The GM has a particular solution in mind to a problem, but s/he doesn't want to tell the players and "give it away," but anything else the players try the GM will say "no, that doesn't work," so
-- the players keep flailing blindly until they stumble onto the GM's solution, getting everyone frustrated, OR
-- the players become really, really good at figuring out what the GM wants and giving it to him/her, so the whole thing looks really smooth, but basically everyone's singing karaoke to the tune the GM's already written, and nobody else is allowed to make a real creative contribution, OR
--the players figure out that the GM will only let one thing work, no matter how cool their ideas are, so they give up and start doing silly crap like knocking over casinos and stealing people's belts in a "serious" game.

In all of these cases, the problem is not the players. The problem is the idea the GM has in his or her head and can't let go of.

[joepub]

Dave,

could you please tell me one thing?
How could the player have removed the Mayor, besides grabbing his valuables and yelling "na-na-na-na!" as he ran?

It seems like he was staunchly planted there,
and your language made it obvious that he needed to leave to have the players learn anything,
and that negotiations were basically barred (you flat out said that, pretty much.)

And... couple with:

Every Oracle knows what this Oracle knows. So, it wouldn't have been too hard for them to learn what they needed.

It almost seems like this player had a good plan.
Get the mayor out of the scene.
If you piss off the Oracle... too bad, but you can just go to a different one.
If you still win the Oracle over, then you can now learn the secret.


Also... was he for sure trying to be comic and disrupt the game?
Think about this:
-While the others negotiate with the Oracle, the thief yoinks something from the Mayor and takes off,
in hopes that he can incite the Mayor to rage and get him to follow chase.
-This usurps the Mayor's status, which might have been a goal.
-Also, it isolates the Oracle, meaning the others have it in 2on1 negotiations, right?

This seems like a perfectly logical course of action to me, when you really think about it.
He used silly language, but are you SURE he had silly intent?

[dindenver]

Hi Sydney!
  OK, I honestly did not have a solution in mind at all. And it really didn't matter to me if they learned this info from this Oracle or another. In my mind, they will get the info eventually. In small or large pieces depending on how they play. Not from my force feeding them or contriving events to happen.
  If Tom had kept running instead of trying to chase him or jump on his back, I might have let the other players talk the Oracle down. But they had only spoken a few lines of text, how far could his character have gotten? Barely into the next room?
  I don't know, as to how I handled it, I admit, I was surprised in a bad way (I like it when my players surprise me usually). And after thinking about it maybe 30 seconds IRL I decided to keep it serious and go with what was on the screen.
  I get what you are saying about roling the dice. Except, there is no applicable skill here. Tom's character was being chased by Foreman as he asked, but then stopped running away seconds later. The Oracle was trying to get these shinanagins to stop and his associates were feet away not helping the foreman nor Tom. I guess I could have let him roll for Intimidate to reverse who is chasing who and then they could have made more distance...
  You honestly think the break down is that small, letting him roll intimidate because he was trying to whipo the Foreman with a belt?

[dindenver]

Hi Joe!
  Yeah, there really really really was more than one solution, in fact, you can see me suggesting an alternate course of action later on. Another solution might have been for one of the characters to ask the Oracle/Priest for a confession of their sins or any other number of things. I guess the only two probs I have with Tom's execution was that he tried to chase someone who was chasing him and that there were so many non-stealing solutions available.

  And for the record, I am not a mean, ogre-y GM that makes people jump through my hoops. I also don't play mind games with people trying to make them guess what I want them to do, I hate that crap and I am  not very good at it besides, lol I just play the world and play by the rules as they are written. And I am always open to players suggesting new approaches, different interpretations of rules and  generally am open to most any discusion about what's going on at the table. I don't setup situations with only one solution. I do my best not to railroad characters that are doing their own thing and everybody seems to have fun at my games.

  The purpose of the post was to see if I overreacted to this and it sounds like the answer is yes. I'll prolly talk to Tom when I see him face to face on Thursday and see what he thinks.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Absolutely, always talk to your players about what worked and what didn't. But your worrying about the who's-chasing-whom stuff is the wrong track. You can't fix it this way.

You honestly think the break down is that small, letting him roll intimidate because he was trying to whipo the Foreman with a belt?

Not quite - I think the tiny little breakdown is the symptom of the fundamental breakdown: Your system doesn't tell you when to roll or what to do with the roll when you've made it.

And that's not you; that's an entire tradition of gaming that the leading Forge designers got fed up with years ago.

"There is no applicable skill here" -- again, fundamental breakdown time. Traditional games say, "roll if these specific circumstances apply" -- but what if your players do something creative that's not provided for in the rules? No help there. You, as GM, have to fit the round peg into one of the square holes provided by the rules, or just wing it. You can't have a list of specific situations and skills/abilities/whatevers to cover all possibilities.

Traditional games say, "rules are about figuring out whether something a character does succeeds or fails -- so if you, as GM, think it makes sense that it should work, or you think it doesn't make sense and shouldn't work, you don't need rules -- right?" WRONG.

I see you driving yourself crazy trying to do this judgment-calling: "I might have let the other players talk the Oracle down. But they had only spoken a few lines of text, how far could his character have gotten? Barely into the next room?" This way lies madness. You're trying to judge what's "realistic" in a situation where you'd have to be physically present, watching, to judge all the variables -- and even then, eyewitnesses in real court cases often disagree about what happened, so you'd need to be there with a video camera, chalk, measuring tapes, and maybe a full CSI crew. But you don't have CSI: You have "a few lines of text" and your personal judgment of how far the average belt-thief could run from the average mayor in the time to speak that text -- huh? What? Who the hell could ever figure that out?

Especially since the problem isn't that you aren't "there" to witness and measure what's happening in the situation; the situation isn't there either, because it's imaginary. So it's quite possible that the "reality" you're trying to be "realistic" about is not self-consistent, or it's missing key details you need to decide (e.g. how far to the door?) because no one's made them up yet. Besides, how many movies or comic books let a key character give a whole speech while someone else is running three steps?

So the traditional rules approach of "the GM determines what would realistically happen, and the rules help the GM make those determinations when s/he's not sure" is a big dead end. It gives you NO help on the questions that really matter:

1. Do you only roll if stuff is really, really important, which may mean you may ruin the game because of sheer luck? Do you only roll when either outcome is okay, which may mean everything that matters is pre-determined? Trad games are no help, because they don't have any way to say "this matters, this really doesn't."

Which leads to the bigger and more important point:

2. Once somebody rolls, what does it mean? Okay, they either succeed or fail at a particular task -- so what? If I succeed in stealing the mayor's belt, does that mean I fail at impressing the Oracle? If I fail at stealing the mayor's belt, does that mean I fail to fail to impress the Oracle, which means I actually succeeded? If I steal the mayor's belt, does that mean I fail to impress the Oracle but I undermine the mayor's authority and get a bonus against him in later scenes?

You can have really strict rules about stealing-the-belt, but if they don't give you any guidance about how to translate stealing-the-belt into impact on what really matters to the players, pfft -- you're lost. In practice, roll all you want, because you, as GM, have to "wing it" every single time: You didn't steal the belt and fell on your face? Well, the Oracle thought that was funny, so it's a good thing. You hit the orc with a critical roll and took him to zero hit points, killing him? Well, some other orcs got pissed off, so it's a bad thing.

Whereas a lot of Forge-style games make what the stake are explicit, and leave the details of what specific actions happen or not up in the air:

"So we want to talk to the Oracle - that's what's at stake."
"Right, but she won't talk with the Mayor there - that's the obstacle."
"I try to steal the Mayor's belt! If I win, I get him out of the room, so we ca talk to the Oracle."
"Okay, but if you lose, the Oracle is pissed off, so she doesn't talk to you!"
"If I lose, do I fail to steal the belt?"
"Uh, does it really matter?"
"Guess not -- if it's okay with you, I'd feel dumb if my character couldn't do something that simple. So if I lose, I steal the belt, but it offends her."
"Good for me. Roll."

Look at Vincent Baker's site for (as usual) the clearest sum-up of a complicated concept, "task resolution vs. conflict resolution" (http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=58 if the link doesn't work).

[dindenver]

Hi Sydney!

Your system doesn't tell you when to roll or what to do with the roll when you've made it.

Um, I beg to differ. It's all over the book, when to roll, what the roll means and why you are rolling. Sure it is Task Resolution with all the problems that come with it, but no system is perfect, Conflict Resolution has its flaws as well...

  You are right, this series of events would have ended differently if I were using conflict resolution. BUT, I am not comfortable enough with conflict resolution to write it into this sytem. And I haven't found a game that uses it that I could pitch to my group and it will stick.

  As to judging how far he could trvel in the space of a few lines of dialogue. I don't have to have a accurate diagram of the situation to know that the character couldn't have gotten very far before he turned and faced his victim. I really wasn't thinking "what is realistic" I was thinking "What should this Oracle do in this situation"
  Yeah, I could have handled it differently. This is not an example of my best performance, but that was the point of posting here, isn't it?

  Basically, you roll when it matters or when you are changing the game setting. Players have luck to boost the roll when it matters, when it is do or die. It's been working pretty well. I was just thrown cuz I didn't expect him to get all slap stick on me I guess.

[Callan S.]

Hi!
  That's what I am trying to get at Cal. More or less this is all in my head. And I am trying to sort out how to handle it better next time.

  As to solution. I didn't consciously think of that until right before I typed it. When I started asking myself "why did he do that?" and "how could I have done it better?"

That's exactly what I mean - sim or gamism, it's not your role to determine how he could have done it better. If your thinking that, then your not in a frame of mind that is 'Okay, I'm opening myself up to what he's about to contribute'.

I really don't think he was in play to produce some beutifully syncronised dream with you.

I don't know what that statement means exactly.

I believe he wasn't thinking "What's good for the story/dream?". He was thinking "What's a way to surmount this problem that will work" and by work, I mean regardless of what that does to change the game world. Regardless of how different it was from how you like to imagine the game world/dream.

It'd be like if you were doing sim super heroes, but when a certain problem comes up, he has spider man pick up a gun and use it to solve the problem. Say your thinking "But spider man just doesn't use guns". That doesn't matter to him right now - solving the problem does. It will work - that's what he's betting, even though it just doesn't mesh with the setting in your mind. He doesn't care about how you feel the game world is unraveling/becoming silly - because he's going for another agenda entirely.

As to agenda conflict, I don't "think" so. When he GMs his games aren't substantially different from mine. We both pretty much view setting, Simulationism and gamism with about the same esteem.

Your games can look the same, but what does he get excited about in the ones he ran? That's where the important difference lies. Right now, I see him getting excited about this plan. Do you have any accounts from his games?

So, did I shoot him down unjustly, how would you have handled it?

If it seemed to be dragging on, note that he got the mayor out, flash a 'you tricky bastard' expression at him and here's some XP to seal the deal. Then I ignore anything else, because it's all done (just cut to the oracle spilling the beans - because while I'd be tempted to make her all offended and such, I'd see that as just too high a difficulty level to raise the game to. The player jumped one hurdle, setting up two is too much for now, even if it makes sense). But that's my gamist responce.

[dindenver]

HI Cal!
  OK, I get what you mean. I thought that was what you were trying to say, but I also wanted to avoid miscommunication.
  He ran a Superhero game (Blood of Heroes) and did dog us when Eric's Human Torch clone grabbed a bunch of drugs from a mutant street gang we just defeated in order to resell them ourselves. So, I think we are both "close" in stripe. I do know the he and I, until recently at least, have not put a lot of thought into GNS-style division of game play.
  Yeah, I guess I'll try and broaden my perceptions in the future.