Sigh.. another group bites the dust

[Brian Leybourne]

Had an RPG group collapse last night. It's never nice when that happens.

Bascially, I have 2 groups. One is comprised of brilliant roleplayers, we have been together for 6 and a half years and have a blast. I can't wait to play ROS with them. The other group was comprised of a small group of close friends, who all love roleplaying but aren't particularly good at it.

Well, maybe I should qualify that. It's not that they're BAD per sae, but that they have different priorities from me. I'm a narritivist with simulationist leanings (perfect for tRoS imo), while they're all strict gamist/simulationists, plus they love playing nasty characters with no morals, and I'm just not into that.

So anyway, the second group and I had our first and sadly last tRoS session the other night. Character creation a week or so ago went very smoothly, they all enjoyed the system and had fun making characters up. Amusingly, all three of them had exactly the same priority selections - attributes, proficiencies, skills, status, gifts, race. One was a grizzled ex-soldier, one a swashbuckling rogue and the last a Tengoku riddle seeking honorable samurai type.

Their SA selection went well, except for the samurai character who just doesn't like making backgrounds for his characters and couldn't be bothered thinking hard enough about it to work out what was important to his character, but eventually over a week of ever-increasingly frantic emails we sorted them out for him. I wove all their SA's and backgrounds together pretty well IMO, and had quite an interesting story planned. I started them off in the town of Cyferddton (in Cyrinthmeir) just as a stop, and they were going to travel up the river to New Cyrinthmeir City where the real story would begin.

Sigh.

The rogue character heads off to an inn, and spends several hours (real hours) picking every lock in the place and stealing everything not bolted down. When I try to hurry him along and make noises about just doing the whole place in one roll he complains that I'm killing his fun. He's anally careful about not being caught as well, and so even though I have plenty of peoppe wander by, he always manages to look innocent at the vital moment.

The soldier character heads off to a brothel. The rogue character says "I should have thought of that" and finishes robbing the place and heads off to have his way with some whores.

The samurai character goes out and wanders the town looking for a library to find out some information on ther guy he's been seeking. "Cool" I think, he's getting into the roleplaying (this guy is the worse powergamer/rules lawyer ever). He asks the clerk in a library if he knows the man he's seeking. Unsurprisingly, the clerk has never heard of the target, so the (honorable riddle seeking samurai, remember) murders him and starts ransacking the library. I have 2 town guards hear the ruckus and run in, so he runs upstairs and hides. He completely ignores the window I give him to escape through, but instead strings his bow and waits, shooting the first guard in the face as they come up the stairs. He has a pitched battle with the second, finally knocks the guy out, and then ties him up, and makes a huge pyre of books, burning the dead librarian and guard, and the live guard on the pire.

Sigh. You know how you love something and it just shatters you seeing it abused? I felt sad for all roleplayers ever that night.

The most telling comment of the night? The samurai player saying "woohoo! finally we can play characters without a conscience. Brian usually makes us play good alignments".

So (rules lawyers 1 - riddle of steel 0),  I'm afraid. But all is not lost! My D20 campaign will be coming to a close in another 10 or 15 sessions, and after that I will be running a long term tRoS campaign with my really good group. Can't wait! In the meantime I'm tRoSless again sadly, but at least oBaM will keep me busy and focused on this great game.

Brian.

[Lance D. Allen]

::gasps:: Ug. Man, I feel your pain. That's horrible. After something like that, I don't think I could play with that group again, despite any friendships. Sometimes you just can't game with people you like, if your styles clash as much as that.

I'm glad you've better prospects with the other group though. Good luck.

[PosterX]

Except for the part with the thief spending *real-time* hours pick-pocketing (How could you and the other players let that go on?) that sounds like a rather interesting session. The insane, spree-killing samurai warrior...I like it! I understand your frustration though. When the GM wants to play one type of game but the players want to play another it's always a recipe for failure.

[Jürgen Mayer]

Whoa, Brian, that sounds like coming directly from the pages of a KODT comic. Don't let it bring you down. You can't have a good story if the players don't want to tell one. It doesn't seem that it was your fault...

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Brian,

I think you might reflect on this sentence in your post:

I ... had quite an interesting story planned. I started them off in the town of Cyferddton (in Cyrinthmeir) just as a stop, and they were going to travel up the river to New Cyrinthmeir City where the real story would begin.

After reading that, I didn't need to read the rest. I imagined it, and then went to read exactly what I'd predicted.

This is the oldest deadly-habit in the history of role-playing. The problem or situation you would like to offer the players is in Place X. However, for some unknown reason, so many GMs refuse to begin the characters in Place X. No. They begin with them in Place W and expect the players gladly to proceed to Place X by their own accord.

I don't know why this expectation seems reasonable. No explanation offered to me has ever seemed anything but plaintive and confused, and believe me, I've heard them all.

I'll offer just a bit of a common justification, in order to debunk it. The GM says, "But events in the games need to proceed 'naturally' from character decisions and actions, not from me just ... why, just railroading them into a situation." Sure. All this is in perfect denial of the fact that the GM is emotionally invested in the situation in Place X, and that there are plenty of decisions and actions to take there. And also in perfect denial of the fact that the only way to get the characters there is to railroad the players ten times, no, a hundred times more drastically, in order for them to "decide" to go there.

It never works. It has never worked. It can never work. The players cannot make the key decisions in a story created by the GM. [Notice your use of "story" in the passage I quoted, ie, the implication that it is created by the GM.] Groups for which it "works" are those in which the players are either resigned to or comfortable with a subordinate "story-creation" role in the group.

The only solution, if the players are to have decision-making power, is for the action to begin in Place X. I do not consider this to be railroading, but rather the "offering" by the GM of the issues at stake and the context of the decisions to be made.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Here are a couple of much older Forge threads which dealt with these issues:
The orchestra metaphor
Story and plotting

[Bob Richter]

Hi Brian,

I think you might reflect on this sentence in your post:

I ... had quite an interesting story planned. I started them off in the town of Cyferddton (in Cyrinthmeir) just as a stop, and they were going to travel up the river to New Cyrinthmeir City where the real story would begin.

After reading that, I didn't need to read the rest. I imagined it, and then went to read exactly what I'd predicted.

Yep. Have to agree with Ron on this one.

Players will meticulously bend themselves to the task placed before them. They were given a Tavern, and the best thing they could think of to do with it was skulk around robbing it. They were given a town, and the best they could think of to do was visit a brothel. They were given a library, and the best they could think of to do was slaughter the librarian.

In short, there was no task, so they made up their own.

These players (probably) aren't hopeless, they just don't precisely play in a style you like/may be used to. They'd do the same thing in a game of DnD, or anything else for that matter. It's not tRoS's fault, and (to an extent) it's not really theirs.

Give them a clear direction, or clear steps on the way to their destination, and they'll be less likely to become sidetracked.

[Brian Leybourne]

Well, I see what you're saying, but you have slightly got the wrong end of the stick - I was trying to be brief in my original rant..err..post so I didn't give all the details. There was a lot of plotty goodness in the town I started them off in, and it was a necessary starting point for the adventure. It certainly wasn't "just a town and lets see what they come up with", but they chose to ignore everything I presented to them and do their own thing.

Now don't get me wrong - doing your own thing is fine. Great even. When I am a player I definately prefer character driven stories to plot-driven ones, however in this particular case the desires of the players/characters are so far removed from what I enjoy roleplaying (or am comfortable roleplaying) that it reduced my enjoyment of the game. And if the GM 'aint enjoying the game...

Rereading my original post I see that I really wrote it badly, I was in a tiss at the time :-) I'm really not the "thou shall play the plot I spent hours designing and nothing else" kind of GM, in fact almost exactly the opposite, I feel a plot is there to support the characters and give them some focus and drive, however in this case.. well.. I wont bother laboring the point. Immature players are hard to cope with when you expect more from people who are not usually immature. :-)

Brian.

[Valamir]

Well, if you haven't already written the group off, the situation may be salvageable depending on what the story was "supposed" to be.

After all, no matter how carefull your two criminals were you can easily arrange to sic the law on them.  I'm sure a local sorcerer NPC would have an easy time combining vagaries in a way as to identify the culprits...gives a whole new meaning to "New Detectives".  At that point you have a very big stick to apply.

Running a group of Dillinger's and Clyde's may not be what you had in mind...but it can be a fun change.  I'd suggest giving them a little bit of latitude in this regard to get it out of their system, and then see if you can't start a new campaign with more heroic personalities.  Someone tied into a victim of one of the first PCs who now has some SAs directed against that first PC/now NPC would be pretty cool IMO.  The Insight mechanic makes such character transitions pretty painless from a "now I have to start over" perspective.