When the GM says "Better Watch Out..." (UPDATE)

[ADGBoss]

Ok yeah that clarifies things somewhat though I think some of my advice may still help you.  I had to walk away from gaming with my friend (and God Son actually... he was baptized late in life and in those the Church and I still got along :)  ) because I couldn't stand playing in his games or with him anymore.

In any case I hope this works out well for you

SMH
ADGBoss

[Balbinus]

RE-UPDATE:

It seems her game is back on after all. It seemed to be that:

1) she disliked my friend correcting her and re-explaining stuff she'd just explained even though he was just being helpful and he wrote the damned rules.

I'm not surprised.  On this one I entirely agree with her.  She is the gm, what you're describing is some guy second guessing her rules calls at the table.  That's just not right and it is annoying.  It would certainly annoy me.

As for him writing the game, cool.  But once someone else is running it it's their game, not his.  She is right to dislike him correcting her, it's obnoxious and rude.  He may think he's being helpful, but ask yourself this, if you were gming would you find it helpful to have a player frequently contradict your rulings and tell everyone how you're getting it wrong?

Frankly, I don't get the impression this is all her fault.  Did you try telling her first that you didn't want to fill in all the stuff on the sheet?  If not, think about how much work she put in just to get the impression you weren't even trying.

Seriously, imagine being in her shoes for a while. From outside it sounds to me like there is lack of thought on both sides.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hi Max

Well, first a clairification:

My friend didn't exactly contridict her as when she explained something and she got a bunch of blank stares back he'd re-explain and get a bunch of "oh!"'s. Or something. But this is something that my wife said he said. So this knowledge isn't exactly fresh.

And AFA him writing the rules, the real problem with it is the rules are still WIP. They have nice printed-out handouts with some stuff crossed off because they've changed stuff already. Her game is going to be, more or less, a playtest session because she's said as much. It's going to be a hard row to hoe since the rules keep changing, or so it seems.

As to you other point. You're right. I should be more up-front about it. But I guess my friend has already addressed this issue by telling her that "Jack prefers to keep his character vague and then develop them during play." We'll see how she deals with *that* or not. Money says she'll eventually tell me: "I know you prefer to keep you character vague and then develop them during play, *BUT*..."

[Balbinus]

Fair enough Jack, that does make more sense.  I was just a bit concerned that maybe you were being unfair.  The extra explanation gives a bit more context and it doesn't sound like you were being.

As to the openness, yeah, it'll probably get you nowhere but at least you'll have tried...

Good luck and please keep us posted :-)

[Jack Spencer Jr]

OK. Here's what went down last night. This'll be lengthy, so you might want to go get a snack or take a leak now.

Last night, my friend's GF started her game. Thing is we, my wife and I, arrived at 6. The other four guys were already there but she doesn't get home from work until 7. So for an hour they played a little of the new Mechwarrior game. I was bored out of my mind because I've already discovered that wargames, at least of the sort of the new Mechwarrior game, are not for me. Fortunately they have nine cats or so, so I occupied myself pestering them. When she finally arrived, she handed out out character sheets, all nice & printed out with all the values printed on there. (I assume every session will have a newly printed character sheets since even highly fluctuating value like money are printed on the sheet. She then took us outside one at a time for a little one-on-one. To kill time, and this was the highlight of the evening for me, we played a little of my Onomatapeoia card game. My friend really dug it and that felt good. (remind me to send him a copy of the file when I'm done here) When she took me outside for the little powwow (yeah, I know that's not how it's spelled) most of it was her reassuring me that I was not the reason she had cancelled her game. I had already known this since it was already related to me from my friend through the wife that is was a combination of at least one of the other players (the player in question took the longest outside. gave us time for a couple hands) and my friend.

Aside: this past Thursday I get a call on the CallWave Internet Answering Machine, which I have set up so people can reach me since I'm perpetually on the internet. Actually it was two calls. The first call was from her on my friend's cell phone. The second call was from him, same cell phone, and it came in before I had finished listening to the first call. Her message was basically "call me when you get this" his message actually went into what the call was about (they were going to Syracuse to play pool and were inviting us to come with, in this case) This struck me as a fairly profound shapshot of their relationship, or at least the difficulties therein, especialy the difficulties they're having in the game. The difference is that my friend is aware of this in the game and makes an effort to back off. In daily life, such as when calling your internet junkie friend to invite him to go shoot pool, this is not always the case.

Before we actually started, she first divied up seeral responsibilities, such as keeping track of the party fund, writing down people we meet and such. This sort of thing is probably usuful in a killer GM D&D-style game, I guess. I don't know. My job is to keep track of the loot we get. Next, she had us rearrange our seating. I'm not sure why except that she put the two martial artist characters together, the two spellcasters together and so on. I don't see the point of this except that my friend is a spellcaster, and as author of the rules, he can help the other guy.

Then we actually started, and it started kind of like the Tunnels & Trolls Crusaders of Khazan computer game. For those who haven't played this game, let me say that is starts with a backstory, like many CRPGs of its day, and this day as well. But after six or seven screens it gets a little tedious so you're hitting the ENTER button in rapid sucession and the screens of text just keep coming, and coming, and coming...

Well, she wasn't quite that bad but it sure felt like it.

The gist: we work for some sorcerer type guy who is very old, hence very powerful, hence he has a lot of enemies. We are currently on some mission to take the body of one of his most trusted bodyguards back to his home town for burial.

Side note: when talking about this dead guy, she said we were all in awe of him because of such-n-such. I immediately thought of something in Sorcerer when it says that the GM should never say "You feel BLANK" because the emotional state is one of the few areas of the character where the player should have complete control. This was all backstory that was trying to get us moving, so I tried not to let it bother me, but it did.

But there's a snag, you see. The dead guy had some kind of curse or disease or something which requires us to shove some kind of magic berry down his throat every three days or else he'll rise and attack anyone nearby.

Now comes the twist. We were recently caught in a flash flood and we were only able to save a few items (as listed on our character sheets) the horse, cart, corpse and only three of those berries. That's nine days worth of not-coming-back-from-the-dead and we're a good ten days travel from our destination.

The rest of the evening was spent buying equipment. Fairly clever way around just sitting people down and having them select what equipment they have when they start because that can be boring page flipping and item naming and stuff and since the game had started proper, we could actually roleplay. Unfortunately, we didn't do much roleplaying. I didn't feel anything yet so I was just sitting there quietly the entire time, so we'll ignore my ass. The others got to interact with the lizardman barkeep who...talk...like...this... because the common tongue, or whatever, wasn't his first language. This struck me like Woody Allen's performance in Casino Royale where he played mute. Yes. That was entertaining. While eating dinner, we rolled a perception check to see why the floor was always so spotless (short lizardmen cleaned up the mud we tracked in). but then all pretense of roleplaying went out the window when we were buying our equipment and we were back to page flipping and item naming. She and my friend argued slightly here and there over the prices of things  not on the list and the organization of the items list, which is exstensive IMO. I mean, prices for various spices? OK.

This is pretty much were we left it, some I'll relate so other things that happened.

She kept saying "I'm getting to that" when someone, namely my friend, asked a question. Actually she said it twice. The first time was during the set-up text when he asked how many berries we have and how far do we have to go, but this got answered a few paragraphs later, so that one can slide. The second time is when we finally got started and we entered town and we we looking for an inn. We find one, I guess (I'm a little hazy on this for some reason) He asks "is there a sign?" SHe goes "I'm getting to that." and then describes the sign. This bothers me because the very next thing she was going to do was describe the sign, so why say "I'm getting to that" in a somewhat ticked tone of voice like she did when you could simply answer the man's question since that's what you were going to do anyway. I'm not sure what this is indicative of, if you guys have any idea and/or advice for what to say so that she can run without getting snippy over minor crap like this, I'd be grateful.

The lizardman I mention earlier was bright yellow. This is apparently where our likes/dislikes list is supposed to kick in because, I guess, if yellow is our favorite color we'll like the lizardman and if we dislike yellow we'd hate him. Or something like this. Or such was the sense I got from her over the importance of the lizardman's skin color. Is this roleplaying? I must've missed this page in the handbook.

The most significant things that happened happened at the begining of the evening, such as the aforementioned card game. But before the GF arrived, my friend was asking me what was going on and what I did for fun. I wasn't saying much because, unfortunately, I was just being Jack. (I would tell him about stuff like this site, but I don't want him reading this thread and getting all mad and stuff) My wife, god bless her, mentioned that I was planning on running Sorcerer. So the cat's out of the bag. Well, sort of. It's out of the bag in such a way that is easy to put it back in again. Hopefully I won't. I'd better not.

After we got home, we talked about the game and I spent my time trying to explain to my wife why I wasn't very happy with this game and was looking forward to running Sorcerer more in spite of being terrified at being the GM. This past session wasn't anything to judge the game on because it was basically set-up for next time and us buying our equipment. But we talked about this and that. Actually I talked, she listened. I explained how I've been reading about this narrativist play and I want to see it because it sounds like much more fun that anyone had last night. I then got out my copy of Sorcerer and read to her the different ways to play: the "dungeon" way, the squad, the dumb way, and the hard way; and I asked her which way sounds like she'd want to play. She said the hard way. That's good. Having her on my side helps

[greyorm]

Side note: when talking about this dead guy, she said we were all in awe of him because of such-n-such. I immediately thought of something in Sorcerer when it says that the GM should never say "You feel BLANK" because the emotional state is one of the few areas of the character where the player should have complete control.

I've been a Sorcerer geek from the very beginning, but I've never agreed with Ron's statement about the emotional control a player exercises over their character being untouchable.

Honestly, I wrote "Orx" partly in response to the common perception that your guy is completely "hands-off" and always cool-headed or witty or whatever you (the player) wants them to be -- or as I put it in "Orx": "...your orc is not a paper-doll for your ego."

I commonly use the "you feel..." in my D&D 3E games, and as my players know (and have acted on) my statement that if there is ANYTHING they dislike about the way I handle things, to bring it to my attention...they have yet to complain about my occasional assignment of emotional states to their characters.

More to the point, you shouldn't try to compare everything to "Sorcerer" or what "Sorcerer" (or any other game) says is the way to play, etc.  You're going to disappoint yourself and drive everyone around you nuts.  Sorcerer is specifically written so that control of your character is of the ultimate importance...with the ultimate penalty being removal of that control (via the loss of all your Humanity), not all other games are written to facilitate or support such.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hi Raven,

Yeah, I figured as much but I guess the thing is, instead of...Jesus, I don't know. All I do know is I found the idea that we were all in awe of this guy was laughable to me. Respected, maybe. Heard about him and his great deeds, I'll buy that. Maybe even fought along side him, sure. But in awe? Which were her words. I can't help but think that I wouldn't have been thinking about that if she had somehow presented it just a little differently.

But you're right. Comparing this game to any other is like Charlie Manson taking Bible passages out of context. I think it was more a bit of free association on my part. I felt like that bit didn't work for me and I thought 'why isn't it working for me?' and I recalled that bit in Sorcerer and i was like "ah, that must be it' Maybe it was, but quite possibly it wasn't.

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Jack,

Get ready for the big plot twist where it turns out the dead guy's not really dead, the berries are keeping him in a death-mimicking state and the plan is to have him end up buried (and berried too) alive. Fortunately the berry-subtracting flash flood will give him a chance to recover and attack the escorts (that's you), setting up a big fight scene until the truth gets sorted out and you all realize it was a set-up...

This is just a guess (I'm not going on any knowledge here other than what you've written) but whether I'm right or wrong, you might want to ponder your options over at the Participationism thread.

- Walt

[C. Edwards]

Hey Jack,

 I've been keeping up with your situation in this thread and after reading Walt's post I find myself wondering why you should even play along at all.

You're not a person that is comfortable with conflict, thats fine, to each his own.  But why not try some "subtle subversion" of the situation.  Allow me to play devil's advocate here.

You've detailed the in-game situation of your character.  As Walt points out there may be some twists and turns involved.  Why not throw in a twist of your own and possibly bring both the in-game and out-of-game situations to a head.

First thing, make sure the dead guy doesn't get any berries.  If you think you can convince the other players to go along, all the better.  Regardless, destroy or hide the berries.  If anyone gives you attitude tell them that your character is so in AWE of this guy that you think meeting him would be a high honor.  But this is only a cover for your character's real motivation.  Since you've been criticized for not fleshing out your character take the opportunity to flesh him out now.  Make him a member of a secret cult bent on... something, you pick.  Anyway, the cult thinks that unleashing the cursed dead guy on the world would somehow promote their objectives and you're their man on the scene.

When the dead guy starts walkin you may have some more options open.  If he does proceed to try and cut everyone down either run off into the woods or jump in and help dead guy.  Either way, if you survive, the cult will probably give you a promotion.

Now, normally this would be considered "troublesome player" behavior, but considering how screwed up your situation apparently is I would call it a "survival adaptation".  Not only is this an elegant criticism of GM techniques and the game in general but will hopefully result in everything coming to a head.  If things go really well there might even be yelling and spilled Mt. Dew.

The whole point is to force others to start a confrontation so you don't have to, and air out all the crap you people haven't been talking to each other about.  Get it all out of the way so you can behave like reasonably sane people again.  If everyone is still speaking to each other afterwards maybe you can game together again.

Or... you can just speak up about everything you've been posting about and discuss it with these people like an adult.  Whether they will act maturely is irrelevant, at least you will be.

Or... you can just not game with these people again.

But... what you can't do is go on in this same situation week after week.  You're miserable, and they don't sound like they're having that much fun either.

Edited in: Oh yeah, if the guy does end up really being alive like Walt theorizes than by destroying the berries you've managed to skip all the drudgery and have probably pissed in your GM's cornflakes in the process.  Sounds like a win-win to me.

Free advice-Not a therapist. You know the drill.

 -Chris

[kevin671]

Hello, Jack, a question if I may?

Are you certain that these things that you've suggested do not have an automatic strike against them because YOU are the one who has suggested them?  

I do not like Titanic because I do not like Leonardo DiCaprio.  However, if someone I was friends with handed me a copy of the movie and asked me to watch it, I would do it because my friend had asked me to give it a chance.  I've seen Sorcerer on the shelves at my local gaming shop, and while I wouldn't shell out the 40+ bucks to buy it, if a friend brought it to the gaming table, or gave it to me to look at, I would honestly give it a chance.

I guess I'm just wondering if this friend doesn't have some issues with you.  Maybe he doesn't even realize it.

[Walt Freitag]

Well, I don't agree with Chris's advice. However, should you wish to try going this route in a lower key (less in-your-face) way, you can suggest to the group that the most prudent course of action would be to tie the corpse very thoroughly (gagged and blindfolded as well) to a very large tree before the last berry runs out, with plenty of whatever your mythos prescribes for destroying the undead on hand. If the corpse "comes alive" you can try to talk to it, instructing it to answer questions yes or no by nodding its head.

If my experience with this sort of GM is any guide, this won't do you any good. Either you'll be told that your character respects the dead man too much to even consider treating his corpse in such a manner, or the ropes will miraculously break at the key moment (possibly with the explanation that the player chracters failed to secure him tightly enough, despite whatever in-character skill and narrated procedural detail you might have applied). On the other hand, the GM would have no reason to resent your attempt (after all, your characters have ample warning about what's supposed to happen), and might learn something in the process (e.g. that player characters given little or no investment in the story cannot be expected to be passive just to follow a dramatic arc; when they see impending disaster they prefer to take action to forestall it). I've seen GMs learn to be much better GMs through experiences of this type. It doesn't always happen, but it can.

- Walt

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hello, Jack, a question if I may?

Are you certain that these things that you've suggested do not have an automatic strike against them because YOU are the one who has suggested them?  

I do not like Titanic because I do not like Leonardo DiCaprio.  However, if someone I was friends with handed me a copy of the movie and asked me to watch it, I would do it because my friend had asked me to give it a chance.  I've seen Sorcerer on the shelves at my local gaming shop, and while I wouldn't shell out the 40+ bucks to buy it, if a friend brought it to the gaming table, or gave it to me to look at, I would honestly give it a chance.

I guess I'm just wondering if this friend doesn't have some issues with you.  Maybe he doesn't even realize it.

This is an excellent question. It may not be he has issues with me per se but, rather that...I'm not sure how to explain this.

One thing I have noticed is that my wife doesn't believe me on certain issues. Trivial issue, usually, but it's still annoying. I once told her that Alcohol was a poison and she didn't buy it. Not until someone else told her this. I recall this happening  at other times, but I do not recall the specifics. My point here is I doubt my enthusiasm is very contageous. The highest praise I usually give something is "...interesting..." or "...alright..." and that's about it.

That and this is something my friend with everybody and everything. I recall once we were in the car going to a movie with one of his friends from college. He and his college chum were discussing such and such a musical group. I really don't recall which one, but I recall it wasn't so much a discussion as just my friend telling his friend that this group sucks. My friend had to get out of the car for some reason, and his friend was seething about the whole thing because "Ted" (as it were) "gets an opinion into his head and he can't help tearing something he doesn't like down."

I think this may be a sign of a form of immaturity on his part. I don't know and I'm sure as hell not fit to judge. He takes his own opinion of things as gospel truth on some level. I mean, if you call him on such things he'll readily admit he's not any kind of final authority on the value of things and that some people may actually enjoy this or that, but he still behave like he is and that they shouldn't.

I think I've kind of learned to live with this because if I ever need to give him a taste of his own medicine I can always talk about how bad Fargo was or how little respect I have for Def Leppard as musicians. ("They sound like they're holding back," I say. "What do you mean by that???" he says. Comedy ensues)

So, knowing what I know about the man I think it's more a bit of him being unable to curb his lack of enthusiasm. I suppose I can't fault the man because I'm the same way at times. Look at the above bit when they were playing Mechwarrior. I suppose the difference between me and him in this case is he might have said something like "Gee, that looks tedious." or something similar because, I guess, commenting is his natural state while I sat there and said nothing which is mine.

[Jeremy Cole]

Please never say anything bad about Fargo ever again.

:)

Anyway, how long is the campaign?  If you just grin and bare it for 4 weeks and try and run with, then when you run your own campaign, you will have willing players.

If a narratavist style is everything your group never knew it wanted, then they'll be converted without any need to subvert the current campaign.  If you are disruptive and sulky in this campaign, then they will be just the same in yours, and your campaign will have chance.

But most importantly, never say anything bad about Fargo ever again.

Jeremy

[kevin671]

See Jack, that's exactly my point.  It's not the game at all.  He's just got this idea into his head that a certain game/genre/idea/whatever sux.  Of course he's gonna side with the girlfriend, because she's probably giving him something that you don't even wanna think about.  It doesn't really matter that his girlfriend has the wiccan/occult books you were mentioning and reads them.  He doesn't see that.  He ignores it.  The fact is that (Speaking as "Ted" here) Sorcerer Sux.  Period.  The genre is crap.  The theme is crap.  Whatever it is that "Ted" does not like about Sorcerer makes it suck.  His problem with Sorcerer, (or with anything else) is that his own maturity level is such that he refuses to accept anything that anyone else suggests (except the girlfriend, for reasons already discussed) simply because he didn't think of it first.  If he had discovered Sorcerer or the Titanic (because the girlfriend [Lets call her "Susan"] had MADE him watch it) before anyone else suggested it they probably would be pretty cool with him.  People like this can be cool to hang out with, but if ya wanna play Sorcerer you'll need to find someone who'll run it.  On the flip side, it could also be the "Yet another gaming system" syndrome.  I know that personally I've learned so many different game systems that I have trouble keeping them all straight at times.  Lets see, whats on the shelf right now....hmm....bunch o' D20 (Spycraft, DnD, SWRPG and a few others)  RTG's Cyberpunk and Mekton Zeta.  Also, RTG's Bubblegum Crisis, Champions The New Millenium and Armored Trooper VOTOMS, whole whack of Palladium's Rifts and the older Robotech stuff.  Revised Recon.  White Wolf's Rage The Apocalypse, Mage The Acension, Vampire, and Wraith The Oblivion as well as numerous sourcebooks for each, SLA Industries, some Battletech stuff, WEG's SWRPG stuff, as well as a a whole bunch of single book indie RPGs.  I figure I have close to 40 different game systems represented on the shelf I'm looking at, and I've played them all.  I tend to be leery whenever anyone tries to introduce me into a new system I've never played before.  Maybe "Ted" and "Susan" are going through something similar.

[greyorm]

I've seen Sorcerer on the shelves at my local gaming shop, and while I wouldn't shell out the 40+ bucks to buy it...

Just a quick note to Kevin (and because I can't stand misinformation): "Sorcerer" does not cost more than $40 to buy, or even close to $40.  $20, straight up -- not including tax.

If your FLGS is charging $40 for it, you might want to let Ron know about the situation...I don't know the legalities of the situation there, but it seems that a place more than doubling the cover-price of the book might need to be checked into.

Ok, back to the regular discussion of Jack's dysfunctional gaming life ;D