Not enough people showed up to our game last night (03/27). I got some different reactions from my normal games, we had a blast, and I wanted to share due to the sharpest, most direct gamist set of actions we've ever produced (I think). I would like to present it, and my theories on it, and see what kind of discussion this can introduce; I guess the core theory I'd like to discuss is when players lose investment in their character (i.e. it doesn't matter if they survive the night or not), they focus on testing their characters to the limit and take otherwise unthinkable risks.

Demographics: The four of us are all male, all over 25, have been playing on Sundays for 3 years now.

Focus had been set on three players and three characters. They've had an hour and a half to fully maximize the potential of squeaky new 12th level D&D characters. The rules had been set, and the atmosphere thus:

"Okay, guys, we don't have enough people to play our normal game tonight. You're gonna make 12th level characters to play through a Gygaxian dungeon I have here in my hands (issue 112 of Dungeon Magazine). This is a one-shot, and we may never play this again. By the way, you're already at the door to the dungeon."

By Gygaxian, they knew that I meant gear destroying traps, ridiculous or non-existant set ups for creatures, and the full intent of the DM to kill the players characters if they 'screw up' or 'don't know when to back down or run away'. After the incident in question, one of the players was even more eager to press on, his quote, "What? I've only died once so far!" Not a normal quote or ethic on regular nights.

They proceded into a large gallery, and faced what they knew to be an Iron Golem (the module's author had severely pumped up what he called 'the golem that Mordenkainen couldn't kill'). There were statues nearby that inexplicably had items to help them fight said golem. After realizing that they could be activated to give them helpful weapons, I activated the creature and attacked the nearest player, who happened to be a two weapon fighter wielding now two weapons of bane to the creature. He attacked with fervor, and gave his damage result, six attacks with only one hitting. To make a point, I grinned and subtracted on our erasable mat the total (having reduced it due to the defenses of the creature) from the total HP above it. This nod to his drop in the bucket did what it was supposed to do, raise the tension that they were in significant trouble. One player readied himself to escape when the creature attacked the dual weapon wielder. He got all five attacks in, and as I started to calculate the damage aloud, and before we could get to the special properties of the weapons, the character was dead. Pretty much the first encounter in a strange new setup with comparitively tons of player prep time possibly down the tube. In an instant, I'd used the thinly fabricated backstory to come up with a way of bringing him back to life and get them back to the gates, as it were. I began to narrate such an outcome. Then it happened.

"Wait, you skipped over my initiative," the third player calmly said.

"I ... what?" I asked incredulously.

With a grin, he picked up his dice. "It's my turn!"

I'd almost washed over the entire point of the dungeon, looking to maximize players' fun by bringing everybody back to the fight. I'd almost taken away everyone's chance to grab the spotlight.

And boy, did he step on up. An hour later, his superiorly maximized character had been whupping up on the creature, and, beknownst to all when he started, losing. They'd all known from second one what the outcome of the battle was going to be. And by Gygax, they were loving it. They didn't have to win, they just had to step up to the plate and give it a shot.

These weren't characters, they were ... experiments. "How would it work if I did this? Will this be effective? Would this be fun to play?" were the underlying, unstated, possibly not consciously thought about questions I think everyone was playing with.

When we did get to an actually surmountable fight, they focused on tactics. When they were exploring, they were focusing on how flippantly they could just be looters of an unknown treasure. But during that big fight, it was them against the biggest BS the game could throw against them, and I guess with the prompting I gave them, it had to be done.

I think I'm rambling now, I hope this provides some modicum of material to discuss. Comments?

My question to the group: If player three hadn't spoke up, or I'd overridden him in the name of 'group fun', wouldn't I have been out of line of our unwritten group expectations? Would I have violated the premise of gamism for gamism's sake?

My question to the group: If player three hadn't spoke up, or I'd overridden him in the name of 'group fun', wouldn't I have been out of line of our unwritten group expectations? Would I have violated the premise of gamism for gamism's sake?

These weren't characters, they were ... experiments. "How would it work if I did this? Will this be effective? Would this be fun to play?" were the underlying, unstated, possibly not consciously thought about questions I think everyone was playing with.

To make a point, I grinned and subtracted on our erasable mat the total (having reduced it due to the defenses of the creature) from the total HP above it.

Actually, another thought on that character thing.

I think you shifted what was valued, and it opened up a great deal of material for exploration. What I mean is that if a character is deeply valued, your not going to risk its destruction. If the primary means of exploration is about risking your PC to destruction...well.

Right now I'm looking at that and thinking "What should the player focus on if their not going to explore all this dangerous stuff". The phrase "simulationist exploration of character/what my character would do" comes to mind. Well, that's what it'd lean toward, unless on the off chance it hits nar. Interesting implications. I intended to say next game I run that PC's can only die if the player decides they've dodged death too many times. I think I can see even more importance in saying this, now.

As a quick note, I think it was also implicit that there wouldn't be any permanent character death for the evening. They could do whatever they wanted to do and I'd find some way of getting them to the end of the evening for after that evening there'd be little to no more interaction (most likely no) with this scenario or characters.

I think what you've hit on is basically the point of D&D: exploration of system.

The players and even the authors might deny that publically, but why else would almost all of the dungeon environment hazards be "solved" by players and rarely if ever expanded on in the extra books, while the supplements continue to add huge numbers of feats, spells, prestige classes.. all more system to experiment with?

If they get killed, who cares? At that point, the game either has them raised a level lower, or depends on the social contract safety-net to bounce them right back with a new character (probably also a level lower).

We are playing a D&D campaign that started from level 1. Starting at level 1 there are very few choices to make. Last night, 4 of the party got killed by an Owlbear. Although rather annoyed, the players actually seemed quite stoked at the idea they'd get to make starting characters of higher level, because it'd give them more chance to do what they want: tweak the system.

I think that's exactly what my group is currently involved in. Every attempt to focus on non-system issues (e.g. non-rules based character development, interpersonal relationships, 'reasons' for adventures) meets with little to no response, or a half-hearted attempt to do so. I want them to describe their spell effects, they want to have more dice to do their damage on spells with. I want to make them hate or despair at the acts of the villains, they want the villains to be just tough or wily enough to make them produce devious strategies to win. They don't need a good reason to want to defeat or kill a villain.

It's taken me quite a bit of reading here and exploration with my players to determine that they just want to 'explore the system', make cool characters and do cool things. My attempts at a story not devoted to those things are something they have sat through as the cost of doing such things. I've thought it my responsibility to provide a world with depth and versimillitude and wondrous items and places, but is not when it isn't what the group wants. It is my belief now that the more I allow them to simply have the trappings a setting to explore their cool characters and less of trying to force them to provide me their inner monologues or attempts at forcing moral decisions the better off this group is.

I guess this leads me to be frustrated, though, for I've discovered that I'm my worst problem in terms of being happy within our playing group.

Well... TSR game texts, particularly AD&D 2e, did a lot to imply that gamism is an inferior mode of play and a "good" Dungeon Master puts hours of efforts into complete fleshed out viillains, ornate backgrounds, and script-driven plots. Everyone I know who's DMed 2e shares these dreams of somehow becoming the master of illusionist play. Of course, the players come to the table with varied expectations.

So there's this dysfunctional cycle created. The DM assumes he's gotta pull out all the stops to faciliate illusionist play. The players are unsatisfied because their expectations for the game are not being met, but don't know how to express this. (Hey, the "DM is always right." Criticizing the DM being an unspoken violation of social contract.) The DM responds to this frustration by trying harder at what he was doing before. Result: disinterested, apathetic players, and a DM who's frustrated that no one appreciates his hard work.

So I'm curious... are your players in the loop regarding Forge lingo? How did you suss out their preferences here?

Aman the Rejected wrote: I guess this leads me to be frustrated, though, for I've discovered that I'm my worst problem in terms of being happy within our playing group.

Miskatonic wrote: So I'm curious... are your players in the loop regarding Forge lingo? How did you suss out their preferences here?

Noon wrote: Can you spend some time as a player? I remember a actual play post by someone who went over to being a player and noted how they really did engage with the systems gamism (this was for exalted).

Noon wrote: One thing our group does is that we have rotating GMs . . .

Noon wrote: Now, if you design some conflicts where the players will miss out on bonus XP for that conflict unless they do extra well, you will have a stake in how that combat turns out. Ideally, this tension is where you'll get your satisfaction, instead of where you've been trying to get it.

Noon wrote: Check out some of the actual play posts for capes, to see otherwise.

Heya again,

I had already gotten frustrated when I realized that I hadn't optimized my character enough to compete for the spotlight in that game.

Would you suggest announcing this before the conflict? Otherwise I think I'd be accused of Monte Hauling the XP. "Defeat this group of mooks in one round and I'll double the XP. Defeat this villain without player death and I'll give you his weapons." Something like that?

Noon wrote: Can I just check something on that? Is that frustrated as in "Ah! I'm loosing the race!" frustration, or "Ah! I'm loosing the race and that'll mean I wont get something else I want out of this?" frustration?

I don't see any digression by you. Your own preferences are integral to how functional the groups play is, since your a member of that group.

There were two factors going on; one, the unstated by me was that despite having been quite vocal on the Gamist focus of the character (my best attempt to make it impossible to lose a 'saving throw'), I was hardly ever in the situation where it mattered and when it did matter, it was an anti-spotlight by the GM ("Everyone but Mark make a saving throw").

As to the rest of your comments about defining Stakes and making them truly and personally interesting, I'll definitely take that to heart. I think I'd implicitly done so with the Iron Golem when I wrote down its HP total on the mat. It was a slap to the face, a "Beat this!" cocky gesture that really worked.

Can Stake Declaration be done subtly, you think? Environmental factors come to mind "Defeat this before the lava rises too high and kills you all!"

I know you weren't trying to enter specifics, but this is a new technique from someone who's always thought that if everything wasn't predefined as having a logical growth from the 'story' that it wasn't good enough.

And it was HARD. I mean DAMN HARD. Go ahead and draw the map of a standard 3 story keep. You've probably got about 75 rooms on your hands. Now a certain percentage of those rooms will be empty. Probably about 10 to 15. The rest you actually have to fill with something. And it can't just be room after room after room of monsters because that will get old. You at least have to give some variety to encounters. I mean even if the whole place was filled with Kobalds, you've got to make each Kobald encounter unique some how. You have to vary the parameters of the challenge. Maybe the Kobalds are armed with special weapons. Maybe you have to fight the Kobalds in and around some traps. Maybe you have to get involved in a three way fight between yourselves, goblins and kobalds. And of course it can't be all fighting either. So you throw in some traps but, man, trap creation is a subtle art I tell you.

You wrote: I know you weren't trying to enter specifics, but this is a new technique from someone who's always thought that if everything wasn't predefined as having a logical growth from the 'story' that it wasn't good enough.

I agree. I'm the kind of guy that if I run a premade game (and I often do due to low amounts of prep time (school, impending wedding, etc.)), and I run into notes or text that I didn't read or had forgotten about, I'll read it out loud to my group. For instance, in the last game:

GM wrote: Huh. You're fight with this creature attracts six human warriors from a nearby room. Okay.

I think scene framing is more like their doing their down time and then you just say "After wandering through countless rooms, being ultra stealthy, you hear heavy breathing ahead...it seems to be getting closer". Ie, a conflict is about to land in their lap, what do they do?

It's something I'm working on to. Good stuff to think about.

Aman the Rejected wrote: I do want to say that this: this was THE most successful game I've run in quite a while. Less players, predefined lack of causality, lack of attachment to characters, it really worked out.