This one will be quick.  I was the DM in our D&D Adventure last week; we're "running through" the first published adventure to get acclimated with the system and decide if we want to make the effort to take 4E farther in some direction afterward.

So the characters are in a tomb and one of them remains back near the entrance, refusing to get near the elaborate coffin or assist the other characters in opening it with the priest to see what can be discovered.  As the tomb is opened, the lid shatters and the ghost of the dead Lord appears to challenge the characters' motives for entering the keep.  It so happens that the ghost is bent on destroying any he suspects have come to remove the wards he protected years ago, but with enough convincing can be led to see that maybe those seeking entry are here to preserve and protect the sanctity of the place.  One of the qualities he was looking for in such a group of heroes was a toughness and determination.  Since this player's character had chosen his character to be skilled in being intimidating, I figured it would come across as a well-suited encounter if the ghost sought some kind of approval of that character's gritty resilience.  Game terms, this meant the player rolled an intimidate check as their character was confronted with a verbal challenge from the ghost and acted out or said some words that could be seen as suitably tough and intimidating.  If it sounded good to me, I'd grant a bonus to the roll.

He instead decided to be humble and give the answer, "Well, I'll do my best, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm capable of." when asked would he press on against the darkness when all hope is lost and all his companions have forsaken him.  I still asked for an Intimidate skill roll since that was what the ghost was looking for, but I decided to simply give no bonus since the answer was not a convincingly appropriate one.  (I was tempted to give a penalty but the game mechanics didn't call for them in this case; though I might start house-ruling if I run similar encounters in the future.)  Now, this is what I'm confused about.  After the session he mentioned this and mentioned that he felt as if the group was not understanding how he "was playing his character correctly" and that they were pressuring him to play his character differently.  I'm noticing this happens with this player every session.  Each session he feels the need to defend his choice of play from one or more other players whenever they make alternate suggestions about things his character might consider doing.  This seems to be a very big deal to this player because he seems to get frustrated and maybe a little stressed about it.  It's as if his character and all his future decisions are already mapped out in his head and to alter from that course would be to upset his game experience; the different situations that might arise be damned.  So, I'm left with this weird feeling that one of the players created a persona that he understands exclusively, and to him playing the game is the simple act of throwing that unchangeable persona against the different challenges and scenarios I present to the group.  I'm left feeling like this is somewhat selfish and hard to please.

So this is what I really want to know.  Are there some things I am unaware of that I can do to run my game better for a player like this?  He said to me later that he had actually already decided his character would have a personality quirk of being particularly unsettled about the idea of upsetting graveyards, although he never told me or any of the other players this when we started playing.  If I had known that, maybe I could have altered the situation, expecting that his character would not have wanted to participate directly with an undead personality.  Maybe I could have made a comical situation out of it, or maybe I could have given him a shot to gain a reward for overcoming his fears with some very obvious potential plot-line prodding.  Otherwise, I'm stumped as to how I can help this guy contribute to the group, beyond simply trying to escape into this character he's created.  Does this make sense, or am I being silly?  Also, if he is going to continue to create this character quirks and not tell me, how can I hope to devise (or modify) role playing encounters that are engaging for his character? 

To be fair, my DMing play style (with this published adventure) has also incorporated some pretty unmutable elements.  I tend to throw situations and encounters at the players with little modification unless absolutely required.  When the ghost wanted to size up the most fearsome member of the adventuring party and found him to be humble, I decided to stick with my guns and have the ghost be disappointed.  I could have allowed the player to make some different kind of check, and played the ghost impressed and made up some line about the quiet, calm reserve of a pure and steady heart.  But I didn't.  I had planned for this encounter to require an Intimidation skill check and I used that.  (In previous sessions I had been more direct about what skill checks would be required to succeed at something, but the player's seemed to not like it.  I get the sense that being too open harms some of what they would call (yikes) immersion.  It's like it's better somehow when I don't directly explain that the ghostly Lord wants to see an intimidating and fearsome hero among them.)

Thanks,

-- John M.

(BTB, these portions of play account for about 25%-33% of our game.  The rest is minatures based combat and puzzle solving which everyone seems to work together very enjoyably on.)

To me, it sounds like it was just a poorly written scenario.

Well the way I see it is. If the GM sets me, the player, a problem and also tell me how I should solve it, I start think why does the GM even need me. He can just roll the dice for me and I can go and watch Futurama reruns this way we both win!

The fun for a player like me is not just rolling d20s on demand, a robot can do that. What is fun for me as player is to be able to express myself creatively and do things I find interesting and feel true to my character and the current situation.

In the specifc case you present, I happen to think that humble is a perfectly natural and genre appropriate reaction to seeing the ghost of a lord. In thefantaasy mindset, you are meant to respect the dead and you are meant to respect nobility. Unless there was some other clue earlier in the scenario on how to approach this encounter, it should be up to the players to decide how to solve it.

As a GM I would have thought your best bet is to ignore what scenario says and go with the moment. Respond to what the players are actually doing now and not to what was written and months and months ago by some guy. The scenario writer isn't there with you, he doesn't know your players.

Hello,

I suggest that the key lies in this sentence of yours:

I figured it would come across as a well-suited encounter if the ghost sought some kind of approval of that character's gritty resilience.  Game terms, this meant the player rolled an intimidate check as their character was confronted with a verbal challenge from the ghost and acted out or said some words that could be seen as suitably tough and intimidating.  If it sounded good to me, I'd grant a bonus to the roll.

... with enough convincing can be led to see that maybe those seeking entry are here to preserve and protect the sanctity of the place.

Hi, John!

I just wanted to add my experience to the pool in support of what Ron's saying. I went through a looooong struggle in my gaming life of feeling like if the other players would just play their characters right, our games could be so awesome. It's a recipe for bitterness and dissatisfaction.

My own bout of "why won't the player respond correctly?!" is documented in the thread, [Over the Edge] Killing the Dilemma, where I got miffed that a player didn't have exactly the same aesthetic judgment as me of the characters and situation I presented him with. My stance was especially poisonous because I was steeped in all kinds of new-fangled principles and techniques gleaned from around here, and thus feeling like I had "fixed" my bad habits and doing awesome gaming, and my dumb ol' dyed-in-the-wool gamer buddies were dragging their feet and ruining all my "scene framing" and "bangs" (by the way, what I used in this incident was a damn lousy Bang).

So this is not to dogpile you but to say, alongside Ron, "I was that guy." And maybe give you a picture of why being "that guy" wasn't too fun for me or those I played with. Note that this does NOT mean you can't have a personal aesthetic judgment of other players' input. See my current Cascadiapunk thread for a case where I played in a game where our aesthetic (and procedural) standards were not in accord, and we (wisely, I think) called it off. This is just to say that roleplaying with real shared input means definitionally opening yourself to the real risk that someone's input will be unsatisfying to someone.

I think it's worth the risk.

peace,
-Joel

Hold on all. It's perfectly all right to frame a scene and then declare the required roll. Framing a scene doesn't automatically mean that system grants players a choice.

John, how did you describe entering the tomb? I'm wondering if you described it rather like a cut scene in a video game, where their all going in very cautiously, but as players, they just watch this. But then at the end one player declares they actually stay at the door and - here's the problem - trying to be a fluid GM, you go with that.

I'm thinking you had imagined the whole thing in advance, like a cut scene following directly into a skill roll. But then you accidentally gave the player a choice - a real choice. And things fell apart from there.

Did you want to give the player a choice, or did you give them one by accident?

If the set up was that they get a choice, then pay attention to what Ron and everyone else posted. If you gave a choice by accident, then it's as simple as that - it was accidentally given. Dang! In that case I'd ignore the other posts (sorry guys) because they appear to hinge on the idea the player must get a choice at this point, regardless of what the actual system is.

And on to your actual question: How to please this player?

Well, I think the question is, rather than you pleasing him, can what comes naturally to him without any real effort, please you? For example, say the situation was that some well liked NPC had been bitten by a monster and would suffer great scaring on the leg and a gimpy leg unless this players PC goes into a nearby crypt right now and gets some grave moss to tend the wound. Does he go?* I'd enjoy it if he went in. I'd enjoy it if he stayed out. Both are really interesting results to me. I'm guessing they would be interesting and pleasing to the player too. Would either result be interesting to you, or only the one that 'gets on with the story'? If it's the latter, you don't appear to match. Either you'd be forcing him to play your way, or you'd be forcing yourself to play his way. That's my rough, overall estimate. Take it with a grain of salt.

I am glad I waited to read Callan's post before replying, which says what I was thinking a little better.  Yes, the players had a choice (although insignificant, I would say) of whether to enter the Tomb, but it was purely binary.  Enter Tomb?==Yes means optional scripted encounter with a possible reward at the end.  Enter Tomb?==No means no optional encounter.  So I think the answer you are looking for is "no".  The real question to me now is, do I really want this kind of play.  And I'm frustrated that a D&D product has put me in the position of having to ask myself this question after we have alread started playing.  However, I consider the railroad discussion the tertiary discussion (but will take the next step anyway) and I will focus on responding to what I was really trying to get at in my OP.

CLARIFICATION

gsoylent wrote:
To me, it sounds like it was just a poorly written scenario.

Ron wrote:
Fact: if you wanted the ghost befriend the characters and give them information, then have it befriend them and give them information as long as they aren't so stupid as to attack it outright. Don't make it contingent upon what a player will ("is supposed to" or "should obviously") do, and don't put in risks, like a possible fight with the ghost, that you as GM aren't willing to take.

Ron wrote:
Here's another point: in-fiction justifications or debate about any of this are not valid. What the ghost would or must do. (a) What the character would or should do. The player's talk about "his character" is one symptom of this common error. We're really talking about the people, you, him, and the others. (b) The question is whether you are able to fulfill the role of GM (DM in this case) without expectations of how the characters must react in order for play to proceed.

Ron wrote:
You basically played the scenario in your head before play, and decided that it would be successful only if specific things happened. And by specific things, you meant that a given player would have his character behave and say particular things. Furthermore, although in the fiction the characters are being presented with a choice and some possible danger, in reality you had no intention whatsoever of this encounter going in any direction except for this particular way.

Ron wrote:
And you even decided beforehand which character would respond in a particular way.

That's called railroading. I recognize it because I did it for years and years.

Ron wrote:
[...] I also must call out the vast majority of published adventures, particularly those which followed upon the publication of D&D3.0, as being the most unplayable railroading trash in role-playing history. By unplayable I do not mean cliched or not to my taste. I mean literally unplayable. No one wants their characters to be played by a GM. No one wants to have to play "guess what I'm thinking" in order for their characters to survive or merely to get to an important point.

Ultimately, I think even the Skill Challenge rules as presented in the 4E material are woefully inadequate for satisfying play

Hey John, I think there has been a lot of bad experience with a lot of vain GMs who blame their players for not playing “right” on this forum, so the default reaction is “the GM is wrong”. Also, your first example sounded like the player was actually making perfect sense given the fictional context, which is why people drew that conclusion.

None of us was there so we can’t tell, but I’ll say this: I once knew a player who had this notion of “good roleplaying”. He would say things like, “you have to separate player knowledge and character knowledge”, or, “I’m just playing my character”. He would maintain this even if it was painfully obvious that everybody at the table was annoyed. “I’m just playing my character” was the excuse he was hinding behind to not take responsibility for annoying everybody. “La la la, I’m not listening to you.” Of course, he had made that character in the first place an he had decided what this character was like.

What added to the problem was that player’s poor judgement. He did not have a good grasp on the established in-game situation. He frequently misinterpreted situations and consequences, where everybody else were slapping their foreheads. He misjudged simple physical conditions, he misjudged people’s reactions to his character, and he misjudged meta game stuff like what was a hint and what wasn’t, what was a consequential choice and what wasn’t. He had these stupid one-dimensional notions of “what the game world was like”, and, without reflection, he applied them in the most non-sensical ways as I wouldn’t have believed had I not seen it.

Needless to say, I am not playing with that player any more. But it was an impressive lesson in how much can go wrong, and how poor a single person’s judgement can be. I don’t know what the case is with your player, probably the truth is somewhere in between.

- Frank

I think the nub is this:

"Of course the first player stuck to his guns that it was 'realistic' for his character to be believing this and that everyone else should be able to see why this was 'plausible' and accept it for that reason".

Heres the thing: Was he just insisting on his characters right to be a dolt, or was he insistent that everyone else accepted his characters doltish plan?

Hey John,

Apologize? No way, don't do that. This is a really good topic. I see now exactly how your example brought in different issues from your intended topic.

To stay with that other issue, briefly, I'm thinking ... well, first, we developed a term here a while ago called Force, meaning when anyone reaches over the table, verbally and mentally speaking, to play someone else's character. Railroading is a term for Force being employed by tacit expectation, by deception, or by bullying - basically without full permission.

You're absolutely right that Force in and of itself is not a bad thing, particularly when everyone buys into it and "the story" is acknowledged to be one person's job. We ended up calling this application of Force Participationist play, as opposed to Illusionist in which the GM tries to hide the Force he or she is relying on. There are a number of threads here about how to make Participationist play successful; Illusionist play is more generally perceived to be unsuccessful in the long run.

Anyway, that said, it's up to you whether to pursue the railroading issue here, which is perfectly OK by the rules of the site, and I can provide some serious linkage to useful discussions. Also, I want to stress that I'm not calling you on being a Damned Railroader or anything else accusatory. My take is that you got temporarily bait-and-switched by the publication, and are thoughtful enough to want to figure out how it happened and how not to find yourself there again. I call that responsible.

Let's focus on the guy in your group, then. As I wrote above, one issue is that dissatisfaction with play is only being addressed in terms of "my character," meaning that this fictional construct who is entirely under the control of a real person is supposed to be referenced as if he, the character were real. There is some integrity to this notion, in that the player's art (or contribution, or shared-imagining) should be given respect by everyone else ... but unfortunately, the notion can become distorted into what Forge-speak calls My Guy Syndrome.

My Guy Syndrome is pretty recognizable - it doesn't matter what the fundamental disconnect is between one player and everyone else, but whatever it may be, it's practically constant during play such that the fun-level is bottoming out. Typically the character either attacks ferociously and randomly ("The merchant smiles and says ..." [interrupting] "I kill him!!") or refuses to do anything ("I say nothing." "OK, what do you do?" "Nothing."). The person always justifies himself by saying "My guy would do it that way." What's happening here is that the fiction is being blamed for being lousy fiction (and here I don't mean "story" but rather the basic imagined medium of play), which is circular logic. If the other members of the group get sucked into that pit of false logic, then they'll wrangle endlessly about what the character "would or would not" do - a hopeless task, because the character does not exist.

... he seems to come from the position that he is the only person who can understand his character and that's what makes him right.  It's not because the rules give him the authority to be in control over his character, it's because he knows who this imaginary character is and what it is thinking.  Like I said in my original post, this might seem like a silly thing for me to think, but this is the impression I get about this one recurring situation in our group.

Hi again, John,

Something else to keep in mind is that you yourself and the rest of the group seem to have a strong focus on 'the group stays together'. Not that that doesn't make sense in RL practical terms - I think it's a pain in the arse in D&D for the party to be split up and it's hardly supported by system. But your really strong focus on this means when one character decides to decline the optional skill challenge, because the rest of the group goes in and because 'the party stays together', he's in there and having to do this ghost roll. Or because 'the party stays together', when he thinks lesser mages need to be stopped from raising a dead dragon, you don't leave him behind, you kind of argue him into coming with you since 'the party must stay together'. Indeed you even think he's acting as if he's right about what the whole party should be doing. That you think as a player he's talking about what the whole party must do kind of shows how much you focus on the party always staying together.

That's something to consider - whether your focusing on, and thus enforcing 'the group stays together' regardless of what choice you gave the player (like the choice to stay out of the crypt).

Just quickly I'd like to add a note to Ron's advice that I think applies (maybe it doesn't)

When the group experiences dissonance of this kind, I think it's pretty much given that someone must say, "Look, I'm not talking about your character, I'm talking to you and about what you do."

This post really brings up a lot of memories and feelings about similar experiences with D&D.

Let me make a few points and you can tell me if they apply or might apply to the situation your talking about:

1) It seems that there's a chance here that this "problem" player is doing his best. His definition of "good role playing" has a lot to do with the notion of sticking to his guns about how he interprets his character and he doesn't really grokk approaching play differently. It may just take some good discussion and experimentation with other ways of thinking about player authority and what "good role playing" is for this group of players playing this game. I have a number of intelligent, creative friends, who got an idea of what "good gaming" was from early experiences and haven't thought about it since, and this lead to seriously shitty play between me and them. So maybe there's a fundamental disconnect where this guy just can't hear whats being said to him because of how he conceptualizes the whole thing.

2) There also seems to be a problem with the question of authority over in game content. D&D has quantified mechanics that detail a character's intelligence, wisdom and level of knowledge. Was this system ever used to address whether or not the character would mechanically have an understanding that dragons could be raised from the dead, or who would be capable of doing it. Is the problem that the player's interpretation of the shared fictional world is different than the rest of the groups, and that there's no "series bible" that can address this.

I'd also like to know more about how you run your games. Ron and others are taking the stance that you use too much Force, but I wonder if perhaps its the opposite. How involved were you in the conversation/arguments/discussions between the players over issues like the dragon skeleton? Could it have been resolved by someone in the group (presumably you, the DM) had stated firmly how common the knowledge of necromancy was in the fantasy setting (as these things are left very ambiguous, despite the above mentioned rules) by the game text.

Finally, the way skill challenges are addressed in the text of the DMG (and presumably Keep on the Shadowfell) are, according the designers, poorly written. If your going to continue playing D&D 4, I'd suggest reading some of the designers blogs or checking out some of the early pod-casts about how the skill challenge system was intended to operate. For instance, if the character wasn't being Intimidating, he should have been allowed to suggest a different skill (Diplomacy, for instance) to achieve his goals. The samples in the DMG do a terrible job of explaining how fluid the system was/is intended to be.

Hope this is on topic and helps further the conversation,

Force is useful when players cannot handle all the creative stuff they might be required to do; when it doesn't come easily to them, or they don't think they can or don't want to do it. In my experience everyone who has had this attitude has actually found that when they came to do it, it was awesome, and so gained a greater appreciation of their own ability, but my sample size is small!

Secondly, I think the problem is actually confusing levels of interaction: Say the players want this player around, but they find his character annoying. If a player really wants to split character from player, then he must be willing for that character to be left behind or forced to comply in ways that wouldn't work at the player level. Basically if the player wants to play an ignorant character who is highly sure of his opinions, then the players characters may leave him behind. We have party cohesion vs player cohesion and it seems like

So what happens if he does get left behind? Does the DM follow his path? Or does he say "This is the path of the adventure, your character has stepped out of it, so he's out of my hands." The limits on the Shared Imaginary Space are quite important to work out; I once walked my PC out of a building and my stressed GM said "You find nothing!" which I thought slightly awesome!

Is this a betrayal of his character? Not really, as you agreed to sit down and play that adventure, and he wanted a character who was not fully limited by it's parameters. No problem, it just means that sometimes stuff he does is outside the adventure. You could even have him on his crazy quest as a separate campaign later on, with new PCs from other players more suited to this.
So what does the player do in the meantime? Well the characters may need another party member, so he could be one of the people they interview etc. Then the player will see that collaboration requires flexibility or pre-arranged harmony, and if his character has neither then he will simply end up leaving the collaborative space. This has happened a number of times with us, but occasionally has lead to an ad-hoc piece of troupe play as someone else has taken up GMing for the new set of stuff, although because it was ad-hoc with substantial compatibility issues that stopped us re-integrating them.

Also on skill challenges, I love them, although I might be biased because they match up to my own system for doing challenges I semi-lifted from Shadowrun. Here's what it seems like your missing: The given skill uses only show the standard way to complete the challenge, if I am not mistaken you should pick skills to roll not by what the spirit wants, but by what fits what they player wants to do, then set the DC by what the spirit wants. So if it is less likely push the DC up. And do not assume only one player must be the one to intimidate; what stops another character stepping up to the plate and intimidating? There's usually a chance, even without the +8 or so for being specialised at it.
Secondly the DMG suggests that whenever you run an encounter, you hide clues as to how easiest to complete it, such as pointing out the cracked structure of a golem or the pungent smell coming off a river. This in character information leads to players being able to take more meaningful choices.

Finally just because someone's character is good at something doesn't mean they always want to do it. They might end up in a situation where the easiest mechanical way to get what they want is to steal some widows savings, because her low influence means inconveniencing her will not effect their chances too much. Obviously not all characters are going to go for that, even ones with identical thieving skills. This is why I like additions like Rustbelts psycho-dynamic system, where you can just stick on the character sheet "by the way, my character will never rob from innocent destitute people". I think adding fears to such a system could be useful cues as well, so people know "this guy can't stand undead". Do you think that may be why the character also wanted to stop the raising of the dragon? One character with high insight sitting down with him might find out that he has a past history problem with undead, and is acting in an obsessive way to compensate. Now how's that for a thematic bomb to drop on that player? It's not longer "just his character", but his motivations can be explored!

Big wrote: However, I'd still like to ask the question, "Is railroading really always bad; can it not be considered a legitimate technique" because the way the encounters are designed in the published adventure still follow a basic railroad format.

Okay, here's my mental pitch for railroad play: the players get to play the heroic protagonists in a story with the crucial parts predetermined.  They will face challenges and battles that allow them to make creative and tactical decisions regarding use of their heroic abilities.

So I have to ask, are you sure?  "Guess what I'm thinking" is a game.  I fondly remember playing "Eye Spy" as a kid.

Is the use of railroading to establish hard plot and situation boundaries a roleplaying game breaker?  I'm posing this question now in all seriousness because I will be at a crossroads soon where the published adventure ends and I must make a decision to radically change our play-style or stick with it.  The players so far have seemed to enjoy themselves.  I will definitely be bringing up the issue of the published adventure and railroading in general to their attention for feedback.  Although I hesitate to use the word "railroad" because that could elicit negative responses even if there is disparity between us over the meaning.

I hear that in published D&D adventures or adventure series it is quite common to alternate between, broadly speaking, dungeoncrawl and railroaded plot. I.e. railroading is used to establish the objective for the dungeon and bring the characters to the dungeon entrance, and then they are “turned lose” on the dungeon until they either achieve the objective or give up. I understand many players accept this as a valid way of bringing context and meaning to a dungeoncrawl. The railroading parts are comparable to introductory sequences in video games.

It’s probably a good idea to be honest about what you are doing and go through the railroaded sequences rather quickly and without much ado or dice-rolling.

- Frank

Railroading

In my high seas Green Isles campaign, I once railroaded my characters inland into a cave system, and then, as one poster said "turned them loose" on a dungeon.  I made train noises after describing their treck inland.  Everyone laughed and let me off the hook, though one player later complained that I had broken the fourth wall.  I totally agree that a bit of railroading is fine with advance warning, because the players generally appreciate the work you've put into providing a good play experience, and the limits of your abilities.

Problem Players

Whether or not they justify it as "in character", I have a method for dealing with problem players.  I force them.  This sounds mean, but let me give a few examples.

a.  One player in my group was rather dominant, and tended to lead the group regardless of what anyone else thought.  He also tended to play his character in a rather haughty and independent manner, knowing full well that for the sake of the game no one would call his bluff.  Now, I'm exagerating somewhat.  His behaviour wasn't causing any real problems.  A few people noticed, but were, at most, only mildly irked.  He wasn't causing anyone not to have a good time.  However, I thought it would be more fun if group leadership were more balanced, and if this character had to integrate into the party.  So I created a challenge for his character that he could not hope to overcome alone.  (I think he was a kobold, which was a minority race, and I used racism or something).  In other words, in order to accomplish his goals as player and as character, he needed to make allies.  When doing this, don't make the consequences too dire, or you might irritate someone.  Just make it clear that it would be in a player's interest to play nice.

b.  Often players create characters with very stringent moral codes, or, as you suggest, very black-and-white character traits.  The trick is to think through these traits and discover a few contradictions or nuances.  If a character fears the undead, have the party get surrounded or cut off by them.  The character either faces his/her fears or dies, simple as that.  Note I do not reccomend this as a real-life means of therapy...