Thanks for the kind words! I don't think I had absolutely *everything* wrong. I had at least learned a few things from a few previous mistakes, and some advice I'd been given. By the time you showed up on Sinai, I think a lot of the worst of what I regret had already happened.
It's really peculiar, I suppose, for me to hold up something like "talk to your players" as some really big bit of advice ... but once upon a time, it just wasn't something I thought about. Somehow, I had this notion that the GM conjures up an Adventure, and it has Puzzles and Mysteries to be Solved, and there is a Right Way of doing things, and a Wrong Way of doing things, and ... well, I think I pretty much thought of the GM's job as being a somewhat more interactive moderator of a slightly higher-order version of a Zork-like computer adventure game. I mean, I don't think I would have DESCRIBED it as such, but I was heavily influenced by such games as a standard against which to measure what an adventure "ought" to be.
And in any case, the GM does his job, and it shouldn't be that the GM is going to tweak or change anything in response to whether the players are enjoying it or not. Or something.
On the one hand, I guess I had this notion that things must happen as they happen, and if the GM tweaks it because the player is having a hard time or whatnot, then it's going to feel like a "cheat." I mean, I suppose that there *is* a way to do that badly.
For instance, way back early in college (my freshman year, I'm pretty sure), I was in a Hero System campaign (Champions superheroes), and my character had a couple of followers (I'm pretty sure I was abusing the Follower rules), and a situation arose in which one of my Followers got killed, and I was helpless to stop it. And even though it was /just a game/, I felt "emotionally wrecked" by it, and my lip was getting quivery, and -- good grief -- I felt like I was going to *cry* over it. It was not a shining moment for me. Well, the GM obviously felt bad for me, or awkward or whatever, and immediately backtracked and -- oh, she's not really *dead*. Just really badly hurt ... hospitalized, but you got there in time, okay? And a few other concessions.
And the thing is ... I felt *worse*. For the GM to make such an obvious retreat from the original position felt like I had *cheated* by making sad puppy dog eyes. I wasn't happy with the outcome, but for it to be amended for the sake of my feelings felt wrong somehow.
I really don't know what I think I should have done, were I in the GM's position. I don't want to break whatever "willful suspension of disbelief" the players have that somehow this game "reality" has any substance to it -- that there are mysteries to solve (and the GM isn't going to just arbitrarily change "whodunnit" to string you along), and that good or bad things might come about because of player decisions, not just because of the whim of the GM. But I *am* going to have to make some course-corrections and decisions on the way, because (especially in "sandbox" campaigns), the PCs are going to do unexpected things, go unexpected ways, and I'm going to have to generate new encounters, new characters, etc. I might as well have player interests in mind when I work on that.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2020-03-22 06:01 am (UTC)It's really peculiar, I suppose, for me to hold up something like "talk to your players" as some really big bit of advice ... but once upon a time, it just wasn't something I thought about. Somehow, I had this notion that the GM conjures up an Adventure, and it has Puzzles and Mysteries to be Solved, and there is a Right Way of doing things, and a Wrong Way of doing things, and ... well, I think I pretty much thought of the GM's job as being a somewhat more interactive moderator of a slightly higher-order version of a Zork-like computer adventure game. I mean, I don't think I would have DESCRIBED it as such, but I was heavily influenced by such games as a standard against which to measure what an adventure "ought" to be.
And in any case, the GM does his job, and it shouldn't be that the GM is going to tweak or change anything in response to whether the players are enjoying it or not. Or something.
On the one hand, I guess I had this notion that things must happen as they happen, and if the GM tweaks it because the player is having a hard time or whatnot, then it's going to feel like a "cheat." I mean, I suppose that there *is* a way to do that badly.
For instance, way back early in college (my freshman year, I'm pretty sure), I was in a Hero System campaign (Champions superheroes), and my character had a couple of followers (I'm pretty sure I was abusing the Follower rules), and a situation arose in which one of my Followers got killed, and I was helpless to stop it. And even though it was /just a game/, I felt "emotionally wrecked" by it, and my lip was getting quivery, and -- good grief -- I felt like I was going to *cry* over it. It was not a shining moment for me. Well, the GM obviously felt bad for me, or awkward or whatever, and immediately backtracked and -- oh, she's not really *dead*. Just really badly hurt ... hospitalized, but you got there in time, okay? And a few other concessions.
And the thing is ... I felt *worse*. For the GM to make such an obvious retreat from the original position felt like I had *cheated* by making sad puppy dog eyes. I wasn't happy with the outcome, but for it to be amended for the sake of my feelings felt wrong somehow.
I really don't know what I think I should have done, were I in the GM's position. I don't want to break whatever "willful suspension of disbelief" the players have that somehow this game "reality" has any substance to it -- that there are mysteries to solve (and the GM isn't going to just arbitrarily change "whodunnit" to string you along), and that good or bad things might come about because of player decisions, not just because of the whim of the GM. But I *am* going to have to make some course-corrections and decisions on the way, because (especially in "sandbox" campaigns), the PCs are going to do unexpected things, go unexpected ways, and I'm going to have to generate new encounters, new characters, etc. I might as well have player interests in mind when I work on that.