A particularly flattering choice of clip there... I don't think.
Mornin'.
The prompt this week comes from James S of Warp Signal, and it's about dealing with expectations, and avoiding situations like this one...
You're walking into your local game shop, sitting down with three strangers and a newbie, and running a WFRP game that's a bit like 'Allo 'Allo, only to discover two sessions in that one of your players hates convoluted mystery plots, one doesn't hate them but really struggles to stay on top of what's going on, the newbie has no idea what to do with this randomly generated character that she doesn't know from Eve, and the one player who might be the right fit for the game is trolling like a good 'un 'cause he can tell it's not going to work out.
What you have there is a problem of expectations. In the first instalment I touched on people's expectations about What Roleplaying Is, and how clashes of expectations are the number one source of nerd drama.
When different people want different things out of an RPG, tension ensues, ESPECIALLY when people haven't been explicit about what they want and are just sitting there fuming in silence. It's not so much about 'things going their way', more about things not going in a general way which interests them more than the way they are going... look, let me put it to you this way.
Zak S, he of I Hit It With My Axe and Playing D&D With Porn Stars fame, came up with this alignment system which, far from concerning itself with weighty matters of ethics and prescribing a character's moral compass, is more interested with describing the player's attitude and how that influences a character's behaviour, because it tends to be more influential.
Pause this video now, go to Zak's blog entry, and have a read of the alignment definitions. You'll need them for the next bit to make sense. I'll wait.
Done?
Right. Case study. If you follow GAME OVER and have read my actual play reports you'll probably recognise the group in question.
Let me tell you about Squirrel. Squirrel is ADD Bloodthirsty Greedy. And that's much cooler than it sounds. He cut his teeth on AD&D and he's never happier than when he's outnumbered three to one, with naught but his wits and a weapon three times his character's size to defend himself with. This is how he rolls, how he's always rolled, and how he will continue to roll until the heavens fall in.
However, he's the only player of his ilk in our regular group. The rest of the group are, in no particular order:
- Fancy ADD Sneaky
- Laid Back Fancy Curious
- Sneaky Fancy Greedy
- Fancy Righteous Curious
- Curious ADD Greedy
- Laid Back Sneaky Laid Back (yes I did say Laid Back twice, if Simon were any more Laid Back he'd be a rug with a character sheet.)
So you see, you've got four Fancy people and four Curious people who are all wanting to do things that Squirrel is not particularly interested in, plus three Sneaky people who are plotting and planning in a way that is of little interest to a man who just wants to hit things with his axe. Now, Squirrel's the sort of good-hearted bloke who doesn't want to tell anyone to stop having fun, bless him, and so he'll sit there and wait for an opportunity for legitimate violence... but because of the way he plays, he sees opportunities for violence quite often, and tends to leap right at them. Because that's how the game works for him.
And this is usually fun, unless it happens at a point in which players with Fancy or Sneaky tendencies have gotten really involved in elaborate, sustained Fancy or Sneaky play and suddenly it's all gone to cock because at the worst possible moment someone has whipped their weaponry out. The play they're invested in is broken. This is the nature of roleplaying with other people, I know, but nobody likes having their immersion broken, their plans spoiled and their playstyle disrupted. It takes maturity to deal with that and assimilate the unexpected event - maturity that not everyone possesses.
Our group are big and ugly enough to take that kind of thing, but the manner in which they take it can cause further issue. The Fancy people tend to assimilate Squirrel's in a Fancy manner, 'cause that's how they are. Because that's not how he is, he doesn't always twig that it's their character who's pissed at his character, not them-the-player who's pissed at him. Drama ensues.
Now, nobody's in the wrong here, it's just a clash of styles, and to be honest the best way of dealing with it is to avoid it happening in the first place.
It helps when players know what they want out of a game and are able to be up-front about it. Everyone prefers something and everyone is disinterested in something, and people who tell you they aren't are either lying to themselves, lying to you, or just haven't thought about it.
Which, by the way, really weirds me out. I get that I'm a natural navel-gazer and tend to explicitly reflect on things and that not everyone has staked out their preferences to the Nth degree like I have. I get that new players aren't going to have a vast basis for comparison and it's more luck than judgement in running for them. But experienced players who claim to have no preferences, or no idea what their preferences are, chill me to the bone. I don't understand how you can have played for years and not had some games you liked and some you didn't like and no idea why you did or didn't like them.
Anyway, players who know what kind of games they like and how they like to play them can look at a group and go "yeah I like you but you like to kill things and I like to faff around talking to other party members and we're going to get on each other's tits unless we're careful." I'm not saying 'flat out refuse to play with people whose styles don't match your own'. That would be boring. What I'm saying is that you need to know what you want and what other people want in order to find a point of compromise, and you need to be big enough to explicitly find that point. Chewing your d20 with boredom but keeping your game face on until you snap isn't strictly helpful.
GMs, meanwhile, have to be very good at picking up signals. Some players will make it very obvious that they're bored, by being aggressively disruptive, and while it's annoying and immature I can't entirely blame them for doing it because nobody wants to be bored while they're playing a game. Some players, like Squirrel, will put their game face on for the sake of their mates, and will bottle up their boredom until it erupts. The GM needs to notice when people are bored, and needs to know their players well enough to know what to do to unbore them.
This means that a good GM is either very flexible and able to change the tempo of a session at speed, or very clear about What Kind Of Game They Want To Run and Who It Is Suitable For so that they shouldn't have to. The former... well, it'd take longer than nine minutes to cover how to do that and to be honest I'm still not sure how I do it or if I'm any good.
The latter can mean headhunting players to suit the game you want to run, which I have done and still tend to do for games that tend to reward particular styles over others. It can also mean picking a game to suit the players you have available, which is one advantage to either something huge and generic that can offer something to everyone, or playing a great many specific games and being able to pluck out the right one for the moment.
To deal with expectations, you have to know yours, you have to know the group's, and above all you have to be unafraid to say, or be told, that "this game is not for you."
Squirrel can do this. That's why he's NOT a Problem Player. You can tell him "this game is not going to involve much combat and there'll be a lot of working things out and character development" and he'll say "okay, that's not my thing, but can we do some more Fighting Fantasy next week, I really enjoyed that" and if you've any sense you'll say "okay mate" 'cause he's a good bloke and you want him around more often.
Some people can't. Some players don't know what they want and some GMs don't know how to ask them or what to do with the intelligence when they've done the asking. I don't know if there's a solution to that - horses to water and involuntary beverage choices, y'know?
All I know is that prevention is miles better than cure. Know yourself, and get to know yourself by thinking and talking about the games and sessions you've liked and haven't liked. Discuss your expectations regularly, openly and honestly with everyone who's involved in your gaming group. And for goodness' sake don't expect the GM to sort it out. The players' expectations are bigger than the game, and if there's a problem there, it's everybody's job to sort it out.
If you want some ideas for doing that, you could do worse than check out the Gaming Curriculum series on GAME OVER. Otherwise, I'll see you next time for some thoughts on MUMMORPEGGERS, kicked-off by Frontline Gamer. Toodle-pip.
ADDITIONAL!
Hark (the saint among women who tolerates my continued presence) overheard me recording this one and pointed out that there are occasions upon which it's appropriate to talk about one's eighteenth level paladin, so... yes, I suppose we need to clarify the issue somewhat.
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