This past couple weeks in one game we've had some less than stellar gameplay/teamwork. I wrote a letter to the players and they found it very helpful(at least they said they did) and thought it would be helpful for others as a blog post. Hopefully as players you can get some good ideas from it, and as STs you can get some ideas about talking to players or diffusing situations. Once in a while its just necessary, as the ST to step in and set everyone back on the right path, as players. The following is just a copy of the email in full:
Everything Im saying applies to people in varying degrees and isnt a reflection of just last game or this story.
PC social contract:
The idea that we're all playing together. And unless something major happens, our PCs will stick together at least til the end of the story.
This helps inform our decisions and lead the characters to generally getting along a little better together.
But its important that its not abused. This can quickly lead to resentment or nonsense.
For example:
If you murder some people in front of others you just met, you should have an expectation that they will want to turn you into the police, or at least never want to be near you because of fear/anger/guilt etc. Very few social situations allow/expect random murder.
If however, it is part of your pcs story(or you decide) that he is ok murdering in front of others, you shouldnt assume that they wont turn you in/kill you back/beat you. When you do, you abuse the pc social contract. You force the other characters to act in a way that they normally wouldnt, not for any reason besides the pc social contract.
Another example is being a wierdo/asshole/or useless. We all want to make interesting characters, and often they have cool/strange quirks. But as players, we shouldnt go into the situation thinking "they're gonna be forced to deal with me cause they have to."
Sometimes fate forces PCs to be together and that makes that "ok" but many other times you're together for different reasons, and in those situations you need to remember that its "on you" to ingratiate yourself to the others or show that your a necessary commodity.
If we're useless/asshole/more harm then good, we should expect the other pcs to tell us to fuck off and not want to be near us.
In the same vein, yes we are heros...but it wasnt too long ago we were humans...we're still mostly humans. If we see someone commit murder(unless we're dead to that for some reason) we should have reactions.
This got super long quickly so hopefully you get my drift. You are godborn people...but you're still people. When you stop acting like people, especially this early, you can easily become 2-dimensional. Again, no one is fully guilty of this, just always good to have a reminder.
Game specific things I heard last week that I wanted to address(but again its no ones fault. We were all voicing our experiences and everyone has different points of view).
You should try to rephrase statements of "blame" towards yourself when trying to succeed. Generally, blaming others isnt helpful in getting you to succeed next time.
"The intelligent person didnt give me enough information"
should be
"even though the intelligence person is annoying/difficult, their advice/ideas must be important, otherwise I wouldnt be worried about it. I should try harder to get that information because at the end of the day, its my ass on the line"
"you got me killed by exploding a thing near me"
should be
"I should stay away from things that might explode if I cant live through it"
Unless like they picked up a grenade and threw it near you...thats on them
"You need to buy more stamina"
should be
"if you arent gonna buy more stamina, please stay away from combat. I want to help you but cant use my legendary deeds on healing you"
"I did this because X was acting strange/not telling me stuff"
should be
"How can my character talk/interact with your character better? Is there a way for us to figure that out IC?
These are able to be rephrased just cause they're players talking and itll make a better environment. Characters can do/say whatever they like, but just remember there are consequences in character.
And thats everything for now. Feel free to reply all and talk about anything that you thought about(or we can talk at start of game). But neither talking nor apologizing is necessary. This is a learning experience for everyone(including me) and I think internet game just adds an extra challenge that forces us to work harder compared to a normal game.
End of email.
STs, have you found diffusing situations like this helpful in the past?
Players, have you had good/bad experiences with something like this?
Yes, I've done this before, when parties have gotten out of hand. Results have ranged from "Fuck you, I didn't do anything wrong, I quit", to "Holy crap, I didn't even realize I was doing that! Thanks for the heads up". I think a party-wide problem needs a party-wide solution, and save the face-to-face discussions for the little stuff.
ReplyDeleteI havnt had the fuck you I didnt do anything wrong yet. But I have had a lot of "no it was this persons fault, or this persons fault". Luckily none of that this time though.
DeleteExtremely helpful.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I wish my ST had as much interest in getting a situation defused/talked about. I both don't like confrontation and find it extremely hard to function when there's tension on the table. We're all long time friends in the particular group I've experienced this and have extremely limited play time, so I don't find it too hard to brush past it for the sake of playing as much as possible, but it's not a desirable experience.
As a ST, I try to defuse these things before they even happen, for the reasons stated above. I haven't yet been in a situation where the conflict's too big to be worked out, so I guess it's been working pretty well for me so far.
Thats good. Hopefully its never too big to be worked out.
DeleteThis is a major help to me, and I will certainly be showing this to my gaming group, especially because I recently encountered a similar situation to your first example: We had been clearing out the Big Bad's complex and discovered several prisoners, one of which was a crying child. One of our group went up to the child and said "If you don't stop crying, I'm going to cut your throat" (it should be noted that this player had a history of making Stupid Evil characters, though this character had previously seemed to buck that trend). When my character brought this up to the rest of the group (who had been present in character), the only real response was "we're PCs, we can do what we want" and that was the end of it as far as they were concerned.
ReplyDeleteO jesus....I hate we're pcs we can do what we want, sooo much. I mean its a true statement. But there are consequences. Its like....hubris personified.
DeleteI think the worst part of that whole thing was that, for the offending character, there were no real negative consequences, as during the next session she betrayed us all to the Big Bad and got away before I could feed her her teeth. But yeah, I think the main problem with that whole campaign was the ST really didn't want to railroad us (which is usually good) so he mostly let us do whatever we wanted and rarely had us suffer any real consequences because of our actions
DeleteYeah, althougho I like a nice story line. I am against railroading(generally, sometimes its good). But the other, very important part of that, is consequences need actions. Otherwise its just ....bad....
DeleteIn that situation, i would have had the other pc rolling many manip + empathy vs the party to keep his intentions secret, and probably someone would have found out unless he was an awesome manipulation machine. And then....maybe he played that right
So as a player speaking to other players, this type of email is something I really need, so if your ST ever approaches you like this don't try and deflect or get upset. Consider it like this, in a RP game we are all actors playing characters, the ST is your director, and good direction helps us do better if we are not playing our roles as well as we could.
ReplyDeleteWe all have shitty days, and constructive criticism like this is the best thing to self analyze and get better!
Thanks again John!
Yeah, unfortunately one of our gaming groups had to be cancelled because none of the players could get along. The storyteller even sat everyone down and told everyone basically the same things you recommend in this e-mail. That everyone needs to be pro-active about forgiving each other and figuring out what they can do to make the situation better, instead of blaming others.
ReplyDeleteBut the behavior would not stop, even after multiple storyteller interventions, so in the end the entire game was cancelled because we couldn't work together. =/
Phewwww, that sounds brutal. I feel horrible for the STs in those situations....there is only so much you can do, but so much of the stress falls on you.
DeleteI ended up leaving a game because of player-compatibility issues. I joined an established gaming group and my personality just didn't mesh with two of their players. Everything my character did rubbed them the wrong way, and my attempts to understand what I was doing wrong just further angered the players. So I left.
DeleteGenerally, it's been my experience that such issues are player-based, not character-driven. One or more players are either not aware that they're being disruptive, or are being disruptive on purpose, or just don't care that they're being disruptive. Only one of those can be solved with a polite, friendly talking-to... and sometimes not even then.
I mostly game online, which is a very different social dynamic from in-person gaming where your group tends to be people that know each other and are friends outside of the game. That at least gives you a basic background to work from and a reason for everyone to play nicely together. Online, especially in a group integrating new players or a newly forming group, there's much less holding the players together and less of a way to feel people out before adding them to the band, which can easily lead to personality conflict.
Yeah, our online group is at least all players I know, most of which I know in person. But even then I can see the strains and difficulty the online-ness brings to it. General charisma and presence is mitigated greatly by the tiny computer screen and sometimes tech problems.
Delete