By the Book
Like it or not, when you sit down behind a GM screen, you are shouldering the burden of certain expectations. If D&D is the game in question, and if I’m a player, I want to walk away with my fair share of sword fights and magical maguffins. If it’s Vampire: The Masquerade, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get my recommended dose of court politics with a side order of blood drinking. And if you tell me that you’re going to run a fantasy police procedural for me and my band of smokin’ hot hard-drinking female adventurers, I damn sure better get chewed out by a police captain.
For GMs, there’s a balance between expressing your own creative vision and giving the people what they want. Sure, maybe you’re sick and tired of dungeons. But if your players are expecting an old fashioned crawl, maybe you should find a way to make it interesting for you. That’s true even if you’re that aforementioned Vampire ST, and even if you had grand designs for a campaign based on moral quandaries rather than combat. If your players want to play Hunters gunning for the monster of the week, then maybe it’s time to shelve your heart-wrenching “innocent werewolf pup” story arc.
That’s because player expectations aren’t determined by GMs, rules sets, or a game’s setting material. Sure, those things all have an influence, but what your players really want has more to do with them as individuals than the components of a campaign. My advice is to keep your eyes sharp and mind open. Chances are your players will let you know what they want and expect from a game. Even if you sat down in that GM chair to express some kind of creative vision, you’re also there at the service of the players. Learning to live with that is part of the job description.
That brings us to today’s discussion question, and it’s for all you GMs out there. Have you ever shelved your own preferences and predilections in favor of giving the players what they want? Did it feel like you were somehow betraying your campaign, or was it ultimately a good thing for the group? Let’s hear all about your creative conflicts down in the comments!
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C’mon, Watch Captain. If you’re talking about ‘as always’, this happens with enough regularity that you should keep a checklist of the kind of thing that Inquisitor expects to hear. You’re not as scatter-brained as your stoner of a brother, Quest Giver….
Watch Captain gets a bonus whenever his “contracted help” gets five stars on the Merc Meet app. Inquisitor’s little personality quirk has seen him bonus-less for years now. Doesn’t stop the poor guy from trying!
So this happened when I was new to GMing and D&D in general. I wanted to do some test runs, so I made a homebrew one-shot(or short campaign depending on how it goes) to run for my family, who were entirely new to pen and paper games.
First session went okay, they were pretty much following the railroad of my introduction session for the villain. My players were learning the game and I was training my GM muscles. The session ends with the players being tricked by the villain and “defeated”.
The session after that, well… let’s say the railroad was forcibly dismantled. The party woke up unconscious in the forest, near a village where I had a whole mystery set up, ready for investigation. Even with the hints dropped as they entered the village, my brother was having none of that. They were just tricked by the villain last session, so it was priority #1 to go after them for vengeance. Which… I should have predicted, looking back now. He stormed through the village and eventually, the party found their way to the next city, ignoring everything that was happening in the village.
It’s fair to assume at this point that I’m feeling a bit salty about that – all my intrigue and carefully crafted NPCs went to waste! But I keep rolling with it, since my brother seems excited.
The first thing he does in the city is approach a guard and ask him “if they have airships”. Immediately, I knew where that was going, and so do you. So the guard replies “Yes, but they’re exclusively owned and used by the Temple”. Naturally, my brother takes the party and cases the temple.
The session ends with the party rushing up to the temple guards in the middle of the night and getting pummeled and captured. My brother is pretty bummed about this, and it makes sense. I was pretty much going by the book and I hadn’t properly communicated what it means to be level 2 characters in this context.
Anyway, as I know what the players are craving, I come prepared for next session. The temple assigns the party to be part of the mission to find and capture the aforementioned villain. On an airship. It wasn’t what I had in mind for the one-shot, but it was still cool and I was happy to make it.
The game didn’t last long after that, unfortunately – but my brother keeps nagging me about it, so we might continue one day :p
I think it’s tough for new GMs. So many come to the hobby as a creative outlet, only to discover that “creative control” is an illusion when there are other people in the picture. It took me a hot minute to take my ego out of the picture. Happily, having other creative projects was a good way to break me out of that railroad mindset.
Good luck with the family game though! I couldn’t get mine to pay attention long enough to learn how to play “One Night Ultimate Werewolf,” and that’s a freaking party game!
I notice the wanted poster for Necromancy School Wizard in the background. Team bounty hunter and team evil gonna square off?
What’s wrong with being a completely by the books “My name is Friday, I carry a badge” cop? That’s a genre into itself. As is the Serpico style “Last good cop in the city” style.
Nothing at all! Unless of course you’re the only one at the table who wants that. Then you’re into negotiation mode, same as anything.
I was working on a super dungeon, full of menace and malice and danger. IT was really great and I was really proud of it. In fact, I conveyed the sense of danger so well that the party decided it was above their level halfway through the first floor and walked out never to return.
This was probably a good thing, and the mostly improvised campaign that followed was wacky and hilarious.
Well hey, the good thing about megadungeons–especially when they’re loosely themed–is that it’s easy to recycle the bits and pieces of prep work into new encounters. Did you manage to convert any of the old dungeon into new content for the “wacky and hilarious” parts of the campaign?
I ran a short campaign in a crime ridden city where the party were expected to complete and defeat various gangs and mafia organizations to take over the city. Party comp was well built for it; we had our face guy who does the talking, our barbarian muscle for dirty work, an assassin for precision skullduggery, and a cleric for healing/medical/drugs. But our party face was a bard, and that’s what should have tipped me off how silly this was going to get.
I was expecting the bard to be a smooth talking mob boss type. Wasn’t long before our four man band became a band of musicians trying to change the world through music. Wasn’t as if they didn’t do some traditional mod war stuff either, but really threw me for a loop when their big plans revolved less around break-ins and robberies and more about concerts and public relation stuff. Slowly but surely they did end up influencing many of the gangs and going straight after their leaders, using mostly wordplay and concert tickets to clean up the streets rather than magica lobotomies and leg breakings.
I really noticed how crazy things went off when I had to make up a cultist faction who would be mostly immune to the power f music just because the old crime gangs were disbanding or going straight thanks to the media empire the party made. Not a bad gig all together.
I am amazed at how many people want to run the all-bards party. I’m beginning to think that there should be a Jem and the Holograms RPG just to meet the demand!
Some time ago in a Black Crusade campaign our merry party of heretics, mutants and chaos cultist have hijacked a lot of imperial ships, amassed and army of cultists ready to destroy everything for the dark gods. We were launching our initial attack, chaos space marines where ready to join us and burn the empire to ashes. Then my pc a rogue psyker and sorcerer of Tzeentch decided to have something about the Khorne bloodcrazy berzerker pc of the only girl on the group. It was just a joke a minor note of color. Still the other two players star shipping our characters, and reading between lines the two of us, then our GM discover that half the party is ignoring the crusade of the chaos gods in favor of the love story the pull out from like three lines my character said. Mid-earth-assault and they still insisted in knowing what wold happen between our pcs. For our GM one of the worst campaigns, for the two of us one of the most embarrassing, for the other two guys one of the best for the idea of including romance in a Warhammer 40000 game, and one dedicated to chaos. At least when we did a all Dark Eldar game they not insisted in shipping our characters, who by the way, were as happily married as two Dark Eldars can be.
Truly, love can bloom on the battlefield.
The unspoken corollary in today’s comic is of course that players have similar responsibilities. If your ideas of a good time aren’t fitting in with the group, then maybe shelve them until the next chaos offensive.
There wasn’t another chaos offensive. Also it was only two-fives of the players who wanted the love story, we keep it so we can continue playing but they forgot that we were trying to kill emprah, not playing “The love in the grimdark times”.
What if better speak about that wanted cartel for Necromancer? Why she looks like Wuya from Xiaolin Showdown?
Artistic license. Also unfounded prejudice against necromancy. 😛
The steam coming for the cut ears is also a artistic license?
It took me forever to figure out what you were talking about. Sometimes, the parchment effect does silly things.
It’s an effect? So no goblin was unnecessarily harmed in the make of this comic? 🙁
Knowing your audience is an important talent for any entertainer, and Gming is ultimately part entertainer. This was lesson one I learned after my first couple of games and the one I actually try to impart to every new GM I speak to. Lots of newer games are making this easier with the advent of Session Zero, but it is really important to know your players and what they want.
Ran a game based on Kingdom Hearts a while back that was supposed to have all sorts of moral choices, a little bit of “Who is the real villains, us or them?” and some choices designed to make people think. It revolved around a Final Fantasy isk world where “fiends” disappeared into pyreflies like in Final Fantasy X. Only, there was this one group of fiends who all looked similar to each other that didn’t, and instead left bodies like normal people. Big twist was that these were people from another dimension, and they were seeking their keyblade, which had effectively gotten trapped in the PCs home dimension, explaining why there were two there. So I ran this mine encounter where the special fiends are boiling out of this mine and the party fights their way to the bottom only to find a portal. Gearing up for world hopping hijinks when my keyblade player instead says “I lock the portal.” I paused, stared at him for a moment, then said “what?”. “I lock it.” I nodded, set my notebook aside and narrated the heavy sound of a lock closing. Then time jumped forward a year and had the special fiends show up somewhere else, but now in Heartless form.
It was not til two years later when someone requested I pick back up the Kingdom Hearts game that I revealed all my notes were for the other side of the portal and that I had been ad-libbing most of the game past the locking of the portal.
You might say “that’s just a case of PCs never doing what you expect”, but it was a Kingdom Hearts game. At the time, I had never played Kingdom Hearts (and it probably showed), but I did a butt-load of research before coming up with what I had. So I was shocked that the PC playing the Key blade wielder chose to actually not do the entire thing that you do in Kingdom Hearts.
That’s a bizarre one for me. Did the keyblade wielder not recognize the trope when they saw it, or were they just curious what would happen if they ignored the central hook? Did they ever explain their thinking?
I suspect it was one of those things like destroying one of the MacGuffin Stones so the villain can’t get his hands on it, thus saving the world by default – it’s really the sensible thing to do, but no fictional character ever does it, because letting the villain get all the bits and then only stopping them then is seen as more dramatic. Or the classic “hostage for MacGuffin” thing, except the protagonist decides that endangering the world isn’t worth saving their friend. Or shooting the villain in the middle of their monologue. Or giving the dramatically dying mentor/girlfriend first aid (or some of that healing magic you use all the time). You’re not “supposed” to do it, but that’s player agency for you.
the heroes destroyed one of the macguffins in “Infinity War”. But by that point the villain had gained the ability to go back in time to before it was destroyed
His party was pretty beaten up due to the system we were running it being pretty unforgiving when it came to failing rolls and some creative but poorly chosen flaws on the parts of the players. (It was BESM 3rd). But his response instead of camping, healing and recovering while guarding the gate was just to seal it for good.
While Clcman has a point, the Keyblades in this game were semi-sentient and one was clearly trying to get him to enter the gate. It turned out good, since everyone enjoyed that game, the later continuation, and the third chapter of it that I ran later.
My curiosity is satisfied. Carry on.
I recently ran a christmas one-shot for a bunch of folks completely new to D&D and tabletop games in general. I had planned two short and easy combats to get them used to the mechanics of the game, and expected the rest of the time to be spent exploring or insulting NPCs or what have you.
Halfway through the game one player asked me “So when is there gonna be a dragon? This is dungeons and dragons, right? When do we get to fight a dragon?”
This started something of a riot with all the players wanting there to be a dragon and getting increasingly disappointed the longer I went without saying that there was a dragon.
I ended up describing Santa’s sleigh being pulled by a young silver dragon and that ended up being enough of a dragon cameo for them, but the next time I run a game for that group I plan on incorporating dragons more heavily to suit their interest.
I think I’ve seen a documentary about your group! Here’s a clip.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PfBw0jEN1Ng
😛
There’s no finer way to make someone feel like they’re their own ultimate depiction than to put them in trope situations and then let them go bananas. The Hunter example you used, for instance…you can totally put in an innocent werewolf pup, ham it up, make it the equivalent of the little matchstick girl freezing to death on Christmas Eve with the NPC roster to support. When you take your hands off of it and give it to your players, and they tell the townsfolk they’ll find the pup a proper home before taking it behind the woodshed and letting the Hunter who’s family was killed by werewolves execute it with a silver railroad spike, you have a table full of people who are just so proud of themselves for roleplaying such a hardened slayer of monsters, the grittiest of the grit, when they knew the ‘right’ thing to do and very purposely chose the ‘characteristic’ thing. You might even get a moral quandary or two out of it! And now you have a group with the faint smell of Silver Fang blood on their clothes, so the wolves are gonna be coming down from the mountains in droves to rip their throats out in vengeance. “I give no shits and take no shit” characters write their own stories, however short they may be (one does not easily survive a sept full of wolfies).
All you gotta do is be the ref, not the goalkeeper. When people internalize that, excellent DMs/GMs/STs are born.
I guess to actually answer the question, though, I remember trying to guide a group through a forest full of orcs and they kept on wanting to take Alternate Routes based on their proclivities (the ranger and the fighter specifically had differing opinions on how to navigate through a WAAAAAAUGHful of orks). The moment I stopped trying to hint at the way to do it ‘correctly’ and said ‘You know what, at this point, I’m just here to watch’ then everything changed.
I implement the Rule of Cool when I can, so a significant portion of the forest wound up burning down and the party blamed it on a neighboring town when someone asked. Diplomacy between the region officials and the town was…strained, for a while, with the latter vehemently denying things, but also being very grateful that the orcs were mostly cinders in the same breath, which did nothing to validate their innocence.
Nothing to add. Well bloody said!
Also, remind me to take out a life insurance policy on my PC if I’m ever in one of your Hunter games.
All the insurance brokers are run by Ventrue thralls or analyzed by Obrimos. No one’s gonna let you take out a policy for a dime, a Hunter’s imminent and painful demise is way too certain even if they weren’t planning on attacking the brokerage later.
At this point I’ve given up on any semblance of writing a linear campaign. It’s never ever worked for me. My players always go off and do their own thing. Mostly because I’m pretty lenient about asking how the player’s want to approach their problems.
I usually give some initial goal, and then try to plan out maybe four or five likely scenarios based on what I think the players are going to do next. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes I reuse those scenarios later.
I like to jot down a “most likely path” so I at least have one way to approach the game. As soon as the players leave that path, however, I tend to abandon it and let them lead.
It sounds like we’ve got fairly similar approaches, actually. It’s all down to doing enough prep work to give a little shape, while being willing to abandon the prep work at the service of player agency. 🙂
Not exactly a preference conflict, but I very recently ended up in a very off-the-rails sequence, and I wish to share, because things got NUTS.
CONTEXT: The PCs are shipwrecked on an island. They found an abandoned village and have recently been menaced by ghouls.
GM’S PLAN: The PCs will fight this next group of ghouls. Once there are only one or two ghouls left, they will turn and flee, shouting to each other to “get back to the ship!”. This refers to the wrecked ship the ghouls use as their base (which they are running towards), but the PCs, not knowing that the ship is not functional, will head in that direction and eventually encounter the ghoul boss, an Oracle nicknamed “Mother.”
WHAT HAPPENS: Everything goes according to plan, but the PCs pursue the escaping ghoul. He tries to escape by jumping into a river, but they lasso him, haul him out, tie him up and interrogate him. Normally, one wouldn’t expect to get much information from a ghoul, but I use this to drop cryptic hints and confirm the PCs’ suspicion that the ghouls used to live in the abandoned village before they became ghouls. The PCs then offer to release the ghoul (!) if he will set up a meeting between the PCs and Mother. The ghoul agrees, on one condition. He turns to Saphira, the PC he bit during the fight, and requests “one more taste.” Saphira and her player squirm for a little bit before agreeing, cutting her arm and giving the ghoul a cup of blood rather than risk the effects of an actual bite. Ghoul then runs off and I realize that the PCs have invited the next boss out of her lair to negotiate terms with them.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THAT: I immediately promote the ghoul with 2 levels of Ranger (favored enemy: Saphira’s race) and a name (“Cadmus”). I decide that Mother will abide by the deal, but covertly bring all the forces from her boss battle and the encounter before that as backup in case things heat up. The PCs discuss what to do if the ghouls don’t just hand over the boat. NE disease master, Urgathoa worshiper and ghoul sympathizer Dr. Ohm tries to lay the groundwork for offering the ghouls Saphira as payment for getting off the island, leading to this moment: https://imgur.com/ydLD3ys
Saphira is very upset about this, and spends the negotiations hiding behind various other PCs. (Out-of-character, Saphira’s player confirms that she is having fun roleplaying her character’s discomfort.) When Cadmus the ghoul arrives, he winks at her and she declares that if he gets any closer, she will cut of his head.
WHAT FINALLY HAPPENS: Mother offers to lend the PCs her ship to leave the island if they will just follow her and her ghouls into this dark swamp that the ghouls control. The PCs, being PCs (and therefore having the self-preservation skills of moths), see no problem with this, and happily follow the ghouls until the ghoul backup has completely surrounded them and attacks, leading to this battle layout: https://imgur.com/5tC7Ib4
The PCs take a battle that is technically CR 14-ish in stride and do much better than I expected (though I did stop using Mother’s Channel Negative Energy offensively, which would have taken out the whole party in a turn or two). Saphira wounds Cadmus and he flees, but Saphira lines up a charge and hits him for 75% of his max HP, decapitating him as she promised (she then kicks his head at Mother, which does 1d4 damage). As Mother and her last Ghast start to fall back, I trigger my “in case the PCs are overwhelmed” plan and have agents of a third, hostile faction the PCs haven’t met yet appear, firing at ghoul and PC alike before the massive storm they summoned ruins everyone’s visibility. The PCs scramble for cover, and the session ends with Mother back at her ship (where the PCs will likely have a second throwdown), this new faction having made a serious impression on the PCs and a PC whose player was hoping to replace them missing in action.
…The point is, REALLY did not expect the players to capture and negotiate with a ghoul. I’m considering writing an Adventure Path type thing of this campaign, and there is absolutely no way that I can expect any other party to end up undergoing anything remotely similar to this last session.
“I immediately promote the ghoul with 2 levels of Ranger (favored enemy: Saphira’s race) and a name (“Cadmus”)” I approve.
Put your PCs in a room with four doors, and they will dig through the floor or teleport out instead of opening any of them.
That’s the trouble with writing modules. You can only take a guess at a most likely path. You’ve got to leave your plot open enough to survive PC shenanigans when they don’t go the route you expect. You can insert little “If the PCs X then you can Y” contingency boxes for GMs, but you’ve ultimately got to rely on GM improvisation to carry the story.
Good luck with it in any case!
True. Fortunately, my original, pre-ghoul capture plan will work just fine for the Adventure Path. Only now I know that I need to add a “if the PCs capture one of these guys, what do they know, how much are they willing to say, and what kinds of cryptic phrases do they use?” (The answer to that last one is very important, as it is a mystery campaign where most everyone except the PCs already knows the basics of what is going on, so the GM needs as many ways to drop hints without revealing the truth as possible.)
I tried to run a low-magic, gritty, Dark-ages, Conan-ish game once. The PCs immidiately turned to building a mercantile empire and became the major economic stabalizing force of the world, in command of dozens cargo ships, a small but powerful navy, hundreds of wagon trains plying the highways of the world, and enough gritty soldiers to keep said highways clear and safe for all.
I just sort of said “fuck it, lets do this,” and got my kicks by naming all important NPCs after musicians. Their Seneshal was named Lars, and the two people in charge of coordinating the movements of the wagon trains were Alice, a very clever woman, and Cooper, her less clever brother.
By the Book becomes Buy the Book.
Please enforce the spellbook and prayerbook rules.