General Disarray
Fighter, in addition to being an all-around jerk, is also specific kind of jerk. He’s a backseat gamer. You might have heard this called “quarterbacking” or “combat choreography” or “that one guy at the table who won’t shut up and let me play my own friggin’ character.” Regardless of what you call it though, one thing is for sure: it’s annoying as all get out.
The problem is that, at least to some extent, these games we play involve teamwork and tactics. A certain amount of strategizing comes with the territory. And if you’ll recall the recent episode between my paladin and a certain stank-smelling wizard, there are times when that little bit of extra table talk can be a good thing.
My advice though? You should error on the side of shutting up and letting the other guy do his thing. Sure you might lose a little bit of combat effectiveness. Sometimes you’ll even suffer serious consequences for your lack of planning and foresight. But my favorite combats tend to be those chaotic affairs where the party squeaks by on luck and audacity. After all, what are the fights you remember? The ones where you hold a model U.N. session to figure out how to eke out every marginal advantage, or the ones where the dwarven barbarian leaps down the stairs, over the melee, into flanking position…and straight into the wizard’s hungry pit? For my money, I’ll take the flying barbarian every time.
How about the rest of you guys? How much strategizing do you like with your combat? A lot or a little? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Generally just a little bit. Stuff within reason like “do you guys think I should X?” or “Hey, could you wait until I X for you to Y?” or “How about I X, you Y, and third party Z’s?” or “Don’t forget you can X.” or putting something in a spoiler labeled “only if you want my advice, otherwise ignore” if I’m going to do something more detailed or more saying what to do with your whole turn or such. And not constantly.
Otherwise I largely like to handle things in character. Typically this involves trying to convince other characters that sneaking and pincer maneuvers and other tactical approaches are a good idea.
But it’s just as enjoyable to just have no plan at all and everyone do whatever as long as working at cross purposes or the like is something that is “oops!” for a single round and not the whole combat.
Really as pretty much always with rpgs, variety is the most delicious spice.
I always heard that appetite was the most delicious spice. Not making a joke or anything. Just never heard the ‘variety’ version of the saying. Huh.
As far as it goes, I think your examples are spot-on precisely because they’re quick and pithy. So called “table talk” and tactical discussions don’t bother me in themselves. What I really hate is the slowdown. A quick back and forth though? Something like, “Don’t forget you can X?” That’s all good in the hood.
Among my closer friends and online groups, I generally end up trying to play the tactician, having more time to think, and more clarity of mind, compared to my IRL group in a game store, where there’s two other tables with people hollaring and screeching, making it hard to think. Then I just wait til it’s my turn, ask the necessary questions of positioning and how far things are away from me (Since there’s no grid) and make my move.
It’s so much easier to plan ahead when there’s a visual representation of what’s going on.
In a game store? Heathens!
Strategy, or planning prior to combat, I tend to do a lot. However, that usually means I work with limited information, if I anticipate combat at all. People either agree or bring up a counterpoint. So far there’s been no betrayal in my parties.
Once initiative is rolled, and strategy becomes tactics, I try to keep it concise. e.g.”Flush the enemies from behind cover. Stay within healing range. Go!” Talking may be a free action, but one only has 6 seconds. Heck, when we REALLY don’t want the enemy to hear us, we do the spec-ops gestures for a rough battle plan… to varying degrees of effect.
Do you actually take Linguistics tricks to do the hand gestures thing? Do you RP it with charades? Or are we talking more of an Octodad style, “A blub reminding my teammates to use sound tactical positioning?”
For your remembrace and enjoyment. This is mostly how any planning in our sessions is fulfilled. We call it Plan B; it seems to be our default plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLyOj_QD4a4
I’m really bad about this. It’s probably my biggest gaming sin, period. I do it mainly because I’ve taught about two dozen people how to play so I’m just used to figuring out what a player should be doing with their turns since the new players often get overwhelmed with the number of sheer number of options each turn presents to them, and giving them suggestions makes it easier for them to parse the game.
Doesn’t make it any less of a sin, though, especially when I’m playing a low-charisma character that no one in their right mind would listen to.
Welcome to the comic, Gorthalon!
And yeah man, I’m right there with ya. Between this comic and my game design interests, it seems like tabletop is always happening inside my head. I just want to share all that expertise with my friends. Ad nauseum. Whether they want it or not. :/
Recently I’ve begun saying things like, “Hey, either option is risky. It’s your character though. Do what you think is cool.” Forcing myself to let other players decide is good medicine for me.
It’s rough! Especially because I game with really new players, I often see bards who forget to use Perform skills or bardic Performance, or fighters that forget that they even GET skill ranks.
My new tactic is to write up a small sheet separate from the character sheets, and list all their attacks and a couple of spells and special abilities and/or skills that they use a lot, and what dice to roll and the modifiers, that way I’m less needed to straight-up backseat game, and the newer player has a nice reference sheet for what the character can do in a pinch!
I recently heard of a bard that uses placards to represent all of his bonuses. He would stand one up in front of him whenever his group buffs went out, then tap on it to remind the other players to count it. So even for veteran players, a physical reminder seems like a good idea.
I’m guilty of this. I recognize it though, so I try not to do it, and my group is nice about it. I have a few guidelines I keep myself to:
* Don’t do it more than once or twice per session.
* Only suggest if the player is hemming and hawing for a moment.
* Be quick about it, don’t hold up the game.
* Don’t talk over anyone.
It’s harder than usual when someone is playing one of my favorite classes, the ones I know the most about. I really want to tell people how to play Clerics and Rogues. It takes extra restraint not to do so.
I’m running an especially wonky Pathfinder character at the moment. I did some wacky multiclassing shenanigans with the magus and the occultist class so that I can eventually add any weapon enchant I want on the fly. You give up quite a bit to make it happen, but I thought it was a worthwhile trade.
Another dude in the game is running vanilla magus. It can enhance a weapon in limited ways, but it cannot do the Swiss Army knife trick.
Dude: “Hey GM, can I add a special weapon property to my weapon instead of the normal +1?”
GM: “Sure!”
Me: Kermit_Face.jpg
Oof. That’s annoying. Balance is often an illusion, or at least subjective to the other players. If a player wants to do something cool and it doesn’t step on another player’s toes, I try to let them do it, you know?
This is one situation where I would have pulled the DM aside and said “hey look, I sacrificed a lot in my build to have this ability and you let that other player have it for free. Now i’m just sitting here with a subpar Magus for no reason. I’d really appreciate if you wouldn’t let the other player continue doing it so I can keep my niche.”
That would have been the mature thing to do. I instead stepped into my finest pair of pedant pants and raised my objections at the table. Not my finest hour.
In an important fight, that could actually get people killed, I’ll remind them of certain things they can do – it’s a bad habit I’ve gotten into after playing the game with some new people who’d forget everything they could try to do or feats they could benefit from, stuff like that.
With my regular group, I only offer input if it’s asked for, unless it’s something like ‘If you move there my battlecleric will be cut off and can’t reach any enemies’ or ‘Can you reach that square beside that one? If you can move there instead that’ll let me get a Charge in on my turn which I kind of need because I have a 20 foot movespeed.’
Like I said to Ramsus up top, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of table talk. It’s all about keeping it quick.
personally for the groups ive been in, we never actually did that. Everyone just kinda did theire things based on the gut-feeling of what would help with people doing in-character callouts
Do you ever feel like you’d like to slow down and talk through the battle plan a bit more? Or is the “gut-feeling method” ideal for you?
See, my solution to this lately has been simple in my latest games. In the two most recent games I’ve played, one was a Planescape game that took place (at least half the time) in Sigil.
As my character was a bit of a “Haste Addict” (See the Swiftblade PrC from 3.5), I was a member of the Transcendent Order. Their mantra is “Action Without Thought”, and one of the mechanics of playing them is that you always take the action you first declare. So if when your turn rolls around, you’re not ready, you’re not playing your character correctly. You say something instantly “I cast Glitterdust and move into melee range with the target!” Now you have to do that and to hell with your party members telling you what would have been better! You’re playing your character properly and doing a marvelous support job all in one turn!
My party members must trust that what I do is helpful to the squad, and as it turns out, that trust is earned every combat situation we get into.
In my Rise of the Runelords game, it kinda works in an in-character way to be the “general”, since I’m playing a Cavalier. Since their whole shtick is about directing others and granting a teamwork feat in combat, it kinda makes sense that he barks commands in combat. And when he isn’t, it’s usually because the situation is one where the Rogue’s expertise is required, or perhaps it’s the Bard’s wheelhouse. Basically, any time the Cavalier isn’t in charge, it’s because he cedes that to the person most relevant for the current action scene.
I think that’s really one way to handle it. Learn what situation is left to what character to direct, and that way everyone gets their hand at the steering wheel once in a while.
So for you, there’s no “being a bossy jerk” in the equation. It all comes down to “would my character take this action” and “would my character tell this other character what to do?”
How does that tend to work out when other players want to talk tactics out of character?
How do you mean out of character? Do you mean discussing what options another character should have used in a given scenario? Is your question in a constructive criticism vein of thought or a “you didn’t do what I would have done” arrogant attitude?
In the former scenario, I try to meet post-game out-of-character discussions with a good attitude, but it can be tough in certain situations. I tend to play gish characters, but if my first rounds end with terrible attack rolls, my attitude sours and I rely on saving throw spells instead. In such situations, it is hard to deal with any criticism or people telling me what I should do instead.
More oftentimes, the post-game talks are about options we should have used that we forgot to use, such as a good crowd-control spell or a grapple option.
If you mean the latter option, then perhaps my words used show my attitude toward that kind of play. If the wizard-player and the fighter-player start arguing about which action is better, it obviously results in gridlock. Since every party I have played with tries to minimize that gridlock, I luckily don’t experience it much.
One other solution I’ve seen for this situation is to limit how long a character has to declare an action. So a timer of say, 15 seconds, works well for them to declare their action and if the resulting explanation of their action, and things they say in character for that round takes a minute, so be it.
But at least it limits how much other players can try to tell others what to do, since they only have about ten seconds to argue their case.
You’ve just rolled initiative. It’s your turn. You’re about to gish into the fray.
“Hold up Wildstag,” says your wizard bro. “Do you think you could lay down haste while we’re all clustered? I know it’s usually my job, but I’ve got a more amusing idea for my turn.”
In this kind of scenario, it’s not about which character is the leader of the fictional party. It’s about a group of players discussing game tactics. My question is whether that sort of thing is acceptable to you, or if it crosses the line into quarterbacking?
(And in case I’m misreading your question, I’d just like to make it clear that I’m not trying to insult you. I make it policy not to insult the people who come to talk shop about games beneath my comic. I’m just trying to get a sense of how things work in your group.)
Oh, I didn’t think you were insulting me, I just was explaining my stance on certain scenarios.
So long as the other guy is willing to explain what he’s got in store, then sure. Otherwise, I’d say there’s no need to waste my turn doing something that isn’t normally my job.
And funnily enough, in that example you used where Wildstag would cast haste… My most recent character, that Swiftblade I mentioned; it was basically his job to cast haste every chance it seemed reasonable to do so. (I really have no clue how to punctuate that statement).
But in a hypothetical gish, yeah, I’d prefer to charge first round…
Also, I see you mentioned hungry pit, but why care about tactics, when you’ve got the spell Roaming Pit! (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/roaming-pit/)
No need to worry about your martial guy ignoring your calls for a bull rush when you can chase down your foe with a 60 foot pit!
My wizard player is going to giggle SO HARD when I tell him about roaming pit. 😀
Back in the day… (I think it was AD&D) TSR manuals suggested that PC parties be led by a spokesperson or party leader who would interact with the DM (GM came later) on behalf of the party as it went through its paces. For the combat tacticians, party leadership was a coveted and competed for position, for it meant that the stream of actions they loved to control (which now is generally considered to be rude and abusive behavior) also was legally sanctioned by the Game’s arbitors.
This that whole “caller” business I’ve heard so much about, right? For parties of 10+ players? Were you ever in one of those? How did it work out?
For inexperienced or new gamers, it was simply the way a given session or campaign was played. Only upon gaining experience under a number of different DM’s, different systems, or different venues was a player able to articulate comparative/contrasting styles of play. It seems to me that the party leader concept always ended up on the unfavorable side of those analyses in favor of a more participatory, (dare I say it?) democratic expressions – the game evolved to embrace more of the “collective storytelling” concept that formed a central tenet of your thesis, right?
Individual cultures are also a big point. But yeah, my basic argument was that TRPGs are set apart generically in their relationship to authorship. You don’t play a video game to experience authorship. That’s something unique to TRPGs as a form. And that does tend to encourage democratic cultures.
On the other hand, I could see an in-character leader (probably some Paladin) giving his advice along these lines as he steps to the fore…” Mage – Hasten our movements and ready your counter spells! Cleric – Bless us and splash us, my Precious! Rogue – (looks about & mutters to self) Where the hell did Rogue go? Get to yon dark sorcerer and put and end to his evil!” etc. etc. etc.
And then the mage was all like, “Listen here, Tin Can. Which one of us has the bigger Int mod? I’m running this show!”
Cue PVP.
I like to find a happy middle ground. Also it helps that our GM likes to keep combat moving quickly, so he makes us take our turns fairly quickly. So when we’re in a fight, the party identifies problems, people volunteer to deal with them, and we each handle our own thing. Though sometimes, due to the fluid nature of parties in our campaign (Living World Campaign with something like 40 people) things run more or less smoothly.
I’ve never been in a living world campaign. Know anyplace I can go to learn more about the ins and outs of running such a beast?
The best way I’ve found seems really just to try it, and see what happens. Checking out the roll20 listings can give you some ideas of what they’re like, but fair warning, they are much harder to run than a normal campaign. It generally requires several people, and most of the ones I’ve seen or heard of did not end well. There’s a Pathfinder LWC simply called Golarion on roll20, and its super good, but it is the exception, not the rule.
Our barbarian has a strong hatred of doors, to the point where he sees a door and rolls a wis save to avoid smashing it. That’s the story of how we were introduced to an entire village of hostile goblins.
As a bard, with some magic, I almost charmed and bribed the whole party out of a tpk scenario, until the warlock decides to come in, and makes sure sure everyone knows he is wearing a severed goblin head as a hat.
Me and the rogue got away, and had the opportunity to buy back those taken prisoner. I paid the ransom on some kobolds, leaving warlock chained to a wall somewhere.
A hatred of doors, you say? Boy do I have a feat for you!
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/stunning-irruption-combat/
I admit I am really guilty of doing too much backseat gaming, though i’m trying to do it a lot less. Been doing fairly good at that the last few sessions.
Stay strong, Brother! If you feel that urge come back on you, just call. The Handbook of Heroes is happy to be your sponsor. 😛
Sometimes you have to be cautious about pre- or even during-attack advice, hints, tips and other messages about what you (want to) do during a fight.
During a Call of Cthulhu game our GM painted this scene in a sleepy New Mexico town. The investigators were walking through town, and came across the Sherrif, who was rather suspicious in the eyes of those investigators. So their players started to talk to each other about what they would do to the Sherrif. Whereupon the GM let the Sherrif say: “You’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder”. “What? Why?” Well, you’re standing in front of me, and discussing how you want to end my life, seems rather clear cut to me…”. That more or less thought us to “mind our surroundings”,and also that our GM would not tolarate too much “out of game” talking\stratigizing.
Now see, this is why you should always have party hats for “in-character” and “out-of-character” conversations. I suggest the Orange 40 Gallon. No one’s going to miss that.
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1363/6517/products/a2020o_6d8c64a0-4864-4f3c-89f8-f81cbf78648b_1024x1024.jpg?v=1476955613
“Are you guilty of backseat gaming?”
My favourite character of all time was a 4th Edition (bring the hate!) Warlord whose whole schtick was constant field and character manipulation; you tell me!