The Last Two Types

The image shown is from p. 9-10 of 4th Edition's DMG, How to be a DM.

Rating: false

Here I start to break down.  These last two player categories were clearly written last; suggesting the list was written chronologically, in that even the writer is tired at this point.  Neither the "thinker" or the "watcher" have any continuity.  There's no connection between liking puzzles and choosing actions carefully.  There's no connection between showing up to play the game socially and acting as a peacemaker.  Each is a hodgepodge of dumpster traits piled in at the end, perhaps hoping the reader will not look too closely.

The smartest fellow in my offline campaign is a power gamer.  He's a genius dinkum-thinkum, a hands-on tradesman and also a peacemaker; he wouldn't think of telling other players what to do and he doesn't grind the game to a halt because he comes up with tactical options like riding a horse around barrels.  The people who slow up a game considering tactical options are not "thinkers."  Taking a lot of time to think shows they don't practice with that.

If I needed to recruit players to invent quests for me, I wouldn't be much of a thinker either.  A DM ought to be.

And the watcher here ... oh gawd.  This is what I mean by inclusiveness and rampant positivity.  Here you have this player; "he doesn't really care" about your game, but you, O DM, you're being counselled here not to force the player to be involved; to accept the player is fine with being a stuffed shirt; and, you know, take the time to urge the player to be involved, when necessary.

I'm going to say some things now that will make you, dear reader, never to want to run in my campaign.  So if you're sensitive, you should probably close your eyes before reading forward.

There's a reason why good, solid players show up every time I run D&D, without failure.  There's a reason why I read about other DMs who cry and moan that there can't keep players in their game—like the pampered writer who threw this half an unresearched article together.  It's because I demand more.  It's because if you come to play, you had better commit yourself to playing.  The people who stay, who do commit, count on me to take out the garbage.

If I have to prompt you twice in a game to wake the fuck up because it's your turn to roll dice, I will turn on you, addressing you like, "Do you want to be here?  Because you don't have to be here."  If I have to prompt you three times, I will yell at you.  And I don't mean any sort of piping yell either, I mean a deep throated, baritone, "WHAT THE FUCK MAN" sort of yell.  I am sitting in this DM's chair and I am giving it my all, I mean my gawddamned fucking all, and what the hell are you doing sitting there in my home like none of this matters to you?  Who the fuck do you think you are?  You think the sun rises and fucking sets on you?

At that point, I haven't booted you.  I'm yelling at you because I'm giving you a chance to sort yourself out and get with the program.  My yelling at you is a KINDNESS.  I don't need you in my game.  I have these other seven fanatical engrossed engaged D&D players sitting right here, ready to play, and I don't ever have to yell at them or encourage them to be interested.  So it is up to you.  Play, or get the fuck out.

My game has breaks.  There's drink and food on the table, and if you need to go to the bathroom, you're an adult and you know how to damn well hold your water for twenty minutes.  You do it during meetings, you do it while finishing a job, you do it because the customers are lined out the door.  If you can do it for them, you will do it for these people who are playing this game and for me.  I will hold my water for you without hesitation, when I don't want the tension and momentum to break.  If you really need to go, you pipe up and you ask.  That's right, dear player.  You get my permission.  I grew up in a dark, far gone age when politeness demanded you EXCUSE YOURSELF to go to the bathroom and you wait for that excuse to be acknowledged by the person whose house you're in.  You get up from my game table without an explanation and I am going to snap at you: "Where are you going?"  And if you say "bathroom," and nothing's going, then I might say, "Okay; give some warning, we're all playing here."  But I might also say, "Sit the fuck down; we're not done."

If your overparented mollycoddled sensibilities can't abide that, tough.  The world does not revolve around you and, in case you've forgotten, you made a commitment to play.  That's not something I take lightly and I'm not going to sit around letting you do so.  Sit your ass in the fucking chair and listen.

I'm trying to capture a moment here.  Yes, I understand, this is not for you.  At least, you think this is not for you.  On the other hand, if you're serious about D&D, and you like a game without distraction, nonsense and personality conflicts; if you like tension and momentum; if you like a multi-layered, thinking game with intrigue and a sense of scale ... then this is exactly what you want.

Mostly, however, the reader is thinking these two things have nothing to do with each other.  My game is deep because I'm a deep thinker and I know the game inside and out; it would be even better if I were not such an asshole.  If you think that, you're wrong.  Serious games require serious people.  If I tear a strip off someone at the table, the other players don't think, "That's offensive!"  They think, "Oh gawd, finally."  They'd love to do it but I won't let them, because order demands there be one responsible voice that keeps order—and no, that is not the party leader.  I'm the only one at the table without an axe to grind (though it sounds to some of you like I do).  I haven't any money in the game.  I'm the croupier, remember?  Were I the croupier at a casino, I could give a look and two burly gentlemen would lead you to the front door.  They wouldn't be gentle.  I don't have two burly men at my beck and call (but how cool would that be?—I'd have them stand behind me with their hands folded looking gently threatening and expressionless), so I have to strong-arm you myself when you get out of order.  No casino stands for one player taking it upon themself to correct another player.  This isn't the player's House.  This is My House.  I'm the one who keeps order in it.

My "axe to grind" is that I want an excellent, exciting game.  That's impossible if the players are carping at each other, or game play is constantly being derailed by players talking about the movie they saw last night or their troubles at work or at home.  We're not here for that.  Nor am I down with players disrespecting other players by simply getting up and walking away, or making everyone wait because they don't really care about the game play.  Disrespect is a big no-no in my game and if I see it, I'm going to come down hard.  My players stay and get involved in my game because they feel they are respected—because I do respect them, when they respect me and they respect each other.  No one, not me, not you, no one, gets a free ride.  If I'm running this game, and I'm providing this experience, then I'm not going to put up with someone who thinks they're sacked out on their couch watching television.  My game is not a one-way performance.  No one "watches."  You take part or you get out.  Them's the prices you pay for the privilege of being here.

If your game has trouble keeping players; if you discover that come the third running, no one shows up; then I promise that it's because you think it's a lark.  You haven't recognized you have to hold your players to a standard, and yourself also.  You don't require them to take the game seriously, because YOU don't take it seriously.  They don't feel privileged to be there, because there's nothing special that they're seeing in your expectations.  Why not just not go?  It's just going to be a lot of derailment and foolishness, with you pandering to your players and them feeling like you're so desperate for their attendance that they can walk all over you, walk out, not go, not care and whatever else the 4th edition DMG says you ought to do to suck up to your own players.

That happy horseshit is going to have you sitting by yourself at a game table the rest of your life.  Is that what you want?  You need to find two players, just two, who really want to play; and then you have to hold them to a standard, and yourself also, that says this behaviour is allowed and this is not.  And then, every new player that comes in, no matter who they are, has to be held to the same standard, no matter how angry you have to get to make them understand there is a line they cannot cross.  Maybe you don't want to be angry, but I will tell you, that is what it takes with some people.  If you can't, or won't, stand up for what you believe, then you can forget about your game ever becoming something as dense and thrilling as you imagine.

It is never going to be that.

I could end this post there, but this is supposed to be about thinkers and watchers, so let's leave the above as a post within a post and get back to it.

Every player ought to make careful choices, not just those who "want" to.  The game ought to require players to recognize that a careless choice is a way to lose.  All games demand that you think carefully about where and how you move; the point of a game is to make good decisions by reflecting on the challenges and the best way to overcome them.  This is not a condition that is limited to only one player at the table.

Every player enjoys when planning results in a success.  In general, the amount of risk and the use of resources are immaterial, so long at the player has those resources, after the fact.  Risk is only a condition before the plan is enacted.  Materials are only concerns before.  So the sentence in the context above is irrational and evidence the writer did not think it through.

Every player likes solving challenges; the implication above is that the challenge being offered is what we often categorize as a "thinking problem," i.e., a puzzle.  But that category is a misnomer.  All challenges, whether they are conversations, combat, figuring out what equipment to buy, deciding which road to take, building a base camp, whatever, require thinking, on the precise same level as a puzzle does.  A puzzle is a thinking problem that has no real consequence if you fail.

Let's say you come to a door that has a complex mechanism that needs to be adjusted before the door will open.  Usually, when we run into this kind of puzzle in D&D, there's plenty of time for the party to discuss and try out alternatives; a door like this can easily eat up 45 minutes of a campaign.  Except in rare cases (and usually when the puzzle is way simpler), there are no monsters attacking the party while the puzzle is being solved.  In such a case, the monsters would have to be more of a problem than the puzzle, for the puzzle to matter.  That is, "The monsters will kill us if we don't solve the puzzle, so hurry!"  However, the monsters are also a "puzzle."  If we figure out a way to kill the monsters, we don't have to solve the puzzle.  Presumedly, the puzzle only matters if the monsters are viewed as unkillable.

More often, however, there are no monsters.  It's just the players, with an unlimited amount of time, trying to solve the door.  Well, what if they don't?  Is there a consequence?  Yes, they don't get to see what's behind the door.  Then again, there is the whole rest of the world, isn't there?  I mean, if we just ditch this door, and go outside, and do something else, then surely there will be other combats, other dungeons.  What makes this door so damned important anyway?

To solve that problem (if the DM sees it as a problem; I don't), we have to create some greater reason, and consequence, for the players to solve the puzzle and go through the door.  There is a powerful wizard, and if we don't get the bauble behind this door, the wizard will kill us.  Well, here again, the wizard is the puzzle, not the door.  Why has this wizard chosen us?  Why are we letting ourselves be bullied?  Why is the DM hinging the entire game on bullying the party?

Thinking recognizes that the puzzle is a distraction.  The "thinker" as described in the 4e DMG is a person who dully, blindly, addresses themselves to 2-dimensional problems that are right here, rather than the larger problem at hand.  The correct sentiment isn't that the "thinker" sees every challenge as a puzzle to be solved, but that they understand every puzzle to be solved is a symptom of a larger, more difficult puzzle.

Every player comes to the game because they want to be part of a social event.  D&D is social.  That's a big reason of why we're here.  The difference in the "watcher" is that he or she wants to come to a social event in which they feel no responsibility to take part.  They just want to watch; they don't want to engage with other people.  Social events require the opposite attitude.  They require that everyone who is there is necessarily aware that their presence is there to be enjoyed.  I go to a party to enjoy other people; at the same time, other people go to the same party to enjoy me.  We go to enjoy each other, and to be enjoyable TO each other.  The watcher, as described here, doesn't do that.  We have a word for this.  We call these people rude.

Overall, I don't want these small-frame thinkers or these vampiric watchers to be among my players.  I've taken a lot of time to say that, and negatively I suppose, but I feel provoked by a text that wants me to be inclusive with these people and suggests that I am responsible as a DM to them.

This series continues with The Typical Party & the Typical DM