The Halfling and the Knight

Time I addressed this point from a recent post; hands up, anyone who knew what I was talking about:

"Much of the time, I believe, people have little understanding of what purpose in the game a rule serves, or how that purpose is compromised, leading to a less robust system, when that rule is casually tossed aside. For me personally, whatever a DM may feel about the presence of experience or encumbrance, and the "inconveniences" they bring, casting those things aside does not improve the game. The game is worse without them.

"Yet this is hardly understood, and even less appreciated. Of course we can still play D&D without those things. Of course the players can still move from place to place, they can still fight, they can yet role-play and even accumulate status and influence upon the game world. But these things — and this is almost impossible to explain to the average player — ARE NOT THE GAME. They certainly seem to be; and most would argue with me on this point ... vehemently. But they'd be wrong."

We don't need to count runs to play baseball.  We don't need teams.  We can still pitch, bat and run the bases without these things, if that's what we want.  We don't need a king to play chess.  We can move the pieces around on the field, attacking one another, deciding the game ends when there are no pieces left to kill, or the opposing player's move assures that a kill can't happen.  We can choose not to race sprinters against one another, having them run without a clock while five judges hold up cards to decide how the sprinter did, like figure skating.  We can play scrabble letters without numbers, ignoring any "score," on a blank lined board, until the board is filled.  We can throw out the property cards of monopoly and just roll dice to move our pieces around the board.

With children, we teach chess in a manner that a modern gamer recognises as save scumming.  Make the wrong move, see the consequences, take it back.  Thinking back 28 years, my daughter moves her rook, I take it with the queen ... then I put the rook and queen back to let her try again.  I let her put her finger on the bishop, deciding if she's going to move it, but I don't make her move it, because she's seven and I don't care if she wants to move the knight instead.  We learn games like this.  We see the consequences of our actions.

Then, as we grow more serious about the game (my daughter didn't, but I did), we don't want those breaks.  We want to win for real ... because we grow to see that it's a measure of the standards against which we hold ourselves.  We put ourselves in situations that aren't comfortable, specifically because the rewards are greater.

There's nothing in my life right now that says I have to walk onto a stage and risk public embarrassment ... but if I had the chance to do it again, to play Uncle Vanya or Dr. Stockmann, I would.  There's no money in it for me.  I have no urge to take up acting as a career (though, admittedly, because no opportunity to do so has presented itself).  But I would do it because I've done it before, because I've challenged myself in that way, I've put my soul and my commitment on the line in a theatre before paying customers ... and received good reviews.  There are no take backs; there's no way to save scum a few seconds before delivering a seven-minute monologue.

I know that the way the vast majority of people play D&D is "entertaining."  Enjoyable.  It must feel good for many to save scum, with getting rewards without risk, to talk their way out of difficulty, to get experience for showing up ... to shirk combat or, to always win, without that much trouble.  Always knowing that the character I have at the start of tonight's session will still be mine at the end.  Never feeling that raw, brutal panic of a die that has to go the right way ... or the plunge of heart that strikes when it doesn't.

But —

I don't want to take my knight back.  And I definitely do not want to play with those who insist on having it that way.  I'm not playing with children.  No, let me put that another way, because it could be misunderstood.  I have no interest in having adults who want to be children play with me.  If you want your knight back, when you lose your knight due to your inability to play, this says more about you than you realise.

Yes, I said inability to play.  D&D is a game with random elements, that a good player knows are there, accounting for them ... expecting them ... so there's no reason to whine or have a fit when they don't go our way.  That is the game's play.  When the player shirks from that, trying to reconstruct the game so as to avoid those consequences, instead of taking them on the chin like an adult ...

The collapse of my game centered on one player who did not like that her 5th level 60-lb. halfling druid wasn't a "fighter."  She chose to be a druid.  She chose to be a halfling.  She chose her spells.  She liked the sound of being a druid.  She liked to make the cute little jokes about being so light that many of the bigger characters could carry her without an encumbrance penalty.  She liked the pretty-sounding spell names, with words like faerie, shillelagh, goodberry ...

But every time a fight came up, she didn't like having to put her trust in that 20-sided die.  She knew there was plenty of power in the party to manage the monsters, to protect her little child-like body, but she didn't like knowing they were going to kick ass and she wasn't.  She didn't like depending on them.  She'd had plenty of opportunities to put out a good spell and help turn the tide of a battle, but that wasn't good enough.  She didn't want to be a team player.  She didn't want to take a bow at the end with the team.  She wanted to shine.  And she didn't have the class, the spells, the hitting power or the experience level that would let her do that ... and she was getting tired of waiting.  Every time she'd miss with that d20, the feeling of failure gnawed just a little deeper.  She didn't need to actually die as a character.  She didn't need that much to push her over the edge.  What she wanted, and what she hadn't earned, was to make the game ... not a game.  To make it into something that would serve her will.  That would obey her.  And when that didn't come out of the things her character could do, she decided it would come out of her inventiveness with the spells, reinterpreting them as she needed them to work.

When I countered that, she tried harder.  She invented more desperately.  She insisted more emotionally.  When it was her turn to throw that d20, she stalled, staring at her spells, sure that they'd be some way to weave them into an action that would get the result she wanted.

And when I put my foot down, one of the other players, a shining white knight, came to her rescue. He chose that moment to tell me how to act.  And what tone of voice to use.  In no uncertain terms.  In my game.  In my house.  And I rose to the occasion, because I don't let people talk to me that way.

The desire not to play a game, but to make the game suit the player's moods and wants, is the insidious poison at the heart of 5th edition and all that the company has done to D&D these last 20 years.  I love the game of D&D.  I do not love the shambling, mawkish doppleganger that is called D&D by nearly everyone ... and I have no idea what's going to become of the game I love.  The game I love.  I expect it to die along with the undead ghoul that it's spawned.

With four weeks gone, I remain uncertain about the future.  The majority of the crowd walked in support of the halfling and the knight, but I think that's an oversimplification.  There is a whiff that remains in my thoughts that the game itself had ceased to satisfy the needs of the party; and as I read the accounts of others lately, I'm detecting that same whiff in their games.

My head feels clearer.  There's a measure of anger.  Of betrayal.  Of the cheapening of this thing I love, which darkly bites at the memory of myself discovering this game as a boy, and thinking of it as a brutal, consequence-ridden thing, like the chess I played, being the greatest game in the world.

Which it isn't.

Anymore.

The Convenient Backstory

I went looking for an example of the player using a backstory to manipulate a DM's world, and found a doozy.  This is marvelous.  The Reddit thread is a long diatribe in which a player bemoans a DM of committing the unforgiveable sin of ignoring the player's backstory, outlined at the top of the thread:

"In my recent campaign, there was an army of hobgoblins being a threat to a major city. I wanted to go back my dwarf mountain to get the help of my fathers military who I was a high ranking officer in. I told everyone about it in my backstory in the beginning of the game. Now as I go back to the mountain the dm [sic] disregards my backstory and puts in his own version of my characters home. He makes it so I'm a nobody dwarf and my family name is shared by everyone and nobody knows who I am. Even though i stated earlier about where I am from and who I was before I went into adventuring. How should I talk to the dm [sic] about this. He just makes jokes and says he doesn't care. Mostly because he doesn't want me to do that. What should I do?"

The remainder of the thread consists of others who deeply respect the suffering of the player, who rush to condemn the DM, and who create examples of how they would run the campaign, catering to the player's needs and backstory.  From the point of view of many players, including a lot of my readers, the angst and abuse of the player in the thread is no doubt something they feel themselves, as the bad, bad DM broke the rules ... after all, the DM approved the backstory, so the DM is clearly in the wrong.

I won't contest that.  That back story should never have been approved.

Oh, your father runs his own military.  How wonderful.  And you were a high ranking officer in that army. Marvelous.  It sure is great when, as a player, you can take five minutes and dream up an army on tap for your needs, whenever you want it.  That's what I call earning your way in the game.

It takes half the thread before someone points this out:

I would guess that the probable situation is that neither the player nor the DM are very experienced.  The DM no doubt approved of the story because it sounded pretty good at the time, never thinking what the consequences of that might be.  At the same time, the player was probably just spiffing around with a story idea ... and then after the fact, realized that he could use it to his advantage.  The player is so dissonant about the enormity of the backstory's personal benefit that it's probable the player can't see what's wrong.

That sounds like "new campaign" to me.  Hey, we're all just heroes anyway ~ and heroes in stories always get to go back to their father's and get the help of a big, convenient military for the last showdown with the big bad.  Can't we all think of about thirty movies that end that way?

The remaining commenters appear to have the opinion that, if the DM approved it, then it has to stand, no matter what.  That is complete bullshit.  DMs make mistakes.  They're human.  Even those with a few years experience are capable of missing the consequences of a brief, poorly thought out decision. The only thing that matters here is that Dad's Army (unless it's the British farce) is an UNFAIR advantage and effectively game breaking.

"But he laughed at me!" ... sob, sob, cry, whine ...

If you're a new DM, as I wrote in the previous post for New DMs, stay far, far away from the backstory.  A marginally clever player, with a week to think about it, can engineer a piece of work that will spear you in the ass in ways you never thought possible.

UX

   "She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time," my father said.   I looked up at him. "What?"   "You looked like you were getting too involved and bothered so I though I would let you relax."   "Oh, for Pete's sake," I said, "you'd think I was a baby or something. What kind of stuff is that?" I really sounded put out, but I'll tell you the truth: I was getting a little too involved and I was glad he told me. I mean, when you're a kid, you don't think, Well, since the book's called The Princess Bride and since we're barely into it, obviously, the author's not about to make shark kibble of his leading lady. You get hooked on things when you're a youngster; so to any youngsters reading, I'll simply repeat my father's words since they worked to soothe me: 'She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time.'

Let me explain something about user experience, or UX as the business calls it.  Every company that has ever created a design that failed after the release of the product has decided, in pure stupidity, that the solution to the matter will be to "educate the public" about the greatness of their product.  See, if you've spent two years preparing a product, writing copy about it, raving in meeting after meeting about the beauty of the product and the wonderful buzz it's going to create as soon as its ready to storm the streets, you just can't believe that people don't like it.  It isn't possible.  You're blown away by how good a product it is.  As soon as the public understands, this product is going to do great!

And so, faced with JB's question at the end of my last post, acknowledging the problem and asking the question, "so what?", I find myself thinking, "Well, hell, D&D is a terrific product and sandboxes are a great way to play the game, why don't I just educate people so that they'll understand how great?

Heh.

If I were going to make an attempt, I'd use Goldman's argument, above.  You, the player, are in this campaign.  It has barely started.  Since you're the most important being in this game world, obviously, I'm not going to rip your guts out just for fun.  What are you, nine?

But I wouldn't expect that to make much impact, given that most of the participants of the game, whatever age they happen to be, ARE nine, or at least they desperately want to be, given that they sit in films about superheroes and screech daily, "It's not believable!"  So much for educating the public.

Thankfully, I don't have to educate everybody.  I only have to bring you around, O Gentle Reader, and count on you to use a few tactics to convince your immediate players.  This crowd-sources the issue as best I can, while retaining the sense that I can say or write or do something about this tiger-in-the-bushes problem.

The goal here is to pull the wool over the players' eyes; not to educate them and explain why they need to view the game differently (they won't, and gawd knows I've tried), but to correct the interface in a manner that will counteract the impression the players will insist on having.  Not easy.  Yet the issue will not improve until this particular element about the campaign is corrected.

People are asking me all the time, how do I fix my campaign?  How do I win the trust of my players?  How do I make the world something they want to run in?  These are questions that every product designing company is asking: how do I make people like my product?  What does my product have to be in order for people to like it?

Step 1: Evaluate your campaign.

Most readers are doing this already, but what's needed is a specific list of what needs to be evaluated.  If the reader will consider any product out there, there are some basic rules that always apply; apply these to your campaign and you'll be fine.

Here's what you're looking for:

• Whatever rule system being used, there will be dozens of features that are part of that system that no one actually uses.  Identify what those features are and get rid of them.  An example?  Virtually every pummelling system ever made, regardless of RPG.  Later on, there might be a fix for it; but for now, consider the actual feature is too boring to capture the player's attention.  Get rid of it.  But take note, don't use the player's opinion of what falls into this category.  Players will endlessly defend features in a game they don't use.  Like alignment.  They all think it needs to be there.  But when it comes to employing it themselves, it is strangely left out.  So don't ask players their opinions.  Watch what they do.
• At the same time, take note of what the players are using a lot.  Your players are creative; if they're interested in something, they'll try to use it every which way they can, challenging your game's coherence as they attempt to play the rules.  Take your cue from that.  Increase your control over those systems with greater rigidity; make sure you give your players plenty of play, as these are features that they want to use.  So make lots of concessions.  But make those concessions fixed and clearly understood.
• Consider what you're asking your players to do when they're running.  What are your expectations?  Are the payoffs for those expectations evident?  If your players are chafing when you give them advice or urge them towards a certain adventure, its because they don't see what's in it for them.  Unless they see that benefit, they'll see it as serving your needs and not their own.  That's going to create friction.  So instead, give your players as much as you dare before asking them to come on board. Make sure they can see where the value is for them.
• Don't take their feedback personally.  Oh, believe me, I have a HUGE problem doing this.  I'm not preaching from a sinless place, oh no.  But just because I fuck this up all the time doesn't take away the correctness of not doing it.  And I'm seeing advice columns saying it all the time: "It's not my fault the user is stupid; they'll just have to learn to be smarter."  So rememeber: negative feedback is good. Negative feedback is good.  Negative feedback is good.  Keep saying it until you believe it.
• Give the players help.  There's a lot of naysayers who will say this isn't the DM's role, but those people are wrong.  Throwing the players into the world and asking them to understand and adjust to everything without help only promotes tiger-in-the-bushes thinking (I sure hope you read the last post, or you must be lost).  There's no possible way the players can remotely understand what your world is about, how it works, how the people communicate with each other or what they should expect if you don't talk about your world and help the players ALL THE TIME.
• Ignore the players when they tell you not to help.  Listen, when you run into this, you're coming face to face with people who have been programmed to think players are deservedly doomed to see tigers. This is where this whole tiger stuff begins; by DMs convincing players, and players convincing themselves, that there is a Chinese Wall between them and the game world.  Tear this wall down.  Get the sort of players who understand why it needs to be torn down.  There are hundreds of decisions to make and plenty of opportunity for the dice and the situation to go against the players; don't make it worse by making your players stand around in the dark.  If the players express tiger-in-the-bushes thinking ("the tower seems out of our league, in my view"), jump in and stress that there is no reason in the world for them to make that assumption.  In the past, I've let that kind of comment slip past unremarked.  I'm beginning to see this only feeds the players' stonewalling.  Once they make a declaration, they'll make it true in their minds by saying it, then keep repeating it and believing it until it becomes a fact that can't be adjusted.  This will bury their enthusiasm for doing anything that counteracts this assumption ~ and it is all based on the conjecture that there must be a tiger there.

This is certainly enough.  Looking through the link midway through on improving user experience will give a few other ideas (I'm really just paraphrasing the fellow's work and making it D&D relevant).  These elements above are what you need to work on if you want to get the rigidity of your game focused and help express better to the player how much play they have in that system.

As I said, not easy.  But start with trimming the unused stuff out of your campaign, then correct your personal addresses to the players' concerns.  You can spend the next ten years learning how to do just those two things.


Postscript,

I'm going to be regularly making links between my blog and content that I write for Vocal media.  Many of these articles will not be about D&D.  Some of them, when I think of a good short subject, will be.  I will probably delete Brass Carrots from this blog and move it there at some point ~ it has proven to be one of my most popular posts, ever.  Understand, my interest is to get published; and Vocal media pays money for content (not much, so far).  If this blog will drive traffic there, I'm going to use this blog.  Please pay no attention to content (such as things about cats) that hold no interest for you.

Crossed Party Paths

Thank you, Maliloki, for asking a question yesterday that gives me an excuse to write this.

I have had three campaigns running in my world at the same time.  I still sort of do, but the online campaign's hiatus cruelly drags on.  Offline, I still have two running.  The question was, is it the same world for all parties?  And if not, is there a chance that the actions taken by one party will affect another?

My first party began in the town of Kolyeno in the county of Voronezh, Russia, on May 1, 1650.  It began there because that was the first part of my world that I mapped according to the principles my blog readers recognize (elevation, 20 miles per hex, etc.).  I began with Voronezh because it was flat steppeland, lightly populated and a long way from the ocean.  I felt, at the beginning of my mapping, that I should start deep inland, developing my skills as I moved outwards.

I know that in my book How to Run I proposed starting on an island or a peninsula.  I made that suggestion because I know most campaigners don't set out to make nit-picky maps based on the actual world's latitude and longitude.  A writer has to know the audience.

At the time of starting that campaign, eight years ago, I hardly had more of the world mapped than that tiny area of south European Russia.  Kolyeno is a tiny village of about 200 people, the right location to start a 1st level party.  In such a small village, their own, where they had friends and family, they weren't likely to be threatened until they took their first risks.  The choices the party made, combined with random events that involved the party indirectly, led them first towards China, then Persia and finally to Transylvania.  Throughout it all, it was their choice to stay or go.

The online campaign began within two weeks of a spontaneous idea I had in February, 2009.  I called it a 'stupid idea.'  It turned out to be somewhat better.  By 2009 I had four years of mapping under my belt and I had produced sufficient areas of the world to provide several options.  However, as I was working on advancing my trade system specifically for a start in Germany, I wanted to experiment with that.  Therefore, I offered the online players a choice of Mecklenburg, Saxony, Sudetenland, Vogtland, Erzgebirge, Bohemia, Moravia, Upper Austria and Bavaria.  The party ultimately went for the last option.  I rolled randomly for a center in Bavaria that wasn't Munich, Augsburg or Nuremberg (I did not want to start them in a big city) and got Dachau.  Yes, that same Dachau.

That location created the events that followed.  The choices the party made, combined with random events that involved the party indirectly, led them first towards Switzerland, then Cuxhaven (after a slight reboot) and finally to the Azov Sea.  Throughout it all, it was their choice to stay or go.

Of course these two campaigns were utterly unique, though they both started on the same date.  At the moment the First Party was in Kolyeno in Russia, the Second Party was waking up in Dachau, Germany.  When the year turned to 1651, the First Party was stumbling south through the desert east of the Caspian Sea, while the Second Party had just been freed from the hands of a bandit in northern Italy.

The Third Party began late in 2011.  Because I had done detailed maps of the area, and because that party did not care, it began in Kronstadt in Transylvania, again on May 1, 1650.  That party consisted of three persons who poked around the area a little before wandering generally southeast into Serbia, Kosovo and ultimately Albania.  When the year turned 1651 for them, Demifee had died and they had made their way to Amisos in northern Turkey.

Now, this is interesting.  In game time, the Third Party passed down the road from Amisos to Melitene before the Second Party, during January of 1651.  However, in real time, the Second Party had already been down that same road, in April of 1651.  Technically, after the Third Party in game time but the actual campaign took place in winter 2013/4.

If this doesn't fuck with your head, nothing will.

The Third Party never came to the little dungeon I set up for the Second Party (which they encountered on the way back to Amisos), for obvious reasons . . . I didn't need to!  As the Second Party came through, they came across the wounded Sphinx, who they saved, setting up a totally different adventure on the same ground.  Why wouldn't I?

Will these parties encounter each other?  Possibly.  For the next year, until Spring 1652, the First Party will be wandering around the northern Ural Mountains.  This because two members of the First Party pulled from a Deck of Many Things, earning the enmity of the same demon, then played stupidly playing with certain picture-portals in a dungeon (they were warned, seriously, that the pictures were EVIL), the demon grasped their souls and dumped them onto the first level of Hell.  Literally.  The rest of the party then went on a quest to get them out (the characters weren't dead, just trapped, a'la Theseus).  I doubt if the Second or Third parties will stumble across them, there, as 1651/52 plays out.

After that, the First Party settled in their Transylvania fief, only to spend the next year trying to wake up King Carol, the last king of the Avars, who slept for 900 years under a mountain in the Tatras between Slovakia and Galicia (Poland).  That is a whole other story.  For them, as I said on the previous post, it is now late 1653 . . . and for various reasons, they will soon be heading for Khorezm in Turkestan, to fight a big, big fight against an old enemy.

I expect that the Second Party, online, will be managing to keep alive in and around the Black Sea for all that time.

Meanwhile, the Third Party is returning these holy items to their origin.  I can't say yet where they will be, since the players only have some of this information . . . however, it looks like they will be crossing to Aria, in northwest Afghanistan, seeking knowledge.  Just now, they're involved in events in Egypt.

See, my world is so immense, so HUGE, that even if all three parties happened to be in the same place at the same time, it would probably be a big city - where they could easily not stumble across one another unless I arranged it.  Or, like the Second and Third parties both passing through Tokat, they would be there three months apart or more.

I don't have to take special steps to ensure they don't meet.  Though I do need to keep good records on the date.

Something made easy by the fact that my world uses the same calendar.

P.S.:

Do be sure and catch the newest post on my new cooking blog.

Don't Get Them

Want to hear something funny?  I've only just stumbled on StackExchange.

I suppose this kind of thing is necessary.  Someone is going to invent it, run it, drive traffic to it and use it as evidence that they're 'helping' bring the community together.  I can't say, however, that I have much interest in it - except as a thought experiment.

Take this page, the one that includes the most frequent questions.  In turn, take the question, "How do I get my PCs to not be a bunch of murderous cretins?"

The most popular answers are as follows:

• Blame the RPG you're playing.  Choose RPG's that do not promote casual violence
• Punish bad behaviour; make the players think hard about their immoral actions
• Take away the motivation for killing by changing the game mechanic
• The players are merely reacting to the setting you've created

It's a perfect representation of the same answers we get about why people commit crime in the real world:  environment, lack of alternatives, failure of deterrents and poor education.  Without thinking about it, a group of amateurs has re-invented the penitentiary system.  The argument that builds up on the page, mechanics vs. reward/punishment, reflects the real problem that has existed since we decided not to simply execute everyone in society that proved to be a problem:

How do you make people behave as you want them to behave, while giving them the illusion of freedom?

Well, I don't have an answer for that.  No one does.  The faulty premise is right there in the original question: the speaker has already condemned the players as "cretins" right out of the gate.  All conversation from there necessarily goes downhill, since the motivation here is clearly trying to change people . . . not play the game.

This does seem to be a special problem that exists among the participants in role-playing games.  I must assume that there are many participants who are playing these games with strangers, people who are not their friends, who are therefore unable to appeal to sentiment or mutual respect.

Speaking for myself, I only play with friends.  When I have had a new player, I have made sure I reach out and make that person my friend.  When this has proved impossible - and it has - then that person is not invited back.  I feel no responsibility towards people who are not friendly.

I must also assume that many participants are uncomfortable with fictional murder.  I am not.  When my players commit murder, I don't automatically set out to 'punish' them for their actions.  True, if they kill an especially powerful person, there will be consequences - but I don't automatically create consequences for every murder because I don't consider that important.  If the party feels a need to kill off a bunch of fictional creations from my imagination, I don't care.  These are my friends; they have stressful jobs; they work hard and throughout their days they have to put up with all sorts of objectionable people (cretins).  If they want to blow off a little steam by putting a sword through the ribs of a government official, who am I to deny them?

But, of course, inherent in the original question is the adjoiner, 'My PCs keep killing off the wrong people.'  That is, people who the DM created to deliberately manufacture the next part of the adventure.  There's no reason for the DM to care if the players kill off someone inconsequential.  It only matters if the players kill the DM's pet.

Well, that's the real world too, isn't it?  The cops don't care if some druggie is killed in a slum in Watts, Ferguson or Haarlem; but kill a white man uptown?  Yeah, then you've got trouble.

This is a good time for a digression.

I finished watching the 8-episode first season of Agent Carter.  Yeah, there are problems, but that isn't important right now.  Suffice to say I don't watch a lot of mainstream television, so there are tropes I remember that I haven't had to put up with for a long time.

For example, that ever-constant scene where the good girl has already determined how bad is the bad guy, along with how desperate it is that the bad guy be stopped and right now.  And here we are, with the good girl pointing a gun at the bad guy and not firing.

Wouldn't it be nice if television could work like D&D?  None of my players would hesitate to blast the bad guy by surprise through the open door; none of my players would warn the bad guy and tell him to put his hands up.  None of my players would ever, ever, get so close with a weapon that the bad guy could kick it out of their hands.

Here is the problem with RPGs in the hands of people who are uncomfortable with realities.  Too much time is taken in trying to make them work like television.  That's all the page on StackExchange has - endless arguments on how to enforce standards on player behavior, via mechanics or deterrents. Oh, it's all outlined as 'for the player's own good.'  All penal codes are.

I'm a DM.  I'm not running a penitentiary.  I'm not trying to rehabilitate my players.  I'm not interested in rebuilding the system so that it works as a better prison to inhibit play.  I am here to create a world and explain the functions of that world.  I am not here to judge.

If I don't like the player's behaviour, the player can get out.  But I'll be damned before I try to change anyone.

D&D Needs a Kindergarten

I cannot understand DMs who allow themselves to be held hostage by their players.  How often have we heard this?  The party has only just met an NPC - an old man, typically, but could be anyone - who begins to describe something.  Then one of the players says, without provocation, "I kill him."  Good moment gone.

There are pages and posts out there explaining how to punish a player that does this - even creating circumstances that will deliberately lure the player into the dumb action, then proscribing exactly how to humiliate the player to get the best results.  I will forego linking these sites.  We've all seen this approach.  I have even seen it said that DMs 'fear' dumb characters, or that the solution is the removal of intelligence, as a low intelligence encourages players to act stupidly.

Really.

Has everyone in this game had their brain removed?  Allow me to put it another way.

You get a group of players together for soccer (or football, if you're reading this in a civilized country). As the ball rolls towards Geoff, he turns and kicks the ball as hard as he can, straight off the field into the trees.

Do the other players a) ask Geoff what the fuck?; or b) presume this is Geoff's way of playing the game, arguing that he's just being a player the best way he thinks?

The ball is retrieved (Geoff refuses to do it) and put back in play.  Geoff approaches it, and, thump, back into the trees.

Do the other players a) gather together and figure out how to move the ball towards Geoff in such a way that Geoff will be humiliated, or b) do the other players threaten to beat the living crap out of Geoff and stop him from playing?

I really don't understand the people who play this game.  I don't understand why they can't take a simple and obvious social annoyance and treat it as it deserves to be treated.  I can only assume that there are many Geoff's in the world who have been booted off soccer fields who end up in role-playing games, with people who have been so completely abused by their school experiences that they're willing to tolerate any behaviour.

I suppose what I find so odd about this is that the same people, playing soccer in the example above, wouldn't hesitate to tell Geoff to fuck himself.  After all, Geoff is clearly ruining the game, for reasons known only to Geoff, in a manner that is imbecile and particularly annoying.  Yet if it is happening in a role-playing game, where Geoff is just as imbecile and just as annoying, and clearly still ruining the game for his own reasons, suddenly we're all supposed to be tolerant.

I wouldn't say Geoff needs a beating.  Chances are, if this is how Geoff behaves, he has had many beatings already.  I personally would ask him the first time, "Why are you behaving like this?"  The second time, I would just say, "Go.  Get out.  I'm not interested in playing with you."  Clean and simple.

What is it?  Are you so desperate for players that Geoff looks good?  Do you need Geoff?  Have you no self esteem at all?  Do you have so little actual regard for the game that you're still fuzzy on what acceptable play is?  It could be, after all, that since we've been trained to recognize the way soccer is played, and that the Geoff's of the world have spent hours in detention already for being obtuse, we accept and recognize the right way to play soccer - that is, to play it.

On the other hand, we had no kindergarten time for D&D.  So your players were never given a time-out for acting stupid - and you never watched them given a time out, so now you're totally fuzzy on what's right and what's wrong here.  Perhaps what's needed is a good six months in D&D kindergaren.  You need an adult to sit Geoff down and explain to the others what he did wrong, so the rest of you will finally know what happens when people don't play nice.

Hm?  Is that what you need?  An adult to sort this stuff out for you?

Perspective from the Floor

In the interest of making a plan, and thus having a purpose to plan for, as suggested in the previous post, suppose we attempt to view the game world from its simplest perspective.

Imagine, if the gentle reader might, that you are seated upon a very large, endless floor, that goes off in every direction without boundaries.  Imagine further that you are about 11 months old, on the cusp between infant and toddler, where you have managed to get up on your feet for a few steps, but that you crawl like the blazes.  Finally, let us grant that you have a little cognitive ability, perhaps a bit more than you reckon an infant has; you can mumble out a few words, you can recognize familiar objects and you have a comprehension of time.

Now, you're not particularly sleepy, and every direction looks precisely the same, so what do you do?  Well, off hand you have some options.  You can first see how far your feet, hands and knees will take you.  Given that using these seems only to present the same horizon as it did when you started, you soon tire of this except in that you're simply enjoying the process of movement.  When that enjoyment runs out, you can sit again, that being comfortable.  Now, next you can spend a little time playing with your fingers on the carpet, making patterns in the pile.  After that, you're reduced to examining the various parts of your body - the ways you fold your legs and arms, the sounds you can make, waving parts of you about, and so on.  Eventually, you'll settle down to a good game of "let's see what's in the diaper," which will take you a while.

In the end, however, if the circumstances don't change, you can holler for attention.  This usually results in your immediate environment changing, and that is a good thing.

Look at that collection of options:  travel, creativity, self-examination, investigation of mystery ... then, finally, a call for help.

Let's step out of the baby's mind, then, and put yourself as you are now in the picture - only, as it happens, you're utterly invisible to the baby.  Of course, you wouldn't normally be, but for our purposes we don't want to get wrapped up in the baby's reaction to you.  Let's say, instead, that you're simply here to place things into the baby's life that are going to matter to the baby.  What can you put there?

First, most obviously, any object at all.  That gives the baby something to walk or crawl towards.  You could give it directly to the baby, but consider how much more involving it would be to place it just inside the baby's cognitive knowledge, maybe twenty feet away.  Far enough away that the baby might start towards it, get tired, lose interest in the object, rediscover it, then start forward again ... only to happily seize the object once having covered the distance.

Now, what is this object?  Is it static, unchanging, or is it like the carpet, with a pile that responds to the baby's actions?  How effective is it in allowing the baby to experiment with it, changing how it is shaped, how well it bounces when thrown, what sound does it make when squeezed and so on.  These are all important elements in how a toy responds when a baby interacts with it ... for good reason.  The sounds interest the baby.  The create memory patterns, so that when the baby sees the object again, the baby remembers not just that it is interesting, but what can be done with it.  Moreover, if it allows lots of experimentation, or is something that takes great skill to manipulate in every way possible, the baby will keep coming back to it for a long time.

We might put out a bunch of objects, to allow the baby to 'choose' depending on the object's color or shape or versatility.  We might stagger the objects in lines, or in circles, so that as the baby moves further out from its starting point, it sees different things.  Perhaps the objects are more interesting and colorful in the outside circles, and less so nearer the baby.  Perhaps you might try the reverse.  What will give the baby the best overall experience?

Let's move on to self-examination.  Let's suppose that as the baby moves something, you laugh and the baby notices.  Or let's suppose that when the baby touches its hands together, you tickle the baby.  Suppose that for each different behavior, you offer some comparison behavior that amuses or rewards the baby, and that on the whole the baby is encouraged to touch its nose or rock on its bottom.

Now let's say that when the baby reaches its hands into its diaper you slap the baby's wrist.  Or say a mean word.  What is the effect of that?  What is the effect of compelling the baby to sit in one place until you're ready to let the baby move?  What happens when you take a toy out of the baby's hands?  The baby doesn't understand why you're doing these things, so if they don't seem to happen for any reason the baby is only going to get unhappy.  The more random you are with your negative actions towards the baby, the less the baby will understand and the more frightened or angry it will become.

Now ask yourself.  What is your world meant to do?  What is your world meant to offer?  How logical or rational are the rules about what people in your world can't do?  How randomly do you apply those rules? How long do your players have to wait before something happens?  How much is there for them to do?  How many choices have you offered?  How interesting are the choices?  And do the players understand why you let some things happen and not others?

Finally, since your players aren't babies ... how often do you give answers to the above questions while forgetting that most salient fact?