As they went around the corner, the pit trap triggered for the two fighters in front. This caused some push back from the players– they didn’t think it should have gone off. They claimed that their ten-foot-pole trap checking was a continuous action and that they never stopped doing it. I didn’t quite see it that way, but in the interests of appearing fair, I gave one of the guys that fell in a DEX check to avoid falling in. He made it, but the other guy was in deep trouble: he only just barely survived the fall
- From Jeffro's Car Wars Blog, discussing Madicon21 and running Basic D&D.
There is a clash of expectations and play style that happens in gaming.
One style is that your character only does what you specifically say he's doing, and if you stop saying it, you stop doing it. This is where this happens: "I swing my sword at the dragon!" "You never said you drew your sword when you entered the dragon's cave. You need to spend a turn readying it."
Another style is that your character is assumed to be doing some "common sense" actions no matter what. If you're entering a dragon's lair, you need to say that you're not readying your sword otherwise we all assume you are. Or if you say you're watching the door, you keep watching the door until you say otherwise. Or that you reload your guns between fights even if you don't say so. Or that you don't touch anything when you examine it unless you say you're touching it. Or watch your back, even if you don't mention it.
You can get a serious culture clash, and disagreements/arguments/fights, when these styles encounter each other. If you assume you're doing the latter style and that looking up is just assumed, you're going to be pissed off when green slime drops on your guy and kills him. Or you might conversely frustrate the GM and other players by saying "I look up. I keep looking up. I'm looking up, okay?" when the rest assume that yeah, duh, that's just assumed and you have to say if you're not.
That bit I lifted from Jeffro's blog is an example of that. I've had the same - and in my current DF game I had to make it a particular point to say that we're doing the former. I will ask players what they are doing. "You're opening the door? Describe how, and everyone tell me what weapons or whatever you have out." I try to prompt them less and less, but it's an adjustment from a more heroic, "of course you slept lightly, facing the door" approach to "your PC is going to die because you didn't say you slept in your armor."
Some games split the difference, or allow you to cover style A with style B via the rules. GURPS, for example, has a Perk called "Standard Operating Procedure" that you can buy, describing some routine action you are assumed to do. "Always sits with his back to the wall, near an exit" say, or "Always cleans, oils, and maintains his weapons before doing anything else" or "Always keeps his dagger within easy reach" or something of that sort. You pay a premium to avoid having to remember to tell the GM you did some basic thing. GURPS also has genre switches where you can just say "In this game, you automatically reload in lulls in combat or between fights" or "bad guys only fight you one-on-one in melee" - essentially letting you set the basic assumptions of the game before you play. An OSR-inspired game wouldn't use these, but they make a heck of a lot of sense in an action movie or martial arts movie (or a Hollywood fantasy movie).
I think it's hard for people to adjust to that clash right out of the box. I think you need to do your best to state the assumptions up front. But everyone needs to recognize that assumptions are just that, and you won't realize you have them until it's a bit too late. Many people can play with either style, but if you expect one and get the other, well, you may end up in a pit despite your 10' poles.
The rules suggest that the players should establish a typical marching order, which is like this sort of thing. It reminds me of rangers in Vietnam. Six men would travel in a line, and each had a responsibility to keep watch in a certain direction. From memory here: The man on point looked down where he was walking (and everywhere else too). The following man looked ahead and up. The next two looked to either side. The team leader kept an eye on the team, to make sure they didn't spread out or bunch up too much. (With automatic weapons at close range, bunching up was a constant danger.) The last man kept an eye out for people following the team and also tried to conceal their passage as best he could by scuffing footprints and straightening undergrowth.
ReplyDeleteAll of the authors that I've read on the subject also take pains to point out that the very first thing the rangers did upon returning from a mission, no matter how exhausted, was to clean their weapons and ready their gear for another outing. This was because they could be called upon at any time to rescue comrades.
Maybe it's different for a group's first outing, but generally, I'd assume that characters going into Indian country are at their highest alert. Or at least tell them to create a marching order and ask them what each person is doing. That damn kobold ambush happens often enough that the DM should be prepared to get answers to these questions ahead of time, even if he needs to be a bit sneaky about it in order to not ruin the surprise.
I think as a GM, it's worth highlighting that, especially if the players are used to more action-movie style games or plot-protected PCs. My players use minis for marching order, and I'll cheerfully let people set up SOPs and refer to them.
DeleteGURPS DF also assumes everyone is on high alert - and I go with that in my games. I just note to my players that "high alert" doesn't mean "cannot be surprised" or "checks the trees for snipers" or "looks up without saying so." I just assume a baseline caution.
Which is kind of my point. I think everyone makes some assumptions, too, it just varies what. Does anyone make their players say they sharpen their swords, say? It's a question of setting expectations. If you're expectations are "I'm running a Navy SEAL, so of course I'm locked and loaded at all times" and the GM's expectations are "You're a Navy SEAL, I expect you to tell me you're locked and loaded" you get headaches.
Lucky for me, my players don't argue this stuff much. For all they like the argue rules with me, they figure, yeah, we should have said "We look behind us." And they sure do. One mini is always facing sideways or backwards. :)
Usually for my games I do a brief bit of talk with my players to establish what works best between myself and them. My first bit of advice is always that characters are as perceptive as their players, so that unless we're playing something like 3.5 where they are allowed listen checks automatically, it is their own blunder to not take precautions. Plus I often remind them of other things I may do as a player, though don't get that wrong, I do not hold their hand. It's a warning before play (that gets quickly reminded at the beginning of almost every game just in case).
ReplyDeleteThey're pretty good at keeping track and thinking sensibly so it's not usually a problem, and if there is one we fix it quick and carry on. We follow the routine of regularly stating what our characters are doing, or at least telling the referee that a character will always do Y at X moment, unless otherwise is said. Weapons being drawn or kept ready for most of a dungeon is common practice unless hands are needed for something else.
We don't do "action movie" stuff. Keeping track of logistics is actually fun for our military player. We also always have a thief/rogue on hand combing over everything in front of the party and testing everything they may assume to be trapped. Pit traps just about never actually get anyone in our games, unless it is the mooks tricked into their own traps, that is.
It really helps to establish some even ground between the referee and the players before the game even starts. Because nothing pisses off (my) players more than saying "Oh yeah, and..." about some miscellaneous thing they could have been keeping track of since minute one.
Yeah, that negotiation is critical. I've done, "You didn't say that this time, but we'll say it happened anyway and next time you need to say it explicitly."
DeleteI think ultimately you negotiate what's fair and what's not with your fellow gamers. This is why you usually hear about a new guy having an issue with a group rather than an veteran group suddenly getting hammered with mistaken assumptions. They've adjusted to each others' style of play.
We relied on "The Usual," which was a list of actions we were assumed to take while advancing, searching, and so forth. The party could simply say, 'We're doing "The Usual,"' and the referee understood what that meant.
ReplyDeleteI need to get my players to write down more SOPs, I think. It would speed things up (and then they could vary when it changes instead of doing it over each time).
DeleteMy position is somewhere between that "simon says" approach and the common sense approach. I don't make risky decisions on behalf of PCs, and I allow the common sense excuse or standard operating procedures unless there was a distraction or risk involved.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. Yeah, that's a fair approach.
DeleteI try to use common sense, but keep my wits about me for any possible mistakes or exploits. While some stuff can be assumed, such as having a weapon drawn in a dungeon, others cannot. If in the first combat a player uses a crossbow and then in the second he tries using a sword in the first round, I'll call him on not saying he changed weapons. Clerics trying to cast with a weapon and shield has also become an issue on occasion.
ReplyDeleteAs far as "looking up" is concerned, I find that players often time make too many assumptions because they only imagine the situation and aren't actually there. My solution to this? Video games!
Get a PC to play a bit of Skyrim. I know this is crazy, but Skyrim's dungeons are littered with traps! Many of these traps are put right out in the open. Pressure plates, tripwires, bone rattles etc. You'll be surprised how many traps you actually set off only to turn around and say "How didn't I see that?"
Sorry for writing a book here!
I wonder. My gamers play video games and then moan about lacking automaps and joke about not finding gold just laying on the floor. ;)
DeleteSince Skyrim's been brought up, it doesn't have an automap either, and there's not much in the way of gold just lying around... Most of the loot is in sellables, although you'll occasionally find a few coins on tables, or in a coin purse.
DeleteMost video games aren't like that at all. Skyrim has a very... tabletop feeling to it that I like.
But, on the other hand, one of my players derisively refers to *anything* vaguely like logistics as "pixel bitching" and wants to assume everything between combats goes by in a pink fog of full-cinematic cut-scenes. I'm an incurable arrow-counter, so it's been difficult finding a middle ground.
I wasn't saying Skyrim automaps. Just what my video game fan players complain about.
DeleteI think your player is engaged in actual bitching, not pixel bitching. He's clearly got a very different approach to the game. I'm willing to let some logistics slide, but not a lot of it, and so far I haven't had someone so completely different from my approach as your player seems to be from yours.
To me one of the most important things is it's a role playing game. Dungeon Delvers are assumed to have had training that the player probably doesn't have I mean even if your player is a member of force recon he doesn't living in a world with cloakers, mimics, and sentient slimes. If you want any role-playing at all out of your players you not going to get it buy get the player have to spell out things that are foreign to them but second nature to their characters.
ReplyDeleteGood point rogue. It does depend on you assuming that the characters know about cloakers, mimics, and sentient slimes. Or the best way to deal with them.
DeleteThe approach I try to use is to give a character-appropriate benefit of the doubt once and then from there out it's up to the player. "Your soldier knows all about slimes, and knows they disintegrate swords - still want to hit it?" "You wizardly teachings informed you that fireballs expand to fill the volume of the spell's area effect, do you want to do that?" After that, it's up to the player.
Man, your blog brings back my Living Greyhawk days. So, a lot of players would have procedures, like the dwarves sleeping chain shirts (Since they didn't get fatigued from it, and a few too many adventures pull the night ambush trick), Arcane casters using Mage Armour on themselves every morning, and so on. However, some DMs were dicks about it, insisting if they hadn't played with the player before and the player forgot to mention something, it didn't happen, which is rather a pain when you are in a 4 hour convention slot when every PC has to explain a dozen small things they do which probably won't come up. Which lead to some players I know writing things on their table tents (Little tents that said their characters name, class, race type stuff). My Dad had one he always had to specify due to a couple asshole DMs, I think it was something to do with an elemental resistant cloak he had or somesuch, but he never got to the point of writing it on his table tent.
ReplyDelete