Tabletop Characters Being Foolish (Screen Rant article reaction)

Every once in a while, the clickbait headlines of Screen Rant get me to click. I mostly try to avoid it, but sometimes there is something that really looks like it has some potential value.*

Why Tabletop RPG Player Characters Sometimes Lack Common Sense

I gave this one a think after I read it.

There are three categories:

#1: Tabletop RPG Players Are Often Unfamiliar With The Game World & Its Rules

#2: Tabletop RPG Gamers Develop "Tunnel Vision" When Under Pressure

#3: Tabletop RPG Gamers Use Roleplaying To Do Things They Can't Do In Real Life

I don't see a lot of #1 in my games. People do mess up the rules - at least once a session, someone makes a mistake. But it's a tactical issue 9 times out of 10. People don't make big, game-changing, "I attack the guardsman" or "I insult the king" kinds of errors because of rules misunderstandings. Unless they misunderstand the campaign rules about what can get your paper man killed. If you haven't made it clear that insulting the king means you can die, players might assume it's a valid campaign choice. Those don't happen much in games I run. In games I've played in, though, I've seen this. Mostly it's willfull, and those players aren't lacking common sense but lacking a desire to fit in with the game. That's choice #3, really.

I think #2 carries a lot of weight. I've seen players myopically focus on some tiny detail while ignoring a larger issue. I've seen players make very odd decisions simply because they can't see another way around it. This happens a lot, even when the solution is at hand. I had a player argue very strenuously that I should bend or change the rules on Resurrection to allow the dead to come back with no penalty despite weeks between the death and the ritual . . . while sitting on a Wish that could bend solve the problem without changing the campaign. I've had players spend hours of game time trying to figure out a five-piece puzzle only to realize there are only four pieces and their map was wrong. Or ignoring stairs down because they were misnamed in discussion. Or trying spells they know won't work because they can't see that there is an easy non-spell solution because they're hypnotised by the list of spells. Add this onto the telephone game of mis-remembered details and one person's description of a situation and you get a total inability to see the forest for the trees.

The point about people getting focused on their record sheet over seeing the situation as a person in it is well taken, too.

A sub-point to #2 is sunk cost, I think. Sometimes players get invested in what they've done so far, and evaluate future choices based on past choices. Let's say you are badly battered party of adventurers, and you face a badly battered potential foe . . . who has something you'd like and you have something they'd like to trade for. They might not have traded if they weren't in desperate straights, and you the same. Do you trade? It's an easy yes . . . until I say, "you're badly battered because of a previous fight with these guys." Now it's personal, and they all need to die die die die die for fighting your characters and daring to not immediately surrender everything they own. That's a sunk cost fallacy. I think it's related to the tunnel vision of #2.

Point #3 has a lot of merit, too. A good chunk of RPGing is the lack of consequences to your real self for doing foolish stuff. It's a chance to act out that fantasy of being a total badass, or a reckless warrior, or whatever. So you get a lot of avoiding taxes, pulling knives in bar brawls, attacking the king (which happened in a high school AD&D game). I think that leads to some of the decisions in #2, actually. You get focused on being X or Y and having ability Z and not backing off the think about what you're trying to accomplish. "I'm a badass who doesn't take any guff," you might think, forgetting, "but taking a little guff here actually gets me what I want pretty easily." So you don't say, "Yes, sir" to the Baron and instead cut his head off, and bad stuff happens from there. And so on. I think #2 and #3 feed into one another in a way that #1 doesn't.

Overall, though, I think it's a worthwhile read.

* There are some poorly-researched articles on D&D on the site, though. This one, for example, misreads the AD&D Unearthed Arcana badly - cavaliers ignoring enemy troops isn't stated in UA, just ignoring friendlies, and it mentions provoking "attacks of opportunity" which isn't an AD&D rule. So I read anything on the site with more caution than usual because they've failed my "look it up before you write" rule. I'd mention that there but hey, Facebook login required and I'm not on Facebook.