Aedilred
2009-06-18, 09:45 AM
For the last couple of months I've been running a PbP game and enjoying it immensely. I was initially slightly sceptical about running combat with no battlefield map, etc., but in fact that's worked out great. I find that the format gives me more time to breathe; I can offer better and more characterful descriptions of people, places, whatever, come up with appropriate NPCs on request, and respond better to what the players want to do rather than pushing them in directions I've already pre-prepared.
One thing that has repeatedly come into play, though, is that a player will say they want to do something, I'll crunch the numbers, present them with the results, and then they'll say "that's not what I meant" or the like. Which is fine in many situations, but in others it can present problems. For instance, I had one player searching a cavern. I told him how long it took to gather everything up from the floor and what he had amassed in total- somewhere in the region of two hundred tiny, shiny bits of metal, glass, and the like. It was pretty obvious that the room was cleared out.
It was pointed out that there was another chamber beyond, and the guy who'd been searching said "oh yeah, I'll carry on." Given that he's not usually the most descriptive of people, I took this to mean that he was going to carry on into the second room and search there, which set off a trap. When that happened it turned out that he had "meant" he carried on searching the same room and not going through any doorways or anything like that. At the end of the day I decided that if he was that worried about his character dying then he could keep it, and someone else ended up setting the trap off... but by that point the moment was kind of spoiled.
That was the worst example, but something along those lines has happened several times with different players, and it's starting to get a bit annoying. I've asked them to be as specific as possible when describing their actions, as it saves my having to make assumptions and doesn't slow the game down when I have to ask for clarification (something I try not to do anyway, as any questions along those lines that I ask tend to be over-analysed and give the game away). But of course it's to the players' advantage to be vague, because then they retain the "that's not what I meant" get-out-of-jail card, and I notice that in life-or-death situations their descriptions tend to become rather more open to interpretation.
In most respects things are going well and I'm happy with the group, but I can see this issue recurring again and again, and apart from anything else it could make the PCs rather difficult to kill if the players get serious about it (one or two of them are worse offenders than others), so has anyone had prior experience of this sort of problem, and have any useful ways to fix it?
One thing that has repeatedly come into play, though, is that a player will say they want to do something, I'll crunch the numbers, present them with the results, and then they'll say "that's not what I meant" or the like. Which is fine in many situations, but in others it can present problems. For instance, I had one player searching a cavern. I told him how long it took to gather everything up from the floor and what he had amassed in total- somewhere in the region of two hundred tiny, shiny bits of metal, glass, and the like. It was pretty obvious that the room was cleared out.
It was pointed out that there was another chamber beyond, and the guy who'd been searching said "oh yeah, I'll carry on." Given that he's not usually the most descriptive of people, I took this to mean that he was going to carry on into the second room and search there, which set off a trap. When that happened it turned out that he had "meant" he carried on searching the same room and not going through any doorways or anything like that. At the end of the day I decided that if he was that worried about his character dying then he could keep it, and someone else ended up setting the trap off... but by that point the moment was kind of spoiled.
That was the worst example, but something along those lines has happened several times with different players, and it's starting to get a bit annoying. I've asked them to be as specific as possible when describing their actions, as it saves my having to make assumptions and doesn't slow the game down when I have to ask for clarification (something I try not to do anyway, as any questions along those lines that I ask tend to be over-analysed and give the game away). But of course it's to the players' advantage to be vague, because then they retain the "that's not what I meant" get-out-of-jail card, and I notice that in life-or-death situations their descriptions tend to become rather more open to interpretation.
In most respects things are going well and I'm happy with the group, but I can see this issue recurring again and again, and apart from anything else it could make the PCs rather difficult to kill if the players get serious about it (one or two of them are worse offenders than others), so has anyone had prior experience of this sort of problem, and have any useful ways to fix it?