Disaster session - DM help needed

[fergo]

Hi guys.

New(ish) DM asking for advice after a disastrous session.

I posted about the same campaign, and the same player, a couple of weeks ago (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?614911-Am-I-a-bad-DM). I’m not doing the whole self-pitying “Am I a bad DM” thing again because in this case I know I am. I’ve just had a disastrous session where I lost my temper with a player, to the point of snapping at them and being rude. I’m ashamed at myself and I’m not sure I’m going to continue DMing, at least for a while.

I’m not going to try and pass the blame here: the common denominator in the two posts I’ve made is me. That said, I do believe I was put in a difficult situation as a DM and I’d genuinely like people’s feedback on how better to handle similar situations in the future—possibly well in the future, depending on if I decide to take a break from running games.

Oh, I’d also like to mention me and this guy are good friends and we’ve both apologised to each other, for what that’s worth.


Before the session

Two players, no magic fantasy setting. I don’t know if I mentioned the system last time but its WFRP 2nd edition, which is infamously pretty deadly and where the PCs aren’t necessarily exponentially more powerful than NPCs. I’m going to call the players Rob and Bill, Bill being the one I had an issue with.

Both players present themselves as good and dedicated roleplayers: this isn’t a situation where I’m trying to force a player to come out of his shell and roleplay or make decisions more than he’s comfortable with, Bill has had years of roleplaying experience and has previously talked about his good of a story-side roleplayer he is.

Since my first session, I made a conscious effort to place Bill more in the centre of things. The last two sessions have circled around him, as the small party travelled back to his home town and met with people from his childhood. The party are investigating an assassination plot and it has turned out that at least part of the plot centres on a fanatical cult lead by an occultist, who believes a certain general is the reincarnation of the last king and wants to overthrow the current monarch to secure the kingdom for the general’s pre-ordained and divinely appointed victory.

This is all based on prophesizing and astrology, things that the PCs have previously derided in-character so I admit that I thought that they would dismiss the cult’s claims out of hand. Bill decided that his character was genuinely interested in joining these guys, which is fine, I knew that was a possibility and had broad plans of how the campaign could play out in this case.

(My original idea was that this general is a charismatic madman with delusions of grandeur, but I was considering changing that: the PCs would probably feel pretty disappointed if they burnt all their bridges with the current regime by siding with a murderous cult and they finally met this guy and he had pants on his head, pencils up his nose, and said “wibble”, you know?).

I thought the last few sessions went pretty well. The party meet these guys, who scope them out as potential recruits to the cause. The only sticking point was that Bill decided to roleplay his character as a sceptic, interested but not thoroughly convinced by their arguments; I prodded that perhaps these fanatical loyalists might not share their innermost secrets with someone who seemed to already have half a foot out the door, but he said that obviously they would see how valuable of an ally his character could be—basically they needed him more than he needed them. He never tried to spell out, either in or out of character, why his character should be so valuable to the cult, but I decided to let it slide since I didn’t want to seem to be policing how he roleplayed.

Meanwhile and elsewhere, Rob was acting deliberately provocative and got himself attacked, and ended up killing some of the cultists in the fight. I let Bill calm tensions with a couple of charm tests, and before you know it the pair are fully-fledged cult members, tasked with carrying an important letter which, what do you know, spells out some of the mysteries behind the plot they’ve been investigating.

As to their eventual goals, there was a bit of disagreement there, with Rob just pretending to be part of the cult to try and bring it down from within, and Bill genuinely interested in maybe joining them. However, they were on the same page in the short- and medium-term, so I was happy go ahead.

The last session ended with the party having to decide between two paths, basically, two objectives to follow. They weren’t mutually exclusive, necessarily, but delay in one might prejudice their chances of success. I specifically asked the players to discuss it over and decide which way to go, so I knew what session to prepare for next week. They disagreed, but eventually Rob talked Bill over.

Early yesterday it turned out that the players had chatted a few days ago and reversed their decision, but hadn’t thought to tell me. When I queried that (gently), Rob changed his mind again and went back to wanting to go the original way (the one I’d prepared), and Bill agreed to follow along. I thought things were resolved pretty amicably, with a compromise position reached, and me reassuring Bill (in universe) that going this way now shouldn’t completely scupper their broader plans.


The session

The party are heading up towards the border of a country, to persuade the king not to invade their homeland. They’re almost at the border when, at nightfall, they get to a village which is about to be attacked by raiders from said country, who ask for their help.

My general idea was to have a bit of a battle scene as things have been very talky for the last few sessions, to help Rob’s fighty character feel useful compared to Bill’s talky one. They were also going to find out important information that helps them with their mission. It wasn’t going to materially delay them: I repeatedly mentioned it was nightfall, so they’d be looking for somewhere to stop anyways.

I had no reason to think Bill wouldn’t play along: he’d been improving his character’s meagre fighting abilities recently, and I was going to have the villagers offer him some better equipment so he could at least hold his own next to Rob.

Rob immediately jumps into organising the defences, etc. When I ask Bill what his character thinks of all this, he says that they’re pursuing an important mission, they’re not here to defend random villagers, and his character isn’t built for combat anyways.

At first we thought he just meant that his character was going to sit the fight out, but then it emerged that his character was going to keep on riding: no attempt to persuade Rob’s character to follow, just immediately set out into the night.

This, of course, being towards the country that the raiders are coming from, less than an hour away. I want to emphasise this, as I specifically asked him to confirm that he was planning to ride towards the oncoming raiders, and Rob did the same and pointed out that since they might have to fight the raiders anyways, better to do it in a fortified village with some allies.

This was a pretty lengthy discussion, which is important, because Bill later claimed that he didn’t know that he was riding directly towards the oncoming raiders. But anyways, that’s what happens. He fails his perception test and fourteen angry men charge at him, surprised to find a random monk wandering around at night in the middle of nowhere but carrying out their mission, which is to kill/kidnap people, burn villages, and cause commotion in the hope of provoking a war.

Bill gets hit with a pistol and loses more than half his health, and Rob eventually talks him into surrendering, much to his chagrin. His plan before then was to dismount and hide under his horse, in the hope that the raiders might just go straight past him, or at least leave a couple of guys behind to deal with him. In hindsight I should have ran with this and gave him a fighting chance, but in any case he’d surrendered before his idea was put to the test.

So long story short, most of the rest of this session was this long fight scene which I’d carefully prepared, in which Bill played no part. Rob rallies the villagers, and derails the attackers’ plans much more successfully than I’d thought he could. It was a lot of fun.

Eventually we cut back to Bill’s character, who’s being lead back by one guy into their country, hands tied behind his back. I go along with his escape plan: he slips his ropes, even though his character doesn’t actually have that skill, and stuns his guard with a kick, even though that’s not really provided for mechanically. I was feeling bad that, yet again, his plan to go off by himself ended in disaster, so wanted to work with him. Knowing that Rob had successfully driven off the raiders, he then decides to ride back towards the village, the way he came, riding behind his guard with a pistol pointed at his back.

Except inevitably he runs into the retreating raiders. He successfully hears them coming. I tell him that he’s in a valley in the middle of the night, and that there are slopes to either side with bracken and ferns. I was trying to let him know that perhaps hiding was an option and letting them go past, without explicitly telling him so. He later claimed that he understood me to be saying there was nowhere to run or hide.

This is where things go really wrong, and turned a mess of a session into a true disaster. He tells his captive to play along when his friends arrive. “I tell him basically be cool, to let them know we’re friends now.” That is it. That’s all the instructions he gave. He also tried to threaten him, but flubbed his intimidation role, and then complained that of course this guy is threatened, there’s a gun pointing at him. (I told him that yes, the captive will play along because his life is in danger, but truly he’s not really scared of Bill’s character).

I point out that the retreating raiders might be suspicious that they last saw the two of them riding the other way, with Bill’s hands tied behind his back, and now they’re coming back towards the fight, with Bill clearly free (I asked if he wanted to put his hands behind his back and pretend to still be tied, but he said that he didn’t).

The raiders arrive, say, “Hey, what’s with this?” I ask Bill how he wants to respond, and he says, no, he’ll let his captive take the lead on this. The captive says something like, “Oh, we’re friends now,” with no additional explanation (because that’s what Bill told him to say). Fails his bluff check. Raiders pass their perception check, and don’t believe him. Frankly I thought I was being bloody generous just rolling for this, as it’s just such an implausible lie.

This is when things get heated. Bill accused me of always calling his ideas stupid (which I have never done, although to be frank I’m pretty close to it with his “let’s just say we’re friends now” plan). I’m annoyed because I feel that Bill isn’t paying attention, isn’t playing along, and has basically asked me to come up with a compelling lie to tell on behalf of the captive, when neither he as a player nor his character has bothered to think of one.

Rob chimes in at this point and says “Oh, you could tell them X, Y, and Z,” coming up with a decently believable plan. And Bill’s character has deception skills and talents coming out of his ears, so he could probably pull it off. Bill says, “Yeah, maybe,” but doesn’t seem convinced.

By this point the session is ruined in any case. I’m snapping at Bill, Bill is complaining I never give his ideas a fair chance, and we decide to just leave things there.

Like I said, we’ve since apologised to each other, but I’m not certain about continuing. As a GM I should never, ever lose my temper and snap at my players, that’s just unacceptable. I’m going to have to be certain that I’ll never do that again before I’d feel comfortable DMing.

But just in case... more experienced DMs here, what should I have done? How could I have prevented the session from getting to that point?

[OldTrees1]

Obviously keep calm.

Quick thing I noticed, both of your stories have your and Bill estimating the feasibility differently. You control the DCs and world so your estimation becomes reality. Bill operates based on their estimation, and falls flat, again, and again, and again.

If I were you, this would encourage me to recalibrate. I would empower the PCs and lower the DCs.

[Lacco]

Reminds me of a player I had. Brilliant roleplayer, great at coming up with the strangest plans that could've worked but there was always one point he forget - usually quite obvious point.

Which everyone at the table could easily spot. Except for him.

The others were usually slow to come up with a plan and he always grew restless and then stormed off, doing his thing, usually complicating stuff even more, but to hilarious and dramatically appropriate levels. Interestingly, he did not mind that - he was irritated by the constant "noplanning" (lengthy waiting for someone to come up with a plan). The others did not mind - they did not want to come up with plans.

I talked to him several times and finally asked him - directly - to do only one thing next time he has a plan. Tell everyone. Involve everyone in the plan (IC and OOC). If he believes his barbarian would not tell them, then he - as a player - should tell them.

It worked. And he even came up with his little minigame. You know, like Rocket sends Quill for the leg? He did similar stuff. Always picked up one person and told them completely crazy thing to do.

Since then, we had no trouble.

[fergo]

Obviously keep calm.

Quick thing I noticed, both of your stories have your and Bill estimating the feasibility differently. You control the DCs and world so your estimation becomes reality. Bill operates based on their estimation, and falls flat, again, and again, and again.

If I were you, this would encourage me to recalibrate. I would empower the PCs and lower the DCs.

Thanks, OldTrees.

My issue is that I don't see Bill as judging the difficulty of things differently to me, he just assumes he's going to be successful at things that his character isn't proficient in. When he's doing things his character is good at, he's almost universally successful.

Making, say, combat easier so that he could single-handedly defeat fourteen armed men would make the game boring for Rob, who has done his best to make his character actually proficient in combat.

And addressing the point that caused a break-down in my session, nothing about the actual mechanics of the game was an issue. It was just that Bill hadn't put any thought into how he expected his plan to succeed, and was upset when things didn't just resolve themselves in his favour. If I'd just hand-waved the challenge away I'd be basically saying that the game wouldn't have any real challenges because even the most outlandish plans would work without a charm.

[Silly Name]

Honestly, I feel like Bill is a bit of a problem player: as you've noted, he kinda expects things to work in his favor without actually putting in the thought necessary to make his plans work. There might be some miscommunication here and there, but his overall behavior strikes me as a bit problematic. Splitting the party almost on a whim, demanding his plans succeed even when it's clear they're not really based in logic, wanting his character to do things he technically couldn't... There's a few red flags here.

And from the discussion you two had, I would be inclined to feel that it'd be an hard topic to breach and discuss with him. I would want to have a discussion with Rob present too and talk about expectations and basic assumptions of the campaign, character concepts and their goals.

[OldTrees1]

Thanks, OldTrees.

My issue is that I don't see Bill as judging the difficulty of things differently to me, he just assumes he's going to be successful at things that his character isn't proficient in. When he's doing things his character is good at, he's almost universally successful.

Making, say, combat easier so that he could single-handedly defeat fourteen armed men would make the game boring for Rob, who has done his best to make his character actually proficient in combat.

And addressing the point that caused a break-down in my session, nothing about the actual mechanics of the game was an issue. It was just that Bill hadn't put any thought into how he expected his plan to succeed, and was upset when things didn't just resolve themselves in his favour. If I'd just hand-waved the challenge away I'd be basically saying that the game wouldn't have any real challenges because even the most outlandish plans would work without a charm.

Leaving Rob out of it for a moment, it still sounds like Bill's estimation of difficulty for these tasks is less than your estimation of the difficulty of these tasks. In areas Bill is proficient, they almost universally succeed. This could still happen if Bill thought the tasks were easier than you did. In areas Bill is not proficient, they attempt the things they assume will have a decent chance of success, and you estimate those as having a low chance of success. Since you set the difficulty, Bill fails again and again.

Bringing Rob back in, if 2 people can have different expectations, 3 people can have different expectations. How you balance different expectations is a difficult, and sometimes impossible, task.

The point that caused a break-down (from my understanding) had Bill attempt to intimidate the captive and then try to instruct the captive on what to say. They expected this to work. You expected it to be harder (you gave it a chance) and ended up not working. This was followed by:


Rob chimes in at this point and says “Oh, you could tell them X, Y, and Z,” coming up with a decently believable plan. And Bill’s character has deception skills and talents coming out of his ears, so he could probably pull it off. Bill says, “Yeah, maybe,” but doesn’t seem convinced.

Descriptions like this sound like Bill thinks you will say "No" so Bill is becoming unmotivated. In this description we hear your thoughts, so we know you think it could reasonably work.

Identifying a key aspect to the problem does not necessarily solve the problem. I agree with Silly Name, have a discussion between the 3 of you. Try to get the expectations to align a bit closer. Be open to some give and take here.

[Wise Weasel]

Well, I'd put a lot of this on the DM. One of the big jobs of the DM is to keep the game together, and reading your post it seems like the DM just does not care.

So the big points I see:

Always try to keep the group together. Even if it's just two characters. Making a whole story plot set up to drive them apart is a bid idea. Each player can have different end goals, but they need to have all the same current goals.

In for the penny in for the pound. The village attack is a classic example. One player says ''who cares about the village" and one player says "we must save everyone". And to make it ten times worse, the players are already on a mission. Typically, you want to do a mission and not get side tracked. This is one of the worst DM mistakes: the players get or pick a mission....and then the DM just throws distractions into their path of "hey lets stop that mission and do something else." While sometimes a small side mission is nice....the twist is that they are often not small. A small side mission would take maybe 15 minutes. Things like defending a village take hours, days, whole game sessions. So it's odd that "pop in, defend the village" was thought of as a quick easy thing. If you wanted to do a 'quick combat" encounter that would be bandits or a wild animal...not a whole other campaign.

Also, if you do want the characters to stop and say defend a village, you need to make it worth it. Make it part of the story: the kings daughter is in town and needs protection(and maybe she is a cult member too....) Plus have a reward, a big one.

You might notice the lack of town details....and it's a bit odd after the huge detail bulk of the story above it. If the town was so plain and boring....then it should have not been there at all. But if the town was even a small part of that big story....add more details.

The encounter is another typical DM mistake: The invaders encounter a lone monk say what do they do: Well with no thought the DMs only answer is Attack! Attack! Though that is hardly the only thing that could have happened. For example, it was just as likely they ignore the one lone person. Bill has a talking character, not a fighting one....so you should try and make his encounters more talky...less pure combat. Like maybe the raiders just leave one guy...Dudley the Mighty...to "take care of him and catch up". Maybe Dudley is not really "in" to all of it and can be talked out of it.

Running into the retreating raiders....well again DMs call. They could have just rode right past him....for example.

And a lot of the Bill encounters seem to be lone Bill vs a mob....and you don't want to do that in a solo encounter. Keep it more one on one.

To me the game feels like a mess. There is the whole kingdom conspiracy thing...but they the game wanders out into the woods for some random invader encounters.

[King of Nowhere]

i would blame mostly bill. he keeps wandering off on his own and tries to do things he's not proficient. when he fails, it's only his fault. but aside from that, he going around for solo adventures times and again is a big waste of table effort. it makes everything harder for everyone. solo adventuring can be done to some extent, but not like that.
your fault, on the other hand, is not reining him in. you should encourage him to stay with the party and plan out with them.
take iacco's example

[Composer99]

So... granting that we only have your side of the story, but it seems as if part of the problem is the discrepancy between Bill being, as you put it, a solid "story-side roleplayer" and Bill's system mastery, and/or ability to cope with not being good at stuff, insofar as he seems to believe that he will just succeed, even when the game mechanics, and especially his build choices, are working against him. We saw this in the last thread.

Also, to be honest, even that "story-side roleplayer" stuff is in doubt if Bill's going to consistently make decisions such as "not stay the night somewhere despite it being time to stay the night somewhere" or "ride off into potential danger alone despite being a poorly-skilled combatant".

Now, having said that, we are only getting your side of the story, here. Bill might be used to game systems where the kind of stuff he likes to do is easier to accomplish; or used to playing with DMs/GMs whose game-running style is more compatible with his playstyle. Well and good.


I do think losing your temper and snapping is on you, and it's a good idea to take a bit of time off to reflect.

While you are doing so, I concur with suggestions to make an effort to have a session 0.5 (or two) with your two players. It seems to me that the kind of game you want to run, or are trying to run, and the kind of game Bill thinks he is playing are not the same, and you need to get on the same page with some kind of compromise. The three of you are trying to have fun, and unless your playstyles are quite incompatible, it ought to be, in theory, possible to sort things out so as to manage that.


One last thing to remember is that deadlier game systems - and, correct me if I'm wrong here, but WFRP is, as I understand it, among such games - are less tolerant of players running off, doing their own thing, and getting into trouble. Or, rather, you can still do that sort of thing, but when you do that sort of thing in WFRP, your character is probably going to die. So when you're having your discussions you'll want to remind both players of that fact. No matter how sandboxy/open world you're running the game, they have to commit to make RP decisions that ensure they are sticking together.

There was an article about making decisions in-character in a pro-party/pro-social way here on GitP until the forums crapped out; I'm not sure whether they've been reinstated anywhere else on the website, but you might find them, or similar advice elsewhere, somewhere on the internet. If you can find some advice like that, it's helpful to nudge your players in that direction.

[Kesnit]

My issue is that I don't see Bill as judging the difficulty of things differently to me, he just assumes he's going to be successful at things that his character isn't proficient in. When he's doing things his character is good at, he's almost universally successful.

Various games have different mindsets. I'm not familiar with WFRP, so can't speak to how deadly it is. But there are a lot of games where the PCs are assumed to be the heroes; players in those games tend to assume everything will work out. At the same time, players who are used to that kind of game will assume the same mindset, even in a different game.

Several years ago, I was running a 3.5 game. I don't like the idea of just handing PCs loot, so was building harder and harder encounters. At one point, one of my players said to me "you know, we are supposed to win." It was a shocking moment because they had been winning - a lot. But the player didn't see it that way because the victories were hard-fought.

Reading the accounts of this campaign makes me think Bill is like my annoyed player - the PCs are always supposed to win, no matter what they do (or don't do). This idea is double because you had spent several game sessions playing up to Bill's strengths; of course Bill is going to succeed under those terms. Bill got used to "winning," and thought he would always win...


It was just that Bill hadn't put any thought into how he expected his plan to succeed, and was upset when things didn't just resolve themselves in his favour. If I'd just hand-waved the challenge away I'd be basically saying that the game wouldn't have any real challenges because even the most outlandish plans would work without a charm.

Bill didn't have any ideas. Did his character? Did you give Bill a chance to roll (or whatever you do in WFRP) to see if his PC (who is social) could talk or otherwise think his way out of the problem?


Always try to keep the group together. Even if it's just two characters. Making a whole story plot set up to drive them apart is a bid idea. Each player can have different end goals, but they need to have all the same current goals.

From the sound of it, the OP intended them to be together, and they were for the most part. It was when they got to the village that Bill left.


In for the penny in for the pound. The village attack is a classic example. One player says ''who cares about the village" and one player says "we must save everyone". And to make it ten times worse, the players are already on a mission. Typically, you want to do a mission and not get side tracked.

I had the same thought. Why was this village important? What was the point of the raider attacks?

I get that the OP intended this as something to play up to Rob's strengths, but IC it makes almost no sense. How much fortifying could be done in the time between Rob and Bill arriving and the arrival of the raiders? Really, it sounds like Rob managed to do days worth of work in a couple of hours. A better idea probably would have been to (i) not mention the raiders until they attacked and have Rob try to rally the villagers, or (ii) have the raiders set up as "let's tell the guard at the next town" or "let's come back with reinforcements," etc.



"the players get or pick a mission....and then the DM just throws distractions into their path of 'hey lets stop that mission and do something else.'"

This can work in computer games because the mission is always going to be there, even if you take a few months off of saving the world to grow a garden. Not so much in a tabletop game. :smallsmile:


The encounter is another typical DM mistake: The invaders encounter a lone monk say what do they do: Well with no thought the DMs only answer is Attack! Attack!

This, too. The raiders are off to attack a village where they can get supplies and slaves. What are they going to get from a single, unknown rider? (Yes, he's on a mission, but the raiders don't know that.) Again, I suspect this comes back to the mindset of "PCs = heroes," (this time on the part of the DM) which is not always the case. Really, the single rider just isn't important.


so you should try and make his encounters more talky...less pure combat.

Also, this. OP, you had spent a long while playing up the Bill's strengths. Why change here?

[KillianHawkeye]

As a GM I should never, ever lose my temper and snap at my players, that’s just unacceptable. I’m going to have to be certain that I’ll never do that again before I’d feel comfortable DMing.

Look, to be honest, you're a human being and human beings sometimes get frustrated and lose their temper. It's perfectly natural. You do not need to be above this in order to be a DM.

It's frankly an unreasonable assumption for you to make upon yourself.

[Kraynic]

I wouldn't be too concerned about people being critical of there being a distraction, or of the lone person being attacked. To my mind (as both DM and player), having things happen on the way are the times that are the best for moral dilemmas for characters. That is when you find out what is important to the characters (or at least the players). They have to weigh all they know about their current mission against the day (or whatever) that would be spent on this other problem. And what it would mean if they fail one or both. Obviously, you don't want to do this all the time, but it keeps the world "alive". There are other things going on. Some of them you might be able to deal with along the way, and others you just end up having to let them resolve in whatever way they may. You can also cause your players all kinds of paranoia by having them ride into some little place to spend the night during a wedding celebration (or whatever). Where nothing goes wrong!

Also, if a lone player runs into raiders, aren't lone riders the best kind (from the perspective of the raider)? They are generally easy to overpower with little damage done to a group, and at the very least the lone rider has a horse. In most games outside D&D (from what I have seen), horses are valuable, just as they were in real life. If you catch a thief that stole your gold, you may cut off their hand, but you kill someone that stole your horse.

It has been brought up that the 2 players might need to coordinate better to more easily survive in that system. How well do their characters actually coordinate? Did they create characters that can actually work together? If they didn't, that will probably be an ongoing issue that will come up as your game goes on. I'm assuming that the 2 of them get on pretty well from your description, so there probably isn't an issue with players working together.

I have recently run a couple one-shot games that were mysteries. I actually didn't hide any facts from the players, and provided at least superficial information just for talking to people. And I mean I gave them at least a tidbit of info for talking to anyone that might have a slim chance of knowing something they would (eventually) need to know. Part of this is because I don't know what they players know or can guess. Sometimes the players are way ahead of where I think they are, but sometimes they aren't. The players often haven't had the same life experiences I have and can't easily visualize certain things, or know how certain pieces of information may fit together. Any time I am uncertain of what players are picking up when I DM, I tend to add more details to descriptions. Did Bill know how much concealment could be had in that terrain at night? It sounds like he didn't. You could have thrown in how his character would gauge chances of concealment in those conditions. And if you do that as part of the description, then you get that info in before any decision is made, while the player is still gathering info, and will now be better informed to make a decision. If he still wants to rely on bluffing his way, then he has discarded the "easy" way and whatever happens from there should be a known gamble (and the dice aren't always friendly).

Temper can be a hard thing. I mean, you throw time into designing this grand adventure and then the players come along and wreck everything! The gall! Over time, I have come to being fine with players wrecking things. I actually kind of look forward to a group doing that. They break their toys, then they have to fix them if they don't like how things become. Either that, or fixing things becomes part of the next game... Be attached to your world, but less so to the npcs therein. Give your players as much info as you can without their eyes glazing over. Hopefully that will help cut down on the frustration.

Oh, and when the players come along and wreck all your work, or do something really strange, try to cultivate the idea that this is just the seed of the next adventure, and laugh. Preferably an "evil" laugh. It may relieve your tension and make the players wonder what you are thinking up. Even if, in that moment, it is only "Why me?".

[fergo]

Hey guys, thank you for all of your help and advice. Obviously I have a lot to learn.

I'm going to pick up on a couple of the points people have made, if that's okay.

A fair few of you commented that I shouldn't have let the party split. My question would be, how should I have prevented that? Before the session begun I'd said I'd prefer that the players didn't split the party: it was in the context of the two different options the party faced, as Bill suggested it as a possible solution. Perhaps I should have, out of character, reiterated this preference? Or should I have just flatly said, no, you're not splitting up, decide what to do as a party?

(More broadly, I think I made a fundamental mistake when setting up the campaign. I presented the party with this mystery, with multiple directions they could go in to unravel different elements. I thought I was being a good DM by allowing the party the freedom of choice of how to go about solving the mystery. In hindsight, I think I presented them with two many different leads to follow, which inevitably led to disagreements over which direction to go in and resulted in a frustrating experience as they have to decide between mutually exclusive options and feel that they were missing out on some opportunities. And with a two-person party, there's no deciding vote between any two given options. Perhaps I should have reconfigured the mystery to present them with one broad path to follow, and just gave them a lot of lateral freedom on how exactly to follow this path?).

More generally, at least a couple have said that the whole protecting-the-village thing was an unnecessary distraction, and that including it at all was a bad idea. That's a really good point, and something I think I'll have to take on board: keep things more focussed, set a mission and have everything very clearly directly related to it from that point on. I had, in fact, given some thought to how helping this village would result in them gaining valuable information that would help them, but obviously that wasn't apparent either to the players or to their characters.

I have two questions related to that:

- Deciding not to help the village is one thing, but Bill specifically ignored (wasn't paying attention and didn't hear?) multiple warnings from both Rob and I that the path he was taking was a very dangerous one, as it was going directly towards the oncoming threat. Obviously I could have handled his encounter with these raiders much better and gave him more of a chance, but I feel that paying attention to the GM and avoiding or mitigating in-world dangers is an important part of roleplaying.

- More generally, I always aimed for the campaign to have a mix of talking and fighting, with the characters almost always having the opportunity to avoid or talk their way out of a fight. My understanding is that parties almost always include a mix of fighty and talking characters, and they both need their opportunity to shine. Kesnit, you asked why I changed here after playing to Bill's strengths for a few sessions--I thought that both players would expect both characters' strengths to come into play. Am I wrong? Should I keep my campaigns more mono-characteristic, either entirely dedicated to politics and intrigue or a series of fights?

There's a lot more I could ask but I'm going to have to leave things here with one last question. Kesnit, you also asked if I gave Bill's character the opportunity to talk his way out of his second encounter with the raiders. I asked what he wanted to say: he specifically said that he wanted his captive to take the lead. Things were a bit heated by this point and I'm genuinely trying to approach this with humbleness and magnanimity, but I deeply feel that this is just... bad roleplaying, both mechanically and player-wise? If he said, "My character thinks up some good excuse--I can't think of one right now, but my character would be able to" and rolls, I don't know, an intelligence check, that would be one thing, but he just delegated all responsibility for how his plan should succeed to me, both in- and out-of character, as the GM and as the NPC.

I'm sorry, I'm genuinely upset at how the session went and I'm here to learn, I don't mean to be defensive or reject the very good advice you guys are providing. Thank you all again.

[DeTess]

- More generally, I always aimed for the campaign to have a mix of talking and fighting, with the characters almost always having the opportunity to avoid or talk their way out of a fight. My understanding is that parties almost always include a mix of fighty and talking characters, and they both need their opportunity to shine. Kesnit, you asked why I changed here after playing to Bill's strengths for a few sessions--I thought that both players would expect both characters' strengths to come into play. Am I wrong? Should I keep my campaigns more mono-characteristic, either entirely dedicated to politics and intrigue or a series of fights?


Though it is true that a generic party probably contains a mix, if your current party skews heavily in one way or another in their preference, you should adapt for that. This is something you should discuss with them though, by asking them what parts they want to see more off, and which bits less.



There's a lot more I could ask but I'm going to have to leave things here with one last question. Kesnit, you also asked if I gave Bill's character the opportunity to talk his way out of his second encounter with the raiders. I asked what he wanted to say: he specifically said that he wanted his captive to take the lead. Things were a bit heated by this point and I'm genuinely trying to approach this with humbleness and magnanimity, but I deeply feel that this is just... bad roleplaying, both mechanically and player-wise? If he said, "My character thinks up some good excuse--I can't think of one right now, but my character would be able to" and rolls, I don't know, an intelligence check, that would be one thing, but he just delegated all responsibility for how his plan should succeed to me, both in- and out-of character, as the GM and as the NPC.

Did you tell him this? At some tables rolling when you could be talking is considered not-done, so your player might not have been aware that you'd have considered it fine to just roll in that situation.

[fergo]

Though it is true that a generic party probably contains a mix, if your current party skews heavily in one way or another in their preference, you should adapt for that. This is something you should discuss with them though, by asking them what parts they want to see more off, and which bits less.

Thanks, DeTess. The party is just two people, one combat-oriented, one not.

Rob, the combat guy, has actually been really great at engaging in the story, remembering what's going on, exploring the lore, and so on. He's written pages on his character's background, his family, his connections to the people and the historic events that are the backdrop of the campaign. (I'm really pleasantly surprised--he's tended to be a bit of a murder hobo in the past, so this is a whole new side of him).

This is 100% above and beyond and I'm not judging Bill for not doing all of these things. The long and the short of it, though, is that the combat character is actually interested and understands what's going on around them, and handles a lot of the talking because Bill has decided his character is shy and undecided and doesn't like taking the lead in conversations.

Meanwhile, Bill's character, who theoretically has all of this knowledge and experience in the history and politics of the world, doesn't really take advantage of his skillsets, and won't actively ask for any background information (taking advantage of his character's legion of areas of knowledge) unless I prompt him.

So both characters enjoy the talky parts, I hope. It's just that only one of the sessions so far has had anything approaching a proper fight, which I thought was under-utilising Rob's skillset--as well as the combat-orientated skills that Bill had been picking up over the last few sessions, as he explicitly said he wanted to be more useful in combat!



Did you tell him this? At some tables rolling when you could be talking is considered not-done, so your player might not have been aware that you'd have considered it fine to just roll in that situation.

I did. When Rob came up with his suggestions for a plausible lie to tell, I explicitly said that this was exactly what I was looking for: Bill to spell out what he told the captive so that the captive knew how to sell it to the other raiders. By this point, though, things were heated (my fault) and perhaps this came across more of an attack than a genuine suggestion. It was just whole mess :smallfrown:.

[Kesnit]

More generally, at least a couple have said that the whole protecting-the-village thing was an unnecessary distraction, and that including it at all was a bad idea. That's a really good point, and something I think I'll have to take on board: keep things more focussed, set a mission and have everything very clearly directly related to it from that point on. I had, in fact, given some thought to how helping this village would result in them gaining valuable information that would help them, but obviously that wasn't apparent either to the players or to their characters.

Side quests can have their place, but they need to have a purpose and need to fit into the main plotline. The "save the village" thing seems really out of place when the PCs were already on what sounded like a time-sensitive mission. That's why I mentioned "have the raiders attack in the night." As it went, Rob's plans were too ambitious for what is supposed to be (to an outside observer) an overnight stop. I can see why Bill left; it looks like Rob was ditching the main story (and time crunch) for an ongoing side quest.

A quick combat, on the other hand, would still allow Rob to use his combat focus, but would not risk turning it into a long-term delay.


- Deciding not to help the village is one thing, but Bill specifically ignored (wasn't paying attention and didn't hear?) multiple warnings from both Rob and I that the path he was taking was a very dangerous one, as it was going directly towards the oncoming threat. Obviously I could have handled his encounter with these raiders much better and gave him more of a chance, but I feel that paying attention to the GM and avoiding or mitigating in-world dangers is an important part of roleplaying.

As I said before, I suspect Bill is of the mindset that he (and Rob) are the heroes and so will always succeed. This is added to since you had run many encounters that played to his strengths, so he thought he would succeed regardless of what he did.

There is also the possibility that Bill thought you were trying to force the party into something and he was balking at it. I've played with DMs who have the entire plot laid out in their head, but cannot improvise when the party does something unexpected. I admit, there were times I intentionally threw a wrench in the works in order to watch the DM squirm.


Kesnit, you asked why I changed here after playing to Bill's strengths for a few sessions--I thought that both players would expect both characters' strengths to come into play. Am I wrong?

You misunderstood me. (My fault because I knew what I was thinking but didn't express it right.) There is nothing wrong with making encounters that play to either Bill's or Rob's strengths. What I meant was that when Bill encountered the raiders, it should not have automatically been a combat encounter. You had been giving him encounters that played to his strengths, then put him in one where he could have used his strength, but did not seem to be allowed to. (It seems like you forced a combat on him and didn't give his talking a chance to work.)


Kesnit, you also asked if I gave Bill's character the opportunity to talk his way out of his second encounter with the raiders. I asked what he wanted to say: he specifically said that he wanted his captive to take the lead. Things were a bit heated by this point and I'm genuinely trying to approach this with humbleness and magnanimity, but I deeply feel that this is just... bad roleplaying, both mechanically and player-wise? If he said, "My character thinks up some good excuse--I can't think of one right now, but my character would be able to" and rolls, I don't know, an intelligence check, that would be one thing, but he just delegated all responsibility for how his plan should succeed to me, both in- and out-of character, as the GM and as the NPC.

I think this was handled poorly by both of you. By asking it that way, it can sound like you were asking specifically what his PC said and did. Bill clearly didn't know. On the other hand, since he did not know, he should have said what you wrote here.


Rob, the combat guy, has actually been really great at engaging in the story, remembering what's going on, exploring the lore, and so on. He's written pages on his character's background, his family, his connections to the people and the historic events that are the backdrop of the campaign. (I'm really pleasantly surprised--he's tended to be a bit of a murder hobo in the past, so this is a whole new side of him).

This is 100% above and beyond and I'm not judging Bill for not doing all of these things. The long and the short of it, though, is that the combat character is actually interested and understands what's going on around them, and handles a lot of the talking because Bill has decided his character is shy and undecided and doesn't like taking the lead in conversations.

This sounds like you have a larger problem. It seems like your players are expecting two different types of games. Rob is getting involved in the world and lore; Bill is focusing on his day-to-day and how he interacts with the world.


Meanwhile, Bill's character, who theoretically has all of this knowledge and experience in the history and politics of the world, doesn't really take advantage of his skillsets, and won't actively ask for any background information (taking advantage of his character's legion of areas of knowledge) unless I prompt him.

Bill isn't interested in all of the extra fluff. He wants the game, here, now, and as his PC is part of it.


When Rob came up with his suggestions for a plausible lie to tell, I explicitly said that this was exactly what I was looking for: Bill to spell out what he told the captive so that the captive knew how to sell it to the other raiders.

Bill is not his PC. He may not have known what to tell the raider. A roll to see if his PC could come up with something would have been better than an OOC mind-block destroying what could have been an interesting IC challenge.

[porchdog]

A fair few of you commented that I shouldn't have let the party split. My question would be, how should I have prevented that? Before the session begun I'd said I'd prefer that the players didn't split the party: it was in the context of the two different options the party faced, as Bill suggested it as a possible solution. Perhaps I should have, out of character, reiterated this preference? Or should I have just flatly said, no, you're not splitting up, decide what to do as a party?

In the big picture, you ant to make everything encountered in the game have meaning to both players and both characters at all times. It's a bit of work, but DMing was not made to be easy. Though you don't always needs to do it for all the players. For example Rob was all fine for defending the village, so you just needed a reason for Bill to stay. Tossing in anything about the cult for example that ties it to the village. Like say they have a hunting lodge there, maybe with a VIP that can't be moved. And if all else fails: Greed Always, Always works. Toss in some sweet reward for Bill, and he will throw himself into defending the town.

You really don't want to do the OOC telling the players what to do.



(More broadly, I think I made a fundamental mistake when setting up the campaign. I presented the party with this mystery, with multiple directions they could go in to unravel different elements. I thought I was being a good DM by allowing the party the freedom of choice of how to go about solving the mystery. In hindsight, I think I presented them with two many different leads to follow, which inevitably led to disagreements over which direction to go in and resulted in a frustrating experience as they have to decide between mutually exclusive options and feel that they were missing out on some opportunities. And with a two-person party, there's no deciding vote between any two given options. Perhaps I should have reconfigured the mystery to present them with one broad path to follow, and just gave them a lot of lateral freedom on how exactly to follow this path?).


Not at all. To start the game "too many" leads is a good thing. The trick here is to be open to changing everything. You present the settings, and let each player pick what they want....then YOU weave both of those things together to make one path.



More generally, at least a couple have said that the whole protecting-the-village thing was an unnecessary distraction, and that including it at all was a bad idea. That's a really good point, and something I think I'll have to take on board: keep things more focussed, set a mission and have everything very clearly directly related to it from that point on. I had, in fact, given some thought to how helping this village would result in them gaining valuable information that would help them, but obviously that wasn't apparent either to the players or to their characters.


You want to be really careful with the huge side plot mini campaign that just gives some bit of maybe useful information. Most of the time this is a bad idea. To derail the mission of a campaign for just some information is often a bad idea. It's worse when only the DM knows about the information too. IF you really want to do this you need to have the pre-made information and give 'most' of it up front to the players so they know about it and can see the use and value of it.

And something 'real', anything that is not words, is Always a better thing to give.



- Deciding not to help the village is one thing, but Bill specifically ignored (wasn't paying attention and didn't hear?) multiple warnings from both Rob and I that the path he was taking was a very dangerous one, as it was going directly towards the oncoming threat. Obviously I could have handled his encounter with these raiders much better and gave him more of a chance, but I feel that paying attention to the GM and avoiding or mitigating in-world dangers is an important part of roleplaying.

Well, that is true: but it comes with a twist. How far are you willing to go? If you are NOT willing to go All The Way, then don't go all hardcore with the consequences.

Or to put it simply: if you are not ready and willing to kill any character or any or no reason on the roll of a dice....then don't be all on the high horse of "I warned you, so this is what you get". If your going punish the player for not listening, you must be willing to go all the way. If you go for the punishment, then just do silly half measures to run around in silly circles....well, you see what happens.



- More generally, I always aimed for the campaign to have a mix of talking and fighting, with the characters almost always having the opportunity to avoid or talk their way out of a fight. My understanding is that parties almost always include a mix of fighty and talking characters, and they both need their opportunity to shine. Kesnit, you asked why I changed here after playing to Bill's strengths for a few sessions--I thought that both players would expect both characters' strengths to come into play. Am I wrong? Should I keep my campaigns more mono-characteristic, either entirely dedicated to politics and intrigue or a series of fights?

Except if Rob is the fighter one, and Bill is the talking one....you want to keep them separate. Note as soon as you left the city the game seems to be all combat and not Bills way. This is never a good idea make a character do things outside their focus.

And you don't want the game to be talking and fighting for BOTH players. Even when an event happens, Rob should only be doing combat, but Bill should still be talking. The same way you don't want Rob talking. Having both in the game does not mean both players must do both.



he just delegated all responsibility for how his plan should succeed to me, both in- and out-of character, as the GM and as the NPC.


Simply put this is a game problem. You either have a game of deep creative role playing.....or you don't. You really can't be in the middle. You can not have a lite role playing game where people just roll dice and say things like "my character does something clever", and then at the drop of a dice you suddenly want master creative deep role playing. Your game needs to be one or the other. The middle ground simply is prone to failure.

Also, remember that this is after Bill was stuck in the wilderness doing things like combat that were out of place for this character.

[Incorrect]

You are not doing so bad. The fact that you consider all these things and ask for input, already makes you a pretty considerate GM.


When there is a split of the party in one of my groups, I usually do this:

I call an OOC time-out. Then I explain that splitting the party will create two different campaigns that will not be merging back together for any foreseeable future. I tell them that this is not the game that I will be running, and if they choose to continue this course, Someone will be making a new character.
Of cause, I try to do this a politely as possible, and without taking sides. They can choose any path they want, as long as they choose as a group. No need for this to take more than 2 minutes, its not supposed to be a discussion.
Then, afterwards, I set the scene and try to get them back ingame to have the RP discussion.
"As you are sitting on your horses, overlooking the town, you get a dreadful feeling that if you separate now, it will be the last time you see each other"

If they after this still split up, then you continue one storyline. It should probably be the majority vote, or if tied 1-1 then the one You prefer. The other player can make a new character, maybe from the town.


One concrete piece of advice.
Try to tell Bill up front what checks and modifiers will be used.
"Hiding on the side of the road will be an average Hide check, bluffing the soldiers will be a very hard deceive check"
I know its not ideal, but it sounds like you guys are judging the difficulties very differently. This could be a temporary thing to bring your expectations closer to each other.

[Zombimode]

Another tool you could employ as a method tought in communication classes: when in a situation where it is really important to understand each other repeat what your communication partner was saying in your words.

So, the next time a player declares an action that is not 100% clear or that find questionable in any way try the following:
Bob: "Ok, I will pursue the attackers!"
You: "Ok Bob, is my understanding correct: you jump to your feet, in your pyjamas, get to your lame horse and try to pursue the half-dozen well equipt attackers into the Dark Forest of Doom and Darkness?"

This will help to clear up misunderstandings on the situation, or get additional details that the player was originally omitting.

Bob: "What? No, not in my pyjamas of course. I will grab at least my shield and a weapon on the way out. Also, I will take Bills super-fast stallion of course!"

Or:
Bob: "Oh, there where that many of them? I thought there were just two."


Also, don't hesitate to ask for clarification or intention of an action:
"Bob, what exactly is your intention of your action?"
"Bill, do you have plan when you reach hostages?"
"Bob, you say that you want to intimidate the Kurgan raiders. What's your approach for the intimidation?"

[patchyman]

Obviously keep calm.

Quick thing I noticed, both of your stories have your and Bill estimating the feasibility differently. You control the DCs and world so your estimation becomes reality. Bill operates based on their estimation, and falls flat, again, and again, and again.

If I were you, this would encourage me to recalibrate. I would empower the PCs and lower the DCs.

Slightly different suggestion but in the same vein. I often give verbal cues (or explicitly state DCs), before the player commits to the action. If the player misunderstood the difficulty (or I failed to express it adequately), it gives the player a chance to recalibrate.

[Lord Torath]

Side quests can have their place, but they need to have a purpose and need to fit into the main plotline. The "save the village" thing seems really out of place when the PCs were already on what sounded like a time-sensitive mission. That's why I mentioned "have the raiders attack in the night." As it went, Rob's plans were too ambitious for what is supposed to be (to an outside observer) an overnight stop. I can see why Bill left; it looks like Rob was ditching the main story (and time crunch) for an ongoing side quest.Just want to clear something up:
The party are heading up towards the border of a country, to persuade the king not to invade their homeland. They’re almost at the border when, at nightfall, they get to a village which is about to be attacked by raiders from said country, who ask for their help. (Emphasis mine)It was night. They arrived at the village as evening fell, so they'd likely be stopping anyway, and the raiders were arriving that very night, and Bill knew this even as he set out on his own. This was not something that would delay their main mission at all, only their bedtime.

[Sapphire Guard]

Maybe get a bit more overt with your descriptions. When I hear 'you're in a valley, with slopes to either side with bracken and ferns, I hear 'okay, I can't climb out of here'. Maybe outright say 'they're not so steep you can't climb' or similar.

[Darth Credence]

Interesting situation, and very interesting how different the responses are here. My take is that other than snapping at Bill, you're mostly all right, although there is room for improvement. Now, it may be different if I was watching and saw what was going on, but based on your description, that's how I see it.
Let's start with the previous session, and I'm going to compare and contrast to my game (I'm going to post a thread on my game as well, so if anyone wants to comment on things I say about that that do not directly relate to this, I'd prefer not clogging up someone else's thread).
When Bill was saying that he would obviously be a benefit to the cult, was that IC or OOC? If OOC, then I'd respond OOC that his character does not yet know the cult well enough to make that judgement. If IC, then I'd make a note that Bill is RPing a fairly overconfident, smug person, and keep that in mind going forward. But I certainly wouldn't have the cult just accept that from him and make it so unless it fit. If his character is, indeed, and obvious benefit to the cult and they would recognize that, then I'd lean into it. It looks like you may have, since they were able to join the cult on the strength of his charm, so that's good.
Now, the first problem I see is where you expected them to give you a plan, and then keep it at the next session. That just really isn't going to happen. I try to always end a session at the beginning of a night's rest, and while I like to have an idea of where to plan for, I know that they will undoubtedly not go where I specifically plan. I deal with this by having multiple paths available near the beginning, and plans to take them any direction. As we move along, I try to focus tighter. If they do something weird but I have the ability to just move things and keep the overall plot on track, then I do so. An example would be if I expect them to go south to the ruins I have set up there where the can find the next MacGuffin, but they missed that it would be south and headed west. If I haven't told them the geography too precisely, I just move the dungeon. It's railroading a bit, but if don't correctly, they don't know that.
Now, for the session. I see absolutely no issue with the raider attack, even if it has nothing to do with the rest of the campaign. I probably would have just had them stop for the night and then had a surprise raider attack that would awaken them. Not a major one with the full force of the bandits, just what the bandits would have used with no strong PCs in town. Now, if they helped drive off the raiders, the town might ask them to stay and assist when they return in greater numbers - I have effectively done that with some undead in my campaign. Then you get the battle out of the way so you have a battle, and you still get the talking and moral dilemma the next morning.
Then you have Bill riding off. I agree that he is going to hit the bandits, who are of course going to accost a lone traveler. The idea that they wouldn't seems ludicrous to me. It's why caravans exist - because small groups or lone travelers are far too vulnerable to bandits on the road. You clearly confirmed what he was doing, and what the possible consequences were, so that's on him. (Now, if they are supposed to be provoking a war, like they're really mercenaries hired for a job, then they might let him go. But I'd certainly see that as a hint that they are not just bandits.) As a note, I probably wouldn't have let Rob try and give him any pointers - he's on his own by choice, and he needs to deal with it on his own. To be clear - he thought he should hide behind his horse after already having been spotted in the hopes that most of the bandits would leave and he could fight off anyone left? Does that sound as ridiculous to everyone else as it does to me? I would have let him try it, but it quickly would have turned into him surrounded, tied up, and hauled off, if not dead. I have a guy that does things like Bill - he gets tired of the plans, and charges off. He's been hit by traps, gotten into battles he shouldn't have, and just last week almost led to a TPK. But he absolutely recognizes that this is due to his impulsive nature, and so it works for us.
Back to Rob, that's fine.
Back to Bill. No way would I have let someone with no escape skills free himself from being bound by ropes, and then successfully capture an armed bandit. Just wouldn't even entertain it. If he insisted, I'd let him roll, tell him he failed, and go back to Rob, then back to him, roll, fail, back to Rob. But it is what it is, so he escaped. He also absolutely should not know that Rob has driven off the raiders. If he cannot compartmentalize that, then you need to do things in separate rooms. I generally expect compartmentalization, and my players do it, but for the biggest things, I go to separate rooms. For instance, the entire group was headed to a new discovery in a mine, and the Paladin went his own way to talk to people in town. If he heard the battles the group was involved in, he would have almost certainly headed to the mine, so he went in the other room. I got everyone set up for the battle, joined him and went through what he was learning, and kept up the back and forth. By the time he finished and made it to the mine, the rest of them were pretty banged up, and had some choice words. They were all IC, and they were having fun, not real words with the player.
So, FTR, I'd have left Bill tied up and hoped that Rob would decide he had to rescue Bill. But, instead, he headed back, thinking the raiders were routed. Taking a prisoner and hoping to use him to escape was good. And when he said that he would get the guy to pretend they are friends, I'd have taken that as the basic outline of the plan for the character, then used his skills to determine how fleshed out it was. When he says the general plan, then do a deception or charisma or whatever check is appropriate - if it comes out OK, then fill in the details of the plan. Don't hold the character hostage to the players "stats".Now, I don't think there is any way I would let the plan succeed, because, seriously, what kind of a bandit is going to accept that the guy they took captive earlier joined the band and is travelling somewhere with his former guard just because? He could have had excellent planning and deception skills, and that still isn't going to work.
And now, the crux of the matter. I completely disagree that there are mismatched expectations. If there are, it's because Bill is a bad player, and just wants everything handed to him. You could absolutely try to save him from himself by offering the character choices based on skills, but at some point you have to let them do what they want. Rob shouldn't be offering plans that he could think won't work, because Rob isn't there. If Bill had made a roll for his character to come up with something, or even if you just looked at the stats and said he could do better than this plan, then you could solicit advice from Rob just in the form of what the character could do.
In conclusion (and I'm sorry this went so long), I think your game is broken. I would not try to pick up from here. I'd ask both players if they wanted to do a reset with clearer agreements, do a different story, or even just shut down. But I don't see a path forward with these characters.

[Mastikator]

I haven't read the entire thread and only have one small thing to contribute:

Don't be vague, don't give subtle hints. If you think that if you it should occur to Bill's character that there's a place to hide in the bracken and ferns in the dead of night say so. "You see good places to hide, the ferns and bracken on the slope give decent cover because it's night".

"Your character realizes the big risk of riding into oncoming raiders"

You're absolutely allowed (encouraged IMO) to give the characters knowledge about their options.

[Kesnit]

Just want to clear something up:It was night. They arrived at the village as evening fell, so they'd likely be stopping anyway, and the raiders were arriving that very night, and Bill knew this even as he set out on his own. This was not something that would delay their main mission at all, only their bedtime.

The village itself isn't the too-large side quest. What made it too large IMO was Rob's plan to rally the village and build up their defenses. That is not a short-term goal, and it even more complicated because (as you point out), it is night, they have ridden all day, the villagers have been working all day, and sleep is important. Rob's plan is one that would take several days. That's why I said having the raiders appear in the night would likely have worked better. That is a quick, sudden event and not one that takes building up.


I completely disagree that there are mismatched expectations. If there are, it's because Bill is a bad player, and just wants everything handed to him.

Those are mismatched expectations.


I'd ask both players if they wanted to do a reset with clearer agreements, do a different story, or even just shut down. But I don't see a path forward with these characters.

This. And I would ask them (separably) what they want from a campaign.

[BRC]

I'm curious what Bill means by "Story-Side Roleplaying", and if he has any real experience with RPG's.



I ask this because the pattern I've noticed seems to be that Bill has difficulty with idea of failure, as well as with specifics, and the general good manners of tabletop roleplaying.

For example, in a TTRPG, it's generally considered polite to have the PC's stick together, even if the situation might call for splitting up. This isn't just "Don't split the party" as a tactical rule, it's a matter of politeness. If everybody is sharing scenes, everybody gets to have fun together, vs waiting their turn while the GM handles the other players. He, by contrast, seems very willing to run off alone. He's also very willing to throw himself into situations without much regard for chance of success as far as what he's good at.


I have a friend who I've run, and played RPG's with, who also considered himself a "Storyteller", and he often ran into frustration in a similar manner. He wasn't quite as bad as Bill, as far as charging forwards into almost certain defeat, but he would often propose some plan that didn't really make a lot of sense as far as something to try and get upset when the GM told him "you can try, but that has basically no chance of working". Eventually, I realized what was going on, he wasn't thinking "What would my character try to do in this situation that might succeed", he wasn't thinking like a player in a game, he was thinking like a co-author in some sort of cooperative storytelling exercise. He wasn't considering a strategy, he was just writing the next part of the story.

And, like, Co-Author IS one of the roles a player can take, but here he's forgetting that you're playing a game, one with dice and mechanics that can determine success and failure.

The fact is, it sounds like you DO give Bill's ideas a fair chance, more than a fair chance actually, but the dice don't add up, mostly because he's built a diplomatic bookworm and he's trying to do Batman stuff, but he's not thinking in terms of the game and mechanics, he's thinking in terms of the story. When he complains that "You never give his ideas a fair chance".

Like, okay, consider the other thread you made. Bill got upset when he didn't catch the Assassin, despite you telling her that she had a faster horse, was a better rider, and had a head start. Part of his complaint, IIRC, was that "You wouldn't have let me chase her for so long if I wasn't supposed to catch her". He views the scenario as one with an intended End Result, proposes a way that result might be reached, and then gets upset when you don't say "Okay, that's what happens".

I wouldn't be surprised if his "Story-Side Roleplaying Experience" is more along the lines of free-form RP, or if he has previous TTRPG experience, it was with a GM who Railroaded heavily. His assumption is that you have a Plan, a place the PC's are supposed to be by end of session, and it's his job as a player to fill in the gaps and say "Well, this is how my character Achieves The Goal", and that failure isn't a result of a dice roll, so much as it's a reprimand from the GM for having a Bad Idea.

He rides off alone, and assumes that will work out, because he thinks "The Plan is for us to do our mission, so I'm going to go do that". He gets captured, and he's like "Alright, well, I can't complete the mission if I'm captured, so I escape".


I wouldn't be surprised if he was pretty disengaged by the time the second encounter with the raiders happened. He's been trying to get to The Mission this whole time, and sees you as throwing obstacles in his path, then punishing him when he tries to avoid them. Then he sits and does nothing for the whole session while Rob leads the battle (Which, from his perspective is you validating Rob's 'Rally the Peasants to fight the battle' Idea, while punishing his "Leave the peasants and pursue the Mission" idea). He Escapes by proposing "Well here is what happens", and you go along with it, but by this point he's pretty disengaged in the whole session, so when you try to press him for specifics as far as what lie to tell to the Raiders, he's just kind of checked out and doesn't consider it worth the effort.

Because, from his perspective, he's not developing a strategy that might succeed or fail, he's telling the story of "How We Got Past The Raiders So This Campaign Can Get Back On Track And We Can Do The Mission". And this is a story he's completely uninterested in telling, he wants to get to the mission, and doesn't know why you sent him on this whole "Captured by raiders" detour in the first place. So he does the bare minimum, puts a pistol to an NPC's back, and says "Tell them we're friends now".

Snapping at him wasn't a good idea, but you're only human, and can't really be blamed. I've done worse with less provocation.


I'd have a discussion with Bill about the type of game you're running, and what he's expecting from you.

[dps]

To be honest, with the big caveat that we have only your side of the story, I see Bill as the problem. He keeps making bad decisions and then then failing in what he was trying to do. This in itself isn't necessarily bad--sometimes the most interesting and satisfying part of a game can be getting yourself out of a mess you've gotten yourself into--but the problem is that instead of blaming his failures on his poor decisions, he blames them on you.

[DeTess]

I think @BRC might have a pretty decent idea of Bill's motivation. It's a lot more charitable than mine, at any rate, which is probably a good sign.

Now, a thing that might help with the issue of him seeing plans working or failing purely on DM fiat (in addition to having a good out-of-game talk, of course) might be to be more open about your DC's for skill checks. DnD (you where playing a variant on DnD right?) is a rather odd duck in my experience in that it expects the DM to keep the DC for a lot of activities hidden. Most other systems I've played either expect the DM to declare the DC before the roll, or have a set threshhold and the DM modifies by imposing a penalty on the roll. Most of those systems also allows the PC's to change their mind after hearing the DC, provided that makes narrative sense.

This approach has two advantages. First, it removes the need for players to translate your description to an approximate chance of success. A player might hear 'this thing will be difficult', but their sheet will only say 'you have a +5 to doing this thing'. They then have to figure out if 'difficult' means 'difficult for an expert (DC 20-ish)', 'difficult for an adventurer (DC 15-ish)', 'difficult for a normal person, but decent odds for an adventurer(DC 10-ish)', etc.. By just straight up giving them the number with the description they can gauge far better the chance their character has, which is, imo, actually more realistic as most people tend to have a pretty good idea of their chances of succes at any given task.

The second advantage is that by telling your players the DC in advance, they'll know there is no DM-chicanery going on behind the scenes wrt to their success or failure. If they roll the number they'll succeed, if they don't they'll fail, and it's all in the hands of the dice gods. You won't have to keep playing with open DC's if you don't want to after a couple of sessions, but if you've got a new group with experience with other DM's, it's not a bad idea to do so for at least a couple of sessions because it allows them to calibrate their expectations to the way you run your checks.

[Darth Credence]

Those are mismatched expectations.

Depends on how you define it, I guess. I took "mismatched expectations" as specific to the level of difficulty. They do have mismatched expectations in that Bill appears to want to be the protagonist in a badly written novel where he is the Marty Stu, while the other people think they are playing a game.
Edit: Pretty much the same idea as what BRC is saying, although I'm not giving Bill the benefit of the doubt that what he's doing is just a different style of playing. I think Bill is trying to make it all about him, and he knows what he's doing.

[BRC]

Depends on how you define it, I guess. I took "mismatched expectations" as specific to the level of difficulty. They do have mismatched expectations in that Bill appears to want to be the protagonist in a badly written novel where he is the Marty Stu, while the other people think they are playing a game.
Edit: Pretty much the same idea as what BRC is saying, although I'm not giving Bill the benefit of the doubt that what he's doing is just a different style of playing. I think Bill is trying to make it all about him, and he knows what he's doing.

Eh, that's more malice than I really want to ascribe to anybody, especially since, like, what's the game there? "I want to join this TTRPG, AND FORCE MYSELF INTO THE PROTAGONIST ROLE MAKING THE OTHER PLAYER INTO A SUPPORTING CHARACTER! MUAHAHAHAHA!" While the tendency certainly exists, it's almost never a conscious effort to Hijack the game, it's mostly just about the player in question not really considering the other players at the table, or that TTRPGs are a method of story-building, rather than storytelling.

Like, there is certainly a type of player who hogs the spotlight, but it's not usually a deliberate "Trying to make it all about them". It's often more 1) They're just trying to have fun and are quick to announce that they're Doing Stuff, and end up hogging the spotlight without considering the other players, or 2) They have a very specific idea of The Story They Want To Tell, and it doesn't quite click that the rest of the table might have some input too, so they get grouchy and impatient when The Story They Want To Tell isn't happening.
Usually this second type means the player brings some elaborate backstory along, and then gets upset when that backstory isn't defining the campaign.


However, from Fergo's description here, I don't think either of these cases really describes Bill. That sort of Spotlight-hogging requires the player to be more assertive than Bill has been described as being. Rather than trying to drag the group along with him, Bill's instinct is to ride off alone, often leaving Rob with the focus for an extended period of clock-time. To me, that speaks of one of three options:

The first, and far more likely, is that Bill is unfamiliar with the etiquette and dynamics of tabletop RPGs. He doesn't fully grasp that by riding off alone and leaving Rob to defend the village, he's effectively written himself out of the majority of the session, because Combat takes a long, long time, and there's no way the DM is going to try to run the "Defend the Town" and "Pursue the Mission" plotlines simultaneously. If his plan went off without a hitch and he dodged the raiders, what's most likely to have happened is he sits out the rest of the session riding towards the Mission, which gets handled next session.
This is part of why I suspect his background might be in more free-form RP, this sort of party-splitting/parallel storytelling is easy to do when you're not rolling out the intricacies of every sword swing and pistol shot, so it probably didn't occur to him that, by riding off and sitting out the battle, he was effectively forfeiting any chance of doing stuff this session.

The second is an honest possibility that Bill isn't enjoying the game very much, and was kind of looking for excuses to check out. Above, I proposed that he was probably pretty checked out by the time he encountered the retreating raiders, but it's possible that he was checked out from the beginning. Possibly he was upset by the "Compromise" you reached about what the session was going to be (You had initially agreed to defend the village, he convinced Rob to ride off, they forgot to tell you, you convinced Rob to switch back to defending the village, and he's not interested in playing through that, but agreed to it because he didn't want to rehash the argument). By riding off alone, he thought he was effectively opting out of participating in the session altogether, which is why his responses to encountering the raiders were kind of lackluster each time. He simply didn't want to Engage with the session any more than necessary, and assumed that staying in the village meant getting caught up in a lengthy, tedious combat encounter he didn't have the skills for, and didn't have any interest in. He didn't want to think of a way to bluff the raiders, you didn't mention any obvious hiding spots, so he heard "There is nowhere to run or hide".


The third possibility falls in the category of Malice rather than Stupidity, so I don't really think it's probable. In this version, he's fully aware of the logistical implications of splitting the party, and was deliberately trying to set up a situation where the GM couldn't focus on both Rob and Him, and assumed that the GM would focus on him. This might tie into the idea that he thinks he's following along with The GM's "Plan", but essentially, Bill isn't interested in the "Defend the Town" Plotline. Rob is. Bill think that, by splitting off and doing his own thing, he can force the GM to minimize session time dedicated to Defending the Town to instead focus on his solo pursuit of the mission. This is the closest to "Trying to make it all about him", but it requires a weird combination of deviousness and stupidity on his part, where he knows that the GM prepped for the Town Defense, but thinks that he can win the ensuing Spotlight Tug-Of-War away from a prepared battle scene.


It's certainly possible that his behavior this session was just a result of pouting that he didn't get his way with the between-session discussion, but the descriptions we've gotten have him pretty consistently arguing that he's following along with clues he thinks he's getting from the GM. Stuff like "I kept chasing the assassin because I figured you wouldn't have let me try if I wasn't supposed to", or "I thought you were telling me that there was nowhere to hide". This isn't the behavior of an egoist player. The Complaint of the Egocentric player is "You're railroading me", not "I thought you were telling me X".

Also, an Egoist player would never have, when prompted to provide some lie for the returning raiders, gone with "I let my hostage take the lead". That's not really the behavior of somebody who craves the spotlight.

[KineticDiplomat]

After acknowledging upfront that sometimes "what we have here is a failure to communicates; some men you just can't reach" and it could just be the personalities don't mesh, here are some ways to try to avoid/mitigate this sort of thing:

System Expectations Up Front

Some systems reward you for being the zany hero whose job is to ROFLSTOMP your way through encounters on route to your mission. Some, like WFRP, are not of this mindset. Indeed, a starting WFRP character is more likely to fail than succeed at most checks and is considered lucky if he and his small but vicious dog live through the night. When playing a new system with unknown players, it's important to establish where your system and game sit on the spectrum - if Bill think's he is supposed to be hero triumphant, and you think that the players need act like life is nasty, brutish and short, shorter for those who adventure, and shortest for those who do so foolishly...well, you can have expectation differences. It might be worth pointing out that this is a system where failure is a very likely occurrence, the good guys are not rigged to win, and PCs are not instantly exceptional in all manner of skills. The story will not care if a PC dies tonight.

Less Prep, More Flex

One of WFRPs strengths is that aside from big named characters, sessions take very little prep. You can throw together a band of raiders in about thirty seconds. So...do less detailed prep. Once you prep, you are mentally committing to where you want the session to go. And since we're human, you're going to start seeing things that deviate from that as worse decisions - you put a lot of effort in, and no one wants effort wasted. This unfortunately can make us a little attached to our idea, and maybe less charitable in how we view reality when it gets deviated from.

Ask yourself: If I had put five minutes in rather than ninety, would I be so certain that riding down that road meant certain death and there was really no way it could end in anything less than a head to head meeting? And if I could whip up something in thirty seconds, would I feel more comfortable whipping up stuff in response to Bill's moves?

De-escalating the Idiot Ball

The first step is to make sure it actually is an idiot ball, and not just a ball that looks different than you imagined. In this case, "riding away from the village" does not necessarily mean "hah, ha, what an idiot! He rode towards the raiders! There's only the one road and of course they'd come down it and murder him! Hilarious fool!" - they very well may be hours away, or he might pass in the night, or maybe there's a fork in the road he'll get to... But let's say it did and he full well knew he was riding out dangerously. He has acted the idiot.

Once you decide to smash him, you have no more tricks left and he's dead. So smashing him for being an idiot is really the last resort. Instead, what manner of escalating consequences can we apply while retaining the shape of the world.

First, give him an "ah crap" moment. There may be fourteen riders, but veterans that they are, perhaps there's a couple riding point out front. And when he fails to see them in time, rather than starting at knife range, it can be a shadowy football field away on a dark road as they come around a bend. The lead man calls out. Many voices answer him. The sound of hooves. Now Bill has one more chance to realize he might die here, and one more chance to try something, anything. And you can almost certainly bend the story to whatever he tries without letting him walk all over you. If he tries to talk, great, the raiders want him to guide them to the village. If he tries to flee, great, if he succeeds he'll arrive a bit ahead of the raiders at the village. If he tries to hide...less great, but you can have a couple raiders look for him to flush him into something more active (or just let him keep hiding, checks pending.)

He may, at this point, still be an idiot. Now we move to "a consequence of severity that you may yet escape." In this case, maybe just the pointmen are charging him. Not a good day. He very well might die. But it isn't rocks fall yet. He might with some rolls and some sense get out. And you can narrate the fact that he knows in his heart of hearts, if he makes a stand here he'll probably die. And add lots of good references to the whole rest of the pack yelling up to their pointmen, galloping hooves around the bend, etc. This is basically you saying "you gonna die if you keep this up! you gonna die!" It gives him a chance for some short term heroism, some consequences, doesn't kill him instantly, and lets him know he is firmly in bad idea land.

Next, while you'd be perfectly within your rights to kill him dead, you can give him one final "dead to rights" offer. Yep. he screwed the pooch good. He ignored everything. He just kept at it. And now he's surrounded by fourteen angry men. What luck that live captives are worth more than cooling bodies. An offer for him to surrender after a good robbing. And since the band is heading to the village anyway...back on scene.

Mook Handoff

Have a big combat scene? Someone dead? Not present? Sitting forever in the corner while this one guy fights an ork? Time for a mook hand off!

Basically, should Bill not be here because he's dead, captured with no real way out, or simply slipped past the raiders in the night - great. He's doing his thing. But the spotlight is here now, so give the player a mook to play with. Maybe it's a villager. Maybe it's bandit number seven. Whatever. He gets to contribute to the scene and the story with a disposable character who no one expects to to be heroic, and no one really cares much if they die. Also a useful way to learn the combat system without real PC peril...

Dice Baby, Dice

There is almost always a a rule for how to default roll on skills you don't have in all systems. Find that rule. Let Bill try. He wants to clip his ropes? Sure, there's probably a test for that - let Bill roll. He fails? Well, he failed. Not your decision. He succeeds? Well, you as the GM might think it's BS, but it turns out he DID get out of that rope - maybe he found a particularly sharp stone or something?