Making Your Players Uncomfortable

[Easy e]

Greetings all,

I know I am a bit of an outlier in GM style on these boards, but I want to talk a bit about this topic. As a GM, I like to put my players (and therefore their characters) onto the "Horns of a Dilemma" in my games. I like to put my players into a game space where there are ethical, moral, social, and psychological consequences for decisions made in the game.

The whole point of my games is to have fun, while making them uncomfortable. Making them question things about their characters, their backgrounds, the world, and the belief systems is the core of the game. How the game resolves should leave many questions with the characters of players.

So, the questions for you GMs out there:
- How do you handle creating this "tension" while still making the games fun for the players?
- What tips or tricks do you have to create this uncomfortable tension?
- How and where do you break the tensions?
- How do you constructing such scenarios?
- How do your players react?
- Have you had negative reactions?

Thanks in advance for your insight.

[KorvinStarmast]

My players to date - in the two campaigns I run currently - have shown me over time that they are not sufficiently invested in the game world to bother trying this. This is not helped by not getting to play in person, and not getting to play one or two times a week consistently.

One of the game is very much beer and pretzels, due to what the group prefers, but the other one has players who can get invested, they do now and again, but I rarely get all of them at the table at the same time consistently. That discontinuity degrades the kind of investment that would lead to caring enough about the world to do what you find appealing.

Which is unfortunate.

[False God]

Greetings all,

I know I am a bit of an outlier in GM style on these boards, but I want to talk a bit about this topic. As a GM, I like to put my players (and therefore their characters) onto the "Horns of a Dilemma" in my games. I like to put my players into a game space where there are ethical, moral, social, and psychological consequences for decisions made in the game.

The whole point of my games is to have fun, while making them uncomfortable. Making them question things about their characters, their backgrounds, the world, and the belief systems is the core of the game. How the game resolves should leave many questions with the characters of players.

I like to do this as well, but, to echo Korvin's comments....

My players to date - in the two campaigns I run currently - have shown me over time that they are not sufficiently invested in the game world to bother trying this. This is not helped by not getting to play in person, and not getting to play one or two times a week consistently.

One of the game is very much beer and pretzels, due to what the group prefers, but the other one has players who can get invested, they do now and again, but I rarely get all of them at the table at the same time consistently. That discontinuity degrades the kind of investment that would lead to caring enough about the world to do what you find appealing.

Which is unfortunate.
This is basically my experience as well.

And these are smart folks, skilled players, and certainly willing to engage with you on ethical, mortal, political and social issues in IRL debate; but I generally find they're just not interested in doing it in game. I have one player, for whom I often run smaller solo games who is.

Running solo games for them is usually pretty easy. I'll often provide them with either a long-term companion or a rotating cast of regulars, usually only sticking around until their particular arc is resolved. As this is one player, tuning the game specifically for them is pretty easy.

At your questions:

- How do you handle creating this "tension" while still making the games fun for the players?
- What tips or tricks do you have to create this uncomfortable tension?
I don't. But lets clarify two things: "fun" and "happy". I LOVE political, ethical, moral and social debate. It's "fun" for me, but it doesn't necessarily always leave me feeling happy. I think it's important to understand that a portion of the game can be "fun", in the sense that it is engaging, the players are on task and focused; but it isn't necessarily happy. Challenge is fun, but also stressful. I think it's entirely possible to have both had fun and also not be happy. I think this is an important element to many of these difficult situations. But I don't think a lot of people are really interested in it. They want to have "fun" AND be "happy". I model a lot of my my challenging situations after real life, things are complicated, messy and even good solutions are far from the best solutions. And some people aren't willing to go away from a situation "satisfied". They only want the best, most positive outcomes.


- How and where do you break the tensions?
I try to provide a mostly open world for my players, they're free to engage in difficult decisions and stressful situations...or not. But I do make an effort after stressful potentially un-fun situations are resolved (one way or another) to provide more light-hearted and relaxing "fun" situations. Easy problems with easy positive solutions. Hard problems with rewarding solutions to take their mind off things. Or a party, beer, food and song go a long way even in game.


- How do you constructing such scenarios?
Ooof, well with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But generally speaking one thing I try to always include is that the worst solution to this situation is always violence. There are plenty of situations where violence is a good solution and sometimes the best way to come to a resolution. But these situations are not that. Violence is always an option, but I try to build the situations such that choosing violence is the least palatable option. You may go away having resolved the situation quickly, but you will probably go away feeling worse. If you are a character who wakes up every morning and consciously chooses violence first you are either: a monster or a villain, or both. And that is generally the feeling I aim to leave people with who make those kind of decisions in these situations.


- How do your players react?
Except for the one who enjoys these games like I do, poorly.


- Have you had negative reactions?
Everything from anger and aggression to outright quitting the game.

[gbaji]

I think it really depends on how you are presenting this. If your goal is "making the players uncomfortable", then the expected reaction is "players aren't going to want to play that game". It's somewhat axiomatic. People tend to avoid uncomfortable things. So maybe that's not the best stated goal.

Presenting them with moral quandaries is a valid RPG tactic. And I've done it a number of times. But it's not with the actual goal of forcing them into an uncomfortable choice. It's usually a natural consequence of the game. And when it happens that way, I find that players accept the choice and then actually engage, make a choice, and move forward. And yeah. Sometimes, I'm surprised at the choices they make.

Players are usually remarkably good at detecting when the GM is forcing something in game. So I'd avoid artificially trying to make these things come up. They'll happen occasionally just on their own. Well, assuming you make any effort at all to create a setting with real consequences for actions/choices, that is. Just doing it for the sake of putting a difficult choice in front of the players will usually not be taken well. But if it's something that "fits in" to the setting, it can work.

Again though, I'd avoid doing this just for the purpose of putting the players into an "uncomfortable" choice. Some players will enjoy this, but most wont.

[Pauly]

1. System matters. D&D style high fantasy doesn’t really help create the mind set that there might be serious consequences. The implied promise in high fantasy is good -v- evil. More realistic earthy settings get more player buy in to moral dilemmas.

2. Time pressure. Dilemmas aren’t dilemmas if the players can go batman + time to prepare. One scenario I’ve borrowed a number of times is from the movie “In Which we Serve”, the situation is that during a uboat attack on a convoy the destroyer captain gets a sonar reading on a uboat. The uboat is directly under a group of survivors in the water waiting to be rescued. The player’s choice is to attack the uboat and possibly killing it, but definitely killing all the survivors; or attempt to rescue the survivors but losing contact with the uboat allowing it to attack the convoy freely and risk being attacked by another uboat during the rescue I put the players on a 5 minute clock clock with a countdown timer and failing to give either order will mean both mission choices will fail.
Big events with big choices like this are intense so they can only be used sparingly. Putting time pressure on smaller events where there is a fleeting opportunity to make a choice helps get the players used to this kind if decision making.

3 Linking the dilemma to previous choices made by the players. This makes it feel less like a trolley problem and more like a natural growth of the story. If the players have deposed the grand vizier to install the fresh faced prince into his rightful seat then have the players have to deal with the prince being an ineffectual ruler [for reasons],

[SpanielBear]

I think one of the things I have found that has worked while DMing, is that if you set things up as a dilemma and the players come up with a (legitimate) 3rd option- let them have it. Don’t force the dilemma, but let them have their clever moment. That way when the next choice comes up and they can’t see a clean option, it’ll have more weight as they’ll feel ownership of that choice.

[Vahnavoi]

These are easier to answer from the end to beginning.

To wit: humans have, what, six basic emotions? Joy, anger, fear, disgust, sorrow and surprise. Only first of these is typically considered "positive" or synonymous with "fun". When you're making a game around uncomfortable situations, you don't focus on that one, you focus on the latter five. The "fun" with those comes from catharsis; "fun" from discomfort comes from eventual end of it, "fun" from tension comes from the release.

Figuring out what kind of topics are uncomfortable or which kind of game scenarios naturally create dilemmas is dead-easy. Anything to do with warfare obviously works, any look at sub-topics people try to tip-toe around will give you a wealth of material. The key is to channel negative player reactions to actions within a game, which relies on their belief that the situation can be resolved within the game. Only the kind of negative reactions that bring a game to halt are worth to purposefully break the tension prematurely. There's an obvious tie-in to "safety tools" thread here. But the short version is that there's no complaining about legal blows. Discomfort that poses no real threat to anyone's physical or mental health is not just beneath least concern, a game master has license to actively cause it, and anyone who disagrees does not understand tragedy, horror, or amusement parks for that matter.

So, focus on making your players suffer, and then trust that your players' natural inclination to avoid suffering will steer them towards the right gameplay.

[NRSASD]

Huh. I am surprised by most of these responses because that has not been my experience at all. IÂ’ve put my players in some pretty dark, ethically challenging situations that were resolved happily in the end after a long campaign and my players loved it. These are my recommendations on what has worked for us.

1. DO NOT go grimdark. To maintain the grim darkness of the setting, a grimdark campaign will demand that all actions are equally miserable. That will kill engagement faster than anything because there is nothing to do except be miserable and your players will (rightfully) call you out on it. InsteadÂ…

2. Make sure their actions have consequences and do not hesitate to be brutal. In a game I ran, a society of humans was oppressing a Tabaxi city. It was not overt slavery but was very similar to working in a steel mill in the 18th century. Lots of Tabaxi died and their human overlords did nothing. After multiple battles and plots with player support, the Tabaxi managed to overthrow the humans, the resistance leader asked the PCs to leave town for a few days on a wild goose chase. The players figured out it was a ruse and returned early, discovering that the Tabaxi resistance were in the middle of an ethnic cleansing event and massacring ALL the humans in the city. This made the players frustrated but only with themselves, because they all agreed that they should have seen this coming.

3. Let the players earn their happy ending. Ambiguity is great, but making a difference is better. If the players propose a solution that could work, let it. In the above scenario, by the time the genocide, revolution, countergenocide, and counterrevolution had occurred, the city was at 1/3 of the original population. The PCs, being the only thing resembling a military force or an authority figure left standing at this point, ordered the entire population to meet in the central plaza. The PCs informed the populace that they had a week to create a new government that allowed for equal rights and representation for all, or “so help me God, we will burn this city to the ground”. They also publicly judged and pardoned the revolutionary leader, saying that everyone deserves a second chance, even him, so the people better not waste theirs… or else.

And, surprisingly, it worked! Having witnessed the party crush the occupiers, the rebellion, and an opportunistic tribe of Hill Giants in quick succession, the people knew the PCs were capable of carrying out the threat. Being a party that included local humans and Tabaxi also helped. The players adored the fact that I rewarded their restraint and allowed them to shape the future of this city in a definitive way after all the setbacks.

4. Present a problem, not a solution. If you want your players to honestly engage with the setting, allow their actions to shape the outcomes. Do not have a fixed, predetermined result in mind, because by clinging to it, you will negate their ability to influence the game, and in turn undermine your attempts to get them to engage with your world.


Hope this is helpful!

[Segev]

Hm. To maximize player discomfort, I recommend hard benches instead of chairs, setting your gaming space's heating or cooling unit to either above 80 or below 65 degrees F, and replacing your battlemat with a chalk board and getting some very hard chalk to write with.

[Just to Browse]

Really love your comment, NRSASD, especially when it comes to letting players earn their happy endings. There's a tendency on the GM side of a game to make everything turn out badly, because otherwise it won't feel like there were hard decisions. But if the players can look at a situation with multiple bad options and solve it in a clever way that avoids all the bad outcomes, make sure to let them. It's empowering, and allows the players to notice how difficult the world around them is, because their successes will stand in contrast to the more complex, bleaker nature of their world.

Second, I would focus on achieving buy-in. A campaign with hard choices won't work if none of the players are interested in that sort of thing at the start, and you'll lose engagement if those hard choices aren't meaningful. "Which of these 2 villages should be genocided for the military war machine?" is not a choice that excites a lot of people. That's another reason why you should let players earn their happy endings; it motivates people to keep engaging with the story.

[Pauly]

I agree with the concepts of “let the players have their happy endings” and “get player buy in”.

On getting player buy in one method I use is engaging with the characters as characters. Players often treat the character sheet as a bunch of cool combat options, and those types of players don’t respond to moral/ethical dilemmas well.
This can include:
- rewarding players for engaging with their backstory. Give them a cool bonus f they bring up a relevant aspect of their backstory to the situation.
- writing plot hooks for specific characters. Give the players opportunities to earn rewards based on backstory/previous campaign events.
- engaging with non mechanical aspects of the character (i.e. making decisions that don’t revolve around which dice modifier to use).
- have distinct NPCs. One method I plan on implementing is to give the players NPC cards as a tangible way of tracking the NPCs they encounter.
- Have NPCs offer commentary on the PCs actions. This oets the players know the world cares about the consequences of their actions.

When players feel that their characters a real people and the world around them is filled with real people then they’ll feel that moral or ethical dilemmas are real too.

Other dilemmas that I’ve used are
- tracking a fugitive down and discovering the fugitive had a good reason for what they did. Players have the classic dilemma of turning in a sympathetic fugitive or failing their mission. Classic example the fugitive killed the murderer of their child. There are lots of ways to spice this up such as the fugitive not knowing the full story and thus taking morally just revenge on the wrong target. Classic twist the the alleged child murderer took the blame for someone else.
- having to choose between morally corrupt competent rulers and morally correct but incompetent rulers.
- making choices on incomplete information. This should never be a situation where if the players fail to guess what in the GM’s mind correctly disaster will happen. More along the lines of wasting time or making things more difficult later if they choose wrong.
- returning useful items to their owner.

[King of Nowhere]

Huh. I am surprised by most of these responses because that has not been my experience at all. IÂ’ve put my players in some pretty dark, ethically challenging situations that were resolved happily in the end after a long campaign and my players loved it. These are my recommendations on what has worked for us.

1. DO NOT go grimdark. To maintain the grim darkness of the setting, a grimdark campaign will demand that all actions are equally miserable. That will kill engagement faster than anything because there is nothing to do except be miserable and your players will (rightfully) call you out on it. InsteadÂ…

2. Make sure their actions have consequences and do not hesitate to be brutal. In a game I ran, a society of humans was oppressing a Tabaxi city. It was not overt slavery but was very similar to working in a steel mill in the 18th century. Lots of Tabaxi died and their human overlords did nothing. After multiple battles and plots with player support, the Tabaxi managed to overthrow the humans, the resistance leader asked the PCs to leave town for a few days on a wild goose chase. The players figured out it was a ruse and returned early, discovering that the Tabaxi resistance were in the middle of an ethnic cleansing event and massacring ALL the humans in the city. This made the players frustrated but only with themselves, because they all agreed that they should have seen this coming.

3. Let the players earn their happy ending. Ambiguity is great, but making a difference is better. If the players propose a solution that could work, let it. In the above scenario, by the time the genocide, revolution, countergenocide, and counterrevolution had occurred, the city was at 1/3 of the original population. The PCs, being the only thing resembling a military force or an authority figure left standing at this point, ordered the entire population to meet in the central plaza. The PCs informed the populace that they had a week to create a new government that allowed for equal rights and representation for all, or “so help me God, we will burn this city to the ground”. They also publicly judged and pardoned the revolutionary leader, saying that everyone deserves a second chance, even him, so the people better not waste theirs… or else.

And, surprisingly, it worked! Having witnessed the party crush the occupiers, the rebellion, and an opportunistic tribe of Hill Giants in quick succession, the people knew the PCs were capable of carrying out the threat. Being a party that included local humans and Tabaxi also helped. The players adored the fact that I rewarded their restraint and allowed them to shape the future of this city in a definitive way after all the setbacks.

4. Present a problem, not a solution. If you want your players to honestly engage with the setting, allow their actions to shape the outcomes. Do not have a fixed, predetermined result in mind, because by clinging to it, you will negate their ability to influence the game, and in turn undermine your attempts to get them to engage with your world.


Hope this is helpful!

That is also my experience. My players generally liked to have a moral dilemma thrown at them. so long as it was a sensible thing and not something designed specifically to be frustrating; so long as it was an actual choice, and not a test where they get punished if they disagree with the dm. And if they had to pick a lesser evil, they still made a difference and can feel accomplished about it. And if they work hard to earn their happy ending, they should definitely get it.

Though I think the thread title may be misleading. You want to put your players through uncomfortable decisions. You do not want to make them uncomfortable. One of them is good, if the players are engaged. The other is bad, and it punishes the players for being engaged.

Hm. To maximize player discomfort, I recommend hard benches instead of chairs, setting your gaming space's heating or cooling unit to either above 80 or below 65 degrees F, and replacing your battlemat with a chalk board and getting some very hard chalk to write with.
See, I wish we had upvotes for stuff like that:smallbiggrin:

[Pauly]

if none of the players are interested in that sort of thing at the start, and you'll lose engagement if those hard choices aren't meaningful. "Which of these 2 villages should be genocided for the military war machine?" is not a choice that excites a lot of people..

Which of these 2 villages are you going to let die is a poor form of dilemma. It makes the players feel powerless to make meaningful choices that affect the world.

Do I choose to save the village full of NPCs I know and care about, or do I take the opportunity to do a surprise raid in the BBEG’s temporarily unguarded HQ and possibly kill the BBEG and end the war is a much tougher dilemma. However it’s only a dilemma if the PCs actually care about the NPCs in the village.

[Pex]

You need player buy in. If they don't want/like philosophical and moral dilemmas the game will never be fun for them. The solution is to make it clear and obvious that is the type of game you want to run when looking for players. Make sure players know and understand what you mean and are willing to experience it. Players who don't like/want what you're offering won't bother to seek a spot. Talk to the players who do seek in case they don't fully comprehend your idea, allowing them to bow out upon understanding and determine for themselves they don't want it.

Once you have the players all in on the premise, play the game.

[gbaji]

I think one of the things I have found that has worked while DMing, is that if you set things up as a dilemma and the players come up with a (legitimate) 3rd option- let them have it. Don’t force the dilemma, but let them have their clever moment. That way when the next choice comes up and they can’t see a clean option, it’ll have more weight as they’ll feel ownership of that choice.

Agree with this 100% You can absolutely put dilemmas in front of the players, but they have to be presented as "here's what's happening, what do you do?" sort of things. If the players come up with a great solution that alleviates most of the negatives across the board, you *must* allow them that choice. Forcing them into an arbitrary "trolley problem" situation will likely only annoy them. It becomes obvious that the objective from the GM pov is to force them to accept a negative consequence, rather than present the players with a problem solving opportunity.

And yeah. I've often been surprised at solutions the players came up with that I didn't think of.

I've also presented my players with "do an evil thing for a good reason" options too. I don't put that into the "make them uncomfortable" category either though. It's more like the fact that in any real life situation you may be presented with opportunities to do things that may be good or evil, and have different pro/con outcomes. That can be done in a very natural way that doesn't put pressure on the players specifically. It's just a choice. And yeah, sometimes the players themselves struggle with the choice. But sometimes, it's merely a RP excersise.

I do agree that you should avoid "goom if you do, gloom if you don't" type choices. Well. Unless you and your players really really want to play a dark/grim game. Although, sometimes, it's not really about "gloom". I've played in some Stormbringer campaigns where at least half of the party was "evil" (and not just a little bit evil here folks). But that was the agreed upon setting and "feel" for the game we chose to play. Such games get tricky though, since it can become difficult over time to rationalize why the PCs *aren't* just bumping eachother off constantly. We found that the GM has to really put a high stakes "mission" in front of them for it to work (well, or you just accept a cycle of PVP going on, which is valid as well). Still didn't stop the occasional "death by opportunity" from happening though.

[Xervous]

If I were faced with an out of the blue “oh no slavers and slaves” dilemma in game I’d probably take whatever action I expected would terminate the topic (the woman and children too!) and keep it from coming back up. Orphans? Sucks to suck kiddo, but there’s other things I actually want to do with my limited time in elf games.

When I GM the majority of hazards and decisions are obviously tied to the players’ prior choices to engage with risky endeavors. The merchant who sabotaged their food supplies was intentionally made an enemy, and the civilian rescue mission they are now under provisioned for was something the party all pledged to do. As with myself, I’ve found that players tend to shrug off random hard choices when they present as a (player perceived) irrelevant distraction. The players have already told me plenty about what they deem relevant, so that’s where I pull from for distractions.

[Easy e]

Thanks guys. A couple comments/responses:

1. Yes, the dilemma must evolve "naturally" from the flow of the game, or what the players are interested or tell me they are interested in. Dilemma's the players are not interested in are not useful, they are annoying problems of logistics.

I believe scenes should only last as long as they are needed and welcomed, if they are not needed or welcomed they need to be ended and left behind. Dilemmas, puzzles, encounters, etc. are the same. Not needed or wanted, drop and move on if the players are not engaging with it.

2. In the ideal state, as GM I simply provide a dilemma and do not worry about the potential solutions. That's for players to solve, not me.

3. I agree with "if everyone agrees" in theory. However, in practice I do not follow this advice very well. Sure, we all agree to play a game of D&D 5e, we all agree that we are going to be part of an adventurer's guild doing a series of one-shots that are loosely linked as we delve into the ruins of an ancient empire, sure we agree on character parameters. That does not mean that those loosely link one-shots will not have moral, social, or related dilemmas.

However, since I have played with my group for a bit, they know that I will put these "Horns of a dilemma" in place. Thereby, by joining the game they can expect some of these types of "challenges" for them to deal with. Is that enough of an "agreement"? Maybe, maybe not?

I actually find, "be clear about your game and play it"- not useful. I do not want to be clear about my game and I want to genre and trope blend. Therefore, I can't be clear about my game because I'm not clear about my game. I guess I find games like that to be "hand-cuffs". I am not 100% sure what people even mean when they say this, but I assume it means do not pitch a giant mecha game and then have all the action involve rolling around in the sewer chasing down rats, but I could see that happening in one of my games; just not every session. Perhaps a topic for a different thread?



Side note: It is always interesting to me how mercenary, cold-blooded, and down right inhumane some players are in their fantasy while others are more noble and self-sacrificing in their fantasy worlds. It is even more interesting when different characters are different but have the same player. Role-playing!

[Ionathus]

I think it really depends on how you are presenting this. If your goal is "making the players uncomfortable", then the expected reaction is "players aren't going to want to play that game". It's somewhat axiomatic. People tend to avoid uncomfortable things. So maybe that's not the best stated goal.

Presenting them with moral quandaries is a valid RPG tactic. And I've done it a number of times. But it's not with the actual goal of forcing them into an uncomfortable choice. It's usually a natural consequence of the game. And when it happens that way, I find that players accept the choice and then actually engage, make a choice, and move forward. And yeah. Sometimes, I'm surprised at the choices they make.

Players are usually remarkably good at detecting when the GM is forcing something in game. So I'd avoid artificially trying to make these things come up. They'll happen occasionally just on their own. Well, assuming you make any effort at all to create a setting with real consequences for actions/choices, that is. Just doing it for the sake of putting a difficult choice in front of the players will usually not be taken well. But if it's something that "fits in" to the setting, it can work.

Again though, I'd avoid doing this just for the purpose of putting the players into an "uncomfortable" choice. Some players will enjoy this, but most wont.

Echoing all of this. You can lead a horse to the Trolley Problem, but you can't make it think.

The conflicts need to flow naturally from both your setting and the PCs' convictions. For example: in my current campaign of 4 players, 2 players directly referenced hating necromancy in their PC backstories, and a 3rd player built a necromancer :smallcool: That conflict writes itself, and I didn't need to "force" anything.

Even still, I'll introduce necromancy elements into the world that I expect these PCs will see differently: a powerful necromancer with a standing offer to show up and buy any corpses you make, a town that hates and fears necromancy, even magic items that give you a bonus if you kill a humanoid. None of these are explicit or forced "moral quandary" scenarios, but I hope that my players take the prompt and have their PCs voice satisfaction/opposition/unease/uncertainty with what's happening. And they almost always do.

Other things that I've poked at in this campaign:

Giving the LG paladin an armor upgrade that he didn't know was Blackguard armor, which he only discovered when it trivialized an infiltration mission. The armor wasn't inherently evil or magical, it just gave him social status and made their time in an evil country much easier -- but he had to change his behavior and lie constantly, which was tricky for his black-and-white Oath of Devotion.
Infecting the Druid with lycanthropy then giving her ways to "control" it - this PC is very materialistic for a druid and has struggled with feeling isolated from others, and I've played up how different her senses are when in werewolf form...including the persistent smell of her teammates' blood, etc.
The barbarian has hurt people with her reckless behavior in the past, so I've given her boons and items that blatantly incentivize her to be even more reckless in hopes that it will spur conflict or a hard choice.


The most important element of all of these is that it's an option that was offered to the PCs, but not forced on them.1 It's the classic "power with a price" decision, and the most important thing is to make both choices appealing and to not screw them over if they pick the "wrong" choice -- this is a game about their characters, after all, so they should direct the major character beats and build a rewarding story either way!

Of course, you need to have a certain kind of player to make this work. But if your players aren't interested in or capable of self-motivating that conversation, then it might be a sign that moral debate or quandaries aren't fun for them.

1. Okay, lycanthropy wasn't a choice, but the druid hasn't followed up on any of the "cure" hooks I've floated, so it's clear she likes playing with the powers and the quandary.


Hm. To maximize player discomfort, I recommend hard benches instead of chairs, setting your gaming space's heating or cooling unit to either above 80 or below 65 degrees F, and replacing your battlemat with a chalk board and getting some very hard chalk to write with.

Snacks: lukewarm beer and a bowl of durian.


I actually find, "be clear about your game and play it"- not useful. I do not want to be clear about my game and I want to genre and trope blend. Therefore, I can't be clear about my game because I'm not clear about my game. I guess I find games like that to be "hand-cuffs". I am not 100% sure what people even mean when they say this, but I assume it means do not pitch a giant mecha game and then have all the action involve rolling around in the sewer chasing down rats, but I could see that happening in one of my games; just not every session. Perhaps a topic for a different thread?

I'm pretty sure it's referencing the tone of the game. Lord of the Rings and ASOIAF are both sword-and-sorcery fantasy series, but one is very idealistic with minimal bodycount and an uplifting message, and one has a much darker and complicated tone with grittier consequences.

If your friends are signing up to roll dice, kill dragons, and get fun magic items, being sucked into a political thriller with no "right" answers isn't going to be fun for them.

[False God]

However, since I have played with my group for a bit, they know that I will put these "Horns of a dilemma" in place. Thereby, by joining the game they can expect some of these types of "challenges" for them to deal with. Is that enough of an "agreement"? Maybe, maybe not?

I actually find, "be clear about your game and play it"- not useful. I do not want to be clear about my game and I want to genre and trope blend. Therefore, I can't be clear about my game because I'm not clear about my game. I guess I find games like that to be "hand-cuffs". I am not 100% sure what people even mean when they say this, but I assume it means do not pitch a giant mecha game and then have all the action involve rolling around in the sewer chasing down rats, but I could see that happening in one of my games; just not every session. Perhaps a topic for a different thread?
I think "I don't stick to one genre." is fair warning. But I do think at a minimum you should be able to pitch the basic concept. "This is a high-magic high-sci-fi magical girl space adventure!" This should IMO be the "core" of the game you're pitching. A clear warning that other genres may be included as you feel they are necessary should be sufficient. But IMO, when I go looking for a game, I'm looking for a DM who is clear on what they want to present and where they're willing to make adjustments and exceptions. IME too often DMs who don't have a clear idea of the game they want to run get drug down by players who don't know what game they want to play. IMO this is more often than not and IME worsened when the DM doesn't have a solid idea of what they want to run.

[kyoryu]

Huh. I am surprised by most of these responses because that has not been my experience at all. IÂ’ve put my players in some pretty dark, ethically challenging situations that were resolved happily in the end after a long campaign and my players loved it. These are my recommendations on what has worked for us.

1. DO NOT go grimdark. To maintain the grim darkness of the setting, a grimdark campaign will demand that all actions are equally miserable. That will kill engagement faster than anything because there is nothing to do except be miserable and your players will (rightfully) call you out on it. InsteadÂ…

2. Make sure their actions have consequences and do not hesitate to be brutal. In a game I ran, a society of humans was oppressing a Tabaxi city. It was not overt slavery but was very similar to working in a steel mill in the 18th century. Lots of Tabaxi died and their human overlords did nothing. After multiple battles and plots with player support, the Tabaxi managed to overthrow the humans, the resistance leader asked the PCs to leave town for a few days on a wild goose chase. The players figured out it was a ruse and returned early, discovering that the Tabaxi resistance were in the middle of an ethnic cleansing event and massacring ALL the humans in the city. This made the players frustrated but only with themselves, because they all agreed that they should have seen this coming.

3. Let the players earn their happy ending. Ambiguity is great, but making a difference is better. If the players propose a solution that could work, let it. In the above scenario, by the time the genocide, revolution, countergenocide, and counterrevolution had occurred, the city was at 1/3 of the original population. The PCs, being the only thing resembling a military force or an authority figure left standing at this point, ordered the entire population to meet in the central plaza. The PCs informed the populace that they had a week to create a new government that allowed for equal rights and representation for all, or “so help me God, we will burn this city to the ground”. They also publicly judged and pardoned the revolutionary leader, saying that everyone deserves a second chance, even him, so the people better not waste theirs… or else.

And, surprisingly, it worked! Having witnessed the party crush the occupiers, the rebellion, and an opportunistic tribe of Hill Giants in quick succession, the people knew the PCs were capable of carrying out the threat. Being a party that included local humans and Tabaxi also helped. The players adored the fact that I rewarded their restraint and allowed them to shape the future of this city in a definitive way after all the setbacks.

4. Present a problem, not a solution. If you want your players to honestly engage with the setting, allow their actions to shape the outcomes. Do not have a fixed, predetermined result in mind, because by clinging to it, you will negate their ability to influence the game, and in turn undermine your attempts to get them to engage with your world.

This is all great stuff.

I'll add two things. If they have to choose between multiple things, make sure they get the thing they choose (so long as they succeed, of course). The choice should be about which thing they aim for, and the cost should be the thing they don't get. Making the cost "oh, and you didn't even get the thing you wanted" pushes it towards grimdark.

In the sub scenario, if they choose to rescue the prisoners, they should have a good chance of doing so. It may be difficult, and they may fail, and that's okay, but they should feel like they failed, not like the scenario forced them. Similarly, if they go for the sub, they should be able to defeat it and save the fleet.

If they sacrifice the fleet to save the survivors, and still can't save the survivors, then it's going to leave a bad taste in their mouth. "Okay, so you choose to ignore the sub and go rescue the survivors. As you head over to their location, you hear the explosions of the fleet in the distance. Oh noes. But when you get to the survivors, they've all been eaten by sharks!" Don't do this. (Or, at the very very least, make sure they know it's a possibility in advance).

Secondly, if they are given a choice in a scenario, it's totally cool for that choice to have consequences. But don't make the consequences of all options worse than the existing situation. That doesn't mean it has to be a 100% perfect Disney ending, but it needs to be better. "It's bad, but you can make it better. Not perfect, but better" is a fine scenario. "It's bad, but anything you do will likely make it worse" is not a good scenario. I speak from experience as a player.


I think "I don't stick to one genre." is fair warning. But I do think at a minimum you should be able to pitch the basic concept. "This is a high-magic high-sci-fi magical girl space adventure!" This should IMO be the "core" of the game you're pitching. A clear warning that other genres may be included as you feel they are necessary should be sufficient. But IMO, when I go looking for a game, I'm looking for a DM who is clear on what they want to present and where they're willing to make adjustments and exceptions. IME too often DMs who don't have a clear idea of the game they want to run get drug down by players who don't know what game they want to play. IMO this is more often than not and IME worsened when the DM doesn't have a solid idea of what they want to run.

Yeah. Think of your game as a TV series. Your trailer for the TV series should accurately tell people what it is - because you want to attract the viewers that would like it, and to some extent warn off people that won't.

That doesn't mean that an "episode" of your "show" can't veer slightly, within the general bounds of what your "show" is "about".

[gbaji]

Snacks: lukewarm beer and a bowl of durian.

One of my coworkers returned from a trip to the Philipines (where she's from originally), and brought some soft durian candy chews with her. Which she promptly shared around the office. Were actually quite delicious. But man is there an aftertaste. Let's just say you're tasting durian for a long long time. And it lingers on your breath. Like all day.

Apparently just people eating these and breathing afterwards created sufficient odor in and around the office suite were in, that facilities was called due to multiple reports of gas leaks in the building.

[Crake]

But lets clarify two things: "fun" and "happy". I LOVE political, ethical, moral and social debate. It's "fun" for me, but it doesn't necessarily always leave me feeling happy. I think it's important to understand that a portion of the game can be "fun", in the sense that it is engaging, the players are on task and focused; but it isn't necessarily happy. Challenge is fun, but also stressful. I think it's entirely possible to have both had fun and also not be happy. I think this is an important element to many of these difficult situations. But I don't think a lot of people are really interested in it. They want to have "fun" AND be "happy". I model a lot of my my challenging situations after real life, things are complicated, messy and even good solutions are far from the best solutions. And some people aren't willing to go away from a situation "satisfied". They only want the best, most positive outcomes.

I think you can describe “fun” as something that leaves you happy after the fact. Challenges might be stressful in the moment, but after the fact, if they were fun, they leave you happy, or at the very least, content.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I want to echo many points made, but lack the skills to multiquote.

Creating problems (conflicts) is key. Further, it helps between sessions to think about the BBEG.

What do they know that's new? (are they even aware of the party, its capabilities, its intentions)

How will this new knowing affect their plans? (move up timeline, change approach, change objective)

How will this change in plans manifest in ways the party can experience? (NPC reports to PCs, encounters, environmental)

What happens if the party ignores the change?

One of my most careful parties thought they were doing the right thing they all agreed on and involved a lesser NPC in the party's goal. The NPC professed a goal the party ignored. This resulted in a totally innocent NPC ward of the PCs being ritually sacrificed to appease an evil god, and the PCs created the circumstances of their death. That made them uncomfortable.

[kyoryu]

Also, if you do want to do more of a grimdark setting, the players need to be able to carve out small areas of light.

Look at Halo:Reach or Rogue One. In both of those movies, we know that the protagonists are doomed. But yet they still can have some level of "winning", by making things better for others in some way.

Even if you don't want to kill the PCs, that's fine. You can have the city/country/whatever doomed, but you at least need to let the players get some wins. They save their friends, or carve out enough area to let people live their lives before the inevitable end, or they at least make the inevitable end less bad - like, maybe the world goes apocalyptic either way, but they can determine whether the people that survive are fundamentally free or not.

[Bulhakov]

Greetings all,

I know I am a bit of an outlier in GM style on these boards, but I want to talk a bit about this topic. As a GM, I like to put my players (and therefore their characters) onto the "Horns of a Dilemma" in my games. I like to put my players into a game space where there are ethical, moral, social, and psychological consequences for decisions made in the game.

The whole point of my games is to have fun, while making them uncomfortable. Making them question things about their characters, their backgrounds, the world, and the belief systems is the core of the game. How the game resolves should leave many questions with the characters of players.

So, the questions for you GMs out there:
- How do you handle creating this "tension" while still making the games fun for the players?
- What tips or tricks do you have to create this uncomfortable tension?
- How and where do you break the tensions?
- How do you constructing such scenarios?
- How do your players react?
- Have you had negative reactions?

Thanks in advance for your insight.

I think it depends on what your players enjoy. I had a bunch of experienced players, so they really liked new twists, trope subversions and morally gray tensions, but they also really really liked happy endings. So I always tried to give them that, even if there were forced into uncomfortable choices, I let them see the good of their deeds. If the choices were too uncomfortable I tried to provide them with a third option (or drop hints which choice would be less "uncomfortable").

Some ideas for constructing such tensions:
- realistic villains with relatable motivations
- warring factions, each with good positive goals
- enemies that surrender or run away
- encountering families of previously killed enemies
- building up, then subverting expectations (e.g. the BBEG being not as evil as expected)
- time limitations / trolley problems (only enough time/resources to do one quest, which is the more important? do ends justify the means?)

[Beelzebub1111]

So, the questions for you GMs out there:
- How do you handle creating this "tension" while still making the games fun for the players?
- What tips or tricks do you have to create this uncomfortable tension?
- How and where do you break the tensions?
- How do you constructing such scenarios?
- How do your players react?
- Have you had negative reactions?

Thanks in advance for your insight.
As someone who has GM'd horror scenarios before the best thing you can do is speak quietly and deliberately when a serious scene is happening. You can laugh and have jokes at the table but scolding them for not paying attention or trying to talk over them gets you nowhere. Draw them in to your description of the scene.

Also, make sure your players know they are in a horror scenario beforehand either with clear telegraphing or out-of-game. This is the most important part.