DM Help I handled a situation badly - advice really appreciated(long-ish read) [Archive]

HoboKnight

2024-01-09, 09:49 AM

Kurald Galain

2024-01-09, 10:08 AM

Background: K is a long time friend of mine who helped me immensely in life. If it was any ordinary player in question, I would put my foot down and settle things there and then, here I could not do it. At the same time, I have real issues with setting and upholding boundaries in life generally. There were several such events with K in the past and I have mostly folded. Guy is super smart, he destroys me with "facts"(TBH i really do not know what the apprentice said at this point 3 sessions ago) and his overall willpower.
I feel a discrepancy in what you write. The way you describe K's behavior is not consistent with how a friend would act. Friends respect each others' boundaries; that's a very basic and fundamental part of friendship.

So ask yourself, are your feelings towards him based on friendship or obligation? Just because he has helped you in the past does not mean he is entitled to an indefinite "free pass" on behavior.

Catullus64

2024-01-09, 10:58 AM

The more heavily interpersonal stuff about your own boundaries, I leave to you, other than commending your desire to take a stand for yourself without losing a valued friend.

With regards to the state of the game, instances where a player and a DM are at odds about the truth of what happened, and something important rests upon the disputed point, are pretty difficult to deal with. So you and the players need to come to consensus about what happened, and decide upon an official version of what the NPC apprentice did and didn't say. If he did in fact promise help, then an explanation is needed of why he didn't say so under Zone of Truth. If he didn't, an explanation is needed as to why Player K thought they did, be it through evasive language, half-promises, fingers-crossed-behind-the-back, whatever. If this behavior from K's character was inconsistent with their usual character, address that, and ask K to account for why his character suddenly acted so aggressively. The important point is to restore your players' faith that the game world is consistent, and that their characters act based around that consistency.

In terms of learning from this situation and handling such things better in future, a couple things spring to mind. Note-taking goes a long way towards resolving these kind of disputes. Though by default the DM assumes most of the responsibility in this regard, you can delegate if you find it too onerous. Divide up information into categories, like NPC conversations, areas explored, items found, etc, and say that each category is one player's responsibility to keep an official log on. Second, when it seems like a situation is proceeding based on a player's misunderstanding, be sharp and direct in addressing that misunderstanding.

Thirdly... trust yourself and your authority more. While fairness and consistency should be your aims, at the end of the day you are the DM, and if you're not sure what happened, make a decision about what did and stand by it. Your players, by virtue of sitting at the table, have entrusted you with that authority, and should be prepared to cede ground like this when your memory and theirs conflict.

NichG

2024-01-09, 12:23 PM

Hey guys,
I would really appreciate some advice on how to handle certain situation I encountered as a DM. I'm running about 2 year long campaign(Faerun, 5e, 4 paladins, 1 fighter, lvl13) for a group of 5 of my friends. Recently, this happened:

My party is tracking an Epic-level tier coven of Hags who reside on their own demiplane and are quite unknown in the wider world(being rather secretive), so the party decided to visit Candlekeep in order to get information on this specific coven. Party invested several sessions worth of game time into acquiring a rare book that gets them into the Candlekeep. They visited Candlekeep, got in and when they just entered, one paladin (paladin A)got a request from his god: "go here, kill baddies. They are high-tier baddies, so I need your help." Paladin A understood the sacrifice if not being able to enter again without another hard-to-acquire book and agreed. His party agreed.
Additionally, player K pressed a Candlekeep apprentice to obtain information from Candlekeep even after departing(you get access by donating a valuable book, if you leave, you must again provide another book to enter. Standard Candlekeep). Apprentice promised he would find a way to provide them with info, even if they leave. Party left, killed the baddies, got a level and some cool loot. Party returned to Candlekeep. As they visited again, they were informed by another clerk, they could not obtain the knowledge, unless a book of value was provided. This pissed off K.

K's character pressed the mentioned apprentice into providing the party with Candlekeep info, even if they don't have a book. As the apprentice said, he never mentioned providing them info and that officially, he can not provide the info.(but I had a backup plan, where the apprentice still finds a solution - and other party members read/understood this hinted-at plot), which resulted in K grabbing an apprentice who just wanted to get out of a stressful situation. (At this point, things started to bleed out of character. Lots of ranting). Candlekeep leadership appeared, several Archmages who basically saw an armored guy grappling their apprentice and wanted for K to let him go and apologize. K did not relent(Dark Knight style) and demanded interrogation under Zone Of Truth. Candlekeep leadership agreed, not being totally uncaring for the fate of the apprentice. Zone of truth was cast, apprentice said he never promised what K claimed to be the truth and K player flipped the table, went completely OOC.

At this point, I as a DM, was unsure what the apprentice had said exactly 3 sessions ago(with the apprentice not being authorized for such agreements at all - he just initially liked the party).
What we remember:
- it turned out player K had misunderstood who asked paladin A to go on a quest. It was not Candlekeep personnel, but a visitor, who was also affected by A's god. I want to say Ks memory in this case was not perfect
- on the other hand: paladin player A said he could understand/read that even if I as a DM may have not been completely clear on what apprentice said, that party will not get another access into the library without another book
- A expected for the party to get a chance to get in - I am not a d*ck DM and A knows this, as well as all others who have played with me for about 2 years now. A also expected with high assurance that I as a DM will provide a plan for a party to still get what they want - it might take just some interesting RP
- Player C was already looking for inventive options, not giving up/ranting even remotely. Player K still wanted to brute-force the issue.

At this point, I as a DM had folded. Given the Candlekeep leadership aspect, they would merely ban aggressive K from the library, but I made the apprentice contact the party just as they were leaving to get another book and enabled them to enter.
Story, which was supposed to present a party with a sacrifice of not being officially allowed into the library again, because they have accepted morally good deed(because they responded to a divine request for help), only to be resolved by a helpful apprentice contacting them afterward because they left a really good impression, was overridden by Ks series of rants and I turned out as a DM who folds under pressure and I really do not feel good about it.

Background: K is a long time friend of mine who helped me immensely in life. If it was any ordinary player in question, I would put my foot down and settle things there and then, here I could not do it. At the same time, I have real issues with setting and upholding boundaries in life generally. There were several such events with K in the past and I have mostly folded. Guy is super smart, he destroys me with "facts"(TBH i really do not know what the apprentice said at this point 3 sessions ago) and his overall willpower.

My question for you guys is not so much what to do with him, but how should I handle this myself? My boundary was not respected. No, my DMing was not perfect. I might have made a mistake and I admit that. Rest of the party, at least on a meta-level understood that there will be some consequences, but also had a strong hunch, I will not just f. party over because they responded to a request from god. Several other players understood this or were immediately willing to seek other solutions. K just wanted to brute force the issues and he succeeded, humiliating me a bit and making me fold. With all written, I still do not feel like kicking the guy from the group. I want to work on my boundaries.

My plan is to go in more confidently. To not allow myself to be pushed around anymore. Candlekeep leadership will return, banning K from the library, because other patrons feel threatened by him(story of attack on apprentice has spread). Again, I have a way out here - in phase two if a person of prominent standard and proper moral fabre is to guarantee for K, he will be allowed to enter, accompanied by this person. This opens great roleplay options for our paladin of Helm who is often a rather oblivious guy when it comes to combat, but engages greatly in roleplay. I will also stop being the guy who is always on him to arrange reconciliatory coffees, give initiative for make-up talks. This never comes from K.

I'd appreciate advice in this, regarding improving my boundaries, general advice/insight is also welcome. I always admit there may be parts I do not see.

thanks

I think at the core of this, regardless of who is remembering things correctly, is that you have a mismatch here between what you think would be a cool story and what K thinks would be a cool story. The arc you imagined that would establish moral fibre and perseverance of the party, when played out, probably felt tedious and like a completed victory was being stolen from K for no really good reason. From that perspective, the apprentice giving some assurances that it'll be alright would have been at best a temporary mollification - K probably wasn't happy with even that state of events but thought 'well okay we have a guarantee, I guess we can't object too much, so I guess we'll go with A's plotline as long as we're promised it doesn't stretch out this thing that I actually care about more'.

But in the end, it looked like it was going to stretch out the thing that K actually cared about. And the ability to pursue that goal directly was more important to K's enjoyment of the game than a story that presented something of the moral character of the party. So K forced the issue, in order to try to 'press skip' over the stuff that they felt they had already properly done. Sure there might have been some other subquest or arc of events that would bring the party back into Candlekeep, but that relies on trusting implied hints that you're giving as the DM immediately after a situation where, from K's perspective, previous implied hints of that form were shown to be a lie.

And this is a classic communication error - something that should be discussed OOC is being handled through IC interactions. So K's character becomes a proxy for what K the player feels about the game.

If I were in this situation, I would basically stop the game and say: "Okay, this is what I was trying to do and why, I thought it would be cool and give you guys an opportunity to show off your character, but clearly it landed wrong. I don't want to represent Candlekeep as being soft on the kind of escalation we just saw since that undermines what Candlekeep is supposed to be in the setting, so I'd like to retcon that entire scene and if necessary retcon things so that A's god sends someone with a valuable book or just that the timing was different, so we can get on with game. But this is an out of character compromise! If you try to throw force around Candlekeep like this in play that we don't retcon, you're just never going to be able to use their resources again period and if that means the campaign ends then the campaign ends - I'm not going to play chicken over it."

You can try to keep your authority as GM by having the world shame K's character for their actions like you proposed, but that will make things worse. The spin-out you saw is what starts to happen when a cooperative relationship at the table turns into an adversarial one. Now you trust K less, and K trusts you less, and its more and more likely that K will make stronger choices with the authority that they have - their character's actions - that prevent you from expressing the story arcs you imagine, as a response to you using your authority as GM to draw things out into those arcs without the consent of all the players.

GloatingSwine

2024-01-09, 01:15 PM

I think at the core of this, regardless of who is remembering things correctly, is that you have a mismatch here between what you think would be a cool story and what K thinks would be a cool story. The arc you imagined that would establish moral fibre and perseverance of the party, when played out, probably felt tedious and like a completed victory was being stolen from K for no really good reason.

Yeah, I think this is also just a weird time to do that kind of thing.

The players weren't going to Candlekeep for something they wanted, they were going there in order to continue the fight against a greater evil. They weren't being asked to make a personal sacrifice in order to do good works, they were being yanked from one good work to another one, more immediate but lesser in scale at the cost of having to basically redo their last three sessions in order to get right back to where they already were in the "main" conflict.

So it's not even really a "test of character", it's just winning a bigger shovel because you're good at digging holes.

gbaji

2024-01-09, 03:53 PM

Yeah, I think this is also just a weird time to do that kind of thing.

The players weren't going to Candlekeep for something they wanted, they were going there in order to continue the fight against a greater evil. They weren't being asked to make a personal sacrifice in order to do good works, they were being yanked from one good work to another one, more immediate but lesser in scale at the cost of having to basically redo their last three sessions in order to get right back to where they already were in the "main" conflict.

So it's not even really a "test of character", it's just winning a bigger shovel because you're good at digging holes.

This. The core problem was the structure of the adventure path itself. If you have presented the players with a goal, and they are proceeding on that path, and they have to sacrifice something to get to a point on that path, it's a really crappy GM thing to then take that away from them, and force them to do it again. They (presumably) had some need/reason to be in Candlekeep, and they paid the price to go there and gain access to the library. So your response was to have one of the PCs deities, right at that freaking moment, decide to send them off on another quest? Why? That's just terrible timing for the adventure. Have them do whatever they need to do in Candlekeep, and *then* send them off on another side adventure.

Doing it the way you did comes off like you're just arbitrarily messing with them. And then, when a player realizes that this will cost them their access, and takes steps to rectify this, you appear to allow them a way to come back, but then renege on it later. It doesn't really matter what exactly was said by the apprentice, the player clearly believed that they would be allowed to come back and use the library after they went off on this side quest. They clearly believed that this was *you* (the GM) telling the players "don't worry, I'm not going to screw you out of the access you just paid for if you do this quest I just put in front of you". But then, when they got back you basically said "nope".

Was there a specific reason why you didn't just have the apprentice let them back into the library? I mean, I guess what I'm confused about is what was the purpose of this whole sequence of events? Was it actually your intention to use the side quest for paladinA just to deny them access to the library they had already paid for? Or did you have some other cool idea in your head about how they would gain access to the library, even without a book, but then the party actually went off and found a book, and used it instead, so you contrived a side bit to nullify that, so they'd have to go through the scripted story you really wanted? I'm not sure which is which, but the effect is really really bad.

I've posted this a few times, and it's like "gbaji's number one rule of GMing": Don't take stuff away from the PCs. There's a lot of ways to interpret and apply this rule, but any time you are running a game, and the plot requires taking *anything* away from the PCs, ask yourself a whole string of questions about why you are doing it, and how the players are going to recieve it. Because what you might think is a "really cool plot twist, with lots of fun drama, and it'lll all work out ok in the end", will almost always result in really angry players if you do this.

They paid for access to the darn library. Just give them the access. Let them do whatever it was they came there to do, and then move on. Don't yank it away from them.

truemane

2024-01-09, 04:31 PM

I actually disagree with the posters who say the issue is the story. The issue is how the player felt about the story. Any kind of story can work, give the right circumstances, and any kind of story can fall flat, given the wrong ones.

I will agree that a story that involves giving the PC's something (or promising it) and then taking it away, is very tricky to get right. It's like trying to make an edgy joke on a touchy topic. It's not that you can't, or shouldn't, it's that it's a very hard thing to get right, and has a high chance of going wrong.

So, here the actual pain point here was the moment that K's IC frustration became OC frustration. And when that happened, you basically offered an IC solution for an OC reason. That never feels good.

What I do, and what I might suggest any time a player seems to frustrated (rather than their player), is to feel free to pause the game and ask why they're upset.

You mentioned that you thought your players would realize, from two years of experience, that you had something in mind and weren't just being arbitrary or contrary, but you might consider stopping the game and just saying that.

The precise order of events is hard to parse from your recounting, but it sounds like you kept trying to move the scene forward IC, even as the situation deteriorated OC.

But I think, if someone gets upset OC, just pause the game. And say to him (OC) "Give me a chance, I've got a plan that'll make this work out."

I've said lots and lots of times that every game, every table, every group, even ever session forms its own tiny little social contract in which the participants (mostly nonverbally, mostly invisibly) make a lot of decisions about how the game should or should not go. And real, intractable conflict is generally the result of people having differing points of view over something so obvious and so clear that it seems impossible to them that anyone else could possible disagree.

(in evidence, I offer the fact that two smart posters just told you to never do this sort of thing and I strongly disagree. I think you can totally do this sort of thing. It's just something that easily cause frustration. There's not a lot of 'always' or 'never' in tabletop roleplaying, and even less 'clearly' or 'obviously')

So, my big advice is: make it part of your social contract to address the social contract. Pause the game and talk about it. If someone's not playing the way you'd like, or seems to be on a different page, just tell them what you're trying to do and ask if that works for them.

(small anecdote: the only RL group in which I'm player, there's one other player who's the type who's always a wizard, and likes to do that thing where his wizard is aware of the precise mechanical boundaries of his spells, and is always exploiting them. This drives the GM nuts because he feels it cheapens the drama and mystery and excitement of the game, and so he's always coming up with IC, in-game limits on the player's actions. I've told him tons of times that what needs to do is tell the player what kind of game he's in, and just ask him to buy in.)

Anyway, other bits of advice to help with maintaining boundaries and handling sudden conflict:
If you make an IC mistake, just say it out loud. Own it. "Ah crap, I don't remember what he said." And, again, pause the game and ask the players what they thing is fair. Do you go by their memory? Or do you assume the players misremembered?

Have a formal, established process by which authority is established at the table. Who has the final say during a game? You? The books? The general consensus? And if a mistake is made, how is it brought up? If there's a conflict, how is it decided? This is one of the main things I find gets decided invisibly, and so one of the main things that causes fights as soon as a disagreement is revealed. So ask your players how they'd like to handle it. Discuss it a bit. Agree to a simple set of procedures, and stick to them.

I would think a convo with K is appropriate at this time. Not a conciliatory one. Or a judgey one. It doesn't even have to be about feelings if you don't want it to. Just "we can't have this sort of thing happening at the table. It's bad for the game. What can we do to make sure it doesn't?" His answer to that question will tell you a lot about where he's coming from and whether or not he's on your side.

Good luck. I've been in this exact situation before and it's not easy.

Unoriginal

2024-01-09, 05:17 PM

Before goimg further in anslysing the situation, I think there are two very important questions OP should answer, in order for us to have a clear picture:

1) Before this, when was the last time things did not go thebway the group wanted them to go?

2) Before this, when was the last time things did not go the way K/K's PC wanted them to go?

Depending on the answer the situation could be immensely different.

GloatingSwine

2024-01-09, 06:08 PM

I actually disagree with the posters who say the issue is the story. The issue is how the player felt about the story. Any kind of story can work, give the right circumstances, and any kind of story can fall flat, given the wrong ones.

It's not the story that's the problem, it's how that story is incarnated in player time.

The players needed a plot coupon to get through a door, they took several sessions to get the plot coupon and used it to go through the door, then they were told they had to leave right now and weren't going to be allowed back in without a new plot coupon that took probably IRL weeks to get last time.

"I was going to spring something on them later that would have given the thing that I stopped them getting last time, but this way it was totally outside of their agency to actually find it for themselves" was never going to fix that.

The only thing that could have was if whatever they were sent to do instead of going to the library in the first place was at least perceptibly and definitively useful to the goal that had sent them to Candlekeep and then they got the information they went for as well.

icefractal

2024-01-09, 06:24 PM

1) Before this, when was the last time things did not go thebway the group wanted them to go?

2) Before this, when was the last time things did not go the way K/K's PC wanted them to go?Seconding this as a very important question. Because on the one hand, this is a type of story that's going to feel unsatisfying at best to some players. But on the other hand, there are plenty of players who'd enjoy it just fine, and if your players have been happy with your GMing style for two years then it seems likely they're in that latter group. So the question is whether K has a style fundamentally at odds with yours, or this was just unlucky escalation from a misunderstanding.

To elaborate on "unsatisfying at best to some players" -
For some people (including myself to an extent) there's a significant distinction between "the PCs consciously set a goal and resolved it by their own efforts" and "karma / the world handed the PCs a solution to their problem". Even if OOC it plays out a similar way (you face a number of threats/problems and then achieve what you wanted if you make it through), it still feels different.

I mean yes, I'm aware that "heroes do the right thing at the cost of their goals, seems like they're screwed now, but karma gives them the win in the end" is an element in many stories and plenty of people enjoy that. But IME, the attitude above correlates heavily with "I'm here to explore a world and/or defeat a challenge, not to co-write or experience a story."

gbaji

2024-01-09, 06:43 PM

I actually disagree with the posters who say the issue is the story. The issue is how the player felt about the story. Any kind of story can work, give the right circumstances, and any kind of story can fall flat, given the wrong ones.

I can buy that. But some stories are more "fraught with peril" than others. And you are correct with the whole social contract concept. But again, that's something the GM has to really have a good handle on, and be very very aware of how the players are going to receive any story twists and turns.

I've said lots and lots of times that every game, every table, every group, even ever session forms its own tiny little social contract in which the participants (mostly nonverbally, mostly invisibly) make a lot of decisions about how the game should or should not go. And real, intractable conflict is generally the result of people having differing points of view over something so obvious and so clear that it seems impossible to them that anyone else could possible disagree.

(in evidence, I offer the fact that two smart posters just told you to never do this sort of thing and I strongly disagree. I think you can totally do this sort of thing. It's just something that easily cause frustration. There's not a lot of 'always' or 'never' in tabletop roleplaying, and even less 'clearly' or 'obviously')

Yup. I suppose I could amend my rule, but it really does depend on what qualifies as "taking something from the players". And this is going to be strongly dependent on how the players view the thing. There's a huge difference between something that is seen as a "cost" (for example, the book they obtained specifically to gain access to the library) versus a "loss" (something they had, which they expected to be able to retain and/or use, but was then taken or made unusable in some way).

And yes, you are correct. You *can* pull this off, but you really have to get strong player buy-in to what you are doing. And IMO (and IME), this is very much about setting expectations and then meeting them. In this case, the GM set the expectation that "if you find a rare book and give it to the librarians, you will have access to the library for <whatever plot/quest purpose they needed this for>". Having created this expectation, you need to meet it. And if you inject something into the adventure that blocks or removes that, then you really need to make it clear to the players that you are providing an alternative path for them that substitues the one they thought they were going to use.

This example is particularly problematic, because it was basically a double failure to meet expectations. First, the players expect to use the library in return for the cost of the book. They're ok with losing the book, because they get access to the library in return, so that's not a problem. But then the GM takes away access, by injecting this sudden quest on one of the PCs. That's acceptable, as long as you provide an alternate path. And this took the form of the other paladin making a deal with the apprentice librarian to alllow access to the library upon their return from this quest. So... taken, but then alternative granted. Seems like we're good here, right? Except now, having taken away their first access, but then giving them an alternative way to have access, they return and that "second path" is also taken away.

And that's where the social contract breaks down. From the players perspective, the GM is not fulfilling his side of the agreement. They accepted that 'we're being told by the GM to do this side quest", and they trust that the GM is going to return access to the library. That trust is then broken when the apprentice renegs on the agreement though. Which causes the conflict. And yeah, even having gone through that, it could be salvaged, but you have to be highly aware that the players expect recovery of what was taken from them. If you *immediately* provide them with a new alternative path to regain access, then it can work. But asking them again to "just trust me, this will work" after having effectively pulled the rug out from under them, not once, but twice, is a really tough sell.

If I were running this, and wanted their route to get to whatever info they needed from the library to be a bit more convoluted (I'm not sure why this is desirable, but whatever), having put them on a side quest, and having given them merely a vague expectation that "the apprentice will try to get you in later", I would have solidified it by maybe having them come across another rare book on this side quest (or information about one, or something else they could barter for access). Again though, I keep coming back to the primary problem being that, having the players have to go find a rare book to buy access in the first place, it was taken away and nothing provided in return. Even if the GM provides some alternative means to gain access, from the players perspective the "cost" off the first book was actually a "loss" (it was taken away and they got nothing for it).

You have to find some way to make the initial expense of that book valuable to them. Even if there is some other plotted out method that you're going to grant them access to the library, if it didn't come about as a result of them providing that book, then it will always be seen as a loss. Heck. It might even be worse, since they'll realize that they could have just not bothered getting the book in the first place, if the GM was going to provide a way into the library anyway. Which can lead to problems in the future, because now the players may expect you to provide methods to achieve stuff like this, without them having to go out and do it themselves. Which is maybe not what you want the players to expect of you.

Anyway, other bits of advice to help with maintaining boundaries and handling sudden conflict:
If you make an IC mistake, just say it out loud. Own it. "Ah crap, I don't remember what he said." And, again, pause the game and ask the players what they thing is fair. Do you go by their memory? Or do you assume the players misremembered?

Well. And this is where I'm confused by the issue in the OP to begin with. It's not like this was a brief bit of confusion. Hoboknight seemed to be well aware of the player's perception that the apprentice was going to give them access to the library, and made a conscious decision to have this not actually happen. But then, he seemed to have run through this whole "what did the apprentice actually say or promise" bit with the zone of truth thing anyway. So there was a fair amount of time here to have realized "Oh. I may have misspoken" or something along the way. Hence my confusion. If it really was that the GM thought the apprentice said one thing, and the player thought he said something different this should have been resolved before going through the in game motions that occurred (the zone of truth). Hoboknight could have simply corrected the player and said "well, actually the apprentice only promied to try to get you back in, he didnt promise he'd actually be able to do it". Instead, this seems to have been played out as though it was the paladin character, and not the paladin's player who was wrong (or was right, and some other nefarious stuff is going on).

Dunno. It just seems odd to have even gone that route in the first place. If there was the slightest doubt over what the apprentice actually said, or even whether the issue was with whether the apprentice could actually deliver on his promise, this should have been cleared up (externally in the first case, and internally by the GM in the second) before proceeding. There should have been no need for in game truth spells, unless the result was to show that the apprentice promised something he could not deliver on, in which case the player was correct in being upset when said promise was shown to have been the truth, despite not being carried out. It just seems as though if it really was a misremembering of what was said, that should have been cleared up. And if it was not, then the apprentice was lying if he actually said "I'll get you back into the library when you return". I can see why the player would be confused and upset if neither condition occurs.

I've certainly seen situations where there was actual disagreement on what the GM said, or an NPC said, or other details in a game. And yeah, that can cause confusion in the game. And you are correct, that the correct course is to immediately stop the game and clarify things. It just feels like there was more to the story in terms of what Hoboknight was trying to do story/plot wise than is included in the OP, so it's hard to really assess what went wrong.

I still go back to my advice though. I've just seen too many times where what happens is that the GM has a vision in thier head of a sequence of events, and they're so focused on making that happen, that they don't really pay attention to how that sequence is going to be perceived by the players when running through it. As the GM, you can see the entire thing to completion, but the players cannot. This means that a sequence that makes complete sense to you, and seems very reasonable to you, will actually appear completly nonsensical and wrong to the players. Which can result in them actively avoiding the direction or steps that you, as the GM, know they need to go through to get where they need to go. And honestly, the best advice I can give is to be super flexible when this sort of thing happens. If the players look at the information you provided and conclude they need to do <the exact opposite of what you expected> then you need to go with that, but then also need to stop and really rethink how you are presenting things to your players. The GM is the arbiter of "what is", but the players are the arbiters of "what we do about it". If those things are not meshing properly, it's almost always because the GM is failing to provide the correct information to the players in the correct format and in the correct order.

Or... You just don't try to plot things out, and just let the players do what they want. But, given the whole "I'm going to put them on a side quest right in the middle of them doing something else" bit, I'm assuming there's a decent amount of plot going on, which means there's objectives and stories, and things interconnecting. Nothing at all wrong with that. It's my preferred method of GMing, in fact. But you have to develop really good empathetic skills as a GM to do this really well. You need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of your players if you want to craft adventures that require that they react in specific ways to the inputs you provide as GM. And yeah, when things go off into the weeds, they can often go off badly. And yeah, there absolutely is a fair amount of social contract in this style of GMing as well. The players have to trust that if they follow the breadcrumbs you lay before them, they will be successful. But also, this means you need to be really hyper aware of the damage done to this trust if you appear to promise that "if you do this, you'll get that in return", and you don't deliver on it.

And that's IMO where this whole thing went wrong.

GloatingSwine

2024-01-09, 06:50 PM

Tbh this doesn’t read to me as “taking something from the players”.

This is just Lucy yanking the football away and leaving them on their asses. Planning to give them the three points anyway doesn’t make that not feel bad, and it turns out you found a trigger point for one of your players to boot.

gbaji

2024-01-09, 07:05 PM

To elaborate on "unsatisfying at best to some players" -
For some people (including myself to an extent) there's a significant distinction between "the PCs consciously set a goal and resolved it by their own efforts" and "karma / the world handed the PCs a solution to their problem". Even if OOC it plays out a similar way (you face a number of threats/problems and then achieve what you wanted if you make it through), it still feels different.

Yes. This x100. If the players think "if we do X, we'll get Y in return", and then they do X, and don't get Y, the GM saying "that's ok, I'll provide Y via another means" is not going to be satisfying at all. It absolutely destroys player agency, because it teaches the players that their own decisions and their own actions are meaningless. The GM will simply provide for them what is needed for the adventure, and deny them anything that isn't. Worse, any methods they decide to take that the GM didn't previously decide was "the way this is going to happen", will fail, and will keep failing, until they just give in and do things the way the GM wants.

Not saying that this is what happened here, but it's a danger inherent in that style of GMing. As I said above, I like writing out adventure plots and running the players through them, but you must be super aware that if the players come up with an idea or a method to do something, that you allow it to succeed or fail on its own merits, and not at all just because you have another method you wanted to use instead. When I write how I think the players may do something into an adventure, that's always the "parachute". If all else fails, and they don't come up with a clever idea themselves, then yeah, I'll provide something they can use to achieve the objectives of the adventure. But those are never a requirement. For example, if the players don't think to check out the mogue for clues, or they don't go ask the deceased's wife about what he was doing before he was killed, well... then they'll overhear his fellow minors drinking and talking in the bar about how he was warned not to explore "mine shaft number 8", but did it anyway, and "everyone knows not to go down there, despite the rummors of riches to be had", and even "he said he found a map, but it didn't do him any good". There's always a means to hand the info the players may want/need to move forward with an adventure. What I would never do, in this hypothetical little mine exploration adventure, is tell the players "you find nothing" if they check out the morgue and the body, and "you learn nothing" if they talk to his wife to see what happened, or "you learn nothing" over and over no matter what they do, and then have them learn it all via a random bar conversation instead.

Taking things away (or just blocking player initiative paths), but then giving it back via GM initiated stuff, it not a great method to use. And no amount of better communication with the players will make up for this. It will tend to make them feel like they are passive participants in a story the GM is writing rather than active particpants in a collective story everyone at the table is writing together.

Unoriginal

2024-01-09, 07:51 PM

Yes. This x100. If the players think "if we do X, we'll get Y in return", and then they do X, and don't get Y

I think the question of WHY the players think that is important, though.

I've had players who were convinced that a specific NPC was a shapechanged dragon.

That wasn't the case at all.

Players and/or PCs reaching an incorrect conclusion doesn't put the players' agency in jeopardy or make their actions and decisions meaningless.

gbaji

2024-01-09, 08:56 PM

I think the question of WHY the players think that is important, though.

I've had players who were convinced that a specific NPC was a shapechanged dragon.

That wasn't the case at all.

Players and/or PCs reaching an incorrect conclusion doesn't put the players' agency in jeopardy or make their actions and decisions meaningless.

Except this wasn't a case of the players creating some completely made up assumption, all on their own, and then being upset when it didn't turn out to be true. This is the relevant bits:

Additionally, player K pressed a Candlekeep apprentice to obtain information from Candlekeep even after departing(you get access by donating a valuable book, if you leave, you must again provide another book to enter. Standard Candlekeep). Apprentice promised he would find a way to provide them with info, even if they leave. Party left, killed the baddies, got a level and some cool loot. Party returned to Candlekeep. As they visited again, they were informed by another clerk, they could not obtain the knowledge, unless a book of value was provided. This pissed off K.

K's character pressed the mentioned apprentice into providing the party with Candlekeep info, even if they don't have a book. As the apprentice said, he never mentioned providing them info and that officially, he can not provide the info.(but I had a backup plan, where the apprentice still finds a solution - and other party members read/understood this hinted-at plot)]

The GM initially has the apprentice promise he would "find a way to provide them with info, even if they leave", which the player(s) took as meaning they could leave without worrying about loosing access to said info (which they had paid for with a rare book already). Then, upon return, the same apprentice said "he never mentioned providing them with info, and that officially, he can not provide the info".

Hoboknight then mentions that *he* (meaning the GM, inside his own head, which the players do not know anything about) had a "backup plan" where the apprentice still finds a solution.

So this is not a case of "we just made something up and it turned out not to be true". This was a case where the PCs first bartered for something (the book for access to the library and the information they needed), then had to leave before getting it, and then recieved a promise to recieve the information they needed anyway, but then upon return were told they could not get the information, and that they were never actually promised this in the first place (which is the part that seems to have really set the player off).

The problem is that Hoboknight believed that the fact that he (secretly) had in mind a means of getting them the information they needed/wanted anyway, made this all ok. But, as several of us have posted, that is not actually ok at all. It is requiring the players to go through hoops to get something, then taking it away, but then handing it to them later via some other method. So... the takeaway for the players is "why did we bother getting the book, if it wasn't actually needed". Now, maybe getting the book gets them the attention of the apprentice, and he decides to help them because of this. So that's kinda okish. But then you need to have that communicated to the PCs immediately, not keep it secret from them.

I mean, you can. But this is the reaction you can expect as a result. So... don't do that.

Satinavian

2024-01-10, 03:42 AM

Story, which was supposed to present a party with a sacrifice of not being officially allowed into the library again, because they have accepted morally good deed(because they responded to a divine request for help), only to be resolved by a helpful apprentice contacting them afterward because they left a really good impression, was overridden by Ks series of rants and I turned out as a DM who folds under pressure and I really do not feel good about it. Honestly, that is a horrible script.

Sacrifices only work if the players decide to sacrifice something for something they think it is worth for. It has little value if it is just a plot demand they follow because that is what you prepared and it is downright detrimental if the sacrifice only helps with some minor sideplot they don't care about. It doesn't even feel like the morally right thing to do to give up a tool against a greater evil they labored several sessions for to stop some minor evil. There are no good feels to be had here. It doesn't feel like a worthy sacrifice, it feels like a pointless mistake and a waste.

Some players are still following the rails in such a case, but K obviously didn't consent to that sacrifice here. He clearly wasn't willing to give up the candlekeep access for the sideplot and only relented after assurances that they effectively wouldn't have to pay that price. At this moment at the latest you should have realized that your plot is not working and given up on it. The paladin might have been willing to do the sacrifice for sideplot because of divine command, but the group including K was obviously not willing to do so.

And after the sidequest you just reneged on the promise and tried to push for your initial idea as if Ks bargaining never happened. They get treated like they consented to that sacrifice which they actually never did and as if the player actions they successfully performed to avoid just this outcome never happened.

I can understand K being pissed here. That was poor DMing and horrible railroading. Now that doesn't mean his reaction was appropriate. Out of game complains should be handled out of game and in a civilized manner. But i think, you relenting here was the appropriate reaction. Your intended plot was never going to work and the long term results are the same. And it was your mistake to clean up.

GloatingSwine

2024-01-10, 06:19 AM

Sacrifices only work if the players decide to sacrifice something for something they think it is worth for. It has little value if it is just a plot demand they follow because that is what you prepared and it is downright detrimental if the sacrifice only helps with some minor sideplot they don't care about. It doesn't even feel like the morally right thing to do to give up a tool against a greater evil they labored several sessions for to stop some minor evil. There are no good feels to be had here. It doesn't feel like a worthy sacrifice, it feels like a pointless mistake and a waste.

In other words it's not a sacrifice, it's Lucy and the football.

A sacrifice is when you give up something you want for its own sake in order to pursue the greater good (or evil, depending on who you're sacrificing to). The only thing the players were giving up here was something that helped them pursue the greater good anyway.

HoboKnight

2024-01-10, 08:24 AM

GloatingSwine

2024-01-10, 08:50 AM

Hey guys,
I have to first say I am immensely grateful to everyone who contributed to this thread. There is a lot to process, but I will try to answer most of the questions and thoughts that arose here.

My basic question is this: should player agency be absolute? Because if I go along this way, this means that the party does A and gets B. Does C and gets D. There is 0% chance that doing A will not provide B. This makes story extremely predictable and erases all possibility of any surprise. Also, it erases other possibilities of players finding answers to a certain problem by themselves.

This isn't really a question about player agency, it's a question about player time and whether your activity design respects it. Agency (player decisions successfully enacted lead to broadly predictable proximately related* outcomes) is a good way to make the players feel like their time is being respected.

From the situation you presented there are roughly three broad options: 1. They get the information from an insider without entering, 2. They regain entry with a new book, 3. They abandon Candlekeep and find the information elsewhere.

And none of those are good options. They haven't earned 1, no, not by doing whatever emergency timed sidequest you sent them on, it wasn't relevant to Candlekeep, 2 is just repeating the last few sessions, and 3 makes the last few sessions irrelevant and therefore they should never have bothered.

In this situation it doesn't sound like the players were going to be allowed to find answers to the problem themselves. They weren't allowed to kick the ball, Lucy yanked it away, but they were going to be given the three points anyway by someone who was impressed with how hard they landed on their ass in the attempt.

This case of mine is a good example, I think. While player K was extremely upset with what happened, player A accepted their departure from the Candlekeep "yeah, being a paladin sometimes takes sacrifice and I accept that" (also, he expected for a DM to give some way around arisen problem). Player C however, was already amassing materials to create a new book to get in. Both of these attitudes are IMHO adult, problem-solving attitude. While K hanged upon a word of an apprentice.

As noted, they haven't sacrificed anything other than their IRL play time. They got all lined up to kick the ball and Lucy yanked it, leaving them on their ass and looking silly.

Have I pulled the rug from under the players feet? Yes, I have.(was not in entirety my intent - the "what had an apprentice said in fact" question) Was this nullifying player agency(to an extent). Yes. If it wasn't for As and Cs reactions to this, I would say I was completely wrong about this. But Ks rant actually nullified player As and Cs agency completely.

The real question is "have I pulled the rug from under the players' feet for a good and fun reason?" and no, you haven't. You just wasted their time to get something you planned to give them but by a different method than the one they had actually put in work to access. Once again, it's not agency, it's time. Respect your players' time.

1) Interesting isÂ… it was never a groups' problem, but always Ks problem. A few such events took place during the campaign. Other players were not happy with what happened, but they communicated their dissatisfaction in a polite way. I'm always vigilant about mentioned issues from there on.

That sounds like the problem is an repeating group problem, but different personalities are expressing it differently. K is less phlegmatic about it than the others and quicker to express it out loud.

* Getting a book to go into Candlekeep to get the information they understand to be there is a proximately related chain, getting a book to go to Candlekeep to not get the information they undertstand to be there but being given it anyway for doing something unrelated to Candlekeep after having poked a toe through the door is not a proximately related chain. The actions only produce the results via an intermediate third party whose involvement was unpredictable.

Kurald Galain

2024-01-10, 10:26 AM

I am reminded of a time when I was DM'ing. An NPC sailor was blocking access to a ship, and one of the PCs said he'd give him a couple gp to step aside. I decided that the NPC was a jerk, he took the money and... did not step aside. The PC got furious, took out his sword, and sliced him in half.
I note that (like in your situation) the player had a pretty strong reaction to not getting what he expected. I also note that (UNlike in your situation) my player kept his reactions IC rather than OOC.

My basic question is this: should player agency be absolute?
No, it shouldn't.

But you probably knew that, and this is not a very useful basic question. A better question would be, in what kind of situations is it reasonable to override player agency?
The exact answer is going to depend on your group, but reasonable situations may include
The PC failed a skill check. No matter how persuasive the player thinks he's being, if the character can't make a decent diplomacy or intimidate check, then he's not being persuasive.
Something fishy is up that is yet unknown to the players, but drop some hints that this NPC may have a hidden agenda / be mindcontrolled / is secretly an evil doppelganger / etc.
Rule Of Funny. Doesn't really apply in your case, but is a common excuse in numerous groups I've seen (and games like Paranoia make a habit out of it).

Player K is a STEM guy and I think this affects his reaction greatly. He expects the world to be predictable.
I maintain that K's actions were out of line, and "being a STEM guy" is not an excuse because plenty of D&D players are STEM guys. Rather, based on your description I'd say that K is either on the spectrum or has anger issues. In both cases, if he's a long-term friend you should be able to talk to him about this.

What I'm seeing so far is that on the one hand, your DM'ing could have been better, AND you're aware of that AND trying to take steps to fix it. And on the other hand, K's reaction was out of line AND he does not seem to be aware of that AND he has a history of doing that and will likely do it again.

So something needs to change here.

truemane

2024-01-10, 10:37 AM

I am utterly dismayed at how focused this thread has become on HoboKnight's story-writing.

I would like to take a moment. I would like to ask everyone posting in this thread to take a moment, and anyone reading this thread, and especially anyone reading this who maybe wants to DM someday and is looking to see what it's like, and especially especially HoboKnight. Please, take a moment and review:

This pissed off K.

...things started to bleed out of character. Lots of ranting [...]

K player flipped the table, went completely OOC.

At this point, I as a DM had folded.

K just wanted to brute force the issues [...] humiliating me [...]

Folks?

This is not okay.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

This will never be okay. There is no fictional story that justifies this behaviour. None! Not enjoying your game of Let's Pretending with Dice and Math does not entitle you to act so aggressively that the DM uses the word HUMILIATION to describe it!

I'm flabbergasted. Genuinely flabbergasted at the victim blaming here. The unbelievable lack of empathy. It is NEVER okay to get so mad at a game of D&D that you intimidate the DM into doing what you want.

Never. Full stop. End of sentence.

HoboKnight: I'm sorry this happened to you. You didn't deserve this. You would have deserved better from complete strangers. You certainly deserved better from friends. This problem is K's, not yours. K is the problem here, not your DM'ing. And I'm sorry this thread has lead you to think that, somehow, if only you had DM'd better, K would have treated you better. Your worth and value as a human being, your right to safety and basic human decency, your right to be free from mistreatment and violence, are inherent and do not need to be earned and paid for by DM'ing a certain way.

This is not your fault. Whether or not you can take some module writing lessons from this thread is completely unrelated to the fact that you have a player (who's a "friend"!) so volatile and so entitled that they are willing to cause you actual real-world harm if it means they get to pretend to do the things they want to pretend to do.

It's egregious.

I still think the answer (part of it anyway) is to tell K that you're not having it any more. It's not a control thing, it's not a "I'm the GM so no one else gets a say." It's a basic human dignity issue. No more yelling. No more ranting. No more interrupting and wrecking everyone else's evening because he can't let it go. If he's so very unhappy with the way you're asking him to use his imagination, and if he feels so entitled to having things his way that he just can't possibly have any fun if things go any other way, then he should just leave. Quietly. Politely. And maybe never come back, if that's his decision. But IF he shows up, THEN he's implicitly agreeing to respect you, and the other players, and the space, and the experience.

His response to this will tell you a lot about who he really is and what he really cares about. My prediction is that he'll double down on some manner of commitment to the pure Platonic ideals of truth and logic. "If you're wrong, and I'm right, then you can't expect me to just NOT cause a fight! I'm rational! I'M RATIONAL! I'm so rational that I'm constantly on the edge of flying into a disruptive rage!"

But if he's such a super-smart, super-logical, uber-rational STEM guy, he should understand how a basic IF/THEN conditional operates, and an axiom set, and the importance of predefined operating conditions.

And this is outside the scope of your original question, but if this were me, I would spend some time seriously thinking about the way K treats you, and ask yourself if, aside from all the ways he's helped you in the past (which are things people do for lots of complicated reasons - not always reasons that have anything to do with you), does he really act like someone who values you as a person?

Maybe I'm over-reacting. I have some experience with these kinds of relationships and sometimes that makes me see patterns that don't exist. If so, feel free to ignore all this.

But, just in case I'm not over-reacting, here's some supplementary reading that really helped me when I was having trouble figuring out how to reshape my place in the world in a way that avoided both causing harm and being harmed. YMMV.

https://captainawkward.com/2011/01/17/reader-question-4-my-friend-is-dating-someone-terrible-or-secrets-of-the-darth-vader-boyfriend/
(this article, while focused on romantic relationships, applies just as readily to platonic relationships)

https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/

https://captainawkward.com/2019/06/20/1209-is-there-a-way-to-get-good-at-setting-boundaries-that-isnt-so-situation-specific-boundaries-school/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

Stay safe out there.

Kurald Galain

2024-01-10, 10:43 AM

This is not okay.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

This will never be okay. There is no fictional story that justifies this behaviour. None! Not enjoying your game of Let's Pretending with Dice and Math does not entitle you to act so aggressively that the DM uses the word HUMILIATION to describe it!

I'm flabbergasted. Genuinely flabbergasted at the victim blaming here. The unbelievable lack of empathy. It is NEVER okay to get so mad at a game of D&D that you intimidate the DM into doing what you want.
THANK YOU.

OP, NTA (https://reddit.com/r/AITA).

Satinavian

2024-01-10, 11:00 AM

Folks?

This is not okay.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

I already said that Ks reaction was inappropriate.

But when exactly did that happen ?

NPC promises something. NPC denies having promised something. NPC repeats that under circle of truth making the "never having promised" an established fact.

Now the OP said that this happened because he didn't remember. But did he tell the player ? No. How does this look from the player side ? Like out-of-game GASLIGHTING. We know it wasn't. But that was surely what K experienced before flipping out.

Initially K stayed in character and projected is anger against the seemingly lying apprentice, not against the DM. He only escalated OT after perceiving the DM secretly retcon the earlier interaction and retroactively making Ks character having left the keep without the promise which K never did.

Now as for the inappropriateness of the behavior : Just to be clear

K player flipped the table, went completely OOC.

Flipping the table (if actually physically, not just figuratively as i read it first) is the inappropriate part. He might also have gotten loud though that is not explicitely stated. Going complete OOC however is the correct course of action in such a situation. OOC problems can only be solved OOC.

I would also call attention to the fact that the OP mentions "ranting" and going "OOC". No shouting, no foul language and certainly nothing of physical violence or the threat thereof. The "brute forcing" bit refers to extracting the promise before going to the side quest, purely to an in game action. He stated that the backing of in the past is related to being destroyed with facts and because of willpower, nothing about being intimidated, rage or anything like that. Which means K just won arguments with logic and the OP sees this as a problem for his authority.

truemane

2024-01-10, 11:55 AM

I already said that Ks reaction was inappropriate.

But when exactly did that happen ?

[...]

No. Incorrect. 100%, completely, entirely, absolutely, categorically incorrect. And not only incorrect, but unethical and harmful.

K's behaviour was wrong. Full stop.

HoboKnight's module writing is a completely separate issue.

HoboKnight did not cause K's disruptive outburst.

K caused K's disruptive outburst. The trigger is irrelevant. No one deserves to be yelled at or intimidated.

Like all of us, K has choices about how he moves through the world. He could have chosen any number of reactions to this event. He chose to be violent. He chose to intimidate and humiliate another human being. His choice. His fault. Not HoboKnight's.

Any conflation of the two justifies his violence. And it is not justified. Can never be justified.

Think of other, similar situations where one member of a close relationship uses anger to control the other member's actions or opinions. And then blames the other for making them so angry and making them do those things.

Think about that. And then revisit whether you think K's outburst is justified. Even a little.

Just egregious. Unconscionable.

If anyone reading this is experiencing violence from friends or partners, and can't figure out how to make them understand how much their actions hurt you, or can't figure out how to set or maintain healthy boundaries, or can't figure out WHY your friend or partner treats them this way, please feel free to PM me.

You don't deserve it. No one does.

I have said my piece. I am now leaving this thread and will not respond any more.

Kurald Galain

2024-01-10, 12:20 PM

I would also call attention to the fact that the OP mentions "ranting" and going "OOC". No shouting, no foul language and certainly nothing of physical violence or the threat thereof. The "brute forcing" bit refers to extracting the promise before going to the side quest, purely to an in game action. He stated that the backing of in the past is related to being destroyed with facts and because of willpower, nothing about being intimidated, rage or anything like that. Which means K just won arguments with logic and the OP sees this as a problem for his authority.
The OP writes: he destroys me with "facts"(TBH i really do not know what the apprentice said at this point 3 sessions ago) and his overall willpower.

To me, that does not at all sound like K won arguments with logic. To me, that sounds like K used bullying and heavy-handedness until nobody was willing or able to argue with him any more. If I were convinced with logic, I would describe that with terms like 'I conceded the point', not phrases like 'I was destroyed with "facts"'.

kyoryu

2024-01-10, 12:32 PM

This. The core problem was the structure of the adventure path itself. If you have presented the players with a goal, and they are proceeding on that path, and they have to sacrifice something to get to a point on that path, it's a really crappy GM thing to then take that away from them, and force them to do it again.

This. It's just bad design.

I've posted this a few times, and it's like "gbaji's number one rule of GMing": Don't take stuff away from the PCs.

Even then there's some nuance involved, which boils down to "let it be optional, make the risk known, and follow through on your contract". Also it really depends on what you're taking away. Taking away plot coupons that have been hard-earned is a bad idea, especially, as it effectively undermines multiple sessions of gaming.

They paid for access to the darn library. Just give them the access. Let them do whatever it was they came there to do, and then move on. Don't yank it away from them.

Or, make sure that it is absolutely clear that they'll still get what they came for, and follow through on that

Folks?

This is not okay.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

Of course it isn't.

But that doesn't mean that Hoboknight was in the right, either. And the one thing that Hoboknight can control is, well, Hoboknight.

While K's reaction is inappropriate and extreme, Hoboknight's handling of the situation leading up to it was also pretty poor. Making players work for a plot coupon for multiple sessions just to yank them away and require a new one is.... not good GMing. "Hinting" at a solution is the wrong way to handle it. A good GM needs to recognize the impact that that will have, and make very clear how they're not doing exactly what it appeared that they were doing. Having a "plan" in their own head doesn't help, because the players don't know that. And having the players "trust" the GM is a weird solution to me, because at some level that implies not taking the GM at their word about any threats or consequences. And that just seems utterly bizarre to me.

I think three things need to happen here.

1. K needs to be told that this behavior is unacceptable. Kindly, but firmly.
2. Some kind of procedure needs to be put in place (even if informally) in case OOC stuff blows up again.
3. Hoboknight needs to look at what in this scenario was unreasonably likely to blow up - and there definitely were things.

Satinavian

2024-01-10, 01:43 PM

Well i obviously have a very different read of the situation than truename. Especially i don't think there are enough hints for bullying, a toxic relationship or that K is a violent person. It is not impossible, but i don't think it is all that likely based on the description.

That said, the advice

Anyway, other bits of advice to help with maintaining boundaries and handling sudden conflict:
If you make an IC mistake, just say it out loud. Own it. "Ah crap, I don't remember what he said." And, again, pause the game and ask the players what they thing is fair. Do you go by their memory? Or do you assume the players misremembered?

Have a formal, established process by which authority is established at the table. Who has the final say during a game? You? The books? The general consensus? And if a mistake is made, how is it brought up? If there's a conflict, how is it decided? This is one of the main things I find gets decided invisibly, and so one of the main things that causes fights as soon as a disagreement is revealed. So ask your players how they'd like to handle it. Discuss it a bit. Agree to a simple set of procedures, and stick to them.

is good regardless. It is difficult to establish such a process when feathers are that ruffled, but by involving the other players it should be possible between friends.

gbaji

2024-01-10, 03:50 PM

I already said that Ks reaction was inappropriate.

Yeah. I agree. But there's some "vague wording" that smacks a bit of retelling going on as well, which is why I've refrained from being super harsh on K's actions. I wasn't there either, and we're only getting Hoboknights version of events. So I think trying to stick to assessing what Hoboknight did and what could have been done differently is a valid approach.

Initially K stayed in character and projected is anger against the seemingly lying apprentice, not against the DM. He only escalated OT after perceiving the DM secretly retcon the earlier interaction and retroactively making Ks character having left the keep without the promise which K never did.

That was my assessment as well. Things only went OOC *after* the player perceived that the GM was manipulating the reality of the game world after the fact to make his plot/story work. This is correctly addressed OOC IMO. Maybe not in the manner K did (again though, it's unclear how loud/violent this actually was), but it was absolutely an OOC event.

Now as for the inappropriateness of the behavior : Just to be clear

K player flipped the table, went completely OOC.

Flipping the table (if actually physically, not just figuratively as i read it first) is the inappropriate part. He might also have gotten loud though that is not explicitely stated. Going complete OOC however is the correct course of action in such a situation. OOC problems can only be solved OOC.

Yeah. I also took that as figurative, and not him literally flipping over the physical table in front of him. I took it as him "flipping the script/whatever" and going from IC to OOC. If it was actually physical, then yes, that was completely inappropriate. I'm just not willing to assume that was the case, without direct clarification from Hoboknight.

I would also call attention to the fact that the OP mentions "ranting" and going "OOC". No shouting, no foul language and certainly nothing of physical violence or the threat thereof. The "brute forcing" bit refers to extracting the promise before going to the side quest, purely to an in game action. He stated that the backing of in the past is related to being destroyed with facts and because of willpower, nothing about being intimidated, rage or anything like that. Which means K just won arguments with logic and the OP sees this as a problem for his authority.

Yup. I got the same impression as well. I get that it's easy for some people to rage about K's behavior here, but I've seen enough after the fact subjective descriptiosn of events from one side and only one side, to take that with a huge grain of salt, and assume that what is implied is not always exactly what happened. I certainly make an effort *not* to read more into what happened than what was literally said, and if I'm to lean my intepretation in any given direction, to always do it in the direction opposite the person relating the story.

The OP writes: he destroys me with "facts"(TBH i really do not know what the apprentice said at this point 3 sessions ago) and his overall willpower.

To me, that does not at all sound like K won arguments with logic. To me, that sounds like K used bullying and heavy-handedness until nobody was willing or able to argue with him any more. If I were convinced with logic, I would describe that with terms like 'I conceded the point', not phrases like 'I was destroyed with "facts"'.

Eh... Maybe I'm more jaded, but that's often exactly how someone who is defeated via logic and reason will describe it. Actually bullying would be described as "he shouts me down", not "he destroys me with facts". I'll repeat my previous statement. If I'm going to interpret something, I'll do so to lessen the "badness" of the person being spoken about. The tendency, when posting an event like this on a forum like this, is to downplay one's own mistakes and poor behavior, while exaggerating the mistakes and poor behavior of others. I'm certainly not going to read into anything about K's actions beyond what was literally stated (ie: I'm not going to interpret "destroys me with facts" as "bullies me").

Again, that's not to say that K was behaving fine in all of this. Almost certainly not. But there's not a lot of value in examining or condemning his behavior. He's not the one posting or reading the responses.

Unoriginal

2024-01-10, 06:03 PM

My basic question is this: should player agency be absolute?

No.

The players have control over their character. That is their agency. The rest of the world is yours to shape and control, not covered by their agency.

Player K is a STEM guy and I think this affects his reaction greatly. He expects the world to be predictable. He expects that at a certain point, he studies things so much, there is 0% of things turning out different that he calculated. He is tha kind of guy that will never take a spell that has 1d6 chance to summon a creature, but will absolutely take a spell that summons a creature on 6th turn. Predictability.

Then he is a terrible STEM guy. STEM is not about perfect predictability, and it CERTAINLY isn't doing things you always know the answer.

This case of mine is a good example, I think. While player K was extremely upset with what happened, player A accepted their departure from the Candlekeep "yeah, being a paladin sometimes takes sacrifice and I accept that" (also, he expected for a DM to give some way around arisen problem). Player C however, was already amassing materials to create a new book to get in. Both of these attitudes are IMHO adult, problem-solving attitude. While K hanged upon a word of an apprentice.
Have I pulled the rug from under the players feet? Yes, I have.(was not in entirety my intent - the "what had an apprentice said in fact" question) Was this nullifying player agency(to an extent). Yes. If it wasn't for As and Cs reactions to this, I would say I was completely wrong about this. But Ks rant actually nullified player As and Cs agency completely.

1) Interesting is… it was never a groups' problem, but always Ks problem. A few such events took place during the campaign. Other players were not happy with what happened, but they communicated their dissatisfaction in a polite way. I'm always vigilant about mentioned issues from there on.

2) A few times, I always buckled.

What had me thinking the most, was As and Cs reaction. Without this I would say yes, I was totally in the wrong. With their reactions taken into account and Ks forcing of his ways actually making their reactions meaningless, I have doubts.

So by what you're saying here, K is a disruptive player who insists you change things when things don't go the way he wants, and who gets angry if you resist.

I have to ask: on the 5e subforum, you asked for advice on encounter buildings several times, and received quite a bit of feedbacks and suggestions. How did K react to those encounters?

I am utterly dismayed at how focused this thread has become on HoboKnight's story-writing.

Same, honestly.

King of Nowhere

2024-01-10, 07:49 PM

(TBH i really do not know what the apprentice said at this point 3 sessions ago)

does it really matter? misunderstandings are common even in real life. even if we had a zone of truth spell, you could get ten people to recount the same event, they'd all get some details different. this is well understood by judges and historians; human memory is malleable.
so just have it be a misunderstanding in game too. the apprentice and K were understanding different things. from there, you can solve it in a number of different ways

gbaji

2024-01-10, 08:29 PM

So by what you're saying here, K is a disruptive player who insists you change things when things don't go the way he wants, and who gets angry if you resist.

Or... K is a completely reasonable player, in a game run by a GM who overly scripts and controls every action the PCs take, not allowing them to take any initiative or make any plot relevant decisions themselves, and A and C have just meekly accepted this, while K finally got fed up with it and said something. If we're just widly speculating about what could be going on here, that is.

I don't personally know any of the people involved, and did not personally witness the events in question, so I can't make any assessment of them. Which is why I've refrained from doing so, and from applying labels to either of them.

I am utterly dismayed at how focused this thread has become on HoboKnight's story-writing.

Same, honestly.

Because HoboKnight is the one who created a thread on this forum asking for advice as to how to avoid mishandling a similar situation in the future?

We are focused on the actions and decisions of HoboKnight because that's literally what he's asking us to do. We could all join in bashing a player none of us know, and it will be of absolutely zero value to us or to HoboKnight. So... why do it? This is not a morality play or test. It's a request for advice on how to run a game so as to avoid situations like this. So yeah... some of us are focusing on what HoboKnight could have done differently in his game to avoid this situation. Just like we were asked to do.

The advice he has received is exactly as valid and useful whether K is a terrible player or not. One has no bearing on the other. Requiring the players to "sacrifice" something they worked for in the game, to do a side quest, and then trust that the GM will reward them for this by returning that sacrifice to them in another way, is just not a good approach to GMing. It absolutely does water down the choices that the players actually make in the game. in this case, it was very overtly done to K, since he took steps on his own initiative to try to ensure they could return and get the info they needed, and seemed to have succeeded at this, only to have the GM take that away in favor of his previously decided upon method.

This is why, when I write advice for GMs, I always say to write very broad plot outlines. What things are there and happening, and what things must be done to resolve them. Then fill in the details over time. If the plot requires "PCs obtain critical information from Candlekeep", then how exactly they do this doesn't matter. Having a side quest come up, them going off to do so, and then being rewarded for their good deed with the information they need is certainly one (that's the "parachute" option I mentioned earlier), but is honestly quite contrived and should only be enacted if the PCs are blocked up somehow. Allowing the players to figure out their own way to gain access is always better, and if they do come up with a way to check a milestone in your plot, it's a really bad GMing choice to actively block them.

So yeah. "Don't do that" is the advice here. I can't give advice to K as to how to be a better player, because he's not the one posting the question. If he was, and was asking about how he should have handled the situation from his side of things, I'd be writing very different posts.

kyoryu

2024-01-10, 09:32 PM

I also think people are interpreting "flipped the table" with wildly varying degrees of literalism.

Kardwill

2024-01-11, 05:55 AM

Yup. I suppose I could amend my rule, but it really does depend on what qualifies as "taking something from the players".

My own rule is "don't inflict something upon a player without their explicit consent/buy-in". Managing expectations in a RPG is complicated ("I wouldn't have done it if I knew..." or "I thought my players would like this plot twist" are the starting point of many disagreements at the gametable), so I try to inform the players and get their direct OOC input rather than play the usual GM/Player gessing game.
That can be simply telling them what the result of a failed roll will be (the decision of the player to jump from a rooftop might be different if a failed jump check means "you land clumsily and the bad guy you were chasing escapes" or "you fall from the roof, break a bone, and are out of the action for the next 3 game sessions"), asking if they're okay with mind-control/possession shenigans, or telling the players about incoming sensitive plot points (like "are you okay if your family are the antagonists of the next game?")

HoboKnight

2024-01-11, 10:33 AM

GloatingSwine

2024-01-11, 10:48 AM

I think my mistake has a bit deeper roots: As the party was leaving, the apprentice should have answered: "No, you can not enter after departing". And in hindsight I think I have already felt this will cause a rant by K. A could not respond to a quest, K could have remained in the library. Heck, there are many solutions.

Yeah, but the real solution is don't make them leave when they've just arrived.

It's just a really baffling thing to have sprung at that point.

Unoriginal

2024-01-11, 10:59 AM

Yeah, but the real solution is don't make them leave when they've just arrived.

It's just a really baffling thing to have sprung at that point.

That's not the "real solution" because it isn't the problem.

Even if something completely baffling happens, a player shouldn't react like that. It may be understandable to get that angry if the GM is actively malicious, but even then there are better ways to handle it.

The real solution is that if the plot takes a turn a player finds baffling or offensive to the point that makes them angry, the session should be stopped and a discussion about it should be had.

EDIT: Case in point, out of 5 players, 4 didn't find that plot point "really baffl

NichG

2024-01-11, 12:03 PM

Hey guys,
flipping the table should have been in air quotes. But the entire encounter seemed a lot like a rather aggressive and merciless sales negotiation. A lot of pressure an ample amount of ranting, just that there was social capital and continuation/coherence of campaign in play.

A few more answers/insights: "Working for something". My players:
- like roleplay
- like puzzles
- love combat

Each "investment" resulted in having a ton of fun in fighting great battles, where they immensely enjoyed the encounters, the loot, the level ups. None of the "sidetracks" ever lead into some arduous chore. Every time the group gathers, they are all giggly about battle, new loot and feat options they are to get. So I dunno, is this really a "waste of time"? I see a couple of people thinking this way in this thread and I like that, because I think K is thinking the same way and I can see the other side.
Also, K reacted well to these encounters, but I have a feeling, there is a "wall of triggering" there too. Encounters for mid-high tier are hard for a DM to balance, IMHO. It's always hard to find a line between TPK and a challenge. And I feel a potential TPK might again result in rage, because " I direly miscalculated the encounter difficulty" (my party is easily smashing 3 times Deadly encounters).

I think my mistake has a bit deeper roots: As the party was leaving, the apprentice should have answered: "No, you can not enter after departing". And in hindsight I think I have already felt this will cause a rant by K. A could not respond to a quest, K could have remained in the library. Heck, there are many solutions.

To be honest, if it wasn't for all the other reactions of A and C I'd be sure I was wrong. But all in all, I think one can react to such things politely. Yes, I could have stopped the game there and then, calmly, but also could K. Somehow, thinking of it, I am getting ever more disgruntled by his reactions. I was wrong, but I am not willing to walk on eggshells/be in fear about our campaign in the future.

I think K should have stayed at the library.

But my read of the situation is that basically OOC conventions got blended into IC considerations and probably K felt they were getting an OOC negotiation with you about how to compromise so that you and A could have a bit of story that you were interested in, but such that the story K was interested in wouldn't be sacrificed. There's lots of pressures like that at any table - sure sometimes it makes sense for the rogue to go off on their own to scout for a session worth of gameplay while everyone else twiddles their thumbs and waits, but everyone implicitly or explicitly recognizes that that sucks for the other players and so you end up with the rogue trying to be stealthy next to the guy in full plate, or at most going one room ahead, or things like that. People make metagame decisions for sake of the whole table and that can be really good and important to ensuring that the game remains fun. But it really sucks to be in a position where someone else at the table is actively exploiting your willingness or feeling of obligation towards making those compromises.

So I would say that K felt that pressure to let A have their neat story arc, to not split the party, etc. But they probably didn't like feeling that pressure, especially when it looked like it was going to lead to interference or set backs in the story arc that K was most interested in moving forward. K could have just put their foot down and said 'no, you guys do that, call me when game gets back to me', but that's actually kind of a hard thing to do in the presence of those sorts of pressures. You have to recognize explicitly that that's why you feel uncomfortable, that it comes from an OOC source, and then you have to move the discussion OOC and it seems like a big deal and so on. So instead, K tried to deal with it IC by extracting a promise from the GM by way of the apprentice 'this isn't going to mess with my storyline, right?'. So that conversation, even if it happened IC, was fulfilling an OOC need and was treated as an OOC promise. Then when later you took it back, that would have felt like you and A were manipulating the social contract of the table to forcibly get something out of K without giving back anything in return. At least, that's how it would have felt to me if I were in K's position.

Imagine a slightly different scenario in which K had convinced the rest of the party not to go on A's quest, so that if A wanted to answer their deity's call they would have to do a solo session. How would you or A feel in that case? Annoyed, right?

Also, just to be clear, my focus in pointing out these things isn't to argue 'you were in the wrong and K was actually acting reasonably'. It's to say 'here's a mindset you can use to understand the different ways players might react to things you choose to run, how to anticipate those reactions, and how to notice when they're spiralling'. I think "Who acted improperly here?" is rarely the right question to have in mind with this kind of situation - understanding why something happened is far more useful than amassing evidence that you were in the right and they were in the wrong or vice versa. I disagree with the posters who say that categorically you should never run something like this - instead I would say, it's dangerous to run something like this unless you know your players well enough to be confident it will be well-received. Now you know a bit more about K and how K receives this sort of plotline, so now you can make those decisions about whether to use twists like this in the future with eyes open rather than blindly. Whether that's 'I'll run this expecting K to be pissed off but they can leave if they want', 'I'll run this when K is not present', 'I'll run this but give K explicit guarantees they need to not feel put out', 'I'll kick K from the group and run this', 'I won't run this' is all up to you.

kyoryu

2024-01-11, 12:06 PM

Apprentice promised he would find a way to provide them with info, even if they leave.

From the player's perspective - we went through several sessions of stuff to get access to this, and we're being promised we'll get it even if we leave. Fair enough.

As the apprentice said, he never mentioned providing them info and that officially, he can not provide the info.(but I had a backup plan, where the apprentice still finds a solution - and other party members read/understood this hinted-at plot)

... and I have a hard time reading this as anything but reneging on the deal. It went from "I'll get you the info" to "no, I won't get you the info".

The problem here is that your divine inspiration is clearly a GM directed thing, and maybe aimed at a particular story you wanted to tell (I'd say that's danger sign one). Based on your explanation (which would theoretically be sympathetic) it still feels like you hid the actual cost of following up on the divine inspiration.

So that leaves two options:

1. "Trust the GM" in which case you basically stop engaging in the game at a deep level, since you basically assume that the GM is just gonna pull you in the right direction. Participationism at its finest.
2. Take the situation at face value, and take it as being lied to by the apprentice.

It's a bad situation. It's a fairly common one in more participationist circles, though.

I'm not saying K acted properly. I dunno what he actually did, but it definitely could have been ugly. It's also a fairly common thing when people are in a participationist game and don't realize it.

Clarify the game. In a participationist game, the players should trust the GM and not fight against what's going on, because the GM has it laid out. In less participationist games, the players should try to respond to the situation appropriately and make smart decisions. The problem is that when players assume it's the latter sort of game but it's really the former? Their plans get stymied and they get (understandably) frustrated. So have that conversation. "Look, guys, I have a lot of this stuff planned out. I guarantee that if you follow my leads, you won't get screwed, even if it might seem like a poor idea. So just go with it, and we'll all have a good time."

At this point, I as a DM, was unsure what the apprentice had said exactly 3 sessions ago(with the apprentice not being authorized for such agreements at all - he just initially liked the party).

So if nobody remembers, why not just go with what's remembered? I'm guessing that would screw up your plot?

- on the other hand: paladin player A said he could understand/read that even if I as a DM may have not been completely clear on what apprentice said, that party will not get another access into the library without another book

When three sessions were used to gain access, be clear that you're taking it away. Just be clear.

- A expected for the party to get a chance to get in - I am not a d*ck DM and A knows this, as well as all others who have played with me for about 2 years now. A also expected with high assurance that I as a DM will provide a plan for a party to still get what they want - it might take just some interesting RP

Okay, here's that game expectation thing again. Following through on the natural consequences of player actions is not being a d*ck GM. At least in many (non-participationist) styles. It's just letting the world play out. It's only being a d*ck GM in situations where you are expecting the players to follow your lead and do the things you expect them to do.

If they have real choice, then the consequences of their choices are the game.

If they are expected to follow your trail, then you are responsible for the consequences, and shouldn't jack them over for doing what you laid out.

See the difference?

Clarify what the game is.

he destroys me with "facts"(TBH i really do not know what the apprentice said at this point 3 sessions ago)

What's the problem with facts? If you don't remember what was said, why are you so insistent that that's not what was said?

If it's reasonable to assume that the apprentice may have promised the info, why not just give it?

and his overall willpower.

This could be a problem for sure. Stubbornness is not willpower or social skills.

My boundary was not respected.

Boundaries aren't for others to respect. They're for you to respect.

No, my DMing was not perfect. I might have made a mistake and I admit that. Rest of the party, at least on a meta-level understood that there will be some consequences, but also had a strong hunch, I will not just f. party over because they responded to a request from god. Several other players understood this or were immediately willing to seek other solutions. K just wanted to brute force the issues and he succeeded, humiliating me a bit and making me fold. With all written, I still do not feel like kicking the guy from the group. I want to work on my boundaries.

CLARIFY THE GAME. You realize that this is basically a railroading/not railroading issue, right? You had a story you wanted to tell, and K didn't want to be part of it. He made efforts to avoid this story (getting the apprentice to agree to give the info before they left), and you enforced it. Then when he tried to avoid this other story again, by trying to get the apprentice to live up to what the apprentice promised (to quote you - "Apprentice promised he would find a way to provide them with info, even if they leave."), you took this as disruptive behavior.

At this point, before it went OOC, I see nothing disruptive at all. The only disruption is to your plans. Which, again, is legitimate in a more participationist game. So, again ***CLARIFY THE GAME***.

And, for the record, as gbaji points out, you're the subject of the critique here as we're getting your story. Shouting/etc. should not be tolerated at a table, and is wrong. However, there is no conservation of blame, and even if K did those things, that doesn't mean that you didn't have a huge part in setting the stage for them. Your biggest "problem" here, in my opinion, is not.... oh, never mind, you know what I'm going to say. But you and K are operating under different impressions of what the game is, while A and C are clearly more into the participationist style already.

Or, to put it differently, "trust the GM" means different things under participationist and non- styles of play. Under participationist play, it means "trust that if we follow the breadcrumbs, the GM will not screw us over". Under non-participationist play, it means "trust that the GM is presenting information truthfully and honestly and will follow through on things in a consistent way". Those are directly opposed. A participationist, effectively, trusts that the GM will not follow through fully on certain consequences in exchange for the players following along.

Each "investment" resulted in having a ton of fun in fighting great battles, where they immensely enjoyed the encounters, the loot, the level ups. None of the "sidetracks" ever lead into some arduous chore. Every time the group gathers, they are all giggly about battle, new loot and feat options they are to get. So I dunno, is this really a "waste of time"?

This is a TERRIBLE take. (Well, it might be reasonable from a participationist view).

From a non-participationist view, the players set a goal - they expended serious time and effort to achieve it, just to have it taken away fairly capriciously. That doesn't sit well. You need to understand the difference here.

Sure, from a participationist view, the goal is never the point. The point is getting to the next cool encounter, really. But K is not a participationist, or at the minimum doesn't think this game is one, so that's the view he's coming from. You NEED TO CLARIFY THIS WITH HIM. You are both working from different perspectives and assumptions, and so are assuming different basic social contracts. You BOTH feel that the social contract was broken, because you had different ideas of what that contract is in the first place.

I think my mistake has a bit deeper roots: As the party was leaving, the apprentice should have answered: "No, you can not enter after departing". And in hindsight I think I have already felt this will cause a rant by K. A could not respond to a quest, K could have remained in the library. Heck, there are many solutions.

Yes, you should have. In situations like that where the consequences are knowable, you should make them known before a decision is made. Then the party can make the decision or not. If my suspicions are right, K might not have liked that, especially if the party decided to leave, but I don't think he would have been mad at you. You would have upheld the social contract. OTOH, A and C might be mad at you in a situation like that where you actually followed through on "no, you don't get the info because you can't get in".

I'm gonna hammer on this one some more, because I think it's key. I think A and C are participationists, and you are, too. To them, the basic assumption is that you're going to always provide a way forward, and you won't punish people for decisions that are where the breadcrumbs lead.

To K, the basic assumption is that you follow through with what you say, and it's up to the players to make smart choices based on that info.

So, situation A: They get the summons to leave, are clearly told they won't be allowed back in. They're not allowed back in without getting another book and don't get the info. I think K would be disgruntled at the party for making a dumb decision, but A and C would be mad....

To K, you followed through on your promise. The other players made dumb choices, and everyone had to pay the price.
To A and C, you didn't follow through on the basic premise that they should trust the GM and go along with it.

Situation B: They get the summons, are clearly told they won't be allowed back in. They're allowed back in or something similar happens.
A and C are perfectly happy, this is what they expected.
K is confused. What was the point of making that decision if it didn't end up mattering? They probably wouldn't be upset, but might look a little disconnected.

To be honest, if it wasn't for all the other reactions of A and C I'd be sure I was wrong. But all in all, I think one can react to such things politely. Yes, I could have stopped the game there and then, calmly, but also could K. Somehow, thinking of it, I am getting ever more disgruntled by his reactions. I was wrong, but I am not willing to walk on eggshells/be in fear about our campaign in the future.

There are two sets of assumptions here about how the game should be run. And they are, fundamentally, incompatible. You and A and C are working from a more participationist view, while K is not. So A and C think what you did is fine because they agree with your assumptions about how the game is being run.

Look, I mean, this is a thing I've run into as well. I was in a game once where the GM was clearly hiding information (there was someone that only spoke broken common that strangely could answer every question that would lead to us attacking, while being unable to understand every question that would lead to us not attacking) in a situation where it was OOC-ly clear that the "bad guys" were actually trying to keep the evil at bay. I kept trying to pry at that, and eventually one of the players said "look, it's obvious Dave has this encounter planned, so let's go ahead".

This is exactly the same dynamic at play! I was playing under the assumption that deciding whether or not to attack this person was a character decision with interesting long-term consequences, and should be approached carefully. The other player was under the assumption that we were basically going through the GM's story, and so why not just go along with it?

Neither of us were objectively wrong. The error was in the lack of clarity. Once I realized what game I was actually in, I just said to heck with it and went along with it, and future games of this GM's. It's not that I was a bad player, or he was a bad GM - we just had different ideas of how games were intended to run.

GloatingSwine

2024-01-11, 12:17 PM

That's not the "real solution" because it isn't the problem.

Yeah, it kinda is.

The problem was poor scenario design where OP thought they were going to have the party make a "sacrifice" then reward them with nothing more than they were trying to get before they sacrificed the way to get it, but delivered through an agent of the DM not the actions of the players and their characters.

Due to which one player thought they had been promised something then told later that they had not been promised that thing by a DM who, subsequently, admitted to not actually remembering whether they promised it or not. (And it appears that they were actually planning all along to provide the thing the player thought they had been promised but been told insistently that they had not been promised, but would have gotten if they had not made a scene about having been promised it).

And it all happened because of a really poor understanding of what makes for a satisfying sacrifice dilemma. You have to think about why the players value the thing you're asking them to sacrifice. "It will be mildly annoying to get another one" is not a valued sacrifice except in as much as it consumes the players' IRL time doing something they have already done once.

Unoriginal

2024-01-11, 01:23 PM

The problem was poor scenario design

No.

Even if all the players declared it was poor scenario design, poor scenario design is *never* a reason to get that angry.

Here, 4 out of 5 players did not think the scenario was a problem, or at least not that much of a problem. Out of those four, one thought it was a mild sacrifice and one was already in the process of solving the in-universe obstacle.

The fifth player's hyperbolic anger is the problem. It should have been addressed differently, perhaps, but that doesn't put the blame on Hoboknight's scenario design.

GloatingSwine

2024-01-11, 01:39 PM

No.

Even if all the players declared it was poor scenario design, poor scenario design is *never* a reason to get that angry.

Here, 4 out of 5 players did not think the scenario was a problem, or at least not that much of a problem. Out of those four, one thought it was a mild sacrifice and one was already in the process of solving the in-universe obstacle.

The fifth player's hyperbolic anger is the problem. It should have been addressed differently, perhaps, but that doesn't put the blame on Hoboknight's scenario design.

1. A lot of assumptions have been made about how actually angry K was and expressed themselves as at the table because we only have one side of the story and several people have exaggerated that in their own replies.

2. This would not have happened without a scenario which produced a player who felt like they had been lied to and then gaslit about what they had previously been told, by someone who subsequently admitted to not actually remembering that very well and now tells us that they had in fact planned all along to provide the thing they first promised to the player and then insisted they had not promised to them.

3. The scenario design was still poor. It almost read slike OP just never actually had a plan for running a session inside Candlekeep and found an excuse to make the party leave so they didn't have to.

gbaji

2024-01-11, 04:56 PM

Yeah, but the real solution is don't make them leave when they've just arrived.

It's just a really baffling thing to have sprung at that point.

Yeah. That's still the bit that I'm confused by. He's the GM. He could literally have chosen to have this side quest appear at any point in time, but he choose to have the request come in during the narrow window of time right after when the players paid for access to the library, but before they had time to get the information they were seeking. It could literally have happened 5 minutes before they handed over the book, or 5 minutes after they got the information, and there would have been zero problems created.

Doing it right then serves only one purpose: It blocks the PCs from getting the information they just paid for (and costs them the book the spent in the process). Why do that?

It also makes the players think the GM is personallly messing with them and creating obstacles to their path. It would be one thing if the bad guys know the PCs are looking for them, know they are going to the library to get information useful to finding them, and thus they create some side conflict which will occupy the PCs time in order to delay them. That would at least be reasonable (though, again, the timing of "right after we just paid for access to the library" is still quite suspect).

But HoboKnight mentioned nothing about this other side quest having been cooked up by actual antagonists in the game for this purpose, so I can't actually speak to what was going on here. But either way, the timing is really really obnoxious, and may very much be seen by the players as the GM yanking their chain.

It also makes the whole "I had a backup plan" bit really strange. Why? What is the virtue of taking away the method the players had come up with to get the information, only to hand one to them that you came up with instead? I'll repeat something I've touched on earlier. It's ok for the GM to have a "backup plan" (parachute) in case the PCs fail to do something they need to do in an adventure. It's never a good idea to make their plan fail so that you can use the "backup plan" instead. That's not a backup plan. That's "the GMs plan", and the GM used his GM powers to force it to happen.

And it's doubly worse because one of the players actually came up with a perfectly viable "backup plan" on his own. One which actually involved the very same apprentice that HoboKnight's "backup plan" seems to have involved getting them the info they needed anyway. So... Um... why not just have the apprentice do this? You had a perfect RP time to do this, right when K's paladin grabbed the apprentice and yelled at him for not giving them the info. You have the apprentice whisper to him "I'm being watched, so I can't give you the info you need now, but meet me at <wherever> and I'll help you out". This was trivially easy to manage IC, but was totally bungled.

So yeah. Not surprised at all that K would be upset at this sequence of events. Most players would be. Very much so. That doesn't excuse yelling and whatnot, but the sequence of actions taken by HoboKnight in this case were just bafffling and served no purpose other than to piss off a player (for no actual reason I can see). It's not like K was trying to do something that the GM didn't want to have happen. The GM planned for them to get that information. And yeah. If kinda looks like HoboKnight just wanted the information to arrive as a result of a GM initiated sequence instead of a player initiated one. Even when handed a nearly perfect transition from K's "plan" to his own "plan", he passed on it. Hard. That's just strange to me.

Kyoru makes some really good points. I would maybe label the two types of play "active" and "passive" though. In one, the players actively make plot decisions and affect the direction and course of the adventure, and are expected to make decisions and come to conclusions themselves (with commissurate rewards and penalties based on how well they do this). In the other (the style HoboKnight seems to be running), the players are passive passengers on the plot train, and should just follow where it leads and enjoy interacting with the events that the GM has them encounter, trusting that as long as they follow the path laid out by the GM, everything will work out.

As he pionted out, some players enjoy one style and some the other (and yes, most games are going to lie somewhere in between). In this case, the player expected to be able to "steer the ship" at least to some degree, but HoboKnight had his own written plot/plan, so that took precedence. Prior to this point, it may not have been so obvious to K that this was the style being used in the game, but the events that occurred were impossible for him to ignore. As I pointed out above, there's very close to zero reasons for the events to have played out that way for any reason other then "The GM wanted things to happen this way".

That can be a hard pill for some players to follow. And again, it's not even like K was blazing his own trail in the adventure here. He just wanted to have a tiny bit of agency in the process of getting the information. And was rejected.

That's not the "real solution" because it isn't the problem.

Even if something completely baffling happens, a player shouldn't react like that. It may be understandable to get that angry if the GM is actively malicious, but even then there are better ways to handle it.

You seem to be trying to make this about "sides". It's not. How we view K's reaction has zero bearing over whether the events HoboKnight played out created a problem.

The real solution is that if the plot takes a turn a player finds baffling or offensive to the point that makes them angry, the session should be stopped and a discussion about it should be had.

That's certainly the solution to diffusing the emotions of the moment. But that's not what we were asked about in this thread. We were asked to look at the sequence of events that happened, and give advice as to how to do things differently in the future to avoid such a conflict.

Is your argument really that if a player gets angry enough about a problem in a GM's game, that this makes the problem not a problem? That seems like an odd way to make that determination. Two wrongs do not make a right. It's possible for HoboKnight to have been in the wrong the way he ran this sequence of events in his game *and* K was wrong with how he reacted to it as a player.

Yeah, it kinda is.

The problem was poor scenario design where OP thought they were going to have the party make a "sacrifice" then reward them with nothing more than they were trying to get before they sacrificed the way to get it, but delivered through an agent of the DM not the actions of the players and their characters.

Yup. this is ultimateluy where the problem is. The player expected that success should come about as a result of player decisions and PC actions in the game world, and came face to face with the reality that succeess (in this case at least) would only come as a result of GM plot fiat.

No.

Even if all the players declared it was poor scenario design, poor scenario design is *never* a reason to get that angry.

Again. That doesn't make the answer to GloatingSwine's statement "no" though. It makes it "yes, the problem was poor scenario design". Because, if it wasn't poor scenario design then K would not have been upset in the first place. We can debate the degree to which he was upset, and what he actually did, and whether that was appropriate if we really want, but if/when we ask the question "Was K right to be upset in the first place?", the answer is a clear "yes".

And we could even get more meta here, and point out that, had K not reacted as strongly as he did, HoboKnight might not have posted the question here, and we would not be writing answers to that question. And maybe HoboKnight would never realize that, for some players, what he did was practically a mortal sin of GMing.

It's really strange to argue that the more loud and angry someone is about somehing, the *less* that something must really be a problem. Usually, it's the other way around. If something you did drove a player you've known and played with for many years to such anger, maybe it's a good idea to figure out what you did?

The fifth player's hyperbolic anger is the problem. It should have been addressed differently, perhaps, but that doesn't put the blame on Hoboknight's scenario design.

No. It's a response to the problem. Also, the only thing I know for sure is hyperbolic is your use of the word "hyperbolic".

Again. Whether K over reacted or not isn't really the issue, and has zero bearing on whether there were problems with the way HoboKnight ran that adventure. I'd prefer to focus on useful feedback about that adventure and how it was run, rather than useless bashing of someone I don't know.

Unoriginal

2024-01-11, 05:45 PM

And maybe HoboKnight would never realize that, for some players, what he did was practically a mortal sin of GMing.

Those players are ridiculous and shouldn't play at any table, then.

It's really strange to argue that the more loud and angry someone is about somehing, the *less* that something must really be a problem. Usually, it's the other way around. If something you did drove a player you've known and played with for many years to such anger, maybe it's a good idea to figure out what you did?.

Except for the fact that not all anger is justified or proportionate.

If someone is angry at you, examining your action is good. That doesn't mean you necessarily have to conclude you did something wrong, and if you did something wrong that still does not mean the level of the reaction was appropriate.

To use an example, if someone makes a meal and their spouse hits them in anger, claiming the meat is overcooked, you don't tell the person "well you shouldn't overcookthe meat".

To be clear, I am not saying that the situation between Hoboknight and K is as bad as the example above. I am merely using it as an example where the reaction is entirely unjustifiable.

GMing an sidequest and a NPC that a player considers annoying, time-wasting, frustrating or the like happens. Anyone getting to a point they can be described as "loud and angry" about such a thing is reacting disproportionaly.

At best you could argue that the problem was no one de-escalated the situation as it happened.

GloatingSwine

2024-01-11, 06:32 PM

GMing an sidequest and a NPC that a player considers annoying, time-wasting, frustrating or the like happens. Anyone getting to a point they can be described as "loud and angry" about such a thing is reacting disproportionaly.

What about gaslighting a player over what they remember being told, even if you don't actually remember what you told them and were even planning to do the thing they wanted you to do but only on your own terms? Which is what the OP lays out for us.

This wasn't *just* an annoying badly timed sidequest, it was an annoying badly timed sidequest designed to take away something the players had worked for, promising that they would not have it taken away and then lying to them that no such promise was made when they came back to claim it three sessions later.

Recognising that that latter part happened is important to realise why a player was so upset that it happened.

Recognising that even if nobody had actually been upset enough to kick off about it right then it still would have been poor design is how to do better in future. (Because it's still one more straw, even if it's not the one that breaks the camel's back).

Nothing was gained in play experience by yanking the party away from the thing they'd just spent several IRL weeks earning.

There are ways a fun and interesting sidequest which prompted a sacrifice from the players could have been inserted into the game (eg. the call is coming from inside the house. The Bad Thing the character is called to resolve is happening right there in Candlekeep and what they'll have to do to solve it will get them banned for life but only after they get the thing they came for. So their previous work is respected but they'll never be allowed to go back to Candlekeep in future if they need a source of esoteric knowledge again.) but "Lol you spent your book noob" is not one of them.

gbaji

2024-01-11, 08:34 PM

Those players are ridiculous and shouldn't play at any table, then.

Uh... Really? It's not ridiculous at all to expect that the GM isn't going to railroad so hard that he'll actually retroactively manipulate the past and "the truth" merely to ensure that an NPC takes an action only due to a sequence the GM wants to put in motion instead of one a player attempted instead. That's literally what we're talking about here. HoboKnight was literally going to have the apprentice provide the information to the party anyway. The same freaking NPC!

When I run my games, and I have a plan to get something to happen, and I'm fumbling around trying to figure out a way to fit it in to the scenario and not make it seem too GM driven and contrived, and a player comes up with an idea that hands me a perfect way to make that exact thing happen, my reaction is "Great! Now I don't have to work so hard, and the result will appear much more natural to the players and they'll be happy for having figured out how to hit a plot milestone". To me, this is the players helping me run my game. It's great when that happens. Player K's actions in the game (prior to getting pissed off of course) were incredibly good actions. They were very forward thinking, and basically handed the GM an "easy button" to both create the side quest and ensure that the players got what they came for anyway (which seemed to be the point here).

Having a GM respond to that sort of player gift with a hard shutdown is... yeah. baffling. It suggests that "the point" wasn't actually to allow the PCs to go on the side quest without losing their hard fought for plot coupon (I'm going to use that term in the future btw), but was more about asking them to take a leap of faith (in him). And when one of the players came up with a way to do the quest without having to put their fate in the hands of the GM, it got shut down. Hard.

I get that some players do like playing in games where the GM basically writes the story and they just follow along. Great. Good for you. But it's not ridiculous that many of us do *not* want that in our games.

Except for the fact that not all anger is justified or proportionate.

True. But irrelevant.

If someone is angry at you, examining your action is good. That doesn't mean you necessarily have to conclude you did something wrong, and if you did something wrong that still does not mean the level of the reaction was appropriate.

It also doesn't mean that you *didn't* do anything wrong. That's what I'm trying to get at here. You seem to be trying to argue that K getting angry somehow disqualifies any critique of what HoboKnight did in his game. I disagree with that.

Simple thought experiement. Let's assume the exact same scenario, but K didn't get angry about anything in it. He never ranted. He never said anything. He just went along with it all quitely, accepted that he must have been wrong about the apprentice's promise and just continued playing. If HoboKnight described the sequence of events that he did in his scenario, and was merely asking for feedback about the flow of the adventure, how would you respond?

I would likely be providing the exact same critiques for the exact same reasons. I'd question the decision to have a side quest occur right after they gave up the book, thus losing their shot at gaining info from it (for the same reasons I've questioned it in this thread). I would also question having a GM contrivance replace the work the players put in to get the info. And yeah, even if K accepted the whole bit with the apprentice claiming after the fact that he never promised to get them the info (um... despite apparently HoboKnight already planning to have the apprentice get it for them anyway), I would question that as well. I would argue, just as I have here, that he should have probably not have timed the side quest as he did. I would follow it up with a point about how, if the player took the initiative to arrange for a way to get the info they needed in spite of leaving for the quest, and he was planning to get them the info anyway, he should have just gone with the player's idea.

In otherwords, my critique of the scenario and how it was run would be exactly the same. I'm not basing it at all on K's reaction. His reaction, angry or not, simply has no bearing on it.

Would your responses be the same? Would you be as vocal in your opposition to what we are saying, if K had *not* gotten angry? I'm honestly curious. Because it seems like you keep responding to our posts, but not about what we are actually saying, but just to repeat that K should not have gotten angry. Well, that's great, but it in no way actually refutes anything we're saying.

It was a poorly played out sequence of game events. Period. It would be poor even if not a single player got upset about it. Even considering a table fine with "go along with the GM" style play, the timing and sequence of events is... well... contrived. And honestly serves no purpose at all. Yanking the PCs off on an unrelated side quest just for the sake of doing it, right in the middle of another quest? That's just not good pacing. Having things come up along the way in an adventure is fine, but a total side track like that? And narratively, right at the moment they were about to get some info they were after? Why not just have the god request their help right after getting the info? It sounds like this whole "fight the interdimensional hags" thing is a larger and longer runnning plot element in the game. It'll keep for a few weeks while they go put out a fire the gods need them to put out. There is no resolution difference between "they get the info about the hags, then they go off on a side quest for a bit, then resume the next step in their larger quest" and the way HoboKnight ran it. Except that doing it the way I just wrote it out, flows 10x better and doesn't require the "leap of faith" in the GM handing them the info instead of them earning it directly.

And yeah, the whole "I'm not going to have the apprentice hand the info over because a PC asked him to do so, but then will have him hand over the info for <some other reason> instead" just seems capricious. I really really just don't get that at all.

GMing an sidequest and a NPC that a player considers annoying, time-wasting, frustrating or the like happens. Anyone getting to a point they can be described as "loud and angry" about such a thing is reacting disproportionaly.

That wasn't why he got angry though. He only got angry (OOC) when he percieved the GM actually retconning the game to block the players action. The GM ruled that a zone of truth showed the NPCs statement to be "true", when the Player was absolutely certain it was false. And by his own admission, HoboKnight says he could not actually remember exactly what the NPC said.

I'll also point out (following up on the "exaggerating the players actions" bit) that nowhere in the OP is the phrase "loud and angry" present. That's you inventing an interpretation of the players actions. The actual quotes are "lots of ranting" and "flipped the table (figuratively), went completely OOC". Nowhere is it stated that the player even yelled. "rant" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and is entirely possible to do without raising one's voice (and it was unclear from the quote which parts were in or out of character).

Neither you nor I were physically present for the event. So maybe lay off the hypebole about the player and how horrible his actions where here. We literally don't know, and it literally doesn't really matter anyway.

HoboKnight is asking us for advice on how to avoid having situations like this in the future. I'm trying to provide that advice. Nothing more.

At best you could argue that the problem was no one de-escalated the situation as it happened.

Problems don't only exist if someone escalates them, and they don't cease to exist if someone successfully de-escalates them as they happen.

Kardwill

2024-01-12, 05:47 AM

So... Um... why not just have the apprentice do this? You had a perfect RP time to do this, right when K's paladin grabbed the apprentice and yelled at him for not giving them the info. You have the apprentice whisper to him "I'm being watched, so I can't give you the info you need now, but meet me at <wherever> and I'll help you out". This was trivially easy to manage IC, but was totally bungled.

To be honest, GMing comes with a lot of pressure, especially when tempers begin to flare up at the table. Quite often, I come up with the perfect way to handle a scene or a player initiative after the scene has already been played. Quite often, while driving back home after a game, I have those facepalm moments where I tell myself "Kardwill, you idiot. Doing X instead of Y would have been so much cooler!"

Sure, I can tell the gametable "wait a minute, I have a better idea. Can we rewind back to when you were threatening the apprentice?", but many players really don't like that kind of retcon. As a GM, I'm not completely confortable with them myself.

Pausing the game (or stopping the session) when things were getting out of hand and discussing things out OOC would have allowed the GM and the players to understand why some people around the table were unhappy, what miscommunication going on. It would have allowed the GM to think about the scene and come up with your solution to everyone's satisfaction.
But in my experience, many players and GMs don't want to be "the guy who stops the game and breaks immersion to talk things out". There's a strong pressure to keep the game going, even when it's a train wreck and doing a pause would be really beneficial.

So we try to keep the ball running and throw the first idea we come up with, we try to find IC solutions to OOC problems, and we sometime end up killing the game
(because let's be honest, there is a fair chance that the OP's campaign is dead : the GM and one player now associate it with a really bad experience, and the other players are probably very unconfortable about the argument they witnessed. Campaigns live and die from players’ and GMs’ excitement and anticipation of the next game. A potential friendship-breaking argument at the gametable is a big downer that can sour the very idea of playing those characters again.)

gbaji

2024-01-12, 06:39 PM

To be honest, GMing comes with a lot of pressure, especially when tempers begin to flare up at the table. Quite often, I come up with the perfect way to handle a scene or a player initiative after the scene has already been played. Quite often, while driving back home after a game, I have those facepalm moments where I tell myself "Kardwill, you idiot. Doing X instead of Y would have been so much cooler!"

Sure, I can tell the gametable "wait a minute, I have a better idea. Can we rewind back to when you were threatening the apprentice?", but many players really don't like that kind of retcon. As a GM, I'm not completely confortable with them myself.

Yeah. I totally agree with that. I've certainly had a ton of those same facepalm moments as well. But I guess I'm just having a hard time with this specific example, because this wasn't like something that just came up out of the blue and the GM couldn't think of a great way to handle it on the fly as it happened. This was a major plot point (obtaining a book, to get access to Candelkeep so they could research info about the big bads of the campaign). The GM knew they were there, and knew why they were there. He knew that having them go on a side quest right at that moment would put a huge damper in their plans. He even planned around this (poorly planned IMO, but planned nonetheless). He also knew that one of the players specifically had a conversation with an NPC at the library and obtained a promise of help from that NPC when they returned. The GM ran the NPC. He had the NPC tell the player that the NPC would help them get the information when they returned.

So... Why is the players action at all a surprise? They spent several game sessions on the side quest. The GM had all the time in the world to think about how to integrate the request by the player and promise from the NPC apprentice into the game he was running. K asking the NPC to deliver on the promise made when they returned was not a surprise (or should not have been). So... why not just have the NPC, which he had already determined was going to help the party get the information, just tell the PC that when asked? It seems like a no-brainer action. Which makes me suspect that there must have been some thing else going on.

It's hard to see this as anything other than the GM actually wanted the PCs to think they had lost their access, and had no way to get the info they needed, and then have a Deus Ex Machina appear for them in the form of the apprentice offering to help. It was about the dramatic up and down of that process and he really wanted the players to feel it or something. And he wanted this sequence so hard, that he actively blocked a proactive effort by a player to request help from the exact same NPC to secure that help ahead of time (because, and again I'm speculating here, that would elminiate the "drama" of the planned sequence).

I could certainly be wrong in my speculation here, but that's pretty much the only motivation I can think of as to why a GM would do that. But yeah, at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter much. If it was just a mistake, or a brain fart, or whatever, then the advice is to pay more attention to major plot points like that, and make sure you are managing them in a consistent manner and that the GM and players are on the same page as far as "what the facts are". If it was intentional (as I've speculated), then my advice is "don't do that". There is a temptation by many GMs to try to "create drama", out of a belief that players will enjoy the up and down emotional effects of gaining, then losing, then regaining "just at the right moment, when they think all is lost", kind of process. But IME, very very few players actually appreciate that kind of game. The reason is that it devalues the choices and actions the players actually make in the game. They are just "along for the ride", which may be fun for a while, but actually gets pretty old pretty quick.

It's a point I try to make often about GMing in an RPG. You are not writing a novel. You are not writing a screenplay. You are not writing a script. Things that work in novels, and films, and TV shows (which includes most of the "up and down" stuff) do *not* work in an RPG. Don't try to force things to work like that. I would say that the number one reason for GMs failing and having games that devolve into arguments and disruption is because they are trying to script their adventures to include the kinds of dramatic elements that they see in films and tv shows. It's very tempting to watch a Shakespearian play and think "I want to run an adventure like that". Don't. Just... dont. Those kinds of stories rely on random events and actions by the characters to make the story work. You cannot rely on those things happening if the characters are being played by actual people, and trying to force them to happen anyway will only piss those people off.

Pausing the game (or stopping the session) when things were getting out of hand and discussing things out OOC would have allowed the GM and the players to understand why some people around the table were unhappy, what miscommunication going on. It would have allowed the GM to think about the scene and come up with your solution to everyone's satisfaction.
But in my experience, many players and GMs don't want to be "the guy who stops the game and breaks immersion to talk things out". There's a strong pressure to keep the game going, even when it's a train wreck and doing a pause would be really beneficial.

So we try to keep the ball running and throw the first idea we come up with, we try to find IC solutions to OOC problems, and we sometime end up killing the game
(because let's be honest, there is a fair chance that the OP's campaign is dead : the GM and one player now associate it with a really bad experience, and the other players are probably very unconfortable about the argument they witnessed. Campaigns live and die from players’ and GMs’ excitement and anticipation of the next game. A potential friendship-breaking argument at the gametable is a big downer that can sour the very idea of playing those characters again.)

Yeah. Once you hit a problem like this, it's very hard to unhit it. Which is why I advise in the direction of avoiding the circumstances likely to result in that sort of conflict in the first place.

I agree that if you can find a way to make a quick ruling that everyone is ok with in the moment (perhaps with a reserved "we can come back to discuss this more completely later"), that's usually a good approach. The danger with pushing through is that the farther you move foward, the more you may have to retcon later if required. So yeah, sometimes, the right answer is to pause/stop the game, and give everone some time to really think things through and cool their heads, and come to a good agreed upon solution. It really depends on how significant the impact of the disagreement is.

In the OP, it seems as though they tried to just play this out in-character, but reached a point where the conflict was between the player and the GM, and the GM effectively used his GM powers to "win the argument" by causing in-game events to support his position and interpretation of previous in-game events as well. That's maybe a very clear case where the moment the NPC did what he did, and it started to escalate in-game (via the PCs reactions), the GM should step out of character and tell the player what's going on: "The NPC didn't actually promise that". It might not have settled the disagreement (clearly the player thought the NPC had), but would have correctly aimed the issue at a difference between the player's memory of in-game events, and the GMs. The player would not have had his character get angry and manhandle and threaten the NPC, because the GM has told him that (at least in his version of events), the NPC had never promised that in the first place, thus (again, if we take the GMs version as truth), his character should not be upset about this.

That would have, at least, removed the in-game escalation. You'd still have an OOC disagreement over what was actually said or happened 4 sessions previously, but it would have been constrained to that. And can be resolved between the player and the GM. So yeah, sometimes you absolutely have to be willing to step out of the game when it's called for. Doubling down on an out of game disagreement by amping up the in-game consequences and conflict is not a good approach IMO. And honestly, if I were the player in this situation, I would also have dropped out of character and consulted the GM, prior to manhandling the NPC too. So it's not like all the blame is even remotely on the GM here. Both people missed the clue that this was an out of game issue IMO. But I've been both playing and GMing RPGs for a very long time. It's maybe easier for me to see the warning signs of something like this coming and take action to head it off than most.