Glass-Cannons, Whinging, and Blame

[kyoryu]

There is of course the old de motivational poster answer "You are the common factor in all your failed relationships," which is really a non-answer in an advice thread as people wouldn't be asking a question if they didn't think they could modify their behavior to change it. Unless that's the point?

I think there's an option - there's something you can do to alleviate these issues that you may be unaware of.

You are noted as having uniquely horrible experiences. An impartial observer would conclude that one of two things is likely:

1) There is something you are doing that is contributing to these problems.
2) There is something you are doing that is both drawing these problematic people to you and driving away less problematic people.

Mostly laziness and soft-hardheartedness.

Playing a monster "hard" all the time is mentally exhausting, and it seems mean to stomp someone into the ground when they are already losing. I don't think this is just a GM thing either, as a player I also try harder when things are going hard, even in single player video games.

On the other hand, playing "soft" all the time makes the game a farce, both from a mechanical level and from a setting level; its hard to take a world seriously when its monsters and villains are complete idiots who can be taken out by a group of wandering adventurers without any effort.


Now, we can look into deeper game philosophy here and say its an important psychological mechanic. Its pretty well agreed upon that most people want a challenge, or at least the illusion of it; most sport's fans agree that close games are the best and many video games give you damage resistance when your life is low or damage boosts when your ammunition is low to give the illusion of a close call. I personally don't really know how much I agree with this though, it seems good in principal, but my players pretty universally throw tantrums at anything that isn't a cake walk, hold grudges for years over close calls, and I don't really trust myself to have that tight a grasp on game balance or on player psychology anyway.

But one of the other things that's important is that players see the results of their actions. You've complained before that the players say it doesn't matter what they do, the results will be the same... but that's kind of what you're saying.

If you've decided that the PCs will lose 90% of their HP, and then play the enemies easier/harder to guarantee that, then from the player POV it looks like what they do doesn't matter. If they play "well", they lose 90% of their HP. If they play "poorly", they lose 90% of their HP. They can't even tell what is good or bad play at that point.

And this leads to a feeling that their actions don't matter. Which leads to a lot of the type of complaints you get.

Note that a similar "it doesn't matter" issue comes about if you don't give players sufficient information to make decisions - "gotchas" and things like that just exacerbate it, especially if you make them super-aware of the consequences. And when doing stuff like that, try to think of what the players do actually know about the situation at hand - not what they "should" be able to guess or infer from clues you've given them.