Talking to my players

[Talakeal]

First, Please note that the "letter" at the end is just a tip sheet going over some solutions to common points of failure. It is absolutely NOT a replacement for actually addressing the larger issues my gaming group is having, and though it touches on a lot of the stuff I mention in the post, it isn't meant to cover it all.

I'm actually curious about the Miser? Do they literally complain that that they only got the same 500 gold that everybody else did, or are they just constantly complaining about wanting More Treasure?

Spoiler: Well...

Show

He won't contribute to party expenses. Stuff like bribing NPCs, hiring mercenaries, purchasing spellcasting services, paying for travel expenses, etc.
While the rest of the party use crafting skills to equip their teammates, he keeps them for himself.*
He tries to optimize the party by telling them that since he is the most powerful member of the party, the group as a whole would be better off giving him extra shares of treasure.
He does not contribute to the parties emergency fund which is used to pay for decurses, ressurections, and the like.
And then if anyone complains about him being selfish, he tells them that it pains him how bad with money his allies are, and that he is the real victim here by having to endure all that wasteful spending around him, and therefore he is the one who should be complaining to them, not the other way around.

He doesn't buy defensive or utilitarian items, and then claims that I am picking on him when his lack of defenses mean his character takes more damage.
Likewise, if he ever has (proportional to his characters WBL, not in absolute terms) less treasure at the end of one session than he did the previous session

Further, my system works kind of like Pendragon or The One Ring in that is alternates adventure phases and downtime phases. Resources such as spells and rerolls not used in the adventure can help with downtime projects. If they have a rough adventure and he does the math and finds that he could have made more money staying home, he will complain bitterly about how I was just wasting his time and stealing his money; completely ignoring the fact that by going on the adventure he also earned XP and whatever reputation / knowledge / power / karma that motivated the quest, as well as the fact that the game assumes that the materials you are using the craft are paid for by your loot while adventuring.

*In my system, costs for items go up by an order of magnitude each level of quality. What most players do is they will, for example, if they are the weapon smith they will make a +1 weapon for themself, then +1 weapons for their allies, then a +2 weapon for themself, then a +2 weapon for their allies, then a +3 for themself and so on. Bob will just craft a +1 weapon for himself, then a +2, then a +3, then a +4, then a +5.

Also, when you talk about preparing when buying conusmables, what is the gameplay loop you are describing. "You know that Wyverns are in the area, so you can prepare an antitoxin for Wyvern Venom" type stuff, or do you just expect every player to buy 5 healing potions, and balance the damage assuming 5 healing potions get drunk each time?

Consumables are not accounted for in the base difficulty. They are a buffer against bad fortune, whether that comes in the form of cold dice, bad / uninformed decisions, or your character build not being will suited to a particular encounter.

However, if the party has an alchemist, their ability to make potions IS accounted for in the base difficulty. Which actually did cause a lot of complaints in the last game, because the party had an alchemist, and a constant complaint was "Your game is too hard, because IF we didn't have an alchemist, we would be losing money on consumables!" without taking into account that if the player wasn't an alchemist they would be doing something else to contribute instead and thus the party wouldn't need as many consumables.

I believe your previous thread had someone say their table spent a fight looking for a "bendy tree to turn into a catapult" and something about juggling axes? So it may not even be difficulty but lack of nonsense.

I remember the story you are talking about, but no that was someone else's story in one of my other threads, not something that happened to me.

If your table is genuinely settled on your system, and particularly if this stuff happens regardless of what you use, I gotta say it's probably time to lay down the law. No phones at the table, no tantrums, no throwing stuff (for real? I assume it's not literal small children you game with?)... y'know, generally behave like a civilized human being. Given that habits may be hard to break, I'd dish out a warning the first time, then kick the offending player if it continues. And if someone walks away from the game, they have left the game entirely. I really cannot emphasize enough how completely unacceptable that sort of behavior is.

Its weird how much I have normalized childish behavior from adults. I see much worse at gaming stores (and especially in online games) than I do at my table, so I always just kind of assumed it was normal. Like, when I used to play Warhammer at the Games Workshop store dice throwing was common, heck even the corporate regional manager for the company was known to toss his dice across the store after a particularly cold streak.

And now you start another campaign of the same kind with mostly the same players and somehow expect it to be different. Because you (again) tell your players how you think players should play. Your new letter is mostly a summary of your past issues that you presumely already have complained about.

That's a neat way to handle multi-quoting. Let me try and respond in the same format.

And now you start another campaign of the same kind with mostly the same players and somehow expect it to be different. Because you (again) tell your players how you think players should play. Your new letter is mostly a summary of your past issues that you presumely already have complained about.



First off, if you want to make it big out here you are going to have to be brave, but also cunning.
If you don't play risky, you can't win. If you do play risky and lose, you were not smart enough. That sounds just plain bad.
So, this is addressing a specific problem I have had; players want to play action / adventure games, but they are too scared to actually go on adventures. When I try and explain that adventurer's, by necessity, need to be braver than normal, they will then recklessly charge headlong into danger without a concern for their own safety and blame me for whatever bad thing happens to them.
Apparently, "brave" and "reckless" are synonyms in most people's minds; but I really need to get across to people that there is a middle ground between the two, and that is where successful adventurers typically dwell; those who aren't brave enough stay in town and become NPCs, and those who aren't cautious enough tend to be corpses.
It’s a dangerous world out there, and most of the folks you will encounter have learned to survive in it.
Then how about assuming that the PCs have learned that as well instead of putting it to the test all the time while NPCs can just do it
Not quite sure what you mean by this. This is actually a specific wording that was suggested in the last thread to warn the players that NPCs will tend to use reasonable tactics without suggesting that I will metagame.
Don’t neglect your defense! All the firepower in the world won’t do you no good if you get taken out before you can bring it to bear.
Not fine. That is telling your players how to build their characters.
On the other hand, don’t neglect your offense. All the armor in the world won’t help if the enemy can afford to just ignore you.
Not fine. That is telling your players how to build their characters.
As I said, its really hard to try and give advice to people if they take it as bossing them around. Focusing to much or too little on defense is a common mistake new players make (I do it myself on occasion, and did it frequently when I was younger) that leaves them bored and / or frustrated. And when someone is bored or frustrated at the table, they tend to make it everyone else's problem
If something seems impossible, don’t give up, and don’t bash your head against it. Fall back, reassess the situation, and keep trying new strategies until you find one that works, which you will.
If somethings seems impossible, giving up is the rational, smart thing to do. If i had new strategies to try it of which i think they could work, it wouldn't seem impossible. And i am not for sticking around trying out harebrained schemes until somethings sticks by fiat.
You aren't my players then. As I said above, my players tend to get frustrated / depressed if their first idea doesn't work and then just give up and call it for the night, which means they miss out on XP and treasure, my time spent prepping an adventure goes to waste, and the entire evening of gaming is just us staring at one another.
You can never know what the future holds, so try and get through each obstacle using as few resources as possible.
Sure. But then don't complain about me being stingy.
This is kind of an apples and oranges comparison. Are you referring to refusing to help your allies? Refusing to help NPCs? Or what?
Life ain’t always about right and wrong; more often it’s about how much suffering you are willing to inflict or endure to see your goals through.
Fine. As long it is my choice, not your choice. And if i decide i don't want to endure that much or that the goal is not worth it, that is OK.
Absolutely. That is the core of the game.
Fate is a fickle mistress, and it’s possible to fail through nobody’s fault, maybe not even your own.
If you insist i can't do much about that. Aside from taking as little risk as possible. Which is precisely what i would do. I am not a gambler at all.
Its not about insistence, its about the nature of dice. But yeah, as I said in the first point, for the game to happen you need to be in the area where you minimize risk but that the same time are still willing to play the game.
Everyone has their own way of looking at things. Don’t trust anyone completely, not even me.
Horrible. If i can't trust you as GM, i am out. NPCs would be different but you speaking OT must absolutely be trustworthy or there is no game.
As I said, this is going to be presented as an in character list of tips from a mentor figure who happens to be a CN trickster type. It is absolutely not talking about the GM, although maybe I could reword it to be more clear.
If you got the brainpower, its often more cost effective to use the right elixir preemptively rather than a tonic after the fact.
That is not a question of "brainpower", that is a question about how much information we get and how easy that is accesssable. But you like to call people stupid, don't you ? Also see your point about using as few resources as possible. Prebuffing at long term cost only makes sense when we know we need it, not for just-in-case. Also that is basically "cost to give it a try" and might lead us instead to to give the while contract a pass if we thing we need too much ressources.
I don't generally assume people are stupid, no. If I inadvertently called you stupid at some point, I am very sorry, but I generally assume people are as smart or smarter than I am, and aside from a few people who have fried their brain with long term drug use I don't have anyone in my friend group who I don't consider to be of above average intelligence. Honestly, its kind of an obstacle for me as I tend to assume people are either lazy or careless when they don't understand something.
That being said, cost / benefit analysis is absolutely a factor of intelligence, and in character knowledge is a huge part of information gathering.

Being captured is humiliating, costly, & often downright painful. Still, surrendering is better than the alternative.
Obviously.
It may seem obvious. But I have seen a lot of games go down the drain because PCs got in over their heads and absolutely refused to surrender.
Only abandon a contract as an absolute last resort; you will miss out on a lot of cash, and the hit to your reputation may be even more costly in the end.
That is stupid. Wouldn't agree to that. If we can not abandon contracts we think are to hard or not worthwile we are basically on rails doing your plot.
Yeah, well, my players want a linear game, and I am not going to prepare a half dozen adventures on the off chance that they might deign to actually go one. That being said, I didn't say it was an OOC, or even an IC rule, only that it shouldn't be done lightly.
That bein’ said, you don’t need to be perfect. Objectives ain’t worth dying for, let alone driving yourself mad or turning on your comrades.
Let us decide what is worth to do things and what not. Objectives and contracts.
That's the whole point. It is a decision, not an obligation.
Folks out here will try and lie, cheat, or trick ya, and may twist your words, but your Gamekeeper won’t.
If Gamekeeper is a fancy word for GM, see above the point how we can't trust you.
It is. You know, its funny, "Game Master" is the default term, but very few games actually use it, in my experience its less "fancy" than "expected". Never really thought about that before.
On t’other hand, don’t expect your Gamekeeper to pull something out of their backside to save yers if you get in over your head.
Sure. But then don't expect us to take lots of risks.
So you don't want to be railroaded, but also expect the GM to save you if things go wrong? Is that correct? But yeah, after the tongue lashing I have been getting the last few months over "rubber-banding" I am going to be doing everything in my power to be as impartial as possible.
You will run into a whole lot of strange stuff out here, and will find yourself in a wide mix of situations; things that seem like a weakness today might be a strength tomorrow, and vice versa.
Not sure what this is supposed to mean. There are hardly any weaknesses and strengths that can become the other. You won't ever win something by being particularly slow or have a bad hearing.
OOC, what I am trying to convey is that I will use a variety of encounters, and I am not going to tailor encounters to the PCs (either in their favor or against them). A flaw that doesn't come up is just free character points, and a merit that doesn't come up is just wasted character points. So, for example, a guy who buys "poison immunity" will be in a much better place when fighting venemous enemies, but a slightly weaker place then fighting non-venomous enemies. A guy who took a weakness to electricity will be in a worse place fighting lightning enemies, but in a slightly better place the rest of the time. Likewise, there are a lot of things that have trade-offs, like wearing heavy armor, focusing in melee over range or vice versa, being immune to all magic, being of a specific creature type or subtype, etc. that are good sometimes and bad other times.
When selecting your teammates, understand that its not about being objectively better or worse, rather its about group synergy. Everyone you meet will be more or less equal, but if you cover all your bases before working on redundancy or over-specialization that will help the team as a whole and give everyone a chance to shine.
Put your team’s face-man at the front of the table and your wizard at the back. Trust me.
???

In my system you take turns going around the table. The character in the "leader" roll buffs their allies, and so should always go first, and the wizard needs to do a lot of math to craft their spells and needs some extra time to think; this is basically just telling them how to keep the game flowing easier to alleviate boredom and frustration.

And when the attacked player isn't you, do you defend them with a "that's not how that happened" or "that's not what I remember" or "that hardly seems fair" or the like?

Generally not. That's a good point.

Were I at your table, I would exacerbate this, TBH. In that, most of my tables, beyond a Wand of Lesser Vigor, consumables are considered highly suboptimal.

Again, that's an (imo unintended) anomaly of 3E. What did you do with all the scrolls and potions you found in treasure hordes in older editions?

Its not so much that they don't like buying consumables, its that they don't like using the one's they have, and imo there is nothing optimal about having possessions that do nothing but sit in a vault collecting dust.

Have you considered… having the guilds pony up for a "standard set" of consumables, and require paperwork filled out for any that need to be replaced, or some other way to make consumables great again?

Could you elaborate here?

I am not quite sure what you are saying. My groups generally don't belong to guilds, but generally do contain an alchemist who gets to make potions for free over time.

One thing that might help is if you introduce a "Doom Check". Basically, the players are allowed to ask you "Are we Doomed". Have they, either through bad luck or lack of preparation or what have you, put themselves in a situation from which the scenario does not allow any reasonable sort of victory. Did they storm the Dark Lord's Fortress without scouting it, and now they're facing down his Venom Knights without having stocked upon Antivenom? If they ask (And you may volunteer), you promise to answer them with complete honesty.
Regardless of if you INTENDED this to be a no-win scenario (You almost certainly didn't), the key is that this promise is a way to keep them engaged and at the table. The answer will almost certainly be "No" every time they ask, but the ability to ask can reassure them.

If the answer is ever "Yes", you can stop the session and figure something out.


You could also just make a blanket promise to Tell Them if they are ever in a no-win scenario, but they might forget that. Making it something they can do makes it a little more proactive on their part, which will make it feel better.

The thing is, the answer would always be "no".

In my last campaign, there was precisely one encounter where the answer would have been yes, when the PCs rolled really badly on a random encounter and got ambushed by a deadly enemy while already badly beaten up on the way back to town. And in that case I flat out told them that I didn't think there was any realistic chance of victory and they should probably run, which they did.

Aside from that, in the two year campaign, they overcame every single obstacle that they actually came up against (although there were still more than a handful of encounters which I knew they could have completed but were too scared to even try).

Wait, wait, wait. People are just walking out in the middle of the session and going into another room to play video games, without even explaining why? They're trash-talking each other to each others' faces, and cursing each other out (and aren't kidding around, they really mean it)? They're THROWING THINGS?? I don't think a letter saying "you do realize sometimes you roll poorly" is gonna solve this. You just reeled off a bunch of events that, if they happened once in any of my games (and most of them never have), everyone would stop everything and we'd all have a very lengthy chat along the lines of "what the hell was that about." These things are all happening regularly??

As I said, each player does something like that about once every ~3 months of bi-weekly games. The problem is it was getting more frequent as the game went on rather than less, and I want to step in before it becomes a regular occurrence.

I believe this is because he was posing it as a charter / advice being provided by an NPC, hence the "not even me" (meaning the NPC); this is further illustrated by him referring to the "gamekeeper" later in the text (which to me is sorta strange, as its a bit of a 4th wall break). Of course, its easy to make the mistake that this is "voice of the DM" and misunderstand this as "the DM cant be trusted".

This is correct.

If anyone has any suggestions on how I can doctor the wording to make this come across better, I am all ears.

This.
You aren't there to be their teacher. You are there to facilitate the game and set the environment and the challenges. They'll learn at their own pace, and they'll only learn what interests them. This is a leisure activity.

Games are a leisure activity, but they are also absolutely a skill that people can get better at with winners and losers. I honestly don't have a problem with a more casual game, what I don't like it that players are perfectionists who get mad when they don't perform flawlessly, but at the same time don't want to put the effort into learning how to play (or work together as a team) and instead expect me to dumb down the campaign setting until every NPC in the world is significantly less competent than they are.

Your title of this thread is "Talking to my players" but what you have presented in your OP here looks, to me, like a case of talking at your players.
I have made this kind of interpersonal communications mistake before, and it's rarely gone well.

As I said, the spoilered part is just a "tip sheet" that I am going to hand to my players. It is NOT the conversation I am hoping to have with my players about broader issues.

snip

You seem to have dismissed the vast majority of the tip sheet as mothering or noise. Which, is absolutely true.

But at the same time, each one of these directly gets at an issue which has occurred numerous times in my games and has a tendency to make players frustrated and / or bored. And when players are frustrated or bored, they tend to make it an issue for everyone else.

It still has a general tone of "This will be hard mode." despite not intending to say that.

The tone I am going for is "I am going to play the game straight; I am not going to tailor encounters to you, fudge dice, or metagame NPC reactions in your favor or against it."

I don't believe it has come up before. The one side account has been acknowledged, but I generally assume the OP in threads like this goes to a forum to get private advice. If we can mediate a dialogue then either it will blow up, or progress will happen.289

I don't really know the new players well enough to ask them to come onto a social media site on my behalf. Bob doesn't like forums, and he specifically considers going onto them for game advice to be a form of gossiping about people behind their backs. Brian has an account here, and I am sure I could talk him into posting if people have any specific questions / topics they want him to address.

Although when I asked him, he said he is still leery after the reaction to a post him made over a decade ago on the old WoTC forums.

I wish the original was still up, but in short he said "I need to solo a red dragon to qualify for vassal of bahamut, but my DM's game is really hard because he plays the monsters smart, so how can I possibly win?" To which the forums response was "LOL, the character you posted is a gestalt character with 40 point buy, 4x WBL, numerous custom items, and a non-standard race. This is the easiest most Monty Haul campaign I have ever seen, I am sure your DM will provide a wheezing, half dead, dragon who rolls over at your feet and beg's for mercy! Quit wasting out time!" That's a paraphrase, but its not actually a comedic exaggeration, btw.

Your existing players ? You can't teach them. They know you already and have probably already heard everything you want to teach them. They have adopted what they agree with and discarded what they don't.

Probably. At this point Bob still makes rookie mistakes, but I am pretty sure he has incorporated them into his strategy; for example he makes characters with glaring weaknesses to buy up his offense, and then he bitches and moans so loudly when they come up that DM's simply don't think its worth the hassle and avoid targeting him entirely.

Brian, unfortunately, has serious medical memory issues and is often "learning" things he has known for years for the first time.

New players ? Those you can teach. If they are new to roleplaying, you can teach them your tables way of role-playing. If they are only new to your table, you can teach them your system and present your tables way of roleplaying which they then will merge with existing habits.

Yeah, the new players are the primary audience.

A GM is not a coach. He is not a better role-player or someone more experienced or more knowledgable. He has not the authority to "teach" anyone. He has the authority to run a game. Yes, people learn by playing and adapting their styles to the surrounding, but a GM is no more teacher than he is pupil and his position is not that different from those of the players.

That's true... but it's also false.

In my experience the GM is generally the oldest and most experienced / knowledgeable person at the party and is almost always the one who knows the game best. This is doubly true in my case as I am generally literally teaching people to play a game that I have written for the first time.

And while the GM is not literally a coach, the two positions do have a lot in common. They are both people who are part of the team, but also separate from it. They are also people who want to see their players grow and succeed, but are also often put in the position of needing to provide the "tough love" to make it happen. In my experience, healthy gaming groups absolutely treat GMs with the same sort of "respect" that sport's teams show their coach. I put respect in quotes because that is a very loaded word; I don't mean it in any sort of a hierarchical sense.

Well, the problem is you're approaching this as giving advice, which already assumes 'my view of the situation is superior to their view of the situation'. That is always going to come off as bossy no matter how good the advice is. Now if you had someone actively looking to learn, saying e.g. 'I'm struggling in your campaign, any advice?' then you can say those things without it being domineering. If you engage someone in a conversation about how they feel and if, in that discussion, you together identify things they don't like about their own play, then that can be a prelude to being able to offer advice.

That's true.

But I am talking from decades of gaming experience here; this is based in repeated observation.

The list is written to address common mistakes players (including myself) often make which results in them becoming bored and / or frustrated; and bored / frustrated players tend to act out in ways that create a toxic table environment.

The problem is, people in my friend circle don't like to ever admit weakness or fault; they don't say "I am struggling," they say "This is unfair! I am being cheated / screwed over!"