Have you seen Gamers talk themselves out of fun?

[Easy e]

Yeah, it's probably worth clarifying that I only game with people I'm already friends with (or who are at most friends of friends), except for play by posts (and even then, I know most people in the scene at least as acquaintances). I've tried gaming with randos before and it always sucks.

I have also had similar experiences.

I did not mind observing and waiting to rotate in at the next campaign because of those past terrible experiences. I also was able to "fill in" when another player was not able to make it and play there character for them. That was a fun RPG challenge trying to mimic another player's character who you have only watched play them a handful of times.

[Quertus]

"Gamers like to talk themselves out of having fun" doesn't sound like a warning about damaging friendships, so much as one about, you know, sabotaging the fun of the game.

This can take many forms. Perhaps the most obvious is choosing an un-fun way of approaching a situation. Sure, we could have had an epic battle... but, instead, we chose diplomacy, or assassination, or economic warfare. Sure, we could have had a cool court drama... but instead we punched them in the face, or assassinated them beforehand.

Perhaps worse, many GMs take a knee-jerk response to this possibility, and assume that they know better what the other players will find fun, and railroad events to force the "fun" outcome, throwing action at players whenever they pause to think about events, preventing smart plans from working so as to force the party to engage the fun plan, etc.

Another way (that I feel Talakeal's table has mastered) is creating a perfectly good plan... then second-guessing that the GM won't allow it, and trashing it for a second... then a third... and, finally, an often terrible plan that isn't any good at any level.

Obviously, some of this comes down to Combat as War vs Combat as Sport. Some of this comes down to "8 kinds of fun", and just what parts of the game the various players enjoy (I enjoy planning far more than actual resolution in RPGs (mind you, I'm a war gamer, so I love me some combat, too, but that's just not the primary draw for me in an RPG; for that, I'd rather just play a war game)).

But "talking themselves out of having fun", by virtue of how English works, means that they have to have already seen the fun path, and then talked themselves into choosing differently. And you can say that that involves issues of "trust" or "optimization", and that's fair, but it also indicates a lack of skill on the part of the GM, to step in gently shepherd their fun, to ask questions like, "why don't you go with that plan?", and, especially if the response is a fear of a hidden "gotcha!", to blatantly admit that no such gotcha exists.

Now, that said, I'm all about handing players rope. I'm perfectly willing to let them have IC conversations in a location where they should know that the enemy can hear them, to make plans based on faulty or missing or even misheard/misinterpreted information, etc. So long as their mistakes are ones that it's perfectly reasonable for the characters to have made (to mishear the difference between "four fathers" and "forefathers", for example), I'm fine with letting them make their own mistakes. But when it's an issue, not with the characters, but with the players, with a lack of understanding of the level of gotcha/CaW that is appropriate for the table, or a misunderstanding of what the game fundamentally is ("when you heard 'political', you... built a matchmaker???"), then I'm gonna step in and work to align expectations.

Now, I've said I enjoy planning. And that's true. But... not all of my characters share my opinions. Some of my characters are much more likely to want to just Leroy Jenkins the situation, and deal with problems as they come up. Some of my characters want a plan. Some of my characters want a plan, and an exit plan. Some of my characters want a plan, and contingencies. Me, I want a plan, and nested/redundant contingencies (if guards show up, and any given PC is unconscious, how will the remainder handle the situation, rather than just "oh, the Face will talk to them") *and* the ability to be flexible (when it turns out the guards are werewolves or something). Or, perhaps, I want a full toolkit, one I feel is more than adequate to any plausible situation that could arise from the scenario.

-----

So, to answer the question of the OP, have I seen such? Not very often, honestly. In part because most people I play with have a decent sense of what they find fun, and actively pursue it, and in part because, curiously, I'm a part of every group I'm in, and, as player or GM, I try to nudge the game away from unfun scenarios, as I'm aware of this phenomenon.

That said, I have seen several times where... hmmm... I didn't metagame hard enough, and it was obvious in retrospect that the GM was only interested in one particular approach, and the game immediately tanked after the players went a different way. Two campaigns in a row with the same GM had this problem - once, because the players didn't go my way; the other, because they did. Sigh.

Usually, though, it isn't quite that catastrophic, and the GM will recover from a suboptimal experience with the next mission / next chapter of the plot / whatever. Maybe Boba Fett's player cut out a cool "cloud city" scene by just immediately informing the Imperials where the Falcon was, but the GM bounced back with Luke sneaking through the imperial way-station and Vader's new, improved trap. One suboptimal scene needn't kill a whole campaign - and can be used as a learning experience, to have an open conversation between the GM and the players about how to optimize the table's fun.

Talk your table into having fun.

[Telok]

This is especially important to keep in mind for heists and the like. Failing a Stealth check means you get detected, no getting around it. But what does getting detected mean? In most cases, a combat. And that gives another hinge that might be used to salvage the situation. If you can incapacitate the guard before he sounds the alarm, maybe...

Sounds like a D&Dism, one failed stealth check equals a fight. Of course with D&D current fight budgets, fights per day, monster hp vs pc damage, and absolute movement rates it often means there's no recourse except for the whole party to pile on with fireballs & everything. If ya want a hiest or sneak scene in your game you should write stealth rules that give you those kind of scenes instead of just giving the GM a couple numbers labelled "stealth" & "perception" and telling them to figure the rest out on their own.

On topic: yeah, I've seen people talk themselves out of fun. One person despises the idea of "storygames" (despite never trying anything more "storygame" than Shadowrun and having no actual working definition besides random internet forum posters ranting). Another who just won't learn any mechanics more complex than the most basic to hit & damage attack rolls or D&D style marking off a spell cast ("parry? dodge? wazzat? is it an ac bonus?"). And a third who apparently won't read anything not written in an WotC official D&D game book. Between those, that group can't play anything but D&D, even if they claim they want outer space sci-fi or supers or grim & gritty or anything else. So they play D&D, sometimes with random piles of houserules, even if that's not what any of them say they want to play. Because they can't agree on anything else.

[Rynjin]

Sounds like a D&Dism, one failed stealth check equals a fight. Of course with D&D current fight budgets, fights per day, monster hp vs pc damage, and absolute movement rates it often means there's no recourse except for the whole party to pile on with fireballs & everything. If ya want a hiest or sneak scene in your game you should write stealth rules that give you those kind of scenes instead of just giving the GM a couple numbers labelled "stealth" & "perception" and telling them to figure the rest out on their own.

Eh, I'm not gonna come up with bespoke heisting rules for a one-off. If I was ever to run a "thieves guild" campaign again I'd probably expand more than I already did, but a heist in a D&D sense is the same as a heist in an "adventure film" sense. Discovery means the guard shouts "Hey, you! What are you doing there!" and a conflict ensues with swashbuckling action and great derring-do.

It's the style of the game, and no more or less valid than more nuanced takes on it.

[Atranen]

That's still a matter of DM trust. If (a mostly-reasonable plan) + (a really ****ty roll) = (a session which is no longer fun), then someone is doing the math wrong. The GM has a lot of steering power, and should use it not to make the characters' lives consequence-free, but to make those consequences fun from the players' perspective (if terrifying in-world for the characters). Which is more fun for everyone involved? "Sorry, your plan failed", or "the only way you can pull it off now is to outthink a new cascade of disasters"?

One rule I always try to remember when GMing, is "a low roll doesn't mean they've failed. It means I get to escalate." What to escalate, and how? Hey, that's why GMing is an art.

I'm a big fan of this approach; it avoids the binary success vs failure and uses failure to drive the narrative in an interesting way.

There are reasons I couldn't play mirror-shade Shadowrun or heist games generally--I like to have the narrative moving constantly. Get in there with a basic plan and some simple fallbacks, then roll with the punches. See what happens. So the whole "plan things perfectly so the execution is trivial and you rarely, if ever, have to roll dice" mode of play just kills my enjoyment.

I'm the opposite --but not everyone I play with is. I'd love nothing more than to come up with an airtight plan and have it go off without a hitch. But I get the sense that doesn't happen with some of my GMs, even when the plan and rolls merit it, just because they think it would be boring for us to win so easily

[BRC]

I often see people (especially my in-person group) to spend way more time discussing plans than it's actually worth given what knowledge they have. Especially given my love of throwing twists into things.

There are reasons I couldn't play mirror-shade Shadowrun or heist games generally--I like to have the narrative moving constantly. Get in there with a basic plan and some simple fallbacks, then roll with the punches. See what happens. So the whole "plan things perfectly so the execution is trivial and you rarely, if ever, have to roll dice" mode of play just kills my enjoyment.

So yes, I've seen gamers talk themselves out of my fun.

Also, taking the "no risks" route often means missing out on lots of cool stuff. The bard I play has the flaw "insatiable curiosity that often gets him into trouble".

I think of this around the concept of "Soft Failure"

I like Deadlands Classic a lot for this.

In deadlands classic, you normally roll a a pile of dice and take highest, with dice exploding. You have a meta-resource, Fate Chips, of which the weaker version (White chips)+ let you roll another die after you finish your rolls, and the more powerful versions (Red and blue) let you roll an add an ADDITIONAL dice, and that can theoretically happen twice.

So, if your skill is 5, you roll 5 dice take highest, if you don't like that roll you can spend a white chip to roll an additional die, if you don't like that you can spend a red chip to roll and add, and a blue to roll another dice and add.
So if you have 1 of each chip, your initial roll of 5d6 can be up to 6d6 (Take highest)+ 1d6 + 1d6 .

This means that, so long as you have a decent pile of chips, you can pretty reliably succeed at plenty of tests. So for critical tests like sneaking past guards, the player with a less-than-sneaky PC can feel fairly confident that they CAN sneak past the guards, the question is just how much it will cost them to do so. Spending chips feels like a real cost, since chips are also XP and wound negation, and nothing is guaranteed, since the dice you chip can still roll 1's. The result is a system that still has tension with critical rolls, but ALSO tends to sidestep the problem of failure ruining everybody's fun, since players tend to self-regulate, if a failure would derail everything and ruin the fun, it gets boosted.


IIRC the Leverage RPG, which is built for heists, has your planning happen retroactively. So rather than an extensive legwork section where you figure out everything and plan out a foolproof approach, you get the basics, start the heist, and anytime you encounter a serious problem you start spending meta-resources to have retroactively found out about it and planned around it.


Both cases allow for "Soft Failure", where failure has real consequence, costing meta-resources, but play doesn't get derailed until a cascade of failures has happened. Similar to how a D&D character can take a hit from an enemy and keep going forwards, it's when they start running out of hit points that they have to start playing cautiously. System that make good use of soft-failure allow that to apply on a strategic level rather than just tactical. Good play is rewarded, as it becomes less expensive to press forwards without failure, but failure doesn't stand much chance of ruining the experience for everyone.

[NichG]

Sounds like a D&Dism, one failed stealth check equals a fight. Of course with D&D current fight budgets, fights per day, monster hp vs pc damage, and absolute movement rates it often means there's no recourse except for the whole party to pile on with fireballs & everything. If ya want a hiest or sneak scene in your game you should write stealth rules that give you those kind of scenes instead of just giving the GM a couple numbers labelled "stealth" & "perception" and telling them to figure the rest out on their own.

My observation has been that the concept of hitpoints as a failure buffer works perhaps better for heists than it does for combats. Call it 'alarm level' or something, and have a failed roll up the alarm level. Or alternatively, roll to see how much alarm buffer you have at the start of the heist and have things cost fixed amounts of alarm to do - guard fails to report in, 4 alarm; move one character across a vision cone in dim conditions, 1 alarm; open a door, 2 alarm; etc.

[Telok]

My observation has been that the concept of hitpoints as a failure buffer works perhaps better for heists than it does for combats. Call it 'alarm level' or something, and have a failed roll up the alarm level. Or alternatively, roll to see how much alarm buffer you have at the start of the heist and have things cost fixed amounts of alarm to do - guard fails to report in, 4 alarm; move one character across a vision cone in dim conditions, 1 alarm; open a door, 2 alarm; etc.

What I find works for me is to run things sort of between RL & movies. Figure out how security is set up for a similar thing in RL then apply some movie logic to the guards/place until the PCs have a chance of success if they put reasonable effort into it.

Weirdly it tends to boil down to there being a few alarms set up in lightly patrolled places or at night, and a few bored guards patrolling in 1s or 2s. Perhaps a guard animal if appropriate. It scales up for really valuable stuff but is still often lighter than most games budget for a single fight and its spread out over the entire area. That's something PCs can normally handle just fine even in Paranoia or Toon, much less some game where they're supposed to be big damn heroes. The only real exceptions are super valuable famous stuff, sensitive parts of military installations, or bases in combat zones.

It does help though that I tend to run modern/sci-fi, so watching a heist movie where the target area is similar to what I'm prepping is pretty easy. Museums, Fort Knox, corporate skyscrapers, banks, university science labs, etc. Like I've got one prepped for what's basically a small city import/export customs office next to a small not very busy space port. There's two bored guards, one sort of patrolling & one half watching some exterior cameras while playing a hand-held, a few locked doors, and some basic alarms on exterior doors & windows. The biggest issues should be finding the right office to raid, not making too much noise using the copier, and remembering to hack & wipe the internal unmonitored security cameras (which only really matters if they bungle something that tips off that the office was burgled). Pretty much any failure just calls for mr. rent-a-cop to make a perception check modified by distance and maybe wander over to take a quick look through a doorway. That set up, if the players have a professional level b&e character or do any prep work, puts them at having to fail multiple checks and not KO a mook before they raise any real alarm.

Now if it were a mad scientist lab or a Shadowrun game it would be more involved. Throw in some mutant attack geese and a few internal alarms or some such. But most of the time real life & movie style security tends to be lighter than most gaming resources & systems imply.

[riot]

IME players going the hyper-cautious route is due to a lack of GM trust. Or more accurately, an expectation of difficulty. If you don't plan well, you die. If you die, you don't get to play anymore (that session). That's a lot less fun than getting to play.

IMO it's more just a matter of human nature. People tend to weigh the chances and consequences of loss far more than the chances and rewards of winning. It only took a broken ankle to render you useless back in the caveman days, so even if the chances of getting injured was in reality 1% or so, taking those chances on the daily meant that you were going to mess up sooner or later. While people playing a fantasy game are definitely going to be more reckless, the more they think about it the more they're going to revert to primal senses than impulsive fun.

[Tanarii]

While people playing a fantasy game are definitely going to be more reckless, the more they think about it the more they're going to revert to primal senses than impulsive fun.

Players are incredibly reckless in TTRPGs.
Until they start losing characters because of it. They they become sensibly cautious and that stops.
Then when it happens over and over despite sensible caution they become paranoid.

Player paranoia in TTRPGs is something that comes about from very old school meat grinder games, where even sensible caution (and planning) isn't sufficient to keep characters alive.

I'm a huge fan of game styles that require some sensible caution and planning, like maybe at least some minimal researching and scouting before charging in head first, and discussing basic fall-back escape plans before you get started. Not assuming your characters can beat a challenge just because it's in front of them. Not sticking your hand (or other body parts) into obvious traps. And failing at those things quite easily having consequences. But old school paranoia with detailed planning and excessive (and slow) hyper-caution can quickly get tedious, both as a player and as a DM.

[137beth]

One example I think of when it comes to talking (or thinking) yourself out of fun is this one courtesy of Kirth on the Paizo forum:

I've often posted before about the guy I played with whose character's prized possession was his flaming sword. The first time the group encountered a troll, he said, "I drop my sword and draw my dagger."
Everyone at the table stared blankly at him.
I said, "You ALWAYS use your sword! You yell 'flame on!' every time we meet a monster! And now all of the sudden you don't want to?"
Player (proudly): "Well, my character wouldn't know that fire hurts trolls! I'm not metagaming!"
Me: (headdesk)

There definitely comes a point at which the efforts of the "metagame police" are self-defeating. In this instance, the poor player was so traumatized by previous DMs that he resorted to blatant metagaming in order to avoid the appearance of metagaming.

I'd rather let the players know stuff, and have us all know that we all know it, and then let the game proceed based on how the character would act.

(Source).

[Telok]

Player paranoia in TTRPGs is something that comes about from very old school meat grinder games, where even sensible caution (and planning) isn't sufficient to keep characters alive.

I'm a huge fan of game styles that require some sensible caution and planning, like maybe at least some minimal researching and scouting before charging in head first, and discussing basic fall-back escape plans before you get started.

I've found that it's more that the players up their paranoia level until it starts suceeding. Whether it's a "gotcha DM", a series of shoddy modules, or just having a 35% chance to fail every meaningful roll, the players adapt their tactics to whatever works. In some games it's been scouting, planning, and having the fastest getaway vehicle the rules can produce. Other games it's been everyone going all in on flight, long range guns, and as much armor as physically possible to wear & damn the non-proficient penalties. In D&D specifically for us it's become either throwing as many rolls at everything as possible to get a high roll, or having three casters buff one melee into indestructability and then letting them walk through everything.

It's very easy to have an adventure or system that screws over anything normal people consider reasonable and push players into optimizing the fun out of stuff in order to feel like they have any say in the plot/story/whatever. It doesn't take "very old school meat grinder games", just enough sessions of annoying continual failures of your "sensible caution and planning". Railroady modules are especially bad for this, particularly with a GM who isn't great at improv and highly experienced in handling perceived or actual disruptive character abilities.

[Tanarii]

I've found that it's more that the players up their paranoia level until it starts suceeding.

Well yes, but my point was my experience is players generally start at zero paranoia and doing things wildly unreasonable because there are no consequences and they can't die in real life as a result of it being a game, and dial it up from there to something most folks would consider semi reasonable.

Not fully reasonable of course. I'd hazard that most gamers would have their characters retire to a safe life after scoring a years salary in loot to play games at the local pub if they took it to real life reasonableness.

[Pex]

I don't remember the details, but it's happened many times. We scheduled our first game session. Great. While I'm busy doing other things the DM and a player have a discussion online about the game that turns into an argument. I log in the next day to find the game is called off. The game could already have been playing a few sessions when two players have an argument online about how to play one player quits. Before the virus apocalypse it could be the host who quits, and we need to find another venue.

I do remember one player quitting because he was having a hard time understanding how to use a VTT character sheet. He was being a luddite saying he wanted to use pencil and paper even though we were playing online. The DM insisted he use the VTT character sheet. However, the VTT being used was new or at least one I haven't heard of. I was even having trouble trying to get it to work. There were errors in its programming, but the DM absolutely refused to let us use D&D Beyond. The player got frustrated and quit. The DM had his own hissy fit about the situation and decided to cancel the game a day later.

I'm not immune to this. Recently I quit a game because one player who didn't know the rules didn't like me playing my character. He accused me of cheating then convinced the DM to make the rules play as he wanted them to as the DM was new and didn't know the rules either.

[Mastikator]

Robin's point was less about table drama and more about pacing and engagement.

Essentially, his assertion is that, given infinite time to plan and discuss, players will most often settle upon a safe, cautious, hyper-conservative mode of play. This ends up creating situations where the players avoid, obviate, or trivialize the big fight with the necromancer, even though having a big fun fight against the necromancer and her skeleton army is actually the engaging part of the game.

Robin was basically, literally saying: do not give your players the chance to talk themselves out of fun. Interrupt them, cut them off, or give them time pressure to ensure that they are running with that first, sloppy, fun plan instead of eliminating all opportunities for twists or fumbles-- and the improvisation that those engender.

That's not everyone's playstyle, of course, but it's certainly Robin's.

I've seen this in action. In XCOM enemy unknown from 2012 there are no time limits to any mission, so the optimal strategy is to take one step and put all your soldiers in overwatch mode, which is what everyone did and it's also the most boring way to play the game.
In XCOM 2 from 2016 the game developers added a time limit to almost every mission and made it all but impossible to not trigger it early. Which meant the player had to start taking risks just to succeed. I remember many people complaining that this will ruin their playstyle, but in my experience it made the game way more fun. The fact that there's a deadline means that the player has to take calculated risks based on incomplete information, bold daring action must be taken, all must be risked.

I use this lesson when I GM, the players are always on a deadline. Either something bad will happen in X amount of time, or the enemy is currently working to kill the player characters and every second the player spends picking flowers the enemy is building and launching their next attack.

[GloatingSwine]

I've seen this in action. In XCOM enemy unknown from 2012 there are no time limits to any mission, so the optimal strategy is to take one step and put all your soldiers in overwatch mode, which is what everyone did and it's also the most boring way to play the game.
In XCOM 2 from 2016 the game developers added a time limit to almost every mission and made it all but impossible to not trigger it early. Which meant the player had to start taking risks just to succeed. I remember many people complaining that this will ruin their playstyle, but in my experience it made the game way more fun. The fact that there's a deadline means that the player has to take calculated risks based on incomplete information, bold daring action must be taken, all must be risked.

I use this lesson when I GM, the players are always on a deadline. Either something bad will happen in X amount of time, or the enemy is currently working to kill the player characters and every second the player spends picking flowers the enemy is building and launching their next attack.

I'm pretty sure the most popular XCOM 2 mod is the one that turns off those timers. The thing about "taking risks" in XCOM is that all you're actually doing is playing worse on purpose because an arbitrary number says so.

Subsequent games in the genre (especially Gears Tactics) have made aggressive and mobile play better instead of just forcing bad choices.

And this is the real lesson. If you want players to play the game the fun way, make the fun way also the best choice.

[Mastikator]

I'm pretty sure the most popular XCOM 2 mod is the one that turns off those timers. The thing about "taking risks" in XCOM is that all you're actually doing is playing worse on purpose because an arbitrary number says so.

Subsequent games in the genre (especially Gears Tactics) have made aggressive and mobile play better instead of just forcing bad choices.

And this is the real lesson. If you want players to play the game the fun way, make the fun way also the best choice.

Yeah, you are playing worse because you have to, it's harder. Harder games that rely on player skill is more rewarding when you win. It benefits players that are good at calculating risks and playing strategically because they can overcome the time limit.

And players mod their way out of this more fun way to play. It makes the game worse. It's the perfect example of gamers talking themselves out of fun.

The same happens in TTRPGs. If something catastrophic happens at the end of the day unless the players complete their quest then they'll have to take bold action, take risks. In my experience the best games I've DMd are the ones where the players are on an arbitrary time limit. Specifically, the time limit should be a little too short, give the players options and not enough time to explore every option, it should feel like a risk to explore the options. They should feel like if they are in immediate danger and if they dilly dally they will not only lose, but die. Here it is important to tell the players up front that new PCs that are introduced mid-game are weaker than their current ones, no you don't get free magic items and unless you take the time to loot your fallen comrade it's lost. You can loot or revive but it costs time, so it may jeopardize the whole party. Death is a setback. Risks are real. The reward is all the sweeter.

I know it sounds harsh, punishing and unfair, like I'm a killer DM. But when I set up the quest this way the players have the most fun. They talk about their awesome plan and their amazing risks they took, whether it killed them or rewarded them either way they love it.

The receipts are in, players will talk themselves out of fun if you let them. So don't let them.

[warty goblin]

I'm pretty sure the most popular XCOM 2 mod is the one that turns off those timers. The thing about "taking risks" in XCOM is that all you're actually doing is playing worse on purpose because an arbitrary number says so.

Subsequent games in the genre (especially Gears Tactics) have made aggressive and mobile play better instead of just forcing bad choices.

And this is the real lesson. If you want players to play the game the fun way, make the fun way also the best choice.

The really weird thing is that XCOM Enemy Within pretty much solved this problem just by putting timers on the upgrade juice in each level. Any given mission you could play super defensively, e.g. if it looked like it was hard or your squad was under-leveled, but on net you were rewarded for playing at least somewhat aggressively by getting that sweet, sweet Meld. And then taking one of your dudes, sawing off their limbs, and turning them into a giant cybernetic killing machine, which is obviously the best reward.

[Quertus]

Personally, I prefer a balance. Some encounters you know your tools and abilities are up for the job, and you can just rush in. Some encounters are thrust upon you, and you have to adapt on the fly. Some encounters, you research, plan, and prepare. And some encounters, you research, realize your toolkit is inadequate, and go shopping / get a training montage / seek out the McGuffin / build yourself an undead mech army.

Not only that, but which is which should vary depending on what characters we brought. For example, Batman can trivially ace the stealth mission Superman needs to puzzle through how to set up for Clark, whereas Superman can just fly off into space while Bruce has to wait for Wayne Enterprises to finish construction of a spaceship.

A good GM can set up adventure content that can be approached with any such variety of approaches, from gung-ho to training montage, from on-the-fly adaptation to careful research, depending on the needs and desires of the party.

And it's that balance that I find fun. Many GMs talk the party out of fun by forcing just one of these approaches as the "right" one.

Not fully reasonable of course. I'd hazard that most gamers would have their characters retire to a safe life after scoring a years salary in loot to play games at the local pub if they took it to real life reasonableness.

I love that you say this while I've got a thread open talking about characters saving up for retirement.

Plus, there's the issue of how of "what's reasonable" changes in a given world/system / under a given GM, and how that must be learned. As well as the fact that the hobby is more escapist, and few people want to spend their gaming time caring about the boring bits, like taxes or thinking, when they avoid those IRL.

I'm pretty sure the most popular XCOM 2 mod is the one that turns off those timers. The thing about "taking risks" in XCOM is that all you're actually doing is playing worse on purpose because an arbitrary number says so.

Subsequent games in the genre (especially Gears Tactics) have made aggressive and mobile play better instead of just forcing bad choices.

And this is the real lesson. If you want players to play the game the fun way, make the fun way also the best choice.

Eh, yes and no. Yes, I absolutely agree that making fun play the better choice than boring play is better than making boring play the better choice. However, even agreeing with you, there are a few issues to consider.

For example, what's the point in having the less fun options if they're always inferior? So, if "run and gun" is more fun, but "overwatch" exists, there should scenarios where overwatch is the obviously superior strategy - and maybe some where it's not so obvious that it's still a good plan.

Also, who says "run and gun" is more fun? It may turn out, people respond to the above with, "I really loved the overwatch scenario". Of course, that could happen even if "run and gun" is generally more fun, and the more intelligent version of that comment were, "I really loved the overwatch scenario, but I think it could get boring if every scenario were played that way".

Even if "run and gun" is the more fun option, you don't want it to feel forced that you've made it also the superior option. If the scenarios or game physics get too unrealistic (too unversamilitudinal?), you'll start to build up dissonance. You've gotta make it feel like that's the right choice, where your 5-year-old advisor doesn't look at the plans and say "that's dumb".

And there's other considerations, like having multiple ways to win each scenario, adding diversity to gameplay, giving players the option to make mistakes, etc.

The same happens in TTRPGs. If something catastrophic happens at the end of the day unless the players complete their quest then they'll have to take bold action, take risks.

Eh, in that scenario, I think I'd eventually just let the bad things happen, while I focused on researching Time Travel, to go back in time and prevent them from happening. "A world that's constantly on the brink" isn't fun for me.

[Mastikator]

Eh, in that scenario, I think I'd eventually just let the bad things happen, while I focused on researching Time Travel, to go back in time and prevent them from happening. "A world that's constantly on the brink" isn't fun for me.

It shouldn't be constant. You need a mix between the high stakes, low time, high reward, and the relaxed low stakes, long time, low reward. The catastrophic thing should matter to the players in some way, it doesn't have to be the end of the world, monsters successfully wiping out a village that the players are in is in no way the end of the world. But it could mean not all of the player characters makes it out alive. Focused and precise bad events can be just as devastating to the players without disrupting the campaign setting.

The quests with more breathing room can also be useful to foreshadow future stuff, immerse players in lore with the show-not-tell technique. Both those quests tend to not be celebrated as much in my experience. The good stuff happens when the players need to take risks or die.

However, if players are not engaging with my offered plot hooks I'd ask them what they're interested in so I can make stuff that makes them want to engage and win. I know a few players who will answer with "I don't know", my interpretation of that is they're not here for the game, they're here to hang out with friends. If I had only players like that I'd bring out some other board game like cards against humanity or whatever. I'm lucky if I can drag my players away from their family drama and jobs get my players to play once a month, so I have to make the best of it. Using that little time on personal side-quests/downtime activities (that can be done electronically) is IMO a waste.

[Eurus]

One quirk of some of my play groups is that most of my players are invested in being heroic, or at least decent people. So if they think there's a possibility to resolve a situation without stabbing anyone, they'll generally go for it and feel bad if they fail to do so. But they do still enjoy combat, when they aren't worried that they're being jerks...

These days, I generally tell them OOC if a given situation is "supposed to be" a fight or not so that they can get in the right mindset. Unfortunately, these bandits need to have their heads knocked together before they'll calm down enough that you can convince them of the error of their ways~

[Satinavian]

Eh, in that scenario, I think I'd eventually just let the bad things happen, while I focused on researching Time Travel, to go back in time and prevent them from happening. "A world that's constantly on the brink" isn't fun for me.

You regularly bring in time travel.

But i must say that IME time travel is rarely been made available because :

a) In kinda kills all the tension if a do-over is always an option.
b) it is hard to balance
c) people don't like deeling with paradoxa. And they have to if players choose to crate them.

Have you really been in that many group that allow you time travel ?

[Jay R]

This is related to a rule in my "Rules for DMs":

3. What the players want today is a quick, easy victory. But what they will want tomorrow is to have brilliantly and valiantly turned the tables to barely survive a deadly encounter where it looked as if they were all about to die.

Robin has over-stated his point; gamers who carefully make sure that there is no danger or risk are still having fun playing D&D. [And I over-state my point too. There are probably some players who never want the suspenseful, hazardous encounters that I remember most fondly long after the game is over.]

Players will work hard to optimize their approach to an encounter. This is fine -- they're supposed to. No fantasy hero ever said, "Let's not ambush the ogres; that won't be dangerous enough. We'll let the ogres ambush us."

Nonetheless, it's quite often true that, if you let the players do so, they will turn the thrilling, perilous encounter into a boring, simple victory.

The DM needs to remember that the PCs are supposed to optimize their attacks. It's not their job to ensure suspense and thrills. That's the DM's job.

[Tanarii]

Robin's point was less about table drama and more about pacing and engagement.

Essentially, his assertion is that, given infinite time to plan and discuss, players will most often settle upon a safe, cautious, hyper-conservative mode of play.

Back to the OP referenced law and this explanation of it: I disagree strongly. New players will, given infinite time to plan and discuss, always charge in to a situation recklessly without any caution.

It's only after they've paid the price for that repeatedly that it changes.

Robin must have made this rule when TTRPGs were in its infancy and the rules made it incredibly easy to outright die even if you were very cautious and planned well, and players inevitably shifted to this style of play as a result. In most modern TTRPGs where death and other serious failures generally only happen if the GM throws you in a situation too deep, or gives you a situation too deep as one possibility out of several and you charge in recklessly, most players will never end up here.
And even for the latter they won't end up there, they'll generally instead resort to scouting things out a little to make sure it's not too much then go do something else if it is.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Back to the OP referenced law and this explanation of it: I disagree strongly. New players will, given infinite time to plan and discuss, always charge in to a situation recklessly without any caution.

It's only after they've paid the price for that repeatedly that it changes.

Robin must have made this rule when TTRPGs were in its infancy and the rules made it incredibly easy to outright die even if you were very cautious and planned well, and players inevitably shifted to this style of play as a result. In most modern TTRPGs where death and other serious failures generally only happen if the GM throws you in a situation too deep, or gives you a situation too deep as one possibility out of several and you charge in recklessly, most players will never end up here.
And even for the latter they won't end up there, they'll generally instead resort to scouting things out a little to make sure it's not too much then go do something else if it is.

I've seen strong results the other way.

I had a party of 100% new players. Never played a TTRPG. These were adults who weren't gamers either. Basically 100% new to fantasy RPGs, the whole bit. Of all the groups that were presented with a simple challenge (get in, grab chalice off of table, get out), they were the only ones who cautiously approached every thing, took no chances, and completed the mission without setting off any alarms or triggering any traps.

I had lots of genre-savvy, experienced players who charged straight in, kicking down doors and setting off obvious traps. It's not new vs experienced, or even "CaW" vs "CaS". It's mostly down to individual play style.

[Telok]

I've seen this in action. In XCOM enemy unknown from 2012 there are no time limits to any mission, so the optimal strategy is to take one step and put all your soldiers in overwatch mode, which is what everyone did and it's also the most boring way to play the game.

In the original XCOM overwatch wouldn't get you many wins. You rarely had the lines of fire needed for it to work, enemies wouldn't suicide charge you or random walk into lines of fire once a soldier was spotted, some were fast enough to pop in and out of cover before your soldiers reacted, you'd lose a terror mission if too many civilians died even if you killed all the aliens eventually, and the chrysallids were freaking murde on packed soldier formations (double if they were inside a civilian and your soldiers wouldn't shoot them normally). Oh, and the ****ers used grenades, then eventually psi and missiles that could turn corners. Overwatch tactics did jack all when a unseen floater on top of a building tossed a 'nade into your squad because some mook on the ground spotted you.

[oxybe]

For the people who meticulously plan things, i find it's likely because they like that. There might be some gamer PTSD involved if their previous group was a meatgrinder, but when shown that the current game isn't of that sort, those who naturally don't lean towards heavy planning will revert to their regular style of play. For the planners though, it's fun to them and kind of rude to assume that they're just "talking themselves out of fun".

Essentially, his assertion is that, given infinite time to plan and discuss, players will most often settle upon a safe, cautious, hyper-conservative mode of play. This ends up creating situations where the players avoid, obviate, or trivialize the big fight with the necromancer, even though having a big fun fight against the necromancer and her skeleton army is actually the engaging part of the game.

Since it just came out with a major update, I'm reminded of playing the videogame Hitman: do you plan out your route and try to kill your targets without being discovered or do you just go in guns a blazing? Why would you assume the latter is universally more "fun" or "engaging" then the former even though both are supported courses of action? And if that's not the case, then why would this also not apply to TTRPGs?

The Necromancer and Skeleton army are still there and the players ARE engaging with it... it's a thing they have to deal with in some form, they're just doing it through planning and preparation instead of having a donnybrook in the crypts.

In the group I play on Tuesdays, I doubt we'd plan things beyond a rough outline and adjust as the refuse hits the ventilation, to turn a phrase. Of us 4 players, only one is overly cautious given the opportunity. Of the other 2 guys, one is... not disposed to planning. At all. The dude games, builds characters and levels them by the seat of his pants and seems to just zone out or lose focus when the action stops for too long. The second guy is more like me, we don't mind planning when it calls for but otherwise it's best to keep the ball rolling instead of making a 5 minute workday out of every situation.

Our Wednesday group fluctuates between 5-7 players and it's very easy to get bogged down into planning or preparation simply due to the size of the group. Not that we don't have fun during that prep time, but some sessions can get very little done, followed by the next session or two being super productive as we put the last week's prep into motion.

Different strokes and all that.

[Segev]

I, for one, have never seen a group talk about how awesome it was for a game to end tragically when they could have saved the day, but man was it worth it for the awesome fight they got defeated in, or where the tragedy strikes because they decided it was cooler to Leeroy Jenkins rather than treat the encounter as a serious one that requires planning and strategy.

[Quertus]

It shouldn't be constant. You need a mix between the high stakes, low time, high reward, and the relaxed low stakes, long time, low reward. The catastrophic thing should matter to the players in some way, it doesn't have to be the end of the world, monsters successfully wiping out a village that the players are in is in no way the end of the world. But it could mean not all of the player characters makes it out alive. Focused and precise bad events can be just as devastating to the players without disrupting the campaign setting.

The quests with more breathing room can also be useful to foreshadow future stuff, immerse players in lore with the show-not-tell technique. Using that little time on personal side-quests/downtime activities (that can be done electronically) is IMO a waste.

It’s great that you recognize the need for a balance of encounter types / pacing, and yeah, in such a scenario I’d be unlikely to reach for time travel. And “end of the world” was meant to be figurative, so I think we’re on the same page on that. But there’s still a few more benefits to Time Travel worth commenting on.

First and foremost (and germane to the thread topic), it puts control of just how much time the characters have to plan in the players’ hands.

Then, depending on the time travel mechanics in play, it also allows the players to adjust other dials, like the threat level or the potential rewards.

These days, I generally tell them OOC if a given situation is "supposed to be" a fight or not so that they can get in the right mindset. Unfortunately, these bandits need to have their heads knocked together before they'll calm down enough that you can convince them of the error of their ways~

Switching to OOC conversations is definitely a tool that should be in the GM’s toolkit. If that’s what works for your players, then I guess that’s the way to go.

You regularly bring in time travel.

But i must say that IME time travel is rarely been made available because :

a) In kinda kills all the tension if a do-over is always an option.
b) it is hard to balance
c) people don't like deeling with paradoxa. And they have to if players choose to crate them.

Have you really been in that many group that allow you time travel ?

Mu?

Look, most GMs aren’t competent enough to manage consistency with just “regular” world physics; I certainly wouldn’t trust them to handle time travel mechanics. So just as I wouldn’t enjoy constant time pressure, I wouldn’t enjoy utilizing time travel under most GMs either. But it’s a tool in my toolkit, and I bring it up in part because nobody else does, and in part because, while he doesn’t understand it as well as I do, Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has it as a tool in their toolkit as well. (Quertus hasn’t encountered, and hasn’t bothered to theorize, as many types of time travel mechanics as I have. Then again, his concerns wrt manipulating time are more “immediate” (heh) than my own.)

Maybe someday I’ll make a thread about how stupid people are about time travel - I’ve been kinda about the topic ever since I saw a YouTube video that said that there are only 2 kinds of time travel.

But, to answer your question, plenty of groups have allowed time travel - more than I’d actually care to allow to utilize the tool, actually.

For the people who meticulously plan things,

it's fun to them and kind of rude to assume that they're just "talking themselves out of fun".

Yeah, conversation >> assumption.

I, for one, have never seen a group talk about how awesome it was for a game to end tragically when they could have saved the day, but man was it worth it for the awesome fight they got defeated in, or where the tragedy strikes because they decided it was cooler to Leeroy Jenkins rather than treat the encounter as a serious one that requires planning and strategy.

Hahaha, true that. Heck, even though I’m a fan of a well-deserved loss, I’m struggling to remember an instance when such was the coolest part of the campaign, let alone when such a loss being caused by Leroy Jenkins was the coolest part of the campaign.

Most groups, “causes unnecessary problems” is a sign of a problem Character/Player, rather than something praiseworthy the group actively seeks out.

[Segev]

Hahaha, true that. Heck, even though I’m a fan of a well-deserved loss, I’m struggling to remember an instance when such was the coolest part of the campaign, let alone when such a loss being caused by Leroy Jenkins was the coolest part of the campaign.

Most groups, “causes unnecessary problems” is a sign of a problem Character/Player, rather than something praiseworthy the group actively seeks out.

Agreed, but I want to clarify that I was using "Leeroy Jenkins" to characterize the style of play that is, "Well, we COULD plan and work out how to make this the most effective assault we possibly can enact, or we could just wing it and hope that the dice favor us...so let's do that latter because it sounds like more fun!"

I don't see groups who actually do the "plan until the combat is as tilted in our favor as we can make it" as their strategy disliking it when the fight with the necromancer-cyberdruid-king and his army of undead robot trees goes rather well with their traps and plans working to make it an "easy" victory feeling like they talked themselves out of fun. I have seen individual players who wish there was more of a fight to engage in, which is something groups should try to accommodate, but it's not the planning that's the problem, there. Plans should hit hitches, generally speaking, and that's when the fighting happens.

One of my favorite victories in a game was when we spent three sessions building up our infiltration of a dragon empress's court after luring her away with rumors of a great rival for her throne gathering support half the world away. We showed up, impersonated a noble and his entourage, and made a mess of things before one of her loyalists got suspicious enough to just flat-out attack us. That fight was pretty epic. The fight with the dragon empress would've been even more devastating, but we rigged it by getting one of her minions who was bound by magical contract and didn't want to be to deliver her a message about treachery at her castle, timed so she'd arrive at a particular time. We laid a trap in her throne room, having arranged for her to be able to magically appear right there. And when we sprang the trap, the fight lasted only a couple of rounds, during which we mostly worked to keep her disoriented rather than to damage her, because the trap was effectively a banishment blanket falling on her.

It worked more or less exactly as planned, albeit with some tense moments as we desperately worked to keep her from acting and moving out from under the trap or noticing it falling.

And it was awesome.