>idea makes perfect sense in context, but muh story so no
Exceptionally shitty advice. If your "story" cannot handle "[actions that] makes perfect sense in context", your "story" is unfit for the medium. Tourists need to realize that roleplaying games is a poor outlet for their failed novels, and that subjecting others to their "writing" as part of what is essentially a social hostage situation is an incredibly shitty thing to do.
I think "sandbox" often gives the wrong ideas, and tends to be an excuse for aimlessness, often resulting in a lack of motivation and a general confusion. Structure tends to help, and it is perfectly fine to present a prefabricated situational hook or given dramatic scenario within the context of an ostensibly living world, with the expectation that the players have their characters act reasonably (not necessarily logically!) in relation to that.
But actions should absolutely have the potential to derail the entire game, if those actions make sense in context, and the characters should suffer or reap the full rewards of the full effects of their actions. This is honestly the fundament and the linchpin, arguably the entire point of the very concept of roleplaying games, in my opinion.
I think a GM is welcome to run it this way. But, I am a bigger fan of in-game consequences.
"I tell the King to go frick himself". "Are you sure?" "Yeah". Cue the guards seizing the character. If the player decides on combat, they'll almost certainly die.
"I try to seduce the dragon." "The dragon isn't sentient, what do you try to do exactly?" "I try to seduce it with a sexy dance!" "Roll initiative".
I mean, you can set the tone of your games. Either the player matches the tone or they keep suffering the consequences of bullshit.
Being massively disruptive means you're not there to play, only to start trouble.
This is evidently not what is being discussed. We're not talking about random stabbings, merchant murders, or muh seduce the dragon. First sentence is literally "Even if their idea makes perfect sense".
>First sentence is literally "Even if their idea makes perfect sense".
It would also make perfect sense to ignore the creepy mansion with the meat hooks all over the kitchen ceiling and get back to the car but that would make for a shitty horror movie.
The fact that no-one realizes this, and that these homosexuals think you can prepare an infinite amount of content, shows you that they're perpetual nogames who think Sir Bearington is real and an example of ideal play.
The fact that no-one realizes this, and that these homosexuals think you can prepare an infinite amount of content, shows you that they're perpetual nogames who think Sir Bearington is real and an example of ideal play.
If you decided to have the adventure in a specific place with a specific scenario start in media res there, why the frick would you give agency to the players if you then have to b***h if they exercise that? Literally a skill issue.
>erm… I know we’re playing a horror campaign but my character would definitely avoid the creepy mansion in the woods
And that’s how you guarantee you don’t get invited back.
Yes, keep reiterating how much if shit gm you are, you purposely made senseless scenarios that cannot be meaningfully interacted and call that a game? You're just full of shit especially since you have multiple ways to adress the plotline without making the players lose time in meaningless shit. You're literally ok in having them pretending to pretend to play just to humour you. Just frick off already.
Imagine watching a horror movie, and one of the characters suggests calling the police, only for another character to say that they can't because the director said not to. Instead of just saying that the phones are out.
Alright, so your character leaves and lives in ignorance for the rest of their lives. If this was your hook, it was shit, and the player was right to have their character turn around and leave, and now your game is rightfully dead.
I see absolutely no problem here. When do we get to the downside?
Horror movie logic would dictate that if you tried to leave, your car would fail to start, and if you try to leave on foot, other contrivance would prevent your escape. Railroading is sometimes OK in that respect. To say that the players' actions are the entire game is incorrect, they're a significant part, but it's illogical to assume that the world is just passively waiting for players to frick it up, and that there are no forces aware of and acting to constrain the players' actions. It just needs to be logical within the setting, like in the example of players taking a boat, suddenly deciding that there are no boats available is illogical railroading, but an established enemy attacking their boat and sinking it would not only be logical but also present an interesting encounter for the party to survive.
I think a GM is welcome to run it this way. But, I am a bigger fan of in-game consequences.
"I tell the King to go frick himself". "Are you sure?" "Yeah". Cue the guards seizing the character. If the player decides on combat, they'll almost certainly die.
"I try to seduce the dragon." "The dragon isn't sentient, what do you try to do exactly?" "I try to seduce it with a sexy dance!" "Roll initiative".
I mean, you can set the tone of your games. Either the player matches the tone or they keep suffering the consequences of bullshit.
Ultimately, the best way to avoid this is curating your group to remove disruptive morons. But yes, 'do what you want, then eat the consequences' is a good approach.
I had a gm who, after one of the players killed an npc with important information, basically said "so he was the only character you guys would realistically be able to contact in order to progress the goal of the adventure. I dont know how to fix this so its essentially a game over" and ended the game.
The character is effectively not "in the game", moron, and a court martial is going to be months or weeks away, unless we're talking about an in-field kangaroo court, in which case it could be easily handled in-game.
Are you so autistic that you cannot comprehend the idea of suffering the consequences of your own actions, and at the same time too moronic to realize that that may end up taking you off the board in a manner congruent with ingame events?
[...] >Write a scenario, not a plot.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Even if there's only a single available NPC that has the relevant information in a given scenario, the absence of that information may result in the advancement of the plot, as being unable to pursue the lead should have consequences that may create opportunities down the road. The player characters experiencing setbacks is perfectly fine.
[...]
Seething false-flagging storyshitter on suicide watch.
[...] >functional illiteracy
Many such cases.
>Critical piece of information is in the hands of NPC. >The players will have no reason to attack this NPC. >NPC will not be accidentally killed by the world GM control. >No reason to have a second source easily reached because clues to reach NPC for information are obvious even for players and no reason for NPC to die
Why should you have a back up just because >Murderhobo murderhoboes for the lulz.
I'd say
He was probably just tired of the moronation. A lot of people (me included) find random hyperbelligerence to be incredibly tiresome after a while, especially when we have reasonable plans and expectations based on how people would generally act in reality.
It wouldn't be hard to advance events and have the players deal with whatever happens, but if the players can be expected to deal with it in the same way, or worse just a single one, a GM may very well throw in the towel, whether that's because they're just tired of this shit or because they simply have no desire to explore the alternate scenario.
The character is effectively not "in the game", moron, and a court martial is going to be months or weeks away, unless we're talking about an in-field kangaroo court, in which case it could be easily handled in-game.
Are you so autistic that you cannot comprehend the idea of suffering the consequences of your own actions, and at the same time too moronic to realize that that may end up taking you off the board in a manner congruent with ingame events?
[...] >Write a scenario, not a plot.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Even if there's only a single available NPC that has the relevant information in a given scenario, the absence of that information may result in the advancement of the plot, as being unable to pursue the lead should have consequences that may create opportunities down the road. The player characters experiencing setbacks is perfectly fine.
[...]
Seething false-flagging storyshitter on suicide watch.
[...] >functional illiteracy
Many such cases.
He was probably just tired of the moronation. A lot of people (me included) find random hyperbelligerence to be incredibly tiresome after a while, especially when we have reasonable plans and expectations based on how people would generally act in reality.
It wouldn't be hard to advance events and have the players deal with whatever happens, but if the players can be expected to deal with it in the same way, or worse just a single one, a GM may very well throw in the towel, whether that's because they're just tired of this shit or because they simply have no desire to explore the alternate scenario.
Are me.
And I'm not saying that there should be a "backup". I'm agreeing that you should create scenarios, not plots, and that if there is only one source of given information and that gets lost (and there could be a thousand legitimate ways, not just murderhoboing; players (and by extension their characters) are routinely moronic, and I maintain that anyone that is a player immediately loses 20 IQ by virtue of being in the player's seat) then that should in itself be treated as a consequence, and the scenario ideally continues appropriately.
You lose the NPC that was going to show you the entrance to the villain's extradimensional castle? You may be shit out of luck, which is a form of a fail state, but it also means that you won't be able to stop what the villain in time, which in turn means that you're going to have to deal with whatever the frick he was doing that you needed to stop. In a best-case scenario, it's actually a fairly minor derailment, similar to any major setback in countless works of fiction, and in a worst-case scenario you're straight-up switching genres from, say, Cthulhuesque investigation to Apocalypse Now, but it is still a perfectly valid thing to do.
And that's still only the situation in which you've constructed a scenario where this is the only potential outcome due to a limited availability of information, which is entirely preventable if you desperately don't want that to happen.
He was probably just tired of the moronation. A lot of people (me included) find random hyperbelligerence to be incredibly tiresome after a while, especially when we have reasonable plans and expectations based on how people would generally act in reality.
It wouldn't be hard to advance events and have the players deal with whatever happens, but if the players can be expected to deal with it in the same way, or worse just a single one, a GM may very well throw in the towel, whether that's because they're just tired of this shit or because they simply have no desire to explore the alternate scenario.
NPC had information written down in his pocket. Informations problem solved.
Possible moronic player problem still exists but without further information the player might have been justified.
Wow you must be really smart, chafing like that at the common colloquial understanding of a word.
>Idiots should stay moronic and continue doing things wrong because it is common practice
Yes! Let it all burn!
I'd say having a quick check around the table to see what the mood is on their stupid antic should be the ultimate decider. If everyone is happy with it, that's the direction the game is going. If everyone is like 'frick no, he's on his own' I'm gonna take that into account and it'll have minimum impact.
For example, for telling the king to frick off. The party as a whole can run like hell and enjoy being outlaws if they back him, unironically that's a campaign that can be fun. The loner nut can get dragged offscreen and receive a swift beating offscreen and thrown out while the party deal with important stuff.
Stupid outlandish actions are also more excusable if this is a pattern for the PC, which is a fricking weird thing to say out loud but it is. If your character is an inexcusable kleptomaniac and this has been repeatedly shown in-story, then trying to pickpocket the king even while he's surrounded by guards and talking serious business is absolute moron behaviour, but perfectly reasonable for the character, and at that point I'd basically say the party should have realized what'd happen when they brought him in and started making checks to restrain or distract him.
TL;DR - One player shouldn't be deciding the total direction, this be group story telling.
>"I tell the King to go frick himself". "Are you sure?" "Yeah". Cue the guards seizing the character. If the player decides on combat, they'll almost certainly die.
The rule of thumb should ALWAYS be that if a player just wants to hog the spotlight in order to make shitty disruptive jokes like this that serve no purpose other than to actively interfere with the story that the rest of the players are there for, that person should not be allowed to play at all. The second someone gets a shit-eating smirk on their face and says "lol I want to go punch the King lol!" you should have him leave and not come back. This kind of person can never, ever, in any circumstance be a benefit or positive part of any group.
If you have to ask someone "Why exactly do you think doing something in-character that you, me, and all of us know is going to result in you dying for no reason and no benefit?", then it means they're not actually involved or invested in the group's game and just there to try and get cheap moron laughs.
I once had a player who was upset we were playing in a medieval fantasy world, and tried to "find a portal back to the real world, and enter it." In the end his character smashed his head into a wall, killing him, and the player left. Best possible outcome.
Was it a bait and switch campaign or did the player just not pay attention when planning their character? I can't fathom how such a situation comes about. I get being upset about campaign developments and taking extra risks to hopefully wipe out and roll a new character, but not that.
>playing in a 5e game >party goes to meet local lord for quest >tries to seduce lords wife in front of everyone, as a female character (male player) >gets mad when he fails >tries to start a, as he puts it, communist revolution against this lord, despite it being established he's a cool guy and the peasants love him >fails >tries to play anti-lord songs in local tavern >fails and gets boo'd but the dm tosses him a bone by having one guy be kind of into it before getting bullied into silence >player gets made at dm for railroading and ragequits the game
For this reason I always take the GM's side and assume the player is a fricking moron, unless given a ton of evidence to the contrary.
Immediately within the second sentence it betrays itself. >uhhh I know it's reasonable but muhh story!!
If your entire game can be derailed by one player's action you never had a good game to begin with. Only if a player's idea is fundamentally founded on incorrect information that can't be amended or it's a complete disruption from a reasonable response or outcome with bad-faith intent behind it should you shut them down. Stuff like mistaking set dressing for something it's not, misunderstanding the crucial threats of a scenario, or shitposting. You can't fix shitposting ingame with an ingame response, ever.
>Even if the idea makes perfect sense in context
Then they can do it >explain that you're not sure how to handle it without throwing the story off course
The character doing something unexpected IS the story. >their actions shouldn't derail the entire game
THEIR ACTIONS ARE THE ENTIRE GAME.
Okay, but if we're playing a module and you want to frick off on a boat across the ocean, you're being completely disruptive and you can't do that.
A good module is a framework to build on, not paint-by-numbers. I can and will get on that boat if it makes sense, even if it means retiring the character. Nothing disruptive about it, I will do it, and there is nothing you can do about it, storyshitting gaywad.
If the entire party wants to leave the country, they absolutely can do that and it's not disruptive. It will take a minute to find some ocean encounter and non-combat event charts, but the group has to either find a boat large enough for them and their supplies or secure passage on a ship before they can set sail. This is one of the many reasons not to handwave travel and survival.
>I'm the DM, buddy, not you.
The hell you are. I've been forever GM for 28 years and I'm not stopping now.
We're playing a battletech/exalted mashup. Pick out your weapon loadouts. Legions of beastmen supported by bound demons have claimed Terra, you're dropping from orbit in 15 minutes.
That sounds dangerous. Why would my character get involved with that? I’ll just go somewhere safe instead - get your random encounter tables ready!
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
You're already involved, it was the campaign concept. If you want your character to want out, that's up to you.
Anyway, it's time for atmospheric re-entry. If you want to run away when you land, go ahead and good luck.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>actually I can veto character actions that don’t fit within the campaign concept
Ok so you agree with the guy you were replying to after all.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Vetoing character actions is different from vetoing character concepts. See
>idea makes perfect sense in context, but muh story so no
Exceptionally shitty advice. If your "story" cannot handle "[actions that] makes perfect sense in context", your "story" is unfit for the medium. Tourists need to realize that roleplaying games is a poor outlet for their failed novels, and that subjecting others to their "writing" as part of what is essentially a social hostage situation is an incredibly shitty thing to do.
I think "sandbox" often gives the wrong ideas, and tends to be an excuse for aimlessness, often resulting in a lack of motivation and a general confusion. Structure tends to help, and it is perfectly fine to present a prefabricated situational hook or given dramatic scenario within the context of an ostensibly living world, with the expectation that the players have their characters act reasonably (not necessarily logically!) in relation to that.
But actions should absolutely have the potential to derail the entire game, if those actions make sense in context, and the characters should suffer or reap the full rewards of the full effects of their actions. This is honestly the fundament and the linchpin, arguably the entire point of the very concept of roleplaying games, in my opinion.
[...]
[...]
This is evidently not what is being discussed. We're not talking about random stabbings, merchant murders, or muh seduce the dragon. First sentence is literally "Even if their idea makes perfect sense".
Alright, so your character leaves and lives in ignorance for the rest of their lives. If this was your hook, it was shit, and the player was right to have their character turn around and leave, and now your game is rightfully dead.
I see absolutely no problem here. When do we get to the downside?
>rather than against player agency that works against tone or theme at all.
Ignoring the drooling morons, I think that's an extremely generous interpretation of the text in the OP. Nothing suggests that you have to even work against tone or theme. I'd say that that is part of "in context". That's the worst part. You could be completely within the tone and theme of the game, take an action that makes perfect sense for your character and in the given situation, and the OP text still recommends "Noooooo please don't nonono I haven't prepared for that, what about muh heckin' storyline, nooo you need to go scene-to-scene and sit through my failed novel noooo".
As far as I'm concerned, it goes against the very idea of roleplaying games. Imagine creating an appropriate character for a campaign premise, act in accordance with your character, follow the clues, come to an understandable but wrong conclusion on something, and then have the nuGM drop all their spaghetti anyway.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Ok so what if this orbital drop isn’t the very first action of the game and happens to be the beginning of the second arc of the campaign? Do you pull up your ‘stay on the ship’ encounter tables? Or do you just tell them to think of a reason for their character to drop in with everyone else because you don’t want to run two campaigns at once because Johny Hometown sensibly isnt thrilled by the idea of risking his life for this alien planet.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>muh what if what if what if what if
That's not what we're talking about, though. Again, read the OP, you drooling moron. >Even if their idea makes perfect sense in context
Context matter. You can't ignore it just because you're too moronic to understand it. And if you insist on metaphorically stabbing the king and robbing the merchant by any other name, you should suffer the consequences of your poor choice.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Vetoing chatacter actions that make sense but don’t fit within the envisioned story of the campaign, such as deciding not to go in the orbital drop. It’s interesting that you suddenly became allergic to hypotheticals as soon as you aren’t able to hand wave it away.
My PC chooses to farm and write poetry instead. The party is going to open up a coffee shop, gigglesquee!
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
I like that your character has a goal for if they survive this. Your daydream is interrupted by the disorienting physical shock of hitting the surface. Do you try to hang on to the fantasy or do you try to live to make it happen?
>actually I can veto character actions that don’t fit within the campaign concept
Ok so you agree with the guy you were replying to after all.
I can veto character actions that aren't physically possible.
You're already in space, on a military ship, that has no shortage of armed men expecting you to drop. "Go somewhere safe" is not a push-button solution. Are you planning to try to hide in the bilge and hope nobody notices you? If you manage to avoid dropping that way, and your ship doesn't get blown out of the sky, you still have to figure out how you're going to deal with the courtmartial.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
And if the character does try and hide in the bilge? Do you really fricking try and run an out-of-mech stealth encounter and a court martial in a battletech game? Do you really think that’s better for the table than “hey man you need to come up with a reason for your character to go on this mission instead of hiding in the bilge.”
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
If he doesn't he's a shit GM, so I'm sure he does.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
The character is effectively not "in the game", moron, and a court martial is going to be months or weeks away, unless we're talking about an in-field kangaroo court, in which case it could be easily handled in-game.
Are you so autistic that you cannot comprehend the idea of suffering the consequences of your own actions, and at the same time too moronic to realize that that may end up taking you off the board in a manner congruent with ingame events?
>Dm has exclusively one NPC with information and no other way to progress
Bad DMing. Write a scenario, not a plot.
>Write a scenario, not a plot.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Even if there's only a single available NPC that has the relevant information in a given scenario, the absence of that information may result in the advancement of the plot, as being unable to pursue the lead should have consequences that may create opportunities down the road. The player characters experiencing setbacks is perfectly fine.
FPBP, if you ever say no to your players at any point you're a railroading storyshitter who is stripping them of all of their agency.
Seething false-flagging storyshitter on suicide watch.
That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Vetoing chatacter actions that make sense but don’t fit within the envisioned story of the campaign, such as deciding not to go in the orbital drop. It’s interesting that you suddenly became allergic to hypotheticals as soon as you aren’t able to hand wave it away.
>functional illiteracy
Many such cases.
1 week ago
Anonymous
Hell yes I run an out-of mech stealth encounter and a court martial if it comes to that.
I don't play tabletop games so I can drag other people into what should be a tactics video game, I play plenty of those myself and I don't need to pretend to be social.
I can work out how to make the cutaway scene of bilgie the coward relevant to an ongoing story. I can work out how to make their eventual execution something that drives politics and explains why the next round of conflicts everyone else is fighting in kick off.
I wouldn't even particularly mind having a player who just plays a series of moronic characters who "accidentally" set up pivotal events everyone else is dealing with before dying. The only person losing out is them because everyone else is likely to get more focus time due to actually cooperating with each other.
If he doesn't he's a shit GM, so I'm sure he does.
Only hacks run modules, it's meant for newbies, not something you stick with because you're a lazy and creatively bankrupt c**t for your entire gaming career. At least weave it into a world of your own creation.
Nobody cares what you think, you fricking autistic loser LMAO. You're actually proud of your DMing skills like that means anything, is impressive, or is worth anything? LMAOOOOO
You're just talking like anyone gives a frick about you, like I should respect you or give a shit what you have to say. I've met enough grogs in real life to know that you're an arrogant, unfun, generally unsuccessful, talentless, know-it-all, slob HACK with no friends except sycophants and clones of yourself who have the exact same autistic perspective as you do. I don't give a frick about what you have to say. You're not my fricking dad or my mentor, you're just some fricking loser. All you have in your life is your identity as a badass GM who does it "the right way" and that's absolutely pathetic.
>Even if the idea makes perfect sense in context
Then they can do it >explain that you're not sure how to handle it without throwing the story off course
The character doing something unexpected IS the story. >their actions shouldn't derail the entire game
THEIR ACTIONS ARE THE ENTIRE GAME.
depends on the group. if the group is there for a structured narrative then yeah its understandable but it will still probably kill the momentum so keep that in mind.
if you sold them on an organic narrative "where their choices matter" as has become the tagline. then even if you really do stick mostly to a plot then this is a bad idea.
if something has really stumped you and you dont know how this would even play out theres still something you can do.
call a short break
its a time to hydrate or get some snacks maybe discuss things and ask for ideas with the group if you feel like. but dont humm and haww at the table.
my group does moronic things all the time to frick with the GM, it's just an excuse for a cigar break while we debate the finer points of the potential consequences
If you dont have a contingency for the players doing the exact opposite of what your narrative would expect them to, you probably dont know your players
If they mean 'if a player says they're going to "punch the king/moon the dragon/graphically rape the child" feel free to tell them "no, that's not the style of game we're paying'" then that's the fine.
If they mean 'if the players try to do something creative or otherwise refuse to follow your scripted narrative, just tell them to shut up and get back on the rails', then no, it's god-awful advice.
The whole point of RPGs is the creativity they allow, both on a tactical level but also in terms of the overall narrative which emerges collaboratively over the course of the campaign. Even if you run a narrative-style campaign rather than a sandbox you shouldn't be scripting things out - you have an idea of what the villain wants and how he's likely to respond to the PC's likely actions and maybe some narrative beats or story arcs that are likely to occur but nothing should be fixed in stone.
Honestly this seems like advice from someone who's idea of how to play an rpg comes purely from scripted rpg streamers and watching Stranger Things. The hobby, the RPG community and probably the world would be better off if someone beat them to death with a 2x4.
To an extent. While the ideal, for me, is a world where the players write the story, if a player is directing their character to act against the tone of the setting then I think punishing the character for those actions is reasonable. As another anon said, if the player directs the character to mock the king, then the character will suffer consequences for doing so. Similarly, if a character constantly pushes slapstick comedy in my grimdark horrorshow, they will, naturally, end up having a bad time.
Yeah, it makes sense when a characters conduct effects everyone else as well. It's all well and good to do "god smites exactly just you, the king arrests just you" but when it's "I shoot a hole in the bottom of the liferaft!" it's just one player spoiling everyone's fun and it's perfectly fair to just say no, you can't do something so boneheaded it instantly ends the game or tpks.
Yes it's great advice
When some tard on a table I had kept going "I run away" or "I attack my party member" my DM just killed him off on the spot, do more of this
Reminds me of a session I was in. >shit going on in city >track shit to underground caverns >there's an entire city down there nobody knew about >we have reasons to believe they are nefarious >decide to check things out >get discovered >immediate party shenanigans, running around with no direction doing random shit >DM visibly exasperated >ask him what the deal is >he says shit is not going at all according to plan and he doesn't know where to go next >tell him he's the DM and he can do what he wants >if he thinks we'll have a better session by railroading us somewhere, he can do that >we all get hit by sleep darts with impossible saves >proceed to run a tightly prepared and very fun puzzle session
It's all about what would be the most fun for everyone at the table.
That's poor DM'ing. If you don't have a relevant random encounter table, or a loose environment plan that you can plop the party into if things go south, you're not doing enough. Fwiw I prep very little, but you need certain things at hand so that you can't be outmaneuvered by shenanigans, that's the job description.
When I playing just give everyone (including the GM) a Yikes card.
When someone does something that's a bit too Yikes, you just have to tap your Yikes card and they have to do something less Yikes.
I think "players control their characters and the GM the rest of the world" is a pretty basic part of the premise of TTRPGs, and not letting players do things that'd be perfectly possible in-setting is immersion-breaking as frick. Depending on the style of the campaign, players being on board with a specific kind of story might be desirable, but that's the kind of thing that should be discussed beforehand. Like, sitting down with your layers before the game stats and saying "hey, I want to run a campaign about plucky rebels overthrowing an evil empire, so make characters with reasons to be on the side of the rebellion" or something like that is fine. Saying "frick, I didn't plan for this, please do something else" in the middle of the session really isn't.
If a player is trying something outside the box, in good faith, I think you should let them try. That's what I strongly dislike about this advice. You shouldn't do this to people playing in good faith.
However, for things like convention games, railroading unironically has its place.
For me personally it depends on the long term consequences. If I make a 3 session game about saving a town from goblins and you, knowing that information, decide to frick off and leave then I'll ask you not to, since I haven't prepped anything outside that scenario.
If that same scenario occurs in a long form game where I've built a world and this is just a pit-stop for a few sessions sure, you can frick off. Then I can show you the impact the goblins razing that town had and you can reap the consequences.
No, the players should be free of doing whatever the frick they want as long as doesn't break the character nature and intents. However choices have consequences and the world keeps moving regardless of what they choose so be careful.
>Is this good advice
No. Let them be moronic and reap what they sow, both IC consequences like getting arrested, killed and/or being abandoned by their companions or OOC consequences like being booted from the table if they fricked up everything on purpose or being made to roll a new character because after getting arrested their old character was shipped to a penal colony and died on the way back to his home planet.
>or does it take away too much player agency?
That's a reason (in context) but not THE reason. The main reason it's bad advice is because it presupposes that (you) as the DM are so incompetent and slaved to your own narrative that you don't have contingency plans for if and when your players go full moron or have a stroke of genius that invalidates an entire set piece and in so doing implies that that's the standard way to play. Seriously, it's not hard to herd players into doing whatever you've got planned for them unless they're all pulling the other direction and at that point you just have to pivot based on rule 0 and either pull something else out of your ass or give your old plans a new coat of paint. When I DM, on top of my improv skills I always have some pre-baked stuff in my back pocket that I can use when I need to call an audible and hopefully keep things running smoothly until the end of the session when I can then make new plans for next time.
Even just calling a five-ten minute break and letting your players go get a snack or something while you figure out how to pivot, if you don't have something pre-baked that fits perfectly, is better than "no".
>ask them to choose a different action >even if their idea makes perfect sense
Sounds pretty gay. In the cases where my players surprise me with something completely unexpected and I'm not sure how to handle it, I usually just ask them to wait while I figure out how to handle it.
Which obviously isn't as ideal as being able to flawlessly improvise something on the spot, but the players get a kick out of 'stumping the GM', and they still get to have their actions play out.
>Post says 'Even if their idea makes perfect sense in context' >Multiple anons immediately going into the weeds with drooling moron player example
I feel like this thread itself is an example for the image; multiple anons immediately assuming this image is arguing against the extremes of player agency, rather than against player agency that works against tone or theme at all. Rather than actually reading the image, they surmised the idea from the OP's own text; immediately assuming this a thread about random assassinations of royalty and eating/breaking of important artifacts. While its not, they'd be forgiven that because its the most common topic for player behavior in this board: the most extreme, worst case. Rather appropriate for the OP image, considering its about reasonable decision making by participant leading away from the objective of the game.
>rather than against player agency that works against tone or theme at all.
Ignoring the drooling morons, I think that's an extremely generous interpretation of the text in the OP. Nothing suggests that you have to even work against tone or theme. I'd say that that is part of "in context". That's the worst part. You could be completely within the tone and theme of the game, take an action that makes perfect sense for your character and in the given situation, and the OP text still recommends "Noooooo please don't nonono I haven't prepared for that, what about muh heckin' storyline, nooo you need to go scene-to-scene and sit through my failed novel noooo".
As far as I'm concerned, it goes against the very idea of roleplaying games. Imagine creating an appropriate character for a campaign premise, act in accordance with your character, follow the clues, come to an understandable but wrong conclusion on something, and then have the nuGM drop all their spaghetti anyway.
I agree. Some of the rules on my table are: >you won't act like a psycho >I'll keep ~10% of your characters agency, acting like his common sense and self preservation instinct >when you do something completely unpredictable (and allowed to carry forward with it), you'll have to explain what happens next (and stopped and asked to try again if it doesn't make sense), that way you can still try stuff but you'll get the improv burden out from the GM
Telling players no because what they're doing is impossible? Sure.
Telling players no because it interferes with your railroad. Frick off and stop GMing.
>Is this good advice or does it take away too much player agency?
GMs are the game's god. Player agency is a spook. You're here to adventure within a story constructed by someone who does all the work, not exist in an infinite open world simulated in your mind.
There is the game where a group of players build character sheets within a system, and then explore the campaign setting using their resources to further their characters' objectives, solving conflict through dice rolls and clever use of what they got. Its a game of chance, immersion within a fictional world and constant creation.
And...
There is this other game where a player named GM tells a story to a group of players, whose characters are self-insert fantasies following the story, with any conflict solved by the GM pretending to roll dice and deciding what happens that better serves the story.
Its all about following, doing exactly what you're supposed to do, and staying on your lane.
I wonder what behavior aligns with a better class of avid consumers. I wonder if I was a writer of a game, intended to incentivize consumer behavior, what would I reward.
>redefining "unexpected or outlandish" to mean "doesn't fit the story I have planned (and the player doesn't know about)"
What a homosexual, almost as gay as OP
I don't care what you homosexuals say, if you want to go some place I've not prepared yet we're stopping play while I make that place.
Unless you want me to just roll on some fricking tables and run a goddamn shitty video game for a while.
I agree, but the solution isn't to say no. You can just complicate the attempt. If they decide they want to head to the king's estate, just throw a mass of people outside waiting to get in, and then a thief swipes a sword or something. Bonus points if you can bring it back to the original session.
I'm not saying no, I'm making everyone sit on their hands as I design this castle they just had to go to right fricking now.
The players don't want invisible wall railroad bullshit, and they don't want out-of-the-table procedural AI-like content, so if they do something outside of my very lenient calculations then they can wait while I make and populate this new area.
Players need to be told to frick off if they are being disruptive, even in your ideal grog OSR sandbox. You prepare a town, and a couple floors for the nearby megadungeon for example. Maybe have hexes planned for up to 3 away from this town, some rumors, a reasonable amount of content by anyone's imagination. If players decide to refuse to engage with any of it and demand something else then the game is over. End of story.
The GM can't reasonably serve up something he doesn't have. Even if "lol just make it up on the spot" happens, it's obviously going to be crap and not fun for the GM. They can either cooperate or not have a game, it's not complicated. If a player is antagonistic to another player that's not cool, and the GM is another player.
It's even more obvious if playing a more linear type of game, like CoC. If you get a mystery and then say "we leave the town, this seems too dangerous" congrats, game is over for the day you are awarded 0 points, may God have mercy on your soul, I'll set up a new game for you... never again.
TBF in your CoC example if the group has failed to properly establish motivation for their characters to be involved then killing the campaign in the crib and starting over is probably the right call.
>he group has failed to properly establish motivation for their characters to be involved
Frick off, dude. We set aside a 2-4-5 hour block to play a game.
Even if you are playing in a Adventure Path, have the player do whatever they want. They might be thinking it's progressing the story in a way you're not thinking about.
If you are on an rail roady AP and the players don't want to be playing on it anymore, that's a different matter to be talked about later.
But outside of that? Let players do whatever they want.
Did they kill and important NPC? Maybe they really didn't like them, if they're still willing to continue the story/game/adventure, that's a not so subtle hint to you the DM that they didn't like that aspect but still want to keep playing. So you as the DM find a way to work around that new aspect. No matter how major it was change was.
If it make sense in context for the PC to do the action, then it's the worst advice possible.
Even railroading them back to the 'plot' later would be better than telling them not to do the thing.
You can't take away player agency like that. Rules are doing that already in a lot of rpgs (you don't have that skill/feat so you can't do that even if it sounds like your character could pull it off!). The GM shouldn't do it as well.
>While it's important to allow players the freedom to think outside the box, frick their freedom.
Bad advice. Sandbox all the way.
>idea makes perfect sense in context, but muh story so no
Exceptionally shitty advice. If your "story" cannot handle "[actions that] makes perfect sense in context", your "story" is unfit for the medium. Tourists need to realize that roleplaying games is a poor outlet for their failed novels, and that subjecting others to their "writing" as part of what is essentially a social hostage situation is an incredibly shitty thing to do.
I think "sandbox" often gives the wrong ideas, and tends to be an excuse for aimlessness, often resulting in a lack of motivation and a general confusion. Structure tends to help, and it is perfectly fine to present a prefabricated situational hook or given dramatic scenario within the context of an ostensibly living world, with the expectation that the players have their characters act reasonably (not necessarily logically!) in relation to that.
But actions should absolutely have the potential to derail the entire game, if those actions make sense in context, and the characters should suffer or reap the full rewards of the full effects of their actions. This is honestly the fundament and the linchpin, arguably the entire point of the very concept of roleplaying games, in my opinion.
This is evidently not what is being discussed. We're not talking about random stabbings, merchant murders, or muh seduce the dragon. First sentence is literally "Even if their idea makes perfect sense".
>First sentence is literally "Even if their idea makes perfect sense".
It would also make perfect sense to ignore the creepy mansion with the meat hooks all over the kitchen ceiling and get back to the car but that would make for a shitty horror movie.
The fact that no-one realizes this, and that these homosexuals think you can prepare an infinite amount of content, shows you that they're perpetual nogames who think Sir Bearington is real and an example of ideal play.
If you decided to have the adventure in a specific place with a specific scenario start in media res there, why the frick would you give agency to the players if you then have to b***h if they exercise that? Literally a skill issue.
>erm… I know we’re playing a horror campaign but my character would definitely avoid the creepy mansion in the woods
And that’s how you guarantee you don’t get invited back.
Yes, keep reiterating how much if shit gm you are, you purposely made senseless scenarios that cannot be meaningfully interacted and call that a game? You're just full of shit especially since you have multiple ways to adress the plotline without making the players lose time in meaningless shit. You're literally ok in having them pretending to pretend to play just to humour you. Just frick off already.
Imagine watching a horror movie, and one of the characters suggests calling the police, only for another character to say that they can't because the director said not to. Instead of just saying that the phones are out.
Sounds like a joke you'd expect to find in Shaun of the Dead or Cabin in the Woods.
Alright, so your character leaves and lives in ignorance for the rest of their lives. If this was your hook, it was shit, and the player was right to have their character turn around and leave, and now your game is rightfully dead.
I see absolutely no problem here. When do we get to the downside?
Horror movie logic would dictate that if you tried to leave, your car would fail to start, and if you try to leave on foot, other contrivance would prevent your escape. Railroading is sometimes OK in that respect. To say that the players' actions are the entire game is incorrect, they're a significant part, but it's illogical to assume that the world is just passively waiting for players to frick it up, and that there are no forces aware of and acting to constrain the players' actions. It just needs to be logical within the setting, like in the example of players taking a boat, suddenly deciding that there are no boats available is illogical railroading, but an established enemy attacking their boat and sinking it would not only be logical but also present an interesting encounter for the party to survive.
to be fair he said "think", not "act"
I don't play sandbox by a long mile, in fact I'd call it closer to pre-arranged missions with hyper-limited scope. That said,
is fricking terrible advice. What's the point of even pretending you're playing a TTRPG at that point?
FPBP, if you ever say no to your players at any point you're a railroading storyshitter who is stripping them of all of their agency.
I think a GM is welcome to run it this way. But, I am a bigger fan of in-game consequences.
"I tell the King to go frick himself". "Are you sure?" "Yeah". Cue the guards seizing the character. If the player decides on combat, they'll almost certainly die.
"I try to seduce the dragon." "The dragon isn't sentient, what do you try to do exactly?" "I try to seduce it with a sexy dance!" "Roll initiative".
I mean, you can set the tone of your games. Either the player matches the tone or they keep suffering the consequences of bullshit.
Ultimately, the best way to avoid this is curating your group to remove disruptive morons. But yes, 'do what you want, then eat the consequences' is a good approach.
I had a gm who, after one of the players killed an npc with important information, basically said "so he was the only character you guys would realistically be able to contact in order to progress the goal of the adventure. I dont know how to fix this so its essentially a game over" and ended the game.
Reviving people from the dead wasn't a thing in that system/setting, I imagine?
But I want to persist in the doomed world I have created?
>Dm has exclusively one NPC with information and no other way to progress
Bad DMing. Write a scenario, not a plot.
>Critical piece of information is in the hands of NPC.
>The players will have no reason to attack this NPC.
>NPC will not be accidentally killed by the world GM control.
>No reason to have a second source easily reached because clues to reach NPC for information are obvious even for players and no reason for NPC to die
Why should you have a back up just because
>Murderhobo murderhoboes for the lulz.
I'd say
has the right idea.
Both
Are me.
And I'm not saying that there should be a "backup". I'm agreeing that you should create scenarios, not plots, and that if there is only one source of given information and that gets lost (and there could be a thousand legitimate ways, not just murderhoboing; players (and by extension their characters) are routinely moronic, and I maintain that anyone that is a player immediately loses 20 IQ by virtue of being in the player's seat) then that should in itself be treated as a consequence, and the scenario ideally continues appropriately.
You lose the NPC that was going to show you the entrance to the villain's extradimensional castle? You may be shit out of luck, which is a form of a fail state, but it also means that you won't be able to stop what the villain in time, which in turn means that you're going to have to deal with whatever the frick he was doing that you needed to stop. In a best-case scenario, it's actually a fairly minor derailment, similar to any major setback in countless works of fiction, and in a worst-case scenario you're straight-up switching genres from, say, Cthulhuesque investigation to Apocalypse Now, but it is still a perfectly valid thing to do.
And that's still only the situation in which you've constructed a scenario where this is the only potential outcome due to a limited availability of information, which is entirely preventable if you desperately don't want that to happen.
He was probably just tired of the moronation. A lot of people (me included) find random hyperbelligerence to be incredibly tiresome after a while, especially when we have reasonable plans and expectations based on how people would generally act in reality.
It wouldn't be hard to advance events and have the players deal with whatever happens, but if the players can be expected to deal with it in the same way, or worse just a single one, a GM may very well throw in the towel, whether that's because they're just tired of this shit or because they simply have no desire to explore the alternate scenario.
NPC had information written down in his pocket. Informations problem solved.
Possible moronic player problem still exists but without further information the player might have been justified.
>Idiots should stay moronic and continue doing things wrong because it is common practice
Yes! Let it all burn!
I'd say having a quick check around the table to see what the mood is on their stupid antic should be the ultimate decider. If everyone is happy with it, that's the direction the game is going. If everyone is like 'frick no, he's on his own' I'm gonna take that into account and it'll have minimum impact.
For example, for telling the king to frick off. The party as a whole can run like hell and enjoy being outlaws if they back him, unironically that's a campaign that can be fun. The loner nut can get dragged offscreen and receive a swift beating offscreen and thrown out while the party deal with important stuff.
Stupid outlandish actions are also more excusable if this is a pattern for the PC, which is a fricking weird thing to say out loud but it is. If your character is an inexcusable kleptomaniac and this has been repeatedly shown in-story, then trying to pickpocket the king even while he's surrounded by guards and talking serious business is absolute moron behaviour, but perfectly reasonable for the character, and at that point I'd basically say the party should have realized what'd happen when they brought him in and started making checks to restrain or distract him.
TL;DR - One player shouldn't be deciding the total direction, this be group story telling.
>The dragon isn't sentient
What the frick is it then? A dragon-shaped stone?
>his dragons aren't made of stone
Literally Seathing
>Seathing
They're hewn from shoreline cliffs?
>Literally Seathing
I just want you to know that I got your joke.
>sentient
What kind of dragon lacks conscious awareness of stimuli without association or interpretation?
Wow you must be really smart, chafing like that at the common colloquial understanding of a word.
>"I tell the King to go frick himself". "Are you sure?" "Yeah". Cue the guards seizing the character. If the player decides on combat, they'll almost certainly die.
The rule of thumb should ALWAYS be that if a player just wants to hog the spotlight in order to make shitty disruptive jokes like this that serve no purpose other than to actively interfere with the story that the rest of the players are there for, that person should not be allowed to play at all. The second someone gets a shit-eating smirk on their face and says "lol I want to go punch the King lol!" you should have him leave and not come back. This kind of person can never, ever, in any circumstance be a benefit or positive part of any group.
If you have to ask someone "Why exactly do you think doing something in-character that you, me, and all of us know is going to result in you dying for no reason and no benefit?", then it means they're not actually involved or invested in the group's game and just there to try and get cheap moron laughs.
I once had a player who was upset we were playing in a medieval fantasy world, and tried to "find a portal back to the real world, and enter it." In the end his character smashed his head into a wall, killing him, and the player left. Best possible outcome.
Was it a bait and switch campaign or did the player just not pay attention when planning their character? I can't fathom how such a situation comes about. I get being upset about campaign developments and taking extra risks to hopefully wipe out and roll a new character, but not that.
I like problems that can take care of themselves.
I just don't play with the kind of morons who would do obviously disruptive things like that.
>playing in a 5e game
>party goes to meet local lord for quest
>tries to seduce lords wife in front of everyone, as a female character (male player)
>gets mad when he fails
>tries to start a, as he puts it, communist revolution against this lord, despite it being established he's a cool guy and the peasants love him
>fails
>tries to play anti-lord songs in local tavern
>fails and gets boo'd but the dm tosses him a bone by having one guy be kind of into it before getting bullied into silence
>player gets made at dm for railroading and ragequits the game
For this reason I always take the GM's side and assume the player is a fricking moron, unless given a ton of evidence to the contrary.
>tries to seduce lords wife in front of everyone, as a female character (male player)
Men should never be allowed to play female characters
>fails and gets boo'd but the dm tosses him a bone by having one guy be kind of into it before getting bullied into silence
Lol, good DM
players are morons and can only have a good time if you force them to
there is only one single way to have fun
if a player's character falls in love with a GM's NPC then the player and GM have to date btw
Maybe you should stop solo play. You're insulting yourself too much.
Being massively disruptive means you're not there to play, only to start trouble.
Immediately within the second sentence it betrays itself.
>uhhh I know it's reasonable but muhh story!!
If your entire game can be derailed by one player's action you never had a good game to begin with. Only if a player's idea is fundamentally founded on incorrect information that can't be amended or it's a complete disruption from a reasonable response or outcome with bad-faith intent behind it should you shut them down. Stuff like mistaking set dressing for something it's not, misunderstanding the crucial threats of a scenario, or shitposting. You can't fix shitposting ingame with an ingame response, ever.
"...throwing the story off course."
>Implying that I'd ever write a story.
It's all chaos, all the way down.
Anathema to the way D&D was originally played. You build the story as you go, the story only exists in retrospect.
Good thing it's not D&D.
All games are D&D
Okay, but if we're playing a module and you want to frick off on a boat across the ocean, you're being completely disruptive and you can't do that.
What part of that makes sense in context?
"This place is fricked, let's just get out of here"
>we're playing a module
homosexual.
A good module is a framework to build on, not paint-by-numbers. I can and will get on that boat if it makes sense, even if it means retiring the character. Nothing disruptive about it, I will do it, and there is nothing you can do about it, storyshitting gaywad.
If the entire party wants to leave the country, they absolutely can do that and it's not disruptive. It will take a minute to find some ocean encounter and non-combat event charts, but the group has to either find a boat large enough for them and their supplies or secure passage on a ship before they can set sail. This is one of the many reasons not to handwave travel and survival.
>they absolutely can do that and it's not disruptive
They can't and it is. I'm the DM, buddy, not you.
>I'm the DM, buddy, not you.
The hell you are. I've been forever GM for 28 years and I'm not stopping now.
We're playing a battletech/exalted mashup. Pick out your weapon loadouts. Legions of beastmen supported by bound demons have claimed Terra, you're dropping from orbit in 15 minutes.
That sounds dangerous. Why would my character get involved with that? I’ll just go somewhere safe instead - get your random encounter tables ready!
You're already involved, it was the campaign concept. If you want your character to want out, that's up to you.
Anyway, it's time for atmospheric re-entry. If you want to run away when you land, go ahead and good luck.
>actually I can veto character actions that don’t fit within the campaign concept
Ok so you agree with the guy you were replying to after all.
Vetoing character actions is different from vetoing character concepts. See
Ok so what if this orbital drop isn’t the very first action of the game and happens to be the beginning of the second arc of the campaign? Do you pull up your ‘stay on the ship’ encounter tables? Or do you just tell them to think of a reason for their character to drop in with everyone else because you don’t want to run two campaigns at once because Johny Hometown sensibly isnt thrilled by the idea of risking his life for this alien planet.
>muh what if what if what if what if
That's not what we're talking about, though. Again, read the OP, you drooling moron.
>Even if their idea makes perfect sense in context
Context matter. You can't ignore it just because you're too moronic to understand it. And if you insist on metaphorically stabbing the king and robbing the merchant by any other name, you should suffer the consequences of your poor choice.
That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Vetoing chatacter actions that make sense but don’t fit within the envisioned story of the campaign, such as deciding not to go in the orbital drop. It’s interesting that you suddenly became allergic to hypotheticals as soon as you aren’t able to hand wave it away.
My PC chooses to farm and write poetry instead. The party is going to open up a coffee shop, gigglesquee!
I like that your character has a goal for if they survive this. Your daydream is interrupted by the disorienting physical shock of hitting the surface. Do you try to hang on to the fantasy or do you try to live to make it happen?
I can veto character actions that aren't physically possible.
You're already in space, on a military ship, that has no shortage of armed men expecting you to drop. "Go somewhere safe" is not a push-button solution. Are you planning to try to hide in the bilge and hope nobody notices you? If you manage to avoid dropping that way, and your ship doesn't get blown out of the sky, you still have to figure out how you're going to deal with the courtmartial.
And if the character does try and hide in the bilge? Do you really fricking try and run an out-of-mech stealth encounter and a court martial in a battletech game? Do you really think that’s better for the table than “hey man you need to come up with a reason for your character to go on this mission instead of hiding in the bilge.”
If he doesn't he's a shit GM, so I'm sure he does.
The character is effectively not "in the game", moron, and a court martial is going to be months or weeks away, unless we're talking about an in-field kangaroo court, in which case it could be easily handled in-game.
Are you so autistic that you cannot comprehend the idea of suffering the consequences of your own actions, and at the same time too moronic to realize that that may end up taking you off the board in a manner congruent with ingame events?
>Write a scenario, not a plot.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Even if there's only a single available NPC that has the relevant information in a given scenario, the absence of that information may result in the advancement of the plot, as being unable to pursue the lead should have consequences that may create opportunities down the road. The player characters experiencing setbacks is perfectly fine.
Seething false-flagging storyshitter on suicide watch.
>functional illiteracy
Many such cases.
Hell yes I run an out-of mech stealth encounter and a court martial if it comes to that.
I don't play tabletop games so I can drag other people into what should be a tactics video game, I play plenty of those myself and I don't need to pretend to be social.
I can work out how to make the cutaway scene of bilgie the coward relevant to an ongoing story. I can work out how to make their eventual execution something that drives politics and explains why the next round of conflicts everyone else is fighting in kick off.
I wouldn't even particularly mind having a player who just plays a series of moronic characters who "accidentally" set up pivotal events everyone else is dealing with before dying. The only person losing out is them because everyone else is likely to get more focus time due to actually cooperating with each other.
Hell yeah.
>DM
Have you tried not playing D&D, storyshitting railroading failed novelistanon?
Only hacks run modules, it's meant for newbies, not something you stick with because you're a lazy and creatively bankrupt c**t for your entire gaming career. At least weave it into a world of your own creation.
Nobody cares what you think, you fricking autistic loser LMAO. You're actually proud of your DMing skills like that means anything, is impressive, or is worth anything? LMAOOOOO
>in an effort to pretend to be unhurt, I will now mock tabletop as a whole, along with the very idea of being good at anything
You're just talking like anyone gives a frick about you, like I should respect you or give a shit what you have to say. I've met enough grogs in real life to know that you're an arrogant, unfun, generally unsuccessful, talentless, know-it-all, slob HACK with no friends except sycophants and clones of yourself who have the exact same autistic perspective as you do. I don't give a frick about what you have to say. You're not my fricking dad or my mentor, you're just some fricking loser. All you have in your life is your identity as a badass GM who does it "the right way" and that's absolutely pathetic.
>Even if the idea makes perfect sense in context
Then they can do it
>explain that you're not sure how to handle it without throwing the story off course
The character doing something unexpected IS the story.
>their actions shouldn't derail the entire game
THEIR ACTIONS ARE THE ENTIRE GAME.
depends on the group. if the group is there for a structured narrative then yeah its understandable but it will still probably kill the momentum so keep that in mind.
if you sold them on an organic narrative "where their choices matter" as has become the tagline. then even if you really do stick mostly to a plot then this is a bad idea.
if something has really stumped you and you dont know how this would even play out theres still something you can do.
call a short break
its a time to hydrate or get some snacks maybe discuss things and ask for ideas with the group if you feel like. but dont humm and haww at the table.
does anyone even read this intro margin shit?
it don't mattah
I do generally read books when I pay for them, yeah.
my group does moronic things all the time to frick with the GM, it's just an excuse for a cigar break while we debate the finer points of the potential consequences
If you dont have a contingency for the players doing the exact opposite of what your narrative would expect them to, you probably dont know your players
If they mean 'if a player says they're going to "punch the king/moon the dragon/graphically rape the child" feel free to tell them "no, that's not the style of game we're paying'" then that's the fine.
If they mean 'if the players try to do something creative or otherwise refuse to follow your scripted narrative, just tell them to shut up and get back on the rails', then no, it's god-awful advice.
The whole point of RPGs is the creativity they allow, both on a tactical level but also in terms of the overall narrative which emerges collaboratively over the course of the campaign. Even if you run a narrative-style campaign rather than a sandbox you shouldn't be scripting things out - you have an idea of what the villain wants and how he's likely to respond to the PC's likely actions and maybe some narrative beats or story arcs that are likely to occur but nothing should be fixed in stone.
Honestly this seems like advice from someone who's idea of how to play an rpg comes purely from scripted rpg streamers and watching Stranger Things. The hobby, the RPG community and probably the world would be better off if someone beat them to death with a 2x4.
To an extent. While the ideal, for me, is a world where the players write the story, if a player is directing their character to act against the tone of the setting then I think punishing the character for those actions is reasonable. As another anon said, if the player directs the character to mock the king, then the character will suffer consequences for doing so. Similarly, if a character constantly pushes slapstick comedy in my grimdark horrorshow, they will, naturally, end up having a bad time.
Yeah, it makes sense when a characters conduct effects everyone else as well. It's all well and good to do "god smites exactly just you, the king arrests just you" but when it's "I shoot a hole in the bottom of the liferaft!" it's just one player spoiling everyone's fun and it's perfectly fair to just say no, you can't do something so boneheaded it instantly ends the game or tpks.
I swear half of you homosexuals are functionally illiterate.
Yes it's great advice
When some tard on a table I had kept going "I run away" or "I attack my party member" my DM just killed him off on the spot, do more of this
Reminds me of a session I was in.
>shit going on in city
>track shit to underground caverns
>there's an entire city down there nobody knew about
>we have reasons to believe they are nefarious
>decide to check things out
>get discovered
>immediate party shenanigans, running around with no direction doing random shit
>DM visibly exasperated
>ask him what the deal is
>he says shit is not going at all according to plan and he doesn't know where to go next
>tell him he's the DM and he can do what he wants
>if he thinks we'll have a better session by railroading us somewhere, he can do that
>we all get hit by sleep darts with impossible saves
>proceed to run a tightly prepared and very fun puzzle session
It's all about what would be the most fun for everyone at the table.
That's poor DM'ing. If you don't have a relevant random encounter table, or a loose environment plan that you can plop the party into if things go south, you're not doing enough. Fwiw I prep very little, but you need certain things at hand so that you can't be outmaneuvered by shenanigans, that's the job description.
what book is this from?
this advice make sense in the context of the genre/game the system is designed to facilitate.
When I playing just give everyone (including the GM) a Yikes card.
When someone does something that's a bit too Yikes, you just have to tap your Yikes card and they have to do something less Yikes.
interesting rule
HOWEVER
This is embarrassingly bad advice, what's it from?
Is this from the FF14 RPG? Uses a lot of language I usually is in japanese games.
I think "players control their characters and the GM the rest of the world" is a pretty basic part of the premise of TTRPGs, and not letting players do things that'd be perfectly possible in-setting is immersion-breaking as frick. Depending on the style of the campaign, players being on board with a specific kind of story might be desirable, but that's the kind of thing that should be discussed beforehand. Like, sitting down with your layers before the game stats and saying "hey, I want to run a campaign about plucky rebels overthrowing an evil empire, so make characters with reasons to be on the side of the rebellion" or something like that is fine. Saying "frick, I didn't plan for this, please do something else" in the middle of the session really isn't.
Most of the time, it's bad advice.
If a player is trying something outside the box, in good faith, I think you should let them try. That's what I strongly dislike about this advice. You shouldn't do this to people playing in good faith.
However, for things like convention games, railroading unironically has its place.
For me personally it depends on the long term consequences. If I make a 3 session game about saving a town from goblins and you, knowing that information, decide to frick off and leave then I'll ask you not to, since I haven't prepped anything outside that scenario.
If that same scenario occurs in a long form game where I've built a world and this is just a pit-stop for a few sessions sure, you can frick off. Then I can show you the impact the goblins razing that town had and you can reap the consequences.
Jesus, this comic is twenty-two years old
I think I was reading this in middle school
Please tell me this isn't still going
The protagonist became a father, and his son is a grown man
No, the players should be free of doing whatever the frick they want as long as doesn't break the character nature and intents. However choices have consequences and the world keeps moving regardless of what they choose so be careful.
Now show us the source without the extreme crop, you troll.
>Is this good advice
No. Let them be moronic and reap what they sow, both IC consequences like getting arrested, killed and/or being abandoned by their companions or OOC consequences like being booted from the table if they fricked up everything on purpose or being made to roll a new character because after getting arrested their old character was shipped to a penal colony and died on the way back to his home planet.
>or does it take away too much player agency?
That's a reason (in context) but not THE reason. The main reason it's bad advice is because it presupposes that (you) as the DM are so incompetent and slaved to your own narrative that you don't have contingency plans for if and when your players go full moron or have a stroke of genius that invalidates an entire set piece and in so doing implies that that's the standard way to play. Seriously, it's not hard to herd players into doing whatever you've got planned for them unless they're all pulling the other direction and at that point you just have to pivot based on rule 0 and either pull something else out of your ass or give your old plans a new coat of paint. When I DM, on top of my improv skills I always have some pre-baked stuff in my back pocket that I can use when I need to call an audible and hopefully keep things running smoothly until the end of the session when I can then make new plans for next time.
Even just calling a five-ten minute break and letting your players go get a snack or something while you figure out how to pivot, if you don't have something pre-baked that fits perfectly, is better than "no".
>ask them to choose a different action
>even if their idea makes perfect sense
Sounds pretty gay. In the cases where my players surprise me with something completely unexpected and I'm not sure how to handle it, I usually just ask them to wait while I figure out how to handle it.
Which obviously isn't as ideal as being able to flawlessly improvise something on the spot, but the players get a kick out of 'stumping the GM', and they still get to have their actions play out.
>Post says 'Even if their idea makes perfect sense in context'
>Multiple anons immediately going into the weeds with drooling moron player example
I feel like this thread itself is an example for the image; multiple anons immediately assuming this image is arguing against the extremes of player agency, rather than against player agency that works against tone or theme at all. Rather than actually reading the image, they surmised the idea from the OP's own text; immediately assuming this a thread about random assassinations of royalty and eating/breaking of important artifacts. While its not, they'd be forgiven that because its the most common topic for player behavior in this board: the most extreme, worst case. Rather appropriate for the OP image, considering its about reasonable decision making by participant leading away from the objective of the game.
>rather than against player agency that works against tone or theme at all.
Ignoring the drooling morons, I think that's an extremely generous interpretation of the text in the OP. Nothing suggests that you have to even work against tone or theme. I'd say that that is part of "in context". That's the worst part. You could be completely within the tone and theme of the game, take an action that makes perfect sense for your character and in the given situation, and the OP text still recommends "Noooooo please don't nonono I haven't prepared for that, what about muh heckin' storyline, nooo you need to go scene-to-scene and sit through my failed novel noooo".
As far as I'm concerned, it goes against the very idea of roleplaying games. Imagine creating an appropriate character for a campaign premise, act in accordance with your character, follow the clues, come to an understandable but wrong conclusion on something, and then have the nuGM drop all their spaghetti anyway.
I agree. Some of the rules on my table are:
>you won't act like a psycho
>I'll keep ~10% of your characters agency, acting like his common sense and self preservation instinct
>when you do something completely unpredictable (and allowed to carry forward with it), you'll have to explain what happens next (and stopped and asked to try again if it doesn't make sense), that way you can still try stuff but you'll get the improv burden out from the GM
Telling players no because what they're doing is impossible? Sure.
Telling players no because it interferes with your railroad. Frick off and stop GMing.
>Is this good advice or does it take away too much player agency?
GMs are the game's god. Player agency is a spook. You're here to adventure within a story constructed by someone who does all the work, not exist in an infinite open world simulated in your mind.
There are TWO different games, both called RPG.
There is the game where a group of players build character sheets within a system, and then explore the campaign setting using their resources to further their characters' objectives, solving conflict through dice rolls and clever use of what they got. Its a game of chance, immersion within a fictional world and constant creation.
And...
There is this other game where a player named GM tells a story to a group of players, whose characters are self-insert fantasies following the story, with any conflict solved by the GM pretending to roll dice and deciding what happens that better serves the story.
Its all about following, doing exactly what you're supposed to do, and staying on your lane.
I wonder what behavior aligns with a better class of avid consumers. I wonder if I was a writer of a game, intended to incentivize consumer behavior, what would I reward.
Just blow it out your ass, you self-serious homosexual
Sub-human cretins who are too stupid to think on their feet and cannot adapt on the fly should not be GMing.
>redefining "unexpected or outlandish" to mean "doesn't fit the story I have planned (and the player doesn't know about)"
What a homosexual, almost as gay as OP
I don't care what you homosexuals say, if you want to go some place I've not prepared yet we're stopping play while I make that place.
Unless you want me to just roll on some fricking tables and run a goddamn shitty video game for a while.
I agree, but the solution isn't to say no. You can just complicate the attempt. If they decide they want to head to the king's estate, just throw a mass of people outside waiting to get in, and then a thief swipes a sword or something. Bonus points if you can bring it back to the original session.
I'm not saying no, I'm making everyone sit on their hands as I design this castle they just had to go to right fricking now.
The players don't want invisible wall railroad bullshit, and they don't want out-of-the-table procedural AI-like content, so if they do something outside of my very lenient calculations then they can wait while I make and populate this new area.
Players need to be told to frick off if they are being disruptive, even in your ideal grog OSR sandbox. You prepare a town, and a couple floors for the nearby megadungeon for example. Maybe have hexes planned for up to 3 away from this town, some rumors, a reasonable amount of content by anyone's imagination. If players decide to refuse to engage with any of it and demand something else then the game is over. End of story.
The GM can't reasonably serve up something he doesn't have. Even if "lol just make it up on the spot" happens, it's obviously going to be crap and not fun for the GM. They can either cooperate or not have a game, it's not complicated. If a player is antagonistic to another player that's not cool, and the GM is another player.
It's even more obvious if playing a more linear type of game, like CoC. If you get a mystery and then say "we leave the town, this seems too dangerous" congrats, game is over for the day you are awarded 0 points, may God have mercy on your soul, I'll set up a new game for you... never again.
TBF in your CoC example if the group has failed to properly establish motivation for their characters to be involved then killing the campaign in the crib and starting over is probably the right call.
>he group has failed to properly establish motivation for their characters to be involved
Frick off, dude. We set aside a 2-4-5 hour block to play a game.
What no? It's absolutely bad advice.
Even if you are playing in a Adventure Path, have the player do whatever they want. They might be thinking it's progressing the story in a way you're not thinking about.
If you are on an rail roady AP and the players don't want to be playing on it anymore, that's a different matter to be talked about later.
But outside of that? Let players do whatever they want.
Did they kill and important NPC? Maybe they really didn't like them, if they're still willing to continue the story/game/adventure, that's a not so subtle hint to you the DM that they didn't like that aspect but still want to keep playing. So you as the DM find a way to work around that new aspect. No matter how major it was change was.
If it make sense in context for the PC to do the action, then it's the worst advice possible.
Even railroading them back to the 'plot' later would be better than telling them not to do the thing.
You can't take away player agency like that. Rules are doing that already in a lot of rpgs (you don't have that skill/feat so you can't do that even if it sounds like your character could pull it off!). The GM shouldn't do it as well.
It's a terrible advice regardless of context, for it effectively boils down to "railroad all the way in"