A Response to Matt @ The Tao of D&D

Matt,

I was born in 1966.  When I started the game, using the Holmes Basic rules, there was no one else I knew who had ever picked up the game.  

Later, I spent four years in the US Army.  I have lived in Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, California, Wisconsin, and Ontario, both in major cities (Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Toronto) and in rural communities (I spent half my childhood in Pembine, Wisconsin, near the border to Upper Peninsula Michigan, with my nearest neighbour being a 5 mile walk away).  

I have moved a lot.  I have had to seek out new groups a lot as a result.  Usually, I have had to form groups.

So, yes, I understand having to find a group.  I do not equate that with begging around, cap in hand, asking players Oliver Twist style, “Please, Sirs, can I run some more?” 

Players are not a captive audience.  They may choose to play or choose not to play.  I have never had a problem finding players, or getting players to choose to play.  That may be because of simple luck, or it may be because of the way that I approach the game itself, but I have run games for a lot of different people in a lot of different places. 

Toronto is a Pathfinder town.  Running a game in a store, which I have done several times last year as part of the DCC World Tour 2013, is a challenge because you are directly competing with what is the most popular game in town, and in some cases competing with the hype surrounding D&D Next.

When I switched to DCC from the homebrewed game I was working on, RCFG, I lost three good players because they preferred the other game.  They were more interested in games with strong character generation sub-games.  That is completely okay.  Players are not a captive audience.  In my philosophy, every player should seek the game he or she most desires to play in, and every GM should run the game they wish to run.  Now, of course, there is a lot of interplay between these two positions, and the GM hopefully wishes to run the game the players wish to play in, just as the players hopefully wish to play in the game they are presented with.

In your response on Tao, you said

It doesn't even take the entire table to undermine me as a DM. I tried to run a game where plague and disease would play a major part in the campaign. I was trying to build an atmosphere with some gloom and some despair. The characters were going to be fighting vampires and necromancers and cultists and such. Some of my players bought in. Two didn't. They decided they would be at the table, but they weren't playing my game. "Oh, sickness is the problem? Lets start a Laundromat! I'll play an Asian stereotype sorcerer and I'll start a magic dry cleaning business. Want to help?" "Sure! I'll help out your business. Lets go about town washing clothes and fixing disease."

and I have to wonder how that is not playing your game.  It is my core belief that the GM devises setting, including the opportunity to interact with things like vampires, necromancers, and disease, and the players determine how they will approach that setting and those opportunities.  Likewise, it seems obvious to me that some players are going to resist an atmosphere of gloom and despair.  But I do not see this as a failure to buy in; I see this as an acceptable decision within the scope of the milieu.

In other words, there is a difference between “Here is an opportunity to fight necromancers” and “You will be fighting necromancers”.  If the “disease” is the result of necromancy and the undead, how effective is a Laundromat going to be, really?  Discovering that the problem is not so easily solved might well have provided you with a gloomier atmosphere than if they had immediately sought out Count Orlock.

And sure, I could have kicked them out, but they were half my group. They were friends. They were some of the only players I had. Were my other players pissed? Sure. They thought they'd get to play a gloomy dark vampire hunting game, and instead two players were pissing all over it with a joke.

I wasn’t there, but I don’t think that any form of player resistance to the opening status quo of a campaign milieu is “pissing all over it” – it is, rather, an attempt to control the direction of the game.  Players should be doing that.  And no matter how much they attempt to make light, the GM should continue to offer context, allow choices, and enforce consequences. 

What would have happened if you had allowed the players to resolve their own internal conflicts?  When two players want to do one thing in a game I run, and two players want to do another, who gets to decide – or even if the group splits up – is a player decision to make.  It is not my job to force a consensus, and it is not my right to tell them that they must decide this or that.

What if you had let them joke, but didn’t change the context in which their choices were being made?  I mean, literally, what if you didn’t let the jokes rattle you, and you continued to play it seriously?  What if, rather than simply allowing that reaction to ruin the game, you used it to highlight the darkness?  Eventually, the number of un-dead would grow, the disease would become worse, and the PCs would be forced to do something, even if “doing something” means flee to another town or continue obliviously until they drowned in a sea of walking corpses. 

See, I don’t see “kick them out” or “trash the game” as the only solutions here.  I see the best solution as “accept their decisions, but that doesn’t change the milieu until they do something to change it.”  I also think that the players should be trying to change the milieu to their benefit.  But the milieu, not their desire, determines how difficult that is.

While your game milieu will include many potential adventure sites, I think it is important to envision a setting in which adventure occurs, rather than specific actions/adventures which will occur.  The PCs should always have the ability to opt out, but putting that option to the test should always include whatever consequences are appropriate to the milieu.  If you choose not to go to White Plume Mountain, nothing happens to you.  If you choose not to pay attention to the growing legion of un-dead where you live, there are likely to be harsher consequences.

That lasted for an hour or two before I quit. I sent everyone home. I trashed the campaign. I forget what we ended up playing after that but I had been running 4th edition D&D during that period of my gaming so it was probably some high powered fantasy loot-explosion bullshit. I hate that kind of game but I ran it because that's what kept my players coming back to the table and quite frankly I needed the creative outlet more than they needed the dice rolling so I ran their game and tried to build a world around it until despite my efforts I lost friends and players anyway.

I got older

You should never run a game that you do not enjoy.  Life is too short for that.  The world is filled with creative outlets.  Some of them even offer remuneration.

But, look at it this way:  If the players have all of the power in the equation, and the bullshit game is what keeps them coming back to the table, it follows that you have to run the bullshit game or have no players. 

But that is not what happened.  Instead, attempting to cater to the tastes of others while ignoring what you wanted caused you to lose friends and players anyway.  And what actually happened?  

You had a milieu in which you had considered what choices the players had, what the context was, and what the potential consequences would be.  Even if two of the players made choices you had not considered, they were engaging with that milieu in so doing.  Had you stayed the course – allowing them to operate their side of the screen (choices) while you operated yours (context and consequence), the natural consequences of ignoring the context of the milieu would have affected player choices over the course of time. 

You might not have gotten exactly what you were expecting – nothing ever is once a human element is added – but you would have gotten much better than what you settled for.  And, honestly, so would your players.  No one is at their best running a game they dislike. 

So I begged the remains of the players to play a game that I would enjoy running and I tried my damnedest to keep it interesting because I was out of options. If I couldn't get them to buy in I had no players.

Listen.  I’m not going to proclaim my insights to be brilliant.  I am not going to claim that I express myself with the EXACT words needed in all cases.  I am not going to claim that my way is the right way, or the only way, or that your experience cannot differ from mine.  I am not even going to claim that if you disagree you must not be listening.  I leave those kinds of claims to others.  I am interested in a dialogue, not a monologue with a chorus.

Perhaps I come from a privileged position, because I have never had to beg players to play in the games that I ran, and I never expected anyone to beg me to play.  Nor have I ever had anyone come to me, cap in hand, begging to run a game.  Why would they?  If the game is worth playing, you don’t have to beg.

You had a game that you believed was worth playing.  And you trashed it because of an hour or two of frustration.  Players always need to find their feet, to learn the rules of a campaign milieu, when they jump into a new game.  Some players will always want to test the GM, to ensure that they are actually able to make unexpected choices in the game milieu.  Some players will always attempt something suicidal with a new GM, just to gauge whether or not the dice will fall where they may.  These things are normal.

And the result of believing that the players should decide what you run was not very happy, was it?  The high powered fantasy loot-explosion was not what you wanted?  Didn’t you have to run what you wanted to be happy?

Again, I’m not Einstein.  I don’t have some pretensions to being an intellectual übermensch, so take this with a grain of salt:  You decided that you didn’t want to play that way, and then offered the players something you wanted to do, and they agreed to do it.  You might have felt like you were begging when you brought it up, but would you have continued running bang-pow-loot if they had said No to your ideas?

If you would have, then, Yup.  They have all the power.  If you would not have, then congratulations! because you both have power in that relationship.  The players can force the GM's game to end, but the GM cannot force the players to play.  Likewise, the GM can force the players' game to end, but the players cannot force the GM to run.  A relationship – any relationship – where one side has all the power is dysfunctional. 

It is my unsolicited advice to you to avoid dysfunctional relationships, and to be very cautious about accepting the conclusion – from anyone, no matter how well-meaning they might be – that the only way to be in any particular type of relationship is to accept that it is going be dysfunctional.  This applies, of course, not only to gaming, but to all of life.

PS:  If you read Alexis' response, you will note that he said that GMs who view players as disposable are not trying to build a team, but trying to gather worshippers.  Or words to that effect.

Imagine that you wanted to play a game of Risk.  You invite some friends.  Some are into it, and some are not, but the invitation is definitely to play Risk.  Are you building worshippers, or are you getting together a group who has an interest in a particular sort of game?  Is your friend who wants to go out with his significant other that night no longer your friend?  Do you stop going out to see movies with your other friend who isn't into boardgames because he won't let you dictate that he plays Risk on Tuesday?  Are you even trying to dictate what he does on Tuesday?  Or are you offering an option?

In other words, is it the people who are replaceable, or their role as players?  Because the first is a problem, and the second, IMHO, is not.  In the second case, you can go fishing with them on Sunday after the game.

Personally, I don't like to demand that people agree with me.  But I do like to take on memes that seem likely to increase dysfunction.  This is one of them.  And I do suggest that you take a look at the research link that Alexis provided.  When you read about how the research describes destructive leadership, do you think that he has nailed it, or do you think that he has extended the definition rather far from what the authors indicated?

All of these questions, by the way, are real questions.  I am curious about what you think.