Quote from: RPGPunditBesides that, there is also the problem of players having an initial character concept that they imagine will be "fun" (I want to play a guy who can't communicate at all with the other characters! I want to play a guy who's a total pacifist! I want to play a guy who's a two-dimensional stereotype I find momentarily funny!) that you realize will stop being fun after the initial amusement wears out. It then becomes your responsibility as a GM to either help to modify this initial concept or suggest an alternate idea that might end up being more practical for the long term.

RPGPundit

Or, if they won't work with you on a good compromise, you could just give them the boot and tell them to go get their non-conformist amusement elsewhere, and that approach works for me.

I'm also not sure if I entirely buy the idea that the GM is responsible for the group's fun. I'd buy that the GM is responsible for creating the opportunity for the group to have fun, though. But I'm being nit-picky on that one.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe bigger issue is that the GM is responsible for the ENTIRE group's fun. He's the one who is mainly concerned with that.

I've GMed that way, and it can work.  However, it is not the only way to GM.  You can also take responsibility for some things and delegate responsibility for others.

Players are smart cookies ... indeed, many of them also GM other games, which means they're smart enough to be a GM.  Expecting them to take on part of the responsibility for making the game fun isn't really that big a deal.

There are many, many ways that people can organize themselves when they get together to have fun.  The viking hat isn't the only model that works.

Quote from: TonyLBWow, somebody willing to tell me on the basis of nothing but his personal preferences that I'm a failure as a GM.  And straight out of the gate!

Amazingly, I am not psychic, and therefore must go on the account you give of yourself.

Based on the account in the original post, you'd be a failure as a GM.

Also notice the "'d" rather than "'re". That "'d" is a contraction of "would", which indicates a conditional. If you take this attitude then you'll be a failure.

Whether you're accurately or precisely describing your GMing style in detail I've no idea. We can only go on what you tell us.

Quote from: TonyLBGiving you good opportunities to have fun? My job as a GM. Making sure you capitalize on them? Not My Job.

There's a whole wide field of play between those two. It's not either/or. We can have,

• vetoing characters
• suggesting characters
• giving rewards for certain types of characters
• dropping hints in play
• vetoing things in play
• giving opportunities, but not making them clear, the players have to be smart to notice
• giving opportunities and making them explicit and obvious
• noticing one player is being talked over by others and interrupting to give the player a chance to speak up
• handing around a "talking stick", if you're not holding it you can't speak
• etc

There are a wide variety of styles between "it's not my job" and "railroading" or "the GM is responsible for everything."

Your original post describes your GMing style as being at one extreme, passively letting players do whatever crazy, game-wrecking thing they come up with, without any suggestions or commands or interference or help from the GM or any other player, and with you as GM being indifferent to their being bored or happy. Like all extremes, that's a fucked-up way of doing things.

If that's actually your GMing style, that's crap. I suspect it isn't, but again we can only go on what you've posted.

Quote from: walkerpStarting to feel responsible to ensure that your players capitalize on the opportunities you created is a step closer to the railroad. It's potentially making assumptions about what's fun for them based on what you think is fun.

No. Because a sensible GM will be... sensible. That is, their sense work, they can look and see what people are enjoying or not enjoying and respond to that. For example, last week I began an espionage game, and one player had his character's first act on arriving at the new office be decorating the tea room. Now, this was stupid, but everyone was enjoying themselves talking and laughing, so why would I interfere? However, I also knew that at least two of the players had complained about previous games with other GMs where, "we never got anything done." So after half an hour or so of this goofing around, I said, "okay, the boss comes along with the mission."

Being sensible, I combined responding to the moment (them enjoying goofing around) with responding to their expressed wishes (them saying they didn't want too much goofing around). For my personal taste, there was too much goofing around - but every one of the player said afterwards the balance was perfect.

Had even one of the players been bored stupid by the tearoom goofing around, I'd have moved them along much more quickly.

Only a spastic thalidomide baby of a GM would just say, "I know what's fun, and you're going to get it whether you like it or not." A sensible GM combines responding to the moment with responding to the players' expressed wishes, bearing in mind that the GM is a player as well.

The GM is definitely responsible for the players' fun, just as the players are responsible for the fun of other players and the GM. Ideally, each player will be responding to the moment and to expressed wishes in that way. In practice, players do it unconsciously, while the GM - having an overview of the campaign as a whole - does it consciously. And obviously, some people are better at that kind of responsiveness than others.

Those who don't respond to the moment and the expressed wishes of others find themselves without a game group, or with players leaving. Three out of four of my players are refugees from game groups where the GM didn't listen to them, and didn't feel responsible for their fun. And it's certainly not the first lot of such players I've known.

Again, I emphasise, this isn't just about the GM. At the game table, everyone is responsible for everyone's fun. It's a game group, after all. It's just that because the GM controls the game world, the rules, and can easily control the pace of the game, the GM has special responsibility for everyone's fun.

Quote from: jeffI disagree here, just because you are a GM of a game doesn't mean that you have to warp the game to ensure that someone who is obviously trying to fuck with the group via his character concept gets his quotient of fun. The guy with the bizarro character is being a cocksmock, why cater to him?

I didn't say you should. In fact,

Quote from: Kyle Aaronit's time for the GM to lay the old smackdown on that character concept, because it'll fuck things up.

Veto power, baby. It's a campaign-saver.

Quote from: Serious PaulYou're that guy, aren't you? :keke:

It has happened to me a few times, yeah. As a matter of fact, it happened recently

Wasn't my fault nor the DM. We just didn't have time for a complete briefing before I was included in what was a long-running campaign.

We found ways around it for the first game, and after that I reworked the character completely, including some class changes, alignment, etc...

Quote from: Kyle AaronVeto power, baby. It's a campaign-saver.

I agree completely (my misunderstanding of you earlier). There just seems to be a lot of angst surrounding the use of that power by a GM when you read about it on forums.

Quote from: Kyle AaronYour original post describes your GMing style as being at one extreme, passively letting players do whatever crazy, game-wrecking thing they come up with, without any suggestions or commands or interference or help from the GM or any other player, and with you as GM being indifferent to their being bored or happy.

You boldly asserting that doesn't make it true.  Here's my original post:

Quote from: TonyLBI used to worry ... really, genuinely worry ... as a GM when some player would come in with a concept that I was convinced they couldn't have fun with.  "I want to play a cool, level-headed, unflappable rogue in Call of Cthulhu" or "I want to play a complete pacifist in Shadowrun" or like that.

Then, somewhere along the line, I stopped worrying.  I delegated, in my mind, the task of "Making sure Joe has fun" to Joe.  Everything got sooo relaxing that I had plenty of time to have fun myself.  And, for the most part, people are creative enough to make their own fun, even with characters I wouldn't have had any faith in, personally.  So it's all good.

Something made me think about the contrast in styles today, so ... a post, and an assertion:  If you're the GM, you don't have to take on responsibility for everybody's fun, or indeed anybody's fun.  Sometimes you can just say "I'm here to do a job, and that job is to provide a good game ... if Joe can't have fun in a good game, that's Not My Problem."

I say you chose to come in and read an extreme position into that where none existed.

Like, we're both somewhere on some sort of spectrum, but I'm a bit to the north of you, so you say "You idiot!  You're going to freeze to death, unless you're eaten by polar bears first!"  When I say "Uh ... it hardly even snows where I am" you respond "Well, I can only go on what you posted, and your post clearly indicates that you live at the north pole, because it is to the north of me."

For entertainment value, I will now respond to your argument as if it were at a far distant extreme suggested by the direction of our apparent difference in styles:

   Why do you even bother inviting people in to play?  If you're going to veto their every move until they get the precise wording that you think their characters should say, you'd be better off just writing fiction like you clearly wish you could, rather than dragging your friends into your little dictatorial wank-fest.  Why not be honest and just give them the characters that you intend them to play, since you're clearly going to veto anything other than your preconceived notions.  And for pete's sake, why don't you at least allow them to wear the clothes they want, rather than vetoing their choice of dress and sending them home to choose something else twenty times a session?  No wonder you're not playing or GMing any games, with an attitude like that!  You're obviously a failure as a GM!"Well that was fun.  I don't think we'd have a very productive discussion if we went back and forth like that.  An off-topic spoof thread of that kind of stuff might be good for laughs though.  You wanna?

I've had a few players exhibit the whole "you gotta twist my arm to get me into the adventure" syndrome. I've had enough of that that I think it's fair to say it's shaped my GMing philosophy. I'm pretty pro-active in ensuring that the PCs have a motivation that is going to work with the adventure before I bless off their character concept.

Edit: In the realm of D&D, the lion's share of these sort of problems are forecast by one thing on the character sheet:

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral.

The problem is there's an entire generation of 90's era roleplayers that believe that players should work very closely with the GM when putting together characters, and that characters should be mostly developed before play begins.

Throw out both assumptions and you lose 90% of the negative issue of who is responsible for what fun. (The remaining 10% is having the players structured as a party/team and not independent operators out to screw each other over).

The GM is supposed to make the game fun, and has more responsibility to do this because they control environment and events. They make it fun by having interesting events and an interesting environment to provide an adventure playground type deal.

Players are supposed to make the game fun by being interesting and by working with other players. They have responsibility over playing and developing their one character.

You know, this is why I've become a massive convert to the idea of players creating their characters together, as a group, rather than going away and statting up their characters in isolation (with or without input from the GM). Most of the time, it simply eliminates unsuitable characters because the players can see straight off the bat what sort of concepts will work with the rest of the party and which won't, and can ditch the concepts that won't work before they get too emotionally invested in them.

Tony, I think there's an angle you're missing here. The assumption that you're making is that if one player isn't having fun, despite your best efforts to present a fun game (although that effort doesn't seem to extend to saying "er, dude, you can play that character if you really want to but you might want to think about how he/she is going to actually engage with the campaign"), then it's not your problem - and there seems to be an unstated assumption that it isn't the other player's problem either.

Which, you know, would work fine if you were running an MMORPG, the players who were having fun could band together and ignore the people who weren't having fun, and the people who weren't having fun would just log off after five minutes and cancel the 14-day free trial. But you're running tabletop RPGs here, and in that context the people who aren't having fun aren't isolated from the people who are. On an OOC level, hanging around someone who is bored and unhappy is kind of likely to make other people unhappy in turn; it's a bummer to glance over and see Joe or Bob doodling on their character sheet and sighing to themselves. It can really wreck the mood if one person isn't enjoying themselves; even if they are being scrupulously polite, it's actually quite difficult for some people to completely suppress their body language or to feign enjoyment.

And on an IC level, bored players tend to become disruptive players - not out of malice, often simply out of attempts to be proactive and "make their own fun" - but it gets disruptive when "their own fun" trips up the fun of other players, or is otherwise inappropriate for the campaign in question. I know a guy who's always an asset to any game he's in, unless the GM allows him to get bored; then he'll start IC conflicts with the other PCs, simply so that there'll be something he's interested in happening in the game (normally political/social conflicts as opposes to stealing and fighting, he's not a sociopath). Which is cool if the player of the PC he's decided to have his PC antagonise is also bored or generally up for an IC scrap, but is disruptive if they're not into intra-character conflict or if they're invested enough in other aspects of the game that the PC-vs-PC conflict is an unwanted distraction.

If a player is genuinely not having fun in a campaign, that's everybody's problem, because on some level - OOC or IC - everyone's going to feel the effects of that.

Quote from: TonyLBSomething made me think about the contrast in styles today, so ... a post, and an assertion:  If you're the GM, you don't have to take on responsibility for everybody's fun, or indeed anybody's fun.  Sometimes you can just say "I'm here to do a job, and that job is to provide a good game ... if Joe can't have fun in a good game, that's Not My Problem."

I guess I'm fortunate that my players have never come to me with a character concept. In fact, I'd never heard of such a thing until I started reading RPGnet a few years ago.

My players just make up whatever PC they want at the table before we start our session. They don't consult with me or have a grand design in mind.

Quote from: WarthurBut you're running tabletop RPGs here, and in that context the people who aren't having fun aren't isolated from the people who are. On an OOC level, hanging around someone who is bored and unhappy is kind of likely to make other people unhappy in turn; it's a bummer to glance over and see Joe or Bob doodling on their character sheet and sighing to themselves.

Yeah, I know what you mean ... but ...

Isn't the ability for Joe to infect me with his unhappiness based, at least in part, on my believing that Joe's unhappiness is something I'm responsible for?  I mean, I get what you're saying, but can you see what I'm saying when I point out that a lot of this is a feedback loop:

• Because I believe I'm responsible for Joe's happiness, I am unhappy when he's unhappy
• Because I'm unhappy when Joe's unhappy, I believe I have to take responsibility for his happiness

Now, naturally, this is a question of more-or-less ... because human beings do respond to each other.  We're social animals.  So it's not like you're just going to turn off either of these factors.  But there's degrees and degrees of gray area between the two extremes of complete sociopathy (where Joe makes no impact on me at all) and utter codependence (where I cannot separate Joe's feelings from my own).  Taking on more responsibility for Joe will tend to make me more invested in Joe and his happiness.  Taking on less responsibility will tend to make me less invested.  Make sense?

Quote from: TonyLBSomething made me think about the contrast in styles today, so ... a post, and an assertion:  If you're the GM, you don't have to take on responsibility for everybody's fun, or indeed anybody's fun.  Sometimes you can just say "I'm here to do a job, and that job is to provide a good game ... if Joe can't have fun in a good game, that's Not My Problem."

Here's a slightly different assertion: You can't ensure others have fun.

I, too, learned this (among other things) and have had smoother sailing since. Which isn't to say that I don't want everyone to have fun at the table or that I don't try to encourage it. But at the end of the day, each individual will determine what he or she will get out of the game  - they make love it no matter what, they might hate it no matter what, but the choice is always theirs.

Seanchai

Quote from: SeanchaiHere's a slightly different assertion: You can't ensure others have fun.

Yeah, that too

Quote from: SeanchaiHere's a slightly different assertion: You can't ensure others have fun.

Very true.

You know, after some of the back and forth in this thread, I think the compromise position is that everyone at the table is responsible, in part, for everyone else's fun. GMs make interesting settings and situations. Players make characters that fit in the setting and work well in the campaign. GMs look to the players' interests to provide hooks and players do their best to take those hooks and run with them. It is a give and take for everyone at the table... I am having fun when I am facilitating your fun.

Quote from: cmagounYou know, after some of the back and forth in this thread, I think the compromise position is that everyone at the table is responsible, in part, for everyone else's fun.

Well, I'd put it slightly differently.  Big surprise, huh?

I think that there's a big difference in viewpoint between saying "My job is to provide X, Y and Z ... and incidentally those things are well chosen to help everyone at the table have fun" and saying "My job is to care about people and help them have fun ... and my tools are providing X, Y and Z."

So I agree with everyone at the table being responsible for things that (often) happen to contribute to each other's fun.  But in my personal style, I don't go with the whole "I'm partly responsible for your fun" bit.

Does that make sense as a distinction?