Across the whole board, generally the idea of having a game be "fair" is what some players are all about. Here, I'm going to give an example using a videogame; then cross it over the RPGs and how it's been with my group in the past when we've tried playing RPGs.

Our setting is a group of high school/college age guys sitting around playing some Halo 2 LAN.(I want to bring it back). My idea was a nice lounging time, playing some Halo with the guys. However, what was supposed to be a fun time. Quickly turned into arguments from half of the players complaining how the teams were not fair. And what I was supposed to do about it. Fair had nothing to do with it. If certain players took effort and implemented a little team work and communication; a team of 3 could have easily prevailed. We didn't get past a single game and they were complaining about the "unfair matchup" of teams.

So, now we're crossing over to our RPG history. So now it's
"How can he do that?" On something fairly reasonable. Coming from someone who sees everything that he's not doing as "unfair."
"He shouldn't be able to do that."
All on abilities or instances that are not all that reasonable to that person. But quite often we have someone saying "That's not fair that he can't take damage from a specific attack because he has an ability nullifying it."
And debating about how this or that should work. Basically democracy and player satisfaction in-game. Which I have grown to hate with a burning passion. Though how should it be approached? How do you handle it?
I don't desire to resort to the extremes of "always say yes" or "always say no" But rather to, "Yes, but..." How do you discipline a party that is set on everything being fair?

I understand balanced, yes. But this is not so much a "game" in terms of everyone having the equal chance to prove themselves. Or equal chance to get kills(which my party is used to, considering they've only ever competed with kills and stats). Or be in X position to execute this. In a lot of these cases, chances are equal or left to chance(Initiative checks, for example).

Now, call me out on being rash, or that I believe that life is not fair. Neither are all games("games"). And that the effectiveness of your character or your performance in a game solely relies on how you play and the effort you put into it. In my opinion: A person or collective body could succeed in simple tasks if they got past thinking about how "unfair" something was and began figuring out how to win.

Please note: I put in effort for that LAN party, for it to turn sour.
My occupation is roofing, so I boil in the sun all day.
I'm tired right now, slightly stressed. So forgive or pardon MY complaining
or lack of explaining every situation.

I agree with you.

But - it's also worth remembering that competitive gaming should be balanced (such as a HALO game, so to speak). RPGs are however, a cooperative game (players versus challenges presented by the GM), where there often is actually a state of inbalance - often desired, so that players and their characters may invent some various out of the box ideas to tackle them.

I've been watching my friends' kids all week... "that's not fair" is something I've been hearing a lot of. My usual response is, "there's no such thing as 'fair'!"
I KNOW that the OCD guy in our group really cares about having his PC fully optimized to do as much damage as possible in combats. That's his fun.
As long as I feel my PC can contribute something, including a decent bit of damage in combat, to the game I'm fine. Sometimes he'll remind me to tick off my usages of some resource... whatever so long as he's not pitching a fit about it.
 
I really don't get where the sense of competition between players in RPGs comes from... "He's getting more than meeeeee!"
Is it when two versions of my OCD guy are in the same game, bean-counting over how much damage they do and eyeballing each other to make sure the numbers add up correctly?
I really wouldn't play with those guys.

Now, if I sense some preferential treatment by the GM... such as when his wife is playing and all her NPC concepts get foregrounded and take over the whole evening with a wedding... then I get a bit annoyed.

There's also a matter of degree of imbalance.  Everybody should be able to contribute meaningfully in the game, even if not in every particular situation.

Someone doing 20% more damage than someone else isn't a big issue, nor is being resistant or even immune to certain types of damage.  What you just don't want to get into is Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit territory.

Quote from: robiswrong;683922Someone doing 20% more damage than someone else isn't a big issue, nor is being resistant or even immune to certain types of damage.  What you just don't want to get into is Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit territory.

Not only true, but also an excellent example .

I love me some Halo 2 LAN, man! That's awesome! Are these guys playing Halo 3 raving about how MLG rules and all that? Because that kind of whining about game balance, weapon balance, unfair spawns blah blah blah sounds horribly familiar.

In any case. Long story short, I agree with you. Life isn't fair, and I for one can greatly enjoy asymmetrical games having to fight my way through a losing scenario. Playing Germans in 45 having to stop the Allies' advance on Germany, you know, that type of thing.

I think that fundamentally you've got a problem of gaming philosophies clashing against one another. I hate to say this to you, but someone's gotta give. Either they learn that asymmetrical games can be fun and play in the moment and just you know, get out there and enjoy the challenge, or you basically run the uber-balanced canned adventure catering to their every whim and that's that. I suspect there isn't much of a middle ground between the two: either you enjoy one aspect, or you don't, either you enjoy the other aspect, or you don't, though you very well can like both, of course.

I'd talk about it with them, assuming they are your buddies and that they can carry a conversation in an adult manner. Maybe you'll be able to find a way to create that middle ground for yourself? At least you'll know where everybody stands on this.

Oh. Also. When I run games there is a very simple rule about this sort of thing that I make VERY clear up front: don't bitch and argue about rules. Making a remark, asking for a ruling on something or saying this or that might have been wrong or whatnot is OK; creating a whole tangent conversation out of the game about this and having exchanges go on and on because you thought some aspect of game play was overlooked or a ruling was wrong and whatnot, that is NOT cool.

Talk about your issues with the GM before, or after the game, not during the game. But then when the discussion comes up before/after the game listen to the players, somewhat.

Know when to put your foot down to keep the game moving: "OK I got your point, we can always talk about it some more, but right now you've got three wererats going for you. What do you do?"

Everything in its own time. There's a time to bitch and be conciliatory and discuss and give/listen to feedback and stuff out of characters and all that, and then there's actual play time. Keep one separate from the other as much as reasonably possible.

Honestly I think the position of perfectly symmetrical fairness is a bit of a strawman. That's not to say that no one holds it, but I think they are few in number and misrepresented in arguments as being a much bigger thing than they are. I think most players can handle asymmetry so long as they can count on meaningful contribution.

Quote from: LibraryLass;683932I think most players can handle asymmetry so long as they can count on meaningful contribution.

That's been my experience as well.

I'd also point out that early versions of D&D arent 'well balanced' in the way we think of balance today.  But that's because a lot of assumptions are different today, with most players.

In a lot of old campaigns the presumption was that character death was an ever-present reality, and players would have multiple characters.  So the wizard being powerful at high levels wasn't an issue.

It was a reward.  And it didn't really matter if Joe's wizard was outshining everyone in one session, because maybe he'd be playing his thief next week.  And him playing the wizard in the first place meant putting that character at risk, and losing it was a *real* thing.

In more modern games, where the assumption is generally that it's going to be x number of players, each with their one character, and that character death is possible, but not probable, the type of balance that showed up in earlier versions doesn't work quite as well.

If the wizard is almost guaranteed to live past the low levels (or hell, let's just skip them, because being low level doesn't show how AWESOME we are), and is given magical gear out the gate to ensure that they can do stuff every turn from first level, then getting to high level isn't a reward.  It's just assumed.

And if the fact that your wizard is still more fragile (+1 hp/level after level 9, anyone?) at high levels isn't true, and if the GM *still* probably wont' kill your character, then the risk of playing that character and *losing them* isn't there either.

And if everybody plays the same characters every week, then gross imbalances become more noticeable, because Bob is *always* outshining everyone else.

Now I'm not saying that everyone plays that way.  When I play old-school games, I sure as hell don't.  I'm just saying that 'balance' can mean different things based on how the campaign is run.  And when you remove or minimize things that the game is balanced around, then it's easy for things to get wonky.

In the end Angel/BMX (which is really a 3e paradigm anyway)is fixed the same way a lot of problems are, not through rules but through a logical campaign.  Where does a wizard keep all his spell books, components, magic items, how does he guard them, if he steps outside his tower how many magical enemies his power level or higher are waiting.  Same with kingdoms, thieves' guilds, etc...  The game just keeps getting bigger and the stakes higher.

You can forget all that stuff and just focus on adventuring,  but the problem with balance then is the table, not the rules.

For the OP, my group has a couple well-used phrases for people who start whining about other characters..
"Play your character."
" Fuckin' Whaaaa!"

While the OP doesn't supply details of what, exactly, these players consider "fair" and "unfair," I strongly suspect it's the common BS in this culture that "fair" = "That which allows me to win/succeed" and "unfair" = "That which either prevents me from winning/succeeding, or which those cheating bastards over there use to win/succeed."  That being said, I have a few thoughts:

* I do not run a "democracy."  I run my game.  The rules I use, with a small hatful of house rules, is effectively GURPS Lite, and I've been running with this game system for 28 years now; they are neither up for discussion nor debate.  So ... the answer to "How can he do that?" boils down to "He's using his abilities," which the system allows him to do.

* I agree with you, strongly, that you get out of a game what you put into it.  Those who trouble themselves to learn the rules will prosper.  Those who don't will be behind the 8-ball.  Those who engage with the game and the setting will prosper, and those who don't want to bother, well ...

* Communicate with your players.  Tell them your expectations, tell them how your game works, and tell them that they can either buy into it or beg out of it.  No hard feelings, but if they can't play the game you plan on running, then they should find a game which better suits their prejudices.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683969In the end Angel/BMX (which is really a 3e paradigm anyway)

It was a thing in earlier editions too, but 3e exacerbated it in any number of ways.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683969is fixed the same way a lot of problems are, not through rules but through a logical campaign.  Where does a wizard keep all his spell books, components, magic items, how does he guard them, if he steps outside his tower how many magical enemies his power level or higher are waiting.  Same with kingdoms, thieves' guilds, etc...  The game just keeps getting bigger and the stakes higher.

Right.  And people, in general, stopped playing that way, making a lot of those things non-factors in "balance."  That's not advocacy for not playing that way, btw.  Just to be clear.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683969You can forget all that stuff and just focus on adventuring,  but the problem with balance then is the table, not the rules.

It's a mismatch between the campaign style of the particular table, and the campaign style that the game was balanced around.  However, given that the majority of people *do* play the "adventuring all the time game" now (in addition to the things I pointed out), I think it's fair to say that some level of rethinking the balance is warranted.

I'm not speaking from *my* preferences here.  I'd prefer D&D be a combination of what I described and your post.  But if I was a WotC designer, my first instinct would be to design for the style that the majority of tables are actually playing.

Some people are argumentative by nature, can't ever be wrong, have control issues, etc...

They have to suck it up, shut the hell up, and play the game.


Everyone can't get their own way.


So in an rpg, the burden is on the gm to make the final calls, and the players are tasked to roll with it.

I really don't see any other option if the people in question have these issues.


"Mr. I am always right" is not going to become reasonable if you give in to him.

It seems to be a common misconception in our hobby but Balanced <> Fair.

Balanced means of equivalent power to other abilities of the same level/cost.  Fair would make for a really dull story, imagine if everyone in your game world got a completely fair distribution of the resources, that would be so boring.

Quote from: Ravenswing;683975While the OP doesn't supply details of what, exactly, these players consider "fair" and "unfair," I strongly suspect it's the common BS in this culture that "fair" = "That which allows me to win/succeed" and "unfair" = "That which either prevents me from winning/succeeding, or which those cheating bastards over there use to win/succeed."

This seems to be the case in general (both inside and outside of rpg games). Especially in "zero sum" or "negative sum" situations, whether real or perceived.