We frightened off the OP days ago...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;942481We frightened off the OP days ago...

Might have. It's ironic, because I think almost everyone agrees with him on the one shot example. The whole Frisco/Shanghai thing, though, is another matter...

Quote from: CRKrueger;942346Dude, you quoted it yourself...

Two pieces of information there...
1. They had good reason...where did they get the idea to go to Shanghai?  From Grove of course, where else?  If they were going to try and break into the Opium Trade, I don't think Grove would have classified it as "a good reason".
2. There was a time limit they were either unaware of, or didn't realize the severity of.  Where would they have gotten that vital piece of information?  From Grove of course, where else?
They got info #1, and did not get info #2.  Someone, perhaps everyone, erred.

and there's the trifecta...
3. He could have taken them to Shanghai and continued the adventure, he just didn't want to, presumably because the players thinking going to Shanghai was either a misrepresentation of clues he gave, or a misinterpretation of clues by the players, or a combination of the two...and since it's Grove we're talking about, the fact that Shanghai wasn't "Mah Storeh" factored in some as well.

Multiple topics?  It was all in the single post you quoted.  You're just so riled about the mistaken assumption that people are advocating GM's being a ScreenMonkey that you're in Opa Opa Smash mode.

That's one way to read it. I read it where it was a GM considering compromise of the party's elected course after the fact, but realizing the should-be-known context makes that untenable. And instead of re-emphasizing the time pressure first, the GM goes straight into "are you breaching our game's campaign's shared understanding?"

Which is using one's trump before assessing if there is an easier, less disruptive way to clarify. He went straight into direct communication, tipping the screen down if you will, instead of asking the players what is their understanding of the situation. And THAT is a great discussion to have among GMs: how to assess players' understanding of the situation before determining if they are being deliberately disruptive -- and how to handle both.

And given rgrove's maddening, meandering manner here, I'd say he is not a good, clear communicator, got flustered and went directly into "spill the (adventure) beans" mode and had The Table Talk.

Quote from: CRKrueger;942346Everything you say here is good...BUT...not applicable to Operation Shanghai.  That wasn't players being dicks because they felt like it, that was a miscommunication of facts somewhere along the way that led to the characters operating under some seriously false assumptions.  Grove decided to come clean and correct it OOC, which is certainly one way to do it, especially since it sounds like he goofed as much as the players there.  No harm, no foul.  

Operation Shanghai in the Grove Files is no longer filed under "Mah Storeh", just cross-referenced.

I honestly don't know if it was the players being dicks or not. I do know his previous anecdote was players postulating arson as a solution to The Haunted House. So... it's hard to say either way. (However, I give much less clemency if they are running anything Cthulhu or "Cthulhu-adjacent.")

Again, I can just as easily see rgrove's communication failure being the problem here. It's also easier to attribute to human error than to deliberate "malpractice." Either way, be it petulant or confused players, rgrove went to the solution of last resort first. It's a good solution to clear the air, but I prefer to reserve it for big problems.

Now the conversational opportunity here -- how to assess players' understanding of the situation before determining if they are being deliberately disruptive, and how to handle both -- is good. And also wholly detachable from trying to tease out the forensics of a fucking forum anecdote. rgrove's clarity capacity, and players' off-roading propensity, are just a good launch point.

edit: I felt like a little alliteration today...

Quote from: tenbones;942356I generally agree with this. But let me toss in some "meta-GMing" caveats... if you'll indulge me.

So one of my "things" is that I try to keep everything in-game. I assume the responsibility of trying to allow for my PC's to get as much wrong or right about the clues they discover to come to whatever conclusion they come to. I tend to do a *lot* of setup before a campaign to check the list off all the points you made above - but once the game starts, it's started. It's extremely rare for me to pull the curtain back and reveal myself because a player is "doing it wrong". The only time I do that is when a player is so grotesquely off the reservation where we've gone beyond just "gaming" and it's turned into something personal. Fortunately this is extremely rare.

So we're both on the same page. The difference here that I've been trying to illustrate, is one of tolerance-level. Not in terms of what the PC's are/are not allowed to do - but in terms of GMing writ-large. This is why I advocate strongly for learning how to sandbox. It's not to say you *can't* do one-shot linear dot-to-dot adventures. Absolutely. I'm saying that sandboxing well encompasses that more basic style so that even your basic mode of storygaming can benefit from understanding how to sandbox. I have no problem putting a themepark module-adventure in the middle of my sandbox for the PC's to discover (and subsequently ruin through their own bizarre conclusions) - I just play the ball where it lands.

There is far less pulling the curtain back. Far less revealing those artificial invisible walls where you're forced to have these unnecessary issues. It's not a problem of being the personal bitch for the players - it's about you owning the results of whatever conclusions the players come up with based on your handling of the game. The corollary of which is learning how to skillfully deal with it without being acrimonious towards your players for coming up with some conclusion that you as the GM did not intend for them, but owning it anyhow with consequences being whatever they may be.

That's just my perspective.

I absolutely agree with you, especially about Sandboxing being a good tool for GMs to learn In Character communication and clarification. Once you commit to playing the ball as it lies, you have placed pressure on yourself not to muddle your communication. It forces you to clarify communicated context and receive feedback confirming understanding.

In fact, it's the big discussion opportunity (brought up tangentially by rgrove's adventures,) I am saddened to see being dropped around here. I tried to clarify it as a statement in my post above. Hopefully some real GM wisdom can be brought out the toolbox this time.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;942364Okay.

The sandbox for our Boot Hill campaign is El Dorado County, the setting included in the core rules. In addition to agreeing on the boundary on our sandbox, we decided to run the five published modules as the campaign background events. Right off the bat we had to modify this - there are no railroads in El Dorado County yet, so Mad Mesa was relocated to Kansas and played as a sort of 'prequel' to the rest of the adventures. The events of Ballots & Bullets and Range War! form the central action of the campaign, but at no time are any of us bound to play The Adventure - my character got run out of Dead Mule by the vigilantes and missed most of Lost Conquistador Mine - which was never completed - while my character was the only one to see Burned Bush Wells all the way through. Ballots & Bullets  and Range War! are what's going on in the background of the campaign, the 'living setting,' and we are free to interact with them or not as we see fit.

My character - or characters, now that we've moved into troupe play - planned to run a cattle drive pretty much from the giddyup, so that meant our sandbox boundary was going to need to stretch a bit to accommodate this - driving a herd to the county line and calling it a day wasn't in the cards. Thus it was we needed a way to handle the cattle drive to Dodge City, which was provided by rules published in Variant magazine a few decades ago and adapting Dodge City from Gunslingers: Wild West Action!. My characters are in Dodge right now, actually, after seven weeks on the trail, bringing in the herd through thunderstorms, deep river crossings, a brush fire and a Comanche raid.

There are a couple of lessons to be drawn here. First, what you prep is important. We knew a cattle drive was likely to take place, based on my character's inclination and vocation, so we had the resources in place to run it. With randomizers, drop-in resources and a couple of warm neurons, a competent referee should be able to improvise enough to keep up with engaged players making the setting and the campaign their own. Fucking think ahead about what you introduce and where it might lead the players, then prep for that.

Second, players engaged with the setting are pearls beyond price, and telling them, 'No, you only cannot go any further than this because I'm such a limp-dick I can't improvise for ninety minutes,' when they're running with logical inferences and a desire to explore is the nadir of refereeing. Hell, saying, 'Yeah, I need a few minutes/an hour/a couple of days to get my shit together,' is better than, 'Fuck you and your excitement about the game, you go where I fucking say you go.'

See, this is a fantastic example of my interest in boundaries, communicating them, and compromise. I like it so much I want to quote it in full.

My favorite part is how the compromise worked out with both players and GM working together, offering contextually reasonable suggestions and hashing it out from there. What was offered did not grossly breach time nor space boundaries (among others).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;942364Remember, we're not talking about players trying to fuck with the campaign out of boredom or spite, or circle-jerking on the campaign premise - those people can fuck straight off. We're talking about players so into the campaign that they're hungry for more, and being told, 'Sorry, I can't be bothered to go back to the kitchen,' makes you a puckered brown-eye.

But how do we know that?

You are making an inference about the players' motives that could just as easily be assumed to be the opposite. For example, rgrove's preceding anecdote was one about a "Cthulhu-adjacent" (*snicker*) classic adventure about The Haunted House -- and the party's solution was arson. Your solutions, don't be a dick player or dick GM, are good... but it's the details that trips everyone up.

How do you assess another's understanding? When do you determine clarity has been sufficient? Is there a granular method to suss out when someone is fucking with you subtly? Obvious cases are obvious. Now we should talk about the process of GM self-reflection and player assessment.

Quote from: Opaopajr;942518I absolutely agree with you, especially about Sandboxing being a good tool for GMs to learn In Character communication and clarification. Once you commit to playing the ball as it lies, you have placed pressure on yourself not to muddle your communication. It forces you to clarify communicated context and receive feedback confirming understanding.

In fact, it's the big discussion opportunity (brought up tangentially by rgrove's adventures,) I am saddened to see being dropped around here. I tried to clarify it as a statement in my post above. Hopefully some real GM wisdom can be brought out the toolbox this time.

The irony here is this has always been my position. The "problem" is people taking offense and reading into what I'm saying as "You're a lesser person". As if my advocacy for "sandboxing" is some kind of tribal challenge to their personage. If it were a simple discussion of "this method" vs. "that method" - sure there will inevitably be heated discussion (but I'm willing to have *that* discussion too). But I'm talking about outcomes and problems that emerge from ostensibly GM's that prefer one method ("storygaming" however you want to define it) that I categorize as a basic method of GMing, and how to resolve those problems using tools from a "sandbox" method.

It's like someone demanding their Crayola 8-crayon box can do anything the Crayola 72-crayon box (with the crayon sharpener) can do despite the fact the 72-crayon box actually contains the same 8-crayons. All I'm doing is pointing out you can do more with the bigger box.

There are two *real* discussions not happening here: 1) what are those other tools (might be fun to explore) 2) What are pitfalls of going "sandbox".

I think both would be far more constructive and helpful (and germane to this thread) rather than coddling feelings that seem to nail themselves to individual trees rather than the exploring the forest.

Quote from: Opaopajr;942519How do you assess another's understanding? When do you determine clarity has been sufficient? Is there a granular method to suss out when someone is fucking with you subtly? Obvious cases are obvious. Now we should talk about the process of GM self-reflection and player assessment.

You already answered your own question in your response to me: It means the GM has to commit to the purpose of the game. For me, that means the GM has to own it. All of it. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the Kitchen sink. That is why learning how to communicate in-game is important (for both players and GM's but more for GM's). It also means you have to learn how to own your own unintentional Red Herrings and don't assume they're mistakes when if done well, they can lead to Gaming Glory(tm) which is what we should aim for.

You can't always know what's in the heads of your players. You can only give them as much information as you feel is appropriate given the conceits of their characters and the situation and what they perceive. After that... it's on them. And yes... you will make mistakes of giving too much/too little. The worst thing is to pretend you control everything the players do.

Total control is an illusion perpetrated by GM's on themselves. The very fact we're having this discussion is proof of that. Learning to roll with the events, intentional or not, as they unfold is a skill any GM can learn. It's not just about improvisation. The more I think about it, I believe it's more about commitment to your game's conceits. It's not about keeping an iron-fisted grip on the PC's, it's about keeping a nice tension on the reins but letting the PC's go where they want. The interval between where they are and the length of those reins is the scope of your campaign. And the better you get at it - the longer you can let those reins get*.

*those reins WILL snap once you've overextended yourself. At which point you'll have to learn how to recover gracefully without anyone being wise to it.

And in the past few years I've been tested by an entire generation of players who don't operate on the same paradigm of "actions have consequences."

At what point do you write-off what seems like ignorance as petulance?

Quote from: cranebump;942500Might have. It's ironic, because I think almost everyone agrees with him on the one shot example. The whole Frisco/Shanghai thing, though, is another matter...

Not my thread cranebump, I would have known better to start such a thread. The overwhelming opinion on such matters here had been well established.

Quote from: rgrove0172;942529Not my thread cranebump, I would have known better to start such a thread. The overwhelming opinion on such matters here had been well established.

You're being a deliberate tease here. Are you indirectly confirming their suspicions of how things played out? Did I waste my benefit of the doubt on you?

Commit. Clarify.

Quote from: Opaopajr;942526And in the past few years I've been tested by an entire generation of players who don't operate on the same paradigm of "actions have consequences."

At what point do you write-off what seems like ignorance as petulance?

Oh I'm way past petulance at this point. LOL

Quote from: rgrove0172;942529The overwhelming opinion on such matters here had been well established.

Translation: "I don't care what they say. I can produce any picture with my 8-crayon set that they can with their 72-crayon set. Though I wonder why my pictures don't look as detailed as theirs?"

Grow your box man!

Quote from: rgrove0172;942529Not my thread cranebump, I would have known better to start such a thread. The overwhelming opinion on such matters here had been well established.

Well, the counter opinions are certainly louder, at times, that's for sure.  That said, I think the general consensus is that players can and will do douche baggy things, and the given example of the haunted house is certainly one of them. And, of course, if there's an agreement by the group on your parameters ahead of time, then you'd be well justified to stay within them. Where you're catching hell is when you expect people with ingrained play styles (and I mean ingrained) to take a step your direction, and they just won't. There's no justifying a style, because all styles are pretty much justified by the people playing them. As the echo chamber has resounded -- more than once -- what you do at your table is perfectly fine, if your entire table is on board.

My long distance observation of the way you play would be that I feel like you're very tied down to your prep, and feel that, if you can't execute it, it's a huge loss. Now, I'm SURE it's a loss of time, and I would be (and have been) disappointed myself, when my prep goes unplayed or untouched (it does all the time, which is why it's less detailed now than it used to be).  But really, it's not wasted at all. It's sort of like, in writing, when you devote time to thinking about a story. You may not actually commit any of those thoughts to paper, but the thoughts you do put down will be influenced, and, hopefully, strengthened by them.

Of course, that's just my observation, based on the readings from these threads. That and a dime is worth 10 cents.:-) Understand, I'm not telling you to change what you do, if you don't want to. I can only say that there are parallels in your style to my previous style. I chucked the idea of linear adventuring since I took up gaming again, the last, oh, 15 years or so, and I think my games are better for it. Further, I feel a lot less pressure to be perfect, which is always a plus. The quest for perfect control leads to false starts and headaches.

Quote from: tenbones;942533Translation: "I don't care what they say. I can produce any picture with my 8-crayon set that they can with their 72-crayon set. Though I wonder why my pictures don't look as detailed as theirs?"

Grow your box man!

Translate however the f.. you want. It's not what I said.

Quote from: tenbones;9425222) What are pitfalls of going "sandbox".

Sandbox campaigns have a chicken and egg problem. The more experienced you are in life, knowledge, and in refereeing RPG. The easier it is to build up a bag of stuff to manage the ad-hoc nature of the campaign. If you are a 15 year old kid, it not so easy even with prep. If you are a 40 year old hobbyist running her first campaign, again not so easy.

For example how is a referee is going to come up with different styles of medieval peasant huts if he has doesn't know what even one looks like. Granted this is a trivial example, but there are plenty of elements used in RPG campaigns that are not commonly known via popular culture.

Centering the first campaign around a maze with rooms filled with monsters and treasures provides a nice tidy structure to get you started with fantasy roleplaying.

Finally there is no "best". Every choice has consequences attached to it. And what it is chosen it works best if it works with the way YOU think. RPG referees are in a sense mini-gods bringing a world to life. That not a straight forward task as human limitations forces a referee to pick and choose what to say and present at every moment of a session. Disciplining ther mind to do that in a way that is fun for the referee and players is different for every person.

When I write about sandbox campaigns, I try to present as A way, not THE way. The main reason it has the attention it has in recent years is because it wasn't a method that wasn't talked about much in the 80s and 90s.

Sandbox campaigns (or any other type of campaigns) are not all one thing or the other. Learning how to run entertaining railroad campaigns or mission oriented campaigns is useful for sandbox when the players choice lead them in situations where there one sensible path, or where their character's lives start to center around performing missions.

And vice versa, sometime in a campaign that mostly railroaded or centered on mission there come a point where the over direction must be chosen by the players. Learning a little bit about sandbox campaigns will make handling that easier.