Over in a thread about dealing with cheaters in an rpg session, I told a story of how as GM I'd dealt with a cheat by cheating straight back - the player cheated because he wanted an epic character having epic battles, so I cheated during an epic battle to give him the epic death. Consonant Dude replied that he thought that sounded fun, but a lot of effort, and that,

Quote from: Consonant DudeI'm really sold on pre and post game meetings because they've taken care of most problems, including cheating.

That's often good, yes. For my part, I run closed-ended campaigns of 12-20 sessions, and about halfway through each I talk to each player one-on-one and ask them what they think of the rules, setting, other players, their own character, etc. I make the questions open-ended and not leading. So, no "are you having fun?" but "what do you think of the system? What do you think of the setting?" etc.

Many times before I've asked more leading questions, "Are you having fun?" or "what do you think of Bob's cheating?" and that leads to a fucking mess. You're inviting criticism and complaints. As a chef, I see this in restaurants, too. You get waitresses enquiring after people's meals. Some ask the customer, "any problems?" while others ask, "I hope everything is satisfactory, sir?" Obviously, the first question invites people to think negatively; the second is open-ended, they're free to give whatever response they wish.

For example in my current group a couple of issues have come out. One is that we all get along very well, so that even though we meet at 7pm, we don't start gaming before 8:30pm, because we're busy talking shit and catching up on the week. The solution to that is the host and GM (me) needs to act more as a moderator, directing people's attention to the game. Another is that one player is quite active, and the other two are more reactive; the reactive players are largely happy with their games, but would like a bit more action. The solution to that is that as GM I bring them more into the action - we're playing Fate, so it's relatively easy to do, "here's a point, I invoke your Daring Aspect, shouldn't you be leaping forward about now?"

Now, it's working well for us, but as I hinted above, other times the Game Session Post-Mortem has led to... well, led to the group breaking up. Someone writes an email saying how they were pissed off with so-and-so, someone gets offended and fires another email back, the emails come faster and faster and flamier and flamier and... bye-bye, group.

Do other people have some formal way of trying to improve everyone's enjoyment of the game, with a pre- or post-session meeting, or emails after four sessions, or whatever? Do they deal with it informally by just watching each-other in play, or chatting about the game outside the session when they catch up with one of the other players for non-gaming stuff? Or do people not bother?

Tell us all about it!

Session post-mortems in my ftf group inevitably turn into gladhanding.  Thing is, I like that.  It fluffs my ego and tells me I'm liked.

Does jack shit else, though.

You know, my best gaming was when none of us ever really talked about it in any kind of meaningful way.  I mean, we'd talk about it between games.  We'd complain about other people's characters or cheating or what have you.  But we didn't really take action.  No one actually asked "Did you like the game?  What parts did you like?"

A few years ago, I started believing all that crap you read in books about how to GM better and was generally taking the advice of the touchy-feelly-get-to-know-your-players crowd.  I started a thing where I handed players questionaires before the game and merely asked them to do two things: 1) to write down anything during the game they liked or disliked, and 2) to score the game session on a scale of 1-10.

For a while, this appearred to work.  I got high marks on games I ran, but I noticed that I hardly ever got feedback of elements during the game the players liked.  When I did get this information, it was extraordinarily vague.

Eventually, the problem with this whole thing blew up in my face.  A player revealed to me that he only scored my games highly because he knew the ego-boost it gave me kept me GMing continuously and prevented another GM who he disliked the games of from running.  Another player was scoring games highly in order to brownnose and get more stuff for their character.  Yet another admitted he just rolled a d10 at the end of each session and had merely never rolled anything lower than a 7.

Faced with this truth, I've quit concerning myself on out of game resources for measuring what the players think, and try to concentrate on the game itself.  If the players are just going to lie, what's the point of asking them?

We always have these post game discussions. When I first started out GMing it was to ensure I was on the right track - which basically meant was everyone having fun. It's much the same these days, but the conversations are shorter and everyone is more articulate about what they want from my games

Regards,
David R

JimBob:  The open-ended nature of the questions gets at something ... subtle.

People pay attention to different things in a game.  When you actually listen to what they talk about (as opposed to filtering it through your own sense of what's important about the game) you can notice some really fascinating things.

Like, when I do "session post-mortems" with some of my friends (also known as sitting around after a session ends, shooting the bull and/or playing Jungle Speed), for instance, there is one player who I know ... absolutely know ... will be talking about what we saw about the fictional world, and what its broader implications must be.  And there's a player who talks about how the mechanics felt to him in action.  And there's a player who talks about the cool things other people did.  And then there's me.  I always talk about the cool things I did, because I'm a little narcissistic that way

Anyway, I watch this and I think to myself "And this is what they're thinking about while playing the game ... man!  We're all playing subtly different games that just happen to work well together."  It's cool.

When I complain, I try to make sure that the GM gets my point. Pundit knows about this.

When I'm sitting on the captain's chair, I like to get feedback after the game and perhaps during the week. What was funny, what wasn't, what confuses players, etc.

I usually encourage players to e-mail me privately if they think that something in the game can be improved.

Most of the feedback over the years has been positive.  There have been a few minor problems here and there, but nothing that wasn't resolved relatively easily.  The most significant difficulty I had was with my last campaign, when a couple of the players disliked the system that I was using.  I tried tweaking it to meet their demands, but suspect that had the campaign continued (it only lasted 3 months, as I moved away to take a new job) we would eventually have had to shift systems.

Almost all my best feedback comes via next-day emails.  At the end of the session we're all tired and want to go home and go to bed, but I usually get at least on email the next morning 'dude, that session rocked' or 'man, you touched me in a bad way lst night when you did this'.

Quote from: TonyLBJimBob:  The open-ended nature of the questions gets at something ... subtle.

People pay attention to different things in a game.  When you actually listen to what they talk about (as opposed to filtering it through your own sense of what's important about the game) you can notice some really fascinating things.

Like, when I do "session post-mortems" with some of my friends (also known as sitting around after a session ends, shooting the bull and/or playing Jungle Speed), for instance, there is one player who I know ... absolutely know ... will be talking about what we saw about the fictional world, and what its broader implications must be.  And there's a player who talks about how the mechanics felt to him in action.  And there's a player who talks about the cool things other people did.  And then there's me.  I always talk about the cool things I did, because I'm a little narcissistic that way

Anyway, I watch this and I think to myself "And this is what they're thinking about while playing the game ... man!  We're all playing subtly different games that just happen to work well together."  It's cool.

Cool but incoherent?

Seriously, JimBob's original post on this thread makes a good point re: open-ended questions.  It's a pretty obvious piece of really good advice that I've never considered.  Whenever I ask for feedback from my players, my questions are either too vague ("What do you think?") or just seemingly focus on the negative ("If there's anything I did wrong here, tell me!").  The result of all this is usually silence or an equally vague "It's going okay."

Good, practical advice for soliciting feedback.  Thanks for making the issue clearer for me, JB.

Quote from: JongWKWhen I complain, I try to make sure that the GM gets my point. Pundit knows about this.

When I'm sitting on the captain's chair, I like to get feedback after the game and perhaps during the week. What was funny, what wasn't, what confuses players, etc.

What Inquiring Minds want to know is what is RPGPundit like as a player?

Quote from: blakkieWhat Inquiring Minds want to know is what is RPGPundit like as a player?

I'm almost always a GM; however, out of anyone in Uruguay, Jong has GMed for me most, so he would be the one to ask.  

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