Conviction also applies to expectations.

The groundhog didn't see his shadow today. Spring is coming early. How much would you bet on it?

It's healthy to be aware of the fallibility of your expectations.

A degenerate gambler might go all in. We don't go blaming his expectations. The odds may very well be in his favor. The problem is the behavior. The strategy. The lack of weight the gambler gives to the possibility he will lose. Because even if he wins this time--even if the outcome matches his expectations--that still doesn't make it a wise bet. You go all in every time, even if your odds of winning are 99%, eventually you will lose everything.

Given that I find over-confidence in expectations more problematic than the expectations themselves, I'm not sure why I'd benefit from a talk to provide the illusion that we're on the same page expectations-wise.

Quote from: CRKrueger;876467What are your experiences as GMs?  Was there a certain time more than others when you gave the players what they needed, not what they said they wanted?

Consider a GM who is good at running "deeper roleplaying", and four times better at running dungeon crawls which wrap up in a single session, but doesn't realize there's any difference. The players in the latter kind of game with that GM say "This is great, but it would be twice as good with deeper roleplaying!"; when the GM changes the game to the former, they discover that it is only half as good. It's not always the players being wrong about what they like.

In actual play, the most similar problem I have run into is players wanting some change that the game/rules in use weren't suitable for, but not wanting to change to another game/rules. They weren't wrong about their preference in either way - they did want the change, they did want the same game/rules - but the two preferences were incompatible.

Wait so in the OP, when this guy is running games that "start in town, end in town," he manages to get through the entire thing in one session?

That's pretty impressive and hard. Usually you will only get halfway through a dungeon.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;876693Wait so in the OP, when this guy is running games that "start in town, end in town," he manages to get through the entire thing in one session?

That's pretty impressive and hard. Usually you will only get halfway through a dungeon.

Eh...

I was playing AD&D, starting with level 1 characters, and not pulling any punches. Very much a let the dice fall approach. You only go through a few encounters at most before you need to rest up.

You didn't do the whole dungeon. You'd get a lot of play out of one dungeon.

But I mean, if you're going to make it so people can swap in and out based on session, you have to have the entire mission wrapped up right? You can't do that if you're still 30000 feet under a mountain because you decided to break there.

This thread inspired me to try something like this, like 4 hours per session, open table, maybe once a week. I would be able to fit it solidly into my normal day, 8 PM to midnight, without having to schedule or do anything. Unlike a normal D&D session which is 8 hours or so for me, where I have to go and make sure everybody can set aside the day ahead of time, etc.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;876709But I mean, if you're going to make it so people can swap in and out based on session, you have to have the entire mission wrapped up right?

That may be your disconnect right there.  In my experience, "back at town by the end of the session" dungeon campaigns generally don't have "missions" as such.  You go in, explore as much as the session gives you time for, and get out.  You might have an (player-set) objective that you want to accomplish while you're in there, but not a mission in the sense of "the king has ordered you to retrieve the Royal Chalice from the orcs on level 4".

Ah, I see. So it's not a totally separate adventure each time. Hmm, I think that would be more exciting, though much harder to pull off...

Wouldn't it get boring just clearing out dungeon rooms for no real greater purpose?

Quote from: Omega;876585EG: A player takes interest in the local merchants and frequents that area. If I didnt have something allready planned for the merchant then the interactions with the PC may suggest directions to go.

This is interesting.

Because I do the same thing. But the foremost thought in my mind is not that I'm adjusting to what the players enjoy. After all, it's MY prep time. Not theirs. I'm out to satisfy MY ends. Not theirs. Why should I? They're not even at the table at the time. And MY goal is to use my prep time efficiently. So of course I'm going to be sure to detail areas I believe are most likely to come up in the game.

Of course there is a greater purpose. There has to be a reason WHY your character is going down in the dungeon in the first place. And the purpose has to be strong enough to justify the struggle of multiple sessions of exploration and braving dangers. The purpose could be common to the party but it need not me. All that matters is that each character has some compelling reason for going down there.

Well, I would expect it's just "go get gold and magic items" but if it's 5e the magic items are going to be slim, and feels kind of like busywork if you're just rotating in and out every few sessions.

That's why I immediately connected it to having some mission every session.

Also would you say in such a format, the dungeon should just be a megadungeon that's wide open and let's you explore, or should it be Angry GM style where everything is balanced by CR and it's more like a small adventure in its own right?

The third way is DCC style where it doesn't use many rooms; every room has a purpose and is its own encounter, and instead of aimless wandering around you have like a 7 room dungeon and that's it. But those 7 rooms are all filled with the meat of the play.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;876744Ah, I see. So it's not a totally separate adventure each time. Hmm, I think that would be more exciting, though much harder to pull off...

Wouldn't it get boring just clearing out dungeon rooms for no real greater purpose?

I think the greater purpose is to gain wealth and power, but I think that only applies to games with a "name level." Not the way I usually play, but there's something to be said for keeping it simple--"I go in there to bring fancy shit out...guess I'm a tad insane...":-)

Quote from: Lunamancer;876748This is interesting.

Because I do the same thing. But the foremost thought in my mind is not that I'm adjusting to what the players enjoy. After all, it's MY prep time. Not theirs. I'm out to satisfy MY ends. Not theirs. Why should I? They're not even at the table at the time. And MY goal is to use my prep time efficiently. So of course I'm going to be sure to detail areas I believe are most likely to come up in the game.

Its more a matter of adjusting to whats being focused on. The PC is paying attention to the merchant and that may well mean that what the PC does changes what the merchant had planned or what someone else had planned for the merchant. That and I as the DM have to come up with conversation on the fly. But that is standard.

EG: Daern and co walk into the evil merchant shop. Beforehand I'd plotted out that in the shop was a suit of full plate that was to be shipped to the boss. It was on display to attract and impress customers. Daern catches sight of it and decides that it would go great on James the Paladin and makes the NPC an offer. His other reason for wanting to buy it was to keep it out of the bosses hands.

I wasnt expecting the players to pick up on a background detail. But here we are and the NPC now has to decide if a-lot of gold now is worth delaying delivery of the armour till a new set can be ordered.

IE: The players payed attention to something and I rolled with it. If Id decided beforehand that the merchant was not the type to sell. Then Id have stuck to that short of the PCs getting really persuasive. Thus the players shift in interest has a potential impact on events going on.

Or say a player shows a-lot of interest in running their own business in the game. And I have a currently sidelined player who is exactly that. I will try to accommodate that if events allow. I ask myself. "Will this intrude on the rest of the game? Will it detract from the other players enjoyment?" an so on. And of course how much extra work do I need to do to set that up or not.

Lots of good comments and discussion, just thought I'd give more info on my OP, because some of the responses share a pattern.

Most of the players were present before, during, and after the "Scheduling Crisis".  They played in complicated, long-term campaigns before and after.  It wasn't really a case of competing playstyles or the players or I accidentally finding our niche.

What used to work, just kind of stopped working.  So, I tried switching up campaigns, taking votes, having talking sessions (all stuff we didn't really do before or after) and that really didn't help.  Only after I said "Fuck it I'm running Rifts, show up if you want." did that get things kickstarted again.  Even though it was a military campaign and subject to structure, orders, reports, etc, I tried to make it as interesting as possible and I guess I did.  After about 18 months, the campaign ended when the characters found the major Mechanoid base on the east coast and called in a massive airstrike on their own position.

After that we went back to Shadowrun and everything was ok again.  In any case, me focusing solely on table play and taking with a grain of salt what was said by the players outside of the game is what ended up working for us during that rough patch.

It's the same for any event coordination. At the end of the day someone has to say, "we're doing this, at this (regular) time." The committee meetings are more pro forma until decisions are made and actions are taken. At that point it's join in or walk.

Your campaign scope may be like a weave or knit, with different levels of stretch and give, but in the end you have to go with the pattern you just cut out.

My bigger challenges are when my GM schedule gets screwed up over extended periods.

Quote from: Opaopajr;876840It's the same for any event coordination. At the end of the day someone has to say, "we're doing this, at this (regular) time." The committee meetings are more pro forma until decisions are made and actions are taken. At that point it's join in or walk.

This is a great point.

I think there's an analogy to be drawn to selling a product. The customer does not get to muck around with the product. Typically, the customer has no expertise to even do so anyway. That's why the customer is buying a product. Whatever it is he gets out of it is something he can't get on his own.

It falls upon the sales person to understand the customer, to know what the customer needs or wants, and then demonstrate how the product can deliver those things. The sales person does not change the product to suit the customer. The sales person educates the customer on how the product works.

If you translate this to RPGs, the GM is typically both wears two hats, as both producer and salesman. The GM puts together something that reflects what SHE wants and in HER style without player input. Then the GM switches to salesperson mode to assemble a group. If it isn't a match for a particular player, the player just doesn't join the group. So getting a group may entail finding out what various players are hoping to find in the game and then explaining how her idea provides that.

And that's the key. Showing how this RPG or campaign or GMing style can accommodate X.