Player Advice

[radthemad4]

We've had threads about MCing before with very a small smattering of player advice:

Q: Cross Gender Role Playing, what's up with that then?
As a general rule I find it is a good idea to "recommend against cross gender role playing".

Which is to say if a player is looking towards playing a character of a gender other than their own to simply suggest it is difficult and you don't recommend it.

That in and of itself is enough to prevent it happening a lot, and also to ensure that when someone does do it, they are at least putting some effort in and are aware that it could cause problems.

And it CAN cause problems of which there are basically two main ones.

1) "I attack him with my tits"
Cross gender role play can become an encouragement for players to flirt with the boundaries of what is acceptable sexual content, and possibly entirely screw those boundaries. And maybe even also be offensively sexist at the same time.

2) "Wait... I forgot what gender I am again... what gender were you again?"
Players as a rule aren't the greatest of immersive method actors or anything. Being sufficiently different means it makes it harder for them to identify with their characters, and harder for others to remember and like their character. Yes I know you are already being a half dragon elfish wizard or something stupid, but apparently it seems gender is a pretty big deal as a self identifier and sympathizer.

So how do you deal with it if it happens? Well the warning works to help people be a little more responsible about it, but for the self identifying business there is one simple trick that can help a little.

Make sure the player stops saying "I do this" and "I do that". No one wants to here Steve talk about getting his tits out (or preferably not getting them out), not even Steve will feel... altogether right about it.

But if Steve begins all his descriptions of his Characters actions with "Alice the Golden Sorceress does this, Alice says that, Alice gets her tits out (or not)" that will help disconnect the player and the character in the minds of all present. And it will also mean that if Alice DOES get her tits out the male players will feel slightly less icky and the female players will blame Alice for being a bit of a slut and forget just a bit that ultimately it's really Steve.

With a little luck you might promote just enough sense of schizophrenia in your player that he will start thinking of 'Alice' as a person in her own right and will let her 'make her own decisions'. No really this simple naming trick is a such a good tool I'm amazed it isn't advised more IN GENERAL.

...

Q: What about cross SPECIES role play? (And I ain't talking elves and centaurs baby)
Gender can alienate people from their own (and other's) characters enough.

But when someone is playing as a carrion crawler they are going to have issues.

I mean "no one knows what women really think like" is actually a bit of an ignorant statement, but "no one knows what CARRION CRAWLERS really think like"... is actually really rather accurate...

Still you can use many of the same tricks, so play Mr Crawly's actions in the third person, "Mr Crawly says 'Grarflglarg?'", "Mr Crawly scuttles under the fridge." "Mr Crawly eats some carrion.".

And while people may get a bit juvenile with an alien monstrosity (Lolz I'm a gelatinous cube!!!!) at least they are less likely to make an entire gender worth of players run from your gaming group screaming "NNNNEEEEEEERRRRRRDZZZZZ!"

Q. What player activities are "warning signs"?

Well, Bill, first you need to remember that these are only warning signs, nothing more. They don't have to mean bad things, but they often do.

1) "I want to play a [Monster]!"

Yes I know, under the regular rules it's like asking to be given a penalty to all actions ever because "Fuck you", and sometimes we do just want to try something different. Who hasn't wanted to try to get into the mindset of what it means to be a snake-person who is also on fire?

However, something to look out for is that for some, it's seen as the easy way to be interesting, and as such, they may get bored quickly and want to try something else - a constant stream of novelty races. And for others, it's part of attention-whoring. Know the kind of person who is a vegetarian simply because they get to say "I CAN'T EAT THAT, I'M A VEGETARIAN, THAT MEANS I DON'T EAT MEAT." so people have to take special consideration for them? Yeah, it's often that.

2) "I want to grow/lose boobs!"

Apparently crossplaying is a big deal (see above). I have only known of one person to be creepy and offensive about it, and he is creepy all the time and someone I actively avoided at an old club. But yeah, some people you just know should not be allowed to play as members of the opposite sex, because they have issues or something. I mean, can you imagine Robert Jordan sitting down and playing as a girl? Ignore that he's dead. Yeah, it would be precisely as bad as it sounds. Just like getting McCain to play as a black person.

3) "My name is Koumei"/"I am kongming"/"They call me Sister Acacia"/"Hi, I'm Zae"

This person will make your life miserable as a DM, trust me on it. Avoid her at all costs.

4) "Yeah, we did Vampire and I got to be Malkav, lawl"

Do I need to explain it? Mental illness is serious business, and there are two ways it can be played: seriously, in which case it is not enjoyable in the slightest, for anyone, and "for laughs", where the group is stuck with Daffy Duck on cocaine for the whole thing. Neither is good. Some people like playing nutbar characters. And this is a bad thing.

5) "Well my Alignment means-"

Yeah, no. Anyone who think their alignment means anything is likely to use it as something to force their character to be annoying - Chaotic Stupid, Stupid Evil and Lawful Stupid are the most common ones, but don't forget "Oh, X PC is alignment Y? In that case I WON'T WORK WITH THEM!"

True story, in one game there was a LE cleric and a NG fighter in the same party. The group encountered a NE necromancer, and the cleric decided "Our alignments are more similar, so it makes sense to work with him and help kill the fighter, who I only travelled and worked with for several weeks".

To get the ball rolling:

As a mister cavern:

- What player actions do you enjoy handling the most?
- Can you share a few moments when your players did something that made you really glad to be MCing for that particular group?
- Invert the above questions along the entertaining/annoying axis (i.e. players who are asshats or who did something that really frustrated you)

As a player:

- What kinds of players do you enjoy playing alongside?
- Any standout moments you want to share?
- What kinds of players did you really hate playing alongside?
- Any particular moments, either from generally terrible players or from otherwise mostly okay players?

[TheFlatline]

My Dark Heresy game had highly motivated gamers who enjoyed the setting enough and was into the mystery story enough that they'd frequently take breaks from the game and discuss, more or less in character, what was going on and the direction they were going to take. They all sort of agreed without agreeing on diverse characters who all had different opinions of where the limits of their power and authority ended. There was a spectrum of ethics as well. It would lead to 20 or 30 minute discussions, sometimes kind of heated, of how much the ends justified the means to the group and how the group as a whole could function with everyone finding a way to sleep at night as it were. Watching the party take on that kind of group dynamic is rare (I've seen it in two games) and watching it happen on a frequent basis was fucking awesome and rewarding.

Everyone was strong enough that there really wasn't a leader, and as the story shifted different players would emerge naturally as instigators in their preferred field. It led to players being willing to disagree with each other, and those disagreements led to party cohesion because of the middle ground they all arrived at.

[MGuy]

My Dark Heresy game had highly motivated gamers who enjoyed the setting enough and was into the mystery story enough that they'd frequently take breaks from the game and discuss, more or less in character, what was going on and the direction they were going to take. They all sort of agreed without agreeing on diverse characters who all had different opinions of where the limits of their power and authority ended. There was a spectrum of ethics as well. It would lead to 20 or 30 minute discussions, sometimes kind of heated, of how much the ends justified the means to the group and how the group as a whole could function with everyone finding a way to sleep at night as it were. Watching the party take on that kind of group dynamic is rare (I've seen it in two games) and watching it happen on a frequent basis was fucking awesome and rewarding.

Everyone was strong enough that there really wasn't a leader, and as the story shifted different players would emerge naturally as instigators in their preferred field. It led to players being willing to disagree with each other, and those disagreements led to party cohesion because of the middle ground they all arrived at.

What you're describing is exactly what I try to make happen when I GM. I've seen this kind of thing in about 5 games in all the years I've played table top.

[Chamomile]

Vet for good players. Go online where the pool of incoming players is big enough that you can pick and choose, use an application process that asks a question(s) relevant to your campaign (for the Dark Heresy one, something like "when does your character think an inquisitor has overstepped their bounds in pursuit of their mission" or something), and anyone whose answer is uninteresting or stupid doesn't get to play.

[Aryxbez]

Having read about that Dark Heresy Game, your group sounds amazing, encapsulates kinda what Roleplaying experience is about, and how the group as the whole, truly make the experience.

As a mister cavern:
- What player actions do you enjoy handling the most?
- Can you share a few moments when your players did something that made you really glad to be MCing for that particular group?
- Invert the above questions.

I suppose I enjoy implementing storylines from PC input, and surprising them with my interpretation. Especially when they involve giving Power-ups or the like to them. I like to see what kind of plans they come up with in a given situation, see how it differs from what I may've guessed.

To see them interacting with NPC's through dialog, and mostly humorous moments. One such was me taking a drunk reference they did one night, and surprising them with that reference in game, which was basically a set of NPC's who devoted to taking on Identity of one of the PC's yelling in a sort of "No! I am Spartacus!" type moment. Another one where an NPC of mine became infamous for his stupidity Primarily because I was tired, and misinterpreted them, but hey it worked perfectly for the character.

Little moments seeing PC personas shine in interaction with NPC's goes a long way to my enjoyment. Good, worthy fights are also memorable endeavors I enjoy seeing.

What do you mean by "invert" by the way, as in, instead of as a DM, as a player, and vice versa?

As a player:
- What kinds of players do you enjoy playing alongside?
- Any standout moments you want to share?
- Invert the above

My friends first and foremost, whom I'm comfortable being around, and the experience wouldn't be as good without it. I'd also enjoy playing around people who know the rules of the game, and someone I could discuss with regularly. That said, I also enjoy immensely people who are into the game, an experience I've received playing at Cons.

Unfortunately I mostly DM, so I hardly have much moments nowadays. The time I got to play a DQ-styled Slime Chef, going around interacting with NPCs having cook-offs and helping each other grow is amazing unto itself.

Years ago, I played a Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian, whom raised a (charmed) hob-gob child out of guilt, and I also freed a gladiator whom I "barely" tied with in an Arena match (rolling 1's everywhere). There was also this Pathfinder Game where as a druid, my monkey won a drinking contest, and also our Party became a notorious gang (albeit antagonist faction didn't know ID of us yet).

Reversed as a DM, answer is similar as above w/Friends.

[radthemad4]

Thanks for sharing guys. That sounds pretty awesome and I'll make an effort to facilitate that sort of experience in future games.

What do you mean by "invert" by the way, as in, instead of as a DM, as a player, and vice versa?

I was referring to experiences with bad players and/or players who did things that disappointed and/or annoyed you, either as a DM or as a fellow player.

Vet for good players. Go online where the pool of incoming players is big enough that you can pick and choose, use an application process that asks a question(s) relevant to your campaign (for the Dark Heresy one, something like "when does your character think an inquisitor has overstepped their bounds in pursuit of their mission" or something), and anyone whose answer is uninteresting or stupid doesn't get to play.

I was asking about the other side of that actually. Any tips on how to be more interesting and less stupid?

[Aryxbez]

I was referring to experiences with bad players and/or players who did things that disappointed and/or annoyed you, either as a DM or as a fellow player.

You should probably put that in the first post then, sounds too confusing to just "invert" it for me.

Bad experiences with Players as a DM, happened often early on in my DMing attempts to get people interested enough to play. Then there's also the struggle to get them to actually be familiar with the rules their characters interact with often, as have basics down otherwise. Another general experience is having them care enough in general, so I don't need to repeat myself during the narration of a scene or another (could be poor writing, definitely not Tone, as I seek to sound upbeat & such).

My last [Tome] Game I ran, had a disruptive player who was a Soulborn. Who every other session would start a rules argument, or seek to increase his power through such despite not actually fully reading the rules, and being better than everyone else in first place. When we ended up having a big argument out of game, he had issue of not reading the entire thing, causing 80+ posts later, an issue could've been resolved sooner. It was the fact this came up like 3 times, the game no longer exciting to do in my eyes (among other reasons). So he was basically a "Munchkin" by the actual definition (someone who seeks to abuse the rules without actually knowing them, especially to point of being disruptive), and near the end seeking to amend otherwise, but the damage was already done. Definitely want to avoid having that dynamic, as it literally became a habit that the players wouldn't want to play without the Soulborn player, even if our player count that week was sufficient enough.

There I learned the Soulborn is definitely a class for Wizard-level games, and isn't a bad class itself, as it was the player that was disruptive, not the Class.

As a player w/bad fellow players? I suppose I've had a friend not be as focused because of his GF, or said GF getting super confused on basic concepts when playing. I've one other player who would when he was slighted, would secretly "mentally check out" for the rest of the campaign, despite not telling us why. One swore off D20 systems due to bad slew of rolling 1's, throwing a fit and literally leaving the table.

NOW For Disappointing DM's or moments within them, I might have couple short tales.

[Whipstitch]

If you're a wallflower you should play with people you already know if you can help it. A well-designed game or campaign can help, but ultimately the group makes its own fun, and it's easier if people aren't walking on egg shells or otherwise need an ice breaker. Also, do your best not to be a dick about people making sub-optimal choices. If you play these games long enough it's just a fact that sooner or later you're going to have varying levels of commitment to the game or even just simple competence, so try to be an adult about it. Competitive people can make for fun gaming partners, but that shit can be a double edged sword, especially if shit gets real because people have become emotionally invested in the fates of their characters. I suspect that's why the Munchkin card game continues to be looked upon so fondly by so many people--yes, it has its flaws, but if your roleplaying session has turned into Serious Business sometimes it really is best to shift gears and do something that has no stakes whatsoever instead. Your alternate game could be just about anything, really. The important thing is to recognize when to switch so Mike doesn't end up stabbing Dan in the neck for needing to be resurrected again.

[Eikre]

- What kinds of players do you enjoy playing alongside?

One whose character is at all interested in mine. Mine is certainly interested in theirs.


So, I do a lot of play-by-post, and intraparty dialogue ends up looking a lot different. Line-by-line exchanges are usually difficult unless you have a chat on IRC and post the log or something, but there's actually a lot of room for talk that there wouldn't be at the table because most players will read everyone else's posts faster than they can/may author their own.

So, in other words, if you launch a lengthy monolog about a favorite childhood memory of working on the skeleton farm while you're sitting at a live table, everyone else has to shut the fuck up for ten minutes and stop moving the game forward while you make them the victims of your substandard writing. In play-by-post, though, that's just grist for the mill. Everyone is waiting on someone else to check in all the time, and frequently you're not the guy holding up the game if you put up some talk about your necromancer's first kiss with the freckled girl next door. You may in fact be increasing the amount of content the game covers per day.

This makes me a little bit of a holdout when it comes to character backstory. I'm not interested in laying out a full summary of a human condition in two paragraphs at the beginning of the campaign when every in-game nightfall is an opportunity to slip in a campfire vignette. The DM gets a private message on the essentials. And I will collude with other players on the individual basis to agree on intertwined backstories.* But everything else I disclose about my character I like to be through in-game interaction.

It makes for a far more literary experience. But if nobody else is interested in saying, "Hey, you've only got a skull for a face, was that a work-related accident, or...?" it doesn't come together as easily. So I always do my best to evoke some banter from the other players, and I appreciate it when they pay me the same courtesy.

*Intertwined backstories: Are super cool and good and you should come up with them. A lot of games are made out of five strangers assembled at a tavern. Refuse to be alienated like that. Be someone's brother. Be someone's Sensai. Be somebody's horse. Doesn't matter. Start the game with the conviction that you care about the other characters and they'll be a greater springboard for your narcissistic fantasies than anything you can come up with on your own.

[Chamomile]

I was asking about the other side of that actually. Any tips on how to be more interesting and less stupid?

The answer is pretty much just to flip it around: Build a character who has some kind of opinion and emotional investment in the campaign that the GM is pitching. Either by directly tying your backstory to the campaign premise because the BBEG torched your hometown or whatever, or else by giving your character an indirect emotional investment in the situation, for example if the story is about trying to mend relations between kingdoms so that they can unite against the BBEG, your character might have once tried to persuade a bunch of sailors to band together and form a guild to resist aristocratic oppression and there were too much bitterness between different merchant crews for them to set aside and unite so they all got screwed in the end and your character was forced out of the shipping industry and had to sell his sons into slavery to pay debts to a powerful aristocrat. This unrelated conflict has made your character deeply cynical about the idea of people with entrenched animosity putting that aside even temporarily to thwart a common enemy. This does something very important: It allows you to have a soliloquy about your backstory that also advances the main plot so other players don't feel like they're wasting time or paying their dues so that they can make everyone else suffer through their own irrelevant backstory monologues.

Also pay attention to the characters other people are making if you can, so that you won't end up invading their mechanical or narrative niches. Nothing spoils a build or a character arc like someone else having an almost identical one show up in almost every single scene. Although in narrative it can actually be really handy to have characters whose arc is very similar except for one key difference, like if you have two different people from the same village who got that village burnt down and one came out cynical and ruthless and the other became an idealistic paladin dedicated to making sure no one else would have to suffer the loss that he did.

Also, also, never import characters into stories where they don't belong. Even if it's the same or a similar setting, taking your character from that one D&D campaign that failed three sessions in and plugging him into a new campaign that's starting at the same level is really half-assed and usually delivers really half-assed results. This goes double for characters who are clones of other characters, especially very popular characters that everyone's familiar with. We all know who Drizz't is and we are unlikely to be anything else but bored by your take on him, whereas if you do something more original you'll hold our attention for a while longer just on novelty.

[Dogbert]

Learn what you want out of the hobby

Once you know what you like, you can start learning the tell-tale signs of gaming tables you know you'll like (or won't like).

No roleplay is better than bad roleplay

You won't be a good fit for all tables, nor is any given table at any given time obligated to provide for your needs. It took me five years to learn this lesson, hopefully you can learn this sooner and save yourself crappy experiences. If a table rubs you the wrong way, leave it. There's always a more fun table elsewhere if you look for it.

Don't play with anyone you wouldn't spend a whole afternoon with doing anything else

Don't fall for the geek social fallacies. If you don't like someone, you don't like them, period. Playing with people you don't like (or that don't like you) is a recipe for disaster.

Don't piss on the other players' Cheerios

If you're of those who can't understand why using "it's what my character would do!" as an excuse to be an ass-hat to everyone else, then there's nothing I can do for you other than refer you to Andrew Matthews' self-help books.

RTFM

Because eventually I'm going to get fed up with you asking me about the same rule after the 20th time. Also, if you don't know the rules, you don't know your in-game rights either. Viking hats thrive on player ignorance because that enables their control issues. Don't be an enabler for viking hats.

That's what comes to my mind right now.

[Maxus]

As a player, I like playing characters who are more than their race/class, and I enjoy seeing it in other people. Saint Iratus the Paladin is a character played for a few sessions by a friend of mine, for example. He clubbed a hellhound to death with another hellhound (and got Smite Evil with it too), while calling it a fuckrag.

I also like to see it as a DM, and it shows up in my NPCs. In my current campaign, the players have a dwarf gardener who is wider than he is tall and uses a shovel in each hand to move dirt, swears loudly at the plants, and has public executions of the plants that attack him (magic garden).

Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'd rather have monks who are streetfighters and drow with dyed hair and devils who don't backstab you the first chance they get and diplomats who are quite pleasant people. If nothing else, it confuses the hell out of some players.

[mean_liar]

As a mister cavern:

- What player actions do you enjoy handling the most?
- Can you share a few moments when your players did something that made you really glad to be MCing for that particular group?
- Invert the above questions along the entertaining/annoying axis (i.e. players who are asshats or who did something that really frustrated you)

Player actions that I'm not expecting are the best. Most of my games are set around choices between factions: the world pre-exists the characters and whatever Bigass Deal the party is pursuing is also a Bigass Deal to at least two other extant entities with invested values, goals, and plots. To plan a campaign I concept map out the relationships and define who these people are before I assume how they react to the party, but at some point to plan an actual session I have to assume what the party will do... and when that's something I haven't considered, it's because I've only considered the orthodox. Heterodox plot direction is almost always cool, for everyone involved. Because I'm extemporizing the NPC actions in this unexpected scenario things are more alive, and I find myself as GM coming up with new plot directions based on PC actions.

Most of my joyful GM moments come from blowing the players' minds and getting a strong reaction out of them: what they do is less important to me than simply getting a strong, positive audience reaction. The (dwarven) Necromancer everyone was tee'd up to go stomp on because he was raising an army... until they realized that he was raising an army to raze not the nearby human city, but an ancient dwarven one taken over by (agreeable) goblinoids, and he was apparently a blazing racist from waaay back and the party eventually decided that they'd help the guy because the party is also largely racist. There were the cursed-heads-grafted-on-wolves glyph of warding suicide bombers employed in an Island of Dr Moreau adventure. There was the ultimate showdown in space with a recurring antagonist who had shot his tower into a massive sphere of annihilation in space, the party fighting their way up the disintegrating tower to reach the slaad and recover his prisoner before they all were disintegrated. There was the custom PrC tagged onto the villain Forty Poisons in a Fist who had the ability to punch your soul out of your body and prevent resurrection/raise dead attempts, and who subsequently scared the shit out of the PCs.

Meanwhile, players that don't participate, don't roleplay... I hates them. I don't mind player ignorance of the rules - I know the rules, I can tell people what they need to know on the fly ("roll this, add that, try to get this or higher"), but what I can't do is stop a table outside of the player's turn in order to ask them, "hey isn't this scene relevant to your character"? It's one thing to do that in combat when everyone is waiting already, but it's just too disruptive to do that otherwise. I can screen and find good players, I don't want to be stuck with someone who doesn't want to engage with the story. I don't need method acting, but I do need players who will engage with the plot, or have their characters meaningfully engage with the PCs/NPCs.

As a player:

- What kinds of players do you enjoy playing alongside?
- Any standout moments you want to share?
- What kinds of players did you really hate playing alongside?
- Any particular moments, either from generally terrible players or from otherwise mostly okay players?

I like playing alongside players that get the tone of the game. Slapstick teehee players generally make me nuts, but playful players don't. I don't care about their rules knowledge or their ability to minmax or even their ability to roleplay and engage with the game during its play, but I do hate it when they're fucking with the narrative tone. Players that don't get minmax are fine, I look better. Players that don't roleplay well are fine, I'll pitch them lines or ask their characters stuff and if they don't do anything with it, well, I'm happy just to try. But a player that insists that his character is crazy and we're fucking hardened criminals makes me want to kill him and sell his gear but I won't for metagame reasons and that sucks. Quiet players are fine, weak players are fine, but actively negative players are shit and I hate them.

That said, I especially like players that engage with the plot, or the PCs/NPCs. Having a backstory that forces the character to have an opinion about things or people is key from the perspective of a GM, but in other players I can take it or leave it... but I'd prefer to take it. They make the game interesting and alive. Players that are plotters, that engage the game from a disinterested player-only perspective are fine and useful, but I'd rather have a player that had their character make the in-game world feel more alive with their actions and words than a player that made the metagame plot pursuit more effective. Ideally they're doing both.

I'm an awesome player. All my moments are awesome. My metagame has previously been disruptive because I'm a minmaxer, but I'm 37 and have learned how to tone it down for the group such that I'm hot shit compared to whoever I'm playing with and under, but not disruptively hot shit. That took a long time to learn. Longer than it should have.

[radthemad4]

Thanks guys