Is it possible for a group to be friends on very good terms with each other, yet incompatible as a gaming group?
I think I am a reasonably experienced GM. Due to a schedule involving multiple six-hour sessions per week, I have logged about ~180 sessions (according to my logs) since December 2014.
During those sessions, one player ("Player X") has been in all but about half a dozen of them. Furthermore, there is another friend I have been GMing for regularly ("Player Y").
Players X and Y were the only two players in two of my recent campaigns. One ran for 24 sessions before we agreed that nobody was enjoying themselves, and another ran for 17 sessions before my players told me that they were not having fun and that I should end the game.
Those two campaigns were fraught with, as my players said, poorly handled GMing. After every session, I would ask how I handled that session, and there was:
- A ~67% chance that one or both would complain about my GMing in a way that implied they disliked the session. I would engage in a several-hour-long (not an exaggeration) argument to clarify what they wanted, and then capitulate to their requests.
- A ~33% chance that everything went relatively fine.
No matter how much I tried to improve, there was always a ~67% chance that I would greatly fumble. I would always try to cater to their requests, but doing so was often met with "You catered to our request, but not in the way we had in mind." A few sessions down the line, I would then receive a request that was mutually exclusive with a previous one.
This makes me consider that my two players do not know what they want and are inept at expressing their preferences. It also makes me think that I am incapable of discerning what my players truly want, seeing how I have attempted to cater to them across many sessions, yet fail to please.
My players now refuse to explain what I am doing wrong with my GMing, because apparently, I am too dense. What can I do to rectify all of this?
>>46123021
>Is it possible for a group to be friends on very good terms with each other, yet incompatible as a gaming group?
Yes
>>46123045
And how can this be solved?
>>46125685
It can't. Be can be similar and different on varying levels and attempting to change them into something they aren't will merely make them hate you and what you're aiming them towards.
Sadly you and your players are somewhat inept in social skills and can't express yourselves or understand others fully and this cannot be remedied its merely who you are.
Best bet is go on the arduous journey of finding one of those special GM's everybody loves and latch onto him like a leech together as a 3 man player group. Be ready however, as i mentioned earlier, you all aren't social butterflies which also means finding a GM that will put up with your shit.
>>46125881
Autocorrect somehow turned People into Be.
>>46123021
Honestly bro, the fact that you measure your career in "sessions according to my logs" instead of "campaigns we've run" or "the times we did those awesome things" is an enormous red flag, as is the fact that your entire post absolutely reeks of utter disdain for your players. You don't "cater" to them, you're not a gorram restaurant, man. You guys work together to write a story that everyone can look back on and be proud of. You give and you take, and you respect the hell out of each other. If a link in that chain is weak, it's gonna break, like yours have.
Could be you just don't have the spark. Not everyone's cut out to craft worlds. Nothing to be ashamed of. Go back to playing, and see if you can get along that way.
>>46128345
If I was not attempting to give and take and respect the players, I would not be asking them for their honest opinion after each session, hearing out complaints over the course of a several-hour-long argument, and then promising to address those complaints in the next sessions to come.
Can this "spark" ever be ignited if attempting to ignite it over ~180 sessions has failed?
>>46123021
>A few sessions down the line, I would then receive a request that was mutually exclusive with a previous one.
you're fucking autistic
>>46125685
>And how can this be solved?
why do you think it can be solved?
"is it possible for a group of good friends to be incompatible as a gaming group" - yes, you fucking idiot, in the EXTREMELY trivial case that one or more of them does not particularly enjoy RPGs. Other counterexamples abound. It's not some kind of way out there problem that we have to be able to bring back to the solution space somehow. Some friends just don't fucking interact that way.
>>46129276
>180
>fucking
>sessions
I've run barely half that and never run into those problems. If you're having this much trouble with your 'friends' you need to seriously take stock of your life
>>46129449
Writing 180 out made me realize something
180 sessions
~3 hrs a session
~2 hrs of post sessions arguing
37.5 days of doing
You have spent more than a month of your life doing something you don't enjoy. You need to seriously get your shot together
>>46129433
>you're fucking autistic
I am.
>why do you think it can be solved?
I have been attempting to better establish compromises with the group, because we came together because of RPGs, and it would be wasteful for me to not attempt to GM a game for them.
>>46129629
Each session is roughly ~6 hours long. Our arguments are several hours long as well; the argument that started with "We do not wish to play in this game any longer" lasted for about ~5 hours judging from my Skype logs.
Bear in mind that it was only really the 24-session campaign (that had to end early) and the 17-session campaign (that likewise had to end early) where the problems truly began to surface, because those were the games where Players X and Y were together (as the only players as well).
>>46129739
>we came together because of RPGs, and it would be wasteful for me to not attempt to GM a game for them.
my primary friend group came together because of mafia and because of magic: the gathering
i have long since sworn off both games in disgust, because mafia is tedious political bullshit and magic: the gathering is a competitive game which means "1 or 2 actually competent players are hugely favored to win against the swarms of scrubs"
And yet the friend group remains intact, and my place within the friend group remains secure. Because we're on very good terms with each other.
Conceptually, abstractly, "it would be wasteful" to not try to GM a game for these people. However, practically, as shown by the data, it distinctly IS wasteful to try to GM a game for these people. Look at what reality is telling you, accept that some configurations of people just fail for reasons that are beyond the average person's ability to fully understand, and shove the issue on the bottom of the to-do list
also i didn't realize this initially because you had only posted twice but if you're THE touhoufag i'm sorry for being so abrasive, you's a vet, mad props
>>46128345
How do I know if I have the spark?
>>46132312
You don't, because that's just bullshit. Surely you've run at least one successful campaign - the players are responsible for how they turn out as well.
>>46134844
>Surely you've run at least one successful campaign
The answer is, unfortunately, "No, I have not." I thought that the most recent campaign would be the one to be brought to a conclusion, but it turns out that my players simply were not having fun at all.
>>46134928
Then look for some more players, or think back on the last time you had fun as a player and try to recreate that.
>>46134928
Different players have different goals when they play tabletop RPGs. Sometimes those goals are incompatible, or as you say, mutually exclusive. Sometimes personalities naturally clash.
What kind of requests did they ask you to cater too?
>>46135032
>think back on the last time you had fun as a player and try to recreate that
I started off doing this (patterning myself off the GMing style of my favorite GM) at the start of the 24-session campaign, and that was met with deep and unabiding scorn for my GMing style. It turned out that what I enjoy as a player is *vastly* different from what they would enjoy as players.
>>46135049
>What kind of requests did they ask you to cater too?
Within the past several sessions alone, requests have included:
- Sessions with a focus on pleasant, slice-of-life-y interactions with singular NPCs, because they apparently like my NPCs and want to get to know them more on non-plot-related terms. Bear in mind that some of my sessions involved talking to a single NPC for *more than half of the session*, and the players still felt like they had not talked to that NPC enough and that I was being hasty by seguing them out of the conversation. My players insist that I have excellent NPCs, but that I never use them properly because I try to push things along towards actual adventuring.
- The conversations ideally should not have to do with in-game investigation, research, information gathering, or planning, because the players apparently dislike doing that. They are the type to jump into situations without any information on hand, because doing prepwork or "playing 20 questions" (as they call it) bores them.
- An interesting, epic battle once every two sessions, with a formidable opponent, interesting terrain, and so on.
(Continued.)
>>46135142
- More personal investment in any given quest. That is, most, if not all, quests should either play to a PC's direct motivations and goals (a bit difficult for me when it is so hard to receive an answer that is *not* vague and noncommittal), or start off with a PC or a beloved NPC being personally wronged or imperiled. I have been trying to do this throughout both campaigns, but I am apparently awful at it, because in their words, "I had no emotional connection to anything happening really because I did not know anything about anyone" (again, despite the fact that some sessions were more than 50% talking to a single NPC).
- An interesting storyline with unexpected twists and turns, riveting antagonists, intriguing dynamics between multiple factions, and plenty of situations where the characters are thrown into new locations against their will and forced to adapt to a sticky situation.
- To quote, "I want something more personal. I want to be as motivated about doing things as my character is. I want to learn about the NPCs, from what they like to eat to deep secrets. I want to help likeable NPCs and ruin shit for dickhead NPCs. I want to save up resources or gather allies for a long term plan and change the world. I want to make decisions that have consequences for everyone involved. I want to go where I want, when I want, with my own plans and goals. I don't want to save the world for some people I hardly know."
You might notice that some of these are mutually exclusive, such as the penultimate request and the "I want to go where I want, when I want, with my own plans and goals." Naturally, I have to try to strike a balance between them, but that balance is virtually impossible to find.
These requests might sound simple on paper, but I have been trying to fulfill them for quite some time now, and my attempts are usually met with "You catered to our request, but not in the way we had in mind, so it was still unfun." Even the execution has to be exact.
>>46135172
This is just for the past several sessions. It is far from an exhaustive list, and I could fill up this entire thread with the myriad requests I had received.
Bear in mind that each request took an arduous, several-hour-long (usually 5 hours) argument to pin down what the players seemed to want, because they are very poor at expressing themselves, and my ability to gauge others' intentions and preferences is essentially nil.
What is even more frustrating is that these players are veteran GMs themselves (one has logged even more sessions than I have), so they know what it is like to be behind the screen.
Furthermore, on the occasions wherein I have brought these players of mine to games under *other*, flakier, short-lived GMs, their standards suddenly lower to the point of nonexistence. The GM can metaphorically phone in a zero-effort, shoddy session, they will be entirely approving and praising of the GM, and I will be raising my contentions with the GM because I did not find the session particularly high-quality myself.
I am wholly baffled as to what I am to do here other than disband the group.
>>46123021
Have you ever not posted touhou pictures touhouguy?
>>46135142
>>46135172
Your images and situation are making me feel sad. Your players have very high expectations.
Regarding "I want to go where I want, when I want, with my own plans and goals.", it is referring to player agency. The players need to be able to solve problems the way they choose to, and also need the freedom to have their characters make decisions that will shape and change the story.
But if you give the players pure agency, and the world is only created by their decisions and only goes in the direction that they intend, the players will end up wandering around aimlessly with no goal.
If the players have no agency, you are 'railroading' them. If you let them go and do anything they want, then it is a 'sandbox' with no goal, story, or direction.
"I have to try to strike a balance between them" This is true. The balance also changes based on who you are GMing for, and even on the mood that the players have at the time.
>>46135142
>>46135172
Also of note is that I do not agree with many of these requests myself.
I certainly do not feel like spending entire sessions embroiled in a conversation with a single NPC; I want actual adventuring to happen.
I am a *great* fan of in-game investigation, research, information gathering, and planning, and to see my players wholly disinterested in such a thing is crushing.
I want to run games about idealized heroes, and I do not think personal investment is all that necessary when it comes to heroics. My definition of a good fictional hero entail "At the end of the day, results are what matter" and "The greatest good for the greatest number of people." I consider it inexcusably selfish, trite, and full of double standards to consider saving a single NPC friend to be more "heroic" than saving a far larger quantity of people.
My players constantly call my ways of thinking in this regard too "cold" or "pragmatic," and it puzzles me as to why this is a bad thing.
Here is another very recent request that puzzles me. One plot device I like to use is "You cannot solve this problem with your own magical powers; you will need [an NPC/a place of power/a MacGuffin magic item] to do so, but that NPC/place/item is currently very difficult to access, so you are going to have to overcome a handful of obstacles just to reach it. That is how you get to show how competent your character is."
*However*, my players dislike this, because it does not make them feel like their characters are capable if they ultimately have to utilitze an external NPC/place/item to solve a problem. They would much rather wield their own magical problems to solve any given problem, which... strikes me as something that will grow old and repetitive very quickly. Furthermore, considering that the NPC/location/item would have been unavailable had the PCs not been there to intervene with their own powers, the PCs are just as instrumental, if not more, to the end result of saving the day.
>>46135198
"my ability to gauge others' intentions and preferences is essentially nil"
This is probably the biggest major problem. You need to be able to figure out how your players are feeling, and respond, which is difficult for you.
"The GM can metaphorically phone in a zero-effort, shoddy session, they will be entirely approving and praising of the GM"
It is possible that you are overdeveloping your campaigns. I have started ad hoc sessions with almost no preparation and had players enjoy it very much.
>>46135251
The problem with the request regarding:
>"I want to go where I want, when I want, with my own plans and goals."
Is that, in my mind, it is mutually exclusive with:
>- More personal investment in any given quest. That is, most, if not all, quests should either play to a PC's direct motivations and goals (a bit difficult for me when it is so hard to receive an answer that is *not* vague and noncommittal), or start off with a PC or a beloved NPC being personally wronged or imperiled. I have been trying to do this throughout both campaigns, but I am apparently awful at it, because in their words, "I had no emotional connection to anything happening really because I did not know anything about anyone" (again, despite the fact that some sessions were more than 50% talking to a single NPC).
>- An interesting storyline with unexpected twists and turns, riveting antagonists, intriguing dynamics between multiple factions, and plenty of situations where the characters are thrown into new locations against their will and forced to adapt to a sticky situation.
How am I suppose to tailor an interesting storyline, villains, plot hooks with personal investment, unexpected twists and turns (which often throw characters into new locations against their will) while also allowing the players to go where they want, when they want, and with their own plans and goals?
My players seem extremely fickle in this regard.
>>46135282
I have attempted varying ratios of well-planned sessions to improvised sessions, and no ratio seems to make for a consistently enjoyable session.
Besides, my players express that I should plan more, and actually *regularly* chide me for having sessions that are "not well-planned" or something to that effect. I have brought these players to GMs who had to improvise on the spot and pushed out *very poor* sessions by my quality standards, and these players were praising those GMs. It is completely nonsensical to me.
>>46135258
"I am a *great* fan of in-game investigation, research, information gathering, and planning, and to see my players wholly disinterested in such a thing is crushing."
I also find this odd. I am currently a player under a GM who does the complete opposite, and I find it very irritating. I assume it is just their personal preference.
"I do not think personal investment is all that necessary when it comes to heroics"
This is logically true, that the results matter more than pure emotional reward of saving someone they care about. However, emotional satisfaction and enjoyment are often the main goals behind playing a tabletop RPG.
The purpose of heroic stories is usually the emotional, physical, and psychological development of the hero, or the PCs in this case. The players want to feel the emotions of their characters, and these emotions need to be invoked. In heroic stories, many characters are created specifically for this purpose.
"I want something more personal. I want to be as motivated about doing things as my character is. I want to learn about the NPCs, from what they like to eat to deep secrets. I want to help likeable NPCs and ruin shit for dickhead NPCs."
They want you to create a victim character. This character should be good to them, so that they will like this character. Then the antagonist should hurt or make the victim character suffer in some way. This makes the players dislike and hate the antagonist. Then when they attack and defeat the antagonist, they feel good because they hurt someone they disliked. This also helps the victim character, who is grateful to the PCs. This way, the players are happy to be thanked by someone they like. I believe this is what your players are talking about.
>>46135318
>How am I suppose to tailor an interesting storyline, villains, plot hooks with personal investment, unexpected twists and turns (which often throw characters into new locations against their will) while also allowing the players to go where they want, when they want, and with their own plans and goals?
This seems entirely possible to me. Have a few rough ideas in mind for potential locations, and develop a few encounters that you can use on the way to either of them. Make a few changes to each based on what the players do, and you can use those sudden interruptions/twists to give you enough time to plan/prepare for their ultimate destination.
Having personal plot hooks isn't too hard either - make some known npcs (although family members are a bit overused) vital ritual components/sacrifices required to do some great evil.
And really, accounting for player plans and goals is easy. Your players will flat out tell you, in-character and out of character, what they want to do. Figure out a bunch of interesting obstacles between them and accomplishing their goals, and let them slowly move forwards on that front as the game progresses.
>>46135258
Your post makes me really sad, cause last week, i think that a little accident in a session would be the end of two different game with my best friend.
So, let's say that what you're saying is exactly how and what happened.
The others anons are right, you do have a problem by failling to see what entertains your player. The fact that they enjoy the campaign of ohters GM while not being so demanding is because of your relation with them. They do seem to expect a freaking lot from you.
Plus, your style of GMing sounds the opposite of their style of playing (you like selfless hero, they want driven goals, maybe playing another game less heroic like Shadowrun may do the trick to meet with your players).
More than exclusive, those requests of them are absurd. Because it's not up to you to make a world that they will want to defend. It's an exchange. You're supposed to create a lot of little things that COULD interest them, and then they do express said interest (by asking about said things, interacting with it) which will make create more about it.
From what you wrote, it really feels like you and your players think that you're supposed to do all the work. Honestly, if a player feels like he should do what he wants when he wants (assuming it's not a premade campaign) well, he simply has to do it, try it, instead of keeping such desire for himself.
And as for a solution, i can't really think of any expect changing game. It really looks like they want a lot while not doing efforts themselves.
Have you tried talking to them about this peculiar issue? That you actually fail at doing a campaign that pleases them? What was their answer? Or do they just want to quit because they are not having fun.wouldn't want to push it further, but it's sad if they are so lazy friend as wanting to stop rather than imprve things. Try to ask THEM to do things for you.
>>46135318
OP, let me tell you a story,
I was in your shoes once, I was running failed campaign, after failed campaign, each one fizzled out as one by one players stopped showing up until I was sitting by myself. They all wanted the same thing, to play skyrim. That's really what they wanted, they wanted and open world where they could do whatever, where consequences came, but could be fought. I didn't know how to run this magical fairy tale they wanted. So I spent some time building a sandbox campaign. Set in post-zombie apocalypse Connecticut. My players loved the idea, I put them in an abandoned house. They built up defenses and gathered supplies, aaaaaaaand..... Now we're bored. So I had a police car drive by, a friendly cop stepped out and gave a group of looters a parking ticket. They fell in love with this loyal to a fault cop, and soon they kept looking to me to give them a story, rather than trying to get rid of any story I had made. It was the best campaign I ever ran and I learned soo much from it. OP, don't give up on your players, build a campaign in which they want a story and can feel like they directly affect it, and you'll go far.
>>46135258
>They would much rather wield their own magical problems to solve any given problem
This is because it is more satisfying to accomplish the goal using their own power, than having someone else do it for them. It is a power fantasy, they want to feel powerful. Being dependent on external forces diminishes this.
>>46135318
"Besides, my players express that I should plan more, and actually *regularly* chide me for having sessions that are "not well-planned" or something to that effect. I have brought these players to GMs who had to improvise on the spot and pushed out *very poor* sessions by my quality standards, and these players were praising those GMs. It is completely nonsensical to me."
I suspect that it is not the amount of planning, but how you plan. Good GMing should be a mix of both planning and improvisation, or even planned improvisation. There should be major plot scenes that you have planned, but how they get to those scenes should be there own decision.
You said that the GMs had to improvise on the spot. As a GM, I already have a few preplanned stock adventures and characters that I could use anytime without much thought. It's possible that the sessions were a lot more planned than they seemed.
"How am I suppose to tailor an interesting storyline, villains, plot hooks with personal investment, unexpected twists and turns (which often throw characters into new locations against their will) while also allowing the players to go where they want, when they want, and with their own plans and goals?"
>>46135395
>However, emotional satisfaction and enjoyment are often the main goals behind playing a tabletop RPG.
>The purpose of heroic stories is usually the emotional, physical, and psychological development of the hero, or the PCs in this case.
I partake emotional satisfaction and enjoyment from making an impact on a game world in a positive way. Results are what matter to me: between course of action A that greatly improves the lives of X upstanding members of society over the course of Y decades to come, and course of action B that greatly improves the lives of 10X upstanding members of society over the course of Y decades to come, I will consider the latter the far more compelling and satisfying course of action to take even if it does not involve any personally related NPCs. That is what "The greatest good for the greatest number of people" means to me in fictional hero stories.
>>46135395
>>46135417
>They want you to create a victim character.
>make some known npcs (although family members are a bit overused) vital ritual components/sacrifices required to do some great evil.
I actually did exactly this at one point (involving a trumpet archon, the plane of Pandemonium, a living phoenix, and a dead phoenix elder god), involving a friend of both characters, but this was met with distaste because I sprung the news of that NPC's capture at the wrong time: the PCs were speaking to another NPC whom they liked, and the players were disappointed that they did not get to continue their conversation.
Apparently, I can give the players exactly what they want, but if it is not timed and executed *perfectly*, it will not be to their standards.
Even if I did execute it perfectly, it seems utterly trite to me that heroes would only ever be interested in doing things because they or their friends were personally wronged. It comes across as self-centered. Does that not defeat the point of playing a compassionate character?
>>46135496
Anon from zombie sandbox post, random encounter tables m8, I wrote nearly 20 pages of zombie themed random encounter tables, then had a surrounding area with supplies and buildings, I then wrote up groups that would inhabit the area, what they looked like, what they wanted, and one weird quirk about them. I am a pretty good improv guy, I've done a bit of stage acting with an improv scene, I like the challenge of story telling on the spot, but mybe that's just me. Writing out bulleted 1 or 2 sentence points of each encounter to occur in that session aslo helps. And dude, six hour sessions! Are your crazy! Run two to four hour sessions, running an adventure for that long makes things boring, no matter how exciting of a DM you are.
>>46135417
>>46135553
I am not a fan of random encounters (or even "random" encounters) en route to a destination unless they are directly related to what the players will be doing at their destination.
This is something I am not going to budge on under any circumstances. If I am on a quest to do X, the last thing I want is some one-off quirky event unrelated to X (or any future plotlines, for that matter) interrupting that quest, because at the end of the day, results are what matter to me, and anything that does not assist in bringing quest X to a conclusion is a waste of time to me.
They do not mesh with my GMing style at all.
>>46135496
>This is because it is more satisfying to accomplish the goal using their own power, than having someone else do it for them. It is a power fantasy, they want to feel powerful. Being dependent on external forces diminishes this.
This is illogical to me, because the PCs' presence and application of their own powers is *necessary* for the end result of "the NPC/location/item applies its own power to solve the problem."
If there is a rift in the center of the multiverse that is wrecking all reality, and the PCs need to retrieve a certain artifact that can mend it, but must go through several trials and tribulations simply to reach it, is it not heroic for the PCs to finally attain and employ that artifact? Why is it suddenly unsatisfying because "It was not our own powers that sealed the rift; it was this artifact's"?
>>46129739
>>46134928
>>46135142
>>46135172
>>46135198
>>46135258
>>46135318
>>46135496
>>46135507
get over yourself. Take some time away from roleplaying and figure out what the fuck you want to do with your life. It doesn't even sound like you enjoy roleplaying.
>>46135507
>"I will consider the latter the far more compelling"
"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
We cannot fully feel the sorrow of a million deaths. We're not emotionally capable of it. But we can look at one person's suffering and empathize with them fully. For many, it is not about how big the number of people saved is, but about how much you want to save them. It is selfish.
"only ever be interested in doing things because they or their friends were personally wronged"
It should not be that they are only doing things because they have personal emotional investment, but it should be in addition to. Without the emotional investment, players cannot identify with their character's problems, and won't be immersed in the setting.
>>46135623
>"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
This is rhetoric that I can never quite understand myself. Nobody can feel the sorrow of a million deaths, but people can have an idea of the impact that would have on a city's economy, their families' finances, whatever they were contributing to society (e.g. the loss of a million scientists and engineers is obviously a massive blow towards society's technological progression), and so on and so forth. When all of this taken into account, the death of a single person is but a mere triviality in comparison... unless, of course, that single person has the capacity to sway society towards more
If anything, is it not substantially more heroic to offer succor to someone whom one never knew today, rather than help someone simply because they were a friend? If the hero in question can create a greater amount of good for a far larger quantity of people, then all the better.
>It should not be that they are only doing things because they have personal emotional investment, but it should be in addition to. Without the emotional investment, players cannot identify with their character's problems, and won't be immersed in the setting.
I do not understand why it is necessary at all, but I have been trying to cater to it nevertheless even though it makes little sense to me.
Hypothesis; C and Z enjoy other games more, because the amount of effort they have to put in to other more shoddy games is much less than the amount of effort they have to put into your games to get fun out of them.
Evidence for this:
1: Both of them aren't too thrilled by investigative matters, legwork or going over things/places in the past
2: At least one has to go through hour long arguments with you 2 out of 3 games.
Given that, while your games might have a good amount of enjoyment in them, they are a lot more draining than if they were not. That means they're having to do too much thinking to get fun out of it.
From that perspective, then, translating the other comments:
"You need to prep sessions more thoroughly" = please prepare sessions catering to our wishes without needing to go over every detail with us.
"I want to go where I want, when I want, with my own plans and goals." = I don't want to have to track all the other intrigue going on, I just want to do what's in front of me and have things fall into place.
Effectively, the playstyles are clashing too much; in order to run a game for them that they enjoy you'd need to play a much more social, simpler game that requires less involvement and depth, frankly, involving more characterized individuals and social interactions.
As I believe you are aware, that is not one of your fortes.
Therefore, if you want your players to have a good game, you'll either have to force yourself to do social interactions that you both are unskilled at and have a distaste to (GM something you're both not fantastic at and don't want to anyway), or see if there's a GM better suited to doing this for them and co-GMing the mechanical side of things.
Or find some players who would enjoy the investigative, researching and legwork style of things. I'm sure there aren't a huge shortage of those.
(Too many people posting touhou images; can we have only the the OP posting them for clearness?)
Greetings anon,
I'm not a player in OP's games, but I'm an observer who was brought on to watch the goings-on and help "translate" between the players and the DMs, in order to help overcome their communication problems. Let me see if I can give a different perspective on things.
-
OP is nothing if not a hardworking DM, and from what I can tell the players are perfectly fine players as well. In my opinion, there are 2 crippling, fundamental issues that's the source of the gaming group's problems:
1) Due to OP's literal autism, as they mentioned earlier here >>46129739, OP has a vastly different perspective on things and has immense difficulty intuiting what people actually want and reading the atmosphere. As a result, OP is forced to ask many, many questions about things to understand them where most other people would intuit the issue immediately. This means that questions about problems can turn into hours long discussions that can be very draining on the parties. And THAT means the players have trouble communicating properly to OP. This is the source of the communication problem.
2) As also mentioned before, OP and the players have vastly different views on games. My impression is that OP sees the plot as a task to be completed, and should be given ultimate priority. The players, on the other hand, much like most other people, view the plot as something that frames the story and are ultimately more interested in the cool NPCs they meet and RPing with them. The players want motivation for saving the world beyond "we're heroes so we must save the world"; the OP thinks this is a bizarre concern to have.
(Continued)
>>46135772
>Hypothesis; C and Z enjoy other games more, because the amount of effort they have to put in to other more shoddy games is much less
>Evidence:
>1: Both of them aren't too thrilled by investigative matters, legwork or going over things/places in the past
>2: At least one has to go through hour long arguments with you 2 out of 3 games.
This hypothesis does not hold water to me. I had discarded investigations, research, and legwork long ago. Furthermore, the players have to argue with me *because* they find many things to complain about with my games.
Does it not stand to reason that if they disliked other GMs' games, they would complain about *those* GMs as well? And yet they do not.
>prepare sessions catering to our wishes
Discerning what they would like in any upcoming session is nearly impossible for me.
>I don't want to have to track all the other intrigue going on, I just want to do what's in front of me and have things fall into place.
I was afraid of this, because it means that even trying to insert subtle amounts of intrigue or in-depth puzzle-solving (not literal dungeon puzzles, but rather "How are we to solve this issue that *seemingly* has no solution anywhere in sight?").
>involving more characterized individuals and social interactions.
>As I believe you are aware, that is not one of your fortes.
You are correct; well-characterized individuals and social interactions are not my forte at all. I cannot understand any of my NPCs' motivations myself, and I do not know what NPCs would be thinking at any given moment. *However*, I am apparently good enough at running NPCs that my players greatly enjoy speaking to those NPCs, to the point wherein they request that even more session time (potentially even an entire session) be spent conversing with an NPC one-on-one.
This is highly awkward for me, because I do not actually know what I am doing right. I should be unskilled at this, and yet the NPCs somehow endear themselves to the players.
>>46135604
"anything that does not assist in bringing quest X to a conclusion is a waste of time to me."
Combat is also an enjoyable mental exercise. If my player's energy level's are getting low, and they are tiring of narration and dialogue and need something more stimulating, I will cause a short combat to start.
Likewise, I also do the opposite. If the players are getting tired of excessive combat and over stimulation, I'll make it so that the combat ends earlier, so they can do something less mentally demanding and recover, such as simply narrative or dialogue.
It may not progress the important quest in the game, but it is important to the player's enjoyment.
>Why is it suddenly unsatisfying because "It was not our own powers that sealed the rift; it was this artifact's"?
It is not unsatisfying, it is just less so because they themselves were the ones that changed the world positively with their own power, and they can take pride in that.
>>46135772
>Too many people posting touhou images
I will stop. Sorry about that, I got carried away.
>>46135831
(Continued)
To use a metaphor...
Imagine that OP, as DM, is the host of a dinner party, and the players are guests. Both parties understand that "dinner party" involves food, so OP prepares something to eat.
Unfortunately, OP's interpretation of "dinner party" is different from the players'. OP thinks the main point of a dinner party is to serve your guests nutritious food and then send them back to let them get on in their lives. The players think of "dinner parties" as times to socialize and have fun, and the actual act of refueling yourself kinda takes a backseat to things.
Comes dinner time, the players arrive and OP brings out the food.
The food turns out to be plates of bland gruel. The players are, understandably, baffled and maybe even a little irritated--you don't normally expect nice dinner parties to consist of what looks like grey oatmeal, even if that's technically food and food is what they implicitly asked for. What the players might not know--or care--is that OP spent hours and hours figuring out how to make the gruel as nutrient-dense as they could, and trying to cook it to perfect consistency. 3 plates of this gruel and you've gotten your daily dose of vitamins, minerals, carbs, protein, and calories. Unfortunately, it still tastes like plain oatmeal.
Everyone starts tucking into the food. When the players try to bring up some small talk, OP grows impatient because the more people the talk, the less efficiently they can consume the food. When the food's all finished and the dinner is technically over, OP shoes them out of the house so the players can get back to their lives--the players, on the other hand, are annoyed that they don't get a chance to settle down and talk over drinks.
-
From my observations, this is basically how a lot of OP's sessions go. This is just my perspective, though, so take it with a pinch of salt.
>>46135906
>From my observations, this is basically how a lot of OP's sessions go.
I believe your observations are spot on. I've worked with some young autistic people as part of my job, and I fully understand why OP finds this difficult.
The players seek emotional satisfaction, and the GM seeks pure actions that give positive results to the world. The reason the GM and players are having difficulties is because their motives for playing the game are almost mutually exclusive.
>>46135906
As an observer, I'm interested in what you have to say about OP's NPC characters.
"You are correct; well-characterized individuals and social interactions are not my forte at all. I cannot understand any of my NPCs' motivations myself, and I do not know what NPCs would be thinking at any given moment. *However*, I am apparently good enough at running NPCs that my players greatly enjoy speaking to those NPCs, to the point wherein they request that even more session time (potentially even an entire session) be spent conversing with an NPC one-on-one.
This is highly awkward for me, because I do not actually know what I am doing right. I should be unskilled at this, and yet the NPCs somehow endear themselves to the players."
Why do the players enjoy talking to OP's characters so much? So much so, that they are happy to talk to them for six hour sessions?
>>46136042
From what I saw, the OP is actually quite skilled at writing colorful characters who seem fun to interact with. I can't say whether those characters are necessarily complex, but each NPC the party comes across seemed unique with vivid personalities, whether they're smug talking cats or a fallen phoenix literally insane with grief.
>>46135417
>Your players will flat out tell you, in-character and out of character, what they want to do.
It would help if they actually told me what their characters' overall drives and motivations were.
Come to think of it, they probably *did* tell me, but I did not understand them (because, again, I am very poor at discerning the meaning of even the most basic of requests, thus prompting several-hour-long arguments), causing me to gloss over them.
>>46135457
>The fact that they enjoy the campaign of ohters GM while not being so demanding is because of your relation with them.
And what relation is this specifically?
>you like selfless hero, they want driven goals, maybe playing another game less heroic
They want to play reasonably heroic characters as well. It is simply that their definition of "heroic" happens to involve "must have some personal stake in what is going on."
>You're supposed to create a lot of little things that COULD interest them, and then they do express said interest (by asking about said things, interacting with it)
Gauging whether or not players are actually interested in something (as opposed to merely interacting with it out of an obligated sense that "This is what we need to do to make progress") has proven very difficult for me; the only thing I know they are interested in is my NPCs.
My players also seem to dislike it whenever I ask OOC something like "Is this interesting to you?" or "Are you finding this enjoyable?", presumably because it breaks their flow.
Thus, I cannot gauge what interests my players or what bores them, and they *dislike* being asked such things out-of-character, and so I am reduced to pure guesswork.
>>46136042
>>46136078
I have no idea what makes my NPCs entertaining to interact with. I honestly could not tell you what makes NPC X different from NPC Y or Z, because they all blend together as faceless blobs with roughly the same personality. I cannot empathize with them in any way.
>>46136078
That is absolutely fascinating, and quite inspiring for me.
OP, if this is what your players' enjoy, and you want them to enjoy your game sessions, then focus on the NPC characters. Make a world filled with characters that have unique and vivid personalities, and give each of them a problem that they need help with. Instead of helping or saving thousands of people, let them help one person at a time. I know it is inefficient, but I believe your players might enjoy it more.
Otherwise, you need to alter the purpose of the game.
>>46136171
I am not the person you are responding to, but:
>And what relation is this specifically?
They are your friends. If they do not know the other GMs very well, they may not criticize honestly, or believe that if they criticize them too harshly, they will be upset and stop being their friend. Because you have a strong friendship with them (I assume) they are probably much more honest about their criticism, because they know their relationship with you will not be damaged by the criticism.
> It is simply that their definition of "heroic" happens to involve "must have some personal stake in what is going on."
It is not their definition of "heroic". It is their definition of "human". If they did everything with no concern to their personal stakes, they are an embodiment of perfect human morality, which humans cannot be. The heroic story is not about being the perfect hero, but about the main characters trying to get closer to that ideal, or being forced to. If they start as perfectly selfless, the story has finished before it as already started.
"presumably because it breaks their flow."
Yes. Starting an out of character conversation reminds them that they are in the real world, and not in the game world.It takes effort to refocus their minds to get back into the game world.
>I am reduced to pure guesswork.
Yes. It is unfortunately a major problem.
>they all blend together as faceless blobs with roughly the same personality
Yet they percieve the complete opposite, or your characters are unique and vivid without you realising. That's amazing.
The oatmeal analogy sounds spot on for this.
It sounds like it's someone else's time to "cook." You can only eat and enjoy so much oatmeal, variety is the spice of life. You sound like you need to punch out for a while & take a break.
Give both of the other players a chance to GM, play a different system, use a different setting, whatever you can to collectively change it up.
Then when that game gets old, the other player GM's for both of you + whomever else. Then you get time to enjoy yourself as a player, and time off to recharge your creative/GM "batteries."
I think everyone would benefit from a change in perspective, in time hopefully you'll be less stubborn and tone-deaf, and they'll be less demanding as players, while learning to communicate better. For example, giving you better plot hooks in their backgrounds and interactions to clue you in where to guide things, while having a good time too. IF YOU'RE NOT ENJOYING YOURSELF THEN DO NOT CONTINUE ON YOUR PRESENT COURSE OF ACTION.
If/when they do GM for you, try not to carry too obvious of a grudge, being salty will feed into a toxic environment (especially when you bring in new players, see if you can get 1-2 more, 3 total players is too of a small group IMO) but instead observe how they go about enjoying themselves, & what they focus & linger on.
Also, JFC, don't play more than weekly, & for more than 4 hours at a time! You can have too much of what was once a good thing! That's 1 reason things prolly feel so stale, other than your small group size.
& hell, if none of our advice helps, then acknowledge that your play-style doesn't mesh well with that of the other 2 players. A bad group is worse than none at all. Your time is your most valuable resource, assuming no one is paying you to GM. Find other interests & hobbies, & make new friends thru them. GM'ing is not supposed to be like a job, jobs are for pay, hobbies are for fun experiences, with or without friends involved.
>it's a Touhoufag thread
>>46136442
I don't have a problem with this.
>>46136171
>with roughly the same personality
If they all have the same personality, then what is that personality? Could you describe it?
>>46136485
For what it's worth, from my observations none of the NPCs had "roughly the same personality". Off the top of my head I remember the following NPCs:
A talking cat
A fallen phoenix mad with grief
Some sort of...evil creature related to nightmares somehow (I forget the exact details of what they were)
A petitioner of Pandemonium who had a screw loose
None of these NPCs felt like they had roughly the same personality, to me. The talking cat, as I recall, was somewhat condescending, coy, and playful--if you've ever played Dark Souls 2, I was reminded of the character Shalquoir. The mad phoenix was fragile, terrified, and consumed with guilt. The nightmare-creature came off as an arrogant, mustache-twirling evil overlord. The kooky petitioner was one of those giggling, saying-nonsense sort of types who feel like they might not be too out of place in Alice in Wonderland.
Therefore, OP might mean something different by "roughly the same personality", or otherwise misunderstands his own NPCs.
>>46136551
>>46136551
Or it is that his character's have the same base personality, but that the single personality is powerfully reacting based on its different situations and circumstances, resulting in a unique set of reactions to the world and the players. This would make that base personality react as it logically would, causing it to appear as wide variety of different personalities. Maybe.
>>46135457
>Have you tried talking to them about this peculiar issue? That you actually fail at doing a campaign that pleases them? What was their answer?
They had issued a recommendation to stop running games for the group as a whole indefinitely.
However, they are open to me running one-on-one games for both of them separately, which I seem to be significantly more skilled at running.
>>46135494
I am not entirely sure what lesson I am supposed to be taking from this.
>>46135496
>There should be major plot scenes that you have planned, but how they get to those scenes should be there own decision.
That is more or less what I do, and it fails to pan out all the same.
>It's possible that the sessions were a lot more planned than they seemed.
If they *were* planned, then they would be even worse in my eyes, as they were flimsy and generally unentertaining sessions.
>>46135884
How can I tell if my players are getting tired of narration or dialogue, or if they are growing weary of combat?
Remember that I have no capacity whatsoever when it comes to intuiting people's moods (especially online), and the players dislike being asked OOC if they are enjoying the current proceedings, and thus I am reduced to guesswork.
>It is not unsatisfying, it is just less so because they themselves were the ones that changed the world positively with their own power, and they can take pride in that.
But was it not due to *their* actions and *their* powers that the end result of "the artifact is acquired and is used to save the day" to begin with?
>>46136779
>They had issued a recommendation to stop running games for the group as a whole indefinitely.
>...However, they are open to me running one-on-one games for both of them separately
Honestly, it sounds like your players are wanting to just get hold of a pet GM that they can dictate what they want out of it directly without any input from anyone else, so anything they say goes.
>>46137011
That's not the impression I get. I'm not privvy to the players' one-on-one games, but neither player strike me as the sort who wish to dominate OP's DMing.
>>46125685
In my case it cant. Literally have known these people for 3 years and we hangout all the time. The second d&d is said they are ready to play the game. Are they able to roleplay? No. Are they able to cooperate? Mildly. Will they more often then not halt all progress because of petty arguements? Yes.
>>46136779
>I am not entirely sure what lesson I am supposed to be taking from this.
He is saying that good groups don't usually just happen, and that they improve over time until they become good. He is encouraging you keep trying. He is also recommending you to try and do something very different from what you normally do.
>they were flimsy and generally unentertaining sessions
They were by your standards, but not by the standards of your friends. The GMs that your friends enjoyed made the game emotionally enjoyable for them, although you thought they were bad because you measure the game's worth using different values from what they use.
>How can I tell if my players are getting tired of narration or dialogue, or if they are growing weary of combat?
I can't really give any advice that you can use. I read their body language. When people are tired they slump a bit, speak less, the tone of their voice changes, a thousand different things that I can't explain in logical words. I just know. Even with text based games online, the frequency of their writing, the time it takes to respond to a question, the way their phrase their sentences all give slight hints to me. I'm sorry I can't help further. When people are excited and engaged, they will respond faster and type sentences faster. If they are bored or disinterested, both of these will slow down.
>But was it not due to *their* actions and *their* powers that the end result of "the artifact is acquired and is used to save the day" to begin with?
I feel like our argument is becoming recursive. Most people like the idea of being powerful, and being able to control and influence the world around them. If something bad happens, or something they don't like, and they have enough power to prevent it, they like that security. It makes them feel safe. By 'saving the world' using their own power, it makes them feel more powerful than relying on someone else, which makes them feel safer against any future threats.
>>46135831
>As a result, OP is forced to ask many, many questions about things to understand them where most other people would intuit the issue immediately.
This calls into question whether I should be GMing *at all*. It appears that a key skill for a GM is intuiting the players' moods, which is something I am inept at; I will simply always be lacking that critical skill, and thus I will be at an eternal handicap.
>My impression is that OP sees the plot as a task to be completed, and should be given ultimate priority.
I enjoy faster-paced games wherein characters go from plot arc to plot arc, adventure to adventure, saving this world and that, traveling to one exotic location after another. I simply cannot have much of that if the players would prefer to spend an entire session conversing pleasantly with a singular NPC for non-plot-heavy reasons.
>ultimately more interested in the cool NPCs they meet and RPing with them
Which, again, is bizarre, because in my mind, those NPCs serve little purpose but to serve as catalysts, set pieces, and sources of information with regards to the plot... and yet the players latch onto those NPCs regardless.
>beyond "we're heroes so we must save the world"
It is less about saving the world for its own sake as it is about creating the largest positive change for the largest quantity of people, effectively creating a benevolent impact on the game world. If they lollygag throughout most sessions, then they will be instigating less positive change upon the world, and thus their status as heroes is questionable in my eyes.
>>46137372
Try reading books or watching TV shows that aren't 'save the world' narratives. Whenever a character does something, stop and ask yourself:
-Why did the character do that?
-What is the character thinking?
-What does the character not know that I do know?
-How will other characters react to what this character is doing?
And so on. If you can't figure it out, that's okay. Keep practicing until you can figure it out naturally.
Most people learn these sort of skills unconsciously, both in the womb and in the early years after they are born. You, however, will have to consciously train this skill.
One more thing: lie to yourself. Encourage yourself to believe you can learn how to understand others. If you repeat this often enough and strongly enough, it will come true.
>This calls into question whether I should be GMing *at all*. It appears that a key skill for a GM is intuiting the players' moods, which is something I am inept at; I will simply always be lacking that critical skill, and thus I will be at an eternal handicap.
You will be at a handicap. However, many people find it very difficult to create numerous interesting personalities, although this is not a problem for you.
Even if you can't intuit the players' moods, it is possible that you could get someone to do this for you. It would require them to be familiar with autism, and enough to explain and tell you about what you're not intuiting. They would also need to have good social awareness themselves, so they could intuit people moods correctly and inform you. If they privately messaged you, then it could help you decide how to proceed with the game.
>>46135765
Most people have no idea how big a million is. They see
>oh 1 million people died. sure is bad
but they can't imagine all of them as actual persons. Our brains are simply not wired for that
Compare that to a single person and they can identify with them. They can imagine the feeling of their family, their friends, their beloved.
Of course this also depends how well they know them. If 400 random persons get killed most surely feel bad but they imagine the dead not as fully fleshed persons but as 1D caricatures. If however 4 close friends of theirs were to die they would remember all of their common interactions, activities, secrets and more and would be a lot sadder.
If you want your players to be sad about someones death then you have to give them more connection. If they remember NPC #342541 they are not going to give a crap, if they remember Bob Jenkins the Smith who liked a good wine, often went fishing, had fear of snakes, was slow to give things cheaper but had good quality, spent time with his little son, had arguments with his wife (where the players can help when they hear of it) and was all around a fully fleshed person you can assume they are going to be searching for the bastard that killed him with the fury of a thousand suns
>>46135615
You realize this is touhouguy, right?
I am currently trying to get "Player X" and "Player Y" to generate characters for their individual one-on-one games. I have asked them each for three lines of backstory, three beliefs, and three goals (one short-term, one medium-term, and one long-term).
Player Y agrees to do so, but Player X would rather not, under the rationale that "personal investment has never been an issue in solo games." This baffles me, because under their own logic from earlier, would personal investment not be even more important in a one-on-one game?
>>46137504
The only piece of non-RPG media I have been consuming regularly is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Contrary to what most people think of that game's storyline (or so I am told), I find myself more gripped by the overall global conflict of the protagonist organization and the villainous organization rather than the personal character arc of the main character.
In generall, I find it easier to grasp and sympathize with factions (that must be why I like Planescape) rather than individual characters.
How might I translate my affinity for thinking in terms of large-scale factions into understanding how individual characters act?
>>46137825
This "observer" is already doing exactly such a thing, and their success has been limited at best.
>>46137941
I always try to have a "representative" NPC for each world they wind up saving, but that NPC is apparently not enough of a source of personal investment... despite the fact that the players express a desire to keep interacting more and more with them.
I do not understand how the players can have this nuanced a set of preferences.
>>46135906
How would this analogy take into account the fact that the GM in question (me) constantly tries to take into account the players' requests and subsequently cater to them, only for two-thirds of all attempts at doing so to be met with dissatisfaction and "That was not exactly what we asked for" all the same?
>>46135988
Can emotional satisfaction not be derived from "pure actions that give positive results to the world"?
>>46136228
The one-on-one games will focus on being a minor god and talking to other gods, therefore being both personal and epic-scale.
>>46136359
>If they start as perfectly selfless, the story has finished before it as already started.
How is this the case if their work is far from done? They have the mindset down, but actually going about executing their work (and thus producing results) is another matter entirely.
>Yes. It is unfortunately a major problem.
>Yet they percieve the complete opposite, or your characters are unique and vivid without you realising. That's amazing.
Is it possible to blunder into the same "doing it right without understanding why" phenomenon with every other problematic aspect of my GMing?
>>46136399
What we will be doing is this.
I will run a weekly one-on-one game for player X.
I will be running a separate, weekly one-on-one game for player Y.
Player X will be GMing for player Y and me.
That will give me three games a week to participate in. I feel as though I should continue GMing for them in a one-on-one environment, because I have many ideas that I would not like to see go to waste.
>>46136551
>>46136694
One thing my players have observed in my NPCs is that they always have the tendency to, every so often, abruptly treat something in a cold, logical, pragmatic way. I never notice this transpiring, because it simply seems like what a sensible person would do.
Other than that, they tell me my NPCs are vivid despite me considering my NPCs to be one of the worst and blandest aspects of my GMing.
>>46139134
>This baffles me, because under their own logic from earlier, would personal investment not be even more important in a one-on-one game?
I believe the intention of his statement is that, during one on one games, Player X already receives sufficient personal investment, and that you do not need to go further with it than you already do.
>>46139134
>How might I translate my affinity for thinking in terms of large-scale factions into understanding how individual characters act?
Ask yourself why you understand organizations more than individuals. Once you have done that, start applying your skill in understanding organizations to the task of understanding individuals.
Also, considering how you use Touhou pictures as avatars, I assume you are familiar with the Touhou characters. Try analyzing the actions and motivations of these characters in various situations.
>>46139602
It stands to reason, however, that adding personal investment via motivations, goals, and beliefs would make for an even better one-on-one game, correct?
>>46139438
>Can emotional satisfaction not be derived from "pure actions that give positive results to the world"?
It can, but most people prefer it on scale that they can comprehend when it comes to stories, where as you prefer the scale of positive results to be as large as possible for maximum benefit.
>They have the mindset down, but actually going about executing their work (and thus producing results) is another matter entirely.
That is true. Stories usually revolve around character's changing the world in someway, however they are also about the characters themselves changing. The characters improving themselves is also a form of positive results, which players can feel and understand much more easily than the positive results of helping millions of people, most of whom they have never met and never will. In the case of the perfect hero, he can no longer improve himself further, so it is part of the story that can't really be told, and they cannot gain emotional satisfaction from seeing him change and improve his thought process as the story progresses.
>Is it possible to blunder into the same "doing it right without understanding why" phenomenon with every other problematic aspect of my GMing?
The 'doing it right phenomenon' is probably a result of your own unique mindset (I assume). If you were naturally talented at the other aspects, you would already be good in those areas. It's possible, but probably not.
>>46139438
>>46139714
>>they tell me my NPCs are vivid despite me considering my NPCs to be one of the worst and blandest aspects of my GMing.
I've something similar with my written stories. Sometimes I'll throw 10 hours of good effort into trying to write a really interesting and well made short story (1000-2000 words), yet when I give it to people to read I can tell they are disinterested and that it is mediocre. Other times I'm forced by work to rush and quickly write a short story in 40-50 minutes, and I write it quickly without thinking much. Then when I give it to people to read they say its the best thing I've ever written, and that the characters are well made and developed when I thought them up in around 2 minutes. It's quite irritating.I believe the problem is that I over analyse, and end up focusing too much on unimportant details. Perhaps your NPCs are something similar.
>It stands to reason, however, that adding personal investment via motivations, goals, and beliefs would make for an even better one-on-one game, correct?
It should do, yes. I don't understand why a player would choose to refuse, especially since you are not asking him to write a lot.
>>46134928
You've told us that your players said they weren't enjoying your games, but you haven't told us what their specific complaints were. Start with that, and we might be able to get somewhere.
>>46140802
Way up in the thread, just a few of them.
>>46135172
>I want something more personal. I want to be as motivated about doing things as my character is. I want to learn about the NPCs, from what they like to eat to deep secrets. I want to help likeable NPCs and ruin shit for dickhead NPCs.
This part is up to the players and their ability to roleplay, much more than it is up to the DM.
>>46135318
>Is that, in my mind, it is mutually exclusive with:
>>- More personal investment in any given quest. That is, most, if not all, quests should either play to a PC's direct motivations and goals (a bit difficult for me when it is so hard to receive an answer that is *not* vague and noncommittal), or start off with a PC or a beloved NPC being personally wronged or imperiled. I have been trying to do this throughout both campaigns, but I am apparently awful at it, because in their words, "I had no emotional connection to anything happening really because I did not know anything about anyone" (again, despite the fact that some sessions were more than 50% talking to a single NPC).
>>- An interesting storyline with unexpected twists and turns, riveting antagonists, intriguing dynamics between multiple factions, and plenty of situations where the characters are thrown into new locations against their will and forced to adapt to a sticky situation.
>How am I suppose to tailor an interesting storyline, villains, plot hooks with personal investment, unexpected twists and turns (which often throw characters into new locations against their will) while also allowing the players to go where they want, when they want, and with their own plans and goals?
>My players seem extremely fickle in this regard.
Imagine your campaign as a map, with a bunch of stuff (little plot hooks) scattered around in different locations, that the PCs can bump into if they choose. If the players take interest in one of these plot hooks, develop it. If not, don't.If they don't enjoy that, I don't know what to tell you.
Is that crystal falling out of Flan's ass?
>>46135258
>I am a *great* fan of in-game investigation, research, information gathering, and planning
As a player, this doesn't interest me greatly either, and I would be disengaged from a campaign revolving around such themes. To each their own.
>>46139679
>Ask yourself why you understand organizations more than individuals.
I do not know why.
>I assume you are familiar with the Touhou characters. Try analyzing the actions and motivations of these characters in various situations.
More dedicated Touhou lore fans than I have difficulty analyzing the characters in question.
>>46140225
>however they are also about the characters themselves changing
There are more ways for a character to change than their underlying morals and ethics, are there not?
>>46141178
How can I gauge if they are actually taking interest in a plot hook, or if they are simply expressing token acknowledgment of it?
Many of this thread's suggestions rely on "see if the players are [interested/disinterested] in X," but without any ability to gauge player interest and without players willing to explicitly declare their interest level, I am left blind.
>>46135142
>Sessions with a focus on pleasant, slice-of-life-y interactions with singular NPCs, because they apparently like my NPCs and want to get to know them more on non-plot-related terms. Bear in mind that some of my sessions involved talking to a single NPC for *more than half of the session*, and the players still felt like they had not talked to that NPC enough and that I was being hasty by seguing them out of the conversation. My players insist that I have excellent NPCs, but that I never use them properly because I try to push things along towards actual adventuring.
If your players don't ever DM for you tell them to go fuck themselves hard.
They essentially want you to be playing multiple different characters every session and don't even give a thought to how much work that involves.
Typical case of selfish players ruining the DMs fun forgetting the DM is there to have fun too.
Tell your players that they have to make 1-2 additional characters and keep track of them every session until they realize why you made them do that. Randomly kill one off and make them make a new one for good measure.
>>46135604
>I am not a fan of random encounters (or even "random" encounters) en route to a destination unless they are directly related to what the players will be doing at their destination.
If you're running a sandbox campaign, random encounters are a must. There's just no other way to do it. As a player, random encounters can be fun! Remember, there's no reason the player's have to know it's random.
>>46141290
>There are more ways for a character to change than their underlying morals and ethics, are there not?
There are, but moral conflicts are usually a major part of most stories.
I have to sleep now (4am for me), and won't be able to respond further. I enjoyed our conversation. I hope things improve for you.
>>46141290
>How can I gauge if they are actually taking interest in a plot hook, or if they are simply expressing token acknowledgment of it?
If you tell them "After X hours of traveling, you come a dimly lit shack rising out of the swamp fog among the yellow glow of the foxfire." and they choose to go investigate it, develop that further. Scatter a bunch of things around the world that have small plots, not too detailed but detailed enough to be interacted with. You want to have a rough idea of how these hooks will go down, but open enough to make changes when the players inevitably do something you didn't expect.
If the players ignore a hook like this, take it as a lack of interest, and move on.
>>46141591
I meant "After X hours of traveling, you come *across* a dimly lit shack"
>>46135604
>I am not a fan of random encounters (or even "random" encounters) en route to a destination unless they are directly related to what the players will be doing at their destination.
>This is something I am not going to budge on under any circumstances.
If no "random" encounters occur and all events shown in-game relate to proceeding toward the objective, that's too transparently unrealistic. It reminds me that I'm having an artificial experience, sitting through what is most likely the first and only draft of this story while using an unbalanced game system, when I could be playing a nice polished video game instead.
If you're willing to have events related to future plotlines rather than the current plotline, that should be sufficient distraction. But you have to give some consideration, whether random "random" or nonrandom encounters, to the role of immersion and simulation.
>>46139714
>It stands to reason, however, that adding personal investment via motivations, goals, and beliefs would make for an even better one-on-one game, correct?
...no?
the role of personal investment in the utility function could very easily be binary: sufficient investment = 1, insufficient investment = 0. At which point adding more details to spur investment would be an irritating waste of time.
>>46141471
But I am not running a sandbox.
>>46141591
>>46141625
Would most players not investigate the hypothetical shack out of either a sense of obligation or a sense of courtesy to the GM?
>>46141741
>If no "random" encounters occur and all events shown in-game relate to proceeding toward the objective, that's too transparently unrealistic.
Unrelated random encounters would be glossed over for the same reason that most of the travel itself would be glossed over: if it is not particularly vital to the proceedings and it is not even tied to a future plotline, then it can be assumed that it may or may not have happened during the time frame of travel that was skipped over.
>But you have to give some consideration, whether random "random" or nonrandom encounters, to the role of immersion and simulation.
"Immersion" and "simulation" have absolutely, positively never been anywhere on my priority list as a GM, and I certainly do not seek either as a player.
>the role of personal investment in the utility function could very easily be binary: sufficient investment = 1, insufficient investment = 0.
Why would it be binary as opposed to a more gradient scale?
>>46141888
>But I am not running a sandbox.
Why not give it a try? In my experiences, the best games have elements of sandbox, with some kind of overarching plot loosely tying it all together.
>>46141888
>Would most players not investigate the hypothetical shack out of either a sense of obligation or a sense of courtesy to the GM?
yeah idk what he was on about
>I certainly do not seek either as a player.
Yeah, well, others do. And if those metrics are lacking people may be dissatisfied.
Look, you need to give consideration to events that don't have an immediately apparent relation to the current plotline. I'm not saying you need to violate the red line you won't budge on. All I'm saying is that strategic placement of events that relate to future plotlines more than the present one may improve necessary metrics that have been deficient. Or it may not and your players don't fundamentally care. Worth a shot.
>Why would it be binary as opposed to a more gradient scale?
Why wouldn't it be? Without specific case studies to dig into and analyze, it comes down to guessing the scale based on personal estimates. And if the player perceives a poor rate of return for that particular prep work, I don't see the point of second-guessing him. It's his happiness that would suffer, after all; better he make the final determination and learn from that responsibility.
>>46135142
>they apparently like my NPCs and want to get to know them more on non-plot-related terms. Bear in mind that some of my sessions involved talking to a single NPC for *more than half of the session*, and the players still felt like they had not talked to that NPC enough and that I was being hasty by seguing them out of the conversation. My players insist that I have excellent NPCs, but that I never use them properly because I try to push things along towards actual adventuring.
>>46139134
>In generall, I find it easier to grasp and sympathize with factions (that must be why I like Planescape) rather than individual characters.
Any given character is a faction of size 1. If your adventuring party of size 1-4 is capable of making these sweeping changes in the world through legwork and gumption, in theory any given NPC is worthy of the same consideration.
You often create situations where an external NPC/place/item is necessary to solve a problem. Your players are taking the hint that in the universes you create, forces outside of them matter. Any NPC that's sketched out vividly enough to give the impression that they would be willing/able to act on their own - which is every NPC, if the observer is to be believed - is a force that could matter, in a future plotline if not now.
When you "push things along towards actual adventuring", you are removing the players from what they perceive as a good rate of progress toward a goal. The goal, that is, of building rapport with this NPC and making sure they stay in the character's memory, thereby making the NPC into a usable asset. Compared to that, they are faced with the prospect of beginning progress toward a different "actual adventuring goal", where progress will likely be slow and stumbling as all beginnings are...
That might not be how they think. I've never seen your group. But it's one possible model for how they think.
>>46142501
>Yeah, well, others do. And if those metrics are lacking people may be dissatisfied.
I do not know if the players are trying to seek out "simulation" or "immersion," and getting a straight answer from either of them will take another several-hour-long argument.
>All I'm saying is that strategic placement of events that relate to future plotlines more than the present one may improve necessary metrics that have been deficient.
This is called "foreshadowing," and for me, it is less about "'random' encounters" en route to a certain destination as it is about certain NPCs mentioning some background event, or the players being able to observe some sort of change in the environment, as opposed to a full-scale encounter.
>It's his happiness that would suffer, after all; better he make the final determination and learn from that responsibility.
The blame is also always placed on me, the GM, whenever I wind up running something unsatisfactory for either player.
>>46143018
>Any given character is a faction of size 1. If your adventuring party of size 1-4 is capable of making these sweeping changes in the world through legwork and gumption, in theory any given NPC is worthy of the same consideration.
A false equivalency. NPCs are generally situationally useful due to their capabilities and their circumstances; PCs tend to have far broader capacities, resources, contacts, and circumstances with which to enact major changes.
>The goal, that is, of building rapport with this NPC and making sure they stay in the character's memory, thereby making the NPC into a usable asset.
I would like to think that spending more than half of a session conversing with an NPC is sufficient for establishing a rapport, and anything beyond that produces sharply diminishing returns.
>That might not be how they think.
They have explicitly stated that they simply find the NPCs enjoyable and pleasant to speak to.
>>46135604
>If there is a rift in the center of the multiverse that is wrecking all reality, and the PCs need to retrieve a certain artifact that can mend it, but must go through several trials and tribulations simply to reach it, is it not heroic for the PCs to finally attain and employ that artifact? Why is it suddenly unsatisfying because "It was not our own powers that sealed the rift; it was this artifact's"?
That's the same role a merchant has. Productive wealth exists over there (goods, ideas, cash), the merchant goes through trials/tribulations/risk to get to that wealth and bring it to where it needs to be (markets, production lines, entrepreneurs). Yet nerds drawn by the light of heroism, by and large, would rather be a scientist or an engineer than a merchant - they'd rather be the holder of the power of knowledge, rather than the hustler who moves that power in a position where it can sway society.
>>46135258
>They would much rather wield their own magical problems to solve any given problem, which... strikes me as something that will grow old and repetitive very quickly.
the RPG community wouldn't exist in its current state if it got old and repetitive as quickly as you seem to imply
your players wouldn't think to ask the request if it got old and repetitive as quickly as you seem to imply
You're coming from a valid perspective, of course, but if you're having problems with this that's probably a sign that your math is wrong. You're using that plot device just a little too frequently, because your estimate of when "old and repetitive" kicks in is just a little too strong.
>>46143238
....It looks like your players are sick of your GMing. Find new players for a while and GM for your old folks later on after some time.
>>46143238
>I do not know if the players are trying to seek out "simulation" or "immersion," and getting a straight answer from either of them
You don't need their explicit opinion on the matter. Most targeted interventions don't occur under circumstances where you can get a straight answer anyway.
There are some games where immersion is lacking, and some things that can be done about that problem. If you do those things and see improvement, it's likely true that your game was one of those lacking games. If you do those things and don't see improvement, whatever, on to the next attempt. No certainty is required a priori.
>as opposed to a full-scale encounter.
What would you define as "a full-scale encounter"? When I hear full-scale encounter, I think of an object in the game world that puts up a decent chunk of resistance, or produces many different reactions in response to being stimulated. And when I hear foreshadowing, I think of an object in the game world that has only one observable state which we as players are to observe.
There's a space in between those two benchmarks where objects exist that can be interacted with, that change states in response to player interaction, but do not have more than 2-4 different states and therefore don't occupy much session time. Incorporating these objects is something I often see/hear done in the context of depicting a living/breathing world.
>>46143238
>NPCs are generally situationally useful due to their capabilities and their circumstances; PCs tend to have far broader capacities, resources, contacts, and circumstances with which to enact major changes.
That's an artifact of the way these stories are usually told. If an NPC has been alive for any length of time, by any reasonable measure they "should" have a wealth of resources/contacts that are at least comparable to those of the often young and callow PCs. In terms of the social contract, it's usually impolite to ask an NPC for use of that wealth because OOC it means asking the GM to spontaneously make new McGuffins, but the intuition isn't touched by that kind of logic. And so players will intuitively gravitate toward vivid NPCs.
>I would like to think that spending more than half of a session conversing with an NPC is sufficient for establishing a rapport, and anything beyond that produces sharply diminishing returns.
Objectively considered, I would too, which is why I added the caveat "that might not be how they think" because my logic sounded shaky.
Come to think of it, what do you mean by "seguing them out of the conversation"? Most people in the world can't be bothered to talk to a bunch of PCs for more than half a session at a time, and it would be entirely within the NPC's rights to just decide to end the conversation. I'm not sure what would prompt your players to call that being hasty.
If I had to guess, you are structuring NPC dialogue in a way that signals continued NPC interest in the PCs, while providing OOC or narration-based hints of your desire to return to adventure. If you can find opportunities for NPCs to cut off the conversation, whether in response to things happening in their personal life or things the PCs say, that might help the SoL sections take up less time. But it's hard to say things like that without a look at how the group operates.
This thread helped me OP,
I had a similar issue and now I know why: autism
>>46135258
>I am a *great* fan of in-game investigation, research, information gathering, and planning, and to see my players wholly disinterested in such a thing is crushing.
Personally I find investigation sequences completely inane because the DM already has the best answers, and the in-game action boils down to "How do we pantomime investigation in such a way that convinces the GM to give us the next hook?"
I'm not a professional investigator, I'm not a professional analyst, I don't know what common patterns exist and need to be planned around, I don't know how to narrow down solution spaces in pursuit of topical relevance... and this holds for every person in every group I've been involved with.
If I were to contribute to the planning process in a way that I don't consider laughably shallow, I would need to log hours of intensive study in adventuring scenarios drawn from non-hypothetical situations. That's the way I learn how to plan effectively about any other topic. But I don't have the opportunity to do that, and neither does anyone else. So we sit around playing pretend in a blatantly shallow fashion until the DM says enough; it irritates me greatly.
>>46135172
>my attempts are usually met with "You catered to our request, but not in the way we had in mind, so it was still unfun." Even the execution has to be exact.
ONLY the execution has to be exact. The formal language of the requests are as misguided as any given piece of advice in this thread. As you say, they're not very good at expressing themselves. This remains the case even when you pin them down to a single answer. The only thing they know with certainty is the end result of not having fun; any request is merely a best guess at an intervention that might work to fix what went wrong in the fun-creation-process. The precise details are just an accident of language.
>>46135318
>How am I suppose to
You're not. "I want to go where I want, when I want" is nearly always a false claim. Very few people have any actual appreciation for freedom. When people express a desire for freedom, usually what they mean is that they want to not be aware of their own impotence and irrelevance.
Insofar as this is a legitimate want, it likely stems from the fact that their actions have at most weak influence on the structure of a gaming session. Events will proceed from locale to locale, arc to arc, with a speed that trends asymptotically to the fast pace OP prefers. And their only way to stop this from happening is to seize time by bogging the session down in, for example, lengthy conversations with individual NPCs. If a fleeting whim to linger on a given situation arises, that whim will be difficult to indulge. And this is perceived as a lack of freedom.
But if the imperatives of freedom and an interesting storyline conflict, I would generally advise breaking toward storyline. If they wanted total freedom they'd run their own damn game; the role of the player is to understand, come to terms with, and attempt to introduce themselves to forces that are external to them - that have their own freedom and will often exert that freedom to reduce that of the PCs.
>>46139438
>How would this analogy take into account the fact that the GM in question (me) constantly tries to take into account the players' requests and subsequently cater to them, only for two-thirds of all attempts at doing so to be met with dissatisfaction and "That was not exactly what we asked for" all the same?
You, the OP, are attempting to host another dinner party. Last time your guests, the players, made comments indicating they were not satisfied with the dinner party for various reasons, and so you try and compensate...but a lot of the times, you misinterpret them or your guests don't express themselves properly:
Your guests tell you the food was "bland", so next time you make gruel and toss in several dozen different spices and flavorings. The end result is a mess of conflicting flavors that taste strange at best and bad at worst.
Your guests tell you the food "wasn't filling", so you triple the portions. Your guests think you made far, far too much food.
Your guests "want something with more meat in it", so you bring forth a roast pig with no other side dishes. Your guests find the the roast pig with nothing else with it too heavy for their tastes, and the lack of lighter side-dishes means they're stuck with too much overly heavy food,
Etc.
>>46143275
Various forms of mythology and fantasy fiction employ the plot device of "In order to overcome an otherwise insurmountable problem, first you must acquire a blessing from X NPC/retrieve the Y artifact/bless yourself in Z location." The characters can then demonstrate their heroic nature by trouncing the obstacle now that the playing field has been evened, which usually involves bringing out their own skills and powers anyway.
Would it not be highly anticlimactic if the solution to this otherwise insurmountable obstacle was simply "go up to it and throw all of your existing powers at it"?
>>46143620
>If you do those things and see improvement, it's likely true that your game was one of those lacking games.
I am not entirely certain I follow the train of logic here. Random encounters (even in a non-sandbox) supposedly add to immersion, and thus if one was to add a random encounter, one would somehow stand to see a nebulous improvement? How does this follow?
>What would you define as "a full-scale encounter"?
Something that requires some degree of problem-solving, conflict resolution (often involving dice rolls), and a risk of failure.
>I hear foreshadowing, I think of an object in the game world that has only one observable state which we as players are to observe.
This is roughly what I aim for, such as NPCs conversing with the PCs regarding a certain strange occurrence. I would prefer not to include more time-intensive full-scale encounters when there is an adventure to be undertaken.
>>46143709
>reasonable measure they "should" have a wealth of resources/contacts that are at least comparable to those of the often young and callow PCs
Again, a false equivalency. Age and general place in the world are not necessarily directly proportional to resources and contacts; PCs, by dint of being PCs, tend to be "golden children" who simply have resources and contacts fall into their metaphorical laps, such that they have far more at their disposal than most.
>>46141290
>I do not know why.
Don't accept that answer. Explore every facet of the question until you find out why you understand organizations more than individuals.
>>46144068
>pantomime investigation in such a way that convinces the GM to give us the next hook
As a player, this is something I actually find greatly enjoyable. I like tapping into different information sources (e.g. libraries, networks of contacts, interrogating people who might be good leads, divination spells/whatever the setting equivalent is, a PC's sheer deductive prowess) to gather as much information as I can, synthesize this information, and use it to the party's advantage to help further the end result of "create a positive impact upon the world."
Most GMs I have played under, sadly, find this monotonous and time-wasting. The one GM who *did* approve of this was using premade Planescape adventures (Dead Gods and Squaring the Circle) and running everything by the book, impartially allowing me to pry and gather information using all of the tools at my character's disposal.
Apparently, my efforts in that game were successful enough that on two separate occasions (once in Dead Gods, once in Squaring the Circle), I managed to figure out exactly what was going on long and who the villains were before the premade module was supposed to reveal such information, thereby attaining an advantage and skipping whole sections of the adventure.
That is something that made me feel very proud (because I advanced the time table to achieve with extreme efficiency). I would like to allow my players to feel something similar in their own investigations, but unfortunately, my players are unwilling to entertain such.
>>46144694
>The formal language of the requests are as misguided as any given piece of advice in this thread.
How am I supposed to improve if I do not try to take to heart any of my players' requests or the suggestions in this very thread?
>seize time by bogging the session down
Are you saying what the players truly want is a much slower pace (orthogonal to my desire for a fast pace), and they simply see NPC conversations as a means towards said slower pace?
>>46145423
You are looking at this problem in the wrong context. As a GM, you are not the author of a fantasy fiction or mythological work. Instead, you are the referee in the cooperative sport you and your friends participate in. Keep reminding yourself of that until it comes naturally.
>>46144068
>because the DM already has the best answers
You actually believe this? Your DM needs to quit DMing and take up pro poker.
Investigations and social scheming in general are basically elaborate ways of getting the players to explain in detail how they're picturing the world so you can make the plot developments play to their expectations. Sure, there's some default notes on where things are going if everybody ends up just rolling dice and asking "do I find anything", but nine times out of ten somebody will wind up inadvertently with a much more interesting idea about what a clue means or how an NPC will react to a certain course of action, and as of that point your job is to make a few subtle changes and act like that was what you were going for all along. The players are in the story's driving seat most of the time, they just don't know it.
>>46145650
>Are you saying what the players truly want is a much slower pace (orthogonal to my desire for a fast pace)
bruh i'm saying it might be, idk shit about your group, i've been writing toward this hypothetical situation long enough that i can't hardly talk anymore
alright, look, i'm going to rant for a little bit
I was in an epic campaign relatively recently, right? Not epic level, just shit where we were going "adventure to adventure, saving this world and that, traveling to one exotic location after another."
I got tired of it after the first two or three worlds and quit the campaign because the GM also pissed me off on a personal level. And the reason that I got tired of it is that "I had no emotional connection to anything happening really because I did not know anything about anyone".
Because fundamentally, what it boils down to is, when the time came to be a hero I had no memories to protect. There was no moment I could point back to and say - the way that scene went made me feel good about the choices I made during characterization. I'd like to go back to the location of that scene later, and failing to be a hero now would close off the possibility of ever returning like that.
In essence, I as a player wanted (purely) hypothetically to be able to return to old content, and took in-game actions to protect that ability. Acting the hero without those memories or that context merely protects my ability to access new content involving the people and communities I save - but there's new content anywhere the party goes, so that's not really a personal payoff. It only speaks to the hero in me, not the gamer.
If these players have GMed their own campaigns, it's possible they recognize this dual-pronged approach from previous successful games of theirs, and are instinctively trying to recreate that approach by taking their time to savor random NPCs. Who fucking knows.
OP, here's a bit food for thought on a few random things from this Thread, please excuse me if i am rambling or am unclear, it's midnight and i had a kinda long day.
>The Hero's Journey
This may be hard for you to grasp (and i don't mean this in a condescending way), but a characters change and progression, both in terms of the outer self (power, riches, influence) and the inner self (hopes, motivations, worldviews), is a fundamental part of almost all stories.
In a game it is easier for people to empathize with changes to the inner self, simply because not only the characters, but the players go through these changes as well. (Atleast to a degree)
It's hard to really, viscerally imagine the change from a +1 to a +2 Greatsword, but it can be gut-wrenching to see a Kobold pleading for you to spare the lives of its children and franticly offering glass pearls (that might be practically worthless, but the only thing she has) for you to leave them be.
To get a bit more philosophical here: One of the main reason for a deeper enjoyment of stories is when is presents us with a novel outlook on the world and ourselves. After watching "Blade Runner" you may think about the worth of memories and how much you are defined by then.
Think of (good) stories as microscopes, as a way to examine ideas and motivations in a clearly marked and controlled way.
You have the "thesis" of reality, the "antithesis" of the story and can reach a "synthesis" of new understanding.
>>46145423
>Would it not be highly anticlimactic if the solution to this otherwise insurmountable obstacle was simply "go up to it and throw all of your existing powers at it"?
It would be fine, once in a while. The story of the McGuffin boils down to "We had the initiative nobody else did to get the XYZ, match it with power/skill, and triumph." The story of just facechecking it boils down to "The problem presented itself as insurmountable; we had the initiative nobody else did to call that bluff, match it with power/skill, and triumph." It's as attested in mythology as the McGuffin model is. Nothing anticlimactic about it.
>Random encounters (even in a non-sandbox) supposedly add to immersion, and thus if one was to add a random encounter, one would somehow stand to see a nebulous improvement? How does this follow?
Immersion occurs when certain feelings that occur in mundane life are evoked in the course of a tabletop game, where they can be framed in adventure rather than mundanity. The feeling under consideration here is "uncertainty". In life, we experience many things that seem immediately like wastes of life, and serve little immediate purpose but to distract us. Experiencing that feeling in-game and proceeding through to succeed in the plot arc while bearing that feeling is pleasant. Even more so if the apparent "waste of time" then turns out to be a foreshadowing element that was worth the distraction.
>Something that requires some degree of problem-solving, conflict resolution (often involving dice rolls), and a risk of failure.
Remove the risk of failure (which will, accordingly, reduce the degree of problem-solving required) and you have the essence of a successful "random" encounter. Something the players can think about and maybe roll dice at before deciding on their own that it's irrelevant and that we should get back to the main plot. This self-produced decision in theory increases the amount of dedication they have to that plot.
>>46123021
Not to be mean, but this is because you have autism.
No, I'm not joking, and this is not an insult - your autism is the culprit. The fact that you are listing off session numbers and probabilities all but confirms it.
Your players are right. Sorry.
>>46145423
>PCs, by dint of being PCs, tend to be "golden children" who simply have resources and contacts fall into their metaphorical laps, such that they have far more at their disposal than most.
>far more
What's the ratio between the lesser and the more? What do your players think the ratio is?
if an NPC is in a position to be talked at by a PC at length, that's already something remarkable about them
who knows what else they might have in the future
>>46145650
>Most GMs I have played under, sadly, find this monotonous and time-wasting
sux2suk senpai most GMs I know would love the chance to sit around watching the players entertain themselves/him without having to chew through the prepared materials
>>46145924
>You actually believe this? Your DM needs to quit DMing and take up pro poker.
there are a lot of autismal people in this thread and i'm one of them, not like my DM is some elder god of being unreadable or anything
that's an interesting way of looking at things though thanks for the expert tip
>>46145733
We also seem to have diametrically opposed goal areas in this "cooperative sport."
>>46146078
It is funny that you bring this exact point up. At one point in the campaign, the players requested that I show them the effects of their heroic deeds upon numerous worlds... and my attempt at doing so led to one of the most reviled sessions throughout the entire campaign. I speak of this incident here:
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/44833106/
>>46146449
For the life of me, I can never appreciate character development in fiction or RPGs, nor can I identify when it is happening, let alone actually try to have one of my characters develop their personality during an RPG campaign.
It simply does not click with me at all. I am much more concerned with what that character does to apply an impact upon the world (for good or for ill) and the overall magnitude and efficiency of that impact. In my view, results are what matter at the end of the day (and, by extension, the contributions that led towards those results are also to be acknowledged). Consequently, my "heroic" characters are generally focused towards applying as positive as possible a change upon the game world, aiming for the maximum number of people whose lives are improved over the maximum feasible time frame, with maximum efficiency.
Your autism is triggering me, OP.
Just ditch your shitty group and stop trying to constantly please and pleasure everybody like a cockthirsty slut.
>>46146460
>The story of just facechecking it boils down to "The problem presented itself as insurmountable; we had the initiative nobody else did to call that bluff, match it with power/skill, and triumph."
Ofttimes, however, it is *not* a bluff, and to retroactively declare something to be but a ruse would be to cheapen it. If an especially powerful and absurdly ancient great red wyrm has come to raze a certain location, and I have decided that it is the genuine article, then why would the players seemingly prefer for the situation to be something that they could rush into and solve with their own powers right out of the gate? That fails to establish the threat as a high-stakes entity able to negatively impact many lives.
Moving along, what you are describing is, to me, not so much "random encounters" as it is "foreshadowing events." They are fleeting occurrences that have no risk of failure and thus little to no need for problem-solving or dice-rolling; the players observe the strange event, perhaps interact with it a little or ask a question or two (or *be* asked a question or two themselves), and then move along their merry way.
That, I can work with, and it is something I have already been using often.
>>46146572
>if an NPC is in a position to be talked at by a PC at length, that's already something remarkable about them
>who knows what else they might have in the future
My NPCs are almost always in top-end leadership positions of some sort. Certainly, they are remarkable and could influence many more lives... but there is no need to talk to them for more than half a session all at once, nor is there a need for them to be personally wronged for the sake of investment, is there?
I will be sleeping now.
>>46147586
I'm going to repeat the distinction between old content and new content.
>the players had requested that they get to see the impact that they have had on the NPCs of the worlds they had saved
In game terms, this is a request to return to previously used assets (characters, locations, etc) and experience new feelings associated with those same assets so that they have something new to record when they return to that memory location and flip "closure=0" to "closure=1"
If they wanted to meet strangers and see what strangers thought of them they could just step out onto the street. There's bound to be a stranger with free time to respond; they don't need to make a special request of you. Whereas with NPCs whose details have been previously established, you might have had plans involving them being in The Middle of Nowhere which would require some thought to unplan.
>>46147586
>my "heroic" characters are generally focused towards applying as positive as possible a change upon the game world, aiming for the maximum number of people whose lives are improved over the maximum feasible time frame, with maximum efficiency.
Honest question, no Judgment: Do you, as a player/GM get anything from that? I mean, do you feel anything? Do you think you would feel different if these efforts would be directed toward a different goal (Doing good vs Getting rich)?
>For the life of me, I can never appreciate character development in fiction or RPGs, nor can I identify when it is happening,
I think the not-appreciation is a "symptom" of not understanding it, right?
Might i ask: On what level don't you "get" character development? Do you not "get" basic emotions or are you having trouble "connecting the dots"?
Before I do sleep...
>>46147950
I believe I had already understood that from the past thread.
>>46147963
>Honest question, no Judgment: Do you, as a player/GM get anything from that? I mean, do you feel anything?
For the same reason that other people can derive an emotional reaction from something as utterly banal as "This imaginary antagonist personally wronged one of your imaginary NPC friends, so that gives you a personal investment," I do derive emotional satisfaction from being able to apply upon an imaginary game world the maximum amount of good for the maximum amount of people over the maximum possible time frame with maximum efficiency.
As I explained in >>46145650, I basked in an exorbitantly high amount of satisfaction when this occurred twice:
>Apparently, my efforts in that game were successful enough that on two separate occasions (once in Dead Gods, once in Squaring the Circle), I managed to figure out exactly what was going on long and who the villains were before the premade module was supposed to reveal such information, thereby attaining an advantage and skipping whole sections of the adventure.
Because it meant that I was being exceptionally efficient, and thus the game world would have a positive impact instigated upon it in an even shorter in-universe time frame, thereby allowing the "saved time" to be used towards other heroic efforts.
>I think the not-appreciation is a "symptom" of not understanding it, right?
Yes, certainly.
>On what level don't you "get" character development? Do you not "get" basic emotions or are you having trouble "connecting the dots"?
In theory, a character changing should not be so different from a world changing, and yet there is so much of a disconnect for me that I cannot explain. This is much like how I can understand and empathize with large-scale factions, but not individual NPCs.
>>46147914
You have been harping on the half-session talk for some time now, so let me ask: Is this kind of thing a common occurrence or was it a one-off? I have a good friend with asperger's, and he to has a problem with letting things go. Not in a vindictive kind of way, but he too has a problem with closure on some things.
So on this point: If it was a fluke, just let it go! Maybe that NPC struck a cord, maybe they were dense that day, maybe, maybe, maybe.
>Is there a need for them to be personally wronged for the sake of investment?
Not in a direct "The BBEG burned down your village and killed your whole family" way, but some kind of investment should be there. The players might go along a few times with the "People need help, you are heroes" thing, for the sake of the game, but at some point in time they have to ask: "Are our PCs really the only ones who can do this? Why are our PCs, time and again the only ones willing, or capable, of doing this?" If they have an investment, it's way easier to gloss over this.
Here's a hypothetical, i am honestly interested here: Imagine you are leisurely walking down the street and meet an old woman carrying a big and cumbersome, but not particularly heavy box. Not that big and cumbersome that she might hurt herself and its not fragile, but she clearly is struggling.
She sees you and asks you to lend a hand. Would you help her?
What if you had an important appointment to get to instead, with barely a minute to spare?
And what would you do in these situations if it were not any old lady, but your grandma, aunt or an especially nice teacher from elementary school (what i am meaning is a person who has been especially nice to you in the past and who you wouldn't have to fear repercussions from if you didn't help)?
So I've read through the entirety of both this thread and the one you posted earlier. I think the biggest problem here is an inability to remove your preference from theirs. You keep coming back to a similar equation "number of people saved=enjoyment". I would not dream of telling you that you are wrong for deriving enjoyment from that formula. Honestly it's somewhat admirable. But here's the thing, it's all logic and most people are not logical. Your average person could give two shits how many millions were killed or saved in any given situation. Your average person cares only for "me and my own". Are you one of the handful of people that I interact with on a regular basis in a positive way? If yes then I want to do anything to help you out so that I can keep that interaction. Are you not one of that handful of individuals? Then I suppose it's cool that I helped you out too but ultimately I don't care. Is this being a bright shining altruistic beacon of goodness? Hell no. But most people don't care. We don't want to be "Good". We want to be good enough. Good enough to make those few people we like impressed enough to like us back. Good enough to make ourselves feel like we aren't complete shitlords (Or at least not as big of shitlords as the shitlords that shat all over those people we like). That's the big problem here. Your enjoyment equation is based on a higher calling than your players want to strive for. Most importantly, it's not the only equation. As an alternative let me give you some other common equations for enjoyment: "How poor of judgment can I employ and how badly can I fuck up and still come out with a result that is more favorable than unfavorable to myself, my party, and the world in that order of importance." "How much loot can I get?" "What can I do to make this NPC fall in love with my PC?" "How awesome did I look when I killed that enemy" etc. The key is figuring out their equations and using them whether you get why they like that or not.
OP, have you maybe tried running more "Goal" oriented games, straight up dungeon crawls or maybe Shadowrun, where you have a group of professional working towards a single, quantifiable goal?
