GM illnesses (half-humour).
Ryan Conner Stoughton
What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
To get the ball rolling...
Setting Safaritis: The tendancy of a GM to develop a huge amount of
setting, and no plot - turning the entire game into a Setting-safari.
This results in a situation where the players have absolutely no
direction, and little interest. The players just visit one after
another mildly interesting locale, until they all get sick of it and
start combing the countryside for things to kill.
Allon
Ryan Conner Stoughton wrote:
This occurs of course the other way around, too. I had a GM one who
would just think of about half a plot and absolutely no settings, and
call that a complete scenario.
I remember one Vampire: the Masquerade scenario he ran, where all the
players were newly embraced vampires, and didn't know it yet. In the
beginning of the scenario he had us all meet in a pub. Naturally, one of
us asked what it name was. After a short thought he replied "Muza" (which
means Muse in Hebrew, and back then used to be the only pub in my home
town, Arad). Two hours later, and in a completely different area of the
city, we met had to meets someone that had some information for us in
another pub. When asked to the name of the pub, the GM answered after a
bit of thought "Muza". When someone said we had already been at Muza, he
answered without hesitation "It's a chain!" ;)
Allon
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You can only make peace with those who are your enemies"
Yitzhak Rabin
Israeli Prime Minister 1992-1995
HaMakon Yikom Damo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allon
> beginning of the scenario he had us all meet in a pub. Naturally, one of
> us asked what it name was. After a short thought he replied "Muza" (which
> means Muse in Hebrew, and back then used to be the only pub in my home
> town, Arad).
Stupid spelling mistake. That should read "Which means Muze in Hebrew..."Oops.
Ryan Conner Stoughton
Allon wrote:
> Ryan Conner Stoughton wrote:
>
> > Wanted to start this thread for awhile...
> >
> > What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
> >
> > To get the ball rolling...
> >
> > Setting Safaritis: The tendancy of a GM to develop a huge amount of
> > setting, and no plot - turning the entire game into a Setting-safari.
> > This results in a situation where the players have absolutely no
> > direction, and little interest. The players just visit one after
> > another mildly interesting locale, until they all get sick of it and
> > start combing the countryside for things to kill.
>
> This occurs of course the other way around, too. I had a GM one who
> would just think of about half a plot and absolutely no settings, and
> call that a complete scenario.
>
> I remember one Vampire: the Masquerade scenario he ran, where all the
> players were newly embraced vampires, and didn't know it yet. In the
> beginning of the scenario he had us all meet in a pub. Naturally, one of
> us asked what it name was. After a short thought he replied "Muza" (which
> means Muse in Hebrew, and back then used to be the only pub in my home
> town, Arad). Two hours later, and in a completely different area of the
> city, we met had to meets someone that had some information for us in
> another pub. When asked to the name of the pub, the GM answered after a
> bit of thought "Muza". When someone said we had already been at Muza, he
> answered without hesitation "It's a chain!" ;)
>
> Allon
What would you _call_ that illness?
George Herbert
As a player, I've always thought that you can balance setting
and scenario... if one is lacking, make the other one solid and
you still have my attention and I can enjoy it.
As a GM... ye gods, you player bastards (yes, including me when
I'm on the other side ;-) just looove screwing up my scenarios
and settings, don't you. I had con games eaten by munchkins
(even with a majority of reasonable PCs, the munchkins did things
which wrecked my whole scenario). I've had a minor sidebar in
the setting turn into an all-day life and death struggle when the
players decided that I was out to get them and the Monkeys really
were the main threat.
When writing things up for future play, I try and handle both
scenario and setting, but it's frustrating when real players
hit the table and things go very differently, making most of
what's been prepared superflous. A good GM adapts, but it makes
it very hard to make good preparations. It's a lot easier to
do both scenario and setting when writing fiction, for example,
or writing adventures for publication or someone else to run...
-george william herbert
gher...@crl.com
adamsloyd
news:37ABA2DC...@idirect.com...
> Wanted to start this thread for awhile...
>
> What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
>
> To get the ball rolling...
>
> Setting Safaritis: The tendancy of a GM to develop a huge amount of
> setting, and no plot - turning the entire game into a Setting-safari.
> This results in a situation where the players have absolutely no
> direction, and little interest. The players just visit one after
> another mildly interesting locale, until they all get sick of it and
> start combing the countryside for things to kill.
>
RTS syndrome: RTS(resetting the scale) Syndrome comes from those DMs who
have created so many home rules they have destroyed the balance of the game.
Don't get me wrong, I like home rules. I use some myself as a DM, but I
find that home rules are like fine wine, they only work well in moderation.
I call this RTS syndrome because it reminds me of when I was young an I used
to play with the dial on the bottom of the scale to make my family think
they heavier than they really were.
DFV(DM favoritism Virus): The name says it all. A DM shows obvious
favoritism toward a certain player. I'm sure any player can relate.
XP retensionitis: A DM once decided he would keep our XP totals secret and
tell us in secret when we gained levels because he had problems in the past
with PCs killing other PCs who had fewer levels. This was the same campain
where the DM had RTS syndrome, and DFV. By the end of three sessions Three
1st level Bladesingers, mine included, Killed off a 7th level minotaur
fighter because he had far more levels than he should have had, and
promptly burned our sheets in front of the DM.
Psychohist
Setting Safaritis: The tendancy of a GM to develop a huge amount of
setting, and no plot - turning the entire game into a Setting-safari.
This results in a situation where the players have absolutely no
direction, and little interest. The players just visit one after
another mildly interesting locale, until they all get sick of it and
start combing the countryside for things to kill.
Aha! Finally! The caricature of the world oriented gamesmaster!
Warren
Paul King
Ryan Conner Stoughton <ryca...@idirect.com> wrote:
>What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
>
Vicarious Narcissus Syndrome : The GM who is so in love with his NCs that
he cannot let them lose. In extreme cases the entire adventure exists
solely for purpose of showcasing a single NPC...
Ryan J Franklin
The cure for this one, fortunately, is pretty easy and a lot of fun. I
know I was surprised to figure out that my all-time favorite NPCs were all
the _total losers_. What follows is a war story, read it at your own
risk.
One example came through in our game tonight (a GURPS fantasy game set in
the world of the computer game Thief: The Dark Project). There's a club
owner/manager who had the misfortune in our first session to be caught
between two player characters, and he got swatted around like a ping pong
ball. The yellow journalist made oblique threats about trashing the
club's reputation in print unless an interview was arranged with the
nightclub singer, the nightclub singer directly threatened that she would
leave--and take most of the club's regular patrons with her--if an
interview _was_ arranged, and (feeling a bit flustered myself) I figured
this poor guy would try very hard to be diplomatic with both sides and see
if he could find a compromise that pleased everyone. In the end, he got
some good press and had to piss that away in order to keep the singer
happy, she still wasn't happy and he ended up paying through the nose for
a bodyguard for her on top of that. If that was the end of his story, I'd
still like him a lot.
But no.
Tonight the players decide they will take the opportunity to torment this
poor guy again. Wounded at being banned from the club, the yellow
journalist looms ominously around the area (more ominously because of his
protestations that he holds no grudges, "EVEN THOUGH I WAS WRONGED,"
<hands waved towards the sky>). Then the singer, whose personal life has
taken further turns for the worse, runs up a massive expense bill with her
bodyguard. Fine, I think. It's time for Clancy (the poor NPC club
manager) to strap on his brass testicles and be a man. Time for him to
stand up for his bottom line, so to speak. He demands, and gets, a
face-to-face meeting with the singer (who has gone into protective
seclusion hoping that all the bad stuff will blow over). He rails at her,
demanding to know why so much of the club's money, his money, HIS BACKERS'
MONEY is being spent to keep her safe--and from what? What danger has she
really been in? How much longer is he to be expected to indulge her
flighty whims?
Quoth the singer's player: "Okay. I start to cry."
Well, dammit, I think. Clancy's mad. He's psyched himself up all day to
have this meeting and walk out of it a winner for a change. Today he will
be a MAN. Acting vs. willpower, ground zero. She's got bonuses, he's got
bonuses.
Then poor Clancy, this poor dumb bastard, this unlucky SOB, he rolls a
flat 18. Critical failure. She turns on the waterworks and he turns to
Jell-O. He's got _nothing_ on her. He _needs_ her for the club, even if
it bankrupts the club to keep her. She's an artist, dammit, she's
entitled to her moods. What has Clancy (that insensitive lout) ever done
to support her in these trying times? And now, the boor, he actually
thought he could browbeat this innocent and talented flower? What a cur!
He must atone--and immediately! What can he do for her?!
As the old Monty Python skit says, "So much for pathos."
Anyway, I say Clancy is my favorite NPC right now, beating out the drunk
incompetent town guardsman, the money-grubbing newsboy urchin (who thought
up the brilliant idea of selling "tours of Death Alley, as seen in the
Courier!" the day after a grisly murder story broke, and the speed-freak
cutpurse-turned-information-broker by a nose. Someday poor Clancy's going
to stroke out and die, or one of my player characters will use him as a
human shield, or a big rock is just going to fall on him, and there won't
be a damn thing he can do about it. In a way, he's only fun for me
_because_ he loses so consistently.
Maybe I've contracted Vicarious Sisyphus Syndrome: my favorite NPCs are
doomed forever to push and push their overly-large rocks up the hill just
so they can get crushed by them. Meanwhile, my competent and successful
NPCs are designed as throwaway targets, and I look forward to seeing the
player characters tear them down because I don't get much of a kick out of
roleplaying the competent and successful NPCs. Give me a spineless feeb
like Clancy any day; I can't help but laugh at the guy even when I'm
feeling sorry for him.
--
psych majors can now begin to have a field day with this article
fran...@u.arizona.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
>>What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
>Vicarious Narcissus Syndrome : The GM who is so in love with his NCs that
>he cannot let them lose. In extreme cases the entire adventure exists
>solely for purpose of showcasing a single NPC...
Ow, yes. I recall a (brief) D&D campaign where my character's goals
slipped steadily from "Go out into the world and make a name for
myself" to "Put a burr under Aragorn's saddle." I didn't even succeed
at that, of course.
Should have shied away from any campaign with an NPC named "Aragorn"
in the first place....
**
"Nuclear Escalation Syndrome"
If the PCs managed to beat their opponent, it must not have been
big enough! Or: The PCs just went up a level, guess the rest of
the world should too....
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Michael T. Richter
news:B3D56F999...@morat.demon.co.uk...
>> What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
> Vicarious Narcissus Syndrome : The GM who is so in love with his NCs that
> he cannot let them lose. In extreme cases the entire adventure exists
> solely for purpose of showcasing a single NPC...
[shudder]
Thanks for the flashbacks, Paul. I guess I'll be racking up a few more
therapy bills....
--
Michael T. Richter <m...@ottawa.com> http://www.igs.net/~mtr/
PGP Key: http://www.igs.net/~mtr/pgp-key.html
PGP Fingerprint: 40D1 33E0 F70B 6BB5 8353 4669 B4CC DD09 04ED 4FE8
Paul King
fran...@kitts.u.arizona.edu (Ryan J Franklin) wrote:
>In article <B3D56F999...@morat.demon.co.uk>,
>Paul King <pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>In article <37ABA2DC...@idirect.com>,
>>Ryan Conner Stoughton <ryca...@idirect.com> wrote:
>>
>>>What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
>>>
>>Vicarious Narcissus Syndrome : The GM who is so in love with his NCs that
>>he cannot let them lose. In extreme cases the entire adventure exists
>>solely for purpose of showcasing a single NPC...
>
>The cure for this one, fortunately, is pretty easy and a lot of fun. I
>know I was surprised to figure out that my all-time favorite NPCs were all
>the _total losers_. What follows is a war story, read it at your own
>risk.
[Michael - you might be happier not reading below this point :-)]
I'm afraid you have had a very mild case. The sort of GM I'm talking about
is the sort that will give a street vendor heavy duty cyberware rather than
let PCs hassle him. (And yes, that really *did* happen). I don't think
you can comprehend the horrors that some GMs are capable of inflicting
unless you've experienced it yourself....
Michael T. Richter
> [Michael - you might be happier not reading below this point :-)]
Aargh! I'm always sucking in tokens two or three lines below the parse
point. (It's called "lookahead" people: look it up!) I read this only
after I got your story started.
> I'm afraid you have had a very mild case. The sort of GM I'm talking
about
> is the sort that will give a street vendor heavy duty cyberware rather
than
> let PCs hassle him. (And yes, that really *did* happen). I don't think
> you can comprehend the horrors that some GMs are capable of inflicting
> unless you've experienced it yourself....
The flashback you triggered in the past is now dominating my brain cells.
Thanks. In revenge, I'll relate the tale.
I played in a Space Opera game under a fellow who was very proud of his
setting. He wanted no changes to it that he didn't plan himself. And his
NPCs, of course, had to do everything. We were there just to see his
magnificent NPCs solve all and do all.
Now one of the manifestations of "no changes" that happened was that
EVERYBODY we met was a much more powerful character than we were.
EVERYBODY. We put this to a test.
We "missed" (ignored) the GM's pathetic adventure hook, walked down the
street of a city (estimated population 10,000,000) and attacked a random
stranger. The random stranger kicked our butts, even though we were very
powerful characters ourselves. (We very loudly worked out the odds among
ourselves. The GM didn't get the message.) Then, when he had us
vanquished, but not yet killed, he offered us a chance to stay alive: do the
adventure we had earlier ignored. We told him to kill us, so he made us go
anyway. We wound up inside a tank on a battlefield.
Deciding that this was the end of the campaign for us, we players got very
unruly.
- First we started trying to fire the tank's gun at other tanks on "our
side". The tank suddenly turned out to be intelligent and refused to fire
the gun.
- We then decided to point the gun opposite to where the enemy was and
charge the enemy (the intent being that we get blown to smithereens). The
tank went along with the plan, but decided to shoot at the enemy for us,
destroying each one with a single shot each.
- We decided to climb out of the tank and lay down under its tracks. It
suddenly became a grav tank -- the tracks were there because they presumably
looked good or something -- and floated over us without harming us.
- We finally decided to commit suicide. I had my character draw his power
sword and cut his own throat. The person who forced us on the mission
suddenly developed intense mental powers and forced the blade of the power
sword to become shorter so that my character basically got a close shave
instead.
At this point we could take no more, even as an intellectual exercise in
evaluating how bad a campaign could get. We just quit and walked out.
Neel Krishnaswami
>Paul King <pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>Vicarious Narcissus Syndrome : The GM who is so in love with his NCs that
>>he cannot let them lose. In extreme cases the entire adventure exists
>>solely for purpose of showcasing a single NPC...
>
>slipped steadily from "Go out into the world and make a name for
>myself" to "Put a burr under Aragorn's saddle." I didn't even succeed
>at that, of course.
How do I tell if I'm doing this?
This is a problem for me in _End of the Line_, because the PCs and
major NPCs are basically duelling demigods. They are designed to
be very close to each other in power, but this is intrinsically
tricky for me to assess.
1. What feels to a GM (who has complete information) like an even
challenge can often be far more terrifying to the players (who operate
in a state of relative uncertainty).
2. The players have a lot more mental resources than the GM does, and
therefore tend to play their PCs at a higher level of skill, simply
because their attention is not split. But giving the NPCs a "villain
bonus" is tricky because of the perception issues in #1.
3. More, some of the NPC archetypes need to come up with clever plans
to maintain their archetype's credibility on the player level. This is
hard because the plan must be clever enough that the players can feel
it's something the NPC would come up with, but if it's too perfect it
can cause the players to lose belief in their own PCs, who are
supposedly at a similar level of competence.
Any advice?
Neel
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk (Paul King) wrote:
>I'm afraid you have had a very mild case. The sort of GM I'm talking about
>is the sort that will give a street vendor heavy duty cyberware rather than
>let PCs hassle him. (And yes, that really *did* happen). I don't think
>you can comprehend the horrors that some GMs are capable of inflicting
>unless you've experienced it yourself....
Are you kidding? In a world where PC-types like beating up street
vendors I'd be surprised if there *weren't* a good number of them
cybered to the gills. Not all of them, mind. Just enough that the PCs
have to think twice before deciding to lay into one. I like to have
the occasional apparently harmless NPC have a surprise up their sleeve
(or arm).
That guy at the 3-card Monty table? He's got a reflex booster and a
built-in punch dagger. The tough guy on the stoop with those LEDs up
his arm? You're meant to think it's an implanted Gauss gun or laser,
but he couldn't afford it, so he just got the lights - like a fake car
alarm. The hot-dog stand guy? He's got relish, ketchup and two types
of mustard dispensers in the fingers of his left hand and a hold-out
gun implanted in the right. The hooker on the corner has razor nails
and a subdermal pocket for her stash and hold-out gun, not to mention
the fertility controls and immunity enhancements. The wino in the
alley, the one with the beret? He's chipped out. All the mods got to
him and he can't keep it together these days, but lay a hand on him
(or any of his wino mates) in anger and you'll be pink mist in under a
second. As for the guy with the skill-chip cart... well let's just say
you don't want to mess with him either. The rest of the vendors are
fleshies, but most of them pay protection money to the local cyber
gang, so...
After a while the PCs stop picking on innocent bystanders so much.
Stumpy.
--
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
Timaru, New Zealand
rma...@xtra.co.nz
<http://members.xoom.com/StumpyNZ/>
John Kim
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh <rma...@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk (Paul King) wrote:
>> The sort of GM I'm talking about is the sort that will give a street
>> vendor heavy duty cyberware rather than let PCs hassle him. (And
>> yes, that really *did* happen).
>
>vendors I'd be surprised if there *weren't* a good number of them
>cybered to the gills. Not all of them, mind. Just enough that the PCs
>have to think twice before deciding to lay into one.
>After a while the PCs stop picking on innocent bystanders so much.
Well, this reminds me of a GM illness -- "The Preacher".
The GM tries to force moral lessons on the players by messing
around with game reality. An interesting phenomena is that NPC
villians can beat up on innocent bystanders without incurring
any karmic wrath or having the tables turned on them -- but
if the PC's try it they are in for trouble.
(No offsense -- Robert's statement above might easily be
a joke rather than a real example of the sickness.)
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
(John Kim) wrote:
>>After a while the PCs stop picking on innocent bystanders so much.
>
> Well, this reminds me of a GM illness -- "The Preacher".
[...]
> (No offsense -- Robert's statement above might easily be
>a joke rather than a real example of the sickness.)
None taken. It was meant to be amusing, but it's no joke. Nor do I
entirely accept the "Preacher" diagnosis. What's the actual illness
called, BTW? How about "Oedema PC Moralis"? Oedema = pressure, no?
My comments weren't really applicable to complaints against genuine
Vicarious Narcissus Syndrome. That's a very real problem. My point was
that not every chipped street vendor is a symptom.
I guess I could call it a treatment for (or at least a reaction to) a
player disease. I'd call it "Mytisritis": the belief that since you're
tough PCs you can beat up and/or kill any "set dressing" NPC, for no
reason at all and with impunity.
It's cyberpunk. Life on the streets is nasty, brutish and short. There
are many people (like the PCs) out there, who will shoot you as soon
as look at you. At least *some* of the street people will have "an ace
up their sleeve".
When the consequences only apply to the PCs, and it happens every
time, then it's a problem. On that we certainly agree. If the bad-guy
has just beaten the crap out of someone, the victim shouldn't suddenly
turn into the Terminator the moment the PCs start to rough him up.
David Kristola
>>>What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
GM-Burnout. This is like writer's block. It is horrible and
insidious. Best solution i have found is to let someone else
GM for a while.
On the PC side, there is Goneitis, a malady that a character
comes down with when it's player is missing from the game.
It is typified by lethargy and indecision on the part of
the infected individual.
--djk, keeper of arcane lore & trivial fluff
Home: David95037 at aol dot com
Spam: goto....@welovespam.com
John Kim
>> Well, this reminds me of a GM illness -- "The Preacher".
[...]
>> (No offsense -- Robert's statement above might easily be a
>> joke rather than a real example of the sickness.)
>
>None taken. It was meant to be amusing, but it's no joke. Nor do I
>entirely accept the "Preacher" diagnosis.
>I guess I could call it a treatment for (or at least a reaction to) a
>player disease. I'd call it "Mytisritis": the belief that since you're
>tough PCs you can beat up and/or kill any "set dressing" NPC, for no
>reason at all and with impunity.
Hm. I guess it completely depends on circumstances which
behavior is the "pathological disease" and which is appropriate.
Personally, I had a PC who was a policeman in London's East End
at the time of Jack the Ripper. The GM was upset that he bullied
and beat on lower-class NPC's -- suggesting that the gangs of the
East End wouldn't put up with this sort of brutality and would
organize response specifically against that individual policeman.
It is perfectly possible to have different views of what is
reasonable even in the historical world -- but no, I do not
consider that even remotely reasonable.
I would agree that "Mightisrightis" may well be a disease,
but I don't see "Preacher" as a cure. Especially when the moral
lessons are taught by having the PC's beaten up, it seems to
prove "Mightisrightis" even more thoroughly.
I suspect that "Mightisrightis" comes primarily from
viewing the game as a set of purely physical or self-reliant
problem-solving -- while society is not really a factor. I think
a more workable solution is showing the *benefits* of being
social rather than going out of one's way to punish antisocial
behavior.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>It's cyberpunk. Life on the streets is nasty, brutish and short.
>There are many people (like the PCs) out there, who will shoot you
>as soon as look at you. At least *some* of the street people will
>have "an ace up their sleeve".
I'm not really following this. Based on the cyberpunk
genre, you expect that tough guys would have healthy fear of the
potential of street people? By my reading, cyberpunk is largely
about the *disempowering* of the masses -- i.e. that without
money and means you can and will get pushed around. Cyberpunk
does not strike me one of those genres where being nice pays, and
bullies always get shown up.
Frank J. Perricone
wrote:
> The flashback you triggered in the past is now dominating my brain cells.
> Thanks. In revenge, I'll relate the tale.
Have you told this one before? It sounds awfully familiar, down to the
details.
--
* Frank J. Perricone * hawt...@sover.net * http://www.sover.net/~hawthorn
Prism: http://www.sover.net/~hawthorn/Prism/
Just because we aren't all the same doesn't mean we have nothing in common
Just because we have something in common doesn't mean we're all the same
Ero...@aol.com
>
1. GM Legalism (named after the Chinese "legalist" philosophy): The idea
that players are inherently corrupt and wicked and need to be kept under
harsh dicipline in order to keep them from running amuck in displays of
full-throated munchkinism.
2. Lovely Filthism: The idea that great fun can be had in extremely
gritty and low-power games where the PCs are forced to "wallow in the
lovely filth".
3. Marginless Gaming: Games where the PCs are chronically at the edge of
disaster, where they constantly have to exert every fiber of their
being to survive and succeed, with no margin for mistakes, sub-optimal
play, displays of panache, or (often) bad luck. Often advertised as a
"thinking person's game"/"a game where the players really have to
*think*"
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com (mail drop)
Er...@ix.netcom.com (surfboard)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
red
about
> is the sort that will give a street vendor heavy duty cyberware rather
than
> you can comprehend the horrors that some GMs are capable of inflicting
> unless you've experienced it yourself....
Me! Me! I've got one!
It occurred when a group of PC's tried to flog an illusionary horse to a
horse-trader... who "as it happened" turned out to be a retired 17-th level
Magic User who then fireballed the PC's for their dishonesty.
Frank T. Sronce
I'd tend to say this- stop and think about how they could defeat each
NPC (including betraying the friendly ones), and what the ramifications
on the campaign would be. If you have any NPC that you just can't
imagine them beating, or without whom they could never succeed at their
mission, then you should consider carefully whether this is realistic,
or you're just unreasonably attached to that NPC.
I know I tend to get attached to NPCs that I have "plans" for. This
usually means that there is some secret role I intend for them to play
later, so I discourage the PCs from killing them and generally give the
NPC the benefit of the doubt in questionable situations. I don't want
to be too inflexible, though- if the PCs manage to get the drop on a
villain who was supposed to be instrumental later and waste him, I try
not to go to unrealistic lengths to have him live- it's easier to revise
the campaign plot than to restore player trust in your even-handedness.
Kiz
Michael T. Richter
news:380c64fe...@news2.sover.net...
>> The flashback you triggered in the past is now dominating my brain cells.
>> Thanks. In revenge, I'll relate the tale.
> Have you told this one before? It sounds awfully familiar, down to the
> details.
I may have, yes.
--
Michael T. Richter <m...@ottawa.com> http://www.igs.net/~mtr/
"get a life. its a plastic box with wires in it."
-- Nadia Mizner <nad...@onthenet.com.au> (in private correspondence)
Paul King
"Michael T. Richter" <m...@ottawa.com> wrote:
[Amusing-but-horrifying story snipped]
>
>At this point we could take no more, even as an intellectual exercise in
>evaluating how bad a campaign could get. We just quit and walked out.
>
Could be, but I think *that* story was the most extreme example of
railroading I've heard of. Anyone got a fun name for that ?
Paul King
rma...@xtra.co.nz (Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh) wrote:
>In message <B3D63B1C9...@morat.demon.co.uk>,
>pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk (Paul King) wrote:
>
>>I'm afraid you have had a very mild case. The sort of GM I'm talking about
>>is the sort that will give a street vendor heavy duty cyberware rather than
>>let PCs hassle him. (And yes, that really *did* happen). I don't think
>>you can comprehend the horrors that some GMs are capable of inflicting
>>unless you've experienced it yourself....
>
>Are you kidding? In a world where PC-types like beating up street
>vendors I'd be surprised if there *weren't* a good number of them
>cybered to the gills. Not all of them, mind. Just enough that the PCs
>have to think twice before deciding to lay into one. I like to have
>the occasional apparently harmless NPC have a surprise up their sleeve
>(or arm).
I'm afraid that doesn't work as an explanation.
Firstly the PCs didn't make a habit of attacking bystanders - they were
lost, confused and this guy was being less-than-helpful. The PCs had only
just arrived in that world anyway
Secondly he *was* a hot-dog seller but with wired reflexes and IIRC at
least one cyber-limb and claws (boosted strength too, I think) - more
heavily wired than any of your examples - how did he afford it ?
Thirdly he was the *first* person they met in that world ! Just what
proportion of hot-dog sellers are that heavily wired ?
Mond you we probably should have a thread on player diseases. What's the
name for somebody who thinks that just because they play a thief they have
to rob the other player characters even though they depend on them for
survival *and* keep getting caught ? (if that character had been an NPC we
*would* have killed *him*).
Dr Nuncheon
Paul King <pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <37b2c2e0...@news.tim.ihug.co.nz>,
>rma...@xtra.co.nz (Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh) wrote:
>>
>>Are you kidding? In a world where PC-types like beating up street
>>vendors I'd be surprised if there *weren't* a good number of them
>>cybered to the gills. Not all of them, mind. Just enough that the PCs
>>have to think twice before deciding to lay into one. I like to have
>>the occasional apparently harmless NPC have a surprise up their sleeve
>>(or arm).
If they have enough money to get cybered to the gills, why are they
selling hot dogs on the street? Unless you've got a situation like in the
_Gunnm_ manga (Battle Angel in the Yoo Ess), where cybernetics can pretty
much be picked up off the ground, having a hot-dog vendor dripping with
chrome is pretty silly. "Yeah, I used to make millions as a 'runner but I
retired and opened my own hot dog stand, just like every other retired
'runner in the city."
I'd buy that *once*.
Now, if he had had a large-caliber polly-one-shot and ventilated the PC
who attacked him - that I'd believe. But there's a huge difference
between a pistol and a huge chunk of cyberware.
It's the same syndrome where not one, but *every* bartender in the AD&D
city is a retired 20th level Fighter.
J
--
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" Jeff Johnston
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. jeffj @ io.com
Mary K. Kuhner
>Mond you we probably should have a thread on player diseases. What's the
>name for somebody who thinks that just because they play a thief they have
>to rob the other player characters even though they depend on them for
>survival *and* keep getting caught ? (if that character had been an NPC we
>*would* have killed *him*).
The GM who wires his street vendors to the eyeballs is probably
reacting to player behavior (past or present) of roughly this
sort, which in turn may be reacting to previous GM behavior of
not treating NPCs as real. It's a vicious circle.
The real-world reaction would mainly, I suspect, be a bad rep
and trouble with the law. Unfortunately, the problem players may
well be from a campaign where PCs automatically have a bad
rep and the law is never their friend--in which case, why should
they care? A GMing rule "don't make things too easy for the PCs"
can easily lead to the players deciding that NPC goodwill is
worth nothing--it never makes their lives easier--which removes
most of the reasons, on the player level, to avoid antisocial
behavior.
I've had good luck starting a new game, and trying to lay out the new
worldview at the start. It's much harder to fix an existing game.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Frank J. Perricone
> If they have enough money to get cybered to the gills, why are they
> selling hot dogs on the street? Unless you've got a situation like in the
> _Gunnm_ manga (Battle Angel in the Yoo Ess), where cybernetics can pretty
> much be picked up off the ground, having a hot-dog vendor dripping with
> chrome is pretty silly. "Yeah, I used to make millions as a 'runner but I
> retired and opened my own hot dog stand, just like every other retired
> 'runner in the city."
One explanation you could come up with if you wanted to run a campaign like
this is, there was a war, and lots of soldiers got cybered up -- most of
them, in fact. Then the war ended and the vets got turned out onto the
streets without having the stuff taken out (perhaps because the tech level
makes it too hard to take out, or too costly). Not too implausible --
there are communities like that in the real world, where lots of vets have
otherwise improbable-seeming attitudes combined with skill at dangerous
arts. If the weapons had been implanted, they'd have them too. Sounds
like a damned scary place to do business, but hey, this is cyberpunk,
right?
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
(John Kim) wrote:
> Hm. I guess it completely depends on circumstances which
>behavior is the "pathological disease" and which is appropriate.
[snip]
> I would agree that "Mightisrightis" may well be a disease,
>but I don't see "Preacher" as a cure. Especially when the moral
>lessons are taught by having the PC's beaten up, it seems to
>prove "Mightisrightis" even more thoroughly.
As you said, it depends on the frequency and impact of the player vs.
the GM "pathology". I don't consider myself a preacher, because I try
to keep things in perspective. I *want* my PCs to be largely amoral -
the setting certainly is. Conversely I don't want them getting
delusions of grandeur. It's a harsh world and he who lives by the gun,
dies by the gun, good or bad, PC or NPC.
> I suspect that "Mightisrightis" comes primarily from
>viewing the game as a set of purely physical or self-reliant
>problem-solving -- while society is not really a factor. I think
>a more workable solution is showing the *benefits* of being
>social rather than going out of one's way to punish antisocial
>behavior.
Which I also do - not as moral pressure, but because it makes sense.
Co-operation is a Good Thing. Real life (and Sesame Street) teaches
all of us that. When you think about it though, pushing the benefits
of co-operation is at least as Preacher-ish as letting the NPCs give
the PCs a surprise once in a while. Generally more so, IMHO.
> I'm not really following this. Based on the cyberpunk
>genre, you expect that tough guys would have healthy fear of the
>potential of street people?
We may be thinking on different scales. If the PCs were hardened
corporate operators chipped to the gills they wouldn't have to worry
much about the hold-out guns and low end reflex boosters the street
vendors can afford. But my PCs are street people too. Somewhat more
highly skilled and better equipped than the average street person,
sure, but when it comes down to it, they're just a better class of
scum. They (almost) invariably get the better of other street people,
usually in short order, but it isn't *always* as easy as they'd like.
Apart from the psychotic combat monster wino, who I admit is rather
OTT (and I wouldn't spring anyone like that on the PCs without some
other NPC warning them about the cyber-psycho vet in the alley), which
of the characters in my little scene do you object to, and why?
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
>Thanks. In revenge, I'll relate the tale.
I'm sorry to be laughing at your pain, but... ROTFL!
-- <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
Paul King
mkku...@eskimo.com (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>Paul King <pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Mond you we probably should have a thread on player diseases. What's the
>>name for somebody who thinks that just because they play a thief they have
>>to rob the other player characters even though they depend on them for
>>survival *and* keep getting caught ? (if that character had been an NPC we
>>*would* have killed *him*).
>
>The GM who wires his street vendors to the eyeballs is probably
>reacting to player behavior (past or present) of roughly this
>sort, which in turn may be reacting to previous GM behavior of
>not treating NPCs as real. It's a vicious circle.
I'm not saying that it couldn't happen, but I don't believe it is the case
in my example - certainly not with the players in the game.
>
>The real-world reaction would mainly, I suspect, be a bad rep
>and trouble with the law. Unfortunately, the problem players may
>well be from a campaign where PCs automatically have a bad
>rep and the law is never their friend--in which case, why should
>they care?
In this case they would probably have ended up on another world first.
Since they had just come from Harn via Ravenloft (which involved a fair bit
of abuse from NPCs as well) the trend was not to stay very long on one
world.
gr...@arduin-delos.com-nospam
<m...@ottawa.com> wrote:
>- We finally decided to commit suicide. I had my character draw his power
>sword and cut his own throat. The person who forced us on the mission
>suddenly developed intense mental powers and forced the blade of the power
>sword to become shorter so that my character basically got a close shave
>instead.
>
>At this point we could take no more, even as an intellectual exercise in
>evaluating how bad a campaign could get. We just quit and walked out.
I really pissed off a new player once. I don't remember why his
character decided to commit suicide -- some sort of frustration
in the game -- but he announced he was using his dagger to slit
his own throat.
I told him to roll his DEX and WISdom (for the willpower to do
it). He failed one of the rolls and got so mad he started eating
his character sheet, iirc. :-)
Graf
-----------------------------------------------------
Graf D.V.B.G.S. Posvalsky of Delos -- "Arduin Lives!"
Grimoires IV-VIII at http://www.arduin-delos.com
(Unless noted, all spells I mention are from Dragon Tree Spell Book.)
Brandi Weed
What if it turned out the local hot dog vendor was friends with a bunch
of nasty toughs who would not appreciate random PCs hurting the guy who
makes the best chili dogs in SynCorpTown?
Brandi
Dr Nuncheon
I'd buy it, once. If *every* hot dog vendor was friends with an
ass-kicking street gang or corporate hit team, I'd start to wonder.
Frank T. Sronce
>
> On a frivolous note...
>
> What if it turned out the local hot dog vendor was friends with a bunch
> of nasty toughs who would not appreciate random PCs hurting the guy who
> makes the best chili dogs in SynCorpTown?
>
THAT, I have no problems with. The problem is when the hot dog vendor
himself can take out a team of Black Ops combat solos himself... _and
so can every OTHER npc in the game..._ :-)
Kiz
Dean Randall Flemming
world. The dungeon was under a trap door in the back of a bakery. The
players decided to wander down the road away from the bakery. The GM
said, you see nothing. " We keep walking." " You see nothing." et
cetera...
> I played in a Space Opera game under a fellow who was very proud of
his
> setting. He wanted no changes to it that he didn't plan himself. And
his
> NPCs, of course, had to do everything. We were there just to see his
> magnificent NPCs solve all and do all.
>
> Deciding that this was the end of the campaign for us, we players got
very
> unruly.
> - First we started trying to fire the tank's gun at other tanks on
"our
> side"... We just quit and walked out.
Dean Randall Flemming
vendors be street vendors!
rma...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
> In message <B3D63B1C9...@morat.demon.co.uk>,
> pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk (Paul King) wrote:
>
> >I'm afraid you have had a very mild case. The sort of GM I'm talking
about
> >is the sort that will give a street vendor heavy duty cyberware
rather than
> >let PCs hassle him. (And yes, that really *did* happen). I don't
think
> >you can comprehend the horrors that some GMs are capable of
inflicting
> >unless you've experienced it yourself....
>
> Are you kidding? In a world where PC-types like beating up street
> vendors I'd be surprised if there *weren't* a good number of them
> cybered to the gills. Not all of them, mind. Just enough that the PCs
> have to think twice before deciding to lay into one. I like to have
> the occasional apparently harmless NPC have a surprise up their sleeve
> (or arm).
>
> That guy at the 3-card Monty table? He's got a reflex booster and a
> built-in punch dagger. The tough guy on the stoop with those LEDs up
> his arm? You're meant to think it's an implanted Gauss gun or laser,
> but he couldn't afford it, so he just got the lights - like a fake car
> alarm. The hot-dog stand guy? He's got relish, ketchup and two types
> of mustard dispensers in the fingers of his left hand and a hold-out
> gun implanted in the right. The hooker on the corner has razor nails
> and a subdermal pocket for her stash and hold-out gun, not to mention
> the fertility controls and immunity enhancements. The wino in the
> alley, the one with the beret? He's chipped out. All the mods got to
> him and he can't keep it together these days, but lay a hand on him
> (or any of his wino mates) in anger and you'll be pink mist in under a
> second. As for the guy with the skill-chip cart... well let's just say
> you don't want to mess with him either. The rest of the vendors are
> fleshies, but most of them pay protection money to the local cyber
> gang, so...
>
> After a while the PCs stop picking on innocent bystanders so much.
>
> Stumpy.
> --
> Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
> Timaru, New Zealand
> rma...@xtra.co.nz
> <http://members.xoom.com/StumpyNZ/>
>
Thomas Galen Ault
>In article <37ABA2DC...@idirect.com>,
> Ryan Conner Stoughton <ryca...@idirect.com> wrote:
>> Wanted to start this thread for awhile...
>>
>> What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
>
>1. GM Legalism (named after the Chinese "legalist" philosophy): The idea
>that players are inherently corrupt and wicked and need to be kept under
>harsh dicipline in order to keep them from running amuck in displays of
>full-throated munchkinism.
GM Legalism is often caught from players suffering from "Munchinitis" or
"Sociopathy." I caught GM Legalism once and it ruined a wonderful
Ars Magica campaign.
>
>2. Lovely Filthism: The idea that great fun can be had in extremely
>gritty and low-power games where the PCs are forced to "wallow in the
>lovely filth".
This disease has its origins in the notion that "gritty and dark" ==
"real roleplaying," but "bright and heroic" == "AD&D pap."
>3. Marginless Gaming: Games where the PCs are chronically at the edge of
>disaster, where they constantly have to exert every fiber of their
>being to survive and succeed, with no margin for mistakes, sub-optimal
>play, displays of panache, or (often) bad luck. Often advertised as a
>"thinking person's game"/"a game where the players really have to
>*think*"
Some more:
4. "Think-like-the-GM-itis" The GM who suffers from this illness also
commonly adventizes his or her games as "a thinking person's game"/
"a game where the players really have to *think*" Solving the GM's
"clever" puzzles more often requires knowledge of the GMs
ideosynchrities (sp?) and world view than it does on critical thinking
or reasoning skills. Had a friend lose a beloved character to a GM
suffering from this disease once because his solution to the problem
wasn't what the GM had in mind.
5. "Killer DM Syndrome" Well documented in Dragon #96, the killer DM
exists only to slaughter legions of player characters. Differs from
"NPC Narcisism" or "The Invincible Street Vendor" in that *everything*
-every monster, NPC, trap, or item- is lethal to the PCs. Symptoms
include Berzerker Kobolds armed with Vorpal Swords+5 (that only work
for Kobold's natch; for PCs, they are cursed swords-5 with 100% magic
resistance) and use of Wandering Damage tables.
6. "The Sleep-Inducing DM" Also documented in Dragon #96, the sleep-inducing
GM creates long, pointless boring adventures for the sole purpose of
putting the players to sleep so he or she can steal their dice.
7. "The GM with a Cause" Everything in the world is designed to emphasize
the rightness of the GM's social, political or religious views, no matter
how obnoxious the players find it, or how unrealistic the resulting
game world is. Examples include:
-the Socialist GM, in whose world Captialist societies are always
hellish pits of oppression, despair, and corruption while Socialist
societies are Shining Beacons of Truth And Love.
-the Libretarian GM, in whose worlds the state exists only to
oppress and destroy freedoms, and anarchy is the only valid form
of (non-)government.
-the Neo-Pagan Storyguide in Ars-Magica, who takes every opportunity
to remind you what a crock Christianity is and how the "historical"
pagan religion it replaced was So Much Better.
-the Fundy GM, who, if he actually existed, would design every
aspect of his world as a chance to evangelize. (Thankfully,
Fundys of this type almost always consider roleplaying to be
a Satanic activity, so the Fundy GM has never been spotted).
8. "The Psychotic GM" who likes to "fuck with the player's heads" because
"personal angst makes great roleplaying." This is the GM who has the
PC's beloved tortured, raped and dismembered while the PC is forced
to watch helplessly, or who gives the heroic PC an Uncontrollable
Berserk Rage which forces the PC to mow down old women and children.
Typically plays "Splotch-Boy" era White Wolf games.
and many, many more.
Tom Ault
Thomas Galen Ault
Thomas Galen Ault <tom...@cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
>GM Legalism is often caught from players suffering from "Munchinitis" or
>"Sociopathy." I caught GM Legalism once and it ruined a wonderful
>Ars Magica campaign.
I should clarify. I caught the disease from a previous group of players
I used to game with. The players for the aforementioned Ars-Magica
campaign were wonderful.
Tom Ault
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
>you don't want to mess with him either. The rest of the vendors are
>fleshies, but most of them pay protection money to the local cyber
>gang, so...
>After a while the PCs stop picking on innocent bystanders so much.
I'd be really leery of having more than a small fraction of the
populace wired (in ICE's _Cyberspace_, it's about 10%, and that's like
half the wealthy 10% and 5% of the rest)... But protection is a viable
option for anyone.
That said, veterans (see the "Unknown Soldier" ep of TekWar (the
series was far better than the first movie)) could be pretty much
everywhere if you had a lot of wars, and it may not always be practical
to "decommission" them.
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes) wrote:
> I'd be really leery of having more than a small fraction of the
>populace wired (in ICE's _Cyberspace_, it's about 10%, and that's like
>half the wealthy 10% and 5% of the rest)... But protection is a viable
>option for anyone.
Yeah that'd be about right. That's the world I use. Translated for
GURPS (modified) and interpretted to taste, of course. Somewhat higher
proportions of gang members (depending on the gang) and people working
the streets have cyberware than ordinary folks of a similar poverty
level, but still in that sort of ballpark.
Rick Pikul
> In article <WF0s3.7$094...@198.235.216.4>,> [Amusing-but-horrifying story snipped]
> >
> >At this point we could take no more, even as an intellectual exercise in
> >
>
> Could be, but I think *that* story was the most extreme example of
> railroading I've heard of. Anyone got a fun name for that ?
VanHorne Syndrome?
--
Phoenix
Russell Wallace
> 2. The players have a lot more mental resources than the GM does, and
> therefore tend to play their PCs at a higher level of skill, simply
> because their attention is not split.
Before you start trying to compensate for this, bear in mind that in
some people's experience (in particular, mine) it is heavily outweighed
by:
2A: A group of NPCs operating as a team are under the control of a
single mind, and therefore function as a far more coherent unit than a
group of PCs trying to operate as a team with one player per PC. (This
is particularly true when one takes into account that trying to get
roleplayers to follow orders is like trying to herd cats, regardless of
whether or not it would be in character for the PC.)
2B: The NPCs are being played by the referee, and are therefore on the
same wavelength as the referee. They *know how the game world works* in
hundreds of unarticulated ways that the players may not even think to
ask about. (I know explicit written rules are supposed to deal with
this, but I find they can only ever deal with a small part of it.)
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Ero...@aol.com
tom...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Galen Ault) wrote:
> In article <7oru1f$6m3$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <Ero...@aol.com> wrote:
> >In article <37ABA2DC...@idirect.com>,
> > Ryan Conner Stoughton <ryca...@idirect.com> wrote:
> >> Wanted to start this thread for awhile...
> >>
> >> What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of
RPGs?
> >
> >1. GM Legalism (named after the Chinese "legalist" philosophy): The
idea
> >that players are inherently corrupt and wicked and need to be kept
under
> >harsh dicipline in order to keep them from running amuck in displays
of
> >full-throated munchkinism.
>
or
> "Sociopathy." I caught GM Legalism once and it ruined a wonderful
> Ars Magica campaign.
IME, the worst cases of GM Legalism occur in GM's who have never
encountered a full-blown munchkin, but who instead are over-reacting to
various horror stories told about munchkins.
<snip>
>
> 7. "The GM with a Cause" Everything in the world is designed to
emphasize
> the rightness of the GM's social, political or religious views, no
matter
> how obnoxious the players find it, or how unrealistic the resulting
> game world is. Examples include:
<snip>
> -the Libretarian GM, in whose worlds the state exists only to
> oppress and destroy freedoms, and anarchy is the only valid form
> of (non-)government.
You mean like in the real world? 1/2 :-)
I lean heavily on various genre conventions & stereotypes wrt
governments in order to keep from over-expressing my political views in
my games. For example, my fantasy games use the standard monarchy/feudal
nobility/aristocracy systems, and I just take that as being part of the
fantasy. After all, most other GM must be doing the same - they can't
all be secret monarchists in their real-world political views.
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com (mail drop)
Er...@ix.netcom.com (surfboard)
Irina Rempt
> -the Fundy GM, who, if he actually existed, would design every
> aspect of his world as a chance to evangelize. (Thankfully,
> Fundys of this type almost always consider roleplaying to be
> a Satanic activity, so the Fundy GM has never been spotted).
They're supposed to be playing Dragonraid (meant to evangelize), but
I've never heard of anyone actually GMing or playing it for real, in
a church-school setting for instance.
I think most GMs try, at least, to get their own ideas of right and
wrong across in their games; I know that I do, though I don't design
it into the world, I just don't make any effort to eliminate it if it
shows through.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)
Gerald Michael Clark
Irina Rempt wrote:
>
> In rec.games.frp.advocacy Thomas Galen Ault <tom...@cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> > -the Fundy GM, who, if he actually existed, would design every
> > aspect of his world as a chance to evangelize. (Thankfully,
> > Fundys of this type almost always consider roleplaying to be
> > a Satanic activity, so the Fundy GM has never been spotted).
>
> They're supposed to be playing Dragonraid (meant to evangelize), but
> I've never heard of anyone actually GMing or playing it for real, in
> a church-school setting for instance.
I'm surprised anyone else would mention Dragonraid. I, and my brother,
both have run and played in several games of Dragonraid. In the right
context it is a good game. A properly grounded person knows that
roleplaying isn't satanic and that a good game can actually show the
proper way to act in a give situation; without using the I-beam over the
head method.
> I think most GMs try, at least, to get their own ideas of right and
> wrong across in their games; I know that I do, though I don't design
> it into the world, I just don't make any effort to eliminate it if it
> shows through.
>
> Irina
-Gerald Clark
Michael Cule
tom...@cs.cmu.edu "Thomas Galen Ault" writes:
> 4. "Think-like-the-GM-itis" The GM who suffers from this illness also
> commonly adventizes his or her games as "a thinking person's game"/
> "a game where the players really have to *think*" Solving the GM's
> "clever" puzzles more often requires knowledge of the GMs
> ideosynchrities (sp?) and world view than it does on critical thinking
> or reasoning skills.
I've done that, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. "What do you mean," I said, "you
don't recognise the symptoms of haemophilia?" I've not seriously tried to do
detective scenarios since.
> Had a friend lose a beloved character to a GM
> suffering from this disease once because his solution to the problem
> wasn't what the GM had in mind.
>
Now that's just rude.
> 5. "Killer DM Syndrome" Well documented in Dragon #96, the killer DM
> exists only to slaughter legions of player characters. Differs from
> "NPC Narcisism" or "The Invincible Street Vendor" in that *everything*
> -every monster, NPC, trap, or item- is lethal to the PCs. Symptoms
> include Berzerker Kobolds armed with Vorpal Swords+5 (that only work
> for Kobold's natch; for PCs, they are cursed swords-5 with 100% magic
> resistance) and use of Wandering Damage tables.
Sometimes we don't mean to and still do it. Such as the time I ran BUSHIDO and
failed to appreciate how much more deadly one sixth level character was in that
system than six first level characters (the PCs). It's amazing to me why they
still game with me.
> 6. "The Sleep-Inducing DM" Also documented in Dragon #96, the sleep-inducing
> GM creates long, pointless boring adventures for the sole purpose of
> putting the players to sleep so he or she can steal their dice.
I think that's a subset of number 4 above. The GM may find a set of adventures
based on obscure bits of architecture fascinating and not understand why the
players are gibbering.
--
Michael Cule
Actor And Genius
AKA Theophilus Prince Archbishop Of The Far Isles Medieval Society
Arms Purpure An Open Book Proper: On the Dexter Page an Alpha Or
On the Sinister an Omega Or. Motto Nulla Spes Sit in Resistendo
(Resistance is Useless). Ask me about the Far Isles:
Better Living through Pan-Medieval Anachronisms.
Irina Rempt
> I'm surprised anyone else would mention Dragonraid. I, and my brother,
> both have run and played in several games of Dragonraid. In the right
> context it is a good game. A properly grounded person knows that
> roleplaying isn't satanic and that a good game can actually show the
> proper way to act in a give situation; without using the I-beam over the
> head method.
My experience with Dragonraid (but then I only have the basic set
that you can download for free) is that it's very much the I-beam
over the head: do the right thing or else. There seems to be only one
right thing you can do (as opposed to what theologians such as C.S.
Lewis say: there are infinite ways to be good but basically only one
way to be evil). All you learn from it when played by the book, in my
opinion, is second-guessing the game designers.
Also, the GMing guide is the best guide to railroading that I've ever
read, even with tips how to get the players back on the beaten track.
I made a Dragonraid character, using a spreadsheet because it was too
complicated to calculate everything by hand, and found that all stats
gravitate to the average eventually; secondary and tertiary stats,
calculated from the primary ones. It makes for insipid characters
that are hardly distinguishable from one another, unless you happen
to roll exceptionally well (or exceptionally badly, but then you're
not even allowed to play).
I can imagine it would be fun to play in the hands of a capable GM
who knows what he's doing and isn't fooled by all the warnings not to
digress from the literal text of the handbook.
Nils K Hammer
Where all the adventures & treasures are just right for _one_ PC.
Michael Cule
> I lean heavily on various genre conventions & stereotypes wrt
> governments in order to keep from over-expressing my political views in
> my games. For example, my fantasy games use the standard monarchy/feudal
> nobility/aristocracy systems, and I just take that as being part of the
> fantasy. After all, most other GM must be doing the same - they can't
> all be secret monarchists in their real-world political views.
No not *secret* monarchists.....(See the sig.)
And didn't you know that the official FBI verdict on the SCA when they
investigated it was 'a bunch of harmless monarchists'?
adamsloyd
--
Adamsloyd
http://www.angelfire.com/wi/magearena/index.html
<Ero...@aol.com> wrote in message news:7oru1f$6m3$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <37ABA2DC...@idirect.com>,
> Ryan Conner Stoughton <ryca...@idirect.com> wrote:
> > Wanted to start this thread for awhile...
> >
> > What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
>
> 1. GM Legalism (named after the Chinese "legalist" philosophy): The idea
> that players are inherently corrupt and wicked and need to be kept under
> harsh dicipline in order to keep them from running amuck in displays of
> full-throated munchkinism.
>
> 2. Lovely Filthism: The idea that great fun can be had in extremely
> gritty and low-power games where the PCs are forced to "wallow in the
> lovely filth".
>
> 3. Marginless Gaming: Games where the PCs are chronically at the edge of
> disaster, where they constantly have to exert every fiber of their
> being to survive and succeed, with no margin for mistakes, sub-optimal
> play, displays of panache, or (often) bad luck. Often advertised as a
> "thinking person's game"/"a game where the players really have to
> *think*"
>
This is not a disease unless used far too often or constantly. I find, as a
DM, that my PCs like the suspense generated by an encounter where they can't
make mistakes, and have little time to think about what they could do.
Doug Atkinson
> That said, veterans (see the "Unknown Soldier" ep of TekWar (the
> series was far better than the first movie)) could be pretty much
> everywhere if you had a lot of wars, and it may not always be practical
> to "decommission" them.
>
This would be particularly appropriate in Underground, where
that's basically the premise, except that Underground veterans don't tend
to be unobtrusive or well-adjusted enough to make good hot dog vendors. :)
--Doug
Doug Atkinson
> In article <7ovhbu$1df$1...@goldenapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
> tom...@cs.cmu.edu "Thomas Galen Ault" writes:
> > 4. "Think-like-the-GM-itis" The GM who suffers from this illness also
> > commonly adventizes his or her games as "a thinking person's game"/
> > "a game where the players really have to *think*" Solving the GM's
> > "clever" puzzles more often requires knowledge of the GMs
> > ideosynchrities (sp?) and world view than it does on critical thinking
> > or reasoning skills.
>
> I've done that, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. "What do you mean," I said, "you
> don't recognise the symptoms of haemophilia?" I've not seriously tried to do
> detective scenarios since.
Ever read Dorothy L. Sayers' "Have His Carcasse?" :)
I'll throw in something which was touched on tangentially before
and which I suffered in college: the tendency to throw together a campaign
based on the book/comic with which I was fascinated at the time. (This
was largely a result of being at loose ends due to the demise of my
long-running superhero campaign, and partially because every serious
attempt I made at starting a campaign fell apart pretty quickly.) These
had a tendency to run through the PCs getting together, and perhaps one or
two ad hoc sessions after that.
(The most extreme example of this, which I didn't initiate but was
complicit in, was a campaign that started and died in one night. It was
basically a case of mass insanity around the idea "We could do Shadowrun
better than FASA"; not only did it never get past the PC meeting stage, we
never even *spoke* of it afterwards.)
--Doug
Ross Smith
players say, or fail to say, literally to a ridiculous extreme. Case
study: The GM who had my character arrested for indecent exposure
because I hadn't mentioned putting clothes on.
--
Ross Smith ....................................... Auckland, New Zealand
<mailto:r-s...@ihug.co.nz> ........ <http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~r-smith/>
"For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand, then with a wooden
foot, and finally with a piece of string." -- The Goon Show
Frank J. Perricone
instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of players
without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy terms;
then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes the
solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players can
solve the problems.
--
* Frank J. Perricone * hawt...@sover.net * http://www.sover.net/~hawthorn
Prism: http://www.sover.net/~hawthorn/Prism/
Just because we aren't all the same doesn't mean we have nothing in common
Just because we have something in common doesn't mean we're all the same
Alain Lapalme
>
>
> I lean heavily on various genre conventions & stereotypes wrt
> governments in order to keep from over-expressing my political views
> in
> my games. For example, my fantasy games use the standard
> monarchy/feudal
> nobility/aristocracy systems, and I just take that as being part of
> the
> fantasy. After all, most other GM must be doing the same - they can't
> all be secret monarchists in their real-world political views.
>
Hey, dictatorship is a very valid form of government as long as _I_ am
the dictator.
Alain
Alain Lapalme
>
>
> I think most GMs try, at least, to get their own ideas of right and
> wrong across in their games; I know that I do, though I don't design
> it into the world, I just don't make any effort to eliminate it if it
> shows through.
>
I don't see how one could not have one's own biases in a game, specially
when GM. Roleplaying tends to be very personal. While it is possible
to uses a set of different ethics when roleplaying a character, it gets
a lot more difficult when GMing. A GM has to handle NPCs, politics,
economics, social ethics, religion, etc., etc.. I seems impossible to
me that, through all these venues, a person's biases will not shine
through.
For example, I have this strong belief that there are always
consequences to one's actions. Intellectually, I know that some actions
really don't have any significant consequences but I also know, that on
the spur of the moment, I'll tend to go for "a consequence" to a PC's
actions. I know that this philosophy permeates my game. The key is to
find players who can live with this.
***************
The funny thing about this thread is that most illnesses stated are not
illnesses, really. They are just part of being human. So, the GM's
personal philosophies are being mirrored in the game. What else do you
expect? The real issue is whether or not the player can live the GM's
biases.
Now, I'll grant that there definitely are GM illnesses, the "GM's
girlfriend syndrome for instance" (or the GM's boyfriend syndrome).
Alain
Alain Lapalme
> 9. The What-You-Say-Is-What-You-Get GM: THe GM who takes everything
> the
> players say, or fail to say, literally to a ridiculous extreme. Case
> study: The GM who had my character arrested for indecent exposure
> because I hadn't mentioned putting clothes on.
>
<snicker> While this may not have been funny at the time, I did laugh
when reading it. I'll agree that this was really extreme.
Alain
Alain Lapalme
> 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
> instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of
> players
> without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy
> terms;
> then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes
> the
> solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players
> can
> solve the problems.
>
Well, at least, you can't accuse the GM of railroading. ;(
Alain
Neel Krishnaswami
>Irina Rempt wrote:
>
>> I think most GMs try, at least, to get their own ideas of right and
>> wrong across in their games; I know that I do, though I don't design
>> it into the world, I just don't make any effort to eliminate it if it
>> shows through.
>
>I don't see how one could not have one's own biases in a game, specially
>when GM. Roleplaying tends to be very personal. While it is possible
>to uses a set of different ethics when roleplaying a character, it gets
>a lot more difficult when GMing.
Well, I make a deliberate effort to avoid designing in my moral
beliefs, and will quite consciously try to eliminate it when I find
it. I *intensely* dislike stories where the action doesn't arise
naturally from the setup, and I worry that if I put in too much of my
ethics into the game, I'll tend to grant too much benefit of the doubt
to the characters who share my ethics. It's just a lot easier for me
to make unbiased judgements when I don't have too much sympathy for
any side in the conflict.
Third, I find it fun to immerse myself in an alien morality. I read a
lot of theology to run In Nomine, and it was a lot of fun. Something
like the doctrine of original sin now makes intellectual sense to me
rather than being one of the opaque doctrines of the mysterious
West. :)
Neel
Dean Randall Flemming
> Nils K Hammer <nh...@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> How about "game masters girlfriend syndrome".
> Where all the adventures & treasures are just right for _one_ PC.
The-Game-Master-Has-a-Girlfiend! I have known many roleplaying games to
collapse because the gamemaster suddenly has to devote all his free time
to something which any gamer without a girlfriend can clearly see to be
less important than gaming.
Michael Martin
: This would be particularly appropriate in Underground, where
: that's basically the premise, except that Underground veterans don't tend
: to be unobtrusive or well-adjusted enough to make good hot dog vendors. :)
: --Doug
I can see it now...
"Do you want the relish?"
"I don't know, it's kind of expensive..."
[Observes various humming and clicking sounds as the vendor begins
twitching menacingly]
"I'll have the relish and whatever is most expensive."
-- Mike
Michael Cule
do...@io.com "Doug Atkinson" writes:
> On Fri, 13 Aug 1999, Michael Cule wrote:
> > I've done that, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. "What do you mean," I said, "you
> > don't recognise the symptoms of haemophilia?" I've not seriously tried to do
> > detective scenarios since.
>
> Ever read Dorothy L. Sayers' "Have His Carcasse?" :)
I try only to steal from the best....
Nightshade
> -the Fundy GM, who, if he actually existed, would design every
> aspect of his world as a chance to evangelize. (Thankfully,
> Fundys of this type almost always consider roleplaying to be
> a Satanic activity, so the Fundy GM has never been spotted).
Though I ran into a couple cases not far from it, where you could
pretty much assume if something looked non-Christian it was Evil. And
not just supernatural phenomenon, either. You see a lot of the same
thing in Christian end times fiction.
Doug Atkinson
> One form of this disease is "Suddenly Signifigant Syndrome", where the
> players are supposed to have been tipped off to Something Of Vital
> Importance because of something in the GM's description or gestures about
> the setting or playing of an NPC, despite the fact that there was not a
> thing to distinguish it from the previous three hours of running commentary.
>
Or the opposite, the Any Detail Is Significant Syndrome, which
seems to be a problem for GMs who aren't good at description. Example: in
my first D&D game, I was instantly alerted to the presence of piercers in
a room because the GM mentioned stalactites, when he had never mentioned
any dungeon detail before except the size of the room. (The worst extreme
of this is reading past the players' description box, which this DM also
did--"There is a statue of a kobold here. It is completely harmless.
Oops.")
--Doug
Charlie Luce -- change nospam to decus to reply
>
>"Nuclear Escalation Syndrome"
>
>If the PCs managed to beat their opponent, it must not have been
>big enough! Or: The PCs just went up a level, guess the rest of
>the world should too....
Locally we call the latter "Expanding Pond Syndrome" -- no matter how big
a fish your PC becomes, they're always a small fish in a big pond.
Mind you, I'm not talking about moving to bigger and bigger ponds as you
grow; that's the sort of "now you're playing in the big leagues" development
you would expect in any coherent game-world. I'm talking about the sort of
thing where (to borrow from earlier examples) the street punks are always
built on 150% of the PCs' points, or the bartender is always 6 levels higher
than the best PC...
Charlie Luce -- change nospam to decus to reply
>
>4. "Think-like-the-GM-itis" The GM who suffers from this illness also
> commonly adventizes his or her games as "a thinking person's game"/
> "a game where the players really have to *think*" Solving the GM's
> "clever" puzzles more often requires knowledge of the GMs
> ideosynchrities (sp?) and world view than it does on critical thinking
> suffering from this disease once because his solution to the problem
> wasn't what the GM had in mind.
One form of this disease is "Suddenly Signifigant Syndrome", where the
Thomas Galen Ault
Alain Lapalme <lap...@intranet.ca> wrote:
>Irina Rempt wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I think most GMs try, at least, to get their own ideas of right and
>> wrong across in their games; I know that I do, though I don't design
>> it into the world, I just don't make any effort to eliminate it if it
>> shows through.
>>
>
>I don't see how one could not have one's own biases in a game, specially
>when GM. Roleplaying tends to be very personal. While it is possible
>to uses a set of different ethics when roleplaying a character, it gets
>economics, social ethics, religion, etc., etc.. I seems impossible to
>me that, through all these venues, a person's biases will not shine
>through.
>The funny thing about this thread is that most illnesses stated are not
>illnesses, really. They are just part of being human. So, the GM's
>personal philosophies are being mirrored in the game. What else do you
>expect? The real issue is whether or not the player can live the GM's
>biases.
The problem occurs when it gets obnoxious and the resultant world defies
any sense of logic or reason. All of the aforementioned "illnesses" are
tolerable unless taken to extremes. It's not the GM whose personal
views occasionally and subtly appear in his or her own world, or
whose personal views reasonably align with reality (e.g. things fall
down in areas of non-zero gravity, shooting someone in broad daylight
gets one arrested by the police if the government hasn't collapsed, etc.),
who is the problem. This is only human, after all. It's the GM who
takes every opportunity to remind the players how wonderful the world
would be if everyone did things his or her way, and how awful all the
the who disagree with him or her are, who is the problem.
An example: the Feminist GM. In the Feminist GM's world, Men are Bad,
and Women are Good. All of the leaders and important people are women,
except for the occasional Master Villian, who is male and not too bright.
Any male NPCs who have power or authority are automatically corrupt,
sexist, or incompetent. There's always a woman who is better than any
man, PC or NPC, for any given activity. Female PCs (and players) are
heavily favored, while male PCs get abused. (For example, if captured
by slavers, the women are left untouched 'to preserve their value,' but
the male PCs are castrated and chained to the oars; the ship's captian
is always female, BTW.) Male NPCs are brutish, stupid, and always
think with their cocks. In short, every aspect of the world is
carefully and blatantly arranged to emphasize the GMs personal view
that men are inferior to women, and to take revenge for "five thousand
years of oppression" men have inflicted upon women. Unless you
subscribe to the GMs views, playing in such a world is a pointless
exercise in frustration.
Tom Ault
John Kim
>arranged to emphasize the GMs personal view that men are inferior
>to women, and to take revenge for "five thousand years of oppression"
>men have inflicted upon women. Unless you subscribe to the GMs
>views, playing in such a world is a pointless exercise in frustration.
Actually, I liked _Macho Women with Guns_! @-) I remember
hearing something about _Renegade Nuns on Wheels_ as well. But I
agree that a GM who seriously held such a real-world belief would
be pretty wierd to game for. I would tend to say: just take a female
PC and bash on those evil men! Could still be amusing for a
session or two.
Sea Wasp
The problem being that if the GM can't separate her real-world
fanatacism from her game world, one would be reasonable to assume that
her real-world fanatacism would also apply to the players. Being a male
player would almost certainly be an UnFun thing.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.html
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
Russell Wallace
>
> 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
> instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of players
> without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy terms;
> then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes the
> solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players can
> solve the problems.
Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
himself.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Sea Wasp
>
> Frank J. Perricone wrote:
> >
> > 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
> > instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of players
> > without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy terms;
> > then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes the
> > solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players can
> > solve the problems.
>
> Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
> with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
> solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
> himself.
I *think* the problem here isn't that the GM is willing to accept the
player's solution; I think it's that the GM deliberately tosses the
problem out with NO solution in mind. I have no trouble taking a new PC
solution and running with it, but I *do* have a bit of a problem with a
GM who doesn't have a clue as to how he's going to solve the problem and
is hoping the PCs come up with a line of BS that works.
glenn...@ichr.uwa.edu.au
: I *think* the problem here isn't that the GM is willing to accept the
: player's solution; I think it's that the GM deliberately tosses the
: problem out with NO solution in mind. I have no trouble taking a new PC
: solution and running with it, but I *do* have a bit of a problem with a
: GM who doesn't have a clue as to how he's going to solve the problem and
: is hoping the PCs come up with a line of BS that works.
Whats wrong with that?
One way to create a situation which is really difficult, is to make a
situation which the GM can't think of a way out. The characters have
always pulled through.
Mind you, it's not something I do very often. Perhaps twice in 10 years.
Sometimes the villians are incredibly smart, and are seriously trying to
kill the PC's (for example). If the villian can see a way out of it, they
will plug it up.
Follow ups snipped to rgfa.
The first spam to this account generally takes about an hour.
The crowd is silent as the spammers go for the record.
--
Glenn Butcher | glenn...@ichr.uwa.edu.au
"One of the things that hamper Linux's climb to world domination is the
shortage of bad Computer Role Playing Games, or CRaPGs. No operating
system can be considered respectable without one."
glenn...@ichr.uwa.edu.au
: seems to be a problem for GMs who aren't good at description. Example: in
: my first D&D game, I was instantly alerted to the presence of piercers in
: a room because the GM mentioned stalactites, when he had never mentioned
: any dungeon detail before except the size of the room. (The worst extreme
: of this is reading past the players' description box, which this DM also
: did--"There is a statue of a kobold here. It is completely harmless.
: Oops.")
Raises hand...
GM: "Ok, the vampire nods in agreement."
PC: "The kid is a vampire?"
*THUD* *THUD* *THUD*
--
Glenn Butcher | glenn...@ichr.uwa.edu.au
"One of the things that hamper Linux's climb to world domination is the
shortage of bad Computer Role Playing Games, or CRaPGs. No operating
system can be considered respectable without one." (Brian O'Donnell)
Sea Wasp
>
> In rec.games.frp.advocacy Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
>
> : I *think* the problem here isn't that the GM is willing to accept the
> : player's solution; I think it's that the GM deliberately tosses the
> : problem out with NO solution in mind. I have no trouble taking a new PC
> : solution and running with it, but I *do* have a bit of a problem with a
> : GM who doesn't have a clue as to how he's going to solve the problem and
> : is hoping the PCs come up with a line of BS that works.
>
> Whats wrong with that?
> One way to create a situation which is really difficult, is to make a
> situation which the GM can't think of a way out. The characters have
> always pulled through.
>
> Mind you, it's not something I do very often. Perhaps twice in 10 years.
> Sometimes the villians are incredibly smart, and are seriously trying to
> kill the PC's (for example). If the villian can see a way out of it, they
> will plug it up.
Most of these "Gm Illnesses" are things which can actually be
reasonable, done rarely and with moderation. I've done that trick
myself, twice. For the same reasons, too: they'd pissed off an NPC who
was smarter than all of them combined ought to be, and he wanted 'em
dead.
However, doing it more than once in five or ten years would be a
problem.
Paul King
Russell Wallace <mano...@iol.ie> wrote:
>
>Frank J. Perricone wrote:
>>
>> 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
>> instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of players
>> without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy terms;
>> then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes the
>> solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players can
>> solve the problems.
>
>Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
>with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
>solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
>himself.
>
I'd have thought it would be mandatory in the ST:tNG RPG :-)
"If we direct a phased tetrion burst..."
Russell Wallace
> I *think* the problem here isn't that the GM is willing to accept the
> player's solution; I think it's that the GM deliberately tosses the
> problem out with NO solution in mind. I have no trouble taking a new PC
> solution and running with it, but I *do* have a bit of a problem with a
> GM who doesn't have a clue as to how he's going to solve the problem and
> is hoping the PCs come up with a line of BS that works.
I'll admit I still don't see a problem with it. I often ask GMs, after
a tricky scenario has been wrapped up, "How did you expect us to deal
with that anyway?" if I suspect we missed his preferred solution. It
wouldn't bother me to get the answer "I had no idea, I was hoping you'd
think of something clever". (Unless we in fact didn't solve the problem
and I am suspecting that there actually was no solution the GM would
have accepted, but that's a different situation.)
George W. Harris
thusly:
= Or the opposite, the Any Detail Is Significant Syndrome, which
=seems to be a problem for GMs who aren't good at description. Example: in
=my first D&D game, I was instantly alerted to the presence of piercers in
=a room because the GM mentioned stalactites, when he had never mentioned
=any dungeon detail before except the size of the room. (The worst extreme
=of this is reading past the players' description box, which this DM also
=did--"There is a statue of a kobold here. It is completely harmless.
=Oops.")
"Opening the chest, you find two swords, a shield,
and a...nother shield."
= --Doug
--
"Intelligence is too complex to capture in a single number." -Alfred Binet
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Supermouse
Counterexample, but making the same point, the Chauvinist GM:
In the Chauvinist GM's world, Men are Smart, and Women are Dumb. All of
the leaders and important people are men, including the Master Villain,
who is male and always seems to be at least on step ahead of PCs. Any
female NPCs who would seem to have power have really just slept their
way up the hierarchy, and will not have orders, or even suggestions,
listened to my men of seemingly inferior rank or station. No woman is
ever truly competent at any given skill, even if they think they are.
Male npcs (and players) are heavily favoured, while female PCs end up
having to have sex with an unattractive male to get out of a situation
alive at some point during the game. (For example, if waylaid by
bandits, the men will be tied up and the females will be told that
either the whole party get killed, or the female must sleep with all the
bandits and thus the party will be freed.) Female NPCs are submissive,
stupid and think what the men tell them to think, but are nonetheless
much cleverer than any female PC. This isn't blatantly arranged to prove
a pint, it's 'how the real world works'.
Sorry, I had to give in to the urge to balance the views a little
between the genders. The scary thing is that I'm describing a real GM,
who actually exists, with real examples of actual game play. The only
answer is not to play[1] a female, and not to be a female character, and
*especially* not to be the GM's girlfriend or ex. I always felt very
sorry for her: she can't play in one of his games without sexual
humiliation taking place. And no female PC *ever* gets through the game
without having to use her vulva as a bargaining chip, even in V:tM.
[1] Many would say end that sentence right at this point...
Cordially,
--
Supermouse
The humble Rodent stands as proof that survival of the
fittest is about so much more than mere strength.
Irina Rempt
> Frank J. Perricone wrote:
>>
>> 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
>> instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of players
>> without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy terms;
>> then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes the
>> solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players can
>> solve the problems.
>
> Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
> with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
> solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
> himself.
No, you're not the only one. I've never set up a problem that *I*
couldn't solve in hopes that the PCs could solve it, but there have
been situations in my games that I wasn't sure had a solution at all
(not puzzles or problems, but plain situations) and I didn't think
out a full possible course of events for it that I expected the PCs
to follow or not to follow, just threw it at them and went with the
flow. Some of those have been among my very best games (according to
the players).
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)
John Kim
throws an abstract problem without any clear idea of how it can be
solved.
Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
>Russell Wallace wrote:
>> Frank J. Perricone wrote:
>>> 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
>>> instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of
>>> players without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in
>>> sketchy terms; then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*,"
>>> the GM takes the solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot
>>> so the players can solve the problems.
>>
>> Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
>> with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
>> solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
>> himself.
>
>I *think* the problem here isn't that the GM is willing to accept the
>player's solution; I think it's that the GM deliberately tosses the
>problem out with NO solution in mind. I have no trouble taking a new PC
>solution and running with it, but I *do* have a bit of a problem with a
>GM who doesn't have a clue as to how he's going to solve the problem and
>is hoping the PCs come up with a line of BS that works.
That's funny. I would say the exact opposite. I have no
problem with the GM producing a problem which doesn't have a clear
solution, but I do have a problem with the GM taking the player
solution as "canon-on-the-spot". That to me implies that the solution
is not being judged on its own merits, but just taken "because it sounds
good" and because there needs to be a neat answer. There is basically
no chance of failure. I have certainly experienced the "that sounds
good" phenomena of using whatever solution the players come up with
regardless of its merits.
On the other hand, I don't have a problem with the GM "throwing"
a problem that he doesn't have a solution in mind for -- as long as he
is willing to accept that the players don't have a solution. I realize
that many players don't like having problems that their PC's can't
solve -- but personally I more often find it a Suspension-of-Disbelief
(SOD) problem that the PC's *can* always solve whatever problems they
encounter.
Frank J. Perricone
wrote:
> > 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
> > instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of players
> > without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy terms;
> > then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes the
> > solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players can
> > solve the problems.
>
> Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
> with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
> solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
> himself.
Sure, it's great. For a while. But when the campaign is really nothing
but this, and you realize you're doing more of the GMing than the GM is,
you just end up seeing how far you can go it. "If the flows of magic
energy here are like, say... a custard, then all we need to do is add the
magical equivalent of baking soda! Hmmm, I think that'd be... ground
quartz crystals. Let's try it... See, I knew it would work!"
The distinction your wording makes me think you might not have picked up is
that it's not that my solution isn't what the GM thought of; it's that the
GM didn't think of anything, not a solution, not the details of the
situation that might lead to a solution, not the basics behind the
situation or theory of the processes, nothing. She (in this case) isn't
even just making it up; she's getting me to just make it up.
--
* Frank J. Perricone * hawt...@sover.net * http://www.sover.net/~hawthorn
Prism: http://www.sover.net/~hawthorn/Prism/
Just because we aren't all the same doesn't mean we have nothing in common
Just because we have something in common doesn't mean we're all the same
Ryan Conner Stoughton
listed here before all the old messages expire? I've only got time to check a
few... sorry.
Stoughton/MonkeyMan
Russell Wallace
> That's funny. I would say the exact opposite. I have no
> problem with the GM producing a problem which doesn't have a clear
> solution, but I do have a problem with the GM taking the player
> solution as "canon-on-the-spot". That to me implies that the solution
> is not being judged on its own merits, but just taken "because it sounds
> good" and because there needs to be a neat answer. There is basically
> no chance of failure. I have certainly experienced the "that sounds
> good" phenomena of using whatever solution the players come up with
> regardless of its merits.
Hmm, could you give an example?
Frank J. Perricone
> > Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
> > with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
> > solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
> > himself.
>
> No, you're not the only one. I've never set up a problem that *I*
> couldn't solve in hopes that the PCs could solve it, but there have
> been situations in my games that I wasn't sure had a solution at all
> (not puzzles or problems, but plain situations) and I didn't think
> out a full possible course of events for it that I expected the PCs
> to follow or not to follow, just threw it at them and went with the
> flow. Some of those have been among my very best games (according to
> the players).
Apparently, my description of the disease was so poor, everyone's mistaking
it for the actually quite positive style that you guys are responding to,
and I take the blame for that. Perhaps an example will serve to clarify.
The GM established that magical energy is being drained from another realm
into the one we're in, via some "taps" which we've located. She has not
determined at all how those taps work, what kinds of things might affect
them, or the theory of how magical energy even can be drained. She has
established that "negative" ("polluted") energy is also being pumped back
through the taps, but again there's no establishment of how this works or
what might be done about it. Attempts to get clarification get nowhere (as
established by prior efforts) but if I speculate, "Perhaps the tap works
like a filter..." and go on, that's how it ends up working. Later I might
add "But then, it couldn't work like that because then the guy who set this
up wouldn't be able to..." and so on, sure enough, I'm right again. In the
end, I define the problem to the point where there's enough material to
solve it, then I solve it.
Fortunately for the game, I am often a GM myself and have a sense of
artistic integrity -- I want my solutions to make sense. But I know that
if I wanted, I could invent something that didn't hold water, and sure
enough, that's the way it would turn out to work. (And later when I
pointed out the hole, and then a way to patch it, that'd turn out true
too.)
Done once, this is just a non-event. But a whole series of adventures can
be done this way. (Even so, it's one of the least offensive of the
illnesses posted to the thread.)
Irina, if you had a situation like this, you might not have figured out in
advance a solution, or even a host of solutions, but you would have figured
out the problem clearly enough that you'd know a solution could be
constructed from them and enough ingenuity. You would know how the tap
worked to within a reasonable level of detail, enough that you would either
know how it would react to someone doing a specific thing to it, or could
infer how it would react based on your own ideas of how it worked, not
based on the player's ideas of how it *could* work. That's the difference
that I'm finding is surprisingly hard to express.
Frank J. Perricone
wrote:
> >Frank J. Perricone wrote:
> >>
> >> 10. "That Sounds Good" -- the GM who throws abstract problems (for
> >> instance, an abundance of negative energy in an area) in front of players
> >> without any clear idea of how it can be solved, not even in sketchy terms;
> >> then, as players ruminate, "Maybe we could do *this*," the GM takes the
> >> solutions presented and makes them canon-on-the-spot so the players can
> >> solve the problems.
> >
> >Mmm... am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly wrong
> >with this? Indeed, I *like* it when the GM is willing to accept my
> >solution to a problem despite not having thought of it beforehand
> >himself.
> >
> I'd have thought it would be mandatory in the ST:tNG RPG :-)
> "If we direct a phased tetrion burst..."
Exactly! Now, why didn't I think of that as an analogy?
Tim
>railroading I've heard of. Anyone got a fun name for that ?
Does "Railroading" not work for some reason? =)
Much earlier in my rpg-ing daze, I got the same syndrome labelled
"clipboarding" because the players knew when they were on-track
when I started referring to my scenario notes on a clipboard.
When I was winging it, usually things dind't work out.
Before you flame, mind you, that was 15 years ago. =)
tim
--
See http://www.sigma.net/tdunn for tips on SSI's, CGI's, and other TLA's
Tim
>>An example: the Feminist GM.
Supermouse <Super...@rat-cage.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Counterexample, but making the same point, the Chauvinist GM:
I believe The Prostelyzer(sp?) GM-disease is the same, regardless
the axis be political (Conservative vs. Liberal, Big Gov't vs.
Small) or otherwise.
OffTopic: What would be the counterexample for a "Everything is a
Government Conspiracy" paranoid-GM?
tim
Tim
[re: problems w/no pre-thought solutions]
>I'll admit I still don't see a problem with it. I often ask GMs, after
>a tricky scenario has been wrapped up, "How did you expect us to deal
>with that anyway?" if I suspect we missed his preferred solution. It
>wouldn't bother me to get the answer "I had no idea, I was hoping you'd
>think of something clever".
The problem I have is when the GM says that, but as a player I feel that
we didn't do anythign particularly clever. Basically, either the GM
didn't feel like letting the nuke go off, or it was getting late, or
whatever, but I'd like a little teeth in the consequences.
tim
Tim
>the tendency to throw together a campaign
>based on the book/comic with which I was fascinated at the time.
Worse would be my "Boys From Brazil"-ish phase where I'd be fascinated
with the story and throw the PC(s) through the setting and the plot,
railroading when they didn't do as the protagonist did in the source
material. =(
tim
paradoxymoron
>Someone (Paul King?) once asked:
>>>>What GM illnesses have you had/encountered in all your years of RPGs?
>GM-Burnout. This is like writer's block. It is horrible and
>insidious. Best solution i have found is to let someone else
>GM for a while.
>On the PC side, there is Goneitis, a malady that a character
>comes down with when it's player is missing from the game.
>It is typified by lethargy and indecision on the part of
>the infected individual.
The Mysterious Dissapearing/Reappearing Character:
It's 11:pm, you've been playing for about 20 minutes in the past 4
hours, and someone has to go home. So, that character dissapears. But,
next session, the same character magically meets up with the rest of
the group (who are at higher levels because everyone else stayed up
til dawn playing) and resumes play.
The Amazing Personality Switch:
same scenario as above, but the character is somewhat important (the
only healer), so the RL pawns the character on someone else. Said
character now becomes a marvelous fighter instead of the cowering
cleric he/she once was.
>--djk, keeper of arcane lore & trivial fluff
>Home: David95037 at aol dot com
>Spam: goto....@welovespam.com
paradoxymoron
After reaching 5th level, a horde of invaders slaughtered the
characters. The rls made new ones, bent on revenge/driving out the
invaders.
It was successful, and combined the three positively.
pdm
wasn't there
>5. "Killer DM Syndrome" Well documented in Dragon #96, the killer DM
> exists only to slaughter legions of player characters. Differs from
> "NPC Narcisism" or "The Invincible Street Vendor" in that *everything*
> -every monster, NPC, trap, or item- is lethal to the PCs. Symptoms
> include Berzerker Kobolds armed with Vorpal Swords+5 (that only work
> for Kobold's natch; for PCs, they are cursed swords-5 with 100% magic
> resistance) and use of Wandering Damage tables.
>7. "The GM with a Cause" Everything in the world is designed to emphasize
> the rightness of the GM's social, political or religious views, no matter
> how obnoxious the players find it, or how unrealistic the resulting
> game world is. Examples include:
> -the Socialist GM, in whose world Captialist societies are always
> hellish pits of oppression, despair, and corruption while Socialist
> societies are Shining Beacons of Truth And Love.
> -the Libretarian GM, in whose worlds the state exists only to
> oppress and destroy freedoms, and anarchy is the only valid form
> of (non-)government.
> -the Neo-Pagan Storyguide in Ars-Magica, who takes every opportunity
> to remind you what a crock Christianity is and how the "historical"
> pagan religion it replaced was So Much Better.
> -the Fundy GM, who, if he actually existed, would design every
> aspect of his world as a chance to evangelize. (Thankfully,
> Fundys of this type almost always consider roleplaying to be
> a Satanic activity, so the Fundy GM has never been spotted).
>8. "The Psychotic GM" who likes to "fuck with the player's heads" because
> "personal angst makes great roleplaying." This is the GM who has the
> PC's beloved tortured, raped and dismembered while the PC is forced
> to watch helplessly, or who gives the heroic PC an Uncontrollable
> Berserk Rage which forces the PC to mow down old women and children.
> Typically plays "Splotch-Boy" era White Wolf games.
>and many, many more.
>Tom Ault
Russell Wallace
> Apparently, my description of the disease was so poor, everyone's mistaking
> it for the actually quite positive style that you guys are responding to,
> and I take the blame for that. Perhaps an example will serve to clarify.
>
> The GM established that magical energy is being drained from another realm
> into the one we're in, via some "taps" which we've located. She has not
> determined at all how those taps work, what kinds of things might affect
Ah! That's clear, thank you - yes, then I agree that this qualifies as
a GM disease.
John Morrow
>More common than either outright misogynist or male-hating campaigns
>are those in which women are just invisible.
This was a real problem in a Tribe 8 game I played in since the
culture is supposed to be matriarchal...
John Morrow
Frank T. Sronce
Possibly the "Everything is unconnected" GM, where all of the plot
links that would have _really made sense_ are left out. The game is a
collection of random encounters (quite possibly rolled up) that hardly
seem to be from the same game world. Perhaps "Scenario Disconnectus",
or something.
Kiz
Frank T. Sronce
>
> In article <7ovhbu$1df$1...@goldenapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu>, Thomas Galen Ault says...
> >
> >4. "Think-like-the-GM-itis" The GM who suffers from this illness also
> > commonly adventizes his or her games as "a thinking person's game"/
> > "a game where the players really have to *think*" Solving the GM's
> > "clever" puzzles more often requires knowledge of the GMs
> > ideosynchrities (sp?) and world view than it does on critical thinking
> > or reasoning skills. Had a friend lose a beloved character to a GM
> > suffering from this disease once because his solution to the problem
> > wasn't what the GM had in mind.
>
> One form of this disease is "Suddenly Signifigant Syndrome", where the
> players are supposed to have been tipped off to Something Of Vital
> Importance because of something in the GM's description or gestures about
> the setting or playing of an NPC, despite the fact that there was not a
> thing to distinguish it from the previous three hours of running commentary.
Heh- what I run into occasionally in players is the "Assumes the GM
mispoke"-syndrome. If I try to be subtle and have an NPC say
contradictory things, or name the wrong person, the players may just
mentally edit out the clue I'm trying to drop as a slip-up on my part
and ignore it.
Kiz
Thomas Galen Ault
Tim <td...@netcom.com> wrote:
>I believe The Prostelyzer(sp?) GM-disease is the same, regardless
>the axis be political (Conservative vs. Liberal, Big Gov't vs.
>Small) or otherwise.
You are of course correct.
>
>OffTopic: What would be the counterexample for a "Everything is a
>Government Conspiracy" paranoid-GM?
The "Government Is Your Friend" GM. In the "GIYF" GM's world, governments
are always examples of "Truth, Justice, and the Foobar Way!" Corruption
is non-existant, politicians are honest, civil servants helpful and
efficient, and you can always trust the cops. The only exceptions
occur when its an explicit part of the GM's plot, and they are clearly
abberations of a system that almost always works. In short, the
whole campaign looks like a 50's or early 60's television show. In
this world, conspiracy theorists are crazy people, sometimes well-meaning
harmless loons, but more often full-blown paranoid raving maniacs blasting
away at enemies that only exist in their own minds.
The real world falls in between the two extremes of "The Government Is
Your Friend" and "Everything is a Government Conspiracy" (not that
you'd know that from reading some of the articles in these
newsgroups). Most of the time, the Government does a pretty good job
of protecting the rights that most people think they should have, but
the system is always being abused by one group or another for its own
ends. Sometimes the bureaucrats do a good job, sometimes they don't.
There are good cops (tm) and bad cops (tm) and a whole bunch who fill
the spectrum in between. There probably aren't any big conspiracies
(there is no flying saucer cover-up, a missle didn't shoot down
TWA800), but a lot of little ones (Senator X accepts a bribe from
lobby Y to vote for bill Z; he conspires with Senators A, B, and C to
trade his vote on bills they care about for their votes on bill Z,
etc.) In short, things aren't as neat-o-clean-o as they were on 50's
television, but they aren't as corrupt and depraved as they are in
the X-Files either.
Of course, those of us in the inner circles of power know that the world
is really run by Dogbert for his personal amusement, but you probably
realized that already :-).
Tom Ault
Mike Harvey
>
> Could somebody make a quick list of the names of the diseases (or whatever)
> listed here before all the old messages expire? I've only got time to check a
> few... sorry.
I've got one I can email to you.
Mike
Michael T. Richter
news:934573...@room3b.demon.co.uk...
> "What do you mean," I said, "you don't recognise the symptoms
> of haemophilia?" I've not seriously tried to do detective
> scenarios since.
Detective scenarios are fiendishly difficult, but still possible. The
problem is that you, as GM, pretty much by definition *know* what happened
to whom, when and how. When you make up your clues, as "obvious" as they
seem to you, you forget that they're only obvious with hindsight to the vast
majority of people. It is an exceptional person who would make the link in
the other direction.
So what's the solution? Litter the area with clues. Where you'd put in a
single clue in a detective story, drop ten for a typical group of
role-players. Trust me. They'll only pick up on one of them anyway. And
don't bother with too many red herrings. The players will make up a dozen
red herrings of their own with little to no provocation.
If you follow this right you can make a police procedural/detective story
adventure come together handily. You'll be lauded for having made a
difficult mystery that was still solvable. And you can feel smugly superior
because of the 99,000 clues the players missed along the way.
--
Michael T. Richter <m...@ottawa.com> http://www.igs.net/~mtr/
"get a life. its a plastic box with wires in it."
-- Nadia Mizner <nad...@onthenet.com.au> (in private correspondence)