the player's guide to gming

I've been gaming now for approximately 13 years, generally speaking with the same core group of people. In that timespan I've seen the good, the bad, and the indifferent GM. So I've committed pixels to computer and come up with a guide to GMing from the point of view of the player.

I do not intend any of these suggestions to mean that you as a GM should just hand control of the game over to the players and let them run it, even though it may seem like it - especially when you get to the one on letting the player have what they want. Instead, I find that there are some things that GMs do in games that mark them as either novices (and these issues can crop up no matter how long you have been GMing) or psychotics who shouldn't be running games in the first place. This article is intended to point out some of those things and, hopefully, suggest ways to deal with them when they arise. It is also intended to help players identify problems with campaigns they are in with an eye to talking to the GM and solving the problem. I will say up front that I have only run one game, and that more or less on the spur of the moment, which is why I've chosen to write this from the standpoint of the player rather than the GM.

I will note that the style of gaming I've gotten used to is somewhere between live action and dice-based. We occasionally use dice to provide a true element of chance, but one of the regular GM's has fessed up to lying about her rolls if it means the character will get toasted. However, we don't run around pretending to be the characters. A friend described it as Choose Your Own Adventure, with maybe a touch of improv thrown in. Generally we sit in someone's living room and interact with each other verbally. We describe complex actions, such as combat, and perform simple ones, such as grabbing the note that the NPC just brought in, rifling through purses, whatever. The GM throws situations to the group as necessary, but we've gotten to the point where we can interact in character without the GM. Our games are generally either one-shots or long-term - as in years of real time. As I mentioned above, it's generally been the same core group of players/GMs, so we have an exceptionally high degree of trust in each other. So most of my examples will be directed to that sort of gaming, and may have only limited applicability to the sort you do, but I hope the ideas pretty much carry across.

1. A good GM will take into account what her players hope to get out of a game.

This may seem somewhat like a statement of the obvious, but I've seen too many campaigns where the GM didn't care what the players got out of the game, and several where the GM actively thwarted what the players wanted. If the players are looking for catharsis and lots of "un-GM'ed" character interaction, you will quickly find yourself not running a game if you insist on putting them into solo "adventures" that are merely frustrating to them. And if what the group wants conflicts with what you want, change the group. In other words, if you want an intense, dark game with lots of emotional catharsis and character development and what the group wants is a comedic fantasy where they sit around and bullshit and fight the occasional villain, use that against them. 95% of the time, such a group will ignore all serious warnings that something is changing. You can hand 'em a newspaper that says their reputations are in the toilet and people are picketing outside their house - they won't pay attention. They also won't notice if their super-cool Batmobile goes in for repairs and they get a Peugeot back, or if they do, they'll think you're joking and that they'll get the Batmobile back sooner or later. Then all of a sudden, there's an angry mob outside the house and they've been accused of murdering the local saintly person. It'll turn into your intense game real fast then, when your players are forced to flee for their lives - but the characters will still be able to take the time to sit around and bullshit occasionally, since it's how their relationships have developed. You both win.

2. Know what the characters and players will tolerate.

This is sort of a continuation of the above idea. Always get to know your players and your characters as separate entities before you throw the serious shit at them. If you have a player who is terrified of hospitals and haunted houses, it doesn't matter that they're playing a character that's bold and fearless and would arm-wrestle the devil to get on God's good side - don't send that character into a haunted hospital. Very few, if any, players are able to separate their characters from their actual phobias.

And bear in mind that no two characters in a group will have the same wants/restrictions - I've been quite amused by two games I was in lately where the players were myself and one other woman. The GMs were different, but for some reason both of them put her into situations that she as a player didn't want to be in, that, in fact, drove her to character suicide just to get out of them, since neither of the characters - who were quite different - would've been able to tolerate the situations either and the GMs were not experienced enough to get her out of those situations in time. Neither GM had paid attention to the fact that if they had given exactly the same situation to me, my characters would've run with it and I'd have had fun. Always identify what each player and character will take - then use it. Unless you're running Paranoia, character suicide is a bad thing and means that you need to take a closer look at what's happening.

3. Be on good terms with your group.

If you have serious issues with a member of your group, you should not be gaming with them, let alone GMing them. In both of the examples cited above, I think that the GMs trusted the other player more than they trusted me, so they decided to throw the strange shit at the person that they trusted more. I don't know why they felt this way, but I think it's the case. And I don't think that you should be gaming with anyone who scares you/irritates you/whatever enough that you can't give them legitimate situations without worrying what will happen. You should know each player well enough to do so, and if it's more along the lines of a personal problem, maybe the game should be stopped or postponed until it can be worked out. If you are able to deal with a person on a rational level, you'll be a lot better at understanding them, differentiating their character, and running a game that the players will enjoy.

4. If the player wants something that badly give it to them.

By this one, I don't mean give their 1st level fighter the +10 Vorpal Sword. Obviously characters have to work to get certain things. But if you ever get into a situation where a player, behaving in character (that part's important, they have to be in character) really wants something to happen, to the point where it's impeding the progress of the game, give it to them. I had a Vampire character who was totally immoral. Humanity, 1. The only reason it wasn't zero was because that isn't possible (of course, technically, neither's a 1...) Cyr needed to work with the Sabbat to get out of a situation, which she could handly, barely. But there was this particular Assamite that pissed her off and that she wanted to kill, which was her reaction to most things. The GM wouldn't let me do it. I tried to kill that Assamite at least five times. It got to the point where I was drawing flare guns on him. And every time, the GM kept rolling on these insanely high scores that the Assamite - a PC disguised as an NPC - had and whipping Cyr's ass. It got to the point where I was totally ignoring the things that the GM wanted to happen and that I wanted to happen because Cyr wanted so badly to kill this other vampire. The campaign came to a total standstill. It got to the point where Cyr had no regard for anything but killing the Assamite. The GM eventually dealt with it by rewriting history to deal with another character's issues, but it still rankles that I couldn't kill the Assamite. In a situation like that, where it's the character's motivation causing the problem - that's an important factor, it has to be an in character action - just give it to the player. Make it hard - maybe they take damage, maybe they incur some kind of supernatural penalty, they may even die, whatever would be appropriate. But let it happen so that the game can continue. In other words, some situations aren't worth the true rolls.

5. Don't give the players everything.

Yes, this is a separate idea from 4. One sign of true novice GMs that I've seen is that they tend to think as players. They hand out presents to the group like it's going out of style. Most players, myself included, will take all the miraculous crap the NPCs like to hand them - bulletproof spray, car keys, technical advice, whatever - and never consider that what they're really getting is a way out. If you don't want to kill players, lie about rolls, rather than giving them impenetrable body armor. Don't give the players a group of NPCs that will take all the dirty work that the group generates. There should be no free lunch here. I think that having to finish up the loose ends - interrogating criminals, following leads - is a better use of game time than just handing over the criminals to the police and asking an NPC to find out if such-and-such a report is actually true, especially when what the group will do with the free time they've now earned is go out and paint graffiti on all the local landmarks (this really happened in a game I was in).

6. Always know the way out.

There are two aspects to this one. The first aspect is the literal way out. I know for a fact that this is one Astolat has in her article, but I'm putting it here too. Always have a real way out, one that can be figured out by people of reasonable intelligence. There is nothing more frustrating for the players than to spend a real-time hour wandering around an empty room that they cannot get out of, and then giving up on the campaign. Astolat's rule of thumb is to always have three ways for the characters to get out of the situation, because that requires you to think flexibly and not dismiss it out of hand when they come up with the way that you didn't think of, which seems like a good number of ways out to me.

In addition, you should have three ways out for yourself when the game doesn't go as expected. While I'm aware that it's frustrating to the GM to have their super-badass dragon that was supposed to last for 8 hours of combat killed with one shot, it's pointless to the players to be told that they didn't make the hit they thought they did. Change it. Dragons are snake-like - isn't it snakes that avenge the deaths of their mates? While the lucky dragon-killers are toasting each other at the tavern, Mrs. Dragon (you've got that almost-new sheet right there) comes along to toast them also. And if you can do it without giving even a hint that the group just screwed up your scenario, you'll look like the coolest character that ever lived.

7. Pay attention to your group.

You'll know quickly if they think a plotline is unsolvable, stupid, or irrelevant - their actions will tell you, if they don't. Then you have the choice of rewriting history, dropping the plotline in favor of one they will take, or continuing the struggle over who's running the game. One day, the GM of our superheroes campaign gave us a situation - all types of power, whether electrical, motor, or what, went out. We were expected to solve this. I fell asleep fairly quickly after determining that my character felt this was totally unsolvable. Another person started writing a story. When I woke up, the three remaining players were playing video games. The group had decided, without consultation, that this was absolutely unsolvable. The GM - who was also playing the video game - wound up saying that it didn't happen after all. Your group's reactions tell you what they think.

If it's just one player whose body language is telling you there's a problem, talk to the player. Find out what they want, or decide if you want them to still be in the game. But in this case, the overall problem is probably not your campaign. My experience is that if only one player is acting like there's a problem, that problem is with the player.

8. Don't be a total control freak/observer/general asshole.

I mention this one because I've seen it too often. My experience is that bad GMs, as opposed to bad games, come in several flavors and are generally predictable. I'd say that every GM should know what they get out of running a campaign and that it should be a positive experience with regards to the players. In other words, if you want to find out how far you can push so-and-so before they snap, you're GMing for the wrong reason (unless that's what the player wants.)

I've had a general asshole GM who had all the characters make a roll out of the blue and the two that lost were basically locked in a room and forced to have sex because the GM found it amusing. Thank God it wasn't live action, is all I can say. We never gamed with him again. I played many games with an observer GM who was only interested in putting the characters into situations to see how they would react. One of his noteworthy campaigns was a TMNT game in which myself and another player, both playing small, female furry creatures, wound up distracting the cops while our less-humanoid partners did something else (can't remember what). This devolved into the cops trying to rape what they thought were 8-year-olds in Halloween costumes while the other two characters tried to figure out a way to get us out of the patrol car that we were in, a situation made all the more interesting because, due to the GM's issues, the door could not be used. We all knew perfectly well that if the other two tried the door, it would be locked and the element of surprise lost. We also knew, as it indeed turned out, that if they didn't try the door, it would be unlocked. He just wanted to see how we would all react. The control freak that I've gamed with kept insisting that the game - a Vampire campaign - go according to his plotline, even though by the time the game ended, we had trashed the Masquerade live on CNN, blown up/killed most of Atlanta, and wanted to go to Hollywood to kill stars and create a cult of the new Messiah, since we were unable to reach the Prince who had fucked us over. Every time we thought we were getting out of Atlanta, we got sucked back in - for progressively stupider reasons - because he was unable to deal with our change to his script, and our reactions got progressively worse every time we were frustrated.

Again, gaming should be a positive (as opposed to necessarily pleasant-at-all-times) experience for all involved, unless you game with masochists. Too often, I think groups wind up in a struggle over who will control the group - the GM or the players. In the control freak example I cited above, the struggle went too far to be retrieved. If the GM had had more experience with his players, I think that game could've been retrieved, but it was a bad case of Empire syndrome - the more he tried to regain control of the game, the harder we fought it, and our fighting was, unfortunately, in character, which was what really led to the scenario trashing. He didn't have enough experience to manipulate our characters (who, it must be admitted, were not the most tractable of characters) effectively.

This goes along with the idea of leaving yourself three ways out. If you have a group that has its own agenda, rewrite your own agenda and surprise the players with it later on. Try to avoid all-out struggle - if you get into a pissing match with the players, you've lost the group. And if you suspect a struggle is brewing, monitor the characters' actions. They'll tell you what the players think about Plot Point 3(c), and you can modify your approach from there before the fight has a chance to develop.

9. Treat your players as they treat you.

I find that frequently GMs try to rope the non-players in the group (see 7 above) by developing plots around them. While this is admirable and has worked quite a few times, I would caution you about trying this on every non-player you meet. If you have a true non-player (a social gamer, who comes because all his/her friends game, the boyfriend/girlfriend of one of your players, etc.) and they aren't gonna turn into a player any time soon, don't give them plots. There are two reasons for this. First of all, if you already know, for whatever reason, that you're not going to make a player out of this one, you will just put them on the spot. This may rid you of the annoying player, but, particularly if that person came into the group by being the significant other of another player, you may lose the second player too. If the player doesn't want to be there, they won't know how to handle the spotlight and will probably be on some level embarrassed, and upset that they are embarrassed. The other reason is more self-centered. As a cathartic gamer myself, one who wants a deep level of emotional involvement in my characters and their worlds, it irritates me when GMs ignore the true players to get the one who won't play into the game. Focus on your real players. My experience has been that the real players like to be rewarded with attention from the GM. Obviously, this has to be balanced among all the characters, but don't assume that your hardcore players will keep coming back if you only infrequently pay any attention to them, especially when the one you are paying attention to isn't a player.

Another aspect of this idea is oriented towards character development. Several of my friends and I, when asked to come up with a character story, hand the GM 10 pages of single-spaced, 8 point font. We give the GM five pages on what the character did during downtime between games. There is nothing worse than not getting a response to this sort of over-achievement. If you are plagued by similar players and don't want to respond to all their crap, tell them flat out that you will not be able to do so. If they keep doing it, you have already told them that you can't deal with all that stuff too, so don't feel bad about reading-but-not-responding to it. (I would say ignore it, but then some clever soul will say that during downtime James Bond stopped by and left the latest Bondmobile with that player.) I don't really know what to say if you dream of having such players. It's possible you could manipulate them into doing such work. Astolat has a Character Novel that has 21 questions for characters on it - give them that and tell them that you want them to fill out three questions fully before each game until the sheet's done. Cyberpunk 2020 has an excellent setup for rolling character background, motivations, lifestyle, everything from the size of their family to the style of their clothing. You may be able to inspire them to spend some time on background, but you'll have to ride herd on them - if you have a player with that little idea of their character's background and personality, they won't do either willingly.

If you thought this article addressed many of your concerns and just generally walked with the gods, tell me all about it. If you thought it was a totally irrelevant waste of pixels and generally sucked try here.