ars ludi

There are a lot of things a GM does to run a great game: straight man, creative enabler, spinner of fantastic yarns, tactical challenger, person who makes all the funny voices…

But there’s one job that I see GMs forget to do more than any other, and that’s keeping players in line.

Oooh, shades of railroading! GM tyranny! No, I don’t mean the characters in the game, I mean the players at the table. When someone crosses the line, gets too loud, too uppity, or just hogs too much play time and won’t let other people contribute, it’s the GM’s job to put a stop to it, to re-establish group balance and harmony. By force if necessary.

GMs can become so focused on their “art” that they forget they are also there to keep the peace. It’s not glamorous or even fun, but when it’s necessary it’s really necessary.

One of the worst games you can be in is not the one where the GM doesn’t come up with an interesting situation or provide a good challenge (if you as a player can’t make up for that, you’re just not trying), it’s the one where some players get out of hand and the GM doesn’t do anything about it.

Why not just peer pressure?

All social groups apply sanctions when someone does something the group doesn’t like. If you act like a jerk at a party, your friends give you dirty looks or tell you to shut up or just don’t call you next time. That’s a social sanction.

So why don’t players just keep each other in line, just like a normal social group? They could, but since playing is a creative activity you want to give players leeway to play the way they want. Players can and should err on the side of caution in stepping on each others’ toes. Have you seen the player who criticizes or second guesses every little thing other players do? You know you hate that guy. Even when you are that guy you hate that guy.

Likewise games can include interactions that can blur the line about what’s okay and what isn’t. In real life, killing your friends is a no go. In some games it might be considered cricket to have players backstab each other, have strong emotional confrontations, or just push other limits. But if everyone is not on the same page one person’s creative play may be another person’s bullying.

It can also be an issue as simple as mechanical rules balance. One player makes a character that is overpowered compared to the rest of the group, or uses cheesy exploits. The other players are annoyed but say nothing.

Players are all peers, theoretically equals at the table. They don’t have authority over each other, so if someone calls someone on their behavior it may escalate into a confrontation to establish who is right and who is wrong — you say I’m talking too much, but who put you in charge?

Happily the GM is in a different position. Everyone at the table has already accepted that the GM is running the game and has a certain degree of authority. Sure there are always players willing to argue with the GM, but even when they do it they know they are arguing against the established authority. It’s less personal, because they know the GM is allowed to run the game the way the GM wants.

Punishment 101

Keeping the peace is a social skill, and there are about a million different ways things can go wrong and seven different solutions for each, but here’s a refresher of the basics:

Be overt and clear, and of course calm if you can manage it. Tell the player what you think the problem is. Don’t be subtle or hint. If the player just misperceived the appropriateness of their actions (overly enthusiastic rather than hostile) this might be enough to settle things.

If you have to use sanctions, always punish players in the real world, not the game world. Never inflict damage, or have monsters choose to attack that character, or have NPCs react irrationally to them (”all the hobbits hate you!”).

The most effective punishment is to take away attention and play time. Tell the player they are sitting out a scene because they were being a jerk or simply turn the game spotlight away from them. Attention is always a reward of sorts, even if it’s “bad” attention. Flip it around and pay attention to the players who are not being jerks.

Sounds like advice out of a parenting guide for toddlers doesn’t it? Yes, yes it does…

Perfect World

And now you’re thinking “but I only game with cool, well-behaved adults! This is a certifiable non-issue!”

Hey, lucky you! Where I live everyone gets cranky sometimes, or steps on toes, or unintentionally dominates the group. Sometimes they have no idea they are rubbing everyone else the wrong way, and because players usually give each other a lot of creative leeway (see above) the offending player may not have any idea they need to back off. Players can tolerate and absorb a lot in silence, but it doesn’t make them happy or foster a good game.

Trouble can be directly proportional to interest level. If your players are totally caught up in the moment they may be more emotional and more prone to these kinds of collisions. Good for you, bad for you.

Footnote: if you’ve never read it I highly recommend Five Geek Social Fallacies. It’s pure rocket science.

For many, many years I ran games as a way of expressing the worlds I had built.

I ran different campaigns, with different groups of people, all in different places or different times, but the vast majority were all on the same world and in my mind all connected. Not connected in plot, just connected because they were part of the same setting.

Even if I wasn’t running games, the world existed in my mind. I was constantly refining and revising it, though it would be more accurate to say I was exploring it, because as any serious world-builder will tell you it often feels more like you are discovering rather than creating. Just a trick of the brain? Probably.

But now I’ve noticed that I do the opposite. Now I run games, and if I need worlds to provide a context for those games I whip them up.

Game => world, not world => game.

As an experienced world-builder I can build a setting that feels detailed and fleshed out in a very short time so to a certain degree I can make the difference invisible to the players, but the root motivation is still entirely different.

For extra credit extend the concept: it’s not just the GM making the world and running the game, it’s also players and their characters. Is your character a tool to play the game, or is the game your vehicle to play the character you envision?

Naturally you’re asking: which one is the right way? That’s the wrong question. The right question is: what drives each? They may look the same on the surface, so much so that some people in the same gaming group may be doing one and some the other and never realize it, but I think they are intrinsically different activities. Understanding that difference can tell us a lot about why we game.

Which one are you doing?

You are in a room. Before you are two doors. On the floor are ancient runes that say beyond one of these doors you’ll find the cure to the bad trap blues.

Choose wisely!

Door 1 — Writing a language of traps

To make more and better interactive traps we would need a language for traps. D&D has a complex language for combat and critters, but traps just borrow a little piece of it, usually to make more zap traps. When I made the traps for Death of Dr Null I extended things a little bit and laid out how each trap would operate each round, including rules for traps surprising or not surprising each character — if you’re not surprised, you get that much more opportunity to do something before the hammer drops.

A complete trap system would include building blocks for making multiple step interactive traps the same way the rules let you build elaborate types of monsters or characters, along with a subset of the combat system specifically for traps. What are the species of traps? How do you link these building blocks together to easily construct unique interactive traps? What kind of actions are appropriate in each? What can you do each round?*

The other rethink is to change how rogues or anyone else interferes with the trap. If the trap becomes a complex system like combat then the rogue can serve a prominent role during the interaction without stealing (or canceling) the show. Much the same way as a big armored fighter can protect other characters, the thief could weaken elements of the trap even while the party is in the middle of it. Poison darts strafe the party as they thread the idol maze, but because of the rogue’s warning everyone gets a bonus to their save. The rogue doesn’t prevent the water from filling the room, but his quick actions partially block the spigots giving the party more time to escape before the room fills up.

Door 2 — Traps as Role-playing

Like a lot of groups we’ve been getting back to our roots and playing some old school Basic D&D in memory of Gary Gygax. We’re talking a low-level dungeon crawl, 10′ poles, iron rations, the works.

When I made the dungeon I did something a little unusual: I made all the traps easy to spot.

Yep, no surprise traps. You might not know exactly _what_ the trap is, but it is always pretty clear there is something dangerous. It might be the remnants of past victims (a litter of half-melted bones scattered in front of one unusual door…) or some particularly suspicious detail (why is there an open spiked pit at the bottom of that staircase?).

Part of it is just game world logic: if there are monsters and other people tromping around, the only trap that would still be a hazard is one that resets, which means other things would have been killed before and their remains would still be there. A one-shot trap would have to literally be somewhere no one had ever gone before to still be a hazard. The other part is game balance: low level D&D can naturally be quite lethal, since any damage roll is a potential instant kill for the average character. The thief? Yeah, he has a 10% chance to find traps.

The interesting part is that removing the surprise and basically announcing there’s a trap (for anyone who’s paying attention) completely changes the dynamic of play. Instead of being a hit point tax for walking down the hall, it becomes, well, a game. The players huddle, they have their characters look around, they brainstorm possible dangers and ways to get around them. And since this is old school D&D and the no Spot check rule applies, they really do have to think and ask questions to figure out the problem. Even zap traps become interactive because the players are interacting with them before they go off.

Sure, even with all the time in the world and all the evidence to examine sometimes they come to completely incorrect conclusions about how the trap will work and walk smack into the buzz saw anyway (”it’s not a door, it’s a grey ooze pretending to be a door? Crap!”), but even when that does happen the players are engaged rather than turned off.

Why? They are seeing the results of their decisions (successful or disastrous) rather than being hit with something they couldn’t do anything about.

* yeah I know, some of you are screaming “system grids! system grids!” but we’ll have to save that for another time

“We approach the door.”
“Half way down the corridor you step on a trap and darts fly out of the walls! The first character in the marching order takes” (roll roll roll) “7 damage!”
(scribbles damage on character) “Okay, we keep going. Someone open the door.”

I’m willing to bet that in all the hours you’ve logged in dungeons, you’ve been in more good fights than good traps. Come to think of it, have you ever been in a good trap, a trap that actually added something to the game?

Why is that, you ask? Bad Trap Syndrome. It’s a sordid tale, a dysfunctional love triangle between rogues, traps and the GMs that make them…

Are You a Good Trap or a Bad Trap?

Traps fall into two basic categories: zap traps and interactive traps. The difference isn’t the kind of danger, it’s how they work in play.

A zap trap is over as soon as it starts: it inflicts immediate harm on the intruders (zap!) who don’t really get to do much more than make a save or hope they don’t get hit. The unfortunate victim steps on something or touches something and then something falls on them or stabs them gasses them or whatever. Done, move along.

Making zap traps is easy. Just think of what is going to do the messy bit (darts, gas, jets of fire, crushing blocks, whatever) assign the damage, saves, etc. You can litter a dungeon with them in minutes flat.

They’re easy to make but they’re also bad gaming. Zap traps are wandering damage with a pretty description, a hit point tax for walking down the hallway, or (if you prefer) a very short fight where only one side gets to do anything. Just like Action Shticks, if you can’t really make any decisions–if you don’t interact with the situation–it fails the “is it a game” test. No choice, no game.

Which conveniently leads us to the alternative, the interactive trap. The interactive trap creates a situation the characters have to react to. They’re trapped in something or being threatened by impending danger or carefully navigating through something, but no matter which it is they get to make decisions about what to do.

Even the humble 10′ pit can be a minimal form of interactive trap, since if you survive you probably have to figure out a way of getting out of it or around it, but really juicy interactive traps have things like arrays of idols that shoot different beams out of their eyes when you step on certain squares, mazes of scything blades, etc etc.

Interactive traps are often really puzzles, even if the riddle the players are trying to solve is just “how do we get out alive.” Like any puzzle, it can take quite a bit of thought to design an interactive trap that is challenging but still solvable, not to mention stylish.

Rogue Busy Work

“It’s a trap!”
– Admiral Ackbar, typical rogue

Now let’s say you’re the GM. You’ve worked very hard to make a complex interactive trap. It’s a work of art. You’ve figured out how water slowly collecting in cisterns floods the chamber but then drains hours later after the intruders are dead and even raises the fallen block that sealed the room — because any serious trap has to be able to reset, right?

Along comes the rogue. Rogues are supposed to be the guy that finds all the traps and helps the party avoid all that damage. Lo and behold, the rogue can make a roll to find the trap and a roll to turn the whole thing off. Crap.

No GM wants to put all that work into something and then have the whole thing get cancelled by one roll, particularly if you were counting on it to fill play time. It’s like skipping a major battle you prepped because someone made a diplomacy check (oh sure, you all have anecdotes about that one time that happened and how cool it was — sheesh, it was one time!). It’s just a bad design work vs playtime pay-off.

So you subtly sabotage the rogue. You make it too hard to find the cool trap or you fudge the roll, and even though you are being a rat bastard GM your instinct is correct: making a roll to skip a whole encounter isn’t good game play (being clever and skipping an encounter, maybe, but just rolling clear is lame). If the encounter was interesting, you are skipping the interesting. It’s a little like rolling to skip the adventure.

But now you have guilt. You’re taking away the rogue’s whole thing. Hmm, better give the rogue something to do. Better put in a lot of zap traps in the rest of the dungeon so the rogue can be useful. Now the rogue can remove all the lame hazards that you shouldn’t have included to begin with. It’s rogue busy work.

The other option is to play it straight and you let the rogue bypass the trap you put spent all that time on. What does that teach you as a GM? Not to waste your time building cool traps. Next game you just put in more fights instead.

Welcome to Bad Trap Syndrome.

next up: Curing the bad trap blues

When you look out from behind your GM screen at all those beaming faces, there is a natural human tendency to focus on what is interesting. Chuck is doing cool stuff, so you pay attention to Chuck. You react to what he’s doing, which means the game world does too. The other players aren’t doing anything interesting (or as interesting) so for the moment they are just along for the ride.

But here’s the thing: part of your job is to run the game for all the players, not just some of them.

Group social dynamics is a complex ball of wax, and games are just social situations. Who’s bored, who’s interested, who’s disenfranchised or secretly pissed — these can be tricky things to stay on top of in the middle of a game, particularly when you’re also trying to figure out what spell the witch should cast next round.

It would be great if every GM was a natural social wunderkind and could stay in tune with every player without any effort, but the truth is there is nothing I can say that will magically give you better social skills — that’s just where you spent your points me bucko. Instead let’s forget about complexity and focus on one simple thing anyone can do:

Be interested in each of the player characters.

Don’t worry about what that means, or how that will change your behavior as a GM. If you are genuinely interested in each character and what happens to them, curious even, you will naturally pay attention to them in the game. When a player is sitting quietly you’ll stop and ask “Hey Mikey, what’s going on with your navigator guy? What’s he think about all this?” because you’ll want to know.

I’m not talking about pretending to be interested in order to engage the player (though it will do that), I’m talking about having genuine interest in that character.

I Endanger Because I Love

Here’s what happens: when you are interested in each character, you pay attention to them, which means the game world pays attention to them. That doesn’t mean that each character has to be equally important within the game world, they just have to be equally important to you, the GM and therefore to the game.

In a particular West Marches game (session #53 if you must know) one character was having a toe-to-toe magical duel with the sorcerer-outlaw Armuth the Crooked while another less powerful character scrambled under a wagon to hide from the other bandit thugs.

The normal reaction would be “ah, the first character is doing something cool, let’s pay attention to that — the other character is just ducking out of the scene so we’ll ignore her.” Oh no my friend. I’m into the clash of magical powers, but I’m also totally into the character hiding under the wagon. What’s that character thinking? Is it scary? Is she scrambling behind a wagon wheel? And when some grimy bandit trudges right past the hiding character, it’s dramatic and interesting to me — I want to know how it turns out, so I run it as being interesting, not unimportant.

Note the obvious contradiction: the hiding character is having no impact on the situation. The magician is blasting people and really deciding the day. But because I care about the characters more than just who wins, I want to know how each character reacts to the situation. I want to know all about each character’s subjective experience, because that is the heart of the game. Careful observers will also note that this holds the secret to running games with characters of mixed power levels.

Is there a player character in your game that just doesn’t interest you or feel kind of ‘blah’ about? That’s a problem. Even a mundane interest in seeing whether this character lives or dies is a start. Ask questions until you start getting interesting answers. Push, don’t ignore.