Problem Players

This came up in the comments here, and it's one of those things that comes up a lot in any co-operative exercise, I think. What does a person do with someone who won't co-operate, or won't co-operate in a way that's useful for the group? It's not an easy question to answer, and I don't think it's possible to do it in one post, but I want to outline some of the best ways I've found to deal with the issues that crop up.

The first thing to mention though, is that I don't believe in problem players. I'm not even sure I believe in problems, which I discuss here and here. I do believe in problematic behaviours, but I'm even a little cagey about that. I'd mark a behaviour inefficient or non-constructive before problematic, because they're usually better labels. It's often a behaviour that isn't helping the person achieve their goals, and we can take that to be a problem, or to be an opportunity to help them achieve what they're really after. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and find that very few people who might seem like jerks think that they're being jerks. People do things for reasons, and if we can understand what some of those reasons are, we can help.

GM Style Overview

So over the last three weeks I've looked at three different styles of GMing, Linear, Semi-linear, and Sandbox. I thought it'd be good to do an overview and directly compare them. The real question, of course, is which one is best? And that's a complicated one to answer, because they're good for different things. I also want to try and illustrate what they're like a bit better by using example of video games which execute these styles particularly well. If you haven't played these games, I highly recommend them. So let's get right to it.

Sandbox GMing

The time has come for the third and last of my GMing style posts, and this one's a doozy. the first thing that I have to admit is that I'm a sandbox cheerleader. I like it, I like what it tries to do, and I think it does a pretty good job. However, I'm not going to let that distract me from the challenges that it presents to a GM who wants to pursue that style. I designed a sandbox setting about a year ago, and run two separate games in it at the moment, and have been for about eight months now. I've had to adjust some of the ways I think about the game and the players, and it's been an interesting experience to do so. That said, this is definitely the style I have the least experience with. This isn't a post about how to design a sandbox setting, just an analysis of the the strengths and weaknesses of the style. So, sandbox!

Semi-Linear GMing

Last week I took on linear GMing, which is a bit of a touchy topic for me, but this week I want to explore semi-linear GMing, which is a style I have a lot of experience with. I've run a number of semi-linear games over the past decade, though I'm finally making a try at turning that setting into a sandbox (and at developing a wiki, the results of which can be seen here). In general, I find that semi-linear is usually a good starting point, because it accords people more freedom than a linear style while maintaining a balanced workload for the GM.

Linear GMing

Something I've wanted to do for a while is explore the benefits and challenges of the three essential styles of GMing. Linear, semi-linear, and sandbox. To make my biases clear, I think sandbox is definitely the best, but each style certainly has its strengths and weaknesses. So here we go with linear GMing.

At My Table: We Vote on House Rules

At my table, we vote on the house rules (which can be found here, on our as yet sparse wiki)

I run two 3.5 edition D&D games, and I've been running one for about eight years now. The players and characters fluctuate, but I try my best to keep them going. I decided I wanted to use some house rules about two or three years ago, after learning more about how the mechanics fit together on various gaming forums, especially the Wizards Forums, Brilliant Gameologists, and the Gaming Den. Before that I was a little naive. I actually banned monks for being overpowered. It's okay. I got better.

I had experience with house rules in the past as a player, and they often went unannounced, were executive decisions by the GM, or took the form of extensive "Patch kits", sometimes in excess of thirty pages. So when I thought about making some, I resolved to try not to do any of that. I wanted them to be light (less than two pages); general, rather than tweaks to specific classes or abilities; and community supported. My general policy is that things aren't a problem until they're a problem, which saves me a lot of time not putting out fires that haven't been lit yet. And realistically, if I couldn't present a clear enough case for why these house rules would make the game more fun, then we didn't need them. While doing that, I learned a lot about the benefits of establishing them democratically, and about a few of the challenges involved.

The Ideal GM: System Mastery

It's a bit of a loaded term, but one of the qualities of the ideal GM is complete knowledge of the rules of whatever game she happens to be running. Obviously, the best we, as mere mortals can hope for is an extensive knowledge of the rules, but it's still worthwhile for a number of reasons. Knowledge of the rules helps us design adventures and settings which are consistent with the ruleset, and the more we know, the faster and more efficiently we can do it. This consistency can be one of the cornerstones of our credibility, which allows us to act in secret without the worry that we're not playing the same game as everyone else in the group. However, what's interesting about the ideal GM on this subject is that she goes above and beyond this, using her system mastery in other ways in order to make the game more fun.