Gordon Olmstead-Dean with Adrienne Amerman
Draft
How things Get into Game when the GMs didn't want them
there, and what to do to Contain them.
Everyone knows that GMs are the controllers of the game. They make the rules and others obey
them. To be a GM is to have the power
of command.
The problem is that this is not in fact true. LARP is a social interaction, and in any social interaction - even that of a jailor with a prisoner, there is never a situation where there is no exchange of power. In an egalitarian setting, among peers, there is a great deal of exchange of power. The GM is not really "in charge," the GM is being allowed to lead in exchange for entertaining the players. Add the complexity of multiple GMs, and you have a situation in which "in charge" is a tenuous concept at best.
Predictably, this means that no GM gets their own way all the time. Those that do predictably run for small groups which blow up with regularity as their participants get tired of their dictatorial ways.
So the game ends up straying to some extent. There is room elsewhere to debate the ethics of grand scale shifting of the game - most GMs understand that the ultimate large scale game is a shared work in which they combine efforts with the players to produce a shared work that everyone enjoys, and mitigate the influence of the extremists who want to drag the game toward a private paradigm rather than a shared one.
On a small scale, however, the ability of the GMs to guide the game toward the shared paradigm which it is their job to interpret and reconcile is often affected - if not in fact hindered - by elements which come into the game without the specific intent of the GMs to allow them there.
In the next paragraphs we'll look at the way in which abilities - defined as
either intrinsic character abilities, items, resources, or any other capability
which a character possesses which the GM did not intend, creep into the game.
We'll see two categories of elements - things which the GMs never wished to allow into the game, but have in fact de-facto ended up allowing, and things which the GMs never wished to allow into the game, and which they have not in fact allowed. Often even these simple sounding lines are blurred.
First in order to understand the problem we'll look at the motives of players who put unintended material into games. Then we'll look at the ways in which it is accomplished. Finally we'll look at the dangers of taking too draconian an approach to containing it, and we'll discuss some strategies for containing, minimalizing, or stopping the problems.
In looking at motives, we'll see three broad categories: Active Weaseling, Overenthusiasm and GM Introductions.
Malice/Active Weaseling
The classic form of Weaseling is that in which the player sets out in a cold and calculated way to achieve an advantage over other players. While this is the form that most of us think of, it really isn't awfully common. In fact the biggest problem is the tendency to assume that, absent this type of abuse, there isn't any problem, or that any other type of abuse is out of malice.
Adversarial Weaseling "what I can get away
with"
An old adage says "anything not nailed down is mine, and anything I can pry loose isn't nailed down." Many players feel that rules were "made to be broken," and see rules as almost a challenge. In general the stiffer the GM, the more justified these players feel in bucking the system by trying to get advantage. However even operating from the standpoint of an "honor system" doesn't make the problem go away.
Jealousy/Feelings Of Inferiority
Overwhelmingly the most typical situation in game is that players feel they are in some way disadvantaged by the system or the game, and that anything they do to give themselves advantage merely offsets an inherent "unfairness" in the system.
In five years of campaign games, both we and other GMs have noted that it is often the case that even very minor setbacks or reversals cause players who we consider to be sensible and know better to begin saying "I'm screwed." In game scenarios and combats, players frustrated at the failure of the first solution to a problem often become despondent and make statements such as "there is no way we can win," sometimes with the clear solution staring them in the face. We still don't know why this is - there is some indication it may have to do with group mentality - but we do know that it occurs on all levels of the game, such that we've often felt that we needed to put elements in to "buck up" the players spirits in scenarios of even minor failure.
We can only assume - and evidence tends to bear out - that this is the same on the personal level. Players do not handle it well when their characters are incapable of handling any challenge. Even if the reason is that they aren't the best person to meet the challenge, that they failed to get help, that they failed to take elements into account, or that they will simply get unlucky some of the time.
Let's take Joe, who plays a Detective. The GMs have paired him up with Sally, who is a Mage. Together they will go in and seize a magical artifact. Sally can't get past the guards without Joe's help, but Joe can't take the artifact without taking down the magical protections around it.
This sounds ideal eh? Both characters need each other. Sometimes, if the parity is clear enough it works. But in more cases than you might think Sally feels that her character is "worthless" because she didn't get to participate in the gun-battle, while Joe feels that his character is "worthless" because he cannot do magic. Both begin a mad scramble to seize the niche of the other.
Okay, in a situation so clear cut, maybe they'd see the light. But maybe less than you think. And what if the situation were a magical box protected by a demon and a spell. Even if Sally knew how to handle the spell, and Bob knew how to handle the demon, the odds that they'd end up being jealous of each other's talents is significant. Particularly if, say Bob is more flamboyant, and drew great attention to his part of the task.
The fact is that many players define their character as "worthless" if the character cannot be active - and in fact sometimes if the character cannot be dominant - in all situations. This is the source of the "Swiss Army Knife" character phenomenon. The problem is that while this is an understandable individual goal, it is death to writing and gaming, because when all characters are the same, those with strong personalities simply dominate the game.
But the fact remains. Any situation in which a character couldn't do is seen not as part of play balance but as a legitimate grievance, a disadvantage in which the universe conspired against the character. So the player feels not at all unjustified in seizing advantage to "set things right."
Not Wanting To Be Embarrassed
Closely akin to this is the motivation of direct embarrassment. It is one thing to have Bob able to handle a demon. It is another thing to have had people laugh at your failure to contain the demon and had Bob come to your rescue.
Not Wanting To Be Worse Than Others
And finally there is the worst of all. What if one is the specialist, and someone else ends up being better. One's niche has been usurped. The player who is the master thief and finds themselves frustrated by a trap that is solved by a novice is likely to burn with rage. The odds that the player will philosophically reflect that they have put a season of experience into trying to compete with someone else are low. They will feel beaten at their own act, and never consider that may be because they stretched themselves too thin.
Not Wanting To Lose
A drowning rat struggles fiercely. If a player is in danger of actual loss which will be either humiliating, or potentially cause him to lose the character, they will fight hard. And they may well decide to pull out all the aces - even the ones they don't have.
If Casey at the bat was working with a GM, that third strike would never have happened. Casey wouldn't have let it. He would have pulled out some bizarro ability, justified or not. Or potentially just cheated.
Compassion - Heading off Trouble Before it Starts
One area where GMs can head off trouble before it starts. Remember that every roll is important to the player and try and treat them with a little compassion and respect. During a game, we may handle fifty die rolls. But to an individual player one of those die rolls may be their "chance to shine" during the game. Blowing the roll, or getting an adverse effect may be a big deal - the loss of a major chance of the weekend. Being neutral toned, trying to resist the urge to be adversarial, and even giving a little support "well, it was a tough roll, anybody could have missed it," can be important. Encouragement towards remedial action, "I think you could get it if you got someone to help you...it's too much for anyone to do alone," can help ameliorate bad feelings and the feeling that a character is the "underdog" and that therefore taking any action to "balance" the situation is "only fair." While it may feel gamebreaking to remind a character on the verge of a big roll that there are options and that this isn't "all or nothing" it may also be the recipe to prevent a drowning rat from turning and biting the hand that GMs for it.
Second only to jealousy as the method by which most unwanted elements find their way into the game is player enthusiasm. The players want something to be the case, and since reality is not immutable, but is determined by vocal instructions from peers, it becomes the case.
An important element of most Overenthusisam is willful self-deception. Essentially the player knows on one level that they don't have the ability. But they engage in a sort of internal dialog to convince themselves that they really do.
"They want someone to heal a wound..."
"I don't have that ability."
"Are you sure? You have an awful lot of abilities that you don't use very often."
"Yeah, but I'd remember if I could do that."
"Would you. Joe
the Doctor is normally around. What about that magic lamp back in game
two."
"What magic lamp?"
"You know the one with the Djinn?"
"Oh I'd forgotten about that."
"Didn't he grant you a wish?"
"I wished for milk and cookies."
"That was a stupid wish..."
"Well yeah..."
"You should have told the GM you retracted it and ask him to let you ask for something else."
"Uhm...I did think about it. I think I even mentioned it at the Party at Sally's a few weeks after that."
"Right. And
healing would make sense as an ability right?"
"Well sure, that's what I've wanted to be able to
do...or at least what I want to do right now."
"So you see, you can heal."
"Uh sure....but what if that magical lamp didn't do that."
"Look do I have to run you through every possibility. She's dying...get to work!"
Okay, that's a humorous over-simplification. But basically the point is that a player creates a certain internal doubt about what their abilities actually are. Intentionally "hazies up" their memory. Then when a question is asked, the answer could be yes. Obviously it's easier to do this game with something slightly more plausible, where abilities can be extrapolated, things one wished to ask for can turn into things one did ask for, etc.
Honest misinterpretation
Every player who ever introduced a bogus ability in game claims this as the reason. Just as many GMs assume malice, most players cry honest misinterpretation. Usually the proof is in the pudding. Honest misinterpretation usually happens when a cooperative player goes too far in making assumptions rather than taxing the GMs. A much less common situation occurs when a player simply misunderstands a description given by a GM.
It is usually unwise to publicly dispute claims of "honest misinterpretation." It is hard for people new to the environment of creating a shared reality to understand that "rules" are in fact a flexible definition system, and that there is no clear determiner between "mistaken" and "cheating." Thus there is the assumption that to deny "honest misinterpretation" is to imply "cheating," which isn't really the case either in most cases.
On the other hand, an aggressive weasel who is constantly "honestly misinterpreting" needs to be put on notice.
"Me Too" - Wanting To Be Part Of The Scene,
Or Wanting To Be Cool And Focus Attention On Themselves
I'm often reminded of a story by Charles Schultz, originally appearing in "Peanuts:"
The Theater
It was the holiday season. She and her husband had decided
to attend a performance of King Lear. It was their first night out together in
months. During the second act, one of the performers became ill. The manager of
the theater walked onto the stage, and asked,
"Is there a doctor in the house?"
Her husband stood up and shouted, "I have an honorary
degree from Anderson College!"
It was at that moment when she decided not to get him anything for Christmas
How often are we like that? No matter how stupid or irrelevant our abilities, we want to be the man of the hour. Only in LARP we can make ourselves the man of the hour. When the call comes out "can anyone save his life," how tempted are we to be the one to save the day. Even if it means pulling an ability out of our ass that we never really had in the first place, or that we know is a severe misinterpretation. The more we can come up with a thin justification, the more likely we are to jump in, but some players, like the husband above, will jump into the fray armed with nothing except good intentions and self-importance.
Wanting badly to help others ("I can heal
you!")
Closely related is the wish to help others. This is seldom without a certain amount of self-aggrandizement. After all, they aren't really hurt. But still the passion of the moment can be captivating. So like the situation above, we leap into the fray, and make something up. After all, we so badly want to be right.
"I've been thinking about
it."
Being from Outer Space
It is the unfortunate case that some of our players come from a place that makes Planet Claire look like a frequent tourist destination. Once in a while we get someone who just isn't playing the same game as us. This person often has a rich internal dialog in which their own internal long-running fantasies are grafted onto the game. So they suddenly mention their background as a Dragon-tamer. Or Dragon-rider. On Pern....
There are two problems with these cases. First some people no matter how stupid, will
always believe them. "You let Joe
play a Dragon-Tamer!!!!" Second people get enervated and they sew
confusion.
To make it worse they are often soft-spoken people that are so obviously basket cases one feels rather bad about victimizing them. I've had a player of this ilk cry when I attacked her heavily embedded background beliefs which conflicted squarely and completely with the game background.
They need to be made to understand that they have to play in the game reality,
or they need to leave. Or everyone else
needs to understand they are a fruit loop and should be ignored. The latter is probably the worst answer, but
the one that is most frequently implemented.
While GMs do make outright errors, by far the more common case is that GMs voluntarily introduce elements into the game which they haven't thought about, or don't define adequately. Every GM has the occasional need to put something into the game "on the fly." But if not planned it may allow something the GM never intended.
In runtime, we are often - quite reasonably - willing to exchange long term stability for short term expedience. In theory we can revisit the issue at a later date and work around it. The trick is to do so in a way that we do not create a problem that ends up sucking up far more of our time than is proportionate.
After we look at the motives, we'll look at some ways to try and limit the damage done by spontaneous introductions.
The Sin of Omission - "We'll Get back to
you."
It takes two to tango, but the GMs can issue an invitation. Often the basis for elements "slipped into" game is the sin of GM omission. The GM never followed up on the issue of resolving details of a new power, etc. If the player already feels put upon, this is to drive the dagger home. Neglect! "If the GM's cared they would give me my answer." So the player takes the decision into their hands. We'll look at this later from the other side, but it is good to remember that this problem has a GM side too. This is often a sign that GMs are overtaxed, and lack time.
GM Vagueness or Error
Similar to this is the GM who is simply too vague in giving information to a player, or who makes errors in that information. The results may have unexpected and undesirable consequences. It is sometimes better not to say anything at all than to be non-specific.
The GM Needs Plot Resolution
Sometimes we put something into game that we didn't originally mean to have there because we need plot resolution. This tends to happen in two circumstances. In one the climax of a game element is predicated on a character (or item) doing something "new" that they haven't been able to do before. The exact implementation is figured out, but the spin off implementations aren't. Joe needs to use the Staff of Moses to part the L.A. River and catch the gangsters. What we don't consider is that in the "Catalina Island" isolation scenario next game, Joe may use that same power to simply leave the island, or bring in outside help.
The second instance is where a power is thrown in for spin control, and this is most often unwise. To some extent this may be better discussed under "Methods" but it bears a mention here as well. Pressured GMs often make unwise rulings. Remember that anything you let in the door will never go back out again.
The GM Wants a Cool Moment
A similar motive is the "Cool Moment." It would just be so right if Joe could part the waters with his staff. It would be theatrical. It would work well. Ultimately this is our decision as a GM, and it may be a good one. But we need to be able to live with the consequences.
The GM Wants a to Reward a Player
Abilities are the true currency of the game. More than money, things that confer abilities - either actual abilities, or items, are the currency of reward, and of success and failure, in LARP. Often the GM makes decisions to grant a new ability because a player has earned it, and it is a justifiable reward.
The GM Wants or Needs to Mollify a Problematic Player
mollify a player who is being disruptive, for whatever reason. We'll discuss player tactics in this regard a little later, but situations remain where the GM has a strong reason to make a change on the fly. While all of us would like to think we'd never give in to a negative player, the fact is that when we need to safeguard the fun of 39 people by giving in to one, that' s often the choice we make.
We may even suggest a remedy. A sulky player may need a lollipop, and often in game economy a lollipop is an ability or item.
This shouldn't be seen as always being the player out to wheedle abilities out of the GM. A player who is depressed or taciturn may need to be drawn back into the game, and this may be the only "carrot" the GMs have on short notice.
Fairness
Most GMs are fair. And most GMs are capable of making a mistake. The result? Most GMs eventually reach a situation where they really have screwed a player and they know it. And they want to make amends. Often the only time-efficient way to do that is to hand out a lollipop. Even if it isn't adequate, it's a way of letting the player know that you know you were wrong and want to make amends.
Unqualified GM Decision
It would be ideal if all the people we used to help us run the game knew everything we did. No matter how hard we try a certain amount of any large game is undocumented - material that exists as Schaeffer's Mozart says "up here...in my noodle."
And eventually someone - whether Co-GM, AGM, etc., will make a decision without knowing all the parameters. Either because time demands it, or because they simply don't know that there is a problem.
And the result is an unqualified decision that allows something we never should have allowed. There is no sure remedy to this, but good lines of authority, communication, and expertise, and an Exclusionary Clause, can help.
Blatant Favoritism
It would be idea if all of us were perfectly honest, perfectly reasonable people. However we aren't the time will come when a GM on staff is pumped by a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, someone they owe money to, the person whose house they live in, a person they've just reconciled a fight with etc., and they will knuckle under and show favoritism.
It's ugly, but it happens, and there is no sure remedy other than to set a high ethical standard among the GMs against that sort of practice. In an ideal world, perhaps we'd only referee for strangers, but in practice that doesn't happen. And degree of relationship can be misleading. Joe may be less vulnerable to demands from his wife (after all, they have plenty of other issues on which they have to go back and forth and neither will press the other too hard), than Sally is to demands from Alec, who lets her rent a room in his house for only $140 a month, but has begun eyeing the space and talking about changes. Maybe Bob and Greta are more than "just friends" and everybody knows it, but while Ed can be disqualified from GMing for his girlfriend Lisa, nobody would have the cheek to disqualify Greta from GMing for Bob, because they'd have to answer the question "why?" and the relationship isn't one that is publicly discussed.
Exclusionary Clause
I recommend an "Exclusionary Clause." At the beginning of the game or campaign make it clear that any ability negotiated during combat, or during a game, is temporary, and will be formalized after review. I don't think there is any reason not to be brutally direct about the reason for this: "because decisions made during runtime cannot give due consideration to larger game balance and issues" is a nice way of putting the fact that in a hurry we often err. An ability isn't "set in stone," until it is written down after the game, and players should expect some changes, limits or qualifications.
We see four primary classes of methods for introducing
irregular elements into the game. Authority Related, Distortion,
Schticks, and Mind
Games
Authority Related methods deal with those ways in which players annex the authority to make decisions about the rules of the game to themselves.
Self GMing
While this can also be attributed to Active Weaseling, in general we'll consider Self GMing under Overenthusiasm. Few Self GMs really want to damage the game, though they often act from a combination of Self-Aggrandizement and jealousy.
Obviously there are situations where a player is allowed to GM for themselves. Problems caused by this fall into the category of "bad rulings by AGMs." The situation we are grappling with here is when a player simply makes up the rules of the game.
Every player must do this to some extent. No GM wants to be harangued every time a player uses a power...
"Does my fireball burn cloth..."
"Sure Joe..."
"Does it burn the people behind the cloth..."
"Sure Joe...it may protect them from the force a little bit..."
"How many dice do I deduct for that?"
"Just throw your damn spell!!!"
On the other hand most reasonable players would guess that their fireball might not work against "a stainless adamantium door"
There is margin for error, but there comes a point where it is clear that a player is essentially GMing the game for their powers as they go along. When the player has a large and formidable set of powers this can be devastating.
Often a player who also GMs will press for the authority to run his own special abilities. This is one of those classic circumstances where the people who most want the power are probably the ones most inclined to abuse it.
It becomes worse when you have....
Player GMing For Others
When the Self-GM starts also telling others how their powers work, you have real problems. Obviously games that allow expert players a good bit of latitude, and in which players may end up helping with basic GMing are more open to this. The problem is that those are good mechanisms for dividing work in a campaign.
The Self-GM who begins to tell other players what they may and may not do is often paving the way for their own downfall. Players will appeal the ruling, just as they would if it came from a legitimate AGM. Nevertheless good faith may create quite a bit of confusion and consternation.
Players Taking Advantage Of GM Option To Make It
"GM Contest Of Will"
In this situation, the GM has granted a vague ability. The GM felt that this was apropos, for any of a number of reasons. The ability is very flexible, the ability is actually the sign of some external intervention "Guardian Angel" or is simply so powerful the GM did not want to give the player discretionary use of it.
However the player is a strong willed person, and begins to use the ability as if it were their right. "My Guardian Angel intercepts it for four points of damage." Often the GM may forget that the ability was designed to work at GM Option, and the player encourages this, often omitting to mention the ability he actually believes is in play, for example stating "I'm immune to fire" rather than "I have a Guardian Angel who often protects me from attacks." The truth may come out long later - or not at all.
"So how did you get fire immunity."
"Well my Guardian Angel wouldn't let me be burned up would he?"
The point is that anytime the GM tries to restrict the use of the ability that was designed to be GM Option, the player argues it - turning it into "GM Contest of Will" rather than "GM Option."
Players usually win contests of will with the GM unless they
are overly confrontational. While a GM
won't back down on a specific point in front of forty players, most GMs won't
seek out fights.
A GM has forty people to steel themselves for argument with. A player only has the GM (and potentially a
few other players). The preponderance
of energy favors the player.
The only real solution - turn a GM Option ability into an acceptable documented ability and make the player stick to it.
Circuitous AGM use - put the ability over on the AGM
then claim it in game
It is a general rule that an ability once used in game never goes away - particularly without the Exclusionary Clause I suggest above. If Mary is once allowed to summon lemmings, Mary will always be able to summon lemmings. Or Mary will have a royal fit...see tantrums below.
So the key is to get the ability referenced in game. While some players will look for a player willing to do "Self GMing " for other players (beware if a group of Self-GMers band together!), most want the cachet and legitimacy of a real GM ruling.
So the AGM is targeted by the weasel. By this we mean an "Assistant GM" - anyone who is actually officially empowered to make rulings. The weasel descends on the AGM and explains how their power works. Not really of course. They explain how they want the ability or power to work. Note that nothing here keeps them from also indulging in willful self deception about the matter.
So the AGM assumes that the player knows what they are
talking about and allows it. After that
the player begins using it regularly.
If the GM ever calls the player on it, then the explanation is that
"I've been able to do that since Game four." Often the fact that the ruling was made by
an AGM is not the first thing the player mentions. But pared down to the core, it comes down to the appearance that
the AGM made an unwise decision. Even
if the AGM denies it, the strong weasel will insist that they never said
how the ability worked. They got a
ruling.
This really comes in two degrees...the outright weasel who claims an ability and frames the AGM for allowing it, and the self-deceptive player who presses for an "advantageous" ruling and then pats themselves on the back for having been so reasonable, and fair.
Mommy Daddy
Probably the best known dodge in the book concerning GMs is the Mommy Daddy Game. We all know the story behind this - if Mom says no ask Dad.
This isn't the most dangerous of dodges, because these days most GMs are onto it. But it still causes problems, because a player will often combine it with dodging until the source of the bogus ability is buried in history.
It is most typical to see this with specialty or auxiliary GMs. But beware if any GM on your staff isn't competent, or just likes to "make players happy." I knew one enthusiastic AGM who never failed to put at least one bogus ability into my games, often being manipulated by players but sometimes just for the sheer joy of it.
Combat decision on the fly
Finally there is the dreaded "on the fly" decision in combat. A distracted GM is asked a question - maybe clear, maybe unclear - about an ability. The answer is considered law forever after...at least if it is the answer that the player wanted to hear. And in the haze of combat, the advantage seeking player can often present a good case for whatever they want to hear.
A variation on this is to simply state something that one is doing. If the GM allows it then it must be an ability right? After all you asked the GM!
Some players do this unwittingly just with bad sentence structure, or by saying "can I" which the Combat GM tends to interpret as "is my position such that I am able to," rather than "in this game do I have the ability to."
Some players simply do not consider that the GM likely does not know either the description of every ability in play, nor what every character in the game has when they are running a combat.
A GM running a combat is at their most harried and least able to process information well. They are likely to make a poor answer. The Exclusionary Clause is one fix. Another is to mandate that any ability never before tried in combat be prefaced with "I want to make an experiment." Obviously some weasels will "forget" this but it increases the chance other players will catch it.
The weasel in question is obviously not going to go out of his way to contact the GMs to clarify the ability after game, so it may grow substantially through extrapolation.
Distortion is a wide category of abuse. The thing that is wonderful about distortion is its plausible deniability. The Player can plead an "honest misunderstanding," on a distortion much more easily than in most other circumstances.
Failure to Count uses/charges
One of the most simple situations is abuse of items meant to be "charge based." A GM creates a powerful object and places it into game, with the belief that it is balanced because it can only be used a specific number of times. Alas that turns out not to be the case. The players "forget" uses, or in the case of a potion "split up" uses. I've seen one potion with three charges become three potions with six charges.
Most attempts to limit this based on props aren't overly effective. In fact the physical props can make the matter worse. Since few GMs are willing to penalize a character for forgetting a physical prop (sure you're willing to penalize smarmy Ed, but are you willing to penalize pensive Maria who shows up full of stories of horror about how bad her job and life are and how she needs this escape), the lack of a prop can be an excuse for cloning an item several times.
Charge markers, or empties don't get picked up by GMs and thus the player concludes that "if I still have it in my pocket I must not have used it."
Check out procedures that rely on characters reporting charge uses work to make sure that honest players don't have the advantages that dishonest players do, and that willfully self deceptive (and lazy) players have the greatest advantage at all. We experimented for a while with a form which called on players to document every item they left game with that they wanted to keep. Not surprisingly about three quarters of the players never recorded anything. That level of compliance renders a system non-viable.
A highly aggressive GM can police checkout to some extent, if the GM team can afford the time and space for a full checkout procedure.
My advice - consider any item placed in game to be a potentially unlimited number of uses. Or make the item something that needs to be destroyed to use, and is too large to lose easily, and keep custody of it.
Abilities posited from a low stat
One common dodge that is almost not apropos here is to gain an ability that your character doesn't have by simply failing to declare level in a level based system. Often in LARP specific level information is irrelevant - for example the GMs ask if anyone can speak French. A player with "French 1" leaps forward and seizes the problem, and eclipses a player who has "French 12" This isn't true in every system, but in level based systems, the extrapolation of a competent skill from the very lowest stat available seems not uncommon, since in LARP panache is often the most important skill.
Failure to remember/Record how an ability works
Darling of the self deception crowd, is the inability to ever remember how an ability works. Of course it always works just the way it needs to, thus an ability that was intended to do one thing ends up doing a dozen.
Extrapolation
Another King of the Hill is extrapolation. The player can do A and B, so logically must be able to do C. Need I bother the GM with such an obvious thing.
For example...I can cast Fireball. That's more powerful than producing a small flame, so I obviously have "Start Fire." And didn't I once learn how to delay a spell or something. So I have "Fire Trap." And I have "force wall" so I can obviously combine that with fireball to get "Fire Wall."
While the case is seldom so simple, the basic idea is the
same at all levels. The player is
making up an ability based on a more or less logical extension of an existing
ability. But without asking, or without
asking clearly
Extrapolation isn't always bad. Many GMs allow a certain amount of extrapolation. However doing it without GM cooperation and approval leads to abilities the GM never meant to see used in game.
Extrapolation from NCC example
If I have Psychic Powers. And Brak the Non Player Character (a GM driven character - NCC or "non continuing character" in the terminology I prefer) has psychic powers. And Brak can melt people's minds. I must be able to melt people's minds.
At the very least seeing an NCC do something is grounds to begin asking for it. But many players choose not to wait, but begin to assume (often driven by jealousy, or the need to "even the balance") that they have equivalent powers.
Mystique "I take his gun"
I play a cool detective character. In The Maltese Falcon Sam Spade takes a guy's gun away. I must be able to do that right? So I'll just declare it. Often GMs who are absorbed in the personality of a strong player are willing to let that player have abilities without paying for them (if the system requires that) or earning them, because they are "cool." This isn't always bad, but it is a primary way that unexpected abilities slip into game.
Spin offs of other Players
There are many flavors of ability that spring from the assumption that "anything you can do I can do better." Whether driven by jealousy or by two players cooperating, watch for players to duplicate abilities as in the NCC example above, or to extrapolate from mixing their own abilities to achieve an unplanned third result.
"Teaching" without cost
In some systems, you can learn anything that someone is willing to teach you. But most systems have some sort of point or time based method for determining how many skills one person can teach at any one time, and how long it takes to learn them. Watch for players to "forget" about this system, or try to create "special" allowances to opt out of it and simply acquire skills by osmosis from each other.
No Cost skills "learned" in game
A variant on this looks for NCCs or in game sources to "learn" abilities - often making an unfounded presumption that doing this obviates any system requirements to actually pay for those abilities.
Drift
Game one "I have protection from fireballs...."
Game two "I have protection from fire..."
Game three "I have immunity to fire"
End of season "I have immunity to magic."
Over time abilities which aren't frequently referenced on paper tend to grow, often with a little help from willful self deception. Suddenly the ability that was reasonable becomes a class ability that is no longer reasonable.
Dave Coleman said:
Limitations on
powers slip away into nothing. You may have thought you gave out a balanced
power because the "+2 to hit bad guys" is offset by "cannot be
used near powerful electric fields". But guess which part isn't going to
be brought up in the heat of battle? And will be forgotten by three sessions
later?
The player who
spent points to get "Sword which is +1 to hit against dragons" is
getting royally screwed over by the player who spent points to get "Things
with dark energies" for the same number of points. If something is defined
incredibly flexibly and vaguely, it is very difficult to say "No, you just
can't do that."
Schticks are the most dangerous class of unwanted abilities, since they are often grandiose in scope and tend to multiply. I'll try to hit the more common routes by which Schticks enter the game. This of course presumes the game has a rule system - some games reward players for making up abilities. This isn't bad in all cases, but requires imposition of a great deal of maturity, restraint, and peer pressure.
The problem with schticks is simple. Willful self deception requires fertile ground. In our example above, the internal dialog has a hard time arguing the case based around an old game. How much easier when the player has some vast Schtick.
"You can heal her!"
"I'm not sure I can heal?"
"Dude you are the Captain of the Dragon Guard! One Major Dude! Even stupid Phil the Doctor over there can heal. You have abilities far beyond those of ordinary mortals. Get to it!"
For those already inclined to abuse, the Schtick is an invitation to do so.
Without digressing too much away from our point of unexpected powers it is worth speaking for a moment about another unexpected effect of Schticks.
Often in an XP based system a Schtick gained in game carries abilities worth more than a season of XP growth. Soon the system begins to militate in favor of everyone having a schtick because a gulf forms.
Let's say that a game starts out with characters with point base 100, and during its first season runs six games with a total XP of 10 each. Characters are now 160 points. However if a Schtick carries 57 points of abilities, you have effectively put the character who gained it at the end of Season 2 XP wise.
Any big grant of abilities should be "measured" to see if it dwarfs the XP pool of the group.
Character Changing Events (jobs, initiations, duties,
disaster, death)
Ever since Spiderman got bit by the arachnid, people have seen any potential disaster as a way to get sudden ultimate powers.
It goes without saying that in games new jobs, initiations, duties and so forth are often plot devices for rewarding players, and forwarding the plot of the game.
But these can turn into ugly situations. For example, "Orion the Guardian of the Portal of the Universe" who had the ability to bend time and space to his will is retiring. At the culmination of a game, one of the players is selected as the Guardian of the Portal of the Universe.
Do the GMs have a plan? What powers go
with this position. The powers of the
original NCC who was effectively ten times more powerful than the average
character? Perhaps the new Guardian
only gets the powers associated with the Belt of Orion...hope so and watch
carefully, because if you don't you'll see other powers suddenly 'cropping
up.' These situations are ideal for
"forgetting" (I forgot the belt didn't give me Orion's "crush
spaceship" power) and other willful self deception.
Items "when do I get my artifact."
Years ago, in a D&D Campaign I had, all the players had an artifact level weapon of some sort. One of the players rather made fun of it..."when do I get my artifact!"
But that's too often the case in LARP. Once powerful items drift into the game, everybody wants them. While items are easier to control than some other rich sources of power, there is the temptation to create "high level" items with expanding abilities.
While these are neat, they can be very dangerous. Most items should have a strict list of abilities. In XP based systems we have been looking at the idea that Items may in some cases simply come with a list of abilities which they enable the owner to buy, perhaps at a reduced rate. For example, perhaps the "One Ring" comes with the relatively trivial ability "invisibility." A nice freebie. But to begin to use the real powers "Build Dark Tower, Summon and Command Nazgul" you have to invest XP. The Ring is still nifty because you can't just take 'Command Nazgul' - only the ringbearer can. But it doesn't come for free.
Unspecified Gifts, Wishes, etc.
Another dangerous avenue is any situation in which a character is given unspecified goodies. For example if the Fair Folk invest the player with the "Power of Earth," that could later be construed to be nearly anything the players want. Watch this sort of thing...it's a red carpet invitation to abuse and at best will produce surprises.
Multiple/Synthesis Characters (Personas,
Personalities, Possessions, Mantles, Auras, Morphs)
You would think that given their relative scarcity in the real world that characters with multiple personalities would be fairly rare in games. Instead they are legion. I think there are several reasons for this.
First, there is always an interest in oddball stuff, and "composite" characters are interesting in fiction, and characters with multiple personalities have always been depicted fictionally more often than they actually occur.
But there are other reasons.
Practically they are an answer to someone who can't decide what kind of
character they want to be. Play
multiple characters - often presented as a disadvantage, but actually as a way
to be active in multiple niches within the game structure.
The same phenomena serves a different need. Often a player is too attached to a character to let the character die, but in practice the character is not a very good one, or the player has lost interest. A sudden "additional" character grafted on top allows the player to be a new character...without parting from the old character they are emotionally attached to. This ends up looking just like a big old farmhouse with an ugly new addition.
There are legitimate plot uses too. Many game plots call for a body to hold two people to some extent. But GMs need to carefully think how the ability distribution for this will work out. Most importantly a player should never effectively receive two characters worth of abilities and be able to switch more or less at will (remember the "at GM Contest of Will" discussion) between them. Not unless that is somehow commensurate with the other abilities in the system.
It would be nice if we could say that only people who acted with malice could play mind games. After all they require a lot of planning and adaptation. But willful self deception is up to the trick.
Outright Bullheaded Declaration
Some players will just declare they can do something and be willing to engage in a staring competition with you over it. In the "hard core" version of this, they will declare it right to you. Surprisingly often you lose, for the same reasons stated above why GMs often back down to players. And there is a certain amount of 'The Emperor's New Clothes' here as well. "Bob can control Dragons?"...well...boy would it look stupid to have to admit to everyone you put the plot in without remember Bob could control Dragons. But when did he get that ability.
Other than strong, determined, players with a streak of defiance towards the GMs, this comes most often from the Space Cadets
In the Soft version the ability is asserted behind the backs of the GMs. By the time the GMs catch up to it the
ability may have been in use for several games.
Outright dodging the GMs
Related to the soft version of this is the class of player who has a very detailed description of what their powers do. Whenever the GM isn't around. Many things in game can be accomplished through assistants, and other players. There are Players who "grow" an ability and may hide for several games from the GMs in order to get it "ingrained" into the system.
Infodump
Even the most dedicated GM may have problems processing what amounts to a full revision of the game rules. Some players have found that if you compile enough information and dump it on the GM, they will say "yes." More normally this produces "no answer" which can eventually become...
"Did you ever read all that material I sent you...is that okay..."
"Uh what was it on?"
"On my new Astral manipulation abilities..."
"Oh....uhh...."
"I put a lot of work in on it...I've been waiting a while..."
"Well...yeah..."
"I don't think there's anything it in you'd object to. Can I at least use the Astral redaction powers? That's almost just what I'm doing now..."
"Uhhh...sure I guess..."
The exact conversation varies, but the point is to simply give the GM more work than they can process. If the entire submission gets met with a firm "rejected" expect a considerable guilt trip implying that you asked them to develop a new system and that they are very hurt that you have rejected it after they put so much work in.
A bigger staff and editing experts can help this, but often non-primary GMs err in one direction or the other. Some, who don't have to run the campaign themselves, may not understand that rejecting another GMs 144 page writeup whole cloth is simply not a wise political move for the stability of the campaign. Others may assume that if it doesn't violate any specific precepts it is fine, and not understand ramifications within the system. The more experienced and familiar with the overall context of the game such an editor is, the better a job they will do.
Shell Games And Obfuscation
Have you ever argued with someone that you can never win with? I'm pretty good in an argument, but there are some people I can't beat. Because every time I make a good argument, what we were arguing about changes.
Take the infodump. Complicate it. Add elements that were missing, were to be submitted later, are drawn from other material already submitted. Make it confusing and badly written so that while parts appear quite reasonable, they refer to other things that are not.
I have players who have never actually submitted solid stats for their characters. In a previous game which required a type of written between games action, I had one player who would always turn in an inexplicable muddle. No matter what I answered, they had a right to be unhappy, and if I accused them of unfairness, obviously I'd read the information wrong. And constraining them to a specific format was of course to hobble them. Though they tried. They just always got it wrong. Since the between games actions effected other characters, I couldn't just send them back and say "forget it."
Players who do this sort of thing are pretty politically ept, and they know how to shuffle papers.
"My power is this...no wait it's this...no it's over here...not in my hand..."
A related element of this is players who always "keep a complaint
open." No matter how much is done
with them, no matter how many remedial sessions, they always claim to have a
dispute open about their character definitions or stats. Fundamentally they
understand political leverage. If they
are called in one area, they fall back on their complaint "well I've never
complained about this issue that has been left unresolved..." These are folks who understand the mantra
"Admit Nothing, Deny Everything, Make Counterallegations."
Tantrums and the First Request after The Tantrum
Tantrums are a remarkably effective way of manipulating the GMs. But not in the way you might think. Unless it is a male GM with a doe eyed girl, most GMs won't actually respond all that well to a noisy tantrum or a crying jag.
But often that isn't the point.
The tantrum is draining. We hate it. It disturbs the game. And it disturbs other players. And make no mistake. No matter how egregious a player's violations have been any player with a beef against the GMs will always have a defender. Someone who at the least thinks that the GM is being "too hard on them." After all it isn't that person's time the complainant has wasted. The worst cases always have a few people to speak for them.
So what happens is that after the tantrum, GMs begin to adopt an avoidance behavior. The next request that comes in is likely to be treated differently. "Well, I don't much care for this ability Rita wants. But it's more reasonable than her last request and I don't feel like dealing with another tantrum."
In the long run tantrum-throwing players (and I classify both those who break down and snivel, or those who start a nasty fight with the GM) exhaust us, and make us willing to deal with them just to keep them from throwing a tantrum.
They are a difficult class of player to deal with. Eventually they wear out their welcome. But not necessarily soon enough, especially those who start fights, because they often become rallying points for anyone else who is disaffected.
Logic games
Logic games are a cross between obfuscation and Guilt games. The player will sequentially insist that a certain set of things are true, and force the GM to redact them one by one. When the GM is finished they find that they were of course wrong and completely misunderstood in fact they've just proved the point. How? Well, some people can write a very thick cluster of words that don't mean much. Frustrating, but comparatively rare.
Guilt Games
Whether they cry and snivel or not, many players resort to guilt games. I've seen it from relatively proud players "Oh well...I don't mind that I don't have any of the abilities you've given Joe. You know I only play for the roleplaying. I'll probably die in the next combat, but what the heck, it's only three years worth of character development down the drain..."
I've seen it from those doe eyed females mentioned above "snif...the other players don't pay attention to me...snif...."
There is always someone out to guilt the GMs. Sometimes they even have a good point - we are human and we do allow inequities. But by the doctrine of jealousy and inferiority, they certainly often believe they are right.
And players throwing guilt trips get more sympathy than most other forms of weaselry.
Obviously the answer to all the issues above is to plug every hole, and not allow anything that isn't written down. The problem is that this won't work in the first place, and would be damaging to the game if it did in the second place. Instead, we look towards containment strategies. Ways to try and minimize the problems above, while maintaining the flexibility to run.
Fundamentally in
most LARP we are pleasing all of the people some of the time. No GM ever lost their audience by letting
the players win. If they could make it
look hard so much the better.
Many GMs have lost
their audience by making the players frustrated or bored. Therefore things
which frustrate players are inherently to be avoided, while things that merely
let them win are only minor hindrances.
The real point of a
system is not to handle resolving the actions of the players against the
enemy (environment, bad guys, etc.), but to keep some remote parity
between them in regards to how they perceive each other, so that
they do not end up feeling dramatically jealous, put upon or invalidated.
How Important
is Combat and Competition Against the GMs/Environment?
A LARP isn't like a
soccer game - two equal and opposed teams vying to see who walks away with the
cup. A LARP is a drama and the usual
function of combat is to move the plot along.
Most Combats are by definition a foregone conclusion. This is a function of plot. The GMs can seldom actually write to the
possibility of the CCs losing a combat without running the game drastically
overtime.
Plenty of GMs disagree with this. They say "Oh the combats should be fair, etc. etc." However I'd argue that if they are GMs who run regularly they are engaging in "willful self deception." If you are a GM ask yourself - how often have you set up a combat that you were perfectly willing to let the players lose and then let them go into it knowing there was any serious chance that they could lose. A GM who says that the players can lose anytime, but has run a year and a half of games where it didn't happen is just being self deceptive. They know it won't happen.
In that case the
only real function of combat is to make the players feel like they had some
input. In which case it really doesn't
matter what the stats are they are simply a matter of walking around
handholding and saying "yes, you did real good."
So the function of
stats in most games is to balance players against other players, not against
the universe, even though it appears to be the very opposite.
Both pragmatically,
and in good theory, we will never strictly define everything in the game. So the answer isn't to hammer ourselves silly trying, but to have GMing tactics flexible enough to handle some
vagueness and still impose consistency
Having some things
vague doesn't mean we can't aspire to a high level of documentation. But we have to recognize it isn't a holy
grail and isn't going to be perfect.
In general players
can't and won't have complete mechanical representations of their non-combat special
abilities. The problem is that doing so
requires a level of simplification of the universe that isn't really worth
going into and limits GM development.
This is particularly
typical in games using magic. When you
start getting into "X does only X" you find plots dead ended because
you need X (which is very similar to Y) to do Y. Especially with a large staff
that level of precision in writing isn't going to be achieved, and in practice,
it's pretty dull when it is. That's the
sort of mechanics you get in an old line game like Dragon, and you end
up with strange abstractions and disharmonies.
"I need a rusty shovel for this spell...only a rusty shovel. A gold shovel will not do."
Flexibility in how
abilities work is important. It
is how a staff without professional offices and a 40 hour work week can write
an event every 60 days. Games
are built on it. Games are based on
it. We can have a group of
semi-committed amateur writers build a game in eight weeks in spare time,
without daily staff meetings, because the dots don't all have to connect. They just have to get close and the nature
of the universe is fuzzy enough that we can connect them on the fly.
It is also why magic
has tended to be so much more powerful in games, and plot-centric. Because magic by its nature lends itself
to the sort of "fuzzy logic" that makes games work.
However, in
exploring how to make other elements of the game as popular as magic, we've discovered in practice that the
solution is not to make magic work more like auto mechanics -
we've played that in the mid 90s, and most games moved away from it for a
reason - it's frustrating and dull. The
same reason most people don't play electricians. The better answer is to make
the other important skills in the game more like magic - i.e. more amenable
to fuzzy logic.
Keeping
Rewards Plentiful
The easiest way to
control play balance and screen out unwanted elements is to keep rewards
scarce. However the most
effective way is to keep rewards plentiful.
In general, while
players can be envious or jealous, we need to remember that positive reinforcement works better
than negative reinforcement.
Thus while one way to keep everyone from being envious is to deny
everyone advantage, the other way is to give everyone advantage. And this works much better in terms of
player satisfaction because positive reinforcement is inherently very powerful.
We've observed elsewhere that the best term to define "what players get out of the game" is gratification. You can't say "fun" because if a player gets their enjoyment out of being put through a hellish survival scenario, or being involved in psychodrama, "fun" begins to become counterintuitive. However you can say that players come back to games because they derive gratification from them.
There are several
primary types of "underlying events" in LARP
Pacing Objects
Objects that must
take a certain amount of time (less or more) so that the game moves on
schedule. A pacing object can be a
gratification object, but it doesn't NEED to be. For example an NPC who says that you cannot perform the ritual
until the stars are right is a NON-Gratification pacing object. A puzzle that you must solve based on
intelligence is a pacing object and ALSO a player gratification object.
CHARACTER
Gratification Objects
Objects that require
a certain amount of attention and then essentially "give the character a
snickers bar." The character
gratification object responds to an element which the player chose to take - a
PC who comes from Brooklyn, knowledge of Babylonian, or a criminal
contact. They are rewards for good
choices in character construction. They
MAY also serve as pacing objects.
PLAYER
Gratification Objects
Objects that require
a certain amount of intelligence or skill to "give the character a
snickers bar." A pile of jack
straws, a wire loop, a code, an excercise in english literature, an NPC with an
emotional element, a revelation that sparks psychodrama. These gratify the players,
Note that MANY
Objects in game actually combine some elements of Character Gratification and
some of Player Gratification (you must be a detective to look at the puzzle,
but then must solve it using your smarts).
Many GMs don't distinguish between the two classes of Gratification, and
some heavily lean towards one or the other, causing frustration. Rules deal mostly with Character
Gratification, while GM designed puzzles tend to deal with Player
Gratification.
Tokens
Abilities are a wide
variety of coins or tokens, coming in various denominations. Gratification objects in game are gumball
machines from which the player gets gratification. The distribution of gumballs is controlled by the possession of
certain classes (abilities) or denominations (levels) of token.
The problem is that
in actual practice it is difficult to impossible to write a game in which the
distribution of "gumball machines" is any too precise. I could go through piles of anecdote on
this, from the early Mersienne games where I tried to write special elements
into the game for at least five players and during the first two games four out
of five in each game failed to show up.
Even if it is
theoretically possible to build a game with this balance, it will not be
done in eight weeks by a temporary staff, without resort to a level of
"canned situations" and "method" which would render the
final product lackluster.
While player
jealousy and envy can't be discounted, player frustration is much
worse. Players are most likely to be
frustrated when a GM won't let their
character grow. In other words,
for all the harm done by jealousy, envy and trying to even the score above,
doing a draconian lockdown to prevent all these things from happening has its
own set of bad consequences. Frustration occurs when invalidation occurs.
It is also important
to note that Frustration over not being able to get advantage is
directed at the GMs. I've observed
before that GMs because they are authority figures in a society that is
generally ruthlessly egalitarian are extremely vulnerable as targets of
dissent. Perfectly reasonable players
can form a virtual lynch mob against GMs.
Many of us have done this in the past.
I we've think learned better, but it takes self control, and you can
still slip into "those damn GMs."
The GMs because they portray the universe are objects of extreme resentment.
Therefore, anything
that makes the players feel resentful to the GMs is about ten times worse for
the campaign than anything which makes them resentful of each other.
Frustration is directed at the GMs, jealousy towards
other players. Now while no GM should
want to promote disharmony, the fact is that envy and jealousy in games
tend to run along natural lines anyway, and seldom occur except between people
who don't get along to begin with. You
really don't see a lot of people sick with envy over the abilities of people
that they like.
And nothing makes
players more resentful than failure to "give them something." Failure to let players stretch, improvise,
and wheedle is inherently frustrating, and worst frustrating to the players most
likely to take it out by doing damage to the game.
Invalidation is the opposite of Gratification. Invalidation occurs in two ways.
Inequality Of
Distribution
Some players feel Invalidated if any other player achieves Gratification. This is nearly impossible to deal with (distraction is the only solution). Fortunately most players feel Invalidated only if another player has substantially higher gratification than they do. Almost all players feel invalidated if gratification that they feel was "theirs" is taken away. The problem is that unless gumball machines are highly individualized players are likely to be able to take Gumball machines away from other players.
Perception Of
Catering Or Devaluation
The conundrum in
Invalidation is obvious. If one aims
gumball machines at specific players, one promotes the perception of
catering. If one has gumball machines
that pay off for any player at any time, one promotes the perception of
Devaluation - i.e. gumballs aren't worth much, because anyone can have one at
any time.
If one doesn't, one
promotes greater likelihood of competition and the occurence of Invalidation
from the feeling that Sally used a token to get my gumball...and it wasn't even the best token. I had the perfect token for that machine.
The Two
Solutions
Perfect
Balance - the highly
stats oriented concept says that you figure out exactly the required
number of gumball machines, and position them exactly correctly. Obviously this concept argues against vagueness. Because it is important every token have
very specific value and denomination.
The problem is that
in practice I have yet to see this ever work. Huge games have been hung
on it in the past requiring thousands of hours of development and insanely
complex systems. Yet in the end some
elements were vague, or were adjusted on the fly. And because this system is
much weaker except when it is functioning perfectly, it tends to break
down badly rather than keep running.
And often players
grow very very frusrated, because the implicit weakness of this system is that
it creates a relative paucity of gumball machines.
I liken this to the
flying wing. Theoretically it is the
perfect aerofoil, much superior to any other form. However, the amount of work it takes to get it to actually
work is comparatively staggering, and the effort to keep it in level flight is
also comparatively high. Therefore it
is crash prone. In short less efficient forms, while inherently inferior,
actually yield much better results in practical terms, because they
operate well under imperfect, as well as perfect, conditions.
Never in LARP exchange a system that is imperfect
but hearty and resilient for one that is perfect, but labor intensive. You will always get burned.
The Other
Option - Market Flood - Coca-Cola's stated marketing strategy is
to have thier product "within reach of every consumer who is
thirsty." The market flood or
scattershot approach places a relatively large number of gumball machines into
the game, and assumes that many tokens will work in many machines. While this
promotes the perception of Fraud, it is in practice easier to ensure
that there is some scarcity of certain types of gumball machine than it
is to ensure that there is a perfect balance of gumball machines. But
this concept requires a certain amount of vagueness...a fair number of tokens
must work in several machines. Also
because of the large number of machines the GMs exert less control over their
placement.
Self-Gratification (ha
hah...yeah...) Going beyond our gumball machine analogy the Market Flood
approach with sufficiently vague tokens tends to allow those players who have a
strong need for gratification to self gratify.
That is to say they identify locations within the game where there ought
to be a challenge, self identify it, and then overcome it. This is very helpful in high demand players
who are not content unless they are constantly encountering
gratification.
It can create a
perception of inequality of course, leading to jealousy. If a power player is constantly identifying
situations in which they should be challenged and declaring that they have
overcome the challenge, other players can grow resentful. However for the most part that is a path to
ridicule, and it is an easier situation than most for GMs to identify and
marginalize.
The principle of Containment is not to attempt to impose Draconian rules and to end every abuse above. The idea is instead to see to it that any abuse is curbed back into a few categories of advantage which are "bearable" within the framework of the game, and which do not promote Frustration, or over-promote Jealousy (though in any given case, Jealousy is better than Frustration).
The idea is to contain
weaseling. Rather than trying to fix everything in
stone, set certain limits and thresholds which all GMs and AGMs know and some
of which are widely known in game. This
tends to immediately "red flag" truly bogus abilities, and give
guidelines to GMs on how to avoid introducing unworkable or bogus
abilities.
General
Protocols
Logically it is
easier to get eight GMs to think alike than to get 45 players to act
alike. GM discussion and agreement on
certain basic principles will tend to keep these problems from getting out of
hand.
In addition a
campaign may want to certify "combat aides" - those well meaning
experienced people who want to help at combat, and are not too abusive about
it. I think we need to keep this
process invitational however.
Combat
Advantage Protocols
All modifiers to
combat can be distilled to a few basic areas:
1) advantage to hit
2) advantage to
defend
3) advantage to damage
4) duration of
advantage
5) advantage to
movement
As long as the
GMs agree on numeric ceilings for those elements, it doesn't matter what things
are thrown into the game. If the player gives a good argument, the GM
makes a general broad determination from one of about four levels of advantage
ranging from minor to godlike, and gives that number value.
The Hotels
Analogy
All hotels will give
you a 10% discount on your room. They
usually advertise AAA, AARP, etc.
However if you stand and argue with anyone over the level of desk clerk
for a while, they will allow SOME rationale for giving you a 10% discount. I get it for "Government." The point is that 10% is what they can
afford to lose without hurting, and push come to shove it is no skin off their
nose whether you are holding a AAA card in your hand or not. Now they don't advertise
this, because a fair number of people won't ask, and if it were known to everyone
then the people who bought the AAA
card would feel invalidated.
But the fact is that
in practice it is easier to administer the system by having a threshold
that they can be pushed to than to have hard and fast rules.
So the point isn't
"never give in to wheedling."
The point is "have universal agreement on what wheedling gets
you."
These
characteristics describe a flexible system "snaps back" into place
when it is damaged, rather than a system that can't be bent.
Lollipops
I also think it's
important to add "lollipops" for not weaseling. Weaseling needs to be recorded and monitored
"you want that ability...okay...," and periodically comparison needs
to be made with "non weasels" who may tend to be given more things
freely.
Have High
Level Agreements
There is no point in
inventing a lot of mechanics to banish demons if you have in fact decided that
any reasonably resolute player who has bought a skill that seems vaguely
applicable can banish demons.
And many systems are
like that. Any token produces a
gumball. You don't need mechanics, you
merely need a high level agreement that the mechanics are having something that
seems vaguely applicable.
Obviously there are
things you do need mechanics for. And
those mechanics should be enforced as much as possible, and when players go
outside of them, they should be constrained by the "discount" - all
the weaseling in the world will get you no more than 10%.
GM Flexibility
In any case where
GMs play fast and loose they must CONSTANTLY be thinking of two things.
1) I may be called
upon to repudiate this ruling. I will
do it without hating my fellow GMs, and without losing my sense of dignity.
2) If this ruling
stands, what are the long term consequences, both of what I actually said and
how it is likely to be misinterpreted.
Trying to document
every aspect of a campaign is thankless, and unlikely to succeed. Instead you use the "discount"
principle. Decide the threshold of
abuse you are willing to allow. You may
have several fairly roughly defined types and echelons of "discounts" some allowing for
future character growth.
GMs can, if they
have good reason - and we are all people of at least decent judgment - allow
anything up to the standard "discount"
GMs agree not to
allow more than that without a high level consultation, and probably a
disclaimer in regards to future support.
Some Basic
Concepts
1) In general it is
the case that written documentation of abilities is better than not.
2) Undocumented
abilities should be avoided. However,
since they will creep in, the player needs to understand that the tradeoff for
an undocumented ability is that they are subject to GM whim. This is an expansion on the idea of the
"Exclusionary Clause." No
player can dictate that "my ability does this," unless it is written
down on paper. A character can say
"in the past I've been able to do this." It may or may not work the same way.
3) Combat abilities
should be written down, and conform to certain conceptual agreements about what
combat abilities can do i.e. we will not write an ability that gives
more than X advantage for X points cost.
4) When a player
attempts to do something in combat that is NOT documented...and this will
happen, and GMs WILL want to allow it on some occasions, there needs to be an
agreed upon table of paramaters for what can happen.
5) In general, non-combat
specific abilities shouldn't be usable as combat abilities unless they are
bought that way. If we make this a
basic precept early on, it eliminates a lot of the argument we get currently. i.e. "focus Evil energy" doesn't
amount to "attack people with Evil energy in combat." This also drastically increases the number
of choices for combat abilities, since if you want to use an ability in combat,
you have to buy it. However this does argue for keeping the number of XP
for character growth reasonably high, which argues for ceilings on combat
ability purchases, for which several reasonably good plans have been put forth.
6) Make people buy
reasonably legitimate characters from the start.
7) Relax. NO decision, ability, etc. for all that we
may joke about it "damages" the game, except to the degree to which
it makes another player not have fun.
In this regard we need to remember - positive reinforcement is more
important than negative.
8) All floor
GMs...not just those running combat...and any player aides who are going to be
allowed to assist in running combat...MUST attend some training sessions where
we establish agreement on certain basic system parameters
9) There must be a
list of things which cannot be allowed in the campaign. Certain problematic classes of abilities -
for example "Detect Lie," or "Teleport." These must be ruthlessly suppressed unless
the GMs decide at a specific point to introduce them.