User:Spazalicious Chaos/Options- What Weak GMs Eliminate First

Consider this my catch all response to the surge of Teleport "fixes" that have occured lately. I thought about posting my concerns on the individual talk pages, but really all have to say can be summed up in one statement- stop being such a chicken shit.

RPGs run off of options, players being able to do what they can imagine and GMs moderating the consequences. That is literally every RPG at its core. Anything else is a board game, like what 4e turned out to be. However, I have discovered a trend in some gaming communities to take options and label them "bad for the game" right before eliminating it with arbitrary and useless rules that exist purely as a straitjacket. This is my personal indicator that a GM is weak and not fit for the job, even worse than backtracking and a sub category of railroading.

In a game of options, the GM needs to take the core rule of improv games- say yes and run with it. Here are some examples of such-

A Completely Fair Request- How Would You Handle It?

The following is a thought experiment for a character for D&D/Pathfinder, and how would it work? How you answer will tell may more than might be comfortable with about how you GM.

Here is my idea for a character in this first level campaign- a fallen angel. I have looked over the various races and saw Aasimar as the best match race wise, but refitted to represent an angel stripped of its wings. But here is the thing- I want this guy to have been cast out for a reason. He tried to wage war against the gods and lost, and had his wings and memories torn away from him as he was cast down to earth. He is a paladin, but I want him to start the game as a fallen paladin, with some of his powers coming back briefly whenever he does something that would atone for his crimes. However, I also think he would lose control whenever confronted with a piece of his past, restoring his power as an angelic anti-paladin in a black-out session. He would be as powerful as he was then, but terrible and must be stopped and returned to his newer state so that he can continue to atone.

Now comes the question- how would you, as a GM, arrange this. By the way, a "you can't" response is an automatic failure as a GM. This is not some "why can't my fighter cast spells and start with lightning farts" min-maxing bullshit. This is a genuinely interesting character that practically writes adventures for you, but how would you set up the character mechanically? What compromises would have to be made? Would the player always have control over his character? These are questions that would literally define how good a GM you are.

Playing a Different Game

This is not "go out and buy a new game" marketing, but rather let go of assumptions about what the game is supposed to be. Take D&D for example. D&D is built assuming a situation that it can not sustain- mercenaries killing monsters and people in caves. But anyone who is even remotely familiar with gaming knows that need not be the case. I had a blast running a merchant campaign, where the players were traders exploring the world and profiting from it's wealth, as well as defending that profit. Completely turns the basis on D&D on its head (the group had a flying submarine by 8th level from their profits), broke all the assumptions, and was in the end balanced and fun. The same thing could happen with political, military, resistance, homesteaders, and thousands of other types of campaigns.

Be Evil With Monsters

The Teleport Ambush, where players scout a location and jump in to slaughter their foes, is a much complained about tactic, as is rocket tag and other mayhem creative players come up with. But GMs forget that the players are not the only ones with these capabilities. Nearly every high level outsider and dragon is more than capable of doing everything players can in one convenient package. The rich and/or powerful can take defensive measures against such threats. And every creature out there will only do what is most effective at the time. There is no good reason that a dragon, a spellcasting tank with ridiculous wealth, would not have a expansive array of defences and buffers as well as keeping well enough informed to teleport ambush plausible threats. Same go for demons and angels, powerful spell casters, nobility of any kind, etc. Chances are if a player can do it, so can a monster.

This section does bleed into the following section in one area — grudge monsters. If something exists in your world, it needs to either have always existed or have a damn good reason for just showing up. You are weak and a miserable GM if you just declare that the common soldiers can see invisibility. There needs to be a reason for it — military casters expecting similar casters, special forces prepared for invisible foes, or the commander has heard of the party and studied their tactics to come out prepared. If you just declare "oh, by the way, a dragon teleports into the inn and disintegrates you," there needs to be build-up and reason. If the party foolishly left the dragon alive after stealing its treasure, or if the party has an enemy that can command dragons, or if the dragon scrys the inn to see who is going to try to kill it this week, or any number of perfectly good reasons that a party could possibly perform and plan out themselves, then go ahead. Just don't make shit up afterward to cover your little hate feast.

Plan Ahead

If you are any kind of decent GM, you know what kind of world you are running, how far you plan to let the campaign advance, how powerful the players will be at the end, etc. If you plan this out and set things up ahead of time, it will save you much whining from players and instill you with confidence so you will not sound like a crying baby when the players gut your dragon. And every detail counts, from the detect magic spell they cast on the king's castle to the bartender being an elf. Every minute of set up you do will save two minutes of umms and five minutes of players being pissed at arbitrary bullshit.

There is a second part to planing ahead — how options are gained and used. An example provided was a first level spell that summons a god. Not stupid if the world was planned out for that possibility. If that were the case, everyone would have use magic device ranks and everyone who could not cast the spell themselves would have scrolls (or potions, since it is first level and therefore potions are an option, or wands if they got lots of money) to cast that spell since there is literally no reason not to. The resulting world can and would be balanced the way the Pokémon universe is — if the GM plans ahead. On the opposite end, let's assume that to learn a spell the player needs to pay 10,000 XP per spell level. Now we have a world where spellcasters are rare and secluded beings that for the most part hide from the world, since they are significantly weaker than most other characters. Magic is unheard of as a result, thus no one prepares for it, some may even refuse to believe it exists, and thus every spellcaster has a surprise factor. This world would be amazing and balanced, but only if the GM plans for it. If the GM's job is to moderate consequences, then the same goes for rule changes.

Side note — rule changes should apply to both monsters and players in all cases. Double standards, without major paradigm shifts to accommodate them (Like the Scion legend system or any of the world of darkness games) come across as arbitrary. For example, while players may enjoy minion rules at first, they will begin to stop using their pet spells and followers entirely if they are killed in one shot anyway.

Let the Players Win

While damn near every gamer pays lip service to this statement, rarely do I see a GM that believes in it. At the back of every GMs head is the thought that this is my world, my story, my monsters, and I'll be damned if I let these asshole win the game. Even if those assholes are your friends. And this is bad for a game. While I am a firm believe that stupid people should die and die more often, you should not kill a player for being smarter than you. Reward the player and get smarter yourself. Read a non-gaming book. Take some classes. Hang out with non-gamers. Then come back as devious and free of nerd rage as the player that bested you.

A part of this also involves the epic win factor, ie the player that is unbalancing the game somehow. This can be any number of things, from a player with the Ring of GM Command (not an item in the DMG or any book, high five to the smart people who get it) to the caster who wins the game by wishing everyone who isn't fanatically devoted to him dead. The answer is simple- let the group sort it out. If it IS cheating of some kind, and not just your GM whining, then the other players will sit up and take action once you give them the space to do so. At that point, do your real job- determine consequences and enforce them. A great example from my own table is Fat Ass Luck, our term for the player that really can roll all 18s for stats and gets a natural 20 for every other roll. We found that getting him to use another, unluckier players special cursed dice (the rolling average is four on the d20) his rolls got down to mathematical averages. Thus, the players all ruled that the Fat Ass had to use the cursed dice. Given the chance, players will solve their own problems.