Why the Long Face?

Gamesmasters love to throw their players the occasional curveball. By the same token, Gamesmasters hate receiving curveballs – of any description. Mark Newbold investigates the phenomenon known as the inwardly collapsing roleplay session…

Many will deny this has ever happened to them. Some will shrug it off casually, but no GM could ever hope to look you square in the eye and tell you that they’ve never had a game go tits up on them.

If they can then maybe they’re in the wrong profession. International spy, world-class poker player or high-ranking politician is more their thing.

The point is, by the sheer nature of the past time no game can ever go exactly the way a GM, gamer or casual observer wants it to go because there are far too many random elements manoeuvring the game. Dice rolls, rules interpretations, bad days at work, irritable bowel syndromes, take your pick. If anyone, let alone a GM, could accurately predict the outcome of an RPG session then fame as a clairvoyant awaits (someone out there knew I was going to say that…) Any game that is so perfect that a GM or player can honestly say “That went exactly as I hoped it would.” is either reading from a script or is a lousy player because the whole core of roleplaying is the unexpected occurring, be it on the decision of a GM or the random role of a dice surprising even a GM. And goodness knows I’ve seen some surprised GM’s.

Case in point: - A friend playing a character so despised by the GM and everyone else in the game that death became the only reasonable destiny for the character. So a briefcase full of detonite was swapped for the real case and left in said characters possession. And, by pure blind luck he got into a situation where he had the chance to roll to survive the blast. Needing 18 on three d sixes he rolled three sixes, with his plus two in dodge, making twenty. He survived with barely a scratch…

The GM was livid, the players amazed and the gamer in question was smug as a bug in a rug (yes, I said smug). It must be said that a few games later he found himself in such a difficult position that he decided to turn his blaster on himself and commit suicide, therefore snatching the GM’s chance of getting revenge on him through an NPC…and annoying the GM even more.

Now, I mention no names (although you all know who you are) but as a participant in this early 1990’s scenario I watched with amazement and pleasure. For a brief time it almost seemed as if the flow of the game had moved away from the control of the GM and into the purely random domain of the dice. Obviously the gamer had a large part to play, and surely anyone lucky enough to roll 20 with three dice deserves some credit. And this seemed to continue for a while – even down to his decision to top himself before he could be murdered. Good on him I say (although the GM still bristles at mention of this game). And that’s my point. The GM was trying to keep control of the game but through no fault of his own it slipped away from him. And this can happen for a number of reasons: -

1. Lady Luck is with the gamers. There’s nothing that anyone can do about this. Ask Lando Calrissian. If the dice want to roll for you then they will. If they want to land snake eyes every time then that’s their prerogative too. Let’s be honest – you have exactly the same chance of rolling six sixes every time you roll your 6d dodge as you do rolling six ones, or six twos, etc. If the dice want you to be lucky then that’s the way it’s going to be. The only way a GM can counteract this is to cheat and fudge dice rolls behind a stat sheet. But no GM would do that. It’s immoral…
2. The GM runs out of ideas and tries to wing it. This one can be disastrous if the GM is inexperienced at off-the-cuff gaming. Some can do it naturally (Jonathan Hicks is the best I know at this because his knowledge of the setting is so deep that he can take you anywhere you want to go and make it feel convincing) and some are not so adept. Some GM’s may have a plotline laid out to last for three hours and it might be over in twenty minutes. So what does he/she do? Well, apart from put the kettle on and waste time talking about the latest rise and fall in the stock market they have to wing it. To varying degrees of success.
3. The players aren’t really interested in the game and begin to mess about. The ultimate kick in the teeth for a GM – when the players are obviously not interested in the game and begin messing about. We had this occur a number of times. I admit I was the main culprit. I distinctly remember a run of about eight sessions on a Sunday night at Paul Squires house in Sutton Coldfield when we’d start gaming at eight at night and the first thing I’d do is crack up laughing for ten minutes. Naturally this wasn’t quite the mood the GM was hoping to establish and I remember a few games being aborted after half an hour because I’d ruined the mood and the game was going nowhere. Again, this was out of the hands of the GM. To be fair, some GM’s had such a style of delivery that they reduced the gamers to tears of laughter without much prompting (“Staaaaarrrr Wwarrrrssss!”) So keeping the gamers interested was important – but the GM had no chance if someone had surreptitiously released laughing gas into the atmosphere…
4. There’s a bad mood between the gamers. Human nature being what it is, and roleplaying being what it is there can sometimes be friction between the players. Whilst the best of buddies away from the table, some characters may not be bosom buddies in the Star Wars universe. And this can cause unrest during games. Some gamers expect you to help their characters even though there may not be a reason within the game to do so. So a power player needing assistance to do the next cool thing on his/her list may want the help of a character-driven gamer. And he/she may have no reason to help…apart from not wanting to annoy their friend opposite them. But what can a GM do about this? As popular 1970’s magician Paul Daniels used to say - “Not a lot.”
5. The GM inadvertently missing players during rounds. A major bugbear of gamers. Some gamers demand the GM’s attention more than others and so hog their time. Some gamers don’t mind in the least being excluded from any given round. But in some cases it can annoy the gamer – especially when certain other gamers get more than their fair share of attention. Sometimes a player can be left literally hanging in mid-air for many rounds, and I remember a game in the mid 1990’s when I was on the verge of getting up and leaving the table because I hadn’t made a single move for almost an hour (despite calling attention to the fact.) While nine out of ten times it’s something that the GM is aware of, small errors like this can pull a game away from a GM.

So as you can see, from this side of the table a GM has many pitfalls to avoid. But character/story/plot-based ones are problems he has to deal with himself, like the gamers. And dice rolls? Everyone has to deal with them, so why should a GM be any different?

So, why the long face indeed? We all have problems to deal with in a regular session, be it in or out of the game. GM’s have the annoying constant battle of pleasing gamers while PC’s have the problems of following the flow of the game and dealing with the rolls of the dice. So all this proves is one thing…

It’s best to stick with what you know and let everyone else’s problems remain everyone else’s problems.