GM–player detente
This week’s WISH is about (mis)communication between players and those running the game. Since I don’t run games, I only have the one perspective.
The reason my current gaming group works as well as it does has nothing to do with how well our gamemasters know the rules or how well they interpret them. Nor are we players necessarily rules experts ourselves. Last night’s Ars session was a lot of “okay, I rolled a 0; is this a simple or stress die?” and “run spontaneous casting by me again?”
The reason we work great (well, one major reason, anyway) is that when a disagreement comes up, whoever is running the game makes a decision and has it immediately accepted, without acrimony or even argument. On with the game!
That said, I can be considerably more obstreperous with my husband. (Why that man puts up with me, there are days I cannot fathom.) We got into trouble once over a trip into the desert. I had assumed that managing gear and supplies came under the heading of things to be elided, competency therein to be assumed of seasoned desert travelers (which all characters involved were at that point). After all, who wants to do the accounting? (“The ogre eats x times as much in a day as the elf, so you have to figure that into the purchasing…” who needs this?)
Then the party got caught in a sandstorm, and he refused to allow me to assume we had brought an appropriate tool to dig ourselves out. I shamefacedly admit that I threw a tantrum; I thought the whole thing was silly and boring (sandstorms are old hat at this point!), and wanted to get on with the purpose of the journey.
Eventually another trip came up, and I obediently drew up a list of gear and supplies that even he had to admit he couldn’t find any obvious holes in. Eagle-eyed hindsight suggests that a better way to handle the situation would have been to allow me the stupid shovel, but ask for a gear accounting next time. Even better would have been to ask for the accounting in the first place, rather than demanding it retroactively. I felt that the rules had been changed under my feet, which has sent better players than I am into fits.
As for me, there were plenty of ways out of the game situation, and I let my anger blind me to them, which was unacceptable (and, under the circumstances, no compliment to me as a player; some of the ways out were pretty bloody obvious).
I would like to offer a list of Rules for Avoiding Miscues at this point, but I don’t really have one. The best I can say is that when a miscue happens, as it inevitably will, do whatever it takes to keep the game going. Figure out a house rule if needed—but do it later.
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