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Old 09-18-2009, 12:54 PM   #61
Crakkerjakk
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Default Re: Information in Prospectuses

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Now, inasmuch as you capitalize "Crakkerjakk," it's correct style to capitalize it. But that's true because it's your style, not because it's a mandatory rule for everyone.

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Old 09-18-2009, 06:26 PM   #62
Agemegos
 
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Originally Posted by trooper6 View Post
I didn't reference Sir-Puddings words because I wasn't talking to him, I was talking to you.

My conversation with you is a different conversation than I'm having with crakkerjakk.
That is my understanding, too. Whswhs seemed to be suggesting something different.

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My conversation with you is however different, and stems from your language calling players who don't do what you want them to do vandals and that ongoing player actions (the how) should be under your control as GM.
That is a bizarre interpretation of what I wrote. Check post #31.

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I have said before that I don't have a problem with GMs setting the stage of a campaign. And that includes things like, you will all be CIA agents, or create a character who is team player. I do it all the time.
And you would agree that if you intend to do some such thing in a particular game it is appropriate to give notice of it in the prospectus.

Now the question is why you think it is appropriate to require an agreement that the characters be team players, but not appropriate to require an agreement that they be honest.

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But I do have a problem with what I see as a GM micromanaging players after the game has started.
I find it hard to be polite about this reading of my statement. Requiring an agreement that PCs be "deputy Imperial marshals who protect the People and combat the corrupt authorities of a bizarre colonial society by diligently enforcing the Imperial Crimes Act (and, occasionally, shooting it out using ultra-tech sidearms)" is by no means micromanagement. I find it hard to believe that a person could sincerely read the statement that way.

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If I tell the players there will be many combat situations in this game, I'm telling them what I'll be doing as a GM.... If I tell players combat is unavoidable, I am telling them that no matter what their characters would do in any given situation, I'm going to force them to fight...
You just got done explaining that this discussion is a separate discussion from your discussion with Sir_pudding of the semantics of "unavoidable". Please don't muddy the waters with irrelevancies.

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In my world the GM makes a plan and negotiate themes and approve characters...but that is all setup. Once the game starts, once we are on the ground, the plan has to adjust to the world as it develops.
And the PCs have to be consistent to their natures as established in set-up.

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How can I as a GM say that I will not allow the PCs to avoid combat
We aren't discussing "unavoidable", remember?

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And that means that I can't decide as a GM before the dice have even been rolled the first time that the players are always going to fight (or not fight...or how they'll fight).
If you mean that you and the players are unable to agree in advance whether you are going to be running Midsomer Murders or The Shield, then I have to say that I prefer my way. Because it seems to me that your way you will get players in the same group who want to play different games. At least one group will be disappointed by being forced into a game about corrupt cops when they wanted to play, expected to play, and thought they had been invited to play honest cops and vice-versa. And most likely the game will not succeed on either terms and end acrimoniously in PvP conflict.

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If the campaign premise is PCs will be bank robbers in the Old West. I've told them the what and the where, but I haven't told them why or how.
But you have told them what they are going to be doing: rob banks.

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They come up with that...and that evolves over time. One may want to save up money for an operation for their ailing mother. Another may be greedy. Another an adrenaline junky.
But they all rob banks. And if they don't rob banks then you fail to deliver what you promised to the players who voted for the game in question on the promise that it would be a series of stories about bank-robbers.

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As for how...they may decide to get all griftery, or demolitiony, or shoot-out/like. Or they may look at each individual case and decide there what would be the best approach.
Certainly. Similarly, detectives who diligently uphold the law take different approaches to each case they investigate.

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maybe they decide to go legit.
I must say that if I wanted to play a game about bank robbers in the Wild West, I would not accept having players force on me a game about honest hog-ranchers. If I'm GMing a bank-robbers game and you want to play a bible-salesman game then you are out of luck. Find another GM and another game. Because I have absolutely no obligation to run a game that I don't want to play.

I state up front that a particular game is going to be about bank robbers in the Wild West. Anyone who doesn't want to play a bank-robber is free to vote for a different campaign, or even find another GM. Anyone who does accept an offer of a place in my bank-robbers game has made a contract that he will generate and play a character who will rob banks. A contract with me, also a contract with the other players.

Suppose that I offer two games about bank robbers: one in the spirit of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the other in the spirit of Reservoir Dogs. Then I expect players to declare their preferences, and I sort them into appropriate groups, they generate appropriate characters, play those characters as true to their appropriate motivation, then we get two games with different tones, but each is consistent, and everyone gets the game he bargained for. But if I take the line that it is wrong for the GM to negotiate campaign tone or character motivation or to mention them in the prospectus, then I will fail to collect the information I need to sort the players into two groups. Then I might end up with a "Western bank robbers game" and a "90s bank-robbers game", each containing two players who want Tarantino and two players who want Goldman. Lacking any hint that they are supposed to do otherwise, all eight players will generate characters with motivations appropriate to their expectations. And then instead of two good games in different styles I get two bad games neither with any style at all.

I don't have to micromanage character actions to find out what players want. I don't have to micromanage character actions to sort players into compatible groups. I don't have to micromanage character actions to let players know what sorts of characters would be appropriate for them to generate for a given campaign. But to do those things I do have to discuss the sorts of things that PCs are going to do in a given game.

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I'm not going to tell my players how their PCs are going to think, feel, and act for the rest of the game.
Neither am I. And if that wasn't clear from my first post, it was certainly clear before now.

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And If I had a prospective GM that would not allow me to react in character to the situation on the ground, I wouldn't play with them.
And therefore you would want them to make it clear in their prospectus that that was what they planned to do. So you would know about it and avoid the game, right?

So what you are doing here is not advising Sir_pudding about the subject of the thread ("Information in prospectuses"). You are berating him and me about the badwrongfun game styles that you suppose we play.

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And if I had players who react to the situation on the ground organically and the results in shifts in the campaign, I wouldn't call them vandals.
Nor would I. And I didn't. Check post #31.

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Calling players vandals like that sets up an attitude where the story is yours alone. The story is your property and they are messing it up. I think the story is ours.
So do I. And I think that we need to discuss the story together before generating characters to make sure that we are all start on the same page when telling that story. The prospectus is the first step in that, a collection of suggestions of possible story ideas.

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I don't see my job as a GM as being one where I get to have my players play through my story. I see it as we create the story together from a combination of the world I have created and altered in response to PC action and PCs the players have created and altered in response to world action.
I do the same. But I grease the wheels by getting the players to discuss elements of the story ahead of time, so that they do not start with discrepant ideas and get unpleasant surprises.

This subthread started when you berated me for suggesting this line in a prospectus: "The PCs will be deputy Imperial marshals who protect the People and combat the corrupt authorities of a bizarre colonial society by diligently enforcing the Imperial Crimes Act (and, occasionally, shooting it out using ultra-tech sidearms)." You objected that "I can't say or force the means on the players. They may diligently enforce the Imperial Crimes Act, or they go all Vic Mackey from The Shield and break the law in order to enforce it."

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"Combat is unavoidable or you are a vandal in my campaign" is antithetical to my gaming philosophy...and something I consider railroading.
It is also a straw man.

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I'm not telling you how to run your campaign, I'm telling how and why I run mine, what my philosophy is.
I'm trying to advise Sir_pudding on what information he ought to put in prospectuses.

Last edited by Agemegos; 09-19-2009 at 12:11 AM.
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Old 09-18-2009, 06:54 PM   #63
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Originally Posted by Brett View Post
If you mean that you and the players are unable to agree in advance whether you are going to be running Midsomer Murders or The Shield, then I have to say that I prefer my way. Because it seems to me that your way you will get players in the same group who want to play different games. At least one group will be disappointed by being forced into a game about corrupt cops when they wanted to play, expected to play, and thought they had been invited to play honest cops and vice-versa. And most likely the game will not succeed on either terms and end acrimoniously in PvP conflict.
In fact, a campaign I signed up for a few years ago was destroyed in exactly this way. The GM defined it as a campaign where we would all play people with superpowers gained through a scientific accident who had been recruited by an international spy agency. I said "cool!" and built a straight arrow female character with invisibility and photokinesis. I talked character concepts over with the two women players, and we all three ended up building characters who, however reluctant they might have been to be on the team, were on board with its mission and genuinely wanted to work together. And the three other guys each built a different sort of loner who had no desire to be on the team, at least two of whom were outright sociopaths of incompatible sorts. There was never any sense of being together as a group; I think even the GM was relived to have the campaign die.

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Old 09-20-2009, 10:20 PM   #64
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Information in Prospectuses

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Originally Posted by trooper6 View Post
Sure sometimes enemies initiate combat...but that doesn't mean the PCs have to continue it.
If the enemy initiates combat, it is still combat regardless of how the players react, isn't it? IMO, it's combat as soon as the sniper shoots, or the bomb goes off.
Quote:
And I often think it somewhat unrealistic for combat to start in melee range with no warning. Usually people have to close, or draw weapons, or there is some sorts of hostile intent shown. Not always, but usually. And PCs can run, or try to talk their way out of it. Or jump in and start to swinging if that's what they want.
What about snipers? Ambushes? Booby Traps? Land-mines? IEDs? Are these unrealistic?
Quote:
Originally Posted by trooper6
You don't have to please me, of course. But I'd probably feel more comfortable with "combat situations are frequent" rather than "combat is unavoidable." But that is just me.
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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I have to say that I tend to phrase this in terms of how frequently combat occurs. I tend to assume that if I say combat will be frequent, the players will take it that the PCs will meet people who want to fight with them.
It seems to me that it is possible to have a campaign with violent PCs who almost always are the aggressors.

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Originally Posted by Michael Cule View Post
A title.

A game system.

A paragraph (maybe three or four sentences) describing the proposed game.

That's all I have at the start of most campaigns so that's all the prospectus I feel like delivering.
I did the same, until this most recent prospectus. I'm reacting to players not understanding my campaigns very well based on that information. I suppose this could be (as Kyle Aaron would have it) because my potential players are not worth playing with. I'd like to think that my friendships are worthwhile (not to mention my marriage) and rather not get a divorce and emigrate to Australia. I think it's possible that I'm not as clear a writer as I could be (as trooper6's misunderstanding seems to support) and my prospectuses could benefit from greater detail.

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Originally Posted by Brett View Post
Someone (and I think he has already posted in this thread) once made the point that a game prospectus ought to systematically include a specification of
  • what happens
  • how it is done.
Another thing I supposed was implicit in my campaign descriptions, perhaps I should break this out explicitly as well.

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Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk View Post
He has some sort of mammal as an avatar.
That is a mongoose.
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Old 09-20-2009, 10:37 PM   #65
Agemegos
 
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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
That is a mongoose.
It is rather like a little cat in its fur and its tail, but quite like a weasel in its head and its habits.... It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because it is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.
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Old 09-23-2009, 02:31 AM   #66
Hans Rancke-Madsen
 
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It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because it is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.
That's very neatly put. One of you own, I take it?


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Old 09-23-2009, 03:36 AM   #67
Agemegos
 
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Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen View Post
That's very neatly put. One of you own, I take it?
I am flattered that you would think so! Those lines are from Rikki-Tikki Tavi, by Rudyard Kipling—a Nobel Prize winner for literature.
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Old 09-26-2009, 11:53 AM   #68
sir_pudding
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How's this for a revised format:

Title: (Campaign Title)
System: (Game system to be used)
Genre: (Best approximation of campaign genres or sub-genres)
Description: (Short paragraph describing the campaign; intended to be a interesting hook).
Setting: (Name of well known setting or brief description of original setting)
Fidelity: (Description of the relative realism of the campaign).
Characters: (Description of the expected types in the campaign including expected hooks and grommets, character goals, and attitude towards violence.)
Combat Deadliness: (Description of the expected deadliness of combat in the campaign)
Combat Frequency: (Description of the expected relative frequency of combat in the game)
Power Level: (Description of the relative power level of the game either in the terms of the character creation rules (e.g. point total) or abstract terms.)
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