Today, I went through and tallied up the responses. Granted, my procedure was about as scientific and rigorous as a newspaper horoscope, but I’ve got conclusions. A few surprises, too.
I broke everything into categories, and I’ll be the first to admit that some of these are far broader than others. But some trends can definitely be discerned among this murk of complaint and poor statistical procedure. So here goes.
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BAD GM COMPLAINTS
Disconnected PC Subplots: This was a limited and unique complaint, but it caught my attention because it was so specific and useful. The poster’s trouble-GM was making an effort to respond to character by building off backstory, but everything was so disconnected that players knew “If it’s a Trogdar story this week, I may have to wait three weeks before MY turn in the spotlight.” The obvious fix is, of course, to weave the backstories together. ONE VOTE
No Slack: I can see how it would be a pain for the GM to be hopelessly uptight about momentary bad decisions by players who are presumably less focused than the characters in life-or-death situations. But this didn’t get a lot of noise. Interesting. TWO VOTES
Don’t Have Fun: This was far less prevalent than people complaining that the GM wasn’t letting THEM have fun, which is perhaps understandable. Still, it makes a lot of sense to me that a GM who’s miserable is going to have trouble bringing joy to others. TWO VOTES
Making It Too Easy: Looking back over my own reams of GM advice, I find that I’ve spent roughly equal word count on the perils of making it too easy and making it too hard. But very few players seem to have issues with cakewalks. Maybe this is because players prefer them, or because from the player perspective (where you don’t know how close you came) it looks much less like a gimme. Or perhaps it’s because asking about ‘lousy GMs’ makes people think about games that made them actively unhappy, instead of ones that were just kind of boring or tediously easy. TWO VOTES
Setting Inconsistency: This is probably a more specific subset of “Insufficient Prep,” a loose category that swallowed up a lot of votes. This covers games where the setting or history changed from week to week. Presumably taking good notes, and then checking them between games, would alleviate this problem. It’s a clear solution, though one that requires some effort. It also included games that were two-fisted PI action one week and gritty survival horror the next – with singing, dancing cyborgs on the way, for all players could tell. I can see how this would happen, where a GM wants to have a wide-ranging game and employ a variety of tropes: After all, some episodes of ‘Twin Peaks’ or ‘The X-Files’ were grotty serious, while others were just laugh riots. But the issue of doing this in a game is that players need to have some foundation for deciding which courses of action are reasonable and wise, and which are going to hurt their characters. If charging boldly forth is going to result in a comic misunderstanding one week, brawny victory the next, and decapitation the week after that… well, variety cuts both ways. It’s not fair to expect players to just intuit from subtle clues that the assumptions have changed. FOUR VOTES
Tone Breaking: You’re going along tensely playing ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and, just as the Keeper describes the profane temple lit by the flames of flickering braziers, she herself cracks some silly pun about ‘flaming brassieres’ and then it’s ERA bra-burning jokes for five minutes. This seems to be a particular risk in horror games in which tone is so critical. If forced to guess, I’d mark this up to poor impulse control. The GM knows she ought to keep a straight face and build the tension to a fever pitch, but the instant gratification of a joke overwhelms her patience. FOUR VOTES
Yoinking Away Rewards: Again, this is a subset of a larger category. In this case, it’s the pinnacle of “Overpowered Obstacles and Excessive Antagonism,” but the transgression of allowing a PC to attain some powerful item or long-sought goal, only to snatch it away in a fit of GM’s remorse… that stands out as insult to injury, worse in a way than never allowing the success at all. Clearly, I’d say GMs might want to try erring on the side of generosity (since so few players complained about insufficient challenge) or, failing that, think REALLY HARD before placing that Staff of the Magi. When a GM has genuine regrets (and not just frustrated antagonism) it sounds like she’s obligated to negotiate with the player to find something mutually acceptable. FOUR VOTES
Favoritism: Often, but not always, cited as ‘favoring the GM’s significant other.’ This is a sticky wicket. You can’t exactly say, ‘no, you should NEVER PLAY with your really close friends!’ any more than you should say ‘you should ONLY run games for groups where you’re equally fond of all the players.’ Sadly, given how blind we’re likely to be to our own favoritism, the only advice I can give GMs is to periodically check yourself against your players’ perceptions. “Am I being unfairly nice to one of you?” If they all think you’re favoring someone different, you’re probably fair. If they all point to the same guy, something’s wrong. EIGHT VOTES
Too Much Detail: Some player felt bogged down and cluttered with obsessively-detailed cultural or house-rules minutia. But see the very next entry… TEN VOTES
Insufficient Detail or Preparation: Sometimes, this was a complaint about disorganized GMs who kept all their players waiting for fifteen minutes while they shuffled papers and reviewed their notes. Sometimes it meant vague settings in which every innkeeper behaved the same because every town was essentially a carbon copy. Clearly though, there’s a sweet zone between ‘too much detail’ and ‘too little’. My suspicion is that it’s a wandering zone that’s different for every group – some are going to be enthralled by detailed descriptions of this city’s vampire Elysium and its curious manners and customs, while others just want to backstab and suck blood already. The only cure that would work for all groups is (surprise!) seeking out and accepting player feedback on how much is too much or not enough. TWENTY-TWO VOTES
Railroading: We’re now getting into the heavyweight category of GM abuses, and railroading – that is, having a plot planned out from beginning to end, and punishing or restricting any character that deviates from its progression – ranks very high indeed. Why is railroading so tempting to GMs? My guess is, because it works sometimes. If your plot is obvious and exciting and compelling, players may follow it happily. Furthermore, even when a railroad plot does annoy the players, it’s a huge security blanket for the GM. After all, when he’s got the tracks laid down, he knows where the game is going to go! He can prepare! He feels ready for anything! Anything except the player who says, “Can’t someone else save the world? I’m just a second-level fighter pulling guard duty at the palace, I can’t walk away from that just because some weird-beard wizard says I’m ‘the Mighty One’! I’ve got responsibilities!” Is there a cure for railroading? If you have several different tracks, it feels much less like railroading while still allowing the GM some safe-zone of preparation. Many GMs just aren’t going to be happy showing up at a session and saying, “You guys do whatever you want an’ I’ll riff off it.” For that matter, many players want more guidance than that. Once again, the key seems to be recognizing what your group wants, more than identifying some Platonic ideal balance between prep and spontaneity. TWENTY-ONE VOTES
Overpowered Obstacles and Excessive Antagonism: Hoo boy. Here’s where the vitriol and bitterness really poured forth in a raging torrent. A recurring theme was not just killer monsters and inescapable traps – people actually didn’t cite that too much. More common and, seemingly more galling, was a lack of respect on the part of GMCs. It wasn’t even a question of bizarre assaults (“What the… the stableboy’s attacking me? What’d I do to him?”) as much as attitudes that didn’t make sense in the context of the game. To wit: Everyone treats the PCs like crap, even if it makes no sense. The stableboy in question sneers and insults the burly warrior dripping with gems? What’s his motivation? If he’s not reasonably worried about getting a gauntlet in the chops, you’d think he’d hope for a decent tip from the rich guy. The explanation, of course, is that the GM has gotten it into her head that her job is to provide resistance to the PCs, and she’s over-enthusiastic about it. She thinks she has to provide resistance to every action they take, no matter how illogical that resistance is in the game. I’d propose that GMs need to consider the success of the PCs as a success on their part, not a failure. The GM’s goal is to provide a good game, and if the characters are growing and succeeding, it means the game is moving. The goal is not to keep the PCs stagnant as dirt-poor nobodies for as long as possible. (Mea culpa – I may have been guilty of this one myself. At least I’ve been accused of it.) TWENTY-ONE VOTES
Ignoring Players/Selfishness: Here’s a category that’s as broad as a barn, but maybe that’s because it covers such a multitude of sins. It’s the GM who takes a group that built all barbarian tough guys and puts them in a scenario that can only be negotiated with guile and manners. It’s the GM who dictates exactly what your character is like. It’s the GM who expects everyone to sit through strange ventriloquist routines where two GMCs talk to one another and the characters have nothing to do but listen for clues (or just for background color). It is, in short, the GM who’s having his fun his way and who regards the players as a necessary inconvenience to his roleplaying experience. How to fix this? Um, well, it’s hard, but a selfish GM has to realize that gaming is social, that the way to get participation from others is to build a story that accepts and rewards them, and that people won’t put up with being your toys or, if they do, they shouldn’t. You want to be like those Shorinji Kempo guys with the “half for self, half for others” motto. TWENTY-SEVEN VOTES
Poor Leadership: I saved the Poor Leader for last (even though the Selfish GM beat him out by one vote) because I feel it’s the most difficult issue to explain. It’s not just passiveness with the plot. That’s probably a symptom, but really falls more under the category of insufficient prep. No, poor leadership means losing control of the game. I don’t mean that you have to GM with an iron fist and relentlessly crack down on all out-of-character speech. (Some groups work that way but, wow, I’d make it crystal clear to the players beforehand if I was going to try that.) I mean that if the GM doesn’t set a good example, there’s nothing for the players to model. If the GM shows up late or blows off a session, what does that tell the players? If the GM won’t tell the abusive loudmouth to take it down a notch, and then won’t boot him when he refuses, isn’t that an indication that players can do any crappy thing they want without consequences? The GM leads. That’s not the same as control. Control means making them do what you want. Leading means showing them the way things are and should be. It also means showing them that you take their input seriously and are on the lookout for ways to give them the game they want. TWENTY-SIX VOTES
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The thread on bad playing got fewer responses, but it’s still instructive. There are some big differences between the kind of person who plays badly and the kind who runs badly. But there are also some similarities that are, unfortunately, all too predictable.
Keep in mind: If you don’t know who the power gamer/apathetic slob/socially maladroit goof-ball is in your group… it just might be you. In that spirit, here is our pageant of player problems.
Cheating: The player who ignores the penalties of a spell, or whose poor memory about Essence costs for his werewolf always seem to work out in his favor? Surprisingly, it’s not much of a problem, at least not according to the respondents here. Is this because other players don’t care and the GM doesn’t notice? Or is it because most games are run with the unstated assumption that the PCs should overcome, and that assumption provides perfect protective coloration for minor cheating? Hm… ONE VOTE
Being a Poor Loser: Again, I’d have expected to see bright fires of internet loathing for someone who whines and snivels at the misfortunes of her character, if I’d put any thought into the matter beforehand. This, too, however, does not seem to be a very big issue. Once again, is it just that PC failure is a relative rarity, giving poor losers little opportunity to show their true colors? That would be my guess… who here has had a recent severe loss to characters in their game? ONE VOTE
Neophobia: In passing, gamers on RPG.NET seem to grumble about groups that only ever want to play D&D or Rifts or The Farm over and over amen. (Okay, no one seems to grumble about The Farm.) But being a gamer who’s stodgy and won’t try new games didn’t get too many beefs. Honestly, though I’d be driven insane by players who only wanted the same thing forever, I find it difficult to condemn people who know what they like and stick to it. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Then again, I’ve got a group that thinks like me and likes new stuff, so it’s easy for me to be tolerant of the grognards over there. TWO VOTES
Rules Law: Who’s more annoying than the guy who just breaks the rules? The guy who treats the rules as unbreakable, and then batters you over the head with them. The rules lawyer who holds up play to paw through the book and say, yep, that goblin shamans can’t learn to teleport is clearly sucking the fun out of everyone else’s game. It’s not just the out-of-character knowledge, I’d guess, but the inflexible insistence on What’s In Print. That, in turn, may really indicate that the rules lawyer trusts some stranger typing up game materials in his underpants more than he trusts the GM who’s right in front of him. That’s sad. When that lack of trust is due to a bad GM who’s arbitrarily antagonistic and who hacks off any PC success at the knees, it’s justified and doubly sad. FIVE VOTES
Deliberate Contrariness: The GM said this was going to be a seafaring adventure, so he built a desert nomad who’s terrified of the ocean. The other PCs are all suave diplomats and he’s the poster boy for Tourette’s Syndrome. Everyone else agrees that the party should just burn the Cthulhu Superfun Coloring Book, so his character reads it, out loud, from a balcony, after making sure the doors to the ballroom are locked so that the other characters can’t avoid hearing him. I’m inclined to ascribe this behavior to two factors. First, the player has a short attention span and poor abilities to defer gratification. Therefore, when the GM isn’t constantly entertaining him with new and different trouble, he feels a need to make trouble all on his own. The idea of a scene that sets mood or deepens character just bores him, even though he probably constantly invokes ‘character’ as the reason for all his troublemaking. (“Of course Vazlek tried to seduce your wife and then killed her when she said no. Hey, I’m just keeping in character! It says ‘lustful sociopath’ right there on the character sheet!”) Secondly, the player wants all the attention, all the time. Is there a fix for this? Well, telling the player to grow up and explaining the concept of “go along to get along” would probably do it, if it takes. If not, well, wear your booting shoes next session. NINE VOTES
Feedback Problems: In the GM section of this I fell back on ‘communication’ as my duct tape omni-fixer. How does a GM find out if she’s got proper levels of detail? Feedback from players. How does she learn if she’s unconsciously biased? Feedback from players. How does she find out she’s got spinach stuck between her teeth? Feedback from players. The flip side of this is that players have to provide useful feedback. Saying “the game’s okay” when you’re bored out of your skull is not useful. If you have a hard time articulating why you don’t like the game, you may have to think about it. You may have to pay attention. You may have to imagine a game you’d really like and then compare it with the one you actually have. No one can figure out your opinions for you. This category also includes useless feedback – the guy with a thousand notes and nags, none of which really help. This guy is at least trying. (Though, if the extent of his advice is, “Your game sucks. Fix it!” he’s not trying very hard.) Understand where the GM is coming from and what she’s trying to do with the game. Then you can either help her get there, or you can explain why you don’t like the destination and try to renegotiate. Either one’s better than brooding because you really wanted to play Star Wars instead of Firefly, but just carping about little stuff instead of stating that honestly. ELEVEN VOTES
Social Ineptness: This is the category for all your invocations of the dreaded cat piss man. When you would not invite someone to sit next to you at a movie, or go out on the lake in a paddle boat, or head out to the mall, because he is repulsive… well, the fact that he’s a gamer does not make him less repulsive. This is not the forum for basic hygiene, so I’ll move on to issues of just behaving well. Having a character relentlessly hit on everything female is not cute, it’s not funny, it’s boring. Having a character who only fights, even for no reason, doesn’t show that your character is tough, it shows that the player is creatively bankrupt. This is very similar to deliberate contrariness and, in my armchair Freud mode, I’ll guess it stems from similar causes. One particular subset of social ineptness was players whose characters always hate, abuse or compete with the other PCs. If they don’t know that they can murder the other PCs at the drop of a hat, they aren’t happy. I’m not even going to pretend to understand how that came about, but I’ll suggest that such players might be happier with games where the antagonism is open and a basic assumption of the game – let’s say Meatbot Massacre or something else with minis. In most RPGs, the assumption is that the players are going to work together, and that even if the characters compete, they do so within a larger framework of common interest. If you want a game where the PCs just go to town on one another 24/7, you’re going to have to seek out something specialized. (Does that game even exist? Probably.) TWELVE VOTES
Not Taking It Seriously: I’ve long been of the opinion that gaming is one of those things that provides more fun in exchange for greater effort. It’s not TV. It’s not passive. You have to get into it to get anything out of it. Therefore the people who don’t take the game seriously and whose first instinct is to mess with the people who are making an effort… yeah, I can see why they were a common complaint. The solution is either to give yourself permission to be a geek about it (by which I mean, ‘care and pay attention’) or to admit that gaming is too hard or you’re too cool to spend time with your friends. TWELVE VOTES
Apathy and Rules Laziness: This is closely related to the above, but the guy who doesn’t take it seriously is at least paying enough attention to be a jackass in a semi-relevant fashion. Some players don’t even care that much. Instead of running a character who just makes everything stupid, or one who actively conspires against the group, they put in a half-baked effort and can’t be bothered to understand what their character does or how she does it. The cure? Same as before: Invest yourself in what you’re doing. It’s okay. Really. You won’t get hurt by being interested. Alternately, some people have a sufficient interest in the setting, characters and plot, but can’t be bothered to learn the rules. In that case, they can either swallow the pill, do some homework and attain such minimal competence that they at least aren’t asking for an explanation every time they roll anything. Or they can try (probably with help) to design a character that’s as easy as possible to run, rules-wise. In D&D, for example, some feats require you to do math and can only be used when certain conditions are met. Others just give you a one-time, lump benefit. If you don’t like paying attention to the rules, pick door #2. FOURTEEN VOTES
Total Selfishness: The winner by a nose! Interestingly, this would seem to be the polar opposite of the runner up problem. The selfish player is interested in the game. He’s just not interested in other gamers. The solution, which is easy to state but maybe hard to put into practice, is an attitude adjustment. He needs to awaken to the fact that there is no game without the group (unless he’s going to one-on-one with the GM, but if he was doing that there’d be no issue) and that if he can broaden his interest to encompass the whole party instead of just his character – and thereby broaden his scope to include the other players, not just himself – he’s going to have a better game. It’s not a zero-sum thing where he must be losing out because someone else is in the spotlight. It’s one for all and all for one. Huzzah! FIFTEEN VOTES
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Ironically, I avoided reading those threads _completely_ because the titles had that "negative thread vibe," and I've learned (well, on some days I've learned) just to steer clear of negative-vibe threads lest I be tempted to do Bad Things. D'oh.
But heck, reading a thoughtful executive summary beats wading through a thread any old day. Thanks.
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Print away, with my blessing. I thought about trying for less negative titles but, in the end, went for clarity. Now that the mob has spoken, of course, you can enjoy my analysis of their statements, pre-digested. I've sailed the seas of acrimony so you don't have to. I'm a hero!
-G.
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Good stuff, thanks for a nice summation. This is going into the hands of the movers and shakers of the group I walked from last year. I don't think it'll do much good, but it might open an eye or two.
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