New GM Debriefing Session 2: Huh?

[flybane]

Hi,

I did another session with my 12 year old boy player,

(Session 1:) dwaitas.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=915


and this time I had a girl the same age temporarily with us, which made it a lot more fun. My girl player was wonderful at character creation, which made my life a lot easier. I also liked being able sit back while my players argued instead of having to get involved. I didn't get to try the music idea because we were actually traveling and at a friend's house. I've pretty much given up on cultivating the "mood" I would have gone for :-)

I'm confused about kids. They can be fascinating creatures as well as seemingly contradictory ones.

They both looked bored, stacked story points, drew doodles without looking up, slouched, made sullen faces, and even complained that it was all talking and no live action (you can if you want, I said) such that I was ready to consider myself a failure as a GM, but they also kept coming back for more and said they had fun. Is this normal? They also bickered a lot, which seemed disturbing to me as an adult but also seemed to be generally harmless in the end... just a bit tedious for me to sit through.

I ran with a "hook" the boy came up with last time and had the PCs, The Master(!) and a lost princess (!) run into a Silurian and end up having to help negotiate a treaty between American Silurians and the United States government while dealing with environmental degradation and issues about recycling. Next, I took one idea from each player: 1) Cybermen and 2) A person from the stars - and created a story from those pieces which we started today.

The funny thing is that my players can have a very strange (to me) sense of what is plausible and what is not. I say that an assassin tacks a note to the TARDIS door with a knife that says "HELP ME" and the kids will find it completely ridiculous. But then they'll suggest that they invent a machine that makes garbage *completely disappear* and look at me like I'm crazy if I say that that goes way too far past the laws of physics and the available quantity of story points, and would make all the other problem-solving pointless - and then rule that they can try with a decent chance of success for a machine that reduces the mass to 1/3. What do you do when your players try to take massive shortcuts that to a GM would significantly spoil the story? Sometimes it's like they don't understand my feeling that plot limits like "the TARDIS is broken" can give direction to a story. Or maybe it's not a story they want, but freeform exploration? (But then I try that and get complaints that nothing happens...) My players are not rules lawyers, but I feel like they can be "story lawyers." I kind of wish they would not pick every minor plot decision I make apart , even if the reasons are clever, and then be outrageous the next moment... I'm generally having fun and I can laugh at these things most of time and move on, but this aspect of it really throws me off. I really would prefer not to debate whether or not there can be two inhabited planets in the Crab Nebula area when it doesn't even matter where this planet is...

Another thing I'm having trouble with: I don't want to squash my players if they want to play very collaboratively, but it makes my job as GM kind of difficult if my players keep trying to tell me what information they receive or what happens next. I know there are games where that works, but this is one that I'd rather play with a clear GM/player distinction. I sort of wish I could set this up to play like Polaris; maybe the kids would like that better? (On the other hand, I described Polaris and got no interest whatsoever. ) Do I try to houserule this, or do I try to "teach" how to play the game effectively the way it's written?

Often I've gone to huge lengths to weave significant parts of their spontaneous suggestions into my plan or even offer to let a player GM a while with my help, but when faced with the actual responsibility of GMing, even if I help with the rules and math, they decide they'd rather be the players and have me set up the story. I'm getting some improvement in that I've increasingly gotten my players to discuss possibilities with each other rather than the GM, but I think they have a hard time describing what actions their characters take (examining a medallion visually) as opposed to the result (noticing that there are a few words inscribed on the back). I sort of have to gently prod - "So, do you want to take a closer look at this thing?" as well as retcon their statements in "Oh, um, OK, it's a locket that just looks like a medallion and the inscription is on the inside" - otherwise, it's like they don't know what to do with their characters.


Finally: They said they want more of what the girl calls "minigames" - like last time's "The Master tries to go fishing in Wisconsin and then tries to get a discount in a candy store" but start agitating for "more adventure" if I throw in a lost baby Silurian on the way home from a powow with the Silurian leaders. Huh? What is it that they want me to give them? I think that feeding the desire for more "minigames" will help my players "get into" their characters and be more comfortable describing actions for their characters to take. It's just that I don't get why some things work with these players and others don't.

[solas]

Okay, kids are well...kids. So their logic processes don't necessarily follow through to consequences as we do as adults. It's like saying 'isn't the blue sky nice today?' and the kid asks 'why?' Something that seems perfectly straightforward and logical to us isn't going to necessarily hold water with kids.

Of course they'll try and make a garbage-eating machine. I would as a kid! It's important to remember that they are kids and to write kids' stories, not adult ones. Granted, some kids are pretty mature, but that's all part of getting to know your audience. I used to run a mixed Star Wars game of adults and kids, and all the kids wanted to do was shoot stormtroopers and throw grenades. So I let them do that, but I also let them know the consequences of doing it too much, when lots more stormtroopers than they could shoot turned up.

Kids -are- kind of story lawyers, because most kids love playing imaginary games where there are no rules other than 'now THIS happens' and you're wondering where 'THIS' came from. Don't let them take shortcuts. A key GM rule is the illusion of free will. Let them do pretty much as they want, so long as it winds up telling the story you want to tell. They can argue all they want that there might be inhabited planets in the Crab Nebula. Let them use the TARDIS scanners to make sure (so you can say 'Are you -sure- there's two planets? Let's find out, but it'll be hard to do.) If they argue 'we can use Story Points to make a planet appear', you can tell them the rules of the game that say they can't. If they don't know their boundaries and how to work in them, they'll just assume anything is possible.

I'd be in favor of 'teaching' your players. A good GM will let a player ask -if- a thing is possible before deciding if it's not. If you just say 'nope, can't do it', then you destroy that illusion of free will. The clear barrier of story hits them in the face. Let them try, let them fail. But make it clear that it's like playing a videogame. You don't know what'll happen next, but you can try and do something and see what happens. The difference is that -you- are the videogame. That way it's give and take.

That last part about the minigame; you're spot on when you say some things work and some don't with players. It comes down to the players. Remember that section in the Game Master's book where it talks about the different kinds of players? That's what you have here. Part of this is thinking on your feet of course; what happens if the Master goes fishing? Nothing -ever- happens in the shows that's routine. Maybe the candy in the candy store is -alien- candy that tastes funny and makes you see everything in pink. There's adventure right there...you're in charge of the carrot on the stick and it's a matter of what kind of carrot gets them to nibble. If the baby Silurian doesn't work, have its mother turn up and collect it, but make the baby look pleadingly at them with big eyes and sniffling and NEEDING HELP...it's another carrot.

I hope these suggestions help!


S.

[Siskoid]

It may be a different way of approaching GMing, but it seems to me that preparation in such a case isn't called for as much as improvisation. Thankfully, that's something DWAITAS handles well. They create a garbage eating machine? Let it happen. You've now got to think on your feet and think up the next stage of the adventure (somebody dropped their wedding ring in the trash you just vaporized!!). Keeping it freeform, as Solas says, means you can integrate the players' varied and sometimes crazy ideas. It's not like the Doctor doesn't perform "magic" disguised as technobabble on a regular basis.

Improvisation is a completely different skill set from writing scenarios and interpreting rules, but I think it would help. A perfect kid-friendly RPG is Toon, and that's all about crazy improv. The notion translates to this situation.

As for prodding players to inspect things closely, I feel this is a somewhat Old School habit (back when GMs would not give you information unless you asked, so you walked into a room full of Orcs, but sheesh, you didn't ask if there was anyone there, so your character is a complete moron). What I usually do is have them roll Awareness as soon as they note the medallion (in your example). On a success, they'll see the inscription.

[ugavine]

The first thing I do when planning a game is to find out what the players want. e.g. there is no point playing as Torchwood if the players really want their own TARDIS crew. And this will go for kids and adults alike.

Then its down to planning adventures. You will NEVER forsee everything a player will do, especially young or new players. In fact if you predict just 10% of what players will do you're doing very well. I plan encounters. Minor encounters can usually be dropped in in any order, then there are the Plot Encounters that happen at certain points. It's my job as GM is improvise the story so that the players hit all my Plot Encounters - and even after 20 years of GMing it can still be very tough.

Players will forget to look at the most obvious clue. It's GM call if you give them the information. Make use of NPCs. If the PCs have missed clues despite heavy prodding then just have an NPC blurt it out.

Mini-games & side-plots, hey, they can be more entertaining that the adventure sometimes. I was only discussing with some friends the other night about a Babylon 5 game that didn't go that well. The best bit was players fighting amongst themselves over the controls of a starship in a totally needless scene that was just meant to be 'you fly to the planet.'

Seriously, it doesn't seem as if you are doing anything wrong, far from it. You're experiencing and learning the joy that is being the Gamesmaster.

[Siskoid]

One thing you can do with mini-games is make them important to the plot. It's how they resolve things. It'll seem less pointless to you that way, yet still appease their appetite for them.

I wrote a blog post about inserting other games into your RPG... let me dig it out here... ok yes, this is it:
siskoid.blogspot.com/2007/09/russian-dolls-games-in-other-games.html

[Craig Oxbrow]

It sounds like the mini-game asides they care about are the ones they introduce. You can bring up possibilities, but if they're not biting, they're not biting (to use a fishing analogy that seems appropriate since it started with the Master going fishing... which should probably lead to giant prehistoric megasharks trying to swallow his boat whole, since every time the Doctor tries to go on holiday he ends up having an adventure).

[flybane]

Thanks everyone for the excellent input! Sounds like good advice and I will certainly try it out next time.

I'm thinking that part of my problem has been that my player had wanted to eventually write up a story or make a video based on the game story, so I had been making an effort to make it a tightly-written, well-planned plot. If I asked him for input, he'd get shy about it and say it was my story.

But in practice, what seems to have happened is that my player doesn't actually play like someone who expects to cruise along the rails of the plot. Sounds like instead of throwing something at the player to see which of several "reasonable" options he takes, I might try seeing if I can take what the player throws at me and weave it into some semblance of a plot. I'm not going to get sophisticated drama out of my player, so next time I'll try to be more improvisatory and see if I can entertain us both while doing so.

I enjoyed all your examples of what could be done with "The Master Goes Fishing." And I looked up Toon - that does seem to give me a better understanding of what my player is finding so entertaining about what I might be tempted to consider lame. Next session, I'll try to shift my sense of tone more towards the charmingly cheesy (not always my favorite style, but even I've got to admit that Who is full of cheese!) If he wants to solve world hunger by reversing the polarity, I'll try not to freak out that my player has painted me into a corner :-)

[Siskoid]

"...and weave it into some semblance of a plot."

If it makes you feel any better, I think that's how quite a number of Who stories were written.