Quote from: Panjumanju;809349You've been *incredibly sensitive* on this thread, as though you expect to get into a confrontation about this

Thanks. You're correct. Appreciate the support everyone!

Quote from: PencilBoy99;809342Yea. We always get down to me being a jerk. Thanks!

I want them to be terrifically awesome. However, I also need to say no when:
- they're doing something that would make them absurdly more powerful than everyone else;
- what they're doing puts me in a position where I can't figure out what to do next meaningfully or would make me unable to come up with future challenges

My goal is that they're awesome heroes by the end of the epsiode. Just because I need to occasionally say no doesn't mean that I'm trying to make them unimportant.

I don't think that you're a jerk. You absolutely do need to have your input, and thus say no some of the time. However, if as GM you're consistently having to argue to tone them down and not tone them up, then it sounds to me like there is a difference in expectations.

For your first issue - if something would make a PC more powerful, one option is to give other PCs benefits to bring them up to be comparable rather than denying it. You shouldn't necessarily do this - but it is workable.

For an existing campaign, it's really hard to change player's expectations for their characters - though it can also be difficult for a GM to change. If you want to adjust average expectations down, it's better to create new characters who are explicitly smaller fish in a smaller pond. You need to set your expectation that those smaller fish are quickly going to be bigger fish, and give them stuff to match that. If you really want them to be small fish, then set up for them to be tiny minnows in a puddle, and they'll be pleased to be small fish.

Can you give some concrete examples of what you tend to argue over?

Quote from: 3rik;809250If I have been informed correctly, in Dungeon [strike]Turd[/strike] World  the players can declare whatever action they want and it's the GM's task to "take it out of Teh Fiction" and cram it into one of the available Moves to see what they need to roll. So, the Moves aren't really limiting the players.

That's one way to look at it.

There is also the "Don't Be An Asshole" move, where the referee or another player says "Don't be an asshole" to somebody who tries to do something game-breaking.

I'm an old school D&Der and Dungeon World works just fine if you play with people who aren't utter douchenozzles.

Quote from: Will;809327Yeah, I think some people are missing the opportunity for this to be an inspiration, rather than players trying to get away with something.

The rules can't fix stupid, and the rules can't fix asshole.

The world would be a better place if more people realized this.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;809345How is saying no to a player's suggestion that they pull a flamethrower out of a trash can magically because of an ambiguously worded power any of those things?

The correct answer is "Sorry, you are not Bugs Bunny."

At some point you have to look at the player and say, "Seriously?"

Quote from: Ladybird;809347It's characters. You should be a fan of the characters... everybody should be a fan of all the characters in their game, really.

That doesn't mean they should get their own way every time (Because that would be boring), it doesn't even mean you need to like them, it means you should want to put them in situations and see what they do next.

Wrestling and soap operas have got it right. Some games just work better if thought of in that way.

Actually, I'm a fan of my players, not their characters.  I want my players to have fun.  If the characters die in the next game session because the wandering monster roll came up with eight manticores that got surprised, so be it.  If the players think it was a great fight and their characters died in a blaze of glory, it's all good.

"This is a story of a world.  There were people on it.  Some became great powerful adventurers, some died horribly in an unknown pit somewhere, and somebody got killed by a runaway manure cart at age 12."

Quote from: Old Geezer;809360Actually, I'm a fan of my players, not their characters.  I want my players to have fun.  If the characters die in the next game session because the wandering monster roll came up with eight manticores that got surprised, so be it.  If the players think it was a great fight and their characters died in a blaze of glory, it's all good.

Love that

Quote"This is a story of a world.  There were people on it.  Some became great powerful adventurers, some died horribly in an unknown pit somewhere, and somebody got killed by a runaway manure cart at age 12."

There's a story there.

Quote from: Old Geezer;809360I want my players to have fun.

Eh. I've always just assumed that's a given.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;809342Yea. We always get down to me being a jerk. Thanks!

I want them to be terrifically awesome. However, I also need to say no when:
- they're doing something that would make them absurdly more powerful than everyone else;
- what they're doing puts me in a position where I can't figure out what to do next meaningfully or would make me unable to come up with future challenges

My goal is that they're awesome heroes by the end of the epsiode. Just because I need to occasionally say no doesn't mean that I'm trying to make them unimportant.

Why is it that having to say no in the above cases makes me a horrible GM who is not meeting his player's needs.

They are awesome players by the end of my sessions where I can do the above. They totally can pull both pistols as they fall backwards out a window. They just cant suddenly get the ability to roll through all the challenges I can come up with, or suddenly get a power/control that is way more than everyone else. I can't always come up with an awesome way to handle anything they want to just make up in every instance. I shouldn't have to feel bad because I'm not perfect. However, it seems like the goal of everyone who is super into these games is to make people like me feel like crap.

I do not know piddly-poo about Fate, but it looks to me like you are trying too hard to bring the fun as GM.  It simply is not the GM's job to make the player's feel awesome, nor is it the GM's job to decide at what part of the night a player will be awesome.  That is entirely up to the player's decisions and luck with the dice.

The GM's job is to run a consistent milieu, drop story hooks for the players to latch upon, and pick up the pace when things start slowing down.  It is up to the players to choose how they want to attempt to have things play out.  The GM doesn't need to spend any effort worrying about whether it is an appropriate time for someone to be awesome, just let the dice fall as they may and spend efforts toward brainstorming the natural consequences.

Anecdotally, my experience is that players like it when they manage to obliterate their objective early in the night and leave me fumbling, "I have no idea where to go next with this guys, y'all fucked my plans, let's break for a few minutes while I figure out what would happen."

Quote from: Ladybird;809346That's not how I've read it. Key points like exploit your prep, make a move that follows, and moves snowball read like pretty clear assertions the game is studiously normal in it's design and structure. Nothing I read in the next made me even think "fail forward", just to make failure more interesting than "you sucked, what do you do".

What he seems to be trying to describe is the difference between conflict resolution and task resolution.

The classic example to distinguish between conflict resolution and task resolution is the PC attempting to find hidden documents in an office with a locked safe. With task resolution, the mechanics determine whether or not the PC can crack the safe. With conflict resolution, the mechanics determine whether or not the PC finds the documents.

mAcular Chaotic, however, is making a rather thorough muddle of it.

First, he's made the mistake of picking an example of conflict resolution that's actually indistinguishable from action resolution: The action is to sneak over and grab the keys; the conflict is to get the keys. This actually a remarkably common mistake when people are discussing task resolution and I think it's largely because the terminology is muddy. (I would argue that the distinction would be clearer if we referred to these as "narrative resolution" and "action resolution", but I digress.)

Second, he appears to be conflating conflict resolution vs. task resolution with the distinction between internal and external factors in a skill check. (The distinction here is between failing to crack the safe because you're simply not skilled enough and failing to crack the safe because your lockpick was defective and snapped off. A lot of GMs default exclusively to the former when it's arguably more effective to remember that the randomness of the dice roll models the entire situation, not just variance in the character's ability.)

Third, he's then followed up by misusing the term "fail forward" to describe the muddle he's created. This is particularly baffling because the term "fail forward" refers to a situation where a mechanical failure is described as being a success-with-complications in the game world. He is instead describing a situation which is just a complete failure: The barbarian was trying to get the key. The barbarian did not get the key. (Failing forward in this situation would be the barbarian grabbing the key while waking up the guard.)

Fourth, I haven't played Dungeon World, but I've read it and I've also played Apocalypse World. I'm pretty sure DW doesn't actually use conflict resolution. (It certainly doesn't in its core moves.) I also don't recall it discussing fail forward principles at any point. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the "success / partial success / failure" dynamic of its mechanics would actually discourage fail forward techniques (since most of those outcomes are already encoded into the "partial success" category).

(scratches his head)

Okay, I'm bucking the trend here, but it strikes me that if you have a rule system that allows a certain style of play, it can't be an enormous shock that it attracts players who favor that style of play.

No, "authoring" isn't the universal holy grail of all RPGs.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;809419What he seems to be trying to describe is the difference between conflict resolution and task resolution.

The classic example to distinguish between conflict resolution and task resolution is the PC attempting to find hidden documents in an office with a locked safe. With task resolution, the mechanics determine whether or not the PC can crack the safe. With conflict resolution, the mechanics determine whether or not the PC finds the documents.

mAcular Chaotic, however, is making a rather thorough muddle of it.

First, he's made the mistake of picking an example of conflict resolution that's actually indistinguishable from action resolution: The action is to sneak over and grab the keys; the conflict is to get the keys. This actually a remarkably common mistake when people are discussing task resolution and I think it's largely because the terminology is muddy. (I would argue that the distinction would be clearer if we referred to these as "narrative resolution" and "action resolution", but I digress.)

Second, he appears to be conflating conflict resolution vs. task resolution with the distinction between internal and external factors in a skill check. (The distinction here is between failing to crack the safe because you're simply not skilled enough and failing to crack the safe because your lockpick was defective and snapped off. A lot of GMs default exclusively to the former when it's arguably more effective to remember that the randomness of the dice roll models the entire situation, not just variance in the character's ability.)

Third, he's then followed up by misusing the term "fail forward" to describe the muddle he's created. This is particularly baffling because the term "fail forward" refers to a situation where a mechanical failure is described as being a success-with-complications in the game world. He is instead describing a situation which is just a complete failure: The barbarian was trying to get the key. The barbarian did not get the key. (Failing forward in this situation would be the barbarian grabbing the key while waking up the guard.)

Fourth, I haven't played Dungeon World, but I've read it and I've also played Apocalypse World. I'm pretty sure DW doesn't actually use conflict resolution. (It certainly doesn't in its core moves.) I also don't recall it discussing fail forward principles at any point. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the "success / partial success / failure" dynamic of its mechanics would actually discourage fail forward techniques (since most of those outcomes are already encoded into the "partial success" category).

Well, first of all, there's a lot of room for interpretation in Dungeon World's rules since they're deliberately vague and meant to be a launching point for the GM's own brand of it. Unlike a lot of games, Dungeon World has a big community around making sense of these rules, and even the creators participate in them regularly, so I'm able to chat with them and get an idea for what they were driving at.

The failure mechanic is NOT a simple task based resolution. Page 19 says "The results always fall into three basic categories. A total of 10 or higher (written 10+) is the best outcome. A total of 7–9 is still a success but it comes with compromises or cost. A 6 or lower is trouble, but you also get to mark XP." It says a 6- is trouble, not a straightforward failure. That means the GM can decide to introduce some new element or complicate the situation somehow in a way that isn't just failing that task.

You are getting confused because DW still makes you roll for those situations that are typically reserved for task resolution, like making an attack. It's just that the results of the rolls are still used for pushing the narrative in a certain direction.

In the case of "fail forward," since we can have "trouble" on a failure, that means that if there's nothing interesting going on by simply failing the task, I can just give them what they were going for and complicate the situation some other way.

However, I probably did misuse some terms, so I'll give you that. I just mean that you are allowed to tie in other events to make a failure more interesting than just, "What you tried didn't work; try again until it does."

Also notice that for the vast majority of Moves, there is no explicit result described on a 6-. For Hack and Slash, for instance, it could just have read, "You don't hit the guy but he hits you," but it leaves the door wide open for anything. Like the GM might describe that you kill the monster after all, but it means you didn't notice the giant spider pouncing on you from above.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;809345Whenever I bring up problems with Fate style games, the response seems to be that if I don't allow players to create whatever the feel like at any time or I say no, I'm on some kind of power trip, or I'm not a fan of the players, or I don't let them be awesome, or whatever.

Well, you are discussing the issues here and no one is suggesting that, so I think you can drop the pressumption that you are a Bad Person.

I think you are just experiencing some fairly common transition pain when moving to Fate, and your players are too.

I think that a problem has grown up in the last decade or so, growing from Chekhov's Gun and "level appropriate challenges". Too many of us have been trained that:

• If there is a door we must need to go through it, or the GM wouldn't have put it there, and
• If the door is locked we must be able to open it somehow, or the GM wouldn't have made it a "locked door."

Traditional sandbox players don't suffer this problem as it is anathema to the sandbox principle.

With games like DnD there is often (in my experience) an unconscious assumption that the party can overcome any challenge presented to them, and must overcome it for the adventure to continue. Failure is simply not an option. You get problems when this unspoken assumption bumps into Fates core assumptions, which are very different.

The guys who wrote Fate are on record that it was specifically created so they could, eventually, do The Dresden Files and the earlier Fate games they wrote were more about getting the system refined to the point where this was achievable. In The Dresden Files the main character spends the first half to two-thirds of the book getting his ass whupped until, eventually, he has a break through and manages to solve the mystery then kick it's ass.

This is a radically different expectation. Many DnD players presume that they should "win" every encounter, whilst fate presumes you will "lose" (or succeed at notable cost) the earlier parts of the adventure, building up a cache of Fate points so that you can overcome the final, climactic challenge. (I take it as read that some people will disagree with the premise, so no need to jump on it. )

Your players seem to be trying to win every encounter, where as you need them to "not win" some of the encounters for your adventure to progress. This is a fundamental mis-match of expectations, so just bringing the expectations into the foreground and discussing them between games may improve a lot of your table issues.

You also seem to be experiencing a competency mis-match where the players expect to be (in DnD parlance) 10th level characters but you still see them as 2nd level characters or some such. This is also a relatively common problem as the games bill PCs as powerful characters, but don't necessarily make it clear how challenging the world is. Even Batman doesn't usually jump straight to the supervillan's base after the first page of the comic! Again, talk these things through with your group outside of the game to better get on the same page of expectations.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;809350Thanks. You're correct. Appreciate the support everyone!

Again, you missed the point - why can't you just put your foot down and say: "No, that's unreasonable"?

//Panjumanju

We've all played and enjoyed Dresden Files because, IMHO, it has all of the parts we like about Fate but plays much like a traditional game. No group discussion/consensus is required constantly, powers are pretty clearly defined, declarations aren't assumed to be world breaking.

I was very disappointed when Fate Core came out because I had incorrectly assumed that it would be a generic Dresden Files. Instead, it took out the parts we liked from Dresden Files and heightened the parts that were problematic for us.

BTW, I don't mind players all starting out as effective. I just don't want one player being absurdly more powerful than everyone else. No, I don't mind them being 10th level characters. They can be whatever they want. I just don't (1) want them to have magic solutions that bypass everything I can think of (e.g., the Flamethrower was the targets specific bane so it would one-shot a big conflict we had built up to) and (2) don't want one character to be absurdly more powerful than other people.

I don't think that having clarified roles for how meta-game conflicts get resolved is a bad thing. If you don't like conflict (I don't) than knowing that you have a right to say "yay/nay" without hurt feelings makes for a smooth running game.

Also, for LOTS of people I'd guess, everyone constantly making *hit up feels very non immersive, and lots of people like immersion.