As some might be aware, I've been running a D&D Next weekly Campaign for about 6 months now, using roll20 and only using the chat system, no voice whatsoever.
Last Saturday, by the time we were supposed to start, some kind of festival was getting really annoying due to tons of noise outside, then things finally started 20 minutes late because of some random delays, which annoyed me further. Not a good start and the "mood" was hard to get back into, especially since the screams and music were getting louder by the minute.
Anyway we started, epic stuff happening, life and death situation progressing. After another 30 minutes, and I couldn't shake that nagging feeling that everyone was either bored to tears, afk or asleep. Why? Because as a GM, I need feedback, near constant feedback, from the PCs.
10 minutes later, that feeling was not just nagging at me anymore, it was fully chewing down on my brain and finally, I popped and told everyone to "wake the fuck up for next week session", then closed the interface, leaving them there...
...for 10 seconds, as I scrambled to re-open the session and re-connect.
What followed, after my apologize of course, was a calm discussion I felt was needed and overall, I'm hoping we'll be better for it as we continue playing week after week.
So, what caused my outburst? Aside from the screams and loud music outside that is. Well, if you're interested, here are the three main points we discussed.
Feedback, feedback, feedback!
As a GM, I try to provide as much feedback as I can regarding the world around the PCs. NPCs constantly emote what they do and talk among themselves, even for mundane things. I describe the world, the wind, temperature and time passing even as PCs are discussing things. Not matter what, I try to keep the flow going, breathing life into it all as I go. It's all background stuff of course, like things you see in the background during movies, things the camera doesn't focus on, but are happening nonetheless on the edge of the actual focus, bringing life into the whole thing.
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| Express yourself! |
Where I get lots of my fun, as a GM, is getting that kind of feedback as well, but from the PCs. I need them to do shit all the damn time to get my kick, get involved, play their PCs to the hilt for just 3 hours. And it can be the most mundane stuff you can imagine, expressing their PCs current emotions or lack of, cleaning their weapons, shaving, whatever!
Having emotions and conflicted feelings or confusion for your PC is great, but only if it's expressed and shared with others. If you keep it to yourself, who the hell cares in an RPG...
Text you see doesn't prevent you from being your PC, ever, that's why I like it so much. Unlike voice, when if someone is doing something, you kinda stop being your PC until it's your turn to speak again, you can have dozens of things happening at the same exact time via text and I need players to use that, or I start going crazy.
It's silly of course, and as far as I can tell, players are far from bored and are loving the campaign, but since a good deal of my fun when GMing a session is that same feedback from them, it's harder for me when it's not happening, and a GM can have some fun too right?
Anyway, that happened, was discussed and overall was agreed upon to give it a go from now on. I'm still massively pissed at my knee-jerk reaction, but really glad that I immediately came back on and that we could discuss this calmly. I should probably have explained this clearly some time ago, but better now than later in any case.
Acknowledgment and action declaration
That point was raised and discussed on the side because of the issues explained above.
As a GM, I'm what I call a Total World Control GM. By that I mean that the ONLY thing I don't control are PCs intents. I try to NEVER describe PCs taking actions, unless the player declared his PCs intents to actually take such action, in which case I describe the outcome if needed. That's a rule for me, THE rule really.
It may seem very restrictive for the players but think about yourself and how much control you have on the world around you. Managing your own intents is a huge deal already, hardly limiting.
What that means however, in a roll20 chat based session, is that I do not make PCs do anything they didn't intend to and therefore, if a player wants his PC to do something, he need to express it clearly, otherwise the PC is just standing there, doing nothing whatsoever, like a puppet forgotten by it's controller.
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| Players are PCs puppeteers, keep moving them fingers! |
The most common thing is for example this:
The 4 PCs are outside a ruined temple. 2 declare (via emote for example), that they enter, but the other 2 don't declare anything specific. I will NEVER automatically consider that the 2 outside simply follow inside without some kind of acknowledgment from them.
Sounds silly right? I mean, of course they'll follow right? NO! Not to me as a GM. When you run a game where you as a GM control everything but the PCs intents, you gotta respect that boundary, or you might as well go play alone.
What that means is that there needs to be acknowledgment in some way, shape or form, for anything your PC intends to do. The issue is that sometimes, because player are not used to it, it doesn't come, or only comes after being asked directly. Hopefully that was made clear and we'll get more active intent declaration from now on.
Leadership
Another point raised, not by me but relevant.
Big stuff have been happening all around the PCs, and couple of their plans didn't work out so good. There is some confusion, lots of unknown and some conflicting PC personalities.
The issue is that this sometimes create some kind of paralysis or passivity, where things feel too complicated and PCs end up just following whatever seems to be the most obvious path.
Even after 23 sessions and pretty much the same PCs we started with, there is no clear (or somewhat accepted) leader in the party. While not a problem in itself, it does lead sometimes to this paralysis I mentioned above, where ideas get somewhat shut down because they appear (and sometimes actually are) risky or uncertain, or at least not clear cut and self evident.
After some discussion on this, it was agreed to try and give a go to a more pro-active decision making and to try and find compromises into doing something, even slightly risky, rather than not doing anything specific. We'll see how this goes and it's almost 100% in the players' hands, but it's good it was discussed.
Anyway, that happened and from a silly outburst came a good and interesting discussion.
The guys I'm playing with are very open to talking about this stuff, which is great, and I also tend to be open about this. Call it group therapy or something, I'm quite glad that after 6 months playing together, we all could talk calmly and wanted to try and keep going for more.
I'm sure other GMs (and players) had this kind of stuff happen to them before and will again at some point. And I'm also pretty sure it's because I'm a bit OCD on all this, but my feeling is that if I'm gonna spend 3-5 hours a week on something, especially with other people, I better care about it and give it proper respect and attention, otherwise I'd go and do something else :)
As a note, the pod-cast Fear the Boot have a couple interesting episodes related to the situations I described. I'm not gonna list them here but it's always interesting to hear other people experience and thoughts on something so if that interests you, I suggest checking it out.
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