Informal game contract?

[Leitz]

Wasn't sure how to title this thread but the conversation I had bothered me enough to post.

I talked to a local game store owner and he had gotten turned off Traveller years ago. A friend was playing and the group had worked up to getting a ship. The first adventure they played with the new ship, the DM destroyed the ship.

When joining a game I listen to the DM's vision of what sort of game they want to run and talk with them about what my character wants to do. I look at the other PCs and make sure there's no show-stopper issues with my concept.

If the DM had said "I don't want you guys to have a ship" then that's part of the informal game contract. If I say "I want to play a character that earns millions of credits and opens branch brokerages on several planets" I'm giving the DM lots of story material. If the best chance that comes my way is to buy and sell trinkets during the game, well, maybe I'm in the wrong game.

What do you think about pre-game discussions to ensure a shared vision of the game's direction? If so, what do you do when the shared vision diverges greatly from your level of enjoyment?

 

[RandyB]

Wasn't sure how to title this thread but the conversation I had bothered me enough to post.

I talked to a local game store owner and he had gotten turned off Traveller years ago. A friend was playing and the group had worked up to getting a ship. The first adventure they played with the new ship, the DM destroyed the ship.

When joining a game I listen to the DM's vision of what sort of game they want to run and talk with them about what my character wants to do. I look at the other PCs and make sure there's no show-stopper issues with my concept.

If the DM had said "I don't want you guys to have a ship" then that's part of the informal game contract. If I say "I want to play a character that earns millions of credits and opens branch brokerages on several planets" I'm giving the DM lots of story material. If the best chance that comes my way is to buy and sell trinkets during the game, well, maybe I'm in the wrong game.

What do you think about pre-game discussions to ensure a shared vision of the game's direction? If so, what do you do when the shared vision diverges greatly from your level of enjoyment?

IMO, such pre-game discussions are necessary. And if the shared vision (explicit or implicit) diverges, I leave the game. No gaming is better than bad gaming.

 

[atpollard]

I think that most games either

• start out with a general idea of what is expected,
• or start out with no specific planned adventure and quickly select a direction from the player's desires (the true 'sandbox' game).

I have actually been on the 'no fun' side of mismatched expectations myself, mostly my fault for misreading the tone of the game and coming prepared for gritty realism and finding grand political intrigue at the highest levels of society.

While a Ref does well to seek player input to the general kind of adventure the players want to have, I have observed that the Ref should also come prepared to suggest the general sort of adventure he had in mind.
The problem with throwing it open to fulfilling every player's whim is that it is very hard to combine 'build a trade empire', 'mercenary strike force' and 'high stakes political intrigue' into a single campaign.
I suspect that you will end up doing everything poorly.

So I think that the Ref needs to draw a rough outline with a big brush right up front ... and take ques from the players to fill in the details.

• The group will be a mercenary strike force going from one ticket to another.
• The group is operating a free trader struggling to make ends meet.
• The group is part of the entourage of the heir of a powerful noblemen attempting to protect and expand the family holdings through political and corporate intrigue.

Within that broad mission, what sort of adventure do you see your character doing?

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Wasn't sure how to title this thread but the conversation I had bothered me enough to post.

I talked to a local game store owner and he had gotten turned off Traveller years ago. A friend was playing and the group had worked up to getting a ship. The first adventure they played with the new ship, the DM destroyed the ship.

With what little information to go on there is, this sounds more like the DM was being a jerk and not a problem with Traveller.

When joining a game I listen to the DM's vision of what sort of game they want to run and talk with them about what my character wants to do. I look at the other PCs and make sure there's no show-stopper issues with my concept.

If the DM had said "I don't want you guys to have a ship" then that's part of the informal game contract. If I say "I want to play a character that earns millions of credits and opens branch brokerages on several planets" I'm giving the DM lots of story material. If the best chance that comes my way is to buy and sell trinkets during the game, well, maybe I'm in the wrong game.

What do you think about pre-game discussions to ensure a shared vision of the game's direction? If so, what do you do when the shared vision diverges greatly from your level of enjoyment?

That communication feedback needs to be going on at all times during the game, not just at the campaign start. I make it a point to ask the guys what works for them and what doesn't after each game session so that I can tailor the Traveller game I Referee to their tastes for the enjoyment of all.

 

[simonh]

I think this is a bigger problem for some games than others.

Some games have a pretty specific set of core assumptions about who the characters are and what sort of things they are doing. In D&D you loot dungeons and climb the levels ladder. In Call of Cthulhu you investigate things man was not meant to know, accumulate sanity-blasting lore and fight cultists. Traveller doesn't have as stable a set of campaign assumptions. You might be scouts exploring backwater planets, traders plying the spinward main, belters, mercenaries, etc.

In those other games, if you don't explicitly state what the game is about, there's a default mode everyone can assume. In Traveller there is no default mode, and so there's more of a need of an explicit statement of what the theme or scope of the game is going to be.

I run and play agmes at a local games club. For my games I always write up at least a few paragraphs describing what kind of characetrs the players are, and what sort of activities they're likely to be involved in. Hardly any of my fellow GMs do though. It's pretty normal for a description of a game to be "D&D 3e", or "Pathfinder", etc and that's it.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Blue Ghost]

Wasn't sure how to title this thread but the conversation I had bothered me enough to post.

I talked to a local game store owner and he had gotten turned off Traveller years ago. A friend was playing and the group had worked up to getting a ship. The first adventure they played with the new ship, the DM destroyed the ship.

When joining a game I listen to the DM's vision of what sort of game they want to run and talk with them about what my character wants to do. I look at the other PCs and make sure there's no show-stopper issues with my concept.

If the DM had said "I don't want you guys to have a ship" then that's part of the informal game contract. If I say "I want to play a character that earns millions of credits and opens branch brokerages on several planets" I'm giving the DM lots of story material. If the best chance that comes my way is to buy and sell trinkets during the game, well, maybe I'm in the wrong game.

What do you think about pre-game discussions to ensure a shared vision of the game's direction? If so, what do you do when the shared vision diverges greatly from your level of enjoyment?

Just leave. Express your dissatisfaction in a civil tone, and then head out. I've got numerous war / horror stories. Too many to share, but here's one or two;

New Years in the 1980s, I got together with some friends for our annual Car Wars Until Next Year autoduel session (it took place on New Years eve, we'd start at about 8-ish, and would go until 2AM). Lots of action, but one of our very church oriented gaming friends said he had to go spend New Years with his family. Fair enough. So he hands his car off to one of the spectators.

What he didn't tell anyone was that he had wiped clean all the damage.

Ergo, his car won.

For Role Playing, I was part of a group who had one bona-fides nut case who ran a Bab-5 RP session. Aside from the fact that I couldn't stand the guy running the show, and I disliked Bab-5 just as much (if not more), the creme-de-la-creme came when the GM stated that we'd each be getting something like Five Billion credits as a reward if we did the job.

Ooookay.

Another session, I had reworked the first Dragon Lance module by TSR for the HERO system. I had carefully went through the encounters, made notes, and even threw in some sci-fi elements, notably the charred remains of a fireteam of Star Fleet marines at the mouth of the dragon's lair, and some other odds and ends like that. The man hosting the session decided he wanted to run it, so I gave him my notes, and he completely (and in retrospect, intentionally) botched the affair. He did the same thing with a Traveller scenario I had carefully crafted, and in point in fact, had a treatment for a screenplay for the concept. Long story short; he got drunk, and just acted like a slob during a session where essentially I ran it for him and one other player.

I eventually left that group. But, for whatever reason, I could not hook up with OTHER players, serious gamers, who had normal lives (wives, girlfriends, kids), and got together with their friends on the weekends for a gaming session.

I should have left after the second gaming session with them way back in 2004, but was dumb enough to think that it would get better.

 

[Leitz]

Within that broad mission, what sort of adventure do you see your character doing?

Your game is an example of mad genius or wild luck. I'm happy either way.

Synchronicity. Marco is not the character I would have designed for the task he's taken on. However, he is emotionally driven to make things better and I am mentally enraptured by planning large tasks and trying to achieve them. Marco will probably not spend any time in book learning. Yet he's taking the best he has and applying it to the problem stat at hand. He may succeed. Great! He may die valiantly in the attempt to save a world. Great!

While I'm hoping for the "succeed" option there are times when the player and DM agree that the story asks the character to die. Those are few and far between but they do show up.

If we succeed the Jozu opens the door to his academy finding and recruiting talent on the planet. Marco may open the door for Prince Al's to get a long term training contract with a few small strike teams to root out the holdouts. We are not "scraping for credits" and I'm glad for that. Things could be better, but the story is pretty dynamic right now.

 

[CosmicGamer]

The first adventure they played with the new ship, the DM destroyed the ship.

With what little information to go on there is, this sounds more like the DM was being a jerk and not a problem with Traveller.

While I agree that the GM and players should discuss the general type of game before hand so they know what to expect and what direction to take things I think as you say, there is little information to go on.

Was the GMs goal to specifically take the ship away?

Perhaps the GM or the players were new and didn't understand the ship specs and combat implications.

Did players choose an option the GM was not expecting them to, like to fight or run from the officials in the ship with better weaponry and armor that are coming to do a customs inspection? Of course they didn't want to get caught smuggling, but maybe the GM figured they would perhaps bribe, bluff or otherwise get out of trouble? EDIT: Again, someone new, especially if coming from one of the many more combat oriented RPGs might always choose fighting as the first option.

Was it just bad dice rolls and poor luck?

Some people feel every encounter can be won and it's the GMs job to fudge the dice or otherwise protect them from bad things instead of making hard choices and deal with consequences.

"You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run"
- Kenny Rodgers

While they were taking damage did they try to run, negotiate or surrender? Or did they just stand and fight to the death?

For some, perhaps getting handouts and life being easy is what they prefer but for others, they like for there to be a challenge.

For those that like a challenge, and the possibility of being heroic because they are risking their ship or their life, the GM is not always perfect at determining the proper opponent and dice are random so sometimes the outcome is not what you would like.


Or the GM was just a dictator.

 

[Leitz]

Good point. My take from the tone of the conversation is that the DM was just being a jerk, but I could easily be wrong. Or the time between now and then could have altered the memory of the event.

It does give food for thought and reminds me to have those sorts of conversations.

 

[Timerover51]

One problem with Traveller that is not part of the Dungeons and Dragon, Middle-Earth Role Playing, or Rolemaster games that I have run is that you can have a wide range of effective skill levels in a Traveller group, along with a wide range of character types.

Fantasy role playing, the group pretty much starts out at the same level, and works its way up together. The starting adventure is typically checking out a local underground area for bad guys and loot, and as Game Master you go from there, having a feel for the group.

In Traveller, you may have a 5 Term Noble with a massive quantity of skills alongside of a 1 Term enlisted Marine, who has very limited skills. With no real system of improving skill levels, the 1 Term guy is essentially out of luck. He is trapped with what he has, with very little possibilities of improvement. Or you can have a 6 term Regimental Sergeant Major teamed up with a Merchant Group battling to cover expenses. Again, a major odd man out.

Basically, I would prefer to run a group that has somewhat similar aims and desires, and then simply say, every has 3 or 4 terms of skills to roll, and have them sort out what they are going to be. No 1 term characters and no Space Admirals either. If someone absolutely has to have a Space Admiral or he/she/it is going to pout the entire campaign, they are either killed off, summoned elsewhere (like the other side of the Imperium, assuming the campaign is in the Imperium, not a given), or told to leave. Once I know what I am dealing with, then I start designing the adventure or campaign, not before. I like having characters with ships, preferably a Free Trader or Far Trader with some room to work with, and some of my changes to the ship design as well. A Scout ship is too small for a moderate sized group, and I do like to run a couple of NPC with the group to feed them needed information or add a needed skill.

 

[Supplement Four]

@ the OP.

Was the ship destroyed by fiat by the Ref? Or, did the Ref put the PCs in a no-win situation?

Or, was it that the PC's actions led them to a space combat, and the bad guys got the better of the fight?

I can see the players being upset with the former. But, with the latter, they really shouldn't be upset if they just lost a space combat or the Ref got "lucky" on some damage rolls.

Plus, I've had players before who make unwise game decisions, damning the consequences, then cry when the consequences catch up with them in game.

 

[Supplement Four]

Oh...and as for the question in the OP....

What do you think about pre-game discussions to ensure a shared vision of the game's direction? If so, what do you do when the shared vision diverges greatly from your level of enjoyment?

No, I'm not much for pre-game discussions. Many times, I don't know where the game is going. I discover it along with my players. And, when I do know, I don't want to tip off the surprise of the moment. Exciting events will sound route.

I'm also a big believer, though, that Refs should always keep their thumb on the pulse of their game. This isn't always easy to do. Sometimes what the Ref will think is cool, the players will not.





MY THUMB and the PULSE of the GAME....

I'll give you an example of where my thumb fell off the game's pulse. I was running my first Conan RPG campaign a few years ago, and I had established this cute little 11 year old girl in the PC's village. The PCs in this game were all barbarians--Cimmerians, like Conan, but in a different village.

There was a blood feud among the PC's clan and another Cimmerian clan, and at one point, several of the non-warriors were killed. Slaughtered really. And, this little girl that I had roleplayed to a "T" so that she had found her way into the hearts of the players (who were all fathers in real life with daughters), was taken. I used to roleplay the little girl as one who idolized the warriors--the PCs. And, she wore an old, hammered, beaten and dented soup bowl on her head. It was her "helmet". At the sight of the abduction, they found her bowl and not her body, and they all knew she'd been taken by the other clan.

So, the girl became the "McGuffin", as Hitchcock used to say. The PC warriors banded together and went after the girl. They fought and stealthed their way into the enemy clan's territory and found a cave complex where the baddies had taken the girl.

Up to this point, I'm running a great game. The players are REALLY into it. They NEED to find the girl. Finding their way into the complex, and all the fights were damn fun. The PCs were pulling off the impossible by slipping in, not getting over-run, and finally finding the girl.

Well...

I thought it would be neat if the girl were damaged in some way. I didn't want the Hollywood outcome where she's rescued, having spent a couple of weeks with these baddies, and nothing happened to her. The enemy clan could care less about the child from a clan at which they were at Blood War.

The girl used to talk a lot. That was my roleplaying. I gave her a slight lisp. And, with that bowl on her head, she was cute as hell.

I didn't want to rape the poor kid. It didn't fit and seemed too "dark". Plus, the PC were worried that she might be enduring that, so I wanted to give them something that they didn't expect. So, the baddie clan didn't rape her, but I figured, after she found a little courage, that maybe she talked too much--that was her nature. That was how I had roleplayed her. So, I took that away from her.

When the PCs found the girl, she was dirty, in a cell, with a rag tied around her mouth, the lower half of her face all swollen. The bad clan had cut out her tongue.




Now...

In my mind, trying to be a good GM and run a gritty, gripping, adventure worthy of the mighty barbarian himself, I thought that this outcome would infuriate the PCs and cement their hatred for the enemy clan.

I thought I was bringing the reality of Blood Feud home to the players.



Where my thumb slipped off the pulse of the game was that, even though I knew the players were really, Really, REALLY into the story of saving the girl, I really, Really, REALLY just didn't know just how much they really, Really, REALLY were into it.

Looking back on it, I realized that buy cutting out the girl's tongue, I had robbed the PCs of their victory. They didn't save the girl. Not completely. So, the prize of rescue was tainted.

When they realized that she was hurt, with her tongue missing, one of the players actually called me a (not a nice word for the male organ). Quickly, the others shook their heads in agreement.

And, I realized that I should have just allowed the Hollywood ending.

My intentions were in the right place. I just mis-read the intensity of what I had created among the players.




So, my point is....maybe the Ref in your story in the OP also had good intentions but misread his players. Maybe the Ref thought, "This will be cool. The players have worked and sacrificed a long time to get this ship...only to have it destroyed!"

What the Ref thought would be a cool obstacle for the players to overcome (having to repair or get yet another ship) turned out to be a mood killer among the players.

Maybe his thumb slipped off the pulse of the game.

 

[salochin999]

I think this is a bigger problem for some games than others.

Some games have a pretty specific set of core assumptions about who the characters are and what sort of things they are doing. In D&D you loot dungeons and climb the levels ladder. In Call of Cthulhu you investigate things man was not meant to know, accumulate sanity-blasting lore and fight cultists. Traveller doesn't have as stable a set of campaign assumptions. You might be scouts exploring backwater planets, traders plying the spinward main, belters, mercenaries, etc.

In those other games, if you don't explicitly state what the game is about, there's a default mode everyone can assume. In Traveller there is no default mode, and so there's more of a need of an explicit statement of what the theme or scope of the game is going to be.

I run and play agmes at a local games club. For my games I always write up at least a few paragraphs describing what kind of characetrs the players are, and what sort of activities they're likely to be involved in. Hardly any of my fellow GMs do though. It's pretty normal for a description of a game to be "D&D 3e", or "Pathfinder", etc and that's it.

Simon Hibbs

There's a lot of truth in this. If you join a d&d game then you might *prefer* a different type of campaign but you know in advance what the default is likely to be so you can't complain if you get the default.

Traveller is like a d&d campaign would be if players got a flying carpet at 1st level i.e. a nightmare for the GM unless they were prepared for it from the beginning.

So I think a Traveller GM is probably wise to at least list the type(s) of game they're into running upfront (which could be a completly open sandbox if they're prepared for that in advance).

(Although from personal experience in this particular case I'd say it's also possible the GM set up an unbeatable naval patrol type encounter for the players to talk their way out of but because the players were new to ship combat they thought they could beat it and opened fire.)

#

The problem of the different personality types and eight different kinds of fun is a general problem

http://angrydm.com/2014/01/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/

but it's probably worse when a game doesn't have a commonly accepted default mode and so some kind of informal agreement beforehand might be more necessary.

 

[rnadams2]

As a referee, it's sometimes hard to give up your vision for the game's direction for that of the players. But I think it's absolutely necessary for the players and the ref to come to come sort of agreement as to what they want to get out of the game.

Often, as a player, I just want to play and be surprised by what the ref has in store, but even then I need something to work with; I'm gonna have a hard time if I generate a merchant character for a campaign centered on ground action and mercenary tickets.

In short, there ought to be some communication before the game gets underway. I've always felt that the player characters should be a strong driving force in a game's story, so as a referee I like to get their input and take it into account when creating the setting.That means maybe giving yourself up to a week to adjust your setting after gathering a group of players and seeing their characters.

You do want to surprise the players with your game, but you also need to make sure they're prepared to handle the surprises.

 

[Frankymole]

While a Ref does well to seek player input to the general kind of adventure the players want to have, I have observed that the Ref should also come prepared to suggest the general sort of adventure he had in mind.
The problem with throwing it open to fulfilling every player's whim is that it is very hard to combine 'build a trade empire', 'mercenary strike force' and 'high stakes political intrigue' into a single campaign.
I suspect that you will end up doing everything poorly.

There could be scope for a vote of sorts. List the possible "main thrust" campaign type (after all, there can be sidesteps into other types of adventure, as long as they don't make things go too far another way) - then get the players to each rank them in order of preference. A simple totting up (more points for the top choice, down to one point for the bottom choice) and the most popular wins - ref goes off and prepares . The players then know the kind of skills to shoot for (not ending up as per the merchant in a mercenary ticket game referred to above!).

That's why I don't enjoy refereeing as much as playing - too much having to please the players

The solo adventures I'm writing will have a blurb like a SF novel as forewarning. The first one is likely to be a crime story a la Slippery Jim di Griz.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Sorry about my previous post. I wound up going into another b__ching-session about a recent past group.

Early on "game type" was never really an issue. Previous groups I gamed with had a very improvise mindset. They worked with what they had. If the objective called to take out a Zho Z-80 grav tank, or several, and all they had to work with were body pistols, they'd find a way to cook up something; i.e. hack into the local Zhodani military network, create a diversion, smash and grab some TDX and lay traps / mines, that sort of thing.

When I ran sessions I occasionally got called on forgetting to give them some kind of advantage they had either negotiated with me or cooked up early on in advance, and things worked out.

There was never a "you said we could have this kind of ship if we did that" kind of thing going on, nor a "I thought this was an exploration mission" gripe. The adventure may have started out as a rescue op, or exploration of strange signals coming from some moon, or what have you, but there was never a "genre is fixed" understanding.

If you were exploring some ancient ruins, and you happen to stumble upon some advanced "magic tech" race that was in suspended animation, and you were dumb enough to go up to one of the stasis units and kick it, thereby activating a company of ultra-tech troopers, then that was your own fault. That sort of mishap didn't happen with any real degree of regularity, but our player groups understood that it was a possibility.

What started out as a James Bondish or Robin Hood like scenario, could easily transform into something else, but it was up to the players. If you were going to be "cute" and just do something random for laughs, well, then I might not let it go and ask you to roll dice. Unlike Straybow, I wasn't a hardass when I ran sessions, but it was all dependent upon context.

I hope that helps.

 

[Vargas]

My group has expressed the opinion that sci fi can be so broad that some specificity beforehand is needed.