Would it help if you started a thread in GM Q&A and shared some specific complaints?

Are the tactical players complaining that the others aren’t pulling their weight? Or are they just frustrated that they can’t play the fighter because that simpler option has to be left for the non-tactical players?

I definitely have a non-tactical player in my group (the young wife). We do actually point out options for her, and try and narrow things down to 2 or maybe three choices. We will actually point out tricks to her occaisionally. It also helps that she enjoys playing a healer and is happy to sit in the background (but in AU and AE she also quite enjoyed tossing damage spells around). This seems to be functional in that I don’t see complaints from the players.

The fact that you have players complaining suggests there is a real problem. Be aware that the solution could be to split the group. It’s possible that you can continue to juggle between tactical and social play, and keep both groups satisfied, but this may be the thing to look at carefully.

Frank

About half the group are “mechanically challenged” as players. They simply do not grok mechanics, tactics, or strategy well. They are anti-powergamers by default, not choice. I cannot emphasize this enough. If we played competitive Toon for some reason, it would still be evident.

When we play a game where they play all the simple choices (e.g. D&D Fighter) and the other half of the group plays the complicated choices, it works great. Only problem is that the other half of the group get tired of that after awhile. We’ve all talked about this, and we all know it. I vet their characters *very* carefully. One player even turned the whole job over to me with just a rough background for what she wanted to play. I wrote a simple tactics guide for them. It doesn’t matter. When we get in a tactical or strategic situation, they are invariably overshadowed. I am simply *not* going to tell them what they can do every round.

Now, I don’t mind this necessarily. The same players are very good at other parts of the game. The one that bumps her character development to me gets into social scenes better than anyone in the group. I give them complicated options as far as hooks, mysteries, and the like. Some of these same guys tear through them. And no one wants to give up the varied, heroic nature of the game. So your character is substandard in combat because you don’t think to use trick #3. If two ot the tactically sound players come up with a trick and blast through a combat quickly, then “Hooray”, onto the next scene. It’s not the only focus of the game. So shine elsewhere.

No, it’s the misdirected complaints themselves that bug me. The situation they don’t like is a direct result of choices they’ve made, which we have clearly stated numerous times. They don’t disagree. So I guess maybe the social contract stuff is that there shouldn’t be so much complaining during play.

I don’t have enough details to be able to say anything definitive for your group.

It’s definitely not “I think it’s so, therefore it magically exists” sort of thing. But the fact that people in the group are complaining means as a group, you guys need to figure out what’s going on.

Is it a valid concern? Do the players know what their choices are? (“You mean, you can talk to Lizardmen? I didn’t know that!”) Are the choices reasonable? (“You went left. Oops, whole party is dead. Choose better next time. Suckers.”) Are the complaints only when things go wrong and then people want the rules to work different?

It’s also really important to pay attention to subtext. Or rather, how people are acting as opposed to the words coming out of their mouth. This is where you usually find out what’s really going on.

The way I see it, the current discontent is two fold:

1. Social Contract – people picking “fight” a bit too quick, forestalling other options. I’ll stress that this is very minor aspect.

2. Mechanics – failure to understand that the game involves choices, and you have to play to your character’s strengths. This is not a social contract problem, I think. However, some of the players do think it’s a social contract problem (a lot more of #1 than is actually the case).

So I guess is something a social contract problem just because someone thinks it is? Is perception reality here?

So yea, game play will be more enjoyable for all if these “how do we play” issues are actually discussed (even if in shortcut form: “we use the bidding conventions from XYZ”). The more purely social ones can usually be left implicit, though that can still cause problems (the chatty guy just doesn’t respond to the non-verbal communication to shut up in a bridge club that prefers to keep chit chat to between games, and eventually a big argument explodes – better to just state when introducing a new player: “we’re pretty serious about our bridge play and prefer to keep chit chat to between games” and so long as that’s reasonably honest (perhaps some chit chat does happen, but it’s easy to see the actual level by observation and comply), the group will be a lot more successfull).

Frank

I didn’t make a big deal out of it in the article, but that bit about “…and HOW do we play it?” is a big, big, big tripping point for a lot of groups.

I will usually state right up front where people ought to concentrate their effectiveness for a game. If the game is about combat, people should build characters around that, if the game is about courtly intrigue, characters should be built around that.

I’m also totally down to mentor or give advice to new players: “Hey, this choice isn’t as effective as it could be, maybe you could do this, or this, and then your guy gets this benefit…”

Again, this is perfect examples of why you can’t just assume folks will know what to do, make it clear, talk it out, and then there’s less problems in play.

In fact, I’d say almost everything that some might chalk up to social contract issues in our group boils down to at least partly game mechanics. The pure social contract stuff got ironed out ages ago. But a new system provides new opportunities for the mechanically-challenged players to develop interesting characters that can’t do squat, and then wonder why they are overshadowed. (I exaggerate somewhat for effect.)

The only social contract part is that instead of getting the issue out in the open, they look to me to fix it in game: “I don’t like the way the wizard guy and the tank guy kill everything so much more effectively, even though I built my character to do a bit of both, and still have some skills.” You could solve it with social contract, via: “No one plays wizard guy or tank guy,” but I don’t think the objecting players really want that.

Your comment sparked a thoght:

I guess one thing that’s unique to RPG play and social contracts is that the goal of “in character play” serves to further suppress a willingness to discuss things (I think there are other factors that hinder open communication that are common to RPGs and plenty of other social contract situations).

Frank

Yes, I’m completely for negotiating in mid-play if necessary. I think for some groups, OOC discussion is not used enough, and people endure a lot of problems instead of resolving them.

I don’t think this is a problem unique to RPG groups.

Frank

Making adjustments and additions midstream is just fine — no group will think of everything up front.

And you’re right: We’re in the middle of a discussion about investigative play at the moment.