The Paladin, Part Three: The GM Problem

"You were always smiling, real friendly like, but the way you smiled was so empty it hurt to watch you."

Here we are at the end of our Paladin Journey, the final step on our holy pilgrimage to the land of not-acting-like-assholes. While the first issue with Paladins is...more or less...shared between the player and the GM, this one lies squarely on the GM's shoulders. Today we discuss a subplot infamous all over the internet, one that's sparked more hatred, debate and nasty stories than any other aspect of the Paladin. I've even met people that feel this is a required part of paladin, something the GM must include in his game due to the Paladin's oath.

Very often in games, the GM will craft personal subplots. I don't think this is necessarily a required part of GMing, since it can get really tedious to do a personal plot for every person in a 6-man party, but they can add a lot of flavor to a game. Some systems like 5E even standardize coming up with a background so the GM has an easier time of it. However, often GMs will look at the Paladin and decide his personal plot should be a moral struggle. Yes, today we're talking about The Fall.

It starts innocent enough. The Paladin's class is all about morals and ethics, so making him question his through hard choices or grey areas sounds like a good fit. It might even sound fun to tempt him toward Evil. Basically, to a GM this could all sound really awesome and frequently they forget to consider the player.

First, let me say, it's pretty shitty to design a subplot where you threaten to take something mechanical away from the player. What're you gonna do next, you sick asshole, make the Fighter deal with Muscular Dystrophy? Is the rogue going to find out he has Parkinsons Disease? What's your next trick, is the Cleric gonna to find out his God is fucking dead? Pardon my fucking French but I can't believe this is 2016 and people still think that a Fall subplot is an acceptable thing to run. Even just based on this fact I can't recommend you ever run this shit.

Ahem. I feel better getting that out of my system. I feel I've properly expressed that negative reinforcement is a stupid thing to bring into a subplot, but there's more than one problem with this. Fallen paladins are a very compelling subject, but there are so many issues with getting there that this is best left to NPCs , Villains, and subplots requested by the player himself.

First, by its very nature, a Fall subplot requires hard moral choices and moral grey areas. These kinds of things work best in games as a 'spice'. Use them sparingly and they create good memories, but use them very often and it turns into a bad thing. People experience something I call Grey Fatigue with this kind of thing, where constantly being faced with hard choices slowly erodes a player's drive to think fairly about them. Some more than others(obviously) will start to hate that every decision is hard, feel that everything will come back and bite them on the ass later, and simply want to move on. They WILL start to pine for a situation where the decision is refreshingly obvious. They might even start to make the "tough" decisions randomly and without thought just to get them over with.

The next problem is related a little. Remember our pal Agency? The problem is that you, as the GM, can take it away at any moment. You absolutely can present him with a situation where every response is interpreted as the wrong one. This is as easy as giving the player a conundrum similar to The Trolley Problem. The Trolley Problem is a philosophical question with no intended "right" answer, it's meant to provoke discussion. However, the GM can easily turn a subjective discussion of morality into an objective scenario, and reason that every outcome leads to a violation of either the Paladin's Oath or Alignment. He is, of course, the final arbiter. Moral ambiguity can absolutely be thrown away at the last second to create an unwinnable situation.

This isn't even hard to do. It's loathsome and despicable, and even if you're an amazing GM who starkly refuses to do this, the Paladin's player will be thinking of it the entire time, I promise you. The moment he makes the 'wrong' decision, he'll be wondering if there even was a right answer at all. This can even lead to some pretty negative philosophical debate in real life as the Paladin(or others) defend what they felt really was the right decision. They'll have their own opinions on the moral grey area you created, and suddenly it's not good enough to simply declare one decision 'good' and one 'evil', if you did that at all. They might even find out you created an unwinnable state, a riddle with no answer, and get angry. I'm assuming philosophical debate is definitely not what most of the group showed up for.

And that's kind of the problem here, isn't it? The GM is metaphorically holding a gun to the Paladin's head, and at some point the Paladin's player will grow fatigued and say "Shoot me or don't, just get it over with." and "just get it over with" is definitely not a sentiment you EVER want someone thinking about your subplots.

This is all because the subplot began with negativity. It started with antagonism and the threat that a player's build can be changed or ruined unless they make the "right" choices, and a vague feeling that there aren't going to be any "right" choices. A lot of the time, a player chooses Paladin because they want something refreshing. Blunt. Obvious. He's a true champion of good, and an assault of grey areas and moral philosophy is very often the last thing he wants. He's a fighting class, and despite the fact that he has moral and ethical restrictions, a whole subplot dedicated to questioning them is about as welcome as offering the same to a Barbarian or Monk.

Sometimes, going for the obvious in a subplot is nice. That's not what makes something boring. Give the Paladin an evil demon to thwart and destroy, a sister to save, a cause to champion. Do something that makes him really feel like the Crusader he is, not something that tears down the very idea of one.

The Paladin, Part Two: The Player Problem

"Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God."

Last week I dumped a bunch of info on you regarding the Paladin and where he came from...starting with Dungeons and Dragons, of course, and not with stories of the Crusades. I hope you can already see the seeds of the problem. The Paladin player expects everyone else to play along with his restrictions to allow him to play this "badass" class that way better than anything else he could play. Hell, he even dumped a 17 into Charisma, which was almost universally worthless until two editions later. Yes, despite the fact that the class requires such a hefty stat, it doesn't actually DO anything with it. But I digress. Later editions would carry this feeling without justifying it, the Paladin in 3.X still having a hefty restriction but now being a middling class at best, easily beat out in terms of effectiveness by Wizards or the dreaded monsters Cleric and Druid.

We discussed the Paladin's oath, but it's worth it to say the class fluff information builds the player up further and gives him a strong sense that the Paladin is a crusader for justice and right. This is where the Paladin gets his reputation, and serves as another seed of the Paladin problem. What we have at the start of a game is a player who feels everyone else has an obligation to play within his character's rules along with someone who's been told his character is a proactive opponent of all evil. Yes, in fact, the idea that the paladin is proactive versus reactive is where some of the problem lies too. Let me explain.

I'm going to try and gloss over this a little bit since a whole post on Evil PCs is coming later, but in general, most PCs are reactive. The GM sets the scene, and the players react to it. Tone is set and the GM lays out an implied feeling or course of action, even if he doesn't realize it. While part of the fun of these games is seeing how players break expectations, doing so repeatedly can potentially have a negative impact. Don't believe me? Find someone with the Cleverness bug I discussed previously and watch him disrupt the game in an effort to subvert the expectations of every fucking scene he's in. The Paladin player is very proactive because he's been told he has a duty, and in some editions of the game, continuing to enjoy his class mechanically relies on it. Nobody wants to be told to switch out his build or class if it's not their idea(more on that next week) so the Paladin player has an additional Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.

So he ends up subverting expectations by acting when even a normal Good aligned character wouldn't. He may feel obligated to ping Detect Evil on every semi-important NPC he meets, and deliver punishments based solely on that information, up to and including death. He'll swing on a villain in the worst circumstances, throwing away his own life, or the lives of others. He'll deliberately ruin attempts of stealth or deception because he's been told he hates those. He'll incessantly lecture PC or NPC on their conduct because, depending on how harsh the GM is, he may feel it's part of his duty.

He's also been told that maintaining his alignment is important. Even in 3.X where alignment restrictions are proliferated, he's the only one who is restricted to a single alignment out of the nine alignments in the Alignment Axis system: Lawful Good. This is where the GM having a heavy hand can come into play a lot, but in general the Paladin can grow very worried that he may break his alignment. His restriction is tighter than Bard or Barbarian(who are restricted to six) or even monk which can choose from three. It also comes with the loss of his class abilities. So now he's got his oath AND his alignment to uphold, lest he lose his class. This often results in overthinking each part of the alignment and trying to take both Lawful and Good actions. Basically, it grows artificial.

In other words, the Paladin acts like an asshole because he's worried he'll be told he can't play his class anymore.

At least, that's true in many circumstances. In others, he's been given an incredibly strong idea on how he's 'supposed' to act and is just trying to be a good player. This is where the word of mouth reputation I mentioned last week comes in. He, more than any other class, has to look to the GM to give his actions the silent nod, and frequently defaults to things that are obvious like destroying everything that's evil without question. I don't think I have to tell you how disruptive killing so much crap can be.

So the solution should be obvious by now. As a GM, you may feel obligated to watch the Paladin like a hawk, because the Oath and his restricted alignment are an intended part of the class's balance. You may not even realize you're doing it. Step back, and analyze the letter of his oath. Cut him some slack, and treat his alignment like anyone else's. Cut back the pressure, and often the Paladin Problem goes away. Use in-character scenarios or NPCs to try and illustrate that he ISN'T under constant, crushing pressure to act a certain way. Cut him slack if he doesn't act against a player, because the rogue doesn't want someone breathing down his neck, and the neutrally aligned necromancer really doesn't want to argue every time he raises a few skeletons. Don't force the Paladin to be that guy.

Overall, don't blow his obligations up into more than what the book says they are. Don't watch his actions too closely and constantly judge him but refuse to do so to any other person. I can tell you that changing alignment happens very rarely in PNP games, and the paladin having a severe restriction doesn't mean it's more likely to happen. If anything, it's way less likely since his alignment is on his mind more than any other player. Watch him, obviously, for upholding his oath, but don't treat this like a game of GOTCHA! where you're trying to find a way to take his class away. Even the 1E oath is pretty easy to uphold and isn't as restrictive as people seem to think: it carries far more nostalgic and emotional weight than real restriction.

As a player, realize that there's a lot of ways to solve a problem. Nearly every version of Dungeons and Dragons would agree that redemption or mercy are better than violence and destruction. You absolutely can suffer Evil to live if it's someone or something that may one day do Good, or if people would suffer from your violent actions against him. You are a champion of Good, but that does not mean you are a psychopathic murderer for God. You are a Crusader, but that does not mean there is absolutely no grey area to morals. You must uphold your alignment, but seriously consider how often you've REALLY seen someone's alignment change in a game: chances are it's seldom. Uphold your Oath, but consider not ruining another player's fun unless it's a really obviously evil act. Consider the letter of your oath: BEING Evil and DOING Evil are two different things, and the oath often doesn't say the punishment must be murder.

So, I didn't mention the GM introducing deliberate moral quandary or constant grey areas. That's because next week, we discuss the other side of this coin: The Fall subplot problem.

Just to be clear, I am declaring it's a fucking problem.

The Paladin, Part One: History

"Remember, heroes, fear is your greatest enemy in these befouled halls. Steel your heart and your soul will shine brighter than a thousand suns. The enemy will falter at the sight of you. They will fall as the light of righteousness envelops them!"

This is a three-shot topic. I don't drink, but I really considered going upstairs and having a bit of that Whipped Cream Vodka stuffed in the fridge. I'll admit to writing down the word "Paladin" and just staring at it for a while. Every so often I'd say "Fuck" out loud. No other class, in any game, has such a weight to it. No other class carries so much reputation as baggage, and no other class has this many horror stories. Today, we talk about the Paladin.

For those of you who don't know what a paladin is, first of all I'd like to welcome you to Earth and I hope that your alien race is a benevolent one. I'm honored you would choose to read my blog. Anyway, to give a system-agnostic explanation, the paladin is a holy warrior. He is a crusader and a champion of truth, justice, and good. He is a warrior with the ability to call upon holy magic and smite the wicked. He also has a strict code of ethics he must adhere to, in addition to upholding a strict alignment of Lawful Good.

He also has a reputation. He's an arrogant one man police force. He destroys any hope of the party being varied or eclectic...or even just differing from his world view. His constant crusading and unwavering 'all evil must die' mentality serves as an ever-present game disruptor. He has a complete inability to compromise, and delivers morally justified murder every single time his evil radar pings. Worst of all, if he doesn't act like this, he has to worry about his "sworn code" being compromised and his class being taken away.

That's the reputation, anyway. You can find constant arguments on this on the Internet, probably more than all other classes combined. If it's not paladins heavily disrupting games with their actions, it's GMs who think that trying to force the paladin to "fall", to break his listed code, is something that he needs to include in the game. This conflict likely started back in first edition, so we're going to take a look at Paladin's history, starting with what the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons book says about Paladins.

First off, they're a subclass of fighter. They share many things with the parent class, but require higher attributes to play. Where Fighter only requires a Strength of 9 and a Constitution of 7, the Paladin requires a Strength of 12, an Intelligence of 9, a Wisdom of 13, a Constitution of 9, and a Charisma of a staggering 17. The most generous of the suggested rolling mechanics is to let the player roll 4D6 dice and drop the lowest. They'd do this six times, then arrange your scores the way you want. Even in this method, your chance of rolling a 17 or 18 on a single roll of 4D6, drop lowest is 5.78%(Thank you, Mike).  Now, you've got six of those chances, but it's not looking very likely. The harshest suggested rolling method is to simply roll 3D6 for each stat, no rearranging. Pen and Paper games were different back then, and this meant your chances of playing a paladin were less than two percent. 

So Paladin players would really feel like they won the lottery, here. It was reflected in the class's abilities too: In addition to the fighter's melee combat abilities, they got a short list of spells, and several special abilities like detecting evil, a free once-a-day heal, a warhorse Pokemon and Turn Undead like a cleric. In first edition, the subclasses(Paladin, Druid, Assassin, and Illusionist) were harder to get into, but they were better than their associated core class.

But there WAS a catch. They didn't get the fighter's men-at-arms, but they ALSO had several restrictions.

They needed to stay Lawful Good in alignment. In addition to that, if they ever performed a chaotic act, they needed to atone for it by finding a high(7+) level cleric and performing the penance they stated. If they ever willingly and knowingly performed an evil act? You're done, son. Do not pass Go, do not collect 100 dollars. You're a plain-ass fighter now.

They had restrictions on the magic items they could carry. They could only have one magic set of armor, one magic shield, four magic weapons, and four other magic items. Period. In a game where magic items were very important, this was pretty big.

You could never amass wealth. You could only keep enough treasure to live in a modest manner, pay your henchmen, and to construct or maintain a small castle. I have to admit, this one's not so bad considering the nature of first edition(You couldn't buy magic items) but...on the other hand, I'm not gonna cry for the guy who owns a castle.

Tithe. In addition to being unable to amass wealth, ten percent of everything you got had to go right to the church. So even after your party split loot, ten percent of it went away. And no, you couldn't give it to a cleric PC: The book even mentions this specifically.

All of your henchmen needed to be Lawful Good. In a game where henchmen were more important, this was a heavy restriction to the types of followers available. You were basically going to be rolling with a lot of expensive clerics unless you did a lot of footwork. In addition to that, you can't associate with evil people at all, and EVEN NEUTRAL PEOPLE had to be on a "single expedition" basis, and ONLY if it forwarded a Lawful Good cause. Not a GOOD cause, a LAWFUL GOOD cause.

So yeah. You're starting to see where the problem began, right? Nobody's ever said "You can't play a Paladin, my guy's a Necromancer". The paladin player feels like he won the lottery(see above) and doesn't want to let go of playing one. He asks(or forces, or begs) everyone to conform to his restrictions so he can play. This wasn't always a terrible thing because games were generally focused on heroics back then, but you still felt it. This meant no neutral characters, meaning no druids, no assassins, and probably no thieves, since they were "only rarely" neutral good in alignment.

But here's something interesting about AD&D. It had another class that was just as hard to get into and had just as many, if not more restrictions. The book claims Monk to be HARDER to attain due to requiring a Strength, Wisdom AND Dexterity of 15 in addition to a Constitution of 11. I'm going to spare my math friend the numbers on that and call it roughly as hard to get into. So why doesn't Monk have a legendary amount of baggage to it?

Well, for one, Paladin is present in every core edition of Dungeons and Dragons, where Monk was left out of the PHB in 2E and 4E. Both 2E and 4E added the Monk later in supplementary materials. In fact, in 4E, the Monk is a twist on the original idea and psychic in nature. In addition to that, Monk's immense amount of restrictions had nothing to do with his conduct or friends beyond requiring a Lawful alignment. The monk doesn't care who he adventures with, where the Paladin class requires the player to act like a police force. Overall, this paints a picture of an easygoing but personally restricted person, one unconcerned with group composition or actions.

Second edition Dungeons and Dragons actually tries to lift the problem oath restriction from the paladin, saying that he understands not everyone can maintain his high standards, and that he will tolerate people of any alignment so long as they are not committing evil or unrighteous acts. However, it also adds that thieves are tolerated if they are "sincerely trying to reform" and that stealth in the name of good is acceptable, but "only as a last resort".

And thus, "Paladins Hate Thieves" is born. God bless them they tried to lift the heaviest(and most unfair) restriction of the Paladin, but it's too little, too late. Most 2E players were 1E players, and even if they weren't, every group probably had one or two. Often we have an idea in our head of how something is 'supposed' to go, how a class is 'meant' to be played or how a passage is meant to be interpreted, and everyone who played 1E is bringing that emotional baggage along with them.

You'll see in coming posts how that baggage is the Paladin's biggest problem.

Third Edition shook up how Dungeons and Dragons was fundamentally played. Previous editions were far from fair or just. Balance was all over the place because it was MEANT to be. The fighter was powerful early and weak later because he was powerful exactly when the Wizard needed him to be: their roles switch with time. There were official modules designed solely to viciously kill the whole party. Most of that is gone. Now the classes were easy to attain and meant to be fairly balanced. You could decide what you wanted to be BEFORE you rolled stats. EVERYONE had special abilities, and classes like 1E's Monk, Druid or Paladin or 2E's Bard were no longer a special lottery win. There were more classes with alignment restrictions, but breaking them wasn't the ridiculous loss it was before: in most situations, you just can't level or use class abilities until you atone, which was a Cleric spell.  You could be a paladin, and all you needed was a half-decent Wisdom for spells and Charisma for your special class abilities.

Everything's equal, so there's a heavy argument for the code of honor being superfluous as a balancing factor now. It's still included, but in a somewhat more subdued manner. In 3.X the code is simply to never commit an evil act, respect legitimate authority, act with honor, help those in need, and punish those who threaten innocents. Yet...he still can't exist alongside an evil player character, or even someone who "consistently offends his moral code". The restriction on henchmen, followers and cohorts remains.

"Trimming down" the code of honor sets the theme for future game editions. Pathfinder adds a clause that a paladin may associate with an evil person if he feels it's for the greater good. 4th edition paladins are champions of a particular god, and don't even need to be good! They simply have to follow the tenets set by their deity. Hell, the only reason they can't be evil is that none of the PCs in 4E can be evil. Fifth edition allows paladins to choose from between three oaths in the core book, which also further customize your character with special abilities. More are sure to come with supplements, widening the definition of a Paladin even further.

Well, what am I getting at? We're going to discuss why the paladin has such baggage behind him, and why he can bring so, so many disruptive things with him. To do that, you needed to know where they began, and where they are now. Paladin began as a very specific thing that...incidentally caused a very specific problem. Further editions slowly tried to fix the issue(as you saw), and coming up I'm going to discuss where they went right, and what was too little, too late.

Dumb and Wrong: Shadowrun, I

"Voodoo? You mean to tell me all this happened because you were messing with the Shadow Man?"

WELCOME TO DUMB AND WRONG! First off, yes there will be as many named segments as I want. You can't stop me, I'm the one chained to the writing desk, not you. This one I'm going to reserve for pointing out things about games I thought were really stupid, bad, or plain wrong. This kind of thing comes up a lot, even though I always advocate following what the books say. I do that because it eliminates arguing, streamlines the game, and sets an amount of inarguable fairness. A good game is one that has a level playing field. Other times something works the way it does for a reason that sets tone, and tone inherent to a system is something people often seem to overlook.

However, there's always going to be really dumb shit. Sometimes a game is victim of Ivory Tower Design philosophies where things suck on purpose. Other times designers just don't do their research or don't care about the implications of their design. I want to discuss these, but I very often don't have enough to say about something to fill an entire post. So this segment is going to be reserved for me getting 2 to 5 or so concepts off my chest. Most of these are things that always bugged me. So without further adieu, our first official segment of Dumb and Wrong.

Shadowrun's White Noise Generator (and Gadget Sizes). 

So this is something that's in pretty much every edition of Shadowrun. At some point I understand completely that this was a depiction of a Cyberpunk future and thus had a pretty strange retro-future feel. As our own world progresses rapidly through technology it gets a little hard for us to "forget" and dive into what Shadowrun expects of us, since the Cyberpunk genre is steeped in heavy cables, bulky terminals and thick, blocky technology. Because of that, Shadowrun 4th edition and beyond start to feel much less like Johnny Mnemonic and much more like Ghost in the Shell. That was PROBABLY a good move on their part.

But I draw the line with some of this dumb shit. When something is larger and bulkier than it is in real life, at the time the book was published, I'd hope that someone somewhere did a little bit of thinking and adjusted that. But no, I'd be wrong.

My prime example is the White Noise Generator. In SR Second Edition, the device is listed as being the size of a briefcase and several kg in weight. It's a device intended to defeat surveillance microphones or even eavesdroppers by creating a continuous "white" noise. Only, here's the problem.

The modern idea of a non-digital white noise generator is a small turbine housed in plastic. Without an on-board battery it's about the size of a baseball. I should know, I use one to help me sleep. The Marpac company first made one of these in 1962 by nailing a dog dish to a piece of wood.

No, really. 

Their design has only iterated four times since then, so we essentially own white noise generators more compact than the one that Shadowrun 2E has. And the thing is, you can't even say that this is a case of the Shadowrun version being bulky by necessity because it's got to be better than the super awesome Shadowrun microphones because technology marches on. That can't possibly be true. A White Noise Generator simply has to generate a certain amount of sound at a certain frequency to mask sounds around it. That's just how sound works. The White Noise Generator can't actually do anything better than it does right now.  The idea of device rating vs. device rating is even just an attempt to streamline device interaction. I guess that's fine.

That's all just assuming we're using a non-digital white noise generator like mine. If the one in Shadowrun is digital in nature, the size is COMPLETELY unacceptable! A digital white noise generator is only as big as a radio is, and Shadowrun has those fuckers extremely miniaturized. Oh, but it wouldn't be a very good white noise generator, you say. Again, that's literally impossible. All a white noise generator does is generate noise of a specific frequency and volume. It can't be better or worse unless you're talking about volume, which the game book clearly isn't. At least 3rd edition did away with most of this and simply gives weights. 1kg sounds about right for a non-digital white noise generator.

Voodoo


Ohh, boy. I hope you're sitting down. I'm guessing someone at TSR thought that since Voodoo is clearly a stupid fakey religion, they could do whatever they wanted with it. Their version of Voodoo hits all the major beats of pop culture but mostly fits to Haitian Vodou. I'll go from littlest problems to biggest problems, because it'll be funnier that way.

First off I'm gonna be real forgiving here. While I know that everyone would probably be pissed off if more popular religious details were wrong in this book, I get that this is a game and not everything has to be historically accurate. The loa hit their major beats, and honestly Papa Ghede probably wouldn't suffer you to remember all the details anyway. He'd mostly suffer you to get drunk on bourbon. It does rub me the wrong way that the selection of "Loa" are from several different religions. There are one or two(like Shango) who don't feature into Haitian Vodou at all and are only a part of the Yoruba religion. The two share many other details, though, so I guess it could be worse.

No, I don't know why I put off the main event at all. Basically, in Shadowrun, being an evil, corrupt mage gives you something called Potency, which is free dice to roll on all of your magical tests. Thus, most styles of mage have some kind of evil NPC-Only style of corrupted mage. Shamans have Insect Shamans, who trade loyalty to dark, alien spirits. There is also the Twisted Way, who feed of terrible actions and negative emotions. There's also the ecoterrorist Toxic Shamans, or mages who make a spirit pact with free spirits.

So Voodoo had to have one of these. Let's put aside that we totally don't discuss Christian Mages getting an evil "Satanic Rites" at all. In fact modern Satanism is primarily about your own personal freedoms and not infringing upon the personal freedoms of others, so you know what? Maybe I should be glad they didn't fuck that up too. No, the book dedicates a few scant paragraphs to Petro Loa, who, and I quote, "Feed on the hatred and revenge sparked by Voodoo's legacy, born from slavery and oppression.". So what's wrong with that? Well, it's kind of true. In a way. Wanna know what Petro means?

There are many "Nations" of Loa in the Voodoo sects that believe in them. "New Orleans" Voodoo doesn't seem to, by the way. The Rada are generally older, their origin in Africa. They are 'cool' as in patient and non-aggressive. Damballah, Legba, Agwe and Loco are all part of this nation and feature in Shadowrun. The Ghede Loa are spirits of the dead, like, you guessed it, Baron Samedi himself who features in Shadowrun, and his wife Maman Brigitte who doesn't. Kongo Loa are from, say it with me now, the Congo.

Are you seeing a theme here? Petro Loa are aggressive and possessing of fiery tempers because they're associated with the "new world" of America.

That's. It. That's all Petro means.

There ARE Petro aspects for some Loa, such as Erzulie's Petro aspect being a fierce protector of women and children and often associated with lesbians. Fucking. Whoops. Other Petro Loa such as Ezili Dantor, the Black Madonna and Loa of Motherhood or Marinette, one who frees from bondage, are suspiciously not fucking mentioned.

I get it. The Petro Loa's rites include whip-cracking and gunpowder. Pretty much everything in Vodou is soaked in alcohol and sacrifice. The Petro Loa are even referred to as "demon" Loa. But how god damn stupid do you have to be to look at Petro, see "Demon Loa" and not bother to look past that? They're angry because they understand the harsh reality of slavery. They're bad-tempered and aggressive because they saw their people in chains. But no, the Petro rites are EEEEEEEVIIIIILLLL. The fucking wikipedia page(which I am fully aware the writers did not have access to) even mentions that this is a common mistake people make. Rada Loa can absolutely be used for malevolent purposes, and the Petro can, one hundred percent, be used to help. Basically, Damballah doesn't care about you any more than Marinette does. Maybe even less.

If you don't see why I'm irritated, imagine a world where Christianity got a similar treatment. Imagine the book insists that all Christians believe in the Catholic Saints and the "Patron Saints" players choose from are a random collection of the(admittedly long list) of popular Saints. One or two of them are just Jewish people. Like, Moses is on the list. Saint Moses. Later in the book it declares Saint Peter as being wholly evil for denying Christ three times and claims he's the Saint of Denial. I mean, not only is that pretty insulting, it's not even the whole story. It would be as if the writer saw a single thing in his research and latched onto it instead of reading further.

So I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. There will be another Dumb and Wrong coming up, on story, logistics, or even mechanics some time soon. Soon as I get pissed off enough to write it.

TPK: Problem Players

Welcome back, my friends, to TPK. When I started this blog, I really didn't think I'd have to write too many of these. The biggest two things I've seen destroy games are disinterest and scheduling conflicts, and...there's not a whole lot I can say about those. Scheduling a game can be a lot like ordering a pizza for five or six people: It sounds super easy, but it never actually is. No, instead, we have a concept today inspired by last week's post on Cleverness. Unchecked, a single player with a bad habit can easily wreck a game: negative feelings build up until nobody wants to play anymore...and worse, they don't want to start a new game either, since they're expecting more of the same. We're talking about disruptive players and how to deal with them.

Just as a warning, this one's going to have some story time. The names won't be changed, because these people weren't innocent. If, for whatever reason, you find yourself reading about a situation you were a part of, don't take it the wrong way. I'm trying to teach, not shame.

So we discussed a lot of bad habits in the blog, but so far only cautions and tips on how to avoid them. The problem is that the social aspect of tabletop gaming is always going to be an X-factor. There are a ton of  ways someone can be disruptive, including ones that really have nothing to do with gaming. People who smoke, dip chewing tobacco or constantly drink too much at game might be obvious, but even someone who insists on snacks being offered, can't go five minutes without quoting Star Wars, or constantly show up in tiny shorts where you can kind of see their balls can be equally as bad as someone with a traditional vice. Internet based games also bring a more common problem of people who are doing something else while playing and thus aren't paying attention at all.

First, you have to analyze whether a character-focused problem is disruption, or character conflict. This can be really hard, but often this is as simple as watching and seeing if the 'problem player' is engaging those around him when challenged. There is a big difference between people who have a quirk or habit to their character because it will spark interaction and people who develop something ridiculous into their character because it's funny and they don't care what others think. You'll know which is which if the character seems to ignore or blow off others who confront or challenge them. The character who is open to IC interaction is not a problem player, and we will not be discussing them. We are splitting a fine hair here, but basically...you just have to get good at figuring out which is which. Don't jump to assuming an in character situation is an out of character problem, but don't think you can solve everything in character either. More on that later.

In my experience, simply letting people continue performing a disruptive or bad habit is a bad idea. Negative feelings will pile up until the game breaks, or worse, the group itself. People will start to resent game day and slowly stop showing up. Lord knows I've been there. Trying to squash confrontation to "keep the group together" will absolutely have the opposite effect. In fact, if you're trying to 'shut someone up'...all you're doing is becoming one more problem for them. It's not as if saying "It's fine" or "I don't have a problem" ever changed anyone's mind. There's only one healthy way to solve a problem player, and I want everyone to read what I'm about to say carefully.

Directly confronting the player in an out-of-character situation and diplomatically discussing the issue is the only thing that's going to work. 

Roll that around in your head until you're tired of thinking about it. Please. Talking to people is the only way you're ever going to fix your problems with people. Trying first to sanction them by penalizing their character will only breed resentment for being passive aggressive. Thinking you can "teach someone a lesson" by using in-character situations is arrogant, and not even very likely to work. They'll either blithely assume there's no problem since people naturally expect others to communicate with them, or they'll 'get it' and think you're being a passive-aggressive dickhead. That's because you ARE a passive aggressive dickhead if you think this is a good first attempt at solving a problem, but I digress.

This is a sidenote, but most people reading this are probably going to remember Blackjack's iron cow method. If you don't, this is a similar suggestion to mine, where Blackjack suggests penalizing them in a way that can't possibly be interpreted as being truly in-character: killing their character by dropping a cast-iron cow on them from the heavens. I appreciate the sentiment of making sure the problem player understands that your reaction was a purely out of character one, but overall I don't agree with the method, despite how popular it is. I find that, very often, people have no idea there was a problem right up until the first mention of one...and if your first mention of a problem is to severely penalize them, all you're going to do is make them mad. Remember, I keep saying that you're not as much an authority as you might feel. You're not their boss, you're their friend.

Nearly nobody likes confrontation. Out of the thirty or more people I can call a friend, I can think of three who enjoy confrontation.  Two have admitted to the behavior, and one just seems to. The rest of us? We'll DO it, but we don't like it. I've even met a lot of people who avoid confrontation as much as possible.

You can't avoid it. You just can't.

Thinking you can by using other methods has strong potential to make everything worse. I don't think I've ever seen it go well at all. In fact, I can trace the beginning of the end of a friendship to something just like this. Someone I knew by the name of John had come to us with a new idea for a Shadowrun game where we all have to "play against type" by taking on severe character restrictions. I had to make someone who looked normal. Dino had to play someone who didn't. Dale had to play an unoptimized character(because John is Dale's brother, and thus uncommonly mean to him). I was behind this idea until he told us that he already came up with all of the restrictions himself, and his wife already had her character finished. I don't remember being told what her restriction was, either. I started to grow uncomfortable when the only plot of the game beyond basic Shadowrunning was my character being mistaken for a child molester with a very high price on his head. Then, my good friend Jason caught him gloating about how he was going to graphically kill my character to prove I take gaming too seriously.

This line break is here so you have time to think about how fucking stupid his plan was.

Once Jason warned me, I started to realize this game only existed so he could do this to me. I was angry, and I won't lie, I was very close to violently angry. It felt like a violation of trust. Probably because it was. I confronted him directly, and he had no reasonable answer for me. It was obvious that John didn't want to actually discuss the problem with me, for whatever reason, and cooked this up so he either didn't have to or held a position of power in the following discussion, assuming one followed at all. We never played that game again.

After that, Jason, Dino and I discussed the problem that John set out to "fix". The core of the problem was that I was constantly leaving another game angry due to Dino's(The GM) love of picking on my character. I was playing a hateful little Jawa technician and I guess it was irresistible. He even cooked up a scenario once where everyone got a nice vacation except for my character, who was stuck dealing with PIT droids and mercenaries, for no reason. After months of being completely unsatisfied with my character, I asked if I could make a new one, and the answer was 'no'. So obviously, this led to anger and dissatisfaction. We talked it out, and I promised to try and step back more often. I don't think we even played many more sessions of that game after that, but Dino did back off too. He later apologized.

So! Colloquial evidence is fun, right? Which method worked, and which ended in a broken friendship? I really can point at that situation as the beginning of the loss of my friendship with John, though. Every time you're passive aggressive or 'sneaky' with your methods of solving problems, you flirt with this disaster. Even something as simple as beginning with in-game penalties or sanctions is very likely to backfire on you: When trying to 'solve' a problem of Ray's attention constantly wandering to his phone, John decided to begin with experience penalties every time it happened. He tried to apply this once, and Ray completely ignored him. That was the end of that idea. It could have gone even worse, though, because if Ray had challenged the idea, John would not have an answer to "why didn't you talk to me first?" and it could have ended with the loss of a player, or worse, over what was a minor problem at best.

I said there's only one healthy way to solve the problem, but there is another way. It's just really shitty of you. When someone's just not working out or being so disruptive that talking isn't working, you can just ditch them. Change game day, stop calling them, lie...whatever. Sometimes, this is the kindest let-down when someone just isn't going to work out. Others, it's really your only recourse. We would have needed to do this in the past, if a particular disruptive player hadn't disappeared just as the confrontation was going to begin. Dale had a roommate who would insist on charging party members listed book price for spells and do whatever it took to keep the game's plot to himself. He'd order us around and, at one point, pointlessly trying to keep us out of an important meeting with a King simply so HE'D get to make all of the decisions and we wouldn't even know what was discussed. He even literally hid treasure and important plot items from us.

Someone like this isn't always proven to be a douchebag in other areas of his life, but it's probably not likely that he's going to change, either. Our nasty little example boy disappeared from our group as he skipped out on over a thousand dollars owed to Dale, but...sometimes, people are just stubborn in their entertainment and otherwise stand-up people. If you tried diplomacy more than once and it's failed, or it's a problem that's too severe to try discussing, you have to skip to the next step of solving the problem.

You kick them out of the group.

Yeah, sorry. There really aren't many steps to this method. There's no tips, or tricks, or little methods I can give you. You have to either talk your problems out, accept some minor annoyance or compromise, or simply not game with that person again. It helps to be willing to compromise or discuss a problem more than once. It also helps to know exactly how many people are being disrupted before you bring it up, and try not to make it a situation similar to an intervention, where one person is socially assaulted by several. Be kind, and be courteous, but make it clear that the game can't go on while they're acting the way they are.

I hope nobody has to use this advice. Truth be told, I don't have as many horror stories of wanton douchebags as other people I know personally. Being up-front with someone is sometimes the hardest thing you can do, but it's the kindest and most effective way to solve a social conflict. Overall, take that away from this: Confronting someone about a problem does not mean you're allowed to throw kindness and compromise out of the window.

Cleverness

"You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! "

Today is another in our series of really obvious concepts that I've seen plague games. I'm getting into minutiae a lot lately, but I promise more big, universal concepts are coming. The problem with writing about those is that they're way harder and require more thought. It's strange, but I can boil something down pretty easily if it's just a minor point to some, but huge universal concepts have way more pressure to them. BUT ANYWAY, enough of me complaining, today we're talking about "Cleverness" and why I hate it.

That's what we call an inflammatory lead-in to hook your interest. I don't mean being intelligent. I'm not suddenly saying I crave the company of the blind and stupid. Cleverness is defined a little more closely here and it's thanks to a book I enjoyed called the Tao of Pooh that made me think of it in a different light. Cleverness is defined(for our purposes) as a desire to prove yourself smarter or more clever than others.

Yeah, suddenly you see why this is a Pen and Paper game concept, right? I'm sure we've all met a few of "that guy" who constantly comes to game with real world tips and tricks, science knowledge, home chemistry recipes or worse, social psychology tricks to use in a pen and paper game. Or, maybe you know someone who immediately looks for a loophole in every encounter, tries to find things the GM hasn't thought of, or worse, constantly tries to trick others in an OOC sense. In my experience, most of these people don't really know what they're doing wrong, but this is a fairly bad habit to get into. First off, a lot of people feel things like bringing real world knowledge to a game is some sort of method to "logically" eliminate a skill check. We've talked about challenge a lot on the blog, and there's a big, big difference between solving a challenge fairly and thinking you can "outsmart" the GM or "skip" a skill check. The difference is very, very obvious, and you should know which is which. Thinking PNP games are a 'fight' between the GM and the Players is probably the beginning of this mode of thought, and I'd like everyone to try and squash that immediately. There are plenty of ways to have a competitive PNP experience, but the model of GM and Players is not one of them. a competitive experience can't have a GM competing in it. Simply put. This doesn't mean that a game can't support competition, but in my experience this slides a PNP game a little closer to being a board game.

Applying real world knowledge is admittedly a hairy concept, because sometimes it's good. Sometimes it can even be what the GM intends for you to do. What I'm arguing against here is less an action and more a mentality. It can feel really cool to apply real science or know-how to a challenge, OR it can leave everyone groaning as you excitedly try to manipulate a loophole in design. Introspection can be hard, but try to think about your motives: If you're more excited that you know something that can solve a challenge easily than you are about actually solving the challenge, that might be a red flag. If you're excited that you found something that you're sure the GM didn't think of and obviously didn't intend, that's a REAL BIG red flag.

I'm going to put aside, for NOW, the idea of bringing knowledge to the table that your character wouldn't necessarily possess. No, a post on The Information Game is coming very soon because it's one of my blog's big elephants in the room. Past that, whether you know you're doing it or not, trying to outsmart other people is arrogant and creates negative feelings that might fester and become a problem later. You might not even know you caused it. So what do I want you to do? In general, try not to think of gaming as inherently antagonistic, because it's not. Be nice, and understand when a GM says something isn't going to work or when he asks you to roll a skill check even though your action shouldn't "logically" need one. I promise I'll explain more about the whys of my advice in a moment, after we talk a bit to the GMs.

Yeah, get back here. This concerns you too. There's two ways to go about creating a challenge, and one of them is wrong. When you create a challenge in a PNP game, most of the time it's something you are intending the PCs to solve. Regardless of the difficulty. This is, understandably, one of the biggest leaps in logic a GM has to make, so I want you to go back and read that until you understand what I'm saying. If you "stump" the PCs to prove you're a smarter person than they are, your game doesn't go anywhere. It's as simple as that. I mean, I didn't think I had to explain this but I've met many, many people who could really use that advice. I've heard dozens more horror stories as well. To constantly try to "trick" or "outsmart" your players also makes them way less likely to want to play your game. There is a very fine line between designing a challenge within the genre's rules(more on that in a moment) with reasonable solutions and designing a tricksy encounter that's intended to stump or halt the PCs. Building a challenge around real world knowledge is only acceptable when you're giving the PCs a real puzzle to solve(such as a word puzzle or cipher) and even then, you should be prepared to give out hints for things like wisdom checks or Enigmas skills. Any other "real world" checks should have some sort of component of a skill check to them. Imagine a situation where a player must build a car engine: Obviously, this is a situation where someone would make one or several skill checks and the GM would state some sort of time frame. Now imagine I forced the players to describe how to build an engine, step by step, without using real world reference. I am confident that I know nobody who would be able. I know many gamers who know car maintenance and construction, but none who would be able to describe the action while sitting at a gaming table and with absolutely no reference.

Obviously that's an extreme example and something that's shockingly mean to do. However, it's also what you're doing, on a smaller scale. Real world knowledge has its place in PNP games, but as we discussed in "Well Logically", it's not even in the top ten most important things about a pen and paper game. You're wholly dismissing the character's build when doing this, which we discussed before when social skills came up. Seeing as how we've transitioned partially to discussing application of real-world knowledge in games, I'd like to bullet-point some of my tips and reasons.

Your clever little real-world trivia could be wrong. You remember how we were all taught things like Christopher Columbus wanted to prove the world was round, how to properly eat with the food pyramid, how Billy the Kid was ugly, and people in the Wild West thought tomatoes were toxic? Maybe you're thinking of torture devices like the Iron Maiden being built in the middle ages? Yeah, none of those are actually true. People get away with applying junk trivia and pseudoscience because we all have something similar to "fight or flight" in our minds: When we encounter someone saying something in a bold or insistent manner, we choose "Argue" or "Drop it". Often, disruptive cleverness starts by someone hearing something on the internet and ends with their bold assertion not being argued, because we don't have all god damn day.

You're only right because you're running counter to the genre. Yeah, this one happens sometimes too. Sometimes, a desire to prove yourself as smarter or better than the GM leads you to completely forget that he's working within genre conventions to create a special feel to the game. He's hoping you play along, because(presumably) he described the game's feel to you fairly well. Doing things like calling the police in a superhero or vigilante game, like using siege tactics on a band of orcs in a high fantasy hack-and-slash game, or even building your character contrary to obvious expectations can be disruptive and breed negativity. It's not even very clever, exactly: The GM probably thought of that sort of thing, and dismissed it because he expected the group to immerse themselves in the world he created. Building a mage who technically has melee attacks when he asked everyone to build melee characters isn't "clever", it's "acting against the spirit of what he asked you to do".

You're not promoting healthy challenge, you're squashing it. In my high school chemistry class, my teacher openly and repeatedly called my row of seats stupid. We were "the dumb kids". I was struggling with the class already after the first time she did that. What do you think happened? Yeah, I stopped trying. I regret not skipping that class, honestly. I failed it, told nobody about the severe verbal abuse(because this was the 90s, nobody cared) and took the class again next year. Constantly trying to "one-up" everyone in a game or prove you're the most clever will absolutely cause everyone around you to just stop trying. Most people naturally shy away from conflict, so everyone's just going to check out and the game will fizzle if it piles up too high.

Rules and conventions exist for a reason. Sometimes some fact, trick or method is omitted for a reason. In addition to presenting a reasonable world, PNP game rule sets have to worry about a multitude of other things. They have to be reasonably fair, offer the players plenty of choices, and be easy to use. Sometimes a system simply doesn't think to include something, but often when things are omitted, it's for a good reason. Telling the GM you're buying a bunch of unrelated chemicals then informing him that they make C4 when mixed is outside what a lot of systems intend: What they want you to do is to buy C4 like a normal person and deal with the availability rules for it. Exceptions can be made, of course, but this is something you need to work with the GM for and not "spring" on him like you're trying to trick him. After all, nobody would argue if trying to make C4 in your bathtub got you blown the fuck up.

Another week, another long ramble. I sincerely apologize for this post not being as coherent as my others, but there's no editing it. This is a habit everyone's seen but one I have a hard time describing. This is also a really, really fine line: a lot of the time, applying knowledge can feel really cool and accomplishing. At the end of the day, I'm cautioning you against a mentality, and it can be very confusing to discuss. Constantly looking for loopholes instead of sincere solutions to challenges is antagonistic and arrogant. Trying to "pull one over" on a GM is ridiculous(he's presumably putting work in for everyone's enjoyment) and trying to "stump" your players ensures that you're the only one having fun. Players buy skills for a reason, and throwing them out to make a challenge harder is the same thing as making them fist fight you in real life to win combat. Bringing up little "real world" science or psychology tricks can get really tiring. Consider it a bad habit: Use skill checks alongside real knowledge, and try to immerse yourself in the genre and tone the GM is setting. Try not to act solely in self interest, and ask yourself if you're doing something because you want everyone to think you're really smart. You're one of several people trying to enjoy the same activity, and you should take care not to step on someone else's enjoyment.

As a final word, I did leave out one major piece of advice: How to deal with a problem player. There are a multitude of advice sections in GMing guides on this, but I'll be weighing in with my own dumb advice next week. It was going to be in this one, but I've tied a really long rambly tail on this post already.

TPK: Railroading

"Do it? Dan, I'm not a republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting the outcome?"

"I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

CHOO CHOO. I wrestled with whether to make this an episode of TPK or not, but frankly? I've seen railroading kill a lot of games. It's something we all hate, but it's also one of those things that everyone has a slightly different definition of. It's one of the villains of pen and paper gaming and you can find millions of horror stories online of shitty GMs using railroad tactics for various ends, usually to make sure nobody messes up their precious story. I'm going to go over this concept like none of you have ever heard of it before, why people hate it so much, when you're going to need to use it, and how to do it when you need to. That's the unfortunate little truth behind railroading, after all: Sometimes, it's necessary.

As a loose definition, railroading is forcing the game to go the way you want it to, either on a large scale or a small scale. It can be as large as blatantly scripting entire parts of the game, providing only one plot hook, or squashing any attempt at self motivation, or as small as forcing the players to deal with the pointlessly weird, overly quirky NPCs you made. Yes, the guy who demands you speak only in rhyme is the only blacksmith within a hundred miles. Sorry.

Remember we discussed Agency, and how I said it's hyper important? Agency is why railroading destroys your game. When people say "I'm upset that you keep railroading us", they're really saying "I'm upset that you keep removing my agency." Agency is a person's control over their surroundings, their character, their choices, the plot, anything. Railroading is more precisely defined as the removal of player agency for some purpose, usually to make the game go in the direction you want it to. When you remove a player's agency, they are going to get upset on some level. It's as simple and as childlike as this: They had something they wanted to do, and now they can't do it. This level of disappointment is primal and easily turns to anger after they reason their own way that you could have presented the plot without railroading. They WILL do that. This is why removing agency is so bad: the response is deep within us and can not be trained or "beaten" out.

Nor should you try. Pen and Paper gaming is a collaborative experience. The GM is not more important than the player, and already has much, much more input over the story than them. Removing what little say over the plot that they have just to protect your lion's share is absurd and selfish. Like I've said over and over, you are not the King of the Castle magnanimously doling out the exact plot that you deem fit, and the players are not grubby Dickensian street urchins who should be glad to get whatever scraps they get. This is a collaborative effort, and frequent railroading is an act of greed.

If you really think that, stop now. You don't have what it takes to be a GM. Close the book, close my blog, and take a break, because no game you ever run will be satisfying. Even if they finish, even if everyone tells you it was amazing, inside, they're not happy. Thinking you're King A-Rab, controller of this game, and telling people who complain that "the door's right there" will lead to failed, unfinished games. period. One of the problems is in the social aspect of PNP games: Frequently, if your railroading killed a game, the players may not tell you the real reason they're not interested. They may not even know consciously. They just know that playing your game doesn't sound very fun.

So I hope I explained why railroading is so bad. This is a collaborative experience, and even past that, punishing or outright preventing people from doing what they want is arrogant and absurd. PNP games are not video games, and they can not be compared to them in any large way. You can't just present the exact linear plot that you want and simply pause every once in a while for reactions. Pen and Paper RPGs are a completely unique beast and can't be treated like a movie, or a game, or a book.

Only, here's the thing. You may need to remove the player's agency over specific things to keep your plot from derailing. There will eventually be a moment, an NPC, a villain or an act that the players can't muddle with or else the plot won't continue. Railroading is still not okay, so we have to minimize the amount of it we do as well as its impact. Here's some tips.

Write as few 'hinge' moments as possible. When outlining your campaign, look for these moments that can easily derail the game. Write them out if you can. Create a contingency if that's possible. Think of how the players might act and plan for it.

When a person must live, do not put them in harm's way.  If I could bold this one twice, I would. Don't give the players a chance to kill someone if killing them destroys your plot. Villains can send lackeys to gloat or provide needed exposition, or employ spells to protect via spells like contingency, or show themselves via illusions. In most systems, inventing a spell isn't THAT hard and the villain often has more time for this sort of thing than the PCs do. More modern games can use phones and televisions to give the villain face time without being in the same room as the PCs. So can architectural design, depending on your PCs and their capabilities. Being too far away from the players for them to catch up or attack effectively, or being behind a fence they won't be able to hack through in time. PCs aren't always as bloodthirsty as the stereotype, but they WILL often try for the shortest solution they can think of: To stop the villain, murder him. Only give them a chance when you're okay with a villain dying and have planned for it. In a pinch, you can fudge a bit to give him more AC or more HP, but be very, very careful with doing that: The players can't know you did it.

Make the players feel like their agency was never removed. This is very tricky and a touch dishonest, but it's very important. in some situations you can control the outcome without making it feel like you did. Do this sparingly(or else they'll notice) and it can be effective. This also covers coming up with contingencies for the PC's actions: If the players are too genre-savvy to open the necronomicon and recite a spell from it, someone accidentally listens to a recording of the former owner doing the same. See what I did there?

Consider important events happening off-screen. The players don't have to be present for everything. The story can be conveyed in other ways, like the PCs showing up too late to stop something or seeing its aftermath. Telling them the story via finding the evidence of something happening can even be more compelling than just watching something happen. The feeling of "There's nothing we could have done, because we weren't there" is very different than "There's nothing we could have done, because you keep fucking with the dice.". In some situations you can even literally show them what happened, via security footage, television screens, tapes, or programmed illusion magic. I've even had one GM show us scripted "Meanwhile" scenes at the end of a session. Use this sparingly, and it can be very effective.

I'd actually like to, for the first time ever, reference the quote I used for today's post. The characters in Watchmen arriving too late to stop Ozymandias is an excellent example of this tactic...however, it's used in precisely the wrong moment. In a comic book story, it's perfectly acceptable to end on a "down note". The good guys lose, the 'bad guy' wins, and the fight that ensues is a pointless, purely emotional conflict. However...it's not okay to ever remove the agency a player has over the ending of a game. This is a big, big moment for everyone, and...I'm sorry, but the players losing in the end is going to make your game memorable in the bad way. It's a disappointment that will live with them for a long time, especially if you forced the 'bad' ending take place.

Information. This one is another tricky one. Something can happen right in front of the PC's eyes if they don't understand what's going on at first or don't think they need to stop it or kill someone. This is another variation on the PCs "showing up too late". There's a huge X-factor to this, and it's called "how bright your players are". In my experience, player's reactions can vary WILDLY, missing obvious clues but latching on to and solving extremely esoteric ones. Be careful, and always have a plan B.

In fact, I think that's my parting advice. Always have a Plan B. Never hinge your game's plot on something that MUST HAPPEN if the players are intended to be anywhere near it when it does. Plan multiple ways your plot can move forward so you don't have to force it to do so. You will have to railroad at some point, but imagine it like ninjitsu: To be noticed is to have failed.

Hard Vs. Soft Crowd Control

As a companion piece to last time, I thought I'd go over the two different type of crowd control. As an MMO player these terms are second nature to me, but I was discussing last week's article with someone and thought maybe this ISN'T a common concept. This week might be a bit of a shortie, but it's about hard vs. soft crowd control. Now, I know what you're thinking and I just want to caution you we're going to be saying "hard" and "soft" a lot. Try to get all the erection jokes and giggles out before the end of the article, please.

Neither type of crowd control is bad, but Hard Crowd Control is the one you have to be more careful with. This type is anything that completely(or virtually completely) denies any action a character can take. Stuns, Paralyzes, Sleeps, anything that makes a PC think it's a good time to get up and get a soda. In fact, while these can be a very powerful threat, THAT is the reason you want to be careful with this style of crowd control: whoever falls victim to it is 'out'. His interest in the game is gone, and it may not necessarily come back once he can act again. Being hit by hard CC is a disappointment to most, and when CC is a problem, it's usually hard CC you're talking about, just like how nearly every time you talk about violent or exploitative video games, it ends up being Rockstar you're discussing.

However, it's not all bad. Neither type is. The good thing about hard CC is its threat factor, they're powerful, scary abilities because they reduce the party's action economy in a single saving throw. Action Economy is the number of actions an individual or party has, and is incredibly important to any type of pen and paper game. This is why Haste was broken in 3.0, why initiative bonus is so important in Shadowrun, and why an army of minions can be so devastating in Mutants and Masterminds. So, knowing all that, we know that Hard CC can be deadly effective and always makes the party sit up and take notice. Use it sparingly, and try to make sure the party knows about it before being hit. That way, the very threat of it will likely make them change their tactics. Reacting to a situation to try and defeat it is what feels good about combat.

Soft crowd control is anything that restricts your actions but does not prevent them entirely. Slows, trips, knockbacks, pushes, herding, grappling and swallowing whole are all in this category. In fact, MOST crowd control lies in this category. Hard CC is a pretty small list in most games. These are effects that cause the players to think, to stare at the board carefully and plan out their action instead of their decisions being basically independent of what's going on in the game board. These you can use more judiciously since Agency has been restricted but not removed, and thus the player remains engaged. The player(depending on how they game) may even be more engaged than he was before. Basically, soft CC is your friend and can be used way more often than its hard counterpart. I do still have two cautions for you, though.

The first is that you really can't spam any of these effects, regardless of the circumstance. Making a decent "really challenging" encounter is a collection of different things and tactics, and overusing any one thing will easily knock your encounter down to "really annoying". As a general rule, don't try to make something more difficult by overusing soft CC or setting up "team tactics" such as pairs of two who repeatedly bull rush you into each other to easily knock you down. Even the guy who came up with THAT one apologized for it later. Remember that the players have a much harder time coordinating tactics than you do, and a solution that sounds simple to you may be anything but for them. In addition to that, the GM often has the luxury of using minions whose actions aren't as important as a player's and thus has more tactics available to him. More on that concept in a future blog post.

The other caution is that, to paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, "Some men, you just can't reach.". Soft CC can easily be used more often in your game, but you still have to use caution. Some people are going to be irritated any time they have to change their tactics due to outside forces. Thankfully, I don't personally know any of these people, but they ARE out there. They're not bad, though, and this isn't something you should try to 'break' them of unless it's very disruptive. Just know that, as always, all of your decisions as GM will be tailored to your specific group. With some, that might mean a grid, miniatures, and heavy tactical combat peppered with crowd control and combat options. With OTHERS, this might mean the joy of jumping into a sea of orcs and destroying them with whirlwind strike over and over, and not worrying about 'dumb stuff' like being pushed around. Neither is the "right" way to play a PNP game, this just comes down to what people want out of their hobby. This is an escape for all of us, and we're equally split between people who crave intellectual challenge when we game(because we don't get it in real life) and people who want to 'turn off' and let loose emotionally(because our real life or job is tense and frustrating). Frequency of Crowd Control is a button for both of these kinds of people.

I'm rambling. Anyway, don't refuse to use crowd control just to pander to the latter crowd. Just tailor your game to their expectations and throw them roadblocks and 'intelligent' encounters every once in a while. With luck, actually, they'll see a powerful sorcerer with the ability to CC them as a major villain and hate them all the more for it.

And in conclusion, penis penis penis.

Dumb Little Bumps and Pops: Crowd Control and Agency

"Very good! Off to Zarkhenar, then. Off to see my friends and family and loved ones. "

"...To kill them, of course, for harming your dragon."

So let me tell you about a thing. Sit down on the story carpet and grab yourself a juice box because we're starting with a little story. In fact, it's a story of the thing that caused me to write this article.

These are the Ley-Ruins of Zarkhenar. The red arrow is pointing to where our boy Prince Ael'yith hangs out.

Ael'yith and his boys are Nightfallen elves who were booted out of their city and thus are starving for the mana they need to survive. Problem is, they're sucking the mana out of Blue Dragon whelplings. This is actually more than just a dick move: Blue Dragons can no longer have children. These whelps are it. So, enter our hero.

This is Malarky.

She's a ""good-natured"" asshole tagging along with the Horde mostly because sitting around in Orgrimmar doesn't afford her many opportunities to maliciously make fun of people. She meets a nightfallen nearly as sarcastic as she is, so helping the blue dragons out to give him a little redemption sounds awesome. The idea? Go here, find Ael'yith and his lieutenants, and feed them their fucking teeth.

So the quest line has been really interesting before you get to this part of it, you meet some awesome, memorable NPCs and you feel like you really gotta help these dragons. You come up on the ruins and Ael'yith stars yelling at you, sounding like he lost it a long time ago. He gets angry and starts firing arcane bolts down on you from his tower, which was kind of a tense moment. SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT DODGE ROLL kind of stuff.

Only...I noticed that they didn't really do any damage. They just bumped you around. I still enjoyed the storyline, but Ael'yith's insane ranting really lost its edge. The few other times he launched his arcane barrage at me, I just got annoyed. I stood there and let him bump me around. The tension is gone, Ael'yith feels like less of a threat, and I'm capital-A Annoyed.

In a scenario, players have to feel challenged. In a fight, we're talking appropriate numbers and abilities. Crowd Control(for the two of you who don't know) is a category of abilities, spell effects, and such that either restrict your character or prevent actions entirely. Grappling, webs, entangling roots, stunning fists, hamstring attacks, sapping strikes, tasers and the classic Hold Person are all examples of crowd control. Bull Rush, Amazing Blow, herding, and Overrun can be considered Crowd Control as well because they can push you out of position and force you to change your action. They are dangerous because it lowers the party's action economy, which is(in super general terms) the total amount of actions they get. Action Economy, without a doubt, is the most important thing in terms of effectiveness in most pen and paper games.

So Crowd Control is threatening. A monster that can paralyze or swallow whole can feel(and even BE) more dangerous than another monster that simply has bigger numbers. In addition to that, it mixes up what the player is challenged with and concerned about. If they're able to prepare it can even lend importance to a "support" character type who can memorize cures or dispels. So, they're a pretty good tool for you to use.

...but here's the thing. They take away player agency and can easily become more irritating or infuriating than challenging. I'm going to tackle those two concepts individually.

Agency is a person's control over a situation. It is hyper-important in pen and paper games since this is a collaborative effort and the GM must be very careful about when and where he takes it away. Even when he DOES so, he should try to make the players feel as though they had it the entire time. When you see someone complain about Plot Railroading, what they're really saying is that they're angry that their agency over the plot has been taken away. Nobody's ever going to be happy when it's gone, and Crowd Control can be a dangerous tool because of this. While it's tactically sound to try and keep a particular person in a fight unable to act, as a game with players this is an awful idea. Remember when I said there's things the players are allowed to do but you are not? This is another one. The GM controls the entire enemy force, and the player(usually) only controls one person. I shouldn't have to say that sitting out of an entire fight isn't fun, but in my experience I've had to spell out a LOT of things that I thought were obvious, so I'm not taking any chances.

Basically, you want the player to feel challenged. It's another common mistake to think that irritated, annoyed or infuriated is an acceptable substitute. It's not. In terms of crowd control, this means that more frequent but less effective and/or easily overcome control effects are much, much less fun than less frequent but more dangerous effects. You also have to be aware of the difference between "There's something you can do" and "There's something you could have done." Basically, if your answer to an effect being unfair or unfun contains the phrase "should have" as in "You should have raised your will save" it might not be a very good answer. Obviously, sometimes a player won't take a hint about a glaring weakness in his character or the players will prepare very poorly. You can't really do anything about that except maybe to softball them a little bit. Don't kill them. Punish the poor choice, then figure something else out. However, a "should have" response often implies the players acted in a way contrary to you think they should have. Try to remember that you don't actually control their character. In addition, it's very easy to forget or overlook that they simply don't have the information you do: It seems like a stupid idea to ignore your will save when you know the next ten encounters are going to feature will-save abilities, but the player has no idea.

This is a side note, but as GM, you have the luxury of NEVER having to kill the party. If everyone dies, runs, gets controlled or what have you, you can simply pull a plot twist and put them in a worse situation...but one they can get out of. A pack of seemingly feral ghouls is actually controlled by a necromancer hiding deep under the swamp...a pack of ogres were fighting to subdue because they need slaves for their mines...the list goes on. Of course...you don't have to TELL them there's no danger. If they win the fight, none of that was true. Obviously. Try not to make getting another PC "back" a huge, long adventure though: Simply put, no matter how 'logical' it is and no matter how 'fun' you think it sounds, the bottom line is that one or more of the players is not playing. There are a lot of situations where their death or subdual wasn't necessarily their fault either, so don't pull that excuse.

Back to annoyance. Annoyed people will usually have one of two impulses. They will either want to stop playing to avoid the irritation, or they will want to retaliate. Neither is good for your game. A sole exception is if an NPC intended as an antagonist is, in fact, antagonizing them. Even then, I'd do that sparingly because it can easily "leak" to the real world, especially if fight tactics are part of their plan. Frequent abilities that make you change your tactics in some way can be extremely annoying, and some classic Pen and Paper villains are even set up for this style of irritation, making them a sort of "trap" to GMs. Prime examples are any monster or antagonist that has an omnipresent crowd control ability, regardless of how easy it is to overcome. Antagonists like ghouls, ghasts, SWAT teams, mind flayers, and troglodytes. Add in the natural inclination for a GM to use a "pack" of these monsters and you get a 'machine gun' stream of low DC saves, which is by far the worst(and most irritating) way you can use crowd control.

Obviously the target numbers and save bonuses can't change based on the individual being targeted, but I would try to put targets around a 50% chance for the 'mid bonus' PC, give or take. Too low and you risk the ability being an annoyance and too high risks being unfair. Low save DCs also often need to be used frequently in the irritating 'machine gun style' to be balanced. Do not balance numbers around the person with the highest save, nor the lowest: either one removes something important(the high person's benefit, or the low person's punishment). The same number can make the person with the high defense feel good, and the person with the low one feel vulnerable. Try to balance frequency in the low-to-mid range. This lends an air of importance to the CC ability and helps to lower people being taken out of the fight. If you have to raise the DC a bit to achieve this, that's better than the opposite.

While taking a break from writing this, I played Payday and was reminded of the OTHER side of the coin that Ael'yith's dumb face is printed on. Payday has an enemy called the Tazer. They're unhinged private security dickheads hired by Washington's police out of desperation. They can taze you from very, very far away, and when you're being tazed you're shooting automatically(to drain out your clip, of course) shaking wildly(to fuck up your aim) and rooted in place. Eventually, the tazer will 'down' you, forcing another person to come help you up. Obviously, this is a co-operative game where someone is intended to help you and DOES have the ability to do so. But many, many things pile on top of each other to make the tazer an infuriating experience: His abundant HP, his ability to keep himself safe while controlling you, draining so much of your ammo, and.,..the worst part? If there's not other cops shooting you, you're stuck there for a very long time. He can't kill you quickly at all. Ael'yith's blasts being undertuned is bad, but so is the Tazer being severely, severely overtuned. His inability to hurt you by himself is not a balancing factor: In fact, it makes it feel worse.

Crowd Control can feel like an awesome challenge, and don't think by this article that it's hard to balance: It's just something you'll learn by doing. Especially now that you know what to look for, it'll be easy to find well balanced antagonists who happen to have crowd control abilities.

Oh, and don't worry. Ael'yith was pummeled to death. It wasn't pretty.

Conveyance

"Don't kill him! If you kill him...he won't learn nothin'."


A huge amount of my blog posts can be boiled down to a single sentence, if I thought that would do them justice. Don't withhold rewards, Don't be afraid of high stat values, the villain is the most important part of your game's plot, et cetera. I kind of don't mind that, since you wouldn't understand what I mean if I just flopped it out there like a tiny little dead fish. Knowing what I mean is actually our next topic, Conveyance.

Conveyance is a fairly important thing in movies, a very important thing in video games, and an EXTREMELY important thing in pen and paper. Basically, it's telling the viewer(slash player) how they're intended to think and what they're intended to do. Giving them the information they needs to move forward or to understand what's going on. Basically, a lot of the time when you're confused about a movie, it's because it's got poor conveyance. Maybe you don't know where or when a scene is supposed to be taking place because the filmmaker didn't include an establishing shot. Perhaps you weren't sure if a character is present at a scene or not, or where they got an important tool or other item. Video games have a lot of the same thing there but also have to teach you about rules, patterns, controls and other things. A bad game throws conveyance out of the window and simply lets you learn via repeatedly dying. A good game? Well, I have a bit of multimedia homework for you guys since someone else explained it way better than I ever could. This isn't required to understand how conveyance fits into Pen and Paper gaming, but I'd like you guys to watch the Sequelitis on Mega Man X.

Here it is, narrated by the beautiful Egoraptor.

What's this have to do with tabletop gaming? Basically, good conveyance is the art of conveying information without just saying it out loud. Remember when I said it's impossible for you to be objective? Conveyance is something you have to do because of that. Basically, on top of doing it for decent quest and world design(more on that later) you have to convey what you think of the player's plans and actions.

People obviously like their own ideas. They think they're sound. Duh. In the real world when you disagree with them, well. We all find out who's right eventually after the action is taken. In a pen and paper game, the GM is going to control some or all aspects of whether something was a "good idea" or not. So in the spirit of good faith, you as the GM need to try to convey, subtly or unsubtly, what you think of what they're about to do. Luckily, our conveyance in a pen and paper game doesn't have to be GOOD, just okay. It's most of your job to just directly tell the PCs things anyway. You can easily get away with reminding them some aspect you feel is important or that they've forgotten, telling them "that might not be wise" or having them roll a knowledge skill.

You need to do this. It's not optional. You can be sparse with it, or withhold info if they fail checks, but on some level this is very important. It's your job to challenge the PCs, and it's very important that you give them the right kind of challenge. Just because something was difficult doesn't mean it's going to feel rewarding: It's very, very possible to give the party the wrong kind of challenge. Never mistake poor conveyance for a proper challenge. In fact, especially never poorly explain yourself on purpose if you're discussing objective information. I had a GM once who thought it was best to promote any idea the PCs have, right up until it spectacularly failed. He thought that a shitty idea would be obvious and that the GM shouldn't hold someone's hand. Well, he's right about one thing: I'm NOT telling you to hold their hand. However, what's a good idea and what's a shitty one maybe isn't so obvious.

To give a really simple example, the PCs have a quest to get a little girl a pet. In the real world most of the PCs have cats, so they feel a kitten is objectively the best possible option. However, the GM is a dog person. Their efforts are wasted. More importantly, this isn't information the players were necessarily privy to. Of course, if they know the GM well they would've gotten a dog simply because they know the GM and noticed he owns like ten of them in real life. However, this sort of double-think is tiring and really shouldn't be promoted. It's not fun to have to psychoanalyze the GM when you're gaming. Most PCs will just want to try their own ideas. In fact, if they're super excited about an idea they've got and you feel like you can challenge them with it, consider swallowing what you think would be 'better' in favor of moving on from the 'planning' phase of gaming and getting the PCs to the action. Planning can be a lot of fun, but you lose some of that fun every time the PCs have to scrap their idea and start back on square one.

Conveyance is used for more traditional things in gaming too, like what the creators of Mega Man X did. We'll go into this more in another topic, I think, but in general terms you're using it any time you want the PCs to be prepared for a challenge. This should be most of the time. It can be as simple as an old tracker in a bar warning them about ghouls appearing in the swampland near the town, or as subtle as the PCs passing half-drowned graveyards, headstones barely sticking out of the water, or half-eaten bodies long dead. Mix up your tactics and find what works best for your group. Some groups will respond well to subtlety, and some(most) will be fairly bone-headed about clues. It's a very crappy thing in a movie to see someone just announcing a huge load of info all at once, but in a PNP game it's a bit more acceptable. It's a common, mostly beloved cliche to see the old wizened sage delivering an ominous warning or piece of vital information, or the terrified, raving villager who only just escaped a monster withtheir life. In a pinch, they can deliver the info you need to get across.

So yeah, at some point when I talk about quest design this is going to come up again. This is one of the keystones of running a game. If you want this boiled down to a single piece of advice, though, just look up to the bolded sentence above. Poor conveyance is not a challenge, it's an irritation. A good challenge is something that the PCs have all of the parts to, so they can put their strategy together. Poor(or no) conveyance is like taking several puzzle pieces out of the box.

Example Danger

So I thought maybe I should explain something. No, it's not why I've been gone. When I write this blog I try to stay as far away from using examples or analogies as possible. So, today I'm going to explain why. This isn't exactly advice for arguing with someone, instead it's advice on how to be better understood at the gaming table, because every time you're misunderstood is a tiny, tiny weight hung onto your game. Too many, and it might sink. This is also advice on how to properly understand a rule book, because most of them have some small element of poor design in them, and the overuse of examples is a very common one.

An example is a powerful tool, though. That's why so many rulebooks use them. There are times(particularly with complex systems) that an example of real play can hit home how a system is supposed to work. That's the idea, anyway. You can tell I don't agree. Anecdotal evidence SUCKS, but most of the time when I encounter someone who's confused over the rules, it's because of the following reasons:

1. The book's wording is complex, obtuse or misleading.
2. The rules were explained poorly by another individual.
3. They read the example first, or ONLY read the example, or the example made them second guess their understanding of the rules.

So yeah, that third one's a pretty specific event, huh? I see it all the time. In fact, number two can be a culprit of 'examples' too, more on that later. Honestly, the only one we can't really do anything about is the first. So how SHOULD you read a rule book? I want to tell you to utterly ignore any play examples unless you're extremely confused AND tried to reread the rule AND there's nobody handy who knows the system better than you. Actually? I'm gonna suggest that. No 'but' this time. The example isn't the rule, it's meant to illustrate the rule, and if it's wrong? You can't in good conscience use the example as ANYTHING. It's NOT the rule, it's NOT a clarification, and it's certainly not a reason on its own to argue interpretation of an otherwise clear rule. It's just there to try and explain the rule and if you already understand it...you don't need it.

The other problem is using examples to explain something. It's a neat little shorthand, but shorthand can be deadly to someone who doesn't already understand something. You're most likely to use these tactics in a new player situation where you don't really know where their understanding lies, and that's(ironically) the least helpful time. What I see happen often is that you either oversimplify the rule with the example and the other person misses some of the subtlety and trips up later, or that you find a great example only because YOU'RE wrong about the rules. Obviously that's a little bad, but it's compelling when you think of a great example. It's like coming up with a great joke: You REALLY want to tell it, even if it's not exactly right.

Try to resist. I should also parrot some awesome advice I heard from Spoony here too: When someone's confused, don't just answer their question, try to find out why they're confused and solve it. "What do I roll?" shouldn't necessarily be met with "D8.". Saying "You hit, so you're rolling damage, it's right here. Longswords are D8 damage plus your strength." is a hell of a lot better.

A special shoutout goes to using examples or analogies in discussions or arguments. I think most people know I can't stand this. If you want to convey your opinion, it's not exactly in your best interests to simplify it unless you think the other person is stupid. ALSO, you shouldn't talk as though you think other people are stupid. I learned that from the classic game Go, which I have no idea how to play. Overuse of examples or analogies proves you don't really have much to say; it's very easy to fill talking time with them because all you're doing is rewording your argument. If you're having a rules discussion, this habit can lead to a lot more confusion than clarity, because people bring 'baggage' along with an example due to associations. If you tell me a system is exactly like grappling in Dungeons and Dragons, I may start to believe you mean to say it's poorly balanced and confusing, when all you meant was you have to roll hit to touch and then initiate a contested check.

So, yeah. What did we learn? Examples are shorthand, and shorthand is terrible for learning, and pretty bad for trying to explain yourself.

Really, I'm just upset that I couldn't get through the examples post without using one. I guess there's a time and place, right?

...Right?

Star Wars Names: Tips

So I've been tossing this around in my head and I may have found a good method for coming up with futuristic sounding names. I mentioned syllables are like building blocks, and I linked that cool Drow Name Generator thing because sometimes all you need is a beginning, some blocks to play with. While sleep deprived I might have come up with a decent method of obtaining those syllabic building blocks.

So, the idea is that you take a name and reverse it. Don't just do that, though. Because it's really obvious. Instead, say it out loud and use those sounds to "rewrite" a name out of it. Do it several times, and pick from what you've got. Chances are the first name will sound spacey enough for Star Wars. The last name can sometimes be weird, but thankfully Star Wars has a world quirk of people slamming two descriptives together for a last name like we're all Native Americans in a lameass space western, so you can just replace the last name with some thematic adjectives if it ends up sounding bad.

So let's do an example. Say we're playing a Noble who's going to be taking the famous artist prestige class. Say he's kind of a shlub who's not that talented and wants to get into music for the money and not for the art. So we'll start with the name Chad Kroeger for no reason.

Chad Kroeger = Dahc Regeork

Dahc could be Dac, Dace, Datch, Dach or Doc just by playing with the sound a little bit.

Regeork could turn into Regork, Reejork,  Rejak. We're manipulating the sound a lot here because Kroeger isn't giving us a lot of room, but that's okay. If we don't come up with anything, we can also replace this with an adjective smash like Soundkiller, or in Chad's case Buttrocker.

So basically from Chad Kroeger we got a really decent Star Wars name like Datch Rejak. It sounds like plenty of other Star Wars names like Dash Rendar, Anakin Skywalker, or Leia Organa. If I didn't tell you where I got that name, you probably wouldn't track it back to Chad Kroeger anyway.

Maybe this doesn't always fit. Maybe I'm just struck with how well it works with Chad's name. I think this is a great starting point though, especially if you're stumped. A piece of paper, a few names and a few minutes and you're bound to come up with SOMETHING.

Mystery and Obscurantism

"What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?"

We're discussing another tool in the GM's toolbox, but this time it's a story tool. The basic definition of Obscurantism is the practice of deliberate restriction of facts. When discussing the real world, this refers to things like a ruling class not making education available to the masses. A secondary definition is the practice of deliberately making knowledge obtuse or hard to grasp, something that was apparently super popular to accuse philosophers of to imply they don't know what they're talking about, and just writing down a bunch of bullshit.

Basically we're discussing the deliberate restriction of knowledge. To what end? Well, in movies and video games, Obscurantism is used to make something seem more important and intellectual than it really is.  The Matrix trilogy is very fond of this tactic, using junk philosophy to make a set of dumb action movies seem like they're far more intellectual than they really are. Mystery can also make for a serious "Cool factor" attached to a concept, place or character in your movie, an attitude and feel that you can't otherwise emulate.  Usually in a movie using Obscurantism this is a bad thing because it's deceptive and cheap. It's a crutch used by some filmmakers to make it look like their movie is so super mega intellectual and clever that you just don't "GET it". Donnie Darko can be arguably accused of Obscurantism. A lot of avant-garde arthouse movies can too, and some whole filmmakers like Terrance Malik, Lars Von Trier or David Lynch have been accused of overuse of this tactic. Every once in a while it's used acceptably, though. What's in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction? The fact that you never know is arguably the entire point. However, the contents of the suitcase aren't really integral to the plot, and it's just there for feel and to put weight to Marcellus Wallace as a crime boss. Nevermind that the script says it's just a shitload of diamonds. Or if you hate Pulp Fiction...what's the deal with the Cowboy in The Big Lebowski? Why's he the narrator, and what's he doing at a bowling alley in California? There's no answer to that question, and that's on purpose. Maybe the Coen Brothers know...but maybe they don't.

Editor's Note: I ran across this while proofreading and editing my blog and I felt really stupid for including it. The Coen Brothers know. They always know. Nothing in their movies is included for no reason. Nothing. 

So what's this mean to you? Well, you could certainly accuse David Lynch of creating scenes and plot lines that have no real intellectual substance and exist just to make you think there's some sort of mystery. However, Lynch believes that a movie is wholly an emotional experience...so maybe he'd even agree with you. Obscurantism is nearly always bad in a movie, but in a Pen and Paper game it can be a tone-setting emotionally manipulative buddy. Mysteries are cool, a lot of the time way cooler than the answer. We love pondering the answer to things, putting clues together and hunting for the truth. See also "Why Lost was so popular for so long".

It's totally okay to put a mystery in your game just to put a mystery there. In fact, it's perfectly okay for you to not know the answer to that mystery right away. Imagine an asterisk on the end of that statement, though. One the size of a mac truck. The thing is, with every mystery, you have a time limit. You can trickle clues to the PCs or wing it on answering their questions, but you do eventually need to decide what the answer is, whether you intend to ever give it out or not. Obscurantism is at its worst when there simply is no answer, and you should avoid that as much as possible. Your players will eventually notice when you're just being coy or when you're making shit up, I promise you. See also, "Why nobody remembers Lost very fondly".

So if you decide to toss a mystery out there without knowing the answer, you're racing your player's curiosity. I can't tell you how much time you've got to come up with an answer, because it depends entirely on  how nosy your players are and how cool the mystery is. Learn how and when to place clues to keep their interest going, and remember it's okay for the PCs to "dead end" every once in a while, but try to do so reasonably. Don't just shut them down, try to feed them clues that won't necessarily blow open into a whole wealth of knowledge you don't want to feed them just yet, because flat out saying "no" is really obvious. You want them to be interested and thinking of ways to find the next clue, not thinking "Oh, that's all we're getting right now regardless of what I do. Fine."

You need to know when to pay off and when not to, though. The more important a mystery is to the main story, the more important it's going to be for you to 'pay it off' and let the players find the answer at some point. Never just hand them the answer, instead you can trigger their final investigation by handing them a key piece of evidence. Even if you haven't been carefully crafting this mystery(which is totally fine) you can still think of something that'll basically reveal the answer without actually revealing the answer, like finding the skin-suit that proves the PC's contact is actually an alien, or reliable evidence of someone being in literally two places at once.

But, if it's a side story, a side NPC, or something that's maybe not so important...feel free to never pay it off, even OOCly. If the players are content to simply discuss the mystery and aren't particularly keen on following the rabbit hole, let it lie. If they're burning with curiosity long after the game's been finished, maybe tell them then. I've sat on the answer to key mysteries for years simply out of hope that I'll be able to give them a proper reveal some day. Don't feel bad doing the same....just remember the answer has to be there, even if you never tell anyone.