The Gaming Outpost

71 responses to Hit ‘em Where it Hurts

1. 

   M. J. Young said on March 9, 2011

   Thanks for the comment, TLL. The idea for your campaign sounds pretty good.

   We seem to be on the second page of responses to this article, so Wick at least gets credit for stirring up the readers, even if it’s been years since he wrote it. This is not the way I play, but it’s the way some people play, and enjoy it.

   Decades back I met a guy who was very proud of the dungeon he’d designed. The centerpiece of the thing seemed to be an inescapable death trap. I don’t remember the details, but the point according to his description was that once you entered that room you would never escape alive. To me, that was unfair design–whether I’m the player or the referee, I expect that there is always a chance, and I won’t play the other way. But some people do, and are pleased with how clever they (or their referee) can be at creating the inescapable.

   For those for whom that’s fun, that’s valid. For the rest of us, we’ll play in another game, thank you. In fact, one of the basic appeals of Multiverser to me (and the reason I got involved in the design) is that death is not the end, so if you get killed either because you were stupid or the scenario made it inevitable, you continue playing in the next world.

   So I understand the appeal of that kind of play, but I wouldn’t enjoy it myself.

   –M. J. Young
2. 

   simple said on March 16, 2011

   He couldn’t honestly have wrote this and expect flowing prasie. This comment may go out to Mr. Young, who is defending him adamantly.

   You can’t be suprised that so many people are against this. You can’t expect people to shower him with praise over this article. Of course people will refute it. Of course they will call it stupid. I find the way you are defending his ideas in such a way kinda strange. Yes, to those that have fun with this, by all means. Nobody is really saying that there aren’t some people who enjoys this. That said, he does not give off a warning that this may be an excellent way to lose a group. In fact, he suggest that it can be used in any game. If this is something you really want to try, talk it out first. His group may like it, for God knows why, but others will be put off.
3. 

   M. J. Young said on March 17, 2011

   Thanks for your comment, Simple. I note that there are now over fifty comments on this article, and even if half of them were mine (I think not) that’s still a lot of material to review. My impression is that most of the response amounts to “no one should ever play like that”. All I am saying is that some people do, and they enjoy it.

   Your point that he does not warn anyone that this might not work with all groups, but suggests that it could improve anyone’s game, is well taken. On the other hand, there is a degree to which this kind of thinking actually could improve almost anyone’s game, to some degree. That’s not to say that all referees ought to be like Wick describes, but that most games could be improved if once in a while the referee thinks like Wick suggests. Wick creates insidious villains, surreptitious death traps, unanticipated disasters, and watches player characters run headlong into them. If you’re used to games in which the players not only always win but always win easily, it may be time for the referee to reconsider what kinds of challenges he ought to be posing.

   I mostly run Multiverser anymore; I don’t have time to run many games, and that’s what people want to play. Ron Edwards said it has one of the best answers to the problem of character death, because when your character dies it drives the story forward as he comes alive in another universe facing new adventures. Eric Ashley says that the game unleashed his “killer GM”, that before Multiverser he always treated player characters with kid gloves, knowing that death put them out of the game, but once he had this rules set he knew he could throw anything at them–if they succeeded, they were victorious, and if they failed they continued in another world. So there are times when I want to hit my players with something out of left field, something that they probably won’t see coming and probably can’t beat. That’s because on the one hand if they don’t beat it it’s not the end of the game, and on the other hand if they succeed they really accomplished something.

   Similarly, when I play, I want to feel like I can handle anything that comes at me, but I don’t want to feel like I am actually invincible. There is no fun in a game you can’t lose, any more than in a game you can’t win. You sometimes want to feel that you almost lost and managed to pull a victory from nowhere at the last minute, to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds, and walk away the last man standing. To do that, though, you have to believe you might have lost; and to do that, you have to know that your referee could have finished you, not merely in the theoretical sense that being the referee he has so much “credibility” in play that he could destroy you, but that he is not afraid to do so.

   Wick puts that back into his players’ perspective. They’re playing a supers game, and think that they can create characters that are genuinely invincible. He reminds them that they aren’t, and they never will be. The more invincible you make your character, the more certain it is that he will exploit a weakness you failed to recognize. Yes, there are challenges that will seem like walk-throughs for your character; but you never know when what looks like a simple matter will become a disaster, so do not let down your guard.

   Besides, the better the players, the better the referee has to be to challenge them; and the better the referee challenges them, the better players they become.

   Does that make sense?

   –M. J. Young
4. 

   Josh W said on May 3, 2011

   The vindictive level of this game is quite suprising, and it could have dodgy implications if not handled right:

   Forming a group where someone periodically humiliates people in indirect but still emotionally hard hitting ways, unless they do things he likes, and they stay for the company of each other? Dodgy.

   Forming a game that seems to be about celebrating your characters only to find it’s actually about being paranoid and watching every shadow? Or having to choose to give up all investment in what you’ve created so that other people can destroy it? Dodgy.

   I don’t think a game with these elements neccesarily makes better players, it widens the scope of things they have to keep an eye on, it can require them to spend so much time covering their back that they don’t play their character in an interesting way.

   This kind of game can lead to all kinds of prepping and “but what about this”, that might totally undermine real inter-character drama.

   But some people like this type of game right? Maybe. Maybe they like other people in the game, maybe they like other people’s characters. Maybe they like other things John does to support their characters, and just put up with the abuse.

   John does something very clever in this though, something that reminds me of the game “my life with master”; the tormentor needs to get justice.

   In other words by bringing his manipulative stuff into the game as an npc, John allows people to deal with it. That is a really good idea, both because it clears the air between players, and because it allows a dramatic arc for characters.

   I wonder what happened after the game; when they defeated Carter, did the game fold as well? Did the crazy disadvantages come back? Was he unneccesary now people had “learned their lesson”, ie having done his job as a bit of social control he could be killed off, or was it he unnecessary because John tried playing things a little lighter?

   Because villains like that can be a mask for a strong desire to emotionally manipulate your freinds and mess them about, and you show that when the first mask falls; do you just start making another?

   Alternatively, it can be an attempt at creating a real villain, and can be replaced by a less personal but no less devious foe, who stretches people in another direction. Maybe you’ll come back to such a foe later, as you cycle through different styles.
5. 

   M. J. Young said on May 3, 2011

   Thanks for the insightful comment, Josh.

   I’ve said before that I’m not a big fan of this style of refereeing, but I understand it. It occurs to me at this point that a distinction should be made, and I’m not certain which side of the line John is standing. On one side is creating a villain that has the potential to blindside the players because their characters might not expect it; on the other side is creating a villain that will blindside the players because the referee already knows the characters aren’t looking there.

   It’s the difference between–well, in Multiverser, it’s often the case that my players are moving through a scenario that was not pre-designed in detail; sometimes they are. In one scenario, I might have a direction that says that there’s a trap on a door, an explosive device which will detonate if the door is opened. I consider that fair; it’s there, and I don’t know whether they will ever touch that door or attempt to check for traps if they do. In a different scenario, I might have no idea what is in a particular area, and so roll the dice (a “general effects roll”) and discover that it’s something the characters won’t like, and so throw a trap on a door they’re probably going to open. I consider this fair, because there is a degree of randomness in it that says “good thing/bad thing ahead”, and it could as easily have indicated that they would find something important or valuable behind that door. But then there is the situation in which I decide that I’m tired of this scenario and want to blow this character out of there (in Multiverser, character death means continue adventuring in another universe), and that he never checks for traps, so I throw an impromptu explosive on a door I know he’s going to open, and blow him out of there. I’m not persuaded that that’s fair, and I don’t usually do it. In fact, I don’t do it unless the dice give me permission (which makes it the second category, at least sort of).

   Wick’s Carter is a brilliant villain, but assuming that he was designed from the beginning to be that villain it seems perfectly fair on that level: player characters were duped into trusting him, and he used that trust against them. On the other hand, if I thought for a moment that Carter had actually been one of the good guys and then Wick decided spontaneously to make him a villain, I’d have trouble with that. Then if Wick looked for someone else who was already in place that was never considered by him to be a villain, and turned him into a villain at that point, that would strike me as unfair. However, if he had been grooming his next villain for some time, I’d accept that as fair.

   –M. J. Young
6. 

   Joke Account said on May 31, 2011

   “Whenever I get to take a character away from a player for a while, explain that they’ve been unconscious and then have them wake up with blood on their hands is a chance to have some real fun.”

   I think this sentence right here points to the largest problem with this GM style. Yes, I am sure taking players’ characters away from them for a while and then telling them that everything fell apart while they had no ability to do anything might be fun for some GMs, but as a player, I find games more fun when I am able to do something.

   Now, this sentence comes from the section on Berserk, and while that particular instance might be more justified than the others, since the player in question was munchkining instead of role-playing (though one must wonder why keeping Scrapper around for a few sessions to the detriment of the other players’ enjoyment was considered preferable to simply taking the player aside and explaining that munchkin nonsense wasn’t how this game was supposed to be run), the same philosophy is clear in every other section.

   DNPC? Malice is stunned once, and that’s enough for the GM to throw her through a window, unmask her, and declare that her grandmother is now dead of a heart attack. Psy Lim? Paladin is unceremoniously mind-controlled because he didn’t check every drink for magic mind-control drugs (though I’ve little doubt that if he had, Carter would have made the drug untraceable). Luck? The character is forced to jump into the middle of a patently insurmountable stack of baddies alone. Immunity? Disease-resistant characters just plain die. Find Weakness? Attack its weak point, and you become completely incapable of showing the slightest restraint, automatically going for the kill even though that is clearly not your intention.

   In none of these cases is the character given any options or interesting decisions or really anything to do at all. Malice has to just lie there paralyzed while Wick does a victory dance; Paladin’s player just sits back and watches as Wick declares that he’s not allowed to make decisions for his character; and Immune characters just drop dead with no hope of doing anything.

   Even in an adversarial game, the point of the game from the GM’s standpoint isn’t to prove how awesomely he can crush the players. If the players aren’t even given any relevant decisions to make, there’s nothing adversarial going on; they can’t act as adversaries to the GM if they aren’t allowed to even control their own characters.

   Is this how any of these abilities ever played out in the comics? Spider-Man never got hit by a random mook, only to recover a moment later to find that his spine was broken, his secret identity was revealed, and Aunt May had a heart attack in response to learning who he was. If Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle are dating, this never leads to Batman taking a mind-control drug and being forced to unconsciously kill Catwoman. “Spidey, will you save Mary-Jane or the bus full of orphans?” is a fair question; “Spidey, while you had no chance to prevent this, everyone learned your secret identity and Aunt May and Mary-Jane both committed suicide as a result, so how cool do you think Jefferson Carter is?” is not a fair question.

   And it’s not like any of these weaknesses were exploited because the hero foolishly let them slip. Jefferson Carter knew about them because Jefferson Carter is John Wick and John Wick has read your character sheet; there is no way of stopping him from obtaining this knowledge. You can’t dissuade him from using it, either, as he has no motivation for anything he does beyond “John Wick finds it fun” (aka “Because he can”). The only defense is to not take the disadvantage or advantage in question. Which, as Carter can turn any disadvantage or advantage into instant ruination, means that the only defense is not to take any disadvantages or advantages.

   Now, this is not to say that disadvantages should never be exploited – they wouldn’t be disadvantages if they didn’t hurt the character at all. But the disadvantages here are never used to set up interesting dilemmas like in the comics examples mentioned above; instead, the player simply loses control of their character and is told “You lose, try again”. A good GM should be able to set up interesting narratives with these weaknesses. Here, there’s no cleverness; every scenario is met with the player losing control due to Plot Contrivance X and whatever the character happens to care about being unceremoniously destroyed without any chance to protect it.

   It’s not even clear in some cases how the disadvantage is even being exploited – for example, in Paladin’s case, any hero could be mind-controlled into attacking random civilians or committing suicide regardless of Psy Lims. And how exactly does “something massively bad happens to you because you’re Lucky and it has a minor good side effect” make sense? If I make a character who is Lucky and is at one point mildly chilly, the GM can certainly conjure lava out of the ground to burn me because I’m Lucky enough for it to heal my mild chill, but that doesn’t make the scene interesting, the campaign fun, or the GM clever. And let’s not even start on the Immunity nonsense again.

   I’m also not terribly sure what the point of all of this is. Wick boasts about how nobody took DNPC after Malace (and I can’t blame them!), but why is this considered a good thing? DNPC’s are comic book staples that allow for all sorts of innovative storylines; how is issuing a de facto ban on them a good thing? Meanwhile, apparently the evil crime of anyone who takes Lucky is being selfish, because it only protects them directly. Presumably, this also applies to all other defensive abilities by exactly the same brand of “logic”. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I first started playing D&D, my DM didn’t instantly make my character get hit by a lightning bolt because having more than 3 CON proved that I was being selfish. And while I’m sure Wick feels clever for being able to nonsensically declare Immune characters dead by disease, exactly what are players supposed to take away from that? And I’d love to see what Batman would have to say about “finding weakness” being equivalent to “brutally killing”.

   Yes, a character’s individual attributes should be relevant to the game, but the point of the game is not for the GM to pick one of those attributes and say, “I mind-hack you, your character is now a broken shell and everything they love is destroyed”.
7. 

   Joke Account said on June 1, 2011

   M J Young, regarding some of the comments you’ve made in Wick’s defense here:

   “Wick creates insidious villains, surreptitious death traps, unanticipated disasters, and watches player characters run headlong into them.”

   That’s just the thing – he doesn’t. None of the examples here lead to the player’s downfall as a result of any in-game mistake. Malice falls because she gets stunned once in combat, and apparently getting hit once is enough to instantly lose. Paladin falls not because of his relationship with a supervillain leading to emotional conflict or because it causes him to lower his defenses toward her; he falls because he didn’t inspect every innocuous object he came in contact with in everyday life for random mind-control drugs from a completely motiveless villain. The Lucky and Immune characters perish because they took Lucky and Immune at character creation, not for any in-game action. And so on. You could honestly summarize this whole article as “If someone takes an advantage or disadvantage and you don’t like it, humiliate and destroy the character without giving the player any chance to avoid this and tell them it’s their fault for taking that dis/advantage”.

   “If you’re used to games in which the players not only always win but always win easily, it may be time for the referee to reconsider what kinds of challenges he ought to be posing.”

   Indeed, that does indicate that the GM should reconsider the difficulty level of the campaign. But there are a lot of ways to increase the difficulty, and randomly autokilling characters out of nowhere for not being blank white slates without giving the players a chance to respond is not a good solution. If you decide to crack down on the players by just giving them unavoidable humiliations like this, then you’re not increasing the degree to which you’re making your players think; you’re just shifting the standard mission result from “Heroes win easily” to “Heroes win easily but Bob’s character had a heart attack and died”.
8. 

   M. J. Young said on June 1, 2011

   Thank you, Joke Account, for those insightful comments.

   You make me wonder whether Wick is running games in a Participationist style; I personally do not like Participationism, but I’ve seen such games run very effectively such that the players enjoyed them immensely. Of course, he hates game theory, and would deny that there is such a category, but your characterization of his style suggests that this is what’s happening: players are letting him create the entire story, and they’re enjoying the ride.

   So, are they enjoying it because they enjoy what he’s doing, or because he’s John Wick and they get to play at the table of a famous game designer? I hesitate to judge that, because people come to play at my games, and I don’t know whether it means I’m a good referee or simply that I’m also a (considerably less) famous game designer. I tend to think that the people who stay with your games must enjoy your style, unless it’s simply that they can’t find anyone else.

   (For Participationism, see http://ptgptb.org/0027/theory101-02.html Theory 101: The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast)

   –M. J. Young
9. 

   Israel Reyes said on August 11, 2011

   Yay passive-aggressiveness!

   THIS is the kind of shit that gives old-schoolers all around a bad name, and the reason why we have so many “sociopathic orphan” murderhobos plaguing our gaming tables, all terminally allergic to involve their characters with the gaming world even a little bit.

   Everyone, take notes from Mr. Wick, he’s a texbook example in what NOT to do at your table.

   *waiting for the inevitable defense by Mr. Young*
10. 

    M. J. Young said on August 11, 2011

    Well, Mr. Young happens to visit this site six days a week, and is alerted to all new posts when they appear, and hopes to keep people interested in the site. The fact that there is a highly controversial article drawing people to the discussion is certainly a good thing for Gaming Outpost. As to defending Mr. Wick, I’m not certain he needs me to defend him. He’s quite well respected and much better known in the gaming industry than I, having been one of the key people behind Legend of the Five Rings and producing several other games. We know each other only on line, and have never played at the same table.

    Back around ’85/’86 I met a guy at a job I was working who had designed a dungeon for his game, and he bragged about the fact that in the middle of it there was an inescapable death trap. I had two feelings about that. The first was, why would you do that to your players? I would never put my players’ characters into an inescapable death trap. I would consider putting them into a nearly hopeless situation, but always there would be the possibility of escape, because that’s what makes the game fun, in my mind. The second, though, was, what’s the point? As referee I can kill the characters at the drop of a hat and make it seem that it was entirely their bad luck.

    Now I run Multiverser, and two things are really very different about that. One is that there’s no particular reason not to kill the characters; character death advances the story by taking the player character to another universe, another world, another setting, and a new story. The other is that written into the game is a sort of controller on the referee–the dice tell me when I can toss something at the player that is just beyond anything he could possibly handle, but they also tell me when I am obligated to provide for him something comparably favorable and good. So sometimes I do throw those impossible death traps into the game, because death isn’t a serious concern; but I don’t do it simply at my own whim.

    My impression from John’s article is that he is conniving and sinister, but that he is never really unfair about it. Whatever happens, the player could have avoided it had he seen it in time. It’s not quite like that impossible death trap room–you might see it before it’s too late, and you might find a solution. Odds are very much against you, but it’s not like John simply lights a candle and throws your character paper into it. He maneuvers you into the trap, and while you’re expecting an attack from one direction, you walk right into the other.

    Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe John really is the kind of referee who takes advantage of the disproportionate credibility granted him by the game to sucker-punch his players. They keep coming back, though. That’s the thing that persuades me. I’ve seen bad referees, and the thing is that they don’t usually run that many games, because unless their players are all completely incompetent, someone else will pick up the game eventually and they will no longer be the referee. I doubt people continue to play with John merely because he’s a well-known game designer. He must be doing something they like. If they are having fun, why are we sitting on the sidelines telling them that they can’t possibly enjoy that?

    –M. J. Young
11. 

    Ernesto Motalve said on August 16, 2011

    Its sad to see how someone who is trusted with a position of authority abuses it so adamantly, and even more, takes pride in doing so.

    Player’s trust a DM/GM/ST to give them an evening of entertainment, but its the whole group the one that creates the experience… so I can’t really understand what kind of masochist players did Wick got, much less where…

    As a ST I create stories surrounding my players’ characters, their are the main characters after all, its the story of their triumps and defeats, an story they help me create. Of course in Mr. Wick’s game the story is NOT about his player’s characters… is about his GMPC Carter… he calls him a NPC, but do’t let him fool you, Carter is nothing but Wick’s avatar, put in game to create the game for his entertainment and to find again and again how to humilliate his player’s characters.

    As a player I create my characters with an story and I devote myself to develop it… of course in Mr. Wick’s table that is adamant to stupidity and suicide, after all whaterver story you got for yourself, will get you killed, humilliated or worst.

    One thing is taking advantage of the players’ disadvantages and background for the benefit of the story… but when you kill the story, when players had so little fun that they had simply to retire their characters because they can’t take it anymore… it ashames myself to be related to this kind of individuals and can’t imagine why haven’t his players just left, or where does he get more after the ones he pushes away.

    But a friend of mine can express it better here: http://gamespeopleplay.smackjeeves.com/comics/1275989/on-sale-now-by-john-wick/
12. 

    M. J. Young said on August 16, 2011

    Hmmm–well, I left a note for John; I don’t know that he cares what you or your comic-producing friend think, but perhaps he will comment somewhere on it.

    John has absolutely no love for Ron Edwards’ theories of role playing, but on this point I think Ron’s ideas come to John’s defense: people are playing in his game because they are enjoying it, on some level having fun. You might not understand why. I don’t understand why people enjoy playing the horrors Call of Cthulu or Paranoia; I don’t understand why people enjoy playing games of Gamma World in which their characters can abruptly die from something completely unanticipated and unavoidable. People do. Some people apparently enjoy seeing how John is going to get around their carefully-planned protections and destroy their characters–or whatever it is that they enjoy. I don’t run games that way, and I don’t play in them, but I don’t condemn them simply because it’s not something I would enjoy. Who knows? Maybe I would enjoy being in one of his games–it doesn’t sound as if all the characters get slaughtered at every session, and there is something to a game in which you know you might meet an unexpected end that keeps it edgy. Let’s put it this way: I’ve been in an illusionist game where the illusion that I was threatened with death several times a night and by my wits I survived was exciting, until I realized that it was an illusion and I was never really threatened because the referee needed my character to stay alive. It wasn’t much fun after that–or rather, I had to change my expectations of what was fun, from any idea that I was playing a game to that of participating in a story that he was telling, in which my color contributions would never really impact the plot.

    No fear of that boredom in Wick’s game.

    –M. J. Young
13. 

    Ernesto Motalve said on August 16, 2011

    Young, you miss the point of my words. But to each its own.

    My complain is mostly because someone prides himself not of making exiting games, o exiting adventures or because his players have fun… he prides himself of abusing his characters in such a way that they prefer using the powers, advantages and disadvantages he as a GM doesn’t like.

    For example there is only oneclear example of a character long… one that he really liked… so this sounds like being partial… he liked the concept, he liked that he was small, simple character and humble, something that he expected of a character, because of that the character lived for a long time, only dying because the player and him wanted it, and only to begin another part of the chronicle… I bet you that the “heroe” that dound about this kids being payd by Carter was the new character of this said player.

    So basically he has a player that is his main character… everyone else can die around, and he actually will search for them to die. If that is the kind of game they like cool for them… but taking pride of that and telling others basically “you should fuck your players like this every time or otherwise you are going easy on them.” (which basically he did, making him judge other’s games through his standards).

    If he cares or not about my words is not the point, I simply give my opinion… considering how he is through this text I am sure he couldn’t care less about my words. I Myself only finished his text to be able to give my opinion with full knowledge of what was it about… usually I would have closed it a lot earlier.
14. 

    M. J. Young said on August 17, 2011

    Oh, I understand; and I won’t say that John is not proud of his fame as a killer GM–but then, that’s because he is famed and respected for that. He is asked to teach seminars at conventions on it, and indeed did write that book (although it does seem likely that the cartoonist never read it)

    I can relate to that. I’m pretty proud of my work in time travel. Understand that I co-authored Multiverser and its related books including a published novel. I’ve also got several Christian books in print and teach an online Bible class in which several pastors and educated laymen from diverse denominations participate. I’ve written several hundred songs and played solo and in dozens of bands throughout the Northeast Corridor. The time travel stuff is almost a joke–I started because people asked me about the movies, and now I get paid to write analyses of time travel movies and recently consulted on a film script. The fact that I’m recognized as an authority on time travel is a source of pride for me, even though to my own mind it is such a small corner of what I am and what I do. In the same way, I can see how John would be proud of the recognition he received for being a killer GM. I would be, too. That’s not the whole story of John Wick, and he’s got other articles–some of them quite memorable, wonderful articles about things like how his wedding ring is in some sense a magical object–but it is the thing that gets attention.

    That said, I’ll note that since I mentioned your post to him, he has replied to the comic, and if you go there you can read not only his response but the support of others who know him and have played in his games.

    So in the final analysis, let’s accept that there is a place for saying, “What John proposes here is much too harsh for anything I would do in any of my games, because my players just wouldn’t enjoy it, even if there are players who do,” but there’s no place for saying “John Wick is a sadistic jerk who abuses his masochistic players.” At least, as long as you’ve never actually sat at his table (which I have not) and played in one of his games, you have no right to say that.

    I’ve put Multiverser player characters in no-win fatal situations, and worse, because part of Multiverser is expanding the variety of the kinds of play experiences we explore, and ultimately your character will survive, even if he is changed by his experiences. I don’t play Champions, so I can’t really assess what John proposes; but it doesn’t sound to me as if his players are complaining about how he treats them or their characters. At least, no one has posted here to say that they played in one of his games and thought he abused his power as referee; everyone who has said that has been a complete stranger to him who never played in his games.

    –M. J. Young
15. 

    Ernesto Motalve said on August 17, 2011

    Aye, I haven’t read his book, and to tell you the truth the article gives me a good idea of what will I find there. And while I can find myself ways to get characters in troubles, I think the spirit in which I would do it its quite different from his own. So while its book might prove interesting to a big or mall number of gamers, personally I will pass, as Monte Cook would say “I have only time for excellent books, good is not enough anymore.”

    But certainly, if his gaming tables enjoy playing with him, that is cool for him and his. Sill I avide to my previous posts. But as you say, there are a lor of ways to game and to each its own, so I agree in which we disagree which would be enjoyable to each other in general.
16. 

    J Jonsson said on September 1, 2011

    Very nice advice mr Wick. It would be truly interesting to have my characters killed by you in any game. I often find the playing style of people these days a bit wishy-washy. Almost no action leads to character death and so forth. If you don´t risk anything going into a game it loses something. A good GM should keep his players on the edge of their seats. I also liked how you personalized the destruction of each of the characters. Nice touch.

    Anyway, thanks for a nice column and keep those players afearing.
17. 

    M. J. Young said on September 1, 2011

    It is a truism that you rarely get feedback on articles from people who agree. Thanks to J Jonsson for that post; the negative feedback was starting to get a bit overwhelming here.

    –M. J. Young
18. 

    Joke Account said on September 17, 2011

    Maybe you rarely get negative feedback on this article because this article, taken on its own – sans appeals to “Oh, if you read stuff he wrote elsewhere, he’s not quite so bad!” and “Oh, he has players, so obviously he does something right somewhere!” – is something that almost nobody can put their support behind.

    I’m sure John Wick somehow manages to make his games fun for his players. I’m sure he’s a brilliant game designer. I’m sure he has more acceptable things to say in his other writings. But the stories told and suggestions given in this article here, removed from all of that, simply aren’t good. (And there’s nothing in the article itself to suggest that it shouldn’t be taken on its own – no external links to other articles or anything of that sort.)

    It’s easy to say that character death should always be possible and the game should have risk. And I agree completely – without the threat of character death, the game loses much of its tension. (There are plenty of other sources of tension, especially with a good story, but the threat of death is always a simple and effective one.)

    But there are different ways of threatening character death. If, at the beginning of each session, I were to roll a d20 for each character and cause any character who came up with a 1 to instantly die of a heart attack. that would certainly make the campaign more dangerous and threaten more death, but it would hardly be fair or fun for the players, because their own actions were not the cause of it. A player should always be able to look back at a death and say, “Yeah, that thing I did there was a mistake that lead to my death. I’ll be careful not to repeat that mistake in future.”

    So what mistakes will the players here regret? They can’t stop Jefferson Carter from finding out about their weaknesses because he is John Wick and reads their character sheet directly. They can’t stop him from wanting to destroy them because he has no human motivation that can be used or persuaded. So what does that leave? Well, that leaves negating his actual attempts at killing them. So what should each hero have done?

    Malice should have… not taken DNPC at character creation. Either that, or she should have… never been hit by a single attack.. Ever. Even – nay, especially – when in her civilian life and not apparently involved in combat. Because ever being hit by anything ever is a stun, and once that happens the player isn’t allowed to do anything and must just watch making no choices as the GM destroys everything.

    Paladin should have… inspected everything he ever touched for random mind-control poisons before touching it. You know, just in case a completely motiveless adversary he doesn’t even know exists and who uses different methods every time he acts might decide to slip him a mind-control poison just for fun. (You’ll notice that I don’t mention not taking Psy Lim at character creation as an option. That’s because this humiliation doesn’t actually depend on the Psy Lim in any way – any hero could be mind-controlled into killing civilians to exactly the same effect.)

    The Lucky characters should have… not taken Lucky at character creation. Either that, or they should have… never made use of Lucky in the entire campaign. (And no, don’t tell me that making the “Lucky” character jump alone into a stack of insurmountable foes is totally fair because they could conceivably have escaped by rolling nothing but critical successes while the opposition rolled nothing but critical failures or something like that; nobody could look back on that and not feel cheated. Especially since, you know, using something defined as “makes things turn out in your favour” to make things worse is just insane troll logic from the very start. And the idea that taking any self-defense ability is somehow selfish is itself ludicrous; maybe you should make everyone who took more than 3 CON or any form of defensive buff die because they weren’t protecting others with those points instead.)

    The Immune characters should have… never taken Immune at character creation. Either that, or they should have… fled to the hills the moment any sort of disease broke out, recognizing that their immunity to disease made them vulnerable to disease.

    Let’s dispense with the whole “John Wick has lots of players and is famous so you just don’t understand” defense, because I’m attacking the article and the advice contained therein, not John Wick himself. This article purports to give advice to GM’s on how to make their games more interesting, and any GM actually taking this advice seriously would not remain a GM for very long.
19. 

    Joke Account said on September 17, 2011

    *rarely get POSITIVE feedback
20. 

    M. J. Young said on September 18, 2011

    That’s a fair statement, J.A. I have two quibbles.

    The first is that when I said one rarely gets positive feedback, it was a statement in general, not specifically with reference to this article. I have published perhaps over two thousand Internet articles/web pages by now. I often get posts and e-mail from people who want to tell me why I am wrong, and even when I get letters which praise what I have done they usually turn to “but I have a problem with this part.” People don’t often say, “I agree with you 100%, thanks for writing, I look forward to reading more.” (In fact, most of the time when you see posts like that on public forums, they’re created by Spambots trying to embed links to commercial sites.)

    Applying that here only means that it’s quite natural that those who disagree would post and those who agree generally would not. We’ve had a few post in support of what Wick presents, but most of the comments have been opposed–which follows the basic rule that those who disagree will be more likely to comment than those who agree.

    The second quibble is that there have been a few positive posts in the mix from people whose reaction is that this is useful advice. I admit that I don’t run games the way John does, and probably would not enjoy playing in one; but there are a lot of kinds of games I probably would not enjoy at all that a lot of people do play and enjoy. Some referees probably can make this advice work really well for some players; all referees can learn something from it, even if it is only that a referee must at least maintain the illusion of fairness when he undermines his player’s characters or he will be called for it.

    Thanks again for your comment.

    –M. J. Young
21. 

    J Jonsson said on November 15, 2011

    Well Joke Account, it’s all in the social contract as far as i’m concerned. I’ve played in campaigns where death is nearly impossible, in campaigns where death comes to a character only if the player makes a mistake, and in campaigns where the GM has been trying to tpk the party, and i have enjoyed them all. As far as I am concerned, there isn’t a right playing style and a lot of wrong playing styles. They each have their own positive aspects.

    Mr Wicks style in particular has the positive aspect of presenting interesting and tragic character arcs. All of his examples would have been fun to play, with all the drama and heartbreak the characters would have gone through. Interesting stories in short, and not to dissimilar to actual comics i have read (we are speaking of superherogaming after all), especially from the gritty nineties.

    The one thing you should be careful about in these campaigns is to make sure the players understand that their characters will most likely be killed in terrible ways during the campaign. Thereby setting a social contract where everybody understands that the stories about to be told are not going to be happy and character mortality will be high. Then you play this interesting and tense campaign and enjoy the tragedy of your characters inevitable demise in much the same way you would enjoy reading an Alan Moore comic.

    Wick states that he was wellknown as the resident killerGM at that campus. I find it likely that everybody went into that campaign with full knowledge that it was a bit like feeding your character to a papershredder. In that type of campaign, that is one of the fun things.

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