Gaming Outpost Discussions

1. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   I was wondering about something. What kind of rights to players have against what the referee says? Suppose the referee says something happened that the player knows is completely impossible under any laws of physics or possibility? Is the referee always right, period end of discussion, or do players have the right to contest things that can't possibly make sense? Suppose the referee says that it would take you 20 minutes to drive from Los Angeles California to Miami Florida. Does the player have the right to contest that as impossible and ask for an explanation, or is it The Referee Is Always Right? Just wondering.

   Sun Jul 27 2008 2:03 pm #
2. 

   Kurt W.
   Member

   Who says that it's impossible?

   The refree can always blame something on this near-impossible event. Divine intervention is just one example.

   Sun Jul 27 2008 4:16 pm #
3. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   Well, maybe that was a bad example, but it was the only one I could think of at that time.

   Sun Jul 27 2008 6:35 pm #
4. 

   M. J. Young
   Moderator

   I believe that the tradition in role playing is that players vote with their feet.

   I have an obligation as referee to create a game environment that is fun for you. If you aren't having fun, you won't play--and it would be foolish of me to expect you to play if I don't make it fun.

   There is the problem of the geek fallacy, that because we are friends we have to enjoy playing together, and if we don't then we're doing something wrong so we should stop thinking we don't enjoy it and just pretend we do. There's not much I can say to that, but that I've seen people quit games because they didn't enjoy them, and just because you're not enjoying it doesn't mean it's your fault.

   Part of creating an environment that you will find fun has to do with whether or not I (to borrow a phrase used by John Wick) "snap your disbelief suspenders". You have some obligation as a player to accept a certain amount of the fantasy as plausible; I have an obligation as a referee to keep the implausibility within the bounds of what you can accept.

   Now, as Kurt says, it's entirely possible that I will throw something at you which is "impossible" given your expectations of the scenario. This might be because your expectations are wrong. You thought you were on earth; you thought that it was what, 2743.6 miles from Los Angeles to Miami, and that it should take you approximately 39 hours 22 mins, because that's what Yahoo!Maps tells you. My game character currently being run on the board started his verser career in what appeared to be New York City, but was actually a model of New York City, a "nostalgia apartments" setup a thousand years in the future. Everything in it was closer together, and there were a lot of little things that didn't fit--like there were cars in every parking space on every street, but none driving on them. So if it takes you only twenty minutes to make the trip from LA to Miami, maybe the reason is that in this world LA is actually only about fifteen miles from Miami.

   Or maybe the vehicle you thought was a car is actually a hyperspace transport vehicle, and once it knew you were trying to get to Miami it jumped you to the gate just outside town.

   So the better response when your mind says, "That's impossible" is "What would have to be true about this world for that to be possible? What explanations do I have for this, and which fit the facts as I know them already?"

   Your present world is actually a good example of this, but you don't know it yet.

   --M. J. Young

   Mon Jul 28 2008 2:19 am #
5. 

   Tadeusz
   Member

   What MJ is talking about is one of my favorite tricks as a GM. It rewards the player who is thinking and paying attention. Its usually something small, and in the background that serves as a clue to the deeper reality.

   Stage dressing upon arrival is one variation of this trick. They used it in the time travel show 'Seven Days' which has the hero tripping back...you know. He arrives at a semi-random location, and after one particularly bad trip, he sees a Civil War battle...and he panics a bit, and draws the logical conclusion that his time machine has malfed and flung him back way further than its supposed to...until he finds out that they're reenactors.

   Michael Di Vars really needs to be dropped into a battle reenactment between one group he recognizes as clearly evil and another group. By the time he finishes hacking apart say the tenth actor, he may realize from the shouts and cries from the people he's 'helping' that he's made a mistake. That would be cruel to do to a player, and I wouldn't, at least without some warning (perhaps in the line of those small background details).

   Mon Jul 28 2008 6:07 am #
6. 

   Tadeusz
   Member

   And sometimes the ref does mess up, but a player trying to reason out the incongruity gives a good referee the note and the time to come up with an explanation (or to With Red Face Admit the Mistake which I've done before). MJ has pointed out that he realized one of my worlds had totally off physics when he saw something...I went with his explanation there instead of going with the generally not as good option of saying "Oops". In other words, Eric missed one of Newton's Laws, but thanks to a thinking player, I had an explanation handed to me.

   Mon Jul 28 2008 6:14 am #

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