A pregnant player once told me that I, as a Player, was threatening the health and life of their unborn child, because of the stress my Character was putting on hers. It never occurred to her that the problem was not my Character’s actions, but the fact that she was so obsessed with game, it was affecting her real life health, and therefore, the health of the child she was carrying.

Another time, I played in a tabletop game that went horribly bad. I intended the following day to approach the Storyteller and try to broach the issue, but before I could, my wife had a miscarriage and resultant hospital stay. The next time I spoke with the Storyteller, he berated me over what a terrible friend I was for not telling him the truth of what I thought about his game. I explained I was dealing with the miscarriage of a child, and he really didn’t care. I offended him by lying through my silence, and that was all he cared about. Needless to say, that was the last I spoke with him. I cut my loss. None of us need friends who put D&D over the death of a baby.

It can be so easy to take our character’s feelings, especially those that are negative, and apply them to ourselves and our Out Of Character feelings about game. We also easily obsess about the game and our characters’ failures or successes, goals and interactions. Fortunately, there are a few things we can do to stay grounded.

Choose your battles: It’s just a game. We pretend to be fantasy creatures that don’t exist. It’s really kind of a childish hobby of make-believe, and, unless a Player is being threatening to you and yours on an OOC level, game just isn’t worth fighting over. Let the Wookie win. Move on. None of this is really all that important in the grande scheme of life. It’s just a game and should be fun, not frustrating and stressful.

Say you’re sorry: It really doesn’t hurt. There’s a big misconception that admitting you’re wrong or saying you’re sorry makes you look weak or makes people stop respecting you. The opposite is true, ESPECIALLY in gaming, where STs and Players usually refuse to do either just based on stubbornness. If you say you’re sorry, or admit you’re wrong, people will like and respect you, and whatever conflict you’re involved in will usually dissipate. Fighting is a headache, and fighting over game is a waste of energy. Say you’re sorry. Move on. None of this is important enough to fight over. It’s just a game, and should be fun, not frustrating and stressful.

Consider things, and acknowledge you may just see things differently: People can agree to disagree. Do it from time to time, it really is okay! Instead of arguing with those who have different opinions than yours, tell them you will consider what they are saying going forward. Usually, that’s all they really want anyway – to feel heard and listened to. If that’s not enough, instead of telling those who wish to fight with you that they are wrong, tell them that you just see things differently. You are saying you disagree, but in a neutral, nonaggressive way that avoids dragging forward the conflict. It’s just a game, and should be fun, not frustrating and stressful.

Remain in perspective: It’s just a game, and should be fun, not frustrating and stressful. We have careers. We have families. We have house payments or rent. We have bills and responsibilities. We have difficulties and troubles in our real life that are important and weigh heavily on us. Gaming is just a hobby, something we do for fun to relax and forget those other things. When it stops being a hobby and stops being fun, don’t look for blame or try to win the conflict. Keep it in perspective, and let go of the obsession, forget the stubbornness, and just man up and do what you need to return it to fun.

It’s not worth it if it’s not fun, and it should never hurt.

We need to stop hating and segregating, and start acting like a unified community, before the entire hobby slips away. Just because you are a member of the Camarilla doesn’t mean you won’t like a TGN game. Just because you play in TGN doesn’t mean you’ll hate OWbN vampire games. There is bullshit and backstabbing in any organization, and you can choose to keep your head clear of the slinging mud. Playing a character doesn’t require you to play politics.

Playing a good character is, after all, the most important part. Playing a character you love can make even a crappy game enjoyable. A great character transcends specific games. A good character is a good character, and genre is irrelevant. There are very few characters (though I personally believe there are none) that only work in a single genre. The very same well developed character history can be applied to a werewolf, vampire, mage, barbarian, thief or any other archetype/class/creature you might play, with just a little tweaking.

Don’t dismiss a vampire game because you don’t like vampires. Play a good character in any game. Support and encourage other games and their players and storytellers who are in your area. Work with them to coordinate schedules for playing different nights and announce one another’s games during each game wrap. Stop being elitists.

Play.

Play everywhere, often, and don’t let our hobby cannibalize what remains of itself.

These are the Unpermissables. Some would argue they make good story. I would argue Storytellers do not always know everything going on in their players’ lives, and these things are far too sensitive to just push into play without an OOC discussion first.

A great example happened a few years ago to my wife. We attended a major event game, at the end of which a universal affect occurred, automatically making every female character who attended pregnant. My wife, in an attempt to be genial, asked, “What if I’d prefer my character not be pregnant?” The Storyteller responded, “Talk to your ST, they can have it worked out so the baby is injured and killed while in the womb during a battle, or they could run a miscarriage for you.”

What this ST didn’t know, was that my wife and I had had a miscarriage in real life just a month before. And it had been our third. She asked if she could opt out of the pregnancy because she couldn’t emotionally handle roleplaying being pregnant just then, and the solution of roleplaying a miscarriage or baby death was, inadvertently, even more insensitive to her.

The theory here is not that you cannot run the Unpermissibles as plots for your players. I would actually tend to agree that with the right story, the right characters and the right players, these scenarios could each foster a good story. All three of those factors must be in place, however. And while STs are pretty good judges of stories and characters, they just often don’t know their players as well as they might like or think.

For our staff, to run an Unpermissible requires a few safeguards. The first, is the story needs to have reached the Unpermissible through non-railroaded, natural story progression. The second, is the character must be one that is well fleshed out and capable of dealing with the Unpermissible (even if it is dealing with it badly). The final safeguard, however, is the most important.

There must be a short, candid discussion between the Storytellers and the Player (yes, more than one ST – - ALWAYS have a second ST who is NOT running the scene present for the safety and comfort of the ST staff and the Player). This discussion is completely out of character, BEFORE the Unpermissible occurs. The conversation begins by clearly notifying the player that the story has reached a point at which the Unpermissible is about to occur, specifically and honestly telling them in no uncertain terms what the Unpermissible is. Then, we ask for permission from the Player to run it, making sure it is quite clear that they are allowed to say, “no,” and that the STs will respect that, unquestioningly, without argument, repercussion or justification. And finally, if they say, “yes,” we then make sure they understand that the scene will only be as graphic and detailed as THEY are comfortable with it being. If they want the scene to just be narrated as vague as, “Then the bad guy rapes you. It’s very violent and horrific. You wake up two days later in the hospital,” then that’s what they get. If they want more details through narration, we accommodate. If they want the scene actually run full on, we do that until the Storytellers’ are no longer comfortable, or the scene is over.

We have to remember to protect our players, and keeping the Unpermissibles in check is a must if Players and STs are to truly trust one another. Good story is not always good times.

Before it comes up, let’s pause a moment to say that Player versus Player is a completely separate debate. Some players really enjoy PvP, some games are really all about that (Old WoD Vampire: the Masquerade is a good example). Those times are not in question. This is about someone simply choosing to place some singular thing about their character above the good of the game.

Let’s say your character has a secret thing way in his past, when he was just a child, in which his mother was raped and killed by a Scottsman. At the young age of 10, your character vowed that forever, he would kill every Scottsman he met. Maybe otherwise, your adventurer is actually chaotic good (to use a D&D adage). It’s not a thing that’s come up in game for the six months you’ve played the character, but tonight, a new Player joined the gaming group.

He made a Scottsman.

Naturally, everyone role-plays for about an hour, and your character just sort of shuns him a bit. The Storyteller notes that at this point, your party stops and camps for the night. Now, the Scottsman is asleep, so you pull your ST aside, and you explain to him that you are now slitting the new guy’s throat while he sleeps.

“I’m just playing my character,” you explain.

Guess what else? You’re a dick. That new guy now hates you, the other players are rolling their eyes at you when you’re not looking and the Storytelling has the rather uncomfortable misfortune of having to tell the brand new Player that, one hour after performing the tedious task of building his character, it’s dead. Even worse, the new guy probably won’t come back. It’s just bad for game, and it’s not fun.

In an instance like this, maybe you could pause the game a moment and just work it out Out Of Character with the new guy. Explain to him your character’s predicament, and see if he can work with you to find some reason to make him an exception to your rule. Your Storyteller can help, as well. It could be as simple as having the Scottsman mention  something in conversation that buys him a day or two to prove his value. In that time, maybe your character can decide all Scottsman must die except for this one, because this one happened to have known an old NPC friend of yours who vouches for him, or some such thing. Character growth is good role-play, and maybe this new arrival could spurn growth instead of just falling victim to stagnant character histories.

Having a deep, rich character with a lush background and subtle behavioral patterns is important. But at the end of the night, the most important thing is having a fun game. As players, we must remember that we share with the Storytellers the responsibility of making the game enjoyable for everyone. It’s a team effort, whether our egos like to think of it that way or not, and sometimes that means working a little harder to make the game work for everyone.

We are never just playing our characters.

It’s hard to say, “no” to people. It’s made even more complicated when a Storyteller worries about losing players because they were told they couldn’t have something they wanted. How do you say “no” and keep your attendance growing? How do you say “no” and keep your game happy?

The truth is, experienced Storytellers will all tell you, saying “no” is NOT a bad thing, and it doesn’t drive good players away. In fact, the opposite is true. It attracts good players, and it makes them like your game and respect you more.

Think about any time you’ve ever travelled to another game in a LARP, or played in a different MUSH or with a different tabletop group of players. Never will you hear from a good player, “Thank God I play here, where they allow all of my power-gamed wonky stuff!”

Now think, have you ever heard a Player say, “I can’t do anything about that character, his Storyteller gives him whatever he wants, so he’s unstoppable.”

I bet you have.

Once, I travelled to a LARP event game, and on the way home, one of my players told me a story. He said that while we were at the event, someone saw something enter play and said to him, “I wish my ST’s allowed that!” My Player then immediately told the other Player, “No you don’t. Remember, if you can have it, so can the bad guys, and the more crazy all these toys get, the more ridiculous the game gets, because everybody is always trying to push the limits and have something more powerful than everyone else. Eventually, there’s no limit, and the game is just a cartoon.” The other player considered this for a moment, and then agreed with him.

And then, my Player thanked me.

It’s testimony that Players are more likely to respect a Storyteller who is willing to tell them “no” when they ask for inappropriate things. They learn they can’t walk all over you, and that the game is bigger than just their own enjoyment. There are others around them playing, and the Storytellers are looking out for all of them.

The key to saying “no” is doing it in a way that doesn’t disrespect the Player making the request, and that doesn’t compromise any precedents the Storytelling staff has set. Remember these helpful suggestions…

Listen to the Player: Hear his entire pitch, start to finish, even if the first words out of his mouth tell you the answer is “no.” It’s important the Player feels listened to, and given the chance to explain his request.

Consider the Past: If you just let another Player have the exact same thing, you need to have a pretty good justification for telling the next guy “no.” Certainly, as a Storyteller, you don’t HAVE to justify your decisions. But if you want to keep your players trusting and respecting you, you should try. Keep your rulings consistent, and if you have multiple Storytellers on your staff, always discuss the pitch with your full staff before answering, so no one is uninformed and the Player cannot get a different answer from the rest of your staff.

Be Nice: Don’t just fold your arms over your chest and say, “No.” Consider your body language and your tone of voice. Tell your player, “I’m sorry, but that request is not something we can do at this time.”

Explain Your Answer: You don’t have to reveal to your Player the secret inner-workings of the game to convey why you are saying “no.” A simple answer with some examples or a few justifying facts is really enough. Players just need to know you aren’t knee-jerking your response. They want to know you really thought about it, and they like to know why they cannot have what they are asking for. If you give them good reasons, they will be disappointed, not angry. They are also less likely to bother you for the same thing again in a few weeks.

If you try all of these tactics, and the Player still stomps his feet and quits the game, perhaps they weren’t a good Player to begin with. Game is about community, fun, good story and dozens of other things.

If they are only playing your game so they can get that one special thing they are asking you for, then maybe your game is better off without them.

There’s a saying that a few LARPers I know always recite, “We pay five bucks to pretend to be nine foot tall fuzzy werewolves at a warehouse every other Friday night. The least we could do is do it like adults.”

The relationship between Storytellers and Players sometimes creates a caste system. A lot of Storytellers think of themselves as parents to their children (the Players). I think it’s more like a teacher student relationship, as there’s more give and take and more respect between the two. Part of a Storyteller’s job is to teach new Players the game, and Players should always be able to come to their Storyteller with problems when they do not understand something, or when they are being mistreated by other people at the game.

Unfortunately, its easy, even in the student/teacher model, for the teacher to be condescending or the student to rebel. We have to respect the model, the Storyteller is the leader, the Player is the bulk of the team they guide. Neither can exist without the other. Both make the game.

When a Storyteller talks down to a Player, he is making the Player have less fun. When a Player disrespects a Storyteller, he’s making the Storyteller have less fun. This might surprise some, but it’s true: Storyteller’s are trying to have fun, too.

If one of these two parts is treating the other like a douche bag, they are going to avoid the other. The Storyteller won’t want to run plot for the jerk Player, and the Player won’t want to ask for any scenes to be run by the jerk Storyteller. When this happens, the game begins to stop working, and everyone’s fun begins to break down. Worse still, it begins to bleed and influence other Players and other Storytellers, festering and spreading like a virus until it rips the game apart and an exodus of Players or Storytellers occurs.

The solution is Players have to begin to realize that Storytellers do not have to run game. They’d probably rather be playing in most cases. They are doing their best to have fun, and they deserve to be treated with some respect. Players need to get over their anger and attitudes and treat Storytellers like people, like friends.

The solution is Storytellers have to begin to realize that Players are not children. Their interaction and inclusion in the imaginary game world is completely contingent on Storytellers’ involvement. Storytellers have to treat Players more like students and peers, protecting them from the bullshit coming from other games in your organization, or other players being jerks or other Storytellers with issues. Storytellers need to get over their ego and condescension and treat Players like people, like friends.

The solution is Players need to voice their concerns like level-headed adults, and if things do not change or cannot change, take steps to become Storytellers themselves and fix the issue, or find a different game to play in. The solution is Storytellers need to address their players with respectful authority, and if things do not change or cannot change, take steps to remove the disruptive Player from their game.

The dissension ruins the game for everyone, not just those involved. If we all treat each other better, the game wins.

Let’s pretend to be werewolves like adults.

One of the great challenges of running a MUSH or LARP versus a tabletop RPG, is that instead of running a single meta-plot for a small party of adventurers within a universe, Storytellers are instead running the entire universe with many stories and many Player Characters who never have to meet but must play in the same narrative space.

Sometimes, this can create a disparaging contradiction in how the meat of a LARP or MUSH game is perceived. Storytellers often look at the rumors and influence and NPC contacts they are pushing into the game and feel like the universe is flooded with plot and story. Perceptive, active players often feel like they are inundated with so much plot and story that they get frustrated because there seems to be too much. Other players may feel like they sit around all night with nothing to do, and that nothing ever happens. How can both of these be true at once?

This dilemma is a shared responsibility. In universe-style storytelling of LARPs and MUSHs, the only sure-fire way to get a story in play and pursued by Players is to railroad it, and that’s never a satisfying way to handle plot for anyone involved. Since that’s not the route to go, Players tend to only be as busy as they choose to be, based on their actions and involvement.

It’s very easy as a Storyteller to simply get frustrated with the complaint that there is nothing to do, especially when you are working so hard to fill your universe with things to do. If players feel there is nothing to do, help to educate them on how to better involve themselves in scenes or with people that might lead to plot connections. There’s nothing wrong with expressing to a Player that there are many stories their character might want to be a part of, and helping to gently direct them towards sources of those plot hooks. Often it’s as simple as the Player just not interacting with the right group of characters, not hanging out in the right locations or needing to purchase a contact or influence type stat on their sheet they don’t realize they need to be connected. They may just be inadvertently isolating themselves from plot.

On the other side of the coin, it’s also frustrating as a Storyteller to be told you’re giving players too much to do, and it’s easy to feel as if the story has to move on even if players aren’t resolving the plots you already have in play. If a Player expresses their concern of too much plot, discuss with them what plots they are pursuing, find out why they are pursuing all of them and then examine the situation surrounding this Player’s plot management choices. Is the Player struggling with a reason to not delegate plots to other players that the Storytellers could help with? Is there something the Player is doing that is attracting the plots to them and pulling them from others? Are the Storytellers accidentally favoring the Player with more than their share? Is the Player a “plot hog” and keeping them all to himself?

The contradicting reviews of your game’s plot contents is really only resolved by working together with the makers of the complaints and your Storytelling Staff to ensure all sides of the problem are looked at and addressed.

Hate is a two way street. Six ways, really, in the world of role playing. My character hates your character. As a Player, I hate you as a Player. Your character hates mine. You as a Player hate me. As a Player, I hate your character. You as a Player hate my character…

Yeesh… No wonder people get all confused.

Sometimes we spend so much time getting into character, the line between us and our other us begins to gray. While this is an issue sometimes in table topping, it’s really primarily a LARP and MUSH problem. This is probably because those two formats are the most immersive, and, generally speaking, tabletop games tend to be made up of people who are friends outside of their weekly game, a real life interaction and friendship LARP’s and MUSH’s do not normally share.

At a LARP, it’s not unusual to spend hours at a time never dropping out of character. This often leaves us not just acting, but thinking and feeling what our character thinks and feels, much like method acting. It makes any action or words against your character seem to be personal, it can seem to be an attack against you, and not the person you’re pretending to be.

With online gaming, there’s often a “zone” we sync into as we play, and- particularly with MUSH- the medium is so easy to become hyper-focused and lost in. Sure, we have a keyboard in front of us next to our Dorito’s and Mountain Dew, but writing is an incredibly fluid, personal thing. With descriptive text, it’s important to be fully tapped into your character’s head so that it can be conveyed through words and descriptions of subtle nuance, and in that mindset, even a playful OOC message can feel like an attack.

It doesn’t help that rich characters have secrets and histories not everyone understands or knows. What seems like a character behaving one way might really mean him reacting to something completely different. Complicate it further by considering another player’s interpretation of your character’s actions have no context in these regards, making it just feel like they are judging you as a Player. “You’re playing your character wrong, a werewolf would never react like that!” “MY werewolf reacts like that, because of this secret thing in my history I can’t tell you!” Suddenly, you’re on the defensive feeling attacked, they feel like you’re mad at them, and the whole thing is out of proportion. This sort of thing can be worse on a MUSH, where there is no vocal inflection. Text just doesn’t convey tone, and no tone usually means no tolerance for things that could even remotely be read as offensive.

Games can be torn apart by these sorts of things. MUSH’s can become very unfriendly places when groups of players shun or ignore other characters because of IC/OOC grudge crossovers and actions. LARP’s become hostile environments, and might even become physically threatening if the IC/OOC dislike line blurring is left unchecked.

We have to be careful about judging Players for what their characters do. We don’t know everything in their history, or everything the Storytelling staffs might have run for them. We also don’t always know the Players very well. They may just be REALLY great actors or writers. Players are not their characters. Characters make decisions that are not what the player might decide, decisions we may not like. But that’s not who they are when they go home or log out (for better or worse).

Some of the biggest asshole characters I’ve met were incredibly nice Players in real life. I’ve also met a few assholes who played incredibly nice characters, too. We tend to err on the side of the former, but the reality is that the latter occurs just as often (some might argue more). But in the end, it’s just a game, and for it to be fun, there HAS to be protagonist and antagonist characters. There does not have to be antagonist players.

It’s strange how easy it is to play make-believe, pretending to be characters we aren’t. Wouldn’t it would be wonderful if we could just pretend to be Players that get along?

Every game has one. The Player motivated by his experience points, and seemingly by little else. As Storytellers, how do you deal with a Player who begins each session essentially doing an audit on his XP history? How do you deal with a Player who’s In Character decisions are all made based on what will benefit his sheet most?

It’s a difficult balance. For some players, their sheet development is where their fun lies. They enjoy the challenge of trying to get as much bang for as few XP as they can. We forget, even for the average player, sheet mechanics is an important element of the fun. But what happens when it is the primary drive?

As an ST, your job (and I hope goal) is to tell a good story in which all your Players have fun. This means, you have to be okay with the fact that letting your XP Whore Player achieve a little power-gamey goodness is something you’ll have to do for that Player to have fun. You also have to be okay with drawing the line and not let it get unbalancing, or seem unfair to other conservative players. Choose your battles, and your “no’s.”

When the XP Whore begins making a regular occurrence out of monopolizing STs before each game so they can audit their XP, spend a few games noting how much time they do so. Then, take them aside and point out just how much time each game they spend, and explain that that kind of time is unfair to the other players who may have issues or scenes they need taken care of also. Make it clear that you understand their concern, and involve them in a conversation about what you can do to facilitate keeping their XP count synced with your records (Maybe an email form he could send you with his downtime before each game detailing his count? Perhaps you print an XP History with his sheet each game?).

If the XPW is letting his sheet dictate his IC actions, then perhaps the ST’s can let that have repercussions that might teach him a lesson. Perhaps the plot could involve decisions that must be role-played out with character instead of simply using a game mechanic. If it’s more serious, then present an opportunity for them to gain new powers on their sheet and have it be a trick, or perhaps have it cost them something else important to them in exchange.

Remember, not all “no” answers are Out Of Character, and if you run the right scenario, maybe it’s the XPW who will say, “no” instead of your ST staff!