Turtle Players

[kaomera]

OK, I'm starting to think that even if BW isn't the "perfect" system I was looking for at one point back in the 80s, the changes it's encouraging in my GMing style might actually smooth out some of the rough spots I've always experienced when gaming...

There's a huge, fairly pointless, and rather angsty rant that could go here, but I'll leave it off. Suffice it to say that I'm fairly "abnormal" both as a player and a GM.

I love the BITs concept... But...
I've seen lots of players 'turtle' with their Beliefs.
...I actually thought I'd come off as a bit of a wuss GM for bringing that up. But since Thor did, how do you get around this? And I mean player "turtling" in general. It has been my unfortunate experience that a lot of players (even good ones) just simply do not want to ever risk taking any real initiative in a game, and I really fear hearing “Well, what do you want me to take as Beliefs?” from a player.

I dunno... It seems to me (and I doubt this is all of it, in any case) that most players get conditioned not to want to really have their characters do anything unless an NPC tells them to. It seems like they feel like they're not supposed to do anything in the game until they get hired / ordered / whatever by an NPC; and I think a lot of this is a fear of disrupting the game / story by running off and doing something the GM hadn't planned for... But that's the whole point of bothering with players in the first place, right? Or am I missing the point?

In any case; I learned long ago to add the phrase “...unless the players do something to stop me.” to all of my plans as a GM. And I don't mean that in a bad way. The best players (IMHO) really are the ones who will sit up and say “Hey, how about we do this instead?” or the like.

[donbaloo]

I dunno... It seems to me (and I doubt this is all of it, in any case) that most players get conditioned not to want to really have their characters do anything unless an NPC tells them to. It seems like they feel like they're not supposed to do anything in the game until they get hired / ordered / whatever by an NPC; and I think a lot of this is a fear of disrupting the game / story by running off and doing something the GM hadn't planned for... But that's the whole point of bothering with players in the first place, right? Or am I missing the point?

This is a concern of mine as well. We haven't gotten into Beliefs yet but I know at least one of my players is really going to be challenged to break away from, "I don't know, what should I do? What do you mean, I'm creating the story?" I don't want to prematurely condemn them though. I've had the opportunity to dicuss in detail with two of them the role of BITs and they seem to be catching on. Now I'm moderately concerned though that I may go too far to the left and give them too much narrative power. Maybe that's not possible though. None the less, what is the best way to draw them out of their shell?

[luke]

Ok, first off, BW is structured to help draw out Turtles from the very beginning. With the BITs and Relationships (BITR should be our new acronym. heh.), players get a LOT of input into how they want the story to go or even how they want to participate in an existing story.

The reason why we encourage you to do group creation sessions? To defeat the turtles and soothe the players that like to act out and shit on everyone when they feel deprotagonized.

So the group creation is one way.

The other way, in play, is harder and requires finesse on the part of the GM and understanding on the part of the group.

Now, if you did a reasonable job with character burning, all players should have a stake in the action of the story. At some point, the turtles BITRs are going to come up and be questioned. Toss a conflict in front of them. Be patient. Everyone at the table should be patient and encouraging. NO ONE gets up and leaves. No one sighs uncomfortably. Most players, I think, turtle out of fear -- fear of fucking up or being smacked down or failing. None of those are options in BW. Sure, you can not get what you want, but it just means the story goes in another cool direction.

It's likely that the turtle will pass on their first conflict. They'll stick to their turtle shell. That's my experience at least. But I keep tossing conflicts their way. I keep putting them on the spot until they can't resist. Until they realize it's cool to participate -- we all make it cooler by our participation.

It's a tough process. Something that needs to be addressed at the table and away from it. Talk to your players. Ask them why they did certain things, why they didn't do others. (We had a severe case of turtling at my table the other night that I'm hellbenting on correcting!)

If the person really, really, really doesn't want to participate, you and the rest of the group need to discuss what to do then. Let them sit and watch and not include them? Or ask them to leave? That's up to the individual groups.

But in my experience, if given a stake, a little encouragement and a chance to shine, most turtles will come out of their shells.

is that helpful?
-L

[donbaloo]

is that helpful?

It is for me. Really it just boils down to the basics of what you guys keep telling us here day in and day out. If we as GM's, and this is key, really make an effort to help the turtle create strong BITRs (yeah, I like it) that lend themselves well to story progression and character conflict, and then foster and maintain story driven challenges aimed at those BITRs, then the player will eventually respond. Once they do, and see that the story shifts and progresses in direct relation to what they have done and hear the clink of artha being dropped in their coffers...the spark will flare.

[kaomera]

Ok, first off, BW is structured to help draw out Turtles from the very beginning. With the BITs and Relationships (BITR should be our new acronym. heh.), players get a LOT of input into how they want the story to go or even how they want to participate in an existing story.

The reason why we encourage you to do group creation sessions? To defeat the turtles and soothe the players that like to act out and shit on everyone when they feel deprotagonized.

So the group creation is one way.

This is a lot of why I got so psyched up for BW right from the very start. You can blame Thor Olavsrud's .sig for the rest of it. I'm currently playing with two groups; the alternate Tuesday group (where I want to run BW) are all good players. If I can just be very up-front with them about this aspect of BW (and don't hijack the game, myself), I'm hoping there won't be any problems. Actually, I've gone over this with some of these guys, about other games & other systems, and the reply I got was along the lines that I was running a good story and they where having fun, so they didn't want to rock the boat.

The second is a D&D game that I run on Saturdays at a local game shop. It's an “open” game, and it really has turned into “dysfunctional gamer theater”. I'm not sure how my change in GMing methodology is going to affect this game. If I try to run it in a BW mode, I think there would be a lot of confusion, if I don't I risk “backsliding”... I'll just focus on the first group, but I may bring this one up if something interesting and/or funny happens in the future.

The other way, in play, is harder and requires finesse on the part of the GM and understanding on the part of the group.

Now, if you did a reasonable job with character burning, all players should have a stake in the action of the story. At some point, the turtles BITRs are going to come up and be questioned. Toss a conflict in front of them. Be patient. Everyone at the table should be patient and encouraging. NO ONE gets up and leaves. No one sighs uncomfortably. Most players, I think, turtle out of fear -- fear of fucking up or being smacked down or failing. None of those are options in BW. Sure, you can not get what you want, but it just means the story goes in another cool direction.

It's likely that the turtle will pass on their first conflict. They'll stick to their turtle shell. That's my experience at least. But I keep tossing conflicts their way. I keep putting them on the spot until they can't resist. Until they realize it's cool to participate -- we all make it cooler by our participation.

It's a tough process. Something that needs to be addressed at the table and away from it. Talk to your players. Ask them why they did certain things, why they didn't do others. (We had a severe case of turtling at my table the other night that I'm hellbenting on correcting!)

If the person really, really, really doesn't want to participate, you and the rest of the group need to discuss what to do then. Let them sit and watch and not include them? Or ask them to leave? That's up to the individual groups.

But in my experience, if given a stake, a little encouragement and a chance to shine, most turtles will come out of their shells.

Cool, I'm just fidgety... I should see some or all of my (prospective) players at a BBQ I will be attending on Saturday. I will quiz them on what they think of my ideas so far. I went with the Black Company idea because it's something I know several of them are (or at least should be) interested in. I think people may not want to worry too much about this yet, because we have what may be a fairly long WHFRPG2 campaign scheduled to run before I can get this in.

I'm actually kind of interested in seeing how much I could make a campaign a shared effort with my players... I may try and get together a small game in the meantime on another night...

is that helpful?

Yes. It all is. :)

[luke]

The second is a D&D game that I run on Saturdays at a local game shop. It's an “open” game, and it really has turned into “dysfunctional gamer theater”. I'm not sure how my change in GMing methodology is going to affect this game. If I try to run it in a BW mode, I think there would be a lot of confusion, if I don't I risk “backsliding”... I'll just focus on the first group, but I may bring this one up if something interesting and/or funny happens in the future.

this cracked me up. and, call me a sadist, but I think you've got a shot to run BW with these folks. Your other groups seems comfortable with WHFRPG and DnD. You don't want to force change on a group. You want to introduce BW as something new, fresh and capable of addressing issues at the table.

Now this other group... they sound ripe for it! But open games are hard. Let me know if you're interested in going this route. We can start another thread in the Fevered Circle and talk about it.

-L

[kaomera]

Aaaargh!!! :evil: :evil: :evil:

I don't think I can finish burning up Toad. Somehow, I have too much concept worked out for him. I'm used to systems where the more you have for a concept, the better... Even random systems work better with a fully fleshed-out background...

I'm not sure this is really a bad thing, considering that you'd be working out background (and not just limited to the character) during burning... But I think I'm going to have to work kind of backwards burning characters... Instincts seem to be where I'm getting stuck, because of their peculiar place in the game mechanics. So, if I work up some good instincts I should be able to build everything around that. It would probably require a bit more monkeying with LPs to get appropriate skills, Traits, etc...

I'll have to see if I can get this to work. Trying to fit everything to an existing concept, however, just doesn't seem to work with Character Burner. I think it might work better with Monster Burner, but I've only gone over that once.

[luke]

Aaaargh!!! :evil: :evil: :evil:



get thee to the Wheel of Life. Post your notes, character concept, game concept, LPs and your roughs for everything else. We shall brainstorm!

-L

[kaomera]

this cracked me up. and, call me a sadist, but I think you've got a shot to run BW with these folks. Your other groups seems comfortable with WHFRPG and DnD. You don't want to force change on a group. You want to introduce BW as something new, fresh and capable of addressing issues at the table.

The Tuesday group rotates games & GMs; I had already suggested that I run the Black Company game before I got BW, but hadn't really decided on a system. (And at least half of them simply will not play d20 "on principal" :roll: )

Now this other group... they sound ripe for it! But open games are hard. Let me know if you're interested in going this route. We can start another thread in the Fevered Circle and talk about it.

OK: "You're a sadist." :twisted: And I'm some kind of masochist, or something... One of the players is illiterate, at least one is a complete dick who simply will not play anything but D&D (and he's one of my friends... :P ), and one is a super-hyper junior high-schooler who tends to forget his meds and is no longer allowed to touch any gaming books or his own character sheet (fortunately, I have permission to kick him out of the group if he makes himself sick by eating bits of plastic again). And those last two want to kill each other, irl as well as in-game. The other five or eight players are OK.

Sweet, merciless Eris, I wish I was making that up. But I still maintain that it is possible to run a good game of D&D, because I'm braindamaged or something...

On the good side, I've got my fiend Alex interested in the game, and if we can get Alliance to actually, y'know, distribute it to my FNLQSLCGS, he's gonna get a copy. Unfortunately he dropped out of the D&D game because his finance's days off changed. The right choice on sooooo many levels...

[Piikki]

fortunately, I have permission to kick him out of the group if he makes himself sick by eating bits of plastic again

I hope this was somekind of joke. I've met many kinds of players, but that would be new.

[yeloson]

Hi,

Often you can get a lot when you explain directly to the player what ISN'T going to happen, and why.

A perfect example was a year ago, introducing a new player to Riddle of Steel, and he played his character super paranoid about everything- including NPCs whom he supposedly had known for years... At one point, I just stopped the game and said, "Look, your girlfriend IS NOT going to get kidnapped. It's just not an interesting story thing to go with. You can calm down and focus on other things." And, he explained how he was so used to the "Dungeonmaster from the D&D cartoon" style of GM, where if you turn your head, poof! He's gone! (or your girlfriend, or your sword, or look, you opened the closet and Tiamat jumped out...).

You don't have to give away everything that's going on in terms of secrets and conspiracies, but you can just get the players to accept that you're not going to poison their food rations while everyone is sleeping- because it's NOT interesting to have a bunch of dead PCs without some serious drama. And the key is to always follow that up. Once turtles learn to trust, they bug out and start actually having fun...

Chris

[Thor Olavsrud]

I'm with abzu. I'll add:

The only really effective way to deal with player turtling is communication. Talk to your players about what you want out of a game. Ask them to talk to you about the same. Be up front with issues.

Gaming is a cooperative activity. It requires every participant to come together with the willingness to engage in the fun, and support everyone else's fun!

Often, our first -- and dysfunctional -- instinct is to deal with high level problems (I'm talking about social issues between players and clashing creative agendas, not character level problems) in play.

"If he keeps doing THAT, I'm going to keep doing this sort of thing to him until he sees the error of his ways!"

This can work as a gentle nudge (in the form abzu describes above), but is only really effective if the problem has already been addressed person to person and there's a bit of backsliding in play. To really tackle problems like this, you have to be upfront with the players about what you see as the problems (and be prepared, because you'll likely get some criticism yourself. Don't dismiss it!) And you have to invite them to talk about it.

The next step is to hold a group character creation session. There is really no substitute for this! And I don't mean you all sit down in the same room, don't talk to each other, and calculate the scores. That won't help at all.

Instead, you, as the GM, need to sit them down and explain your ideas for a game. Now, here's the difficult part for GMs, you should explain that during this discussion, you are not a GM, but just another player with a stake in the game. Open the floor to their ideas. If they don't like yours, let them offer alternatives. Let them make alterations to your idea. Talk this out until everyone is onboard and excited about the game. I mean it! If one person is forced to go along and is not excited by the idea, I can GUARANTEE you that he will be a problem in play.

If one or two people just can't be brought on board, and no one is interested in playing their ideas, then you should ask them to sit the game out. They aren't going to have fun during the game anyway, and it is quite likely that they will spoil everyone else's fun in the course of it.

During this whole conversation, your job is to act as a moderator and participant. You need to keep the idea creation flowing. The best way to do that is to come to the table with several ideas:

"I'm interested in doing a Lhankmar sort of thing where we try to get revenge on the Thieves' Guild!"

"I'm interested in doing where our non-noble city characters get tangled up in an aristocrat's plot to undermine a treaty. I'm seeing lots of assassination attempts and back-alley brawls!"

"I'm interested in doing a a campaign where we're all dwarves, seeking out the lost High King's Hall!"

Once you've had your brainstorming session and everyone is excited and onboard, talk character concepts. Let everyone define their roles. Encourage the players to make suggestions for each other. Again, you want to moderate. Feel free to take a stand with concepts that don't fit well with the game idea, but I think you'll find the other players will do that for you with a bit of encouragement.

Then go ahead and have everyone write up their characters, but don't let them take too long. You don't want to run out of time, because there's still something important to do. The numbers can be tweaked later if necessary.

The final step is to talk BITs + R, if the players have gotten that done. I suggest talking about the Beliefs and Instincts openly and at the table. Yeah, that means everyone knows what they are. No biggie. Here's where you're really going to wear your GM's hat. Do not let them walk out of the session with BITs that will not drive them into the conflict you've jointly created. Make sure their Beliefs can be challenged, as I've described in other threads. Let other players make suggestions and comments.

If you go through this process and really open it up to the players, it is very unlikely you'll see much turtling. Why? Because they have serious stakes in this game. They came up with the ideas. They're excited about them. Their characters are DESIGNED to dive into this game. They'll be ready.

[luke]

Hi,

Often you can get a lot when you explain directly to the player what ISN'T going to happen, and why. ..
<snip>


i think these are excellent points.

[Fourth Horseman]

Turtle . . . turtle.

[luke]

Turtle . . . turtle.

This is also an excellent point.
:D

[Kublai]

That D+D group sounds like it is RIPE for Poisonous Ambition! There's no better way to introduce BW than a great one-shot like that!

Turtle! Turtle!
http://bedoper.com/reptilian/graphics_graveyard/masterofdisguise.jpg