Real-world impacts on in-game GM decisions

[Space Coyote]

I'm new to gamemastering, so I welcome the feedback of all the veterans on The Pit. Here goes:

I ran my (nearly) first adventure for some friends this winter, as an open-ended one-shot that could be continued if there was interest. I don't think I was great at it, but everyone enjoyed themselves for the most part, so I'm not UN-happy with how it all went. But one thing still nags at me, now that I'm planning the continuation.

The PCs were on Tatooine moving crates of stolen goods to their contact's freighter for transport off-world. One of them had the idea of finding a local fence to set up a transaction for the goods, but really just wanted to find a decoy for anyone following them, so the PCs could escape with the merchandise. It was a good idea: player-initiated, consistant with the character, and covered the PCs butts, not to mention full of story possibilities for me. However, I had never planned on there being any pursuit at that time. I had him roll his Streetwise to find an underworld contact, which most can imagine would be fairly easy in Mos Eisley, and though I don't remember the number now, it was probably good enough for a moderate difficulty. So... I told him he checked around and couldn't find anyone. That's right--I squashed his free will just because I didn't want him to succeed. And I'm pretty sure he could tell, and he wasn't happy.

But here's the thing: Some of the players could not stay past midnight, it was already 11:30, and I still had two and a half more scenes to run through to get to the stopping point and there was no "next time" to finish the adventure.

My instinct was to let him find the contact and set up the decoy, and then invent the pursuers to get fooled by it so he could see his idea work, maybe even earn a new enemy in the process. But there just wasn't time for it. If I had it to do over again, I would quickly have him meet the contact, but then have a stormtrooper/militia patrol pass by and arrest or scare away the contact and leave the PC without enough time to find someone else, meanwhile rolling a few dice of my own so it would look like bad luck.

The end result was not ideal, but the player did get to distinguish himself in one of the final scenes, so everyone left pleased and willing to play again. All in all, a successful evening.

Now, what do you think? Did I handle it alright? Should I have just levelled with the guy at the moment, told him that no one was following them and we had to hurry up and finish? Should I have let him pursue the new tangent, and just called a stop when we ran out of time and not reach the end of the adventure? Should I have found a way to end the adventure without those last scenes (although they were important for giving the players more variety of things to do and setting up the continuing story)? Should I have confessed to the player afterward that I fudged his difficulty only because we had so little time left to finish? What would you have done in my place?

And while I'm at it... Does this happen a lot, when the real-life situation DURING your game session affects your decisions regarding the in-game storyline? Have you had to change your storyline, not because of unexpected decisions made by the players in the game, but because you had to accommodate the clock, or the information you had available, or the egos of and fights between your players, or whatever else?

Thanks for reading the long post.

[Gry Sarth]

Nice post. And yes, real-life factors certainly are a constant factor in the storyline. Because roleplaying is such a fluid media, the GM is always having to adapt to the real world events going on around him. Cut a scene short for time, take it easy on the players when you feel they're getting sleepy, inserting an uplanned action scene when you feel they're getting bored. It's an art, and it's not easy to do it seamlessly.

As for your case, I think you could have handled it a bit better. I don;t think you should have inserted someone hunting the group, since you were already pressed for time. But you could have allowed for the player to go through with his plan and establish his contact. It would be a nice seed for a future adventure and the player would feel like his decisions affect the storyline. Now, since you didn't have time to devote to that scene, you could have simply narrated it for the player, without letting him roleplay much. "Ok, so you find this one-armed rodian called Sleemo and stuff a 50cred bill on his slimy hands. He assures you you won't regret making business with him and dives into an alleyway when a patrol walks by". That's it, contact made, move on with the important scenes.
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[vong]

I have 2 stories, so ill try to keep them brief

The first being an x-friend of mine kept doing stupid and unrelated things in game (eg strafing a group of fleeing refugees in a tie fighter, to try to hit the 1 or 2 stormtroopers intermixed. merited a DSP (because he missed... a lot) and he took it out on me in real life. He got more and more upset saying i was targetting his character for bad stuff and eventually started to mess with the game. Granted we are no longer friends, and this was probably one of the many things that added to it.

I find that it all depends on the level of gaming experience of the players what you can do. (and of course their maturity). In a D&D game that I run (2 players 1 gm) all 3 of us are accomplished GMs. So when one is GMing and a player says "I hire a contact to get rid of a tail" or otherwise interacts with something that was not in my original thoughts and really wont do anything or add anything i tell them straight out "ok, you do it but there is no one following you" or "there is nothing behind that door". All the other players then in their minds picture their character doing it, but they realize its irrelevant to the story so we move on.

Kept my stories quick, but really the moral is it depends on your players. Generally speaking it doesnt hurt to say a few lines about doing it, and then move on, but sometimes the players are insistent and keep checking for somethign thats not there so eventually feel free to do a point blank "there is nothing there, you spend 5 minutes searching, and your sure" kind of deal. a bit more direct to force the "lets move on".
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[Raven Redstar]

I can't say that I've ever had a game where there isn't "someone" taking interest in what my players are doing, it leaves a lot of doors open for me, for laying ambushes, speeding players off planets through conflicts or whatever. I've flubbed difficulties before, more often or not, instead of saying that he didn't find anyone, say that he didn't find anyone that really met his criteria. They all wanted to know too much or whatever. A decent way to have him fail, but have him fail because of what he wants from them, not necessarily because no one is following and you want to move on. As for adjusting games for time crunch; I don't run one shot games anymore. It, for me personally, is a huge disappointment, I don't like to waste my time thinking up an adventure, or story arc which will never be finished, given that I have dedicated players. When the players want to do something, and I don't feel like they really have time for it. I'll talk to them out of game, and make sure that they realize that their character is on time constraints, and finding a fence even in mos eisley or wherever will take them hours, and put them behind schedule. Which can have some serious ramifications.

More than anything else, I wouldn't worry about it too much. If there is an issue with the player, just tell him you're still learning, and trying to find your balance as Game Master, if he's your friend, he'll let it go.
Even seasoned GMs like myself find yourself making decisions and turning stories from time to time that upset your players, some of the better GMs I've played with set huge difficulties on even the simplest tasks, playing in them were exercises in frustration. Did I have fun anyway? Yes, when we finally managed to finish a goal or something, it gave a great sense of accomplishment.
Good luck with your future games.

[garhkal]

Wow, shooting up innocents in a tie fighter to kill a few enemies.. That would alwasy get a DSP in my book.
AS to the OP. Yes, there are times real world concerns will dictate your decisions, like when you are running combat and you are nearing the end of the session (especially important for cons). But i would rather it end in that situation with say the enemy leaving after getting called off for some reason than just saying the pcs defeated them all (which has happened a lot in our group at the cons).
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[Grimace]

I'll ask a couple of questions to try to get a better feel for why you made the decision you made.

And I'll also mention that you made the decision, whether right or wrong, so it's good your asking, but make sure you learn something from the situation.

Now, my questions:
Why is there no "next time"? You make it sound like you'll have further adventures with the group, so why couldn't there be a next time?

How much were you able to accomplish of your two and a half more scenes in the last half hour of gaming?

And now my suggestions:
When you're pressed on time in an adventure, if it's not a Convention game, just run with what's presented you. Unless your scenes were incredibly short, I'm betting you probably had to hurry through and gloss over a lot of things in the last two and a half scenes anyway. Taking a little time to do something that provides further adventure ideas, such as the situation that the player came up with, is something that you probably should have acted on rather than automatically denying him. While what you decided wasn't "OMG awful", it wasn't necessarily the best way to go about it. You're new to GMing, though, so things like that will happen. It's up to you to learn from those decisions and decide how you want to handle them in the future. Obviously since you're double-thinking it, you think you could have handled it better. It's true, you could have, but don't beat yourself up over it. GMing is a learning experience.

Since it sounds like you run a somewhat ongoing set of adventures with the group, it's just as easy to run with what you're given, include it if it helps enhance the game, and push the end of the adventure to another time. Rather than canning the idea by calling for a roll and then denying the outcome for time's sake, if you call for a roll, make the roll count for something. If they would have succeeded, let the success happen. If that makes the game so it won't finish that night...make the adventure a two-parter. Next time you get together, whenever that might be, you can finish it up. That way you won't have to rush through the last two scenes, you don't squash inventive ideas from the players that can really help enhance the game as a whole, and you don't set a precendent that may lead to your players not thinking of things too much since they fear you'll just arbitrarily decide they fail due to lack of time or lack of planning.

If your adventure isn't long enough to take up two full sessions, then take the time between Part 1 and Part 2 to maybe expand the second part a little more to make it more full. Only on Con games or for true One-shots do you really have to abide by the time crunch. The rest of the time, and this is my opinion based on the information I know at this time, there should never be a time crunch that can't let you run the game how you and your players want to run it. Just because it doesn't stick with what you had planned doesn't mean you have to deny it because you're running short on time for the night.

So while what you didn't wasn't the best way to handle it, it wasn't terrible either. Be more flexible with your games and don't let the factor of the clock be such an important aspect when it comes to including something in your games. You'll find throughout your time running games that there will be many times where the group goes slower than you anticipated and you don't get to where you wanted to be at the end of the night. Don't short change your players by giving false hope and having them do rolls if you really don't intend on playing out what those rolls indicate. If you don't get done, then you don't get done. Pick it up next time...whenever next time is.

And finally, ignore what I just said if you're running a game at a Con. You've got to get things done in a certain amount of time, so side trips waste time. Most gamers as a con know this, though, so they limit those side ideas. One shots...games announced and intended to be played to completion in one sitting, fall into the same category. A good one-shot, though, will keep the options of side events limited so they aren't so much of a worry.

Welcome to the boards, and congrats on running games! GMing is a fun thing to do!

[Ankhanu]

Yeah, real life issues interfere with gaming almost every session
You really have to be fluid (as mentioned) in your GMing with most constraints, especially time... some sessions that may mean quickly passing through things you had planned, some sessions it means stopping at some point you didn't intend to stop at, picking up the adventure later, some sessions it means doing things you hadn't planned at all, taking your adventure in a whole new direction. You really have to keep on your toes and be open to deviating from your established plan.

As for your particular situation, yeah, I pretty much agree with Gry, it could have been handled better... but, that's true of almost any situation. Where you say you forced the player out of establishing a contact... I don't think it's so bad. A Moderate roll may not have been enough to find the contact that they needed. Sure, they could probably find a contact for something, but possibly not one to fill their needs.
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[Space Coyote]

Thanks for all of the advice, everyone. There's some good stuff in there. I've made some mental notes on what to watch for with the players, and I just might work in "Sleemo the one-armed Rodian" at some point.

I don't expect to ever run a game at a convention, so I'm not worried about that.

My friends and I are all in our early 30s for the most part and pretty easy-going, so I doubt there would ever be any personality conflicts or anything, either. They were mostly interested in the novelty of playing an RPG again, which I don't think any of us had done since college. Worst case scenario, we'd just shelve Star Wars and play something else.

Learning experience? You bet your sweet bippy it was a learning experience. I'd never GMed before, and none of us had ever gamed together before (in an RPG, anyway). I learned a lot, including the situation I originally posted on. I'll prep things differently in the future.

I expected to make a number of rookie mistakes, and I did, but they understood that I'm new to it. Two things did surprise me. First, the timing. Everything seemed to take longer than I expected it would, from people making characters to getting through the story. I tried to streamline the character-making, but it still took a while. And second, I was completely surprised by the play styles of my friends. Of the four players present, three had played RPGs in high school and college--one of whom had a smattering of GM experience and had actually played Star Wars D6 before--and the fourth had never played an RPG (but is a Star Wars fan). But they were all SOOOOO overly-cautious and miserly, I could hardly believe it. They seemed afraid to approach anyone (and I doubt my descriptions were that frightening). And I'd thought that, surely, the bounty hunter would use his thermal detonator against the krayt dragon that was chasing their speeder through the canyons, but he just wouldn't turn the thing loose. Man, if that's not the time to use a thermal detonator, I don't know what is!

Ah, well. Players are unpredictable, right?

As for Grimace's questions... You're absolutely right--I DID have to rush through the final scenes. Not as bad as I was fearing at that point, but more than I wanted. It helped that some player inventiveness avoided the TIE fighters I'd meant them to blast through. It cost the adventure the little bit of space combat I wanted it to have, but it was probably for the best, and saved time.

And operating with the idea that there was no "next time" had more to do with challenges of getting my friends together, more than anything else. I could go into the details if anybody cares, but the important part is that my gaming group--if you can even call us that--can only get together every six to eight weeks. Sometimes longer. I also didn't know if they'd even want to play Star Wars, again. So, I wanted the adventure to be a self-contained story that could stand on its own, since we might never play again. Considering the number of months that have passed since we played, I wasn't far off the mark, in that regard. With so much time between sessions, I wanted them to leave with more of an ending for the evening and the adventure. But who knows? Ending the evening before the adventure might get us together again sooner.

I guess, at the time I made the bad call, I was just caught off-guard, and was worried about the time. Even getting the player to explain his plan took way longer than it should have since the other players and I had to almost drag it out of him. I think he wants to keep secrets from me. Anyway, I didn't feel like I even had the time to come up with a way to adjust things for the remaining time. So I made a rush decision and denied the action.

So, I've learned some lessons, and will be much better prepared the next time we play. (They're interested, we just need to find time to make it happen.) I will know who the characters are (I prepped ten different character sheets from templates that would all work, and let them each pick one for the first adventure), I'll have a better idea of how they will play and interact, and I'll rearrange my reference material in a way that works better for me. I'm also going to cut down the number of scenes I prepare, and keep them simple. That way, there's more room in the schedule for the players to do things they come up with, and I can throw in some action if things start to get slow. It sounds much easier to expand parts of an adventure than to cut them out. If we run out of time, I'll be more likely to just call it off and save the conclusion for later, since that seems like the best way to go (more fair for everyone). And if it runs too fast and we finish early, they can spend their character points and I can introduce the next portion, or at least pass the time with some dirty jokes!

Thanks, again.