Should you penalize stupid player actions?

[Bren]

On a number of threads I have seen comments indicating that GMs will penalize a player for "stupid" actions.

Is this a good thing?

To get the discussion going, I will argue that often it is not. Here's why:

I like fast decisions by the PCs, but fast decisions sometimes means that players don't fully understand the situation or the threat level which sometimes results in seemingly stupid decisions.

I've learned from some of my players that a stupid decision may just be a "failure to communicate" and communciation failures are as much my fault as the player's.

Sometimes "stupid" decisions by the PCs advance the plot or add humor to the scenario - think Han in the detention level of the Death Star "We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?" Therefore rather than penalize that sort of play, I want to reward it.

Players that are afraid to make stupid decisions because they know they will be penalized can become paralized which slows down play, which is boring.

Other players react by becoming min/max players (and most campaigns really only need 1 or 2 of those at most);

Or by becoming rules lawyers, which makes play both slow and contentious.

Therefore my conclusion - tolerate and occassionally even encourage stupid player decisions if the players are otherwise contributing to the fun of play and when in doubt, ere on the side of giving the players a break.

Just my two credits. What do you all think?

[Kytross]

Quick, let's quantify stupidity!

I tend to run the game with repercussions for actions. When Han made the call in the detention center the repercussion is that the imperials sent up a squad to check it out, putting the team in a horrible defensive position until Leia came up with the solution for getting them out of there.

Action and Repercussion.

When I talk about stupid moves from my players I'm not talking about making mistakes or bad roles or coming in from ignorance, I'm talking about willfully doing something I've made perfectly clear is a bad idea. AN example would be going up against impossible odds, like a frontal assault on an Imperial stronghold or taking on a Star Destroyer in a single starfighter and expecting to win. Repercussions for those actions are generally death and starting up new character sheets, though I'll roll out the dice with them and let them enjoy their short, quick death. On rare occasion once the blaster bolts start flying people smarten up and run, and sometimes they survive.

Another example would be robbing a bank without a mask. The repercussion there would be getting your face plastered up on wanted posters across the holonet. Now you have bounty hunters coming after you, bounty hunters who generally have much better stats then you do. Every starport has your picture up. Anyone looking to make a cool 10,000 credits for information leading to an arrest will turn you in. Your life just got a whole lot worse. Good luck getting off the planet.

Another example would be treating important NPCs rudely. I'll throw you in prison for insulting the king, or a superior officer. I have no problem with that.

[Whill]

[ZzaphodD]

Also, even stupid decisions usually dont mean automatic death, especially fast decisions. Even if a stupid decision has harsh consequences it can still add plot or humour. We have had several moments where one or several players stupid decisions have had grave consequenses for the whole group, which usually have to get the stupid ones out of the mess. This usually results in a lot of groaning but also a lot of laughter.

One classic moment is where we are on a city on a very 'civilized' planet with a general pro-imperial populace. We have noticed a man following us, and strongly believes that its an ISB agent (and probably not without back up). Suddenly one of our more 'spontaneous' players, without warning the rest of the group, walks up the the man and asks him 'why do you follow us' which of course gives away that the group have spotted him and he calls in the back-up... The best 'defensive' position the group had managed to get to while he walked across the street and approached the agent was to slip into the nearest establishment which was a rather seedy bar (given the clean-cut surroundings). Getting out of there with the forces of the empire gathering outside was fun story in itself.
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[Gry Sarth]

I think the thing is what you understand by "penalize" and "reward". Stupid actions should have in-game consequences accordingly. That doesn't mean the players are being penalized. Putting obstacles in front of your players is not a punishment, it's simply part of the adventure. In the same way that making things extra easy for them would not be a reward, but might make the adventure less fun (which is ultimately a punishment).

[ZzaphodD]

If by 'stupid' one means that the players decides on a course of action that you as a GM clearly signals is against better judgement, then yes the players will be 'penalized' in the sense that I will not go easy on them to save their skins. If they are not careful about keeping their skins watertight, why should I?
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[garhkal]

It also depends on whether their stupidity is blantent or just minor. IE a minor stupidity.. not turning on shields when fighting a few ties. Blatent. Getting on the comm and calling the imp commander of the isd they ar fighting against a pisspot hutt sucker and challenging him to send ALL his ties after you....
YES i did have a pc in a home game do that...
Almost ended up a TPK. 2 pc's got their wits about them and jetessoned in an escape pod while broadcasting a surrender signal...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Bren]

First let me use the term “bad decision/choice” rather than “stupid decision/choice” just because I see bad as more objective and stupid as more subjective. I rarely have players that intentionally make a stupid choice. But they may for reasons of imperfect information, misunderstanding, or the general fog of war make a bad choice. In addition they may, for character motivations that are reasonable and consistent make a bad choice. In the latter case bad is from the POV of the plan and/or the other characters.

I agree actions have consequences. Complications to a plan seem a very reasonable and natural result of bad decisions by the player(s). In general I prefer that complications make play more interesting. The movies are full of examples and you have all given several examples from your play.

Let me try to clarify what I mean by reward or penalty. By penalty I mean one or more of the following:

(A) a consequence that immediately puts the characters in an unrecoverable situation;

(B) immediate death of the character that is not based on a clear choice or decision by the player (this concept is complicated so let’s come back to that later);

(C) an immediate and significant increase in the chance of death or multiple deaths of the party this is related to (B);

(D) award of fewer character points and force points at the end of the adventure.

(A) A consequence may just add some difficulty (which may be similar to a complication due to a 1 on the wild die) or it may even require the players to alter their plan. They may need to surrender and then escape from enemies before they can continue or they may need to change to Plan B, or C, or even Plan F; but usually there should be some way to recover from the consequence.

(B) Immediate death, by this I mean something like players have a choice of go left, go right, or go back. They hear noise to the right and they go right (maybe they think this is where their missing pals are or where the shuttle bay is or whatever). When they go right they run into a group of stormtroopers. A consequence of immediate death is “you round the corner, the stormtroopers have the drop on you, open fire” and more or less bang you’re dead. To me this is a penalty. I contrast that to “you round the corner and see a group of stormtroopers – roll search/sneak or roll initiative.” This gives the party a chance to either defeat or run away from the stormtroopers.

(C) This might be similar to (B) above but the stormtroopers outnumber the players to the point where they can’t be defeated, call for back up surrounding the players so they can’t run, and shoot to kill and won’t accept any surrender. This is really just a delayed version of (B).

Now I realize sometimes you have players who come around the corner and attack the stormtroopers and during the combat the GM describes the huge volume of fire hitting all around the party with blaster bolts getting closer and closer each time and/or the party clearly taking losses at a greater rate than the stormtroopers. If a player insists his character is staying, in the open, and fighting it out – I can have NPCs suggest a withdrawl. I can inquire as to any character motivation for the last stand mentality. I can inquire of other players what they are doing or if they are trying to persuade the player to leave or drag himmer to safety. But at the end of the day, if a player insists on standing there and dying in blaze of light. Bye bye.

But absent good in game reasons for that, players that repeatedly make those sorts choices aren’t likely to get invited back (by me). That kind of dumb I don’t understand or enjoy.

(D) I have several groups that are not very, shall we say tactical or strategic in their thinking. For those folks I may reward good tactical ideas. But in general I tend to reward based on the following (in no particular order) the player: (i) acts in character; (ii) plays well with others (which includes making other characters look good or letting them get their share of the time and glory); (iii) contributes to the overall fun of the group; and (iv) entertains me; (v) bonus points if you write up the adventure either as a short summary or a narrative. Our current adventure timeline summary is about 20 pages long with adventures generally having a 1-4 sentence summary.

By reward, I guess I really meant positive reinforcement on how play went and character point and force point awards.

Based on that, anyone agree, disagree, have a different spin on how they prefer to GM or to be GM’d?

[atgxtg]

[Bren]

atgxtg wrote:

[Grimace]

I'm going to make mention of a couple of decisions my players made, both of which would be considered "stupid" or "bad" ideas. You'll see that one worked, one didn't.

Case 1:
Two players. One PC fought the bad guy and was left hanging from a tenuous handhold 25 meters down a sheer canyon. The second PC was playing a character with NO skill in piloting and only 3D in Mechanical. Second PC decides to run to their ship and fly it over, into the canyon, and get under PC #1 to rescue him.
Rolls result in the frieghter getting airborne, barely making it into the canyon and barely staying aloft as PC#2 tries to move in close to the still hanging PC#1.
Suddenly PC#1 loses grip and falls into canyon.
PC#2 decides to put freighter into dive, speed under the falling PC#2 and catch the falling person. Burns Force point to perform dive and adjust speed to that of falling person. Then has to make normal skill roll to pull up without slamming into the floor of the canyon that was rapidly approaching. Managed to just barely make it.
An amazing success for a rather foolish and "stupid" action. Although stupid, it paid off.

Case 2:
PC was captured by Imperials. Rest of PC group (4 other players) learn that their friend was transported to the local imperial garrison. And it's the full shebang. The fortress, the death fence, AT-ATs, armed probe droids, TIEs...you name it. So what do the 4 PCs decide to do? Attack the fortress!!
No plan...just attack! Here they go, using explosives to blow through the death fence and detonate the land mines. They blast the armed probe droids and begin to tangle with the first responders of biker scouts on speeder bikes. Then the AT-STs show up. Then the AT-AT shows up...and more stormtroopers. Needless to say, the only one left alive was the one PC who was captured and inside the garrison...the one the others were trying to save.
So their "stupid" decision resulted in 4 dead PCs at one time. Nearly a TPK. In the end, even the player who's character was still alive decided it was time to make new characters.


So I don't necessarily make it harder for them if they make a stupid or bad decision. I just set the difficulties appropriately. In one case it worked out great for the player and he could brag about that for many, many game sessions after. In another case it was simply a case of the players deciding on a tactic that was so ridiculous that I hoped when the first assault started and they took fire from multiple directions at once they'd retreat and rethink their actions. At least plan some, or come up with something better than "Let's attack an Imperial garrison to get our friend back." But no. So I wasn't going to get easy on them and let them waltz into an imperial stronghold without a fight. When it all ended, they realized - rightly so - that an Imperial fortress was not something to be attacked on a whim and without a plan.

As others have said...sometimes you don't need to "punish" the players for a bad decision. Sometimes the dice or the circumstances do it on their own. To "punish" them, sometimes you just let the numbers do the job. Like 4 PCs vs. 800 stormtroopers than know they're coming....hmmm.... you do the math.

[garhkal]

Yup. One of my modules has in it upto 200 or so storm troopers that can be thrown against the pcs. If they dawdle, get the alarm sounded AND stand their ground, eventually they WILL get all 200 of them on their butts... I don't care how high a character you have, at that level of 'fire' coming your way you WILL get hit.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[mdlake]

Whill captures about 90% of it by observing that you needn't seek to punish poor decisions, but simply play out the consequences. Almost by definition, poor decisions are those with regretable consequences. As for the other 10%, Kytross asks the right question when he wants stupidity quantified, and Gry Sarth makes an excellent point distintuishing punishments for players from punishments for their characters.

I think all three can be bundled by a slight shift in perspective: the GM's job is not to enforce intelligent tactics, but to enforce the genre at hand. In this light, bad decisions aren't necessarily those that invite disaster; bad decisions are those that destroy the tone of the game, or stop the action, or undermine the willing suspension of disbelief.

Inviting disaster certainly CAN be a bad decision, especially in games of tactical simulation. "Everyone dies" isn't much fun. Nor is the deus ex machina necessary to save players from themselves, if one is employed. But wild risks are integral to other genres, including pulp action, comedy, and (ahem) space opera. ("Never tell me the odds!") As Robin Laws observes of Feng Shui, "Characters exist in a world where 'go get captured and try to figure out what the enemy is up to' is actually a pretty good strategy." And so it is--in Feng Shui. Not so much for Chill or Twilight 2000.

Garkhal and atgxtg complain of reckless players, and pound their characters for it. Fair enough. I would too, in their shoes. I, however, currently deal with overly cautious players, and have to adopt an entirely different stance to match: I've spent the last two campaigns rewarding my players for reckless acts, just as a way of drawing them out of their shell, because their reflex is to turtle the moment they get confused, or the moment they suspect the enemy might beat them in a fight. Not WILL beat them, mind you, just MIGHT beat them. They're particularly prone to presuming enemies will anticipate and neutralize their plans. My most frequent reason to award bonus xp is taking the initiative, and my most frequent reason for xp penalties is decisions that stop the action cold--usually to protests that they're just staying in character. If I killed characters in this group for dumb tactics, they'd give up entirely. With encouragement, they're learning to advance the story instead of simply noodling about, trying to find the (non-existent) risk-free path to victory.

A GM needs to reward or punish players according to how well they entertain and advance the story. Rewards, punishment, entertainment, and story advancement can take many forms, according to what the players want out of a game, including things their characters decidedly don't want.

[Bren]

Grimace, I've had a scene similar to your Case 1 and the Player really enjoyed and remembered it.

Case 2, it really seems they were trying to commit suicide by stormtrooper.

Sometimes the best solution is roll playing i.e. let them roll up new characters. But if the characters and players seem salvagable I might try one of these options.

OptionA: I might have decided the Imperials would try to capture/stun the PCs so they could question the Rebels. Cut to: "An odd humming sound wakes you. You are in what looks like an Imperial cell. The cell door opens. The humming sound is much louder and you see a scary, shiny black Interrogator Droid floating into your cell." Let's see who has a good willpower roll.

OptionB: I might let the players rescue their captured friend. But unbeknownst to any of them, he has been implanted with a secret tracking device. The Imperials use that to locate and roll up the local Rebel cells. Eventually the players will suspect there is a mole in the Rebellion and will be tasked with finding and stopping the mole. Of course their efforts to question their fellow rebels leads the Imperials to even more cells. At some point they may suspect their captured friend was turned and you have even more fun until they maybe find the real problem. They could then use the locator to lead the Imperials into an ambush, but by this time the local rebellion has taken serious losses.

Grimace, did the style of play improve with the new characters?

[Bren]

Mdlake, I really, really liked your post. 8) It was very well written and articulated my thoughts almost exactly. One thing in particular really stood out for me:

mdlake wrote: