Advice/Help Being mean/punishing to Player Characters as a narrator, plus adapting to player choices?

[Femboy]

Hey, I'm looking to improve on Narrative and Storytelling stuff, but I feel like it's such a struggle to write high-stakes scenes or combat encounters because I don't want to punish/hurt player characters without permission or to upset anyone through doing so. Maybe it's a dumb point of just 'Git Gud' but is there a good way to balance out fair treatment when you want there to be difficulty and risk-reward scenarios?

Also, any tips for better designing situations for player creativity and direction? Sometimes it feels really hard to write a scenario that doesn't feel like heavy railroading on storytelling when I want to make sure all people involved feel like they have major control which can sometimes feel difficult if a certain little scenario is more related to a specific character or thing. I try to adjust things for what people may come up with or want to do, but unless it's not really focused on a specific goal to begin with it can feel rather hard to prepare for or come up with ideas that can be weaved in. Just looking mainly for narration and storytelling tips, DnD DM experience and the likes well appreciated but sort of just running RPs in general. My main talent is in simply engaging characters people want to interact with, worldbuilding and storybuilding is usually a mess where I just wing all my writing when I sit down to write it rather than it being too heavily planned out. Thankies! :3

 

[Idea]

Maybe it's a dumb point of just 'Git Gud' but is there a good way to balance out fair treatment when you want there to be difficulty and risk-reward scenarios?

I wouldn't say those two things are a contradiction in the first place, not unless it is made so. What's important here is to establish clearly what the expectations should be, particularly in terms of tone, setting and style of the roleplay - and hence what players should be taking into account. To greatly simplify, let me put three tones:

• Light-hearted: Slice of life or very comedic roleplays typically, players are not expected to take their choices or their impact too seriously and there's a possibility of a sitcom-esque "return to status quo" feature or an approximation of it.
• Heroic Adventure: The world is generally design in a way that very lightly favors or lightly opposes the cast, with a more grounded but not necessarily realistic impact of actions and is generally geared for some challenge but with leeway for mistakes or alternative directions that aren't particularly if at all punishing. Adventure, action and other similar genres are where this tone is usually more at home, and unsurprisingly it's probably the most common tone.
• Grim: Every action and decision constitutes an important choice as the setting and tone are heavily skewed against the odds of the cast and consequences tend to either try to be hyper-realistic or exaggerated in an dark direction. While creativity is often encouraged it's seriously risky business, but then again so is sticking to convention, and the challenge is usually less in confrontation (which may be outright impossible in some extremes) and more in avoidance or preparing for said confrontation. Survival and horror things are often slotted here.

These are not official terms, I came up with them on the spot.

How you set your tone and the setting you're in is an important factor in what players can and should reasonably expect. You can't set up the tone of a heroic adventure, with characters lauded as uniquely skilled to deal with the problems and generally capable when compared to the world around them which in turn is described with a mix of seriousness and levity, only to kill them the first time they act a little reckless with a group of bandits. By all means have the character take a loss and get captured if that works, but killing or permanently disabling the character should probably not happen that early in the adventure with anything short of blatantly suicidal behavior.

Speaking of which, how early into things you are is also important here. The longer it's been and the more payoff a character had the time to go through, the less 'plot armor' a player should expect to have. On the other hand, if the RP is just starting out odds are it's going to feel all the more unfair if you immediately punish them for something they couldn't know.

Once the tone is set and is clear though, it's fair game within the boundaries of that tone. The permission is inherent in the participation in a game that makes it crystal clear what it is going for. Expecting that a character can die or suffer a horrible fate over something unexpected or minor in an explicitly grimdark roleplay is no more unfair to a player than expecting them to not come with a spaceship to a high fantasy game.

Of course, even a grimdark setting should have outs. Indeed, without the possibility of hope (perhaps not on a grand scale, but on a smaller one) even despair loses its flavor. More importantly for this discussion, you need to present the players with the means to get through their situation. This needn't be too obvious, but a player shouldn't have to guess from nonexistent information. If you present them with characters A, B and C, and no matter which they interact with things could very much end badly, as long as you still mention the unlocked door the character walked in from and the noises of the people busying themselves outside the player has been given an out. Of course, how clearly you'll need to present signs and what consequences there are for taking 'wrong' options is something that will vary depending on the tone and nature of the roleplay.

The last thing I will mention for now is of course, be consistent in how you apply whatever standards you decide to apply. The last thing you want is to give favorable treatment to a character and punish another for the same or an equivalent thing.

None of this advice will magically stop people being upset. People being treated unfairly will be upset, but so will people treated fairly so actually warranted the negative consequences they incurred. To an extent, it really depends on the players and you can only do your best and hope to otherwise get lucky. On the other hand though, clearly setting expectations will help to ensure that at least from the pool of reasonable people interested in your RP, you will not get people who expect you to give an entirely different treatment than the one your RP is meant to give. From this point on, you have to be committed to what you set out to do. There is no shame in making an RP where characters suffer little to no consequences, provided you present your RP as such from the outset.


Oh and before I forget: Tone shifts and secret tones. Those can happen in stories, and just like in a book, you don't want to do it unless you already have the experience, confidence and hopefully the trust from an audience/your players that you can give them a quality experience despite either having to put up with a facade or having the rug pulled from under them.

Also, any tips for better designing situations for player creativity and direction?

Design the setting not the scenario. If it's creativity you want to enable, what you need to come up and give the players is the facts of their situation, and give sufficient leeway in the way those facts are constructed that players can go through means you don't expect and haven't planned for.

This does imply a character may not necessarily be involved in the same or all events as other characters. Players will have "major control" over their own decisions, but that doesn't mean they will have major influence in every situation if they actively put themselves in a distanced position from it. If there is anything a character should absolutely be involved with though, namely if it's part of the premise of the RP, then it's a matter of doing your due diligence as a GM and not approving characters that wouldn't be involved in those major necessary elements.

worldbuilding and storybuilding is usually a mess where I just wing all my writing when I sit down to write it rather than it being too heavily planned out.

If you wanna wing the story, be my guest. But don't wing worldbuilding, that is a recipe for contradictions, lacking content, temptation for contrivances and more. You don't need a super specific, super established world with every little thing detailed, but you should have a solid grasp of the big feature and any key features and preferably (though you don't need to plan super long term) you should have a better sense of at least the nearby parts of the setting where characters may be at for the forseable future. Characters in a magic school? You should know what the magic school is like as a GM. Characters just entered a town? You should probably know key features, more or less what you might or not be able to find in the town, and the characteristics of the people living here in general.

A solid foundation, I would argue, is a prerequisite for creativity. In a magic system where anything is possible, the existence of a spell with a given effect isn't really creative. It's in finding the possibilities of your limits that creativity resides in. Creativity is problem-solving, and thus in the absence of a problem -constrictions and limitations that aren't excessive- it can't flourish. It's a puzzle where you can't cut the pieces but you can bring pieces from different puzzles as long as you still end up with a rectangle.

But the pieces of the puzzles need to exist in the first place before you can use them.



One more thing I will mention: Taking an active interest in your players and their characters individually will help a lot in terms of integrating them and their choices. Having an understanding of your player's characters, what they want with those characters and in general, will help you better integrate these things into whatever you make for your RP, and if done right will certainly make players feel more appreciated than successfully fulfilling part slot #3.

 

[GojiBean]

Hey, I'm looking to improve on Narrative and Storytelling stuff, but I feel like it's such a struggle to write high-stakes scenes or combat encounters because I don't want to punish/hurt player characters without permission or to upset anyone through doing so. Maybe it's a dumb point of just 'Git Gud' but is there a good way to balance out fair treatment when you want there to be difficulty and risk-reward scenarios?

Also, any tips for better designing situations for player creativity and direction? Sometimes it feels really hard to write a scenario that doesn't feel like heavy railroading on storytelling when I want to make sure all people involved feel like they have major control which can sometimes feel difficult if a certain little scenario is more related to a specific character or thing. I try to adjust things for what people may come up with or want to do, but unless it's not really focused on a specific goal to begin with it can feel rather hard to prepare for or come up with ideas that can be weaved in. Just looking mainly for narration and storytelling tips, DnD DM experience and the likes well appreciated but sort of just running RPs in general. My main talent is in simply engaging characters people want to interact with, worldbuilding and storybuilding is usually a mess where I just wing all my writing when I sit down to write it rather than it being too heavily planned out. Thankies! :3

Hoyo!

Idea provided a lot of good information for you, but I couldn't help but want to contribute as well. So, here goes!


First, I think it would be wise if you changed the way you thought about what you're trying to do.

"I'm looking to improve on Narrative and Storytelling stuff, but I feel like it's such a struggle to write high-stakes scenes or combat encounters because I don't want to punish/hurt player characters without permission or to upset anyone through doing so."

You're not punishing or hurting anyone by placing them in high-stakes scenes or combat encounters. What you're doing is setting them up for progression through struggle/conflict. Another phrase to describe this is "character development."

It doesn't matter the genre, time period, setting, etc. It's a universal truth about storytelling that progression through struggle/conflict, even if the struggle/conflict is intangible, is the beating heart of all character development.

In romance, the struggle/conflict is overcoming the main protag's personal weaknesses and fears to earn the affection of the love interest. In horror, the struggle/conflict is overcoming the threat to the protag's survival. In thrillers, the struggle/conflict is overcoming the obstacles to finding out the truth or catching the big bad before they escape forever. Even in comedy there is progression through struggle. And the struggle/conflict is almost always the initial setup for each comedic moment as the whole point of comedy is to relieve tension through the punchline of each joke.

A good rule of thumb for keeping things "fair" is to carefully observe what's been going on up until this point when you're ready to introduce the moment of conflict. How have all the characters responded to the story so far? How have they responded to each other? How have they responded to the struggles which have led to this point?

By observing first and taking time to think about it, you can usually come up with pretty well-balanced ideas for how to set up a struggle/conflict that will both challenge all the characters enough to push them forward in their personal inner journeys (aka character development), as well as give them relief/reward at the end when it's concluded to help balance things out.

Remember, all of the participants want to be able to experience their characters gaining reward for whatever conflict they overcome. So long as there's reward of equivalent importance to the conflict needed to attain it, balance and fairness will be there.


"Also, any tips for better designing situations for player creativity and direction?"

Yes, actually.

Don't think about it too hard.

I know that sounds a bit oversimplified, but it's true. Don't overthink it.

Remember, everyone you encounter is a human being. They have brains. They're creative thinkers just like you. And they know what they want for their own characters.

Trust them to respond to whatever conflict you send their way.

If you're a bit concerned about whether or not you might be upsetting some folks then it would be a good idea to let everyone know ahead of time that "Hey, I want to put us in a combat situation. Without getting too much into details, I was planning on there being (X) number of main threats and a few side threats. Is everyone okay with this right now? Should I maybe wait a bit?"

Giving players/participants the option to say "Yeah, I'm ready for that," or "Maybe wait a little longer" will go a long way towards helping you read the room, so to speak, and get to know the limits of the group you're working with a lot better. And the more you build that trust and respect between you and your group, the more easily they'll accept you giving them conflict to overcome without questioning when and why it's being presented as they go along.


"Sometimes it feels really hard to write a scenario that doesn't feel like heavy railroading on storytelling when I want to make sure all people involved feel like they have major control which can sometimes feel difficult if a certain little scenario is more related to a specific character or thing."

Making sure everyone feels involved and like they have control simply boils down to you being attentive during your scene setup process. Take note of how many characters there are who are owned/played by a person. Take note of their relative positioning, if it's been described enough to paint that kind of picture. Take stock of supplies, materials, and possible escapes if the intensity gets too much. And take stock of any openly talked about goals, aspirations, dreams, fears, etc of each character.

As an example, a good GM will know how many characters are in the RP for the sake of "numbers" when it comes to how many enemies show up. But a great GM will go that extra mile to be attentive to each character's strengths, weaknesses, fears, desires, beliefs, and weave them all into the conflict which is presented in some way, shape, or form.

For example, let's say you have a war RP and one character is just an average joe who was forced into a militia, given a weapon and some rather bare bones basic instruction on how to hold and swing it, and now they're in this war. Every time they hold their weapon against an enemy their hands shake because of how scared they are that they're going to die. And every time they kill an enemy and the conflict dies down, they throw up from stress, fear, and a host of other emotions all wreaking havoc in their head and heart. They're frightened. And they just want to go home to their family.

Now, it's time to put them into a combat situation. Who do we pit them against? Well, how about an enemy or two who are exactly like them?

Don't put this person against faceless enemies who charge blindly forward with no regard for their lives so that the character can feel good slicing through them without mercy. That doesn't present nearly enough internal conflict for this character to gain any meaningful development. Instead, pit them against terrified human beings forced to wear armor that's too big and wielding weapons which are too heavy because they too were drafted into this war despite not being ready or cut out for combat. They'd rather be anywhere but here. And they don't necessarily want your characters dead. But, they have no choice. They just want to go home. But the only way home is through your characters.

Facing one's own mirror image is one of the most powerful means of drawing out a character's truest innermost essence. And, in this example, being forced to kill a frightened person who just wants to go home is one of the most heartbreaking and soul-shattering things this particular character could possibly endure.

That's where your control and involvement ends, and you pass it off to the owner of the character in question to guide them through the emotional aftermath.

And that's how you can set them up without railroading them, and how you can let the players feel in control of what happens.


In conclusion...

Ultimately the issues you presented with aren't a matter of "getting good." They're simply a matter of adjusting your current perspective on what your own actions are doing to the characters involved, and making subtle adjustments to how you plan the conflict of the RP so as to be in service to character development and allowing for player agency.

The more attentive you remain to the characters involved, and the more carefully you craft the conflict to challenge them based on who they are and who they've shown themselves to be (such as with the example in the section above), the more you will both be able to craft meaningful and impactful conflict while also allowing each player to feel important and like they're in total control of what's happening with their characters.

Remember, they don't need to control the circumstances their characters are in. They just need to retain control over their characters themselves, as well as be given freedom to explore the emotional aftermath of whatever conflict you throw their way.

Cheers!

- GojiBean

 

[A Sparkling Zombie]

One more thing I will mention: Taking an active interest in your players and their characters individually will help a lot in terms of integrating them and their choices. Having an understanding of your player's characters, what they want with those characters and in general, will help you better integrate these things into whatever you make for your RP, and if done right will certainly make players feel more appreciated than successfully fulfilling part slot #3.

FWIW to those considering this point, my favorite GMs leverage the character sheet as at least a starting place for integrating individual characters. Instead of the standard "bio" section, their character sheets will ask specific questions related to the character's background or personality that is relevant to the game, if not also cover basic aspects of the character that can be answered in a single paragraph or two. So, for example, questions might pertain to a defining moment in the character's life, or how they ended up in the game's premise, or what the character hopes to accomplish.

One GM also went as far as a GM-only section, where a player can be asked meta questions: any secrets the player would like to disclose, anything the player hopes to accomplish, any concerns they have, what aspects of roleplay most excites them (character development, romance, genre elements, whatever else - useful for guided sandboxes).

It doesn't replace the 1-on-1 discussions that need to happen, but it prompts players to think about relevant info where they might not otherwise, and I imagine it can be useful for screening the applications - finding the players who are actually interested in the game versus those who just like to create characters or who aren't likely to pull their weight.