Re: (TFT) I knew this guy 3

["John J Hyland" <johnnyboytmm@juno.com>]

Personally I don't get why the guy was invited to play.  If he essentially
wants to annoy the GM and disrupt the game for everyone else, it is not clear
to me why I would invite him into my home.
But assuming for the moment that for some reason I do in fact invite him into
my home, and the gang wants him to be part of the campaign, then I suppose I
let him dig.  Though not with as much attention as DMG.  I imagine it would go
something like this:
Me - How long do you think you'd like to dig for
Him - I don't know, 6 hours or so.
Me - OK, you are digging.  What do the rest of you want to do for the next six
hours?
Gang - [plays out 6 hrs of game time having (one would hope) lots of fun]
Me - OK, back to the hole.  According to the digging rules you have now
created a hole X feet accross and y feet deep, assuming you took appropriate
rest breaks during the digging.  You also have a similarly sized pile of dirt
and rocks next to the hole.  The sun will soon be setting.  What would you
like to do.
Pretty much the DMG response, just less solicitous of the annoying play-style.
Which might be just fine with him, for all I know.  After all I run a beer and
pretzels game where the point is to get together with friends and hang out,
and the RPG is just the excuse to do so, so he may well enjoy the B&P more
than the TFT, and just have his PC spend a day digging.
John


-- "Steven K. Mariner" <skmwg@bhmk.com> wrote:
Peter von Kleinsmid wrote:

> The digger is really funny. I'm half-surprised this threw many people.

This exchange has brought to my attention an interesting lesson about
GMing.  One I'm embarrassed to say I never quite fully understood until now.

I learned early on in my GMing days that the single most important duty
for the GM is to facilitate everyone having fun.  But learning what
makes it fun for others has proven to be a long (30ish years and still
going) string of sub-lessons for me.  I never saw the big picture.

But I get it now.  It all falls under the simple concept that this is a
role-playing game.  The players want to play roles (Duh!).  The GM's job
is to facilitate that being a fun thing to do (which includes a lot of
other tasks, often mistaken for the actual job of th GM).

If the guy wants to dig, he digs.  Apply game mechanics, try to remember
all aspects of what would really happen if some guy were digging a hole
someplace, add points of interest if you're inspired, and move on with
the story.

It's not our job to force the players to do anything.  I've played under
GMs who did that, and those were the most unfun, frustrating,
want-to-quit-the-game moments in all my 30 years as a gamer.  So forcing
him to quit digging is just another violation of that commonly-broken
rule.

We don't dictate; we facilitate.  So if the boy wants to dig, he digs.

Thank you, David.  Your little story just took a few hundred
painfully-learned, complex, interworking rules-of-thumb and melded them
into one conscise whole for me.

- Steve M.
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