I just thought i would piggy back on this.  Ever since my very first game as ST till now, the most important thing i have learned (and only very recently i embarrassingly admit) was that the game is a collaborative effort, and that in order for anyone to have fun, everyone needs to have fun.  And that everyone (usually) has much more fun with YES! than with NO!.

I think coming across dungeon worlds, and learning about how they have a player driven style of Storytelling, meaning the ST makes a move in response to the players move (for anyone that doesnt know) has really helped my ability to ST alot.  Especially here in PBP, i find that by empowering the players with the ability to create facts for the gameverse on their own, (which i will sometimes adjust afterwards) really helps the players tell the stories that they are envisioning for their characters.

Just recently i had some players inside of a building, outside of which are a bunch of vigilantes firebombing the place.  One unfortunate player discovered this by poking his head out the door.  One of the other characters asked me, is the fire extinguisher near the door blocked by fire?  I replied, i dont know? is it?  And by letting the players take the lead and describe what they want to have happen, i can come behind and describe what actually happens, using their information as a guide for the story.

I have found that letting the players take the lead (Which can be a chore.  Some players are not used to/have a difficult time driving even their own characters story) it makes the players feel like they are in control of the story, rather than just passengers in my story.  I used to come up with intricate and specific storylines.  These always went off the rails when player A decided that he was just going to do something completely different from what i imagined he would do.  This in turn led to me trying to shoehorn everyone back onto my story rails, which in turn led to the players refusing or getting upset about not having any control over their characters.

This of course has to be tempered with actual storytelling on my part.  But now, i create my stories through "bubbles".  I create thought bubbles of important events i want to have happen in my story.  Then, as the game begins unfolding, however the players have chosen to take the game, i simply have to figure out how to connect back to my original plot bubble.  This often happens in very unique, exciting and unforeseen ways.  Two NPC characters that i created for a minor appearance, never to be seen from again, have risen to be major characters in the story.  Something i never would have imagined would be the case.

I have found that this also takes so much of the creative workload off of my shoulders.  Because i dont usually have scripted interactions or paths of play, characters who like to investigate for clues even when i didnt create anything for them, can always find something with good rolls.  I almost always turn things back onto the players.  "I rolled 5 successes on my investigation roll! What do i find?!"  "I dont know player A, what important clue do you find?"  "Hmm, ok well using my medical background i decipher that the writing from the killer is shaky on the ends of his messages, this leads me to believe that he has a serious underlying medical condition.  If he is receiving treatment he must be going to one of the local hospitals for regular care!  We can start looking for him there! "Why yes player A, that is exactly what i was(nt) thinking!  Great work finding those clues!  And now we know something personal about our killer that i didnt create, the players feel like they have uncovered some secret weakness about the killer using their skills and played their characters the way they wanted to.  Fun for everyone.

All of this is great advice, and "yes" is the tool you should try and use most often.

There are only two things I'm going to add. First knowing when to say no is important. I had a GM who I stopped playing with because he said yes to everything. Basically, if I gave him a half good reason to do so, I ended up with everything I wanted way too early in the game. It became boring, as I knew that anything I tried would succeed. That was not fun, since there were no real challenges.

Second I wish to give credit to this next piece of advice to Matt Mercer. The statement "You can certainly try." That statement has changed the way I have run games since I started watching Critical Role. Allow the players to try anything. It gives them the freedom, but they have to live with the consequences. Jump off of a 1000 foot cliff and when you see rocks below turn yourself into a goldfish. Splat. Make a deal with a goddess of death and turn your rogue into a paladin. Great!

Let them try things but keep the consequences realistic. "I don't care if you rolled a Nat 20 Your character can't phase himself through a wall just because you think you can. You do break through a portion, but take 20 damage doing so..."

That's a very good point. As a GM you can warn and drop hints but you shouldn't stop someone from doing something that their character can attempt to do; as long as you have appropriate consequences that is.

There's also the key GM warning sign that you need to learn to whip out of 'are you sure?' keep it in your back pocket for when the players are trying something that probably (if they had all the information) would actually be quite stupid or a waste of time). Some players will sensibly take this as a warning that what they're doing might not be conducive to their characters' good health ... while others will blunder forward regardless but at least you can feel good that you gave them a warning.

Sidenote: Also if you're cruel use that question when the players are making sensible and/or obvious decisions just to really throw them off.

Lol. 'You can try' and 'Are you sure' are stock responses of mine.

Many of my games are sandboxy and less regimented than D&D, so I make a stock warning at the start of the game that says effectively: this game is not levelled with foes artificially matched to your skills. As in  the real world, you may meet foes who are much more powerful than you, and you must decide when to fight and when to run.

Alas, there is always that one player who doesn't think the warning applies to him. Such a player will end up rolling a new character or storming out of the game in a huff.

I recall one player in particular. I'd warned him subtly and less subtly IC and then rather directly OOC that a certain gang boss was out of his league. The PCs were supposed to skirmish with his goons, but this One Guy decided he and the other PCs were going to take down the entire gang in one night!

Well, I couldn't have him bring the whole party to a sticky end, so he had to go...
He left in a huff.

I'm glad others are talking more about "no" examples.  I didn't want to get into that side of things too much, since my main hope was to get GM's who aren't yet used to letting players do what they want to reconsider how they do things.  Of course, I do agree that "no" is just as important as "yes" depending on the context.

In reply to Ike (msg # 15):

Ike, I like that you warn the players up front that they can come across foes that are simply too powerful. This also opens up the idea that running away from a fight is a viable (and sometimes necessary) option.

In your case, with several direct warnings I think the message should've come across. However, in other cases I think it can be difficult to convey subtle hints when the only form of communication is text. Even NPCs directly telling the party their foe is too strong can be unconvincing. After all, in many stories 'someone tells the heroes that the bad guy is too strong to be defeated, after which the heroes go and defeat the bad guy.'

I can imagine that as a GM it isn't nice to tell the party "no". Especially when it comes to their agency. Do you GMs use other methods of saying "no"? Such as convincing the party that what they're up against is out of their league, or even preventing them from reaching it?

• For example, by comparing the bad guy IC to other foes the party has previously faced.
  Written in a letter the group finds, or told by an important NPC: "The bad guy has defeated 6 trolls without even breaking a sweat." While the party almost died facing 2 trolls.
  
• Or do you put up "invisible walls" that prevent, or make it very difficult, for the party to reach such foe?
  On their way to the bad guy, the party is intercepted by a group of the bad guy's minions. These minions prove to be almost more than the party can handle.

What is your experience with such, or different, methods? Would you advise it, or is a direct "no" or OOC explanation clearer?

There are many ways to suggest to players that they're getting into deep water, and usually a gradual ramp up is better than a precipice. If the PCs are finding it increasingly difficult to defeat minions of the bad guy, they should get the picture sooner or later.

This could be viewed as 'diminishing yeses' as the PCs get close to a powerful foe.

Using rumours about the bad guy's reputation is also useful - better than the precipice - facing the bad guy with no idea if they can beat him or not, until they start losing hit points like there's a hole in their character sheet.

However, even that can work if the players are experienced enough, have a rapport with the GM and if the GM gives them an escape route they can recognize.

OOC warnings should be a last resort IMO; it jolts players out of the game reality - like 'author intrusion' in a novel. I only used OOC in the above example because That Guy couldn't take a hint, was dragging the whole team into his delusion, and was in danger of derailing the game.

I think in a situation like Ike outlined, it should be fairly easy for the players to realize that they were doing it wrong.  I imagine it somewhat like the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill.  They just keep coming, and coming, and the players watch their characters being slowly bled out...  Directly confronting the gang is a large no-no, especially if they are at the height of their power, and you're in their home.

Sun Tsu said to always give your enemies a golden bridge.  That doesn't mean your enemies will take it.  Which leads to another of Sun Tsu's advice, paraphrased: Never interrupt an enemy while they're making a mistake. :D

The Bride in Kill Bill could have fled out the front doors of the place, but she did not, and while she did win, she did get fairly sliced up.  And she could have been killed at any time during that fight.  Gogo Yubari almost got her... That's the essence of a good fight.

I think it's a good idea to always give your players some impression of doubt that they will succeed.  Always leave an escape route.  Give them the impression that the opponents they face are their equal.  Allow uncertainty to flow on both sides of a conflict.

You should end up with players who hesitate and consider the consequences of starting a fight, before the fight starts.  Which leads to another Sun Tzu gem: Win first and then go to battle, do not battle and then try to win.  Again paraphrased.

I've been noodling over a pair of threads:  The "NO" game, and The "MAYBE"* Game

But I've been distracted by work and lack of sleep...  as I'm most definitely not a "Yes" GM*.


* Though I'm liking the "You Can Try" line.  Being a stronk "Maybe"er myself.




That depends on the style of game you're running.  There are certainly styles (The "NO" Game) that lend themselves fabulously to the precipice.

Even my "Maybe" style tosses out precipices occasionally (but not without at least one IC warning).


I go back and forth on this one.  I use OOC warnings in games like I use salt in cooking, lightly and to taste.  But sometimes someone just really does need a clue-by-four upside the head to see where they are going.




Every GM should read Sun Tzu's Art of War and Machiavelli's The Prince.  Even if they don't use anything from the works, it's good to know so it doesn't get used against them!

Yes!  Those are two excellent books to read, evileeyore. :)  For the reason you laid out and many more.

I have copies of both on my bookshelf.

I find that "Yes" games lead to a lot of fun for the players, but stifle my enjoyment as a GM somewhat. I prefer the "Maybe" game. As it allows the players the options, but leaves it up to chance, yet also allows me the freedom to alter that chance a bit if it's detracting from the story.. That said I do run my games as if it's a band preforming on stage. The players are the band, and I'm the audience, set designer, manager, noise police, etc...

Hehe.  The way I see it, the roleplaying game is a play, the players the characters on stage, and I the director.

I have an idea of the story and how it should go, but the players are mostly unscripted and so, who knows what will happen?  I can let the players do their thing, and only intervene when it starts to become unwieldy, but I can only exercise that so often before the players get mad and walk off the stage.

And that is the first thing every GM should learn.

In reply to A Voice in the Dark (msg # 24):

On the flip side, the players should understand that they can only abuse the GM so often before they get up and walk away from the table.

Nope. The GM never leaves the table.
It's the GM's table.
The GM shows errant players the door, instead.
And keeps doing so until s/he has only decent players left.
Then the game continues in peace and harmony. :)

Good opening topic.

I was somewhat surprised to see that this was about saying "Yes," and yet there was no mention of saying "Yes, and...."

"Yes, and..." is about not just accepting an idea as presented, but adding on to it. Not moderating it, or turning it back on a player, but actually improving the idea. That concept is embodied in some of the examples people have given here, but I think it's important to realize that that's the real key. When it's presented as just saying "Yes," people tend (as we see in the later posts here) to edge away from that, as they think of ideas that they don't dare say "Yes" to, for the sake of something they want to keep intact about their games. Is that what some of you here feel?

There's a topic that this thread has prompted that I think needs its own thread, but which has a lot to do with why GMs have trouble taking a "Yes, and..." approach. That topic is "failure."

The issue arises because GMs are given the impression that saying "Yes" means that the characters always succeed, because they feel (and maybe have experienced) that players will only ask for things that make their own characters better and more successful. GMs are concerned that players will not feel challenged, and will feel they can go anywhere or do anything in a game. Is that how some of you feel about it?

One aspect of that is that saying "Yes, and..." to a course of action doesn't have to mean that the action succeeds or is beneficial. It's common and fair for an action by a character to require a roll:

"Can I swing my sword at him?"/"I swing my sword at him!"
"Yes, and he reacts as quickly as he can? Roll to see if you're too fast for him!"

The roll can generally succeed or fail, or somewhere in a range of outcomes. That's not saying "Yes, but..." that's saying "Yes, and..." while working within the framework of the game. That doesn't mean every action has to engage the rules - the rules aren't the laws of physics - but that just because one is in a "Yes, and..." mindset doesn't mean actions never engage the rules.

Another aspect of this is what "failure" looks like. Very, very often in discussions of what goes on in games, "failure" means "character death," or something that might as well be equivalent, like capture and imprisonment. It's common for games to have mechanics to know when a character is dead, and ways for the game to edge a character toward that, so it's a handy default. Lots of games have ways to make death fairly easy to cope with either by some kind of ressurection or by easy replacement of characters.

But there are other ways for characters to fail than just death. These can be tricky to implement in the moment, but some forethought (and collaboration with players) can see one through it. For instance, we see here examples of players poking dragons or taking on huge gangs. It's not very plausible that the characters would by successful at those actions, and very plausible for those actions to lead directly to messy death. But what if the players were not successful but also didn't die? Even in games that strive for realism, such an outcome can be plausible, at least in one's own game.

Every situation is different of course, but dragons, for instance, love to play with their food and also have long term plans involving minions. A dragon might knock a character around for a minute, and then offer the character an opportunity. The dragon needs an emissary or an infiltrator and has a job for the character. The dragon imagines it can always eat the character later when they're no longer useful, but in the meantime, the adventure goes in a new direction. The character has failed, but failed more interestingly than just being slaughtered.

A criminal gang might just be capriciously lethal, or, like a dragon, might have plans that a defeated enemy could help with in exchange for not being killed. Or there might be factions within the gang that see a better purpose for the character than just a messy death scene. Or another gang or the authorities might show up - which doesn't necessarily let the character off the hook, depending on their relationship with those groups. Again, the character has failed, but is still alive.

How to handle that is not always easy to see, and in that case, it's okay to pause the game and say "You can absolutely do what you intend to do, but failure is a distinct possibility, and I'm not sure what it should look like. What do you think?" Maybe they think that death or capture would be appropriate, in which case have at it. Or they might have in mind something more like a narrow escape with horrific injuries, or some other set-back.

If they don't see a way to lose, and in fact don't think that they should lose, it's still not necessary to say "No." Pause the game and talk about it. Just come to that conversation with the hope of being able to say "Yes, and..." rather than something else.

This is an ongoing discussion. None of the above is the last word. If you disagree with what you understand me to say, I hope you'll ask me what I mean.

Some good points there, Centauri - food for thought. :)

Yeah, definitely good input for fresh-faced GMs and harrowed ones alike.

In reply to Ike (msg # 26):

No, sometimes the GM has to walk away.  I've run games for people in places where I have no control over.  Conventions.  Friend's homes.  Acquaintence's homes.

Sometimes you don't have A troublesome player, sometimes the whole table is such.  And whether you believe them to be the problem, or perhaps stop to consider that it could be you, that is one of those times where it might be that you get up and walk away.

That post is nearly 5 years old bud...

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 31):

Yes, it is.

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 31):

Good advice is still good even after five years.

It doesn't have to be a "yes" game, but you really want to avoid a "no" game.

There's few things less fun than a game where no matter what you try, you lose.

In reply to Fugitive (msg # 34):

Very accurate.

Similar advice I was once given is "be a fan of your players (and their characters)." Part of it just feeds into helping them be their best. Having a positive attitude about things is probably good for the game overall too. Might take conscious effort at times.
Players having a similar outlook towards their GM might be good too.
(Of course there's going to be situations where a player/character/GM is just not good though.)