Derailed: On players and their tendency to do the unexpected
So this post will seek to answer the question of What do I do when the players surprise me with their actions? As may be obvious from other posts on this blog, I am a huge believer in giving players as much agency as possible. In my opinion this creates a much better game for everyone involved, but as a ref it can be scary and confusing when players suddenly do a thing you did not expect. Sometimes it means making ref calls on the fly, and it means accepting you have no control over the situation. As the saying goes; no plot survives contact with the players.
The first and foremost thing to remember is this: Don’t Panic. So your players have done a thing. The world has not ended, your game will go on. See this as an opportunity to add more coolness rather than players derailing your baby.
Don’t be afraid to talk to other refs: Sometimes calls need to be made right away, but most of the time they don’t. Go find another ref, discuss between you whats happening and how it’s going to affect the game world. Even when I was head reffing a game, if something I was unsure about came up I always got another opinion to make sure I wasn’t making a rash decision.
How you think about your game: So I find when I’m writing games it’s very helpful to think of it as setting up a board game. You put the board together, and place all the pieces in their starting positions. But that’s it. The players are the ones that will maneuver the pieces, your job is simply the set up. While its ok to have some plans for things the players will likely do, you shouldn’t be overly attached to any of them. Players are notorious for doing their own thing, and you need to be flexable.
The difference between World Building and Narrativium: When you are writing plot its far to easy to think of it in terms of narrative. If players do X, Y happens because that is how the story goes. This isn’t useful in terms of running a game however because if the players don’t choose one of the options you are left desperately trying to figure out how to react. A much better approach is to understand how your game world works. That way it is very simple to figure out cause and effect no matter what the players pull out. It also creates a much more organic and coherent feel for your game. Does your system have magic? Great how does it work? Complex political machinations? Again work out the whys and wherefores and its much easier to model the outcomes. Make sure NPCs have drives and personalities, desires and motivations so that deciding how they would react to any given action is a simple exercise. I will go into world building in more depth in another post, but the important thing is you are creating situations for the players to react to and a living world that will react to the players rather than creating a story for the players to follow. The world exists around the players, not because of them.
But What if Players Destroy the World/ Break the Game? So this risk sounds much worse than it actually is. Remember, you designed the game world, the number of big red buttons are up to you. A well designed game should not give the players the tools they need to break the game. I am all for having big red buttons, but if you include them, you need to be ready for the players to push them, have a contingency plans that mean the game is still playable or accept the risk that your game might just end. This is another good reason to make sure you understand how your metaphysic and world function, so that you have some idea of how various things in setting will interact with each other.
Things You Shouldn’t Do No Matter What:
Try to force the players back on track- This just ends up getting really convoluted, and ultimately invalidates player action. It also runs the risk of taking up so much time that the rest of the plot doesn’t run, which can be a complete bastard. When you ref something you have to accept you do not have control over the players, no matter how much you want to.
Example: Player B spends most of their event destroying all references to their deep dark secret. This is a difficult undertaking, but they are successful. The refs then send another player a vision of the secret because they want it to come out. This completely invalidates Player B’s actions.
Example: Player A does a ritual to destroy a plot item. The refs then add an impromtu plot line which forces the players to go on a quest to get the item back. This again invlaidates Player A’s actions and while the impromtu plot is running the plot that was meant to go out is siting stagnant. Much better to just let the players live with the consequences of letting Player A do the ritual in the first place.
Pull Players out of game to yell at them OC- I really dont care how much you love your plot, pulling players out of game to tell them off is only acceptable if they are doing something horrifically disruptive (such as cheating or causeing OC harm). Players exercising their agency and choosing a path you didn’t think of doesn’t count as OC disruptive.
Punish the players responsible - Consequences of actions are one thing, actions should have consequences. What is bad is when you victimize a player because you are pissed they screwed up your master plan.
Example: Player A is a secret cultist. They are caught by the rest of the players which means the secret cult plot is much less dangerous. The ref is annoyed and sends a monster hit squad after player A.
That is absolutely not ok. Yes it can be frustrating, but punishing players because they deviated from your plot is a serious breach of social contract.
Ret Con- Turning around and telling a player that they didn’t do the thing they just did sucks majorly. It strips that player of all their agency and invalidates a large amount of roleplay. Ret Cons are really deserving of their own post, but I honestly don’t think there is ever a situation in which they are necessary.
TL:DR
Players do stupid shit and that’s ok
Don’t Panic
Don’t be afraid to talk to other refs/crew members before making a call
Make sure you understand how your world works rather than just focusing on the story you want to tell
Be flexible, react to what players do, don’t try to force them into anything.