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22:54, 28th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious.

Posted by PushBarToOpen
PushBarToOpen
member, 872 posts
Tue 24 Feb 2015
at 12:00
  • msg #1

Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

So my local playgroup are starting a new game. I've taken it upon myself to run a 5th Ed DnD game. Now we have completed character creation this week and it gave me concerns. Usually we have shied away from DnD for long campaigns and run them as one shots, this has meant they have associated 3rd ed with shenanigans.

I'm not wanting to run a shenanigans style of game something much more grounded, more traditional fantasy. But i'm unsure of how i can get this across. I have already told my players that a party elephant pet is not acceptable as well as having to stop a group conspiracy of playing the blues brothers. They now all have fairly reasonable and sensible characters.

However comments like, "My character is basically Captain Hammer-Smash", "my dog is called Fruitcake"  and "I've created an Investment banker". Leave me concerned that they won't appreciate the tone I've written for, and i feel like i'm going to get frustrated doing things like insisting on proper names and trying to encourage the traditional adventuring role-play.

I have told them time and time again that this isn't a silly one shot to poke fun of. (Something i have ran happily in the past). and although i'm expecting some more seriousness when the game actually starts, all it takes is a few little actions to tip the scale.

So without enforcing embargo's on character actions, and having told them what i expect... what options am i left with to try and make the game go a little more how i want in the worst case scenarios?
truemane
member, 1953 posts
Firing magic missles at
the darkness!
Tue 24 Feb 2015
at 13:59
  • msg #2

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

There are three 'worlds' at play when you come together to make a game:
-the GM
-the game itself
-the players

The game is only going to be successful if all three are in the same place. All you can do is clearly communicate the game you want to play. At that point, it is up to the players as to whether or not they're interested in playing that game.

You tell them (email is good for this, I've found) that THIS is the story I want to tell, THIS is the mood I want to strike, THIS is the overall effect and theme I'm aiming for. And you ask them to either buy in or bow out.

Enforcing an embargo on player actions is not necessarily a bad thing. You're trying to tell a story. Good players do their best to take actions and do things that make that story better.

But the other side is, as I said, that if they don't want to tell that story with you, and they want to tell a different story, then you, too, have to either buy in or bow out.
Gaffer
member, 1247 posts
Ocoee FL
40 yrs of RPGs
Tue 24 Feb 2015
at 14:31
  • msg #3

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

You can do a lot to set the tone.

Don't engage in any of the usual hi-jinks. Keep your mood serious and somber for at least the first session and for the beginning of every session. They should pick this up from you.

Change the ambiance of your space. Lower the lights, dress in dark colors, use a quiet voice. Set all phones in airplane mode (they'd do it for a movie).

Make sure you have a good opening planned that draws them into the serious setting. Don't start in any place their former characters frequented. If past adventures have often started in a tavern where they banter with barmaids and order everything with fries, don't start in a tavern, for example. A good way to start can be right in the middle of a scene.

Maybe they're fighting for their lives, backs to the wall, taking minor wounds, down to two arrows, shield cleaved in half. Suddenly trumpets! A half dozen men at arms scatter their foes. Their leader, a grizzled mercenary tells them he needs men to round out his band, having lost two of his best in rescuing them.

Or they're creeping through the woods, sneaking up on an orc camp. Their task is to close off this line of escape while the other half of their band attacks from the other side. There it is! Two captives are strung up and dressed out like deer, but the Lady Agatha and her sister are being roughly handled and destined for a worse fate. The trumpet sounds from the forest and their captain leads his men into the camp. But a hobgoblin rears up and starts laying waste to their comrades. A few orcs flee in their direction with the captives, but are easily cut down, the ladies secured. Flight is the only option. But Lady Agatha wants to pursue the man who hired these orcs and has something that she wants back.

If that's not enough and they persist in shenanigans -- kill them all.
Mystic-Scholar
member, 90 posts
Tue 24 Feb 2015
at 16:14
  • msg #4

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

Always clarify your Game World for them. I play in games of various types, they're fun enough. But when I GM, there's only one type of world that I run.

It is always Fantasy, not Science Fiction.
It is always early medieval -- at best.
There are no gunpowder weapons.
Science is very limited. With Heal and Cure spells, who in the Nine Hells is going to need glasses?

Before anyone starts: There are several Gods that are quite merciful and generous and are going to fix poor people's eyesight for nothing. It's how such a God gets worshippers.

There are a few other points for my game, but that's enough of an example: Clarify your Game World parameters. And as has already been noted, do not let the shenanigans even get start. Stop it the moment it happens.
Jarodemo
member, 759 posts
My hovercraft
is full of eels
Tue 24 Feb 2015
at 16:17
  • msg #5

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

Gaffer:
If that's not enough and they persist in shenanigans -- kill them all.

Drastic, but a viable option! :)

Seriously though, punishment and reward can be good motivators. If they take it seriously then reward with gold or cool magic items (not necessarily powerful, just cool!), but if they mess about then punish them with curses, broken gear, a thief stealing their prized magic item in the night, etc. Hopefully they'll soon get the message.
ShadoPrism
member, 735 posts
OCGD-Obsessive-Compulsive
Gamer-Disorder
Tue 24 Feb 2015
at 16:41
  • msg #6

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

Speaking of setting the mood by putting characters in the story fast.
In my present game what I did was pull people from their present lives and drop them in to the middle of a dungeon - none have met in real life before, have no experience in this world (I am running a cross universe 2cd ed AD&D game just to clarify). So they have to learn to work as a group and about the world they have found themselves in from the start.
It's working pretty well. Even with one character comparing everything to Diablo video games. (They are from This world, or one very similar to it and I dropped them in to Realms. You can imagine how tech oriented people will do in a low tech, high magic realm)
facemaker329
member, 6592 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Tue 24 Feb 2015
at 17:22
  • msg #7

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

Starting the game with them in dire circumstances is good.  Another thing that will help is having NPCs who don't respond well to light-hearted jesting.

But be careful how hard you hold the reins.  It's a natural reaction for some people to respond to high stress situations with some kind of humor.  Taking all humor out of the game may totally kill their enjoyment of it (note, while I appreciate humor in grim situations, there's a world of difference between a quip to help defuse tension and treating the whole situation as the setup for a big joke.)

Let them pick whatever name they want...but don't have anyone outside the party react to the name as anything other than a name...or have NPCs twist the name into an insult, if appropriate.  Someone wants an investment banker?  Great...but look him squarely in the eye and tell him to start working on another character now, because an investment banker will not survive the scenario they're going to play.  Some people have a hard time shifting gears and understanding just what 'serious' means, especially if they're accustomed to playing zany concepts.  But if you don't buy into their jokes, they'll either stop buying into each other's jokes and get serious...or they'll decide that 'serious' is not what they want in a game (which is an option you should prepare yourself for, just in case...)

In the end, though, your best bet is probably to convey to each of them, individually and personally, that you want the game to be fun for them...but playing yet another goofy one-off game isn't going to be fun for you.  If they've got any respect for you as a friend and/or GM, they'll tone it down on their own.  And you may find that a compromise of the two approaches will work best.
Azraile
member, 488 posts
AIM: Azraile - Dislexic
Dont take my text as mean
Wed 25 Feb 2015
at 05:38
  • msg #8

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

Ok well in WoD cannon there is a ratkin named Ricky Rat, long story short Ricky Rat as a young man tried to sell Ricky Rat comics to producers and the like and the idea was stolen and made into Micky Mouse. He went a little loony toons and lost all credablity due to his inability to let it stand and exstream hostility on the matter. Fact was Ricky was not exsactly PG being overly perverted and foul mouthed to say the least so no one took his ties to Micky sereously. In the end though he got sick and became a ratkin, something in him snapped, he WAS Ricky Rat fast forward 60-80 years of debotchuary, indiscriminate sex, foul language enought to make sailors throw up, and being kicked out of to many senior citizen homes to count, and he's nearly 100 years old and knows he is going to die. Before his death though he is calling on all his bastard children, grand children, and great great great ect ect children to his side to take back what is his and has stated before he dies he swares to Rat (the totem/god) that he will be sitting on a throne in the burning ruins of the magic castle with a hariem of tourist women at his feet before he dies.

This is 100% seriously in the book cannon stuff.

Considering how much a haven to the weaver Diseny World must be, a place where every thing is fake and everything is carefully controlled for the mindless drones of park goers.... Well it must be a massive hot bed of weaver activity.  And with a encursion of the wyld of such power with in only a few hundred miles at most (the fountain of youth), well it just lines up for one massive rediculous standoff between the wyld and the weaver.  There WILL be chaos monitors and the weavers children (humanity 2.0 now with out all that anoying emotions and mortality in the way), run and hide!!!!  lol

So I thought AWSOME let's make this a game, and a little side tour of the umbra from getting lost because they want to know more about the umbra and the game would be to short otherwise, and bam got a good game.

I could not get a SINGLE person to take it seriously at all, and the keep getting pissed off when crazy antics had repercussions. Keep asking me why I made a such a rediculous game so serous. They can't see rats and wyld things VS Diseny Land and not be all yah let's go crazy.

Yes ratkin are crazy, wild, and unpredictable... And the consept a little goofy, but the world it is set in is deadly serous and the wyld vs weaver power play going on is a grand scale serous world changing event. The fall of Orlando FL to mass chaos, Ratkin, and wyld spirits would rip the exsursuon at the fountain of youth right open and sent insane amounts of wyld energy surging back into the world.  The SE USA would be a jungle in weeks/months. lol

I spent a lot of time and effort into it for people to quit 1/3 the way through because they got fed up with the game having to many consequences and realistic cause and effect.

Every single game we ran has had realistic cause and effect, what on earth suddenly made them think that would change when I ran a game regardless of how odd ball it was.

And now I can never get anyone interested because they all think it's to rediculous. lol even when I tell them it's canon and the dinamics of the wyld and weaver that are in it.

So yah, deffently understand the whole no one will take a game serous thing.  >.<

And I so wanted to see there reactions when they realized the park has/is a weaver totem spirit that the weavers children wake up. Nothing like Epcct center trying to step on your face to kick a war into second gear. That and I always love peoples reactions to chaos monitors and the way they cross over into the phisical plane.... lol they are so powerful the barrier between the spirit and flesh SHATERS like braking glass when they cross. It looks like the creaking sky cracks and shatters and a big scary 100 foot long diamond scorpion crawls out. O.O scary!!!!
JxJxA
member, 92 posts
Wed 25 Feb 2015
at 05:54
  • msg #9

Re: Players Expect Silly Iv'e Written Serious

I'll echo the people who mentioned compromise. I think it's a little easier in pbp for the GM to set the tone of the game because you can pick and choose your players. You're stuck with each other in an in-person gaming group, for better or for worse. This is especially true if you're all friends outside of tabletop sessions, and you want that friendship to continue.

If they have reasonable PCs, you might want to give them a little leniency for goofiness with their characters. Alternatively, you could find a way to tweak it into the story-line. Maybe Hammer-Smash meets a more malevolent Dr. Horrible, and who knows how responsive Fruitcake could be to his name?

The investment banker concept kind of makes me laugh. Is he supposed to be really good with numbers (i.e. the party's money manager), or is he a appletart who spends everyone else's money?
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