How I Roll - Losing a Player 2

Losing a player is different than losing a character. In game losses are tough. Losing a person at the table can go either way. Let's be honest. As a GM there's players you wouldn't mind seeing the last of.

We lost a player recently. I knew he was unhappy even though the game included things he said he wanted. I asked him about it. The response I got was long delayed and I could tell he was working up to leaving. But I was more than willing to give at least one encounter I knew would intrigue him. The rest of the group would enjoy it as well.

I also think the shift to online didn't help. There will be more on that in a future post. But the disconnect between in person and online seems to have been a problem for him. I honestly think he couldn't keep his attention on the game when he didn't have the people there. I would see him off in other channels while we were playing and he always had excuses why his camera didn't work.

Even when you see it coming a player leaving can be a shock.

In this case he left in the middle of the game, sending a message to the group chat that it's been fun but the game isn't for him anymore, and wishing us well. Completely out of the blue, at least to the rest of the players. It hit everyone.

So how do you deal with it? Especially when it brings the group down below a critical mass for an effective game? I used the time right there to talk it out. I wanted to let the rest of the group wasn't to blame (his message could have read that way) and that we could move forward in a few ways. These work even when the player leaving is something with notice.

First I asked if anyone knew someone who wanted to join. Players talk to other players. The best way to get someone in line with the group is to have someone from the group recommend them. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is that the person already knows what the game is like. The other is that the person has a reason to behave since they were recommended.

We lucked out and one of the players said his wife was interested in joining. She and I talked after the session and she seemed like a potential good fit. I have my own issues with couples at the game table and addressed them (yet another post here). So that's all handled.

If we didn't have a player on hand then I would have advertised the game on Meetup and in the local Facebook groups. Although we're online now we want to go back to in person so that means local. It also means finding a new place to play since the player that left was the host. Really the only place open will be mine, once I clean up my junk. Finding a new player this way means interviewing.

Another option is not to replace the player. Most games are optimized for four players but it can be more or less. If the group has decided not to play when players are missing then it's not that much of a problem. If they do want to play when people can't be there then it is a problem. Again, this is a group thing.

We had another issue with this player leaving. His character was the wizard. As of now the group has no access to arcane magic besides magic items. Since I refuse to force people into "missing slots" and the new player chose a non-arcane class it's on me to rejigger the encounters so they are arcane magic lite. I've also made it so that once a magic item is identified they don't need to roll Use Magic Device to use it. They know how from the identification. This lets me replace the wizard with trinkets.

I won't lie. Losing a player hurts. Losing one this way makes me doubt myself. I've gotten past that by referring to my notes and how the player changed when we had the long break then restarted online. He's an in person gamer. That's fine. I think he really wanted to try the online gaming. It didn't work for him. But he chose a very poor way to leave. No one got the chance to say goodbye.

That's the thing. A group of players tends to be more than strangers who sit down at a table every so often and roll shiny math rocks. They form a party. When he left the game he hurt every person in that party. I had very little issue with throwing shade on him for his actions, both in game and out. His character had been very dickish the last few sessions and getting very greedy. The other players were noticing and were trying to play it out. But alas, it didn't happen.

I've lost other players for other reasons. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes they decide the game isn't for them. Sometimes they don't give a reason.

I recommend spending a little time contemplating what they were like prior to leaving (exceptions for those who leave for real life reasons) and see if there was anything that could have been done. That doesn't mean you should beat yourself up. It's more of an evening worth of going back through your notes and thinking about how that player reacted to things in the game. Then decide if it was the game or the player. Or both.

The important thing is to have an open discussion with the rest of the group. Let them know that they can bring up any problems to you. I know there's a school of thought where after every game the GM asks the players what they did and didn't like. I avoid that kind of thing and I'll tell you why. Issues players are having with other players never get disclosed. I send out occasional emails to each person asking what they think of the game and what's missing for them, if anything. I word it better than that. But it's between the two of us so I hope they feel they can be more honest.

The summary of all this is that you can't please everyone. Players are going to leave your game. The game can go on, the game can end. You don't know. But in every case take the time to think about why that player left and if it's something that can be and/or should be avoided in the future. Just because one player didn't like something doesn't mean it's wrong - don't obsess.

3D Designs - How to Cut Out Shapes

I made a very rough tutorial on how to cut a circle out of a square. While this sounds simple it's a lot of steps.

Have a look here.

I'm using Tinkercad for almost everything I do. You can create a free account and do some pretty complex stuff using their tools and the shapes other people have shared.

But CAD has always been a sore point with me. Mostly I don't 'get it'. Having the 3D printers has changed my opinion of that. I needed stuff that wasn't out there or I wanted to modify stuff that was. So I had to learn some form of CAD.

Anyway. If you're looking for a tool that lets you build more mechanical things (organic is a whole different game) then by all means use Tinkercad. They even have a section of pre-built connectors. Just take your time and do a lot of Google searches when things seem weird.

Personally the part that gets me most is the need to make negatives in order to get the shapes I want. That one I'm still working on since I suck at it.

How I Roll - Session Notes

Session notes. The oh-so-necessary drudge work of taking session notes. It's the only way to remember who did what when where and why. And what is going to happen to them because they did this other thing.

I feel it's necessary as a GM to take session notes in sufficient detail that I can read back to get the flavor of what was going on as well as the facts. That's me. My games tend to be an equal mix of role play and combat. If yours lean more towards combat you can have fewer notes. Probably.

In my past games I've had a spiral bound notebook with notes in my rather unique handwriting that I would have to decipher later, paging through to try to remember when things happened. It worked well enough and I could keep up the with the game for the most part. I'm old school that way as I don't allow electronics at my table.

Honestly I don't know that I could GM and write notes on a laptop. The clicky clicky would be a huge distraction to me and the players. At least that's my opinion.

Mind you, these are my notes. They're never meant for the players. That's a different blog post.

The reason this post came into being is my newer way of taking notes. I use a Rocketbook (link goes to an unaffiliated Amazon product) which was recommended by some of the GMs I follow on Twitter. It gives me the best of both worlds - writing by hand but having the notes electronically.

OK. This isn't me plugging the product. I'm describing how it works so I can move past that into more about session notes.

A Rocketbook is a spiral bound notebook with plastic pages. You write using a particular kind of ballpoint pen that kind of works like a whiteboard marker. You can erase with the end of the pen or with a bit of water on a paper towel. Then when you're done you use the app to take pictures of the pages and send them to online storage. I use Google Drive because it saves the pages as a single PDF and it does an OCR transcription that isn't bad. In theory this is the best of both worlds.

I'm also addicted to notecards so I take pictures of those when I hand loot to players. I take pictures of the battle mat and maps drawn on it.

Since my session notes are made into a document via OCR I have to go back over them and not quite rewrite them but clean them up. Sometimes heavily. I end up with notes in my format and I can embed the pictures into the notes for the session, which is a great thing for me. It really helps me know what was given out and what it does. I also don't have to keep a physical copy of the card for myself since it has the magic effects on it.

I do wonder how much time I save, if any, by using this nifty new toy. I still have a printed copy of the notes in a folder for fast reference. I haven't tried searching the documents as a whole for words. I honestly don't know if a regular notebook and typing up the notes would save me any time over the technology toy.

I do know that transcribing them helps me with getting the flow of the game session in writing. I use these notes to make the campaign posts here. If I'm caught up I do both at once - clean up the notes and write the next chapter of the story. If I'm not caught up I get the notes transcribed because I need the space to write.

I don't know how I'll handle session notes when using Fantasy Grounds. I'll have to play with that in the sample game. I might be tapping away during game or writing it down and typing it in later. That's not really what this post is about.

Now that I'm past all that let's talk about what's in my notes. Don't tell my players.

I try to get a lot of information into as few sentences as possible. I summarize things. I jot down interesting turns of phrase. Notable interactions between players and with NPCs are documented. Anything that annoys me gets documented. Interesting future plot points they bring up as part of trying to figure out what's going on very much get documented. For me it's the playbook of the game. What happened, who did it, who didn't pick up on stuff, who went off into the weeds, who was on the mark, and what happened around them. It's actually a lot of information.

Having said that my notes are generally at most 4 typed pages in a bullet point format. I'm not writing narrative when I take these notes. I'm getting the high points and things I want to remember for later. The players will never read them.

Session notes are also good for doing a retrospective about where things went off the rails. And things do go off the rails. By having decent notes you can see what led up to the change and either get it back where it should be going or find out why it went the way it did. Or both. Without a decent set of notes you can't go back and learn from the mistakes that were made. You also can't snicker over some particularly fun piece of gaming that happened. Without notes you're stuck if a player insists something happened and you don't remember it that way.

Yes. These are also meant to keep the players honest. If you're not tracking the loot you give out then how can you be sure where they got that magic item? Or how many coins they got? Or who struck the final blow in a combat? All these are things that can't be left to memory. Well. Maybe the bandit thing but not if you're going to hang an story on the bandit's sibling tracking them down.

You can't write down everything. You could record the session but then you're in an even worse place for trying to find specific events. There's a signal to noise ratio that each GM has to find for themselves. Some don't care about the nitty gritty and want to know the big things. Some want every detail (not recommended). Most seem to fall somewhere in the middle of wanting to know enough that they can figure out what they had planned before the players screwed it all up. I mean, wanting to know how the group handled encounters and interactions.

Notes are also where you keep track of NPCs, which are yet another blog post in the future. But at least a precis of them - name, race, occupation, where they were - can be helpful along with the names of shops and inns. It's amazing how you can work them back into the narrative and it's also amazing how quickly the players pick up on you reusing names.

If you're running pure modules then you probably don't need very detailed notes. If you're running a long term game with a bunch of stuff strung together then you probably need a decent set of notes. It's a matter of what you feel you need as the GM to keep the game flowing.

How I Roll - Losing a Player

It happens. A player leaves the game for whatever reason and we have to deal with the aftermath.

They could be a member of a closed group. They could be a regular drop in player. They could be someone who never made it past Session Zero. But they're no longer a part of the game.

I've had this happen quite a bit and honestly it still hurts when it does. No matter what their reason I always feel - even if it's just a tiny bit - like it's my fault. Even when it totally is NOT my fault.

Losing a player means a shift in the group dynamic as well.

We just lost a player. I expected it to happen even if I did shift the game more in line with what he enjoyed more without sacrificing what the other players wanted. It showed in both player and PC attitude.

There's no one clue that lets you know you're going to lose them. Well. Saying they're moving out of the area for an in person game is a clue but in general I'm talking about losing one without that kind of concrete situation. It take some attention to detail to pick up on clues, if they're even given.

My players lost before and at Session Zero didn't like how I structure my games. I had one who didn't like not being able to choose their stats and completely control their character. I had a pair that didn't like that I wasn't able to be bullied into changing the parameters of the game. I had two who went through Session Zero and disappeared.

Those aren't as painful and are kind of a relief that they left before the game got started. Losing players before the game begins means that more players can be found and the game can start with them. Losing them and then not having enough players to keep a game running isn't fair to everyone else, especially if the players who left knew that my game wasn't what they wanted. Rude.

Losing a player to situations outside of their control hurts because you're losing a friend. But we get to say goodbye in at least one more gaming session before their character rides off into the sunset. Unless I have a reason I don't kill of characters that leave. They're still out there in the world and they tend to show up in the narrative later. It's a nice tribute.

Losing a player during the game because they choose to leave is the most difficult. This is the one that throws off everyone. Players aren't necessarily tuned in to when one of them is unhappy with the game itself so it can come as a nasty surprise when suddenly one decides to leave. There's no discussion, there's no closure. There's a hole.

As a GM this is the one that hurts. I know that games evolve and not everyone will like the direction it's going. Someone who prefers more dungeon crawling won't like a game where everyone else likes sessions that are pure role playing and visa versa. Some want the spotlight more than they're getting. Some just don't like the game. To me this always reflects back on me.

I soul search after they leave. I wonder if I could have caught it earlier and made the game more enjoyable so they wouldn't have left. I wonder if other players are unhappy and I haven't seen it. I question my decisions as to what encounters I brought to them. I wonder if I'm a good GM.

I won't discuss an unhappy player with the group while they're still involved. I'll try to talk to them privately to see what I can do to include things they want but honestly by that point they've made up their minds to leave. I haven't been able to persuade a player to stay and I don't know that I want to do it unless they've got some valid reason for it that doesn't make the rest of the players unhappy. A player that's going to leave is going to leave.

At this point I send out individual emails asking how each player is liking the game, what they feel could be done better, what they feel is missing, etc. I know groups that do that at the end of every session but I don't like that. It puts players on the spot so if they have concerns and everyone else has a different opinion there's a good chance I'll never hear it. By making it private they don't have to worry about being singled out.

Once the player is gone then the group can discuss what happened and the progress of the game. I can ask if they're unhappy with the specific things that caused the player to leave. I can be more honest at that point. The player is gone and there's no chance of making them uncomfortable. They did that to the group so I feel it's only fair to return the favor. I can be a little petty.

Losing a player doesn't mean you're a bad GM. It really isn't your fault. If the player didn't reach out to say they wanted something else you can't read minds. If you reach out and they don't tell you then you can't resolve it. Even if they do reach out that doesn't mean you can or will change the game to suit them.

Regardless there's a few things to do after it happens.

Decide how the character is going to leave the group. Keep it in the format the player was handling their character. Remove the PC from the game however you feel is appropriate but try to keep the spite to a minimum. You can always have something horrible happen to them "off camera" and let it filter back later.
Talk to the group about it. They can be more upset than you since it's a shock. Find out if they have the same concerns (if you know them) and let them talk it out.
Ask them how they want to proceed. Do they want to add another player? Do they know someone who they think would fit in the group? Do they want to end the game? They're all valid options.
Send an email thanking the player and wish them well. Don't burn bridges and don't vent on them.
Adjust any upcoming encounters to fill the hole. Losing the cleric means lots of undead probably aren't a great idea and add a lot of healing magic to the loot they find. Losing the tank means turning the combat to things they can handle without having someone go through and make kibble out of the opponents.
This is my person one but if you do decide to add another player don't expect them to "fill the hole". Let them choose a character type they want to play and adjust, adjust, adjust. If they really do enjoy playing all the classes they'll pick a character to replace the missing one on their own. Again this is my personal preference but if that's not yours then by all means do what works for you.

To finish up. Mourn the loss (if the player is worth it), talk it out, and move on. Make the game what the remaining players want it to be. You can't fix what one person thought was broken and isn't around anymore.

Forgotten Realms Campaign - Game Update

This is a post to let you know the campaign is still going after a hiatus while we waited to see if we could continue in person or if we had to go online.

We did go online using Discord and there's quite a few sessions I have to transcribe my notes and make them into posts here.

Stay tuned!

How I Roll - That Other Player

I already talked about That One Player and how to work with them to make a decent game. Now I'm going to talk about That Other Player.

This is the player you can't read. Most of the time the players at the table open up and you get a feeling for what they want, what kind of person they are, if they're enjoying the game, etc. Then you get a player who isn't like that at all.

This player makes me feel insecure, personally. I'm not getting feedback to know if I'm running the game in a way that makes them happy. I start to second guess what I'm about to do and how I'm going to engage their character.

This is the one who doesn't want to help the villagers while the rest of the group does. This is the one who doesn't get excited about some kind of mystery they've tripped over. This is the one who does their part in the game but then you don't hear from them until the next game. This is the one who seems to enjoy the game but also seems to find it lacking.

It makes me want to throw a really big d20 at them and make them tell me what they're thinking.

Some things to try are flat out asking them what they think, trailing teasers across their path, paying close attention at various aspects of the game, and other frustrating ways to try to interpret their feelings. I know that flat out asking shouldn't be frustrating but it is if they won't give you a straight answer.

I'm not particularly subtle at times. Hence the "throw the really big d20" comment. I'll keep trying to find out what's in their head until I figure it out or I accept that I'll never figure it out. Other people with actual social skills will have a better chance at it than I do. When asking them if they're having fun gets no definitive answer I'll go with the option of doing what I do unless told otherwise.

This is another one where I don't have much of an answer. Doing the table check at the end of the game asking everyone what they liked and didn't like always feels weird to me since I don't know how honest any one person would be in front of everyone else. And asking separately can get slanted answers because they don't want to hurt my feelings or make me angry. I'm fine with hurt feelings and it would take a lot to make me angry. The d20 thing is frustration, not anger.

I can't draw a conclusion on this one. There's too much going on and it's specific to the group and GM. The game should be fun and a way to hang out as a group, either in person or online. When something feels off then address it and accept the answers given, I guess.