This is how you know we’re a comics about roleplayers first, and fantasy adventures second: The moment something sudden and dramatic happens in-game, we stop for a whole page of a player complaining about fairness.
Now, I don’t want to bash Rotem here – complaining about fairness is an essential part of the roleplaying experience. It’s not inherently petty, nor is it inherently childish (it can be both, but only if taken to the extreme). We’re playing a game with some loose boundaries, because in all RPGs there are always some essential rules that are open to interpretation. Even more so, the mere act of choosing to use the rules in a given situation is itself open to interpretation – and almost always, the GM is the sole judge of when and how to do so.
Games have to be fair, otherwise we won’t play them. We must feel like there’s a chance for us to express ourselves in a way that generates a perceived reward. In RPGs, this self expression is very open-ended, and the perceived reward is very open to personal tastes. So in order to make sure we’re all having fun, we should question rulings, and we should comment when things aren’t going the way we think is fair. A good GM will be aware of the fact that the players almost always want to feel like they’re having agency, and so will help clear any misunderstandings and re-interpret the rules in a way that allows for all the players to get sufficient power over the story. (And a good player will ask for a sufficient amount, and won’t be petty about the rules).
News!
Our comics are now available through Leisure Games! Buy them for yourself, your friends, and your family!
Aviv continues to draw our patrons’ characters (she asked them to describe them); she’s posting them on her Facebook page and Twitter account.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1507930685990172.1073741848.101284133321508&type=1&l=0e056aff85
On today’s new On the Shoulders of Dwarves, Uri and I read an email by Jessica, a new GM who seems to be killing her PCs a lot more frequently than she intends to. How to control the level of deadliness of your adventure?
One last thing – if you’re around London, and you want me to run some Dungeon Crawl Classics for you, check this out.
Related RPG article: Keeping it Unreal
If you enjoy our work and think it’s good, please consider paying a monthly $1 or more for it, via our Patreon page. We are ad-free, and all of our funding comes from Patreon supporters.
Actually, about 5% of it now comes from selling our stuff over at Leisure Games.
