The Sneaky GM Trap I Spotted At Start Of This Adventure
The Sneaky GM Trap I Spotted At Start Of This Adventure
I was reading an adventure last night (an adventure that I also played in January) and something troublesome jumped out at me from the initial encounter’s boxed text.
Here is the first sentence:
The stairs leading to the basement of the Otari Fishery creak with age as you make your way downstairs to find the beast that has been eating all the fish.
Can you guess what my issue with that read-aloud sentence is?
The Trap
Managing player agency is tough. We have ideas and plans we’d love to see played out. So we direct the characters without giving players a choice. And removing a bit of player agency often happens without us even realizing it!
The example above kicks-off a beginner’s adventure. So I think the designers were going for nice ambiance and flavor via detail there.
But here is the trap: the stairs made a creaking sound.
A minor quibble? Yes. But I’m picking on this small thing because it illustrates the point so well of how we can reduce player agency and remove choice without noticing it.
The party quests to find a monster in the basement. Indeed, there are monsters in this encounter to fight. But already I have told players their characters have made some noise – a party gaffe.
Again, a minor quibble, but if you’ve got a jerk like me at your table I’d be kind of ticked off. (And I was when I played Ezren the wizard, but I kept my mouth shut.)
Why is that Sentence a GM Trap?
Three quick reasons:
- Making a creaking noise would give any nearby foes a chance to hear the party. We’ve put the party at potential disadvantage. While the sentence might be pure decorative detail, players don’t know that because of their Fog of War.
- If the creaking was pure decorative detail, and the creatures in this encounter don’t get to make perception checks, then I’ve created a small Logic Bomb.
- If I was playing a stealthy PC, the adventure has betrayed my character identity. I want to be stealthy, and from the get-go I’ve been forced to make a mistake.
We’re telling players their PCs have just made noise. No choice. No agency.
A Different Beginning
What would I do to fix this encounter opening?
If this was meant to be a throwaway detail, then I’d remove it:
You notice the stairs leading to the basement of the Otari Fishery are very old as you make your way down to find the beast that has been eating all the fish.
No creak. No GM trap.
Even better, I might turn this into a way to teach perception and skill rules before diving into combat for newbies:
A set of very old and possibly creaky stairs lead to the basement of the Otari Fishery on your quest to find the beast that has been eating all the fish. Do you take any precautions before heading down?
I’ve removed the mandatory noise and given players a good clue they’re about to make some. The clue’s obvious because the adventure’s aimed at new players. Likewise, I make a leading suggestion to prompt and guide the newbies.
Then I’d toss the hot potato to the party. It’s up to them now whether to proceed without caution and trigger the creaking trap.
One More Minor Quibble
This opener also demonstrates another gotcha I often see with boxed text:
The stairs leading to the basement of the Otari Fishery creak with age as you make your way downstairs to find the beast that has been eating all the fish.
There’s too much information packed into one breath. It’s a player trap, this time.
I know it’s a challenge making maximum use of page space because printing books is expensive. But when homebrewing adventures, at least, try to stick to one key point per breath or sentence.
That way you space things out for players to process better. It also makes improvising descriptions much easer.
Rewriting the sentence in a way I prefer to GM, it would look like this:
- You are at the Otari Fishery
- You quest to find the beast eating all the fish
- You stand before the stairs to the basement
- The stairs look very old and might be creaky
- The basement is dark and smells terrible
While boring to read-as-entertainment, functionally, bullets like that help me paraphrase important details in-game using a more authentic voice. And splitting up points spaces details out for better player listening, processing, and understanding.
Raise Our Antennae to Catch When We Reduce Player Choice & Agency
I’m not trying to pick on the company, game system, or designers here. Instead, it’s a fantastic example of how we might take control of the characters without meaning to, eliminating a potentially important decision point.
I do things like this even today and try to remain vigilant against it. And when players call me out on it, it’s mea culpa time and I’ll do a quick rewind to allow quetions, actions, and rolls.
With all the books and shows we consume, it’s tough to break the “author” habit. But it’s something we should aim to repair in our interactive medium.