Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 175 - Wizards of the Coast, Pinkertons, and That One DM Question

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

I've given the WOTC Pinkerton issue a couple of weeks to marinate and I wanted to give my thoughts on the matter.  Also, I wanted to give my wonderful GMs out there a useful tool:  one question you can ask your players to keep them from making a preventable mistake. #DMTips #Dnd #OpenDnd #Pathfinder #WOTC #Pinkerton

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Maybe the player didn't know it was a negotiation. Maybe that other player didn't know that Medusa can turn you to stone if you meet their eyes. Maybe the bard really thinks that he can seduce that dragon. These situations are going to come up as a DM, and many times the success of the gaming session will depend on how you handle this situation. on how you handle this situation. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast,

episode 175. This time, giving some practical advice to DMs about the one question they should ask their players. I also want to thank this week's sponsor, Cowboys. I've found that most Cowboys are happy people, or as I like to call them, jolly ranchers. Are you interested in more interviews on the podcast? Do you have a GM or a player that you think would bring a good perspective or advice to the table? If so, please send me their details via Facebook or Instagram or email it to feedback at taking20podcast.com

and I'd be happy to reach out to them. I'm always interested in meeting other players and DMs who have a passion for passing on what they have learned. I've given this Wizards of the Coast Pinkerton thing some time to marinate, and I wanted to weigh in on this. I tend to take a wait-and-see approach to a lot of these situations, and while that's not good for clicks or views or listens, I hope that means that fewer of my takes are half-baked and based on only part of the story.

If you haven't heard, Wizards of the Coast, who makes Magic the Gathering, sent Pinkerton agents to the home of Dan Cannon, a YouTuber known as OldSchoolMTG, to retrieve a selection of unreleased cards from the latest Magic the Gathering set. Cannon was mistakenly sent a set of boosters in April that wasn't supposed to be released until May. He showed them on his YouTube channel and said that to the best of his knowledge, nothing he received was stolen, but instead someone just screwed up at a distribution center. According to Wizards of the Coast, they said they sent an investigator regarding the unauthorized distribution and disclosure of an embargoed product, and only did so after

several phone calls to the person went unanswered. And also to be fair to Wizards of the Coast, they said that a representative was willing to send him other merchandise to compensate for the money he had spent on the confiscated cards. In an email exchange with a site called io9, Cannon stated that Pinkerton were a little more aggressive than wizards revealed in their statement and told him that they were there to recover stolen goods when asked to wait outside cannon claimed that they forced themselves into his door and prevented his wife from closing it eventually the conversation did move outside where the agents maintained that he had stolen property and if he didn't hand over the product immediately,

they would bring the situation to local law enforcement, and he'd face between one and ten years in jail and up to $200,000 in fines. Cannon claimed that had they emailed or called him that he would have fully cooperated. He also stated that Pinkerton agents went door-to-door in his neighborhood to collect information about him. What's come out since is a revelation that Wizards of the Coast has used Pinkerton and other groups and individuals, including private investigators who specialized in supply chains, cyber security experts, and local law enforcement in the past. If you don't know about them, a quick word about Pinkerton. They were founded in 1850 and have a long and checkered history, to be polite. They stopped the first assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln and guarded trains,

but they were also hired to use lethal force to break up strikes and are used in a number of anti-union measures to this day. Okay, there's a lot to unpack here, and I wasn't there at Mr. Cannon's house, so I don't know exactly what happened. Also, I am not a lawyer, nor do I want to be one, so this should not be considered legal advice. This happened in the United States, and I believe there are two conflicting laws here. One, if you are in possession of stolen property, you do not have the right to keep it. As a matter of fact, if it can be proven that you knew the property was stolen when you bought it, you can actually be charged with possession of stolen property.

However, if it was merely sent to Mr. Cannon in error, the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has ruled in the past that if you receive things that you didn't order, you're legally entitled to keep it as a free gift. I will not question either party's version of events, but they are fairly contradictory. I don't know where the truth lies, with Wizards of the Coast, with Mr. Cannon, or somewhere in the middle. But let's throw all that out. Hop into the supposition copter with me and let's make the best possible assumptions for Wizards of the Coast. Suppose their version of events is 100% correct and Mr. Cannon's isn't. Even if that's true, this looks bad for Wizards of the Coast.

Even if the YouTube video was taken down, and it has been, the damage is done. The OGL fiasco is barely over the horizon, and now it's disclosed that they've used Pinkerton. The same Pinkerton that broke up the Molly Maguires and has been accused of using violence during the Homestead Strike, or more recently, hired by a large warehousing company to spy on its workers looking for signs of union activity. It feels like we just got one bad Wizards of the Coast taste out of our mouths about Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast and the OGL and them trying to sneak in additional restrictions on content

providers. And then along comes this crap sandwich. Personally, I'm pretty disgusted by the whole situation. I would like to beseech, beg, implore Wizards of the Coast to rethink the direction they're taking of interaction with fans and supporters. After all, you catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar. Thank you all for listening. Now on to the episode proper. My beloved GMs out there, let me ask you something.

Have you ever been sitting behind the screen after presenting the situation to the characters? You're halfway listening to the banter and conversation about what they're going to do next, when one player turns to you and says they want to do something that is impossible, physics-defying, or underwear-on-their-face-crotch-first stupid. Something that makes you do a double-take and stare blankly as your mind shatters trying to work out how they thought this was a good idea. The first-level fighter wants to challenge the Barbarian King to one-on-one combat. The bard tries to seduce the Medusa. The rogue wants to set fire to the pet store that's

full of baby animals and adult people so they can rob the tavern across the street. Pulling a gun on the leader of the town's SWAT team. In the police station. The common room. That kind of thing. There are multiple possible causes for players wanting to do something that just doesn't make sense. Maybe they're brand new to the hobby. When you haven't played RPGs before, many times you think the game is different than what it really is. You think that because you're one of the main characters of the story, things will always work out for you. I was guilty of this when I started playing in the 1980s. Quick story, by the way. My very first character I ever made lasted less than one game session.

I was about 10 and created a human fighter named Calipres, I believe was his name. Don't ask me where the name came from, I'm sure my 10 year old addled brain thought it was a great name. The DM started us off in a tavern and being new to the game, I wanted to get into some combat. So I said, I grabbed my tankard and swing at the loudmouth one table over. And just like that, combat were declared. Calipraz hit a few people and eventually came toe-to-toe with an enormous, well-armed NPC. I'm a hero and a first-level fighter, and most of these schmucks don't have class levels. What are you going to do, chump? Well, much to the horror of the two other

more experienced players at the table, my character drew his sword, pointed it at the NPC, who happened to be the head of the local rangers guild, and promptly turned my first character into something that resembled a cherry smoothie before I could even make an attack roll. Bad choice, but fun introduction to the hobby. Lesson learned, my second character was a touch more cautious. I know, I was stupid, I was new, I didn't have a good lay of the RPG land, so to speak. I didn't know any better. Maybe the weird action being declared by the player is because the player didn't understand

the situation properly. Maybe I, the DM, didn't explain it properly. Or they weren't listening, or they didn't comprehend what was going on and why what they suggested would be a poor decision. A subset of that is that the player, and by extension the character, didn't properly assess the situation they were presented. They didn't take stock of the fact that the alchemist has more than a dozen vials of variously colored liquid on a bandolier. They didn't pay any attention that the bookish gnome was reading a spell book and making the hearth of the inn light up and then extinguish over and over and over again. They didn't stop to count the fact that there are 11 elephants in the herd, all looming

in a threatening manner. Hey, these situations happen to all of us. Some of my players are in Mensa and they are brilliant human beings. Engineers who have multiple degrees and some of them have tried to do the dumbest shit at my table. One group I was in was sent to negotiate buying information from a crime lord. Let me pause the story here. When you hear the word negotiate, what do you think of? Me? I think of having a discussion, an offer and a counter offer. A tête-à-tête, where each side gives a little and you meet somewhere in the middle. The party was given a thousand gold pieces to negotiate with, and as the players were discussing our opening offer, one of the players

strolled up to the crime lord, dropped the bag with a thousand gold pieces on the table, and said, hey, we'll give you that much for the information. I mean, you know, it's a hell of an opening to your negotiation. Offer all the gold you have. The crime lord counter offered 2,000 gold pieces and the yelling match was on at the table. Well, okay, yelling match isn't entirely accurate. It's more like a lot of groans and mutters and exasperated sighs that the party's going to come out of this job poorer than what they started. That player, by the way, has a PhD and helps design rockets. Love you, brother, but I had to tell this story. Bear in mind, the reward for the party was going to be whatever gold they brought back to the noble who needed the information, which wound up being,

of course, nothing. We were broke. A thousand gold pieces was a small fortune to us, and we desperately could have used that coin on things like potions and armor and useful shit. Maybe the player didn't know it was a negotiation. Maybe that other player didn't know that Medusa can turn you to stone if you meet their eyes. Maybe the bard really thinks that he can seduce that dragon. These situations are going to come up as a DM, and many times the success of the gaming session will depend on how you handle this situation. First and foremost, you know your players, their temperaments, their attitudes, their experience. You need to handle this in the way that's best for your table. When this happens the first time, have a conversation with your players as a group or one-on-one to get their feedback about how you handled it.

What they consider best for the table may be different than what you do. Secondly, no matter which of the choices I'm about to discuss that you'd like, I encourage every DM to use their common sense when it comes to players declaring their character's actions. There are a lot of jokes cracked around the gaming table, sometimes goofy, outlandish, or anachronistic. I'm pretty sure the cleric was kidding when he said he wanted to take the big bad out for waffles. The warlock was surely joking when they said they want to meet their patron at the Manchester United game. Insert your own joke here about whether a patron rooting for Man U is good or evil. One of my players would be screaming the word evil at the top of her lungs if she heard this right now because she's a Liverpool fan. I like Everton. There are a couple of tense gaming weekends each year around the Merseyside Derby. When it comes to how you respond to these situations

where the players declare their characters are doing something impossible, unlikely, or frankly unintelligent, you can always take the tough but fair route. They've declared their actions, so what happens next is on them. They paid their money, now they'll take their chances. My first DM did this. He let me challenge the head of the Rangers Guild to one-on-one combat. Our DM allowed the start of the negotiation to be every bit of gold we were given. You treat choices made or actions declared by the players in the moment at the table to be the same choices or actions by the characters in the story at that moment. There's no, well now wait a minute, or let's think this through, or are you sure? questions asked.

If you're running a roleplay heavy campaign, this might be the best choice. The player is currently roleplaying their character and says that their character does X. Well, that means that their character is going to try to do X. It's your job as the DM to adjudicate what happens from that choice. They're going to try to jump that 15-foot fence like they're a superhero. They're going to try to tightrope across a fishing line suspended from the ceiling or willingly dive headfirst into a lava pool. There are advantages of doing this from behind the screen. It's relatively easy, it's a solution that requires the least adjudication on your part, and you don't have to remember to provide figurative safety nets for characters who make ill-advised leap-off-of-a-building decisions. Plus, sometimes

it can be funny. Variations of I stick my finger in it has resulted in a lot of laughs around gaming tables through the years. But this can also cause seriously hurt feelings around the table. Not everybody appreciates being the butt of a joke, even for just a short time. They may feel cheated that if they knew more information about what was going on, they would have made a different choice. Not to tip my hand, but this solution is always my fallback. If I've tried other solutions and the player wants to push through with their declared action, then let's try and let's let the dice fall where they may. You come up a mere nine feet short trying to vault that fence,

and you're now prone on this side with the kobolds laughing at you through the fence. Or the first time you bring your weight to bear on the fishing line, it snaps in two, sending you tumbling into the alleyway below. It is, after all, only five-pound test fishing line and you weigh 185 pounds. Or you leap off the bridge and execute a perfect swan dive into the 2,000-degree lava flow. 78 points of damage. 78 points of damage? Yeah, that's just round one, by the way. Do you have a backup character on you tonight? Tough but fair is my fallback,

but tends to not be my default first response. My default response, by the way, has evolved through the years. I used to ask, are you sure when a player declares that their character is doing something that I think that is either reckless, impossible, or at least ill-advised? Before you is a shimmering black orb of nothingness which arcs with power shooting all along the surface. I stick my hand in it. Are you sure? The benefit of asking this question was that it generally made my player think about their actions a bit before proceeding, and it was my go-to for multiple decades of DMing. However, I started paying attention to what happened when I asked that question, and it usually prompted more questions or the player would get defensive, like I was insulting

them or denigrating them by asking them, are you sure? Of course, I wasn't, but I understand how a subset of players could see that question as aggressive and perhaps even a bit belittling. So I grew and I learned and I adjusted my technique. About five to six years ago, I changed are you sure to why does your character want to do that? Or now my more common This slight rephrasing of the question makes it less confrontational, more results-oriented. The player has declared that their character will do something that you know from behind the screen is a bad idea. You're the DM. You know what happens when players try to jump out of an orbiting space station with no ability to slow their descent. By asking, what are you trying to accomplish? It reduces the chance of the question, are you sure being interpreted as, could you not

do this? Or even, are you stupid? By the way, in case you're unsure about what would happen if a character jumped out of a space station with no ability to slow down, they'll probably create a pretty good-sized crater when they land. Well, okay, well, they'll burn up on re-entry, and what's left would make a decent-sized hole. Okay, you know what? To be fair, you'd asphyxiate, then burn up, then leave a... Or your lungs would rupture, you'd have an embolism, go unconscious, bruise all over your body as the water forcibly leaves it, asphyxiate, begin to freeze, burn up on re-entry, and then crater. In short, you'd have a no good, very bad five minutes. Wow, I've wandered pretty far afield.

Okay, back to the question. The intent behind the question, are you sure? Or what are you trying to accomplish? Is not to make the players feel stupid. The reason you ask the question like this, instead of leaving the player character to his fate, is to give the player an opportunity to re-evaluate. As I've mentioned previously, episode 169, for example, even in the most role-play heavy games,

your players are only inside your character's heads for a relatively small percentage of the time. Most of the time, players are only in the character's head during adventuring, possibly some interaction with NPC. You're not seeing what they're seeing and experiencing what they're experiencing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And plus, even during those times when the player is playing the character, the player can't see everything in the exact same way the character can. DMs, I assume you're not taking an hour to describe everything the character could possibly see given their perception role. You don't have

time or every game session you schedule would be like six seconds of game time and four hours of real time. Hour after hour of grass and sky and trees and the footprints and the grazing donkeys and and and. We DMs describe what we feel are the most important parts of the scene or the game and we leave the rest to everyone's imagination. Most of the time we're on pretty close to the same page but sometimes we're not. The player may simply not know what they can and can't do because they have a different picture in their head about what's going on. That easily could be the source of the declaration of an action that makes you say, you want to do what now? They've made different assumptions about the current status of the

battlefield or adventure. What are you trying to accomplish allows for the possibility that the DM and player or players are out of sync about their assumptions, and it allows the DM to fix any incorrect assumptions being made by the player. A character would know there's a muddy patch on the battlefield that'll prevent the character from running through it. A character would hear the high-pitched whistle that indicates pressure is building up in the machine. A character would know that if they charge the fire elemental, their skin's going to start melting off when they get into melee range. If I think there's even a chance that the player doesn't understand the scene or the battlefield the same way I do, I will ask that one question. What is your desired outcome, or what are you hoping to accomplish? My players have learned that when they hear that question, more than likely they're making a mistake

and may not be seeing the world in their head in the same way I do and in the way the adventure should be. Usually they'll start talking amongst themselves about the situation and will make a different choice. My strong recommendation to my wonderful DMs out there, if your player is indicating that they want their character to do something that you know either the character or player should know better, ask them what they're trying to do, what they're trying to accomplish, and what end result they're hoping for. Make sure the player understands the risks and consequences of that choice.

It serves no one well to surprise the player with a character death or putting them in a bad situation that their character would know better. While we're at it, players, if your GM asks you those questions, don't take offense. They're not challenging your intelligence. They're not trying to make you feel stupid. Most of the time, they're just trying to keep you from making a potential mistake that your character wouldn't make if you had all the information. making a potential mistake that your character wouldn't make if you had all the information. Around your table, keep the communication lines open, be respectful to each other, and everyone work together for the best time for everyone around the table, and I bet you and your players would have fun doing it.

Do you have a topic idea for the podcast? I'd love to make episodes that you want to hear. Is there some piece of advice that you think newer players and GMs need to hear? Send it to me on social media or feedback at taking20podcast.com. Tune in next week when, ooh, players really aren't going to like this next week's episode. How DMs can make monsters mechanically and narratively tougher. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Cowboys. Did you know that most Cowboys don't use a microwave? They cook their meals on the range. This has been episode 175 about Wizards of the Coast, Pinkertons, and that one DM question you

can ask. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023. References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers.