Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 228 - Back to Basics - Player Ideas

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

We GMs have to generate a lot about the world from the grand multiverse and pantheons of gods to what Typhon the baker looks like and their foibles.  Sometimes players will have great ideas about their character, the world they live in and maybe even larger topics like names of towns and nations.  In this episode I encourage my DMs to listen to player ideas about the game and how it’s played and incorporate them whenever possible.   #dnd #5e #pf2e #dmtips #gmtips #RPGplayers

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. As long as their character ideas don't unbalance the game or start dicking with a lot of the rules, then I say go for it. I would encourage you to allow it whenever you can, but the second a player's idea would give them an unfair advantage or make the game inequitable between themselves and the other PCs, I'd definitely say no. Thank you for listening to the taking 20 podcast episode 228. Another back to basics episode reminding you that player ideas can be good ideas for your game.

I want to thank this week's sponsor French fries. Did you know that fries weren't invented in France? No, no, they were fried in Greece. Before you come at me with, be careful with that joke, it's an antique, I have to say I know, and I've passed over the french fries as a sponsor joke for about a year now to avoid it. But eventually, I had to stop waffling about it. Oh ho ho ho! So bad, and yet your groans only make me more likely to include a pun next week, so keep them coming.

This episode is all about ideas and speaking of which, if you have any ideas for topics that you'd like me to cover, please send them to me, feedback at taking20podcast.com. I'd love to hear what you want to hear, so please don't be shy and send those ideas in. There's a lot of pressure being a DM or GM. We're expected to generate the adventure around the players, the world around the adventure, and then the connections, plots, schemes, and political powers both overt and covert. We have to determine motivations and desires of NPCs, not to mention names of NPCs and businesses and what the population is and what towns exist and

what are the nations and maybe even planets. Sometimes we use some or part of a pre-built world to alleviate some of this world-building pressure and another set of us use some or part of pre-built adventures as the basis for our games. There's no shame in any of that just like there's no shame in generating a complete world from scratch. God bless you if you do that, because I'll admit, I don't have a lot of time for world building these days. I borrow from stories and pre-generated worlds and use them to fill in details that I don't have time to generate on my own. The other thing I do to fill in details, and the reason I wanted to talk to you about it this week, is that I listen to my players for ideas about my game and game world.

In talking with some of the amazing people who've emailed me at feedbackattaking20podcast.com with questions and some of my fellow DMs out there, it sounds like I'm in the minority here. And for that reason, I wanna try to sell you my beloved hardworking GMs out there on accepting ideas from your players and incorporating them into your game world.

What? Let the player whose cleric is named Elvis Priestley and the fighter's name Stud Mclarge Huge to come up with ideas for my world? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. That player and all the others around your table might have good ideas for your game and let me tell you why. Some of you DM listeners out there haven't been in the player seat for a while. There's an ocean of reasons why that could be and we're not here to discuss those, but for whatever reason you haven't been a player in a while. Being a player in a lot of ways means you give up quite a bit of power at the table. The DM is the authority, the rules adjudicator, drives the story, presents the

challenges, sets difficulty, interprets results, and generally is seen as judge, jury, and executioner at a lot of tables. Now, I hear some of you, Jeremy, I don't run my table that way. I'm a benevolent God who treats the players with respect and makes sure that the table is a safe space for them and whatever characters they play, to which I would say, good. I think that's generally the best kind of GM to be, especially when you're playing with new players. However, even in those very friendly tables, there's still a power dynamic here. Players are putting a tremendous amount of trust that the world that the DM gives them will be fun to play in. They trust that the power the DM wields will not be used for ill. I say all of that to help long-time DMs remember that it takes a lot of courage for a player to

volunteer a suggestion for the game, the game world, or the DM themselves. They are, in a very loose sense, beseeching the controller of the game to make a suggestion or make a change because they think they have a good idea. And generally, the vast majority of ideas that players float are ones that they think would probably modify the game to make it more enjoyable for them. So, okay, let's talk more concrete. What do I mean by ideas? They come in multiple forms. They come in many different forms, but most of them break down to four general categories. Ideas about their character, ideas about the adventure, ideas about the game world details, and ideas on what's going on at the table in the real world.

Let's take these one at a time. Players will most often have ideas about their character, what they look like, where they came from, what they're carrying, connections they have with the world and its occupants, what they did before becoming an adventurer, and why they're becoming an adventurer in the first place. These characters belong to the players in as much as any fictional character idea can belong to anyone. In many cases, they are emotionally attached to these creations in their head, whether their idea was a human fighter or a seven foot tall animatronic squirrel wielding a laser rifle and calling everyone champ. Hang on, I just had a new character idea. Laser rifle, fire damage, and done.

Generally, you should work with your players to accommodate ideas about their character, even and especially if the ideas are purely flavor. Some item in their family has a history, for example. Their family comes from noble stock and the family crest is, I don't know, a red and white checkered board shield on a field of cerulean blue. Sure, sounds great, no problem. As long as their character ideas don't unbalance the game or start dicking with a lot of the rules, then I say go for it. I would encourage you to allow it whenever you can, but the second

a player's idea would give them an unfair advantage or make the game inequitable between themselves and the other PCs, I'd definitely say no. Suppose a PC tells you they have an heirloom weapon that their grandfather used during the great invasion of 4583. Sure her, why not? Sounds great. That's pure flavor, sounds like a cool backstory for that weapon and their family. However, the second they tell me, oh, also it's a plus one crossbow,

or it's a crossbow of distance with a plus three greater striking auto reloading explosive flaming crossbow that does an additional 1d8 damage with every shot. You lost me. The game simply isn't balanced for a character to have such a powerful weapon in the early levels. Hell, may not even be balanced for them to ever have a weapon like that. But what if instead you gave them a non-magical crossbow? Now, it's an heirloom and maybe it grows with them over time. Becoming magical when they hit an appropriate level and growing in power with them as they do.

Why not? That sounds fun as hell. Keep track of its capabilities compared to the other PCs and just make sure it doesn't get overpowered and I bet you everybody would enjoy it. Let me give an example from a recent campaign. I'm a player in a Pathfinder 2e campaign called Bloodlords. That adventure path encourages the use of PCs who are one type of dead or another. I had an absolutely crazy idea for a character that I wanted to play. He was a corpse preparer

who kept the undead shuffling along, preparing the freshly deceased for a lifetime... death time? Undeath time? For a long time of being undead. He'd repair the intelligent and unintelligent undead alike, replacing parts that had become damaged or worn like a healer but for the non-living. He fixed problems like in the obscure movie Death Becomes Her with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis where damaged undead didn't have their natural healing properties so he— sorry, almost turned this into Jeremy's movie corner again. Anyway, my idea for Novius was that he dabbled in magic and healing and occult and alchemy and other disciplines to augment his own body with body parts for the recently deceased.

A muscle here, a tendon there, an eyeball from another place, and so forth. My GM Tom said, no problem, but I can't get any mechanical benefits from this capability from the backstory, so I needed to follow the mummy rules from Paizo's Book of the Dead. I said, done. Continued his backstory to make him undead, and in my backstory and one of the attempts he tried to replace a part of himself with a part of a corpse, he cut too greedily and too deep and died in the process. The other corpse preparers turned him into a mummy and voila, Novius was born. Or made. Or came back. Whatever, level one Novius came into being. I had a

crazy idea and my GM worked with me to make sure it wasn't overpowered and stayed in line with the power level of the other characters and the campaign itself. Novius has been a fun character to play. He's not the best cleric in the world and is if anything a little underpowered but he's one of my favorite characters because my GM listened to possible ideas about my character. So please I would encourage you to listen to the ideas that your players have about their characters and work with them to accommodate it as much and as often as you can. Players will often have ideas about adventures and campaigns. Sometimes these ideas show up as preferences and aren't even spoken aloud. However, preferences will easily

become apparent by watching what they do and noting what they enjoy. They prefer combat to social encounters, or diplomacy to intimidation. They try to help others and you can tell that they feel good when they do so. If you notice that, good. Put more opportunities in front of them that cater to those preferences whenever possible. However, they also may have ideas about the adventure that they will discuss with you as the DM or the other players at the table. And here's one of the great DM secrets. If their idea is better than yours, use their idea if you can accommodate it. You may have planned to make Captain Ferrera responsible for the terrors experienced at night on the docks so she can make use of the docks for her, I don't know, burgeoning

pirate fleet. However, if your players are bandying about ideas and one of them comes up with something better, like it's Michael, the warehouse owner who wants to buy a larger pretendant to the docks so he can get more mooring fees by those who use them? Sure, I mean that would work too. And if it fits with your game and if you like it better, buy Jove's, start revealing clues that might point to Michael. When the player turns out to be right, they will feel so smart and you can smile and congratulate them for figuring it out. Never mind that you adjusted the story behind the screen to make it so. Now that being said, if you do adjust the story

don't ever ever ever tell the players that you did. As far as they're concerned that was the answer the whole time. If you reveal the fact that you changed it because one of your players mentioned it, now the players will feel like they got cheated out of figuring out something very smart. Another category of ideas is what I'll call ideas about the game world and its details. These are details like where the character is from, names of countries, regions, towns, maybe even neighborhoods or even smaller details. They may want to be from a small village somewhere on Golarion that's not even on a map or a tiny town south of Whiterun that's just a

crossroads. It's a bunch of farms and a tavern and that's about all that's there. They may completely make up the town name, how long it's been there, who lives there, or some subset thereof. If it fits in your game world, add it to your home game. Novias come from a migrant group who lives by trade in the Galarian nation of Osirian. I have a few details in reserve in case they come up, but since we're 18th level at this point, it's probably only going to be in the post-credits scene. If we even have one. See episode 222, by the way, for my discussion on epilogue and post-credits scenes.

But, I have it ready in case the GM wants to accommodate it. Besides geographic areas, the players may come up with a name of an NPC they know or could meet. Novius's aunt Griselda is the only one of her family who knows what Novius has become, as she is the only one he's still in touch with. She's pushing 60, has weathered many storms in her life, is tall but starting to shrink a bit since time wears us all down and it's undefeated. Your player may say they have business connections, family, old friends, acquaintances through work or other ideas about people they could reasonably know.

If it makes sense for their backstory and it fits your game, I would encourage you to allow it. Lastly, they may have ideas about how the game is run around the table, rules, how players interact and so forth. As a reminder, the difference between a character and a player is that if you hit characters with a hammer, they take 1d6 bludgeoning damage. If you hit a player with a hammer, you go to jail for assault. So they may have ideas about how the players interact, or changes in the rules.

They may want to try critical fumble table or a more narrative type of combat. If your game and the other players are too, give it a shot. At worst, you tried and it didn't work and the player feels valued because their suggestion was tried. At best though, maybe it even makes your game better. You don't have to accept every idea a player throws out, by the way. Many of these ideas will be spontaneous and improvisational and maybe not even fully fleshed out in their mind.

When suggestions are given, analyze each proposed idea in the light of this. Will it make the game less fun or more fun for others or me? Some players may make a suggestion that makes the game better or easier for them and harder for the other players and or for you. Those ideas should probably just be discarded. At long last, here are some tips.

1. Decide if you're open to suggestions at all. This isn't some totalitarian state where you have to take all players ideas and suggestions and roll them into your game. If you don't like suggestions or ideas for your game and you don't like suggestions or ideas for your game and you don't want to try to adjust your game around their suggestions, then just let your players know. Be polite, thank them for their suggestion, explain you're not going to allow them. Keep the game moving.

I will say this is something I would probably discuss in session zero. Tip number two, if you're open to suggestions, decide the scope and frequency of those suggestions or ideas. If you're going to accept ideas for your players, one of the challenges that you're going to have to face is how often you're going to listen to suggestions and how wide in scope, or another too wide, then it might make the world unbelievable, untenable, or worse yet, not fun. If you don't allow any player suggestions, you might make the player feel like they have less agency or choice about the game. You have to find the balance that suits your game and your DM style.

3. If you're open to suggestions suggestions decide when you're going to allow these suggestions. Are you only going to allow it during backstory? The players making their characters backstory? What I would say is be there and make yourself available when the players create their characters. You know your campaign setting in game world and your input can help the players fit the ideas of their backgrounds into your world. Answer any questions they may have to help their character integrate into the game world and as a bonus you're probably gonna get some plot hooks you can add to your game

to make the game even better. Are you going to allow players to make suggestions about descriptions of items or areas? Are you going to allow them to decide what that sword sticking out of the stone looks like? What interior temple is made of and so forth? Decide if you're gonna allow them to make those suggestions or have those ideas about what areas or items look like. Are you going to accept ideas about mysteries to be solved? Listen to your players' speculations and suggestions as they're trying to solve a mystery.

If you are going to accept these ideas, be flexible. Be ready to adjust your plans slightly based on what they're talking about. Remember, the most interesting stories are the ones that are lived together, not the ones that are just written on paper. So accept their ideas about mysteries to be solved and possibly adjust on the fly.

Another thing to decide is that if you're going to allow these types of suggestions or ideas, are you going to prompt them for the ideas? Or are you gonna allow the players to just throw them out unprompted? Fourth tip, communicate what you've decided with your players and work with them to keep things within your comfort zone

of changes that you're going to allow. And then fifth and probably most important tip, make sure you respect player agency. Remember, player agency is key and decisions about their characters and what they are doing and what they would like to do should almost always be allowed as long as it doesn't break your game. The player should have control over their character and how they contribute to the game's narrative.

You want to make that player feel like their choices for their character and their actions matter, that they have options and they can express themselves You can respect the players agency by avoiding false or forced choices and by providing consistent and logical Outcomes by whatever ideas that they have You acknowledge and reflect on the players choices and then give the player feedback and possibly even rewards if they come up with great ideas Sometimes a player will come up with something a a plot idea, a possible big bad or their lieutenant, an element of their backstory or other feature of your game world that would fit well, make the story fun for the player, and maybe even make the game better overall. If so, and it wouldn't break your game world, I would encourage all of my GMs out there to consider player ideas and not just dismiss them outright.

Incorporate the good ones to make your game better and more tailored to your players, and if you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. This podcast could use some likes and reviews. If you wouldn't mind, please like, subscribe, and review the podcast wherever you happen to find it. That feeds the almighty social algorithm and helps spread the word about the podcast. If you've already done so, thank you so much.

And if you haven't, it only takes a minute and it would be a huge help. Tune in next week when I'm gonna talk about the pros and cons of one of the oldest ideas in tabletop RPGs, Wandering Monsters. But before I go, I wanna thank this week's sponsor, French Fries. I always eat them at the end of the week.

I mean, why else would it be called Friday? This has been episode 228, a Back to Basics episode reminding you that player ideas can be good ideas. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2024. References to game system content or copyright, their respective publishers.