The need for meta-social communication is one I’ve been stressing to my group for quite a while now. It’s still very difficult for me to get feedback out of them, because it’s tough to stir them to the “know thyself” portion. I get mostly “oh, I had a lot of fun, can’t think of anything wrong!” It’s good to know when I do a good job, but it’s better to hear specifics. Thankfully, we’ve made better progress towards frank discussion after the fact when there are problems, so we rarely get repeated big mistakes.

In the past I’ve had trouble conveying to DMs that I’m _really_ not comfortable having my character be the focus or leader of the game….I’ve tried pretty much everything from hints to flat-out statements and have been basically SOL. Any suggestions on how to give feedback that encourages them to point the roleplaying/leadership stick at someone who enjoys it rather than someone who dreads it?

(oh, and written in a coffeehouse in Switzerland is so cool that you get 12 extra ‘dude!’ points )

Perhaps I’ve been at this too long.

A GM should be soliciting that feedback, and ought to have the thick skin to handle whatever it is they have to discuss. The game is meant to be collaborative, so there should be some give and take, there should be discussion about what kind of game people want, there should be input from both sides of the screen. What you’re describing is what ought to happen with the start of every game, every time. Are you telling me it doesn’t?

-Ben.

That was a pretty extreme example. Usually I won’t take such things very personally. Especially in 3.5, which is not my system of choice, often times I might roll with a bad DMing choice and made the most of it. My now-a-traveling-hobo Warblade spent a few encounters being the only one able to combat things effectively, using Mountain hammer techs with his unarmed strike. I ate a lot of AoO, but it was worth it to see the rogue, knight and bard shouting at me to go get every monster, like I was an attack dog…

I can forgive things, is what I tried to say with that rambling nonsense. But sometimes things really rub me the wrong way. Like a room full of treasure way beyond our level actually being a rust monster encounter that goes way out of control and leaves us at “Wealth: 0 gold”. At those times, the Wyatt Machine might whirr up to work.

Wyatts last blog post..Paizo Watch: The CP Machine Keeps On Truckin’

@Joshua: In terms of being careful, yes I agree that it applies to negative/constructive feedback. As for positive feedback, if it can be given freely and about specific items, I agree that it should also be given as soon as possible. However, gamers being geeks, they are sometime on a geekout high and then feedback gushes out in some garbled mess of praise and reminiscences. Pinpointing out the factor that brought the geekout can get lost.

But I’m spitting hairs here. Bottomline, I agree with you.

@Greywulf: Alex told me what you were referencing. Har Har har. I hope to go to the UK (Astra Zenaca has offices there I might visit soon, and I’ll drop by la Maison du Loup Gris)

@Flying: Lack of self confidence in our GMing skill… one of the most common characteristics of our craft. I will get to part II soon enough.

@Lanir: Ack, I recall you sharing that you had been unlucky in your games. That does indeed suck. One caveat of this series will be that sometimes, no matter how skillful, careful and helpful you might be, the GM will be too defensive for it to be of any help.

Which is a shame really… the key to becoming better as a Gm is to get that proverbial self-esteem (and related misplaced self-importance) stick out of your butt and accept that you can always get better.

@The Last Rogue: Welcome to the Blog and thanks for the kudos! Positive feedback from players, when honest, is sooooo appreciated. I hope you get to DM again soon.

@Wyatt: Welcome back Hombre. It’s clear from reading your blog that you are of the tough love/tough shit brutal honesty school of thought. While I don’t share the same conflict resolution methods, I know that it is sometimes very efficient.

Thing is, especially with inexperienced DMs, implying that the DM was dumb or evil for choosing so and so creature makes me grit my teeth. I mean, I have been doing this for 25 years and I still manage to wipe the players with a badly designed encounter once in a while.

Then again, I assume that your DM can take it when you dish it out and that’s fine. It comes with the Salazaar combo package I’m sure. As you say, online feedback and discussion are often devoid of the filters of face to face caution and diplomacy.

So I’m not saying you are full of shit, far from it, I’m just saying your kind of shit ain’t my first choice! He he he!

@Eric: Greywulf’s player feedback is indeed a very good tool. I use it often to make sure players are aware of their options and are not missing out on things they would find fun.

@Ravyn:Thanks. The best time for feedback is a few days after the game, by email, when you start planning your next session. You basically go out on a limb sayiong you’d appreciate feedback to help you pave the way to the next sessions. It usually works. Well it does in my group.

@Michael: Welcome on the blog! I’ll got to part II real soon. Just tell yourself that its impossible to be good at all aspects of GMing all the time. Hell, I’ve been doing it forever and I still learn things at each game!

If you are honestly focused on making your player’s evening the most fun possible for them, you can say you are doing a good job and you can stop torturing yourself.

Cheers.

I’m quite new at GMing, and have only run a few sessions total. I never get much for feedback other than “I liked it.” But there’s that inner GM voice that tells me, “He’s lying! He’s just sparing your feelings!”

I’m sincerely looking forward to Part II, as I’m currently in that “My world/story/system modification is going to be so awesome no player can possibly not enjoy it!” phase right now (good thing I don’t have a group to suffer it!). I’ll be sure to take this stuff to heart next time I game (whenever that will be, *le sigh*)!

I tend to ask for opinions at the end of my games, but everyone tends to be tired or not feel like commenting. I should implement the giving feedback to players thing as well….

Ravyns last blog post..The Generic Villain on When Not to Kill Your Lieutenant

I always find it difficult to comment ‘publicly’ on a game.

Our DM always polls for our opinion at the end of the game – which is great. But if I really have something constructive to say, I’ll usually try and talk to him privately about it. He’s always very receptive of criticism.

@greywulf: I *love* your idea of the DM also giving feedback on the players.

It reminds me that we used to award XP based on roleplaying quality and creative game playing.

Eric Maziades last blog post..Writing adventure logs.

Wyatts last blog post..Paizo Watch: The CP Machine Keeps On Truckin’

All of the campaigns I’ve been in since shortly after 3rd edition came out have ended badly to be honest. RL concerns tore me away from one, two crashed and burned because the GM decided he couldn’t run anymore (the last of those was blamed on me, the other one was blamed on a different player), and one completed a full story arc but the GM ran it in a very antagonistic fashion so it wasn’t much fun to play. All four were run by two GMs. The thing they had in common was getting very defensive about player feedback, no matter how well concerns were laid out or how neutral and friendly the words used. I’d say a quarter to a half of all feedback they got ended in arguments which seems really high to me (and I’m generously assuming I forgot a lot of times when arguments didn’t happen).

This was at age 15 though; I am a bit better at handling criticism now. With me, I think puberty and associated lack of confidence were the evil-doers in a low tolerance for critique. To what extent this applies to others, I don’t know.

Hope you have a great time, wish I was there too!

Joshuas last blog post..Fluid Combat Rounds Rules

@Flying: I found that giving work to players, especially written, is usually not a good idea to get results. Asking for pre-campaign ideas and input is a great idea and I tried doing it on occasion and it works wonders!

@Greywulf: Good comment, as always! I am in fact having dinner with Alex tonight. You should come!

I’m coming back Tomorrow…

A corollary to this is that a good GM needs to know how to give advice and feedback to players too. Sometimes this can just be a matter of going over points in the rules that the player is unsure of (AKA If I hear “how do you grapple in 3e” one more time, I shall scream…..), suggesting how their characters could work together, agreeing House Rules or planning future plots and machinations just for them. Players love it when you take them behind the scenes and give them little off-camera snippets about what you’ve got planned for them.

For example, I told one of my players “by 5th level, your character is going to be a Duke. Don’t die.”. Boy did his ability to role-play caution (and cowardice!) improve!

Feedback works both ways, and it’s a fine life skill to possess if you can give and receive it diplomatically. After all, it’s not called co-operative storytelling for nuthin’.

Good post, as ever!

We actually tried to use anonymous fill-out forms sent via e-mail to all players and handed in at the end of a session as a feedback option. The problem is that you’ll recognoze most player’s writing style or you can track back their negative comments to a certain point in the game, immediately knowing who filled out the form. So it’s not all that anonymous.

Needless to say, we returned to good ‘ole verbal communication after the forms ended up being too much of a drag and not really efficient anyway. A form does work for player suggestions for next campaigns, though.