There’s a post up at the Transitive Property of Gaming blog about how the author had a really great idea for a homebrew zombie apocalypse game, and how it didn’t go at all how he planned. I want to reiterate how awesome this homebrew idea sounds: he has a whole apartment complex and neighborhood that he was personally familiar with, he made up maps of the floor plans, rules for improvised barricades, a flowchart for zombie behaviors, a timeline for how bad the infestation is from one block to the next, systems to encourage foraging outside the fortress — some really cool ideas.
The problem is that from session one the players decided that staying put was a bad idea, and so made it their goal to escape the city. They knew, as we all do, that most “successful” zombie movies are the ones where the characters escape the populated areas, and movies where characters whole up end with the social unit collapsing and people turning on each other. But that situation, the one where the characters have to deal with the break down of social bonds, is obviously the game the author wanted to play. Instead, he had to toss out a bunch of his prep and resorted to believable roadblocks like a military quarantine and making the easiest path be the one that lead back to the fortress — but the players just interpreted this as the requisite obstacles that needed to be overcome. They thought *that* was the game, rather than the GM’s attempt to get them back to the game.
I wasn’t at this particular game, so I can’t say how well things were communicated or not, but I can say that I’ve seen this happen over and over and over again, in games I’ve played in and games I’ve run. There seems to be this unspoken rule that GMs aren’t allowed to tell their players what kind of game they (the GM) want to play, which is kind of silly when you consider the amount of effort those same GMs end up putting in to guide/railroad the players back to where they “should” be, back to The Plot. Back to the Game.
It should be a pretty simple fix: just tell your players before you start before Character creation or anything) what kind of game you want to play. The GM is as much a player as anyone else at the table, and you deserve to have your fun as much as the next guy. For most of us, this is a hobby and we shouldn’t treat it like a job. You aren’t their to entertain an audience, you’re there to play a game with your friends.
“I want to play a game where your characters barricade their apartment building against the zombie hordes and have to deal with each other in the resulting stressful environment.”
“I want to play a game where your characters are professional adventurers who delve into ruins and make a living selling ancient treasures they find.”
“I want to play a game where your characters are small-town folk who are thrust into adventuring when your town is destroyed.”
“I want to play a game where your characters are non-combatants who travel cross-country to reclaim their fallen kingdom from an ancient dragon.”
I’d say that adding “and if you fail you will likely die” to any of those is probably healthy, too, but your mileage may vary.
My only observation is that as GMs we feel like we need to cajole our players into the game, that what they want is more important than what we want, because without players there is no game. Or because we want to play a game with *those* friends, specifically. Or some other situation where compromising our fun seems to be the best or only way. Maybe this post says more about my experiences than any wider phenomenon in the hobby, I don’t know. And while I don’t think the GM should give away all his secrets and twists, I think we’d all be better off if we stopped playing “guess the plot.”
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