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Answerless Game World Questions

May 18, 10:53 AM by Raesanos regarding Administration

Sometimes there seems to be an interesting expectation among some of our players. These players expect every question about the game world to have a single, definitive answer. This may be a good sign: it means our game world is well-defined enough that it feels like there is an answer to every such question. The problem, of course, is that there isn’t.

There may be more too it, though. Let’s take an example question: “Would my character refuse to wear this cloak that is the color of their enemy clan?”

My answer would be “Well, that is up to you. We certainly don’t have a rule that says you must or must not, so it depends on if your character hates their enemies so much they wouldn’t even wear the same colors as them.”

Some people don’t like getting answers like that. Mostly because it doesn’t answer their question, but I think it goes a little deeper. Some people feel that unless they do what we would have done, they are doing it wrong. It is not surprising that people have this expectation: surely they have been told before that they are doing something wrong, when they thought it was a matter of opinion. That is part of the process of learning a new game and is very common even for fantastic players.

If a player is unsatisfied by this answer, a good response would be that if there was a rule about what to do in every situation, role playing would cease to exist, and you would only ever be a drone doing what the rules tell you. A lot of rules have to be guidelines rather than directions to allow for people to act as individuals in a society. Sometimes people are still unsatisfied by this answer, maybe because they still disagree, maybe because I didn’t explain it well enough, but I generally leave it at that.

There is another thing that might happen when this question is asked. Some staff member might pause, think about it, then give an answer. It might end there, but often responses like this turn into undocumented policy. If they say “Oh no, they would never do that” then the player might tell other players, and eventually the game has an unspoken rule that you never wear the colors of your enemies. The staff member may have felt this was true, but often the staff member is just giving an opinion or advice and didn’t mean to imply this should always be the case.

The trick is, in my opinion, to never tell a player to do something when it isn’t clearly documented that they must do it. Staff word is as good as documentation, as it should be. If you are giving an opinion or advice, clearly frame it as such. Saying “You don’t have to do this, but a good idea might be…” should be enough. Some people will inevitably misinterpret that, but at least you can easily explain why the misinterpretation was wrong if you said it like this to begin with.

When telling a player something that isn’t documented as true, but you think it should be, tell them that you are documenting it right then and there, then do it.

Another goal is, of course, to set the expectation that players won’t get an answer to every question. The only way to do this is to consistently not answer questions that don’t have answers, and make it clear why this happens. Sometimes that can be tough, especially as you want to use your imagination, put yourself in their shoes, and come up with some ideas, but ultimately that is the best thing for the game.

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