I was asked, a while ago, what I liked about 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons. My answer then really continues on into 4th Edition: earlier editions said no a lot to players. These editions say yes.
Let me give a bit of an example of what I mean. You younger gamers who haven’t done your history homework may not realize it, but there was a time when you wouldn’t have been able to play your dwarf paladin…or your half-orc paladin…or an elf fighter above 4th level, for that matter. In the name of game balance, a lot of race-class combinations weren’t strictly speaking legal, and some races were limited to certain levels of advancement in various classes. Your elf may have been 300 years old and taught his martial skills by the finest warriors in the land, but he’d never be better than 4th level as a fighter. With its 3rd edition, D&D started saying yes a lot more to its players. Suddenly, any race could be any class and get to any level of advancement. Yes was in.
D&D 4th edition streamlined saying yes further, making a quick and easy series of DCs and formulae for resolving what could have been a back-and-forth argument in earlier editions. You want to kick a brazier of coals into the ogre’s face? Okay, how about a Dexterity-based attack vs. the ogre’s Reflex defense. I’ll have him grant Combat Advantage if you succeed, because he’ll be startled, and he’ll take 1d6 fire damage. Some 4E players have told me they feel hamstrung by the Powers of the game, but I find them intensely liberating. Strip the flavor text off and repurpose them. Does your fighter want to describe his Cleave as a slash to one foe and a shield-bash to the other? Knock yourself out. Does your wizard want to flavor burning hands as a storm of lightning because of his storm theme? Why not?
Even saying yes in small ways can reap surprising benefits. I recently ran a game for an old high school friend, her son, and a bunch of their friends, young and old. One of the players (one of the adults, oddly) decided she wanted to use a Playmobil figure that was at the table as her miniature. Now, I’d brought about twenty minis with me for people to choose from. I opened my mouth to say that she should really choose one of the to-scale figs. The Playmobil figure was unbalanced, huge, and blocked line of sight. But I didn’t say that. I said yes. What was the consequence? Did the figure get knocked over a lot? Sure. But it was a bunch of kids…they found it hilarious when we referred to the giant cleric, or when I talked about the cleric knocking her head on the cave ceiling. It turned something that my inner control freak could have made an issue of into something we could all laugh at.
Fleshy-Headed Mutant, Are You Friendly?
Just before sitting down to write this article, I ran my first session of the new Gamma World RPG. I have an abiding love of this genre and game. After D&D, Gamma World was the second ever RPG I played, and it looms large in the legend of my childhood. I loved the inherent wackiness of the original edition, with its mutant chickens controlling a food factory, mutant badgers worshipping a college football icon, and flying lion-insect-bats with a fetish for textiles. I’m happy to say that this edition is rife with that level of insanity, and I feel like I’ve come home again.
No intervening edition of the game captured the feel of those insane first games. The tone got more and more serious, and I have a theory about this. The original Gamma World came out when the specter of Nuclear War was looming. I remember being honestly sure, as a teen, that a nuclear war was going to happen. I was so sure of it that I sometimes wondered if it might happen that night, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about my math test the next day. In a climate like that, it felt good to make the Apocalypse wacky. As the Cold War cooled off, it wasn’t necessary to laugh in the face of certain death, so the Apocalypse became dryer and duller. Nowadays, we have threats like global climate change and nuclear-armed terrorists, as well as constant media barrages of people concerned about the Rapture and prophecies of the world ending in 2012 (on my wedding anniversary I might note…maybe gay marriage really is the end of the world!) With so much concern and uncertainty, maybe the time was right for the Apocalypse to get wacky again!
With a game as random as Gamma World is, zaniness is really a part of it right from character creation. Some of our players embraced it immediately. When my friend Jay rolled a Doppelganger Radioactive, he wondered if he might play a lab chimp who’d been exposed directly to the Hadron Collider accident that caused the Big Mistake. I said yes in a heartbeat. Did it matter to me that there was no logical reason for his character to be a simian, or that he didn’t have the Simian origin from the Famine in Fargo expansion? Not at all. He jokingly asked if he could name his character Chimps Ahoy, and I said sure, but how about Chimp Savoy. This caused Jay to immediately envision Chimp Savoy, who would be dressed in a dapper fashion and trying to be civil, but occasionally flying into rages and blasting foes with his radioactive eyes. If I hadn’t said yes, this delightful character might not have been part of my game.
As characters were created, I kept saying yes to my players. The Giant Plant, Mossback George, carries a streetlamp in one hand and wears a stop sign for a shield. Li’l Balls o’ Fire, a Pyrokinetic Rat Swam, (actually an adorable group of mice wearing kilts who fight with needles and blowguns with tiny darts…and who set things on fire gleefully) doesn’t speak. At the player’s request, the swarm turns into shapes and symbols, like the school of fish from “Finding Nemo”. Vi, a Felinoid Plant, is a sentient chia pet. How does that work? I don’t know, but the players love her. And then there’s the Gravity Controlling Mindbreaker, Vw (pronounced Voo) who named himself for the letters on the shield he carries (actually a Volkswagen bug’s hood). I said yes to all of these, and I don’t regret it one bit.
Tilting the Sandbox
Just because I’m saying yes a lot to my players, that doesn’t mean that I’ve totally let go of all control. Oh no, dear readers, no. To illustrate my point, I will give you my framework for my 4E D&D game, Seven Kingdoms: Seowyn’s Crossing, which I’ve charmingly named Sandbox with Benefits. I explained this model in a different article, so I’ll just sum up here. I’m giving my players freedom to roam where they will and pursue whatever goals they take it into their heads to pursue. Because I have a story I want to tell, however, I slip story elements in at a pre-determined pace. If the dragon Flamefang is going to be an important villain later on, then I might decide that there’ll be evidence of the dragon in the 1st adventure, someone talking about the dragon in the 2nd adventure, and a minion of the dragon in the 3rd adventure, no matter which adventures those turn out to be.
Note to my players: I know you read my articles here. I don’t have any plans to introduce a dragon named Flamefang. Ever. This is just an example.
Now, I’ve asked my players to be proactive. I want them to come up with their own goals, and, in general, they are doing that. We’ve barely started, and already there are missing family members to be found, a fey castle that touched one adventurer’s youth, a village to avenge, an orphan in search of his heritage, poachers to be punished, and a character who’s virtually a blank slate with no certain sense of his destiny. I have said yes to all of these backgrounds, and I will use my SWB model to introduce hints of these personal adventures, as well as my own storylines. Then it will be up to my players to decide which stories are most important to pursue, and I will follow, hoping to tell my own stories along with theirs. All in all, it should be one heck of a ride.
Your Turn: Say Yes
I’m advocating any game-master who reads this article to say yes to your players more. I’m not suggesting you should give over the running of the asylum to the inmates. Just try to be more open and accepting of the crazy stuff your players suggest. This doesn’t have to be anything too big. Something as trivial as the Playmobil “miniature” mentioned above could mean more to your player than you recognize.
Happy players keep coming back for more and telling tales of how awesome your games are. As GMs, what more do we need?
How About You?
Do you have a story about a time when you said “yes” to a player and had it result in something you didn’t expect?
About GGG
GGG, you nailed it. And I had completely forgotten elves could not go over 3rd level fighters. What edition was that? 1st AD&D?
Anyhow, if saying “yes” (especially “yes and”) is a golden rule of improv actors out there, it should be a golden rules for us RPGers too.
I tend to say ‘Yes, but…’ rather than ‘Yes, and…’ makes for more of a trade-off and more opportunities for adventure
Great article GGG! I’ve been a fan of the saying yes approach for a long time. As a player I HATED being told that my cleric couldn’t be of that god because of my race or that this vampire clan wouldn’t work like this. It really engendered a sense of openness to player requests when I started GMing. Working around restrictions in games isn’t all that tough and the GM always has control. Plus, saying yes creates unique characters that people want to play and that always helps with game immersion and player fun.
I absolutely, one hundred per cent agree with everything you’ve just said. Saying “yes” may seem like a hip buzzword, but it makes your games so much more fun and energetic. I can think of an example that happened to me recently; I was a player, so I got to see how awesome it is for the player when you tell them “yes”.
In the first, we were playing Dark Sun; it was a session of Encounters. There were goblins up on ledges, and a drake flying around. My fighter climbed up onto one of the ledges, and I asked the DM if I could ready an action for when the drake flew near me, then do a flying tackle and bring it to the ground. He said “yes”, I succeeded, and it was freaking awesome. I kept on doing things like that during the session; I think I only used one power the entire time. The great thing was, it was contagious. The other players started trying wacky, creative things, and the session wound up being so much fun and high-energy as a result that we all cheered at the end. It was fantastic.
I second the notion that saying yes engenders a sense of campaign ownership in the players. And if theres anywhere to practice saying yes, it’s in Gamma World! That place is so crazy, anything can happen!
Do you have a link to that article on “Sandbox with Benefits” please?
Working with your players to make the game “ours” rather than just “mine” is vitally important but also great fun. Players will come up with great ideas that will expand and enrich your world is ways you would never have thought of.
Say “Yes” to your players (with ands and buts as needed) and you will not regret it.
Weirdly enough (and I don’t have children) I’m willing to bet this is good parenting advice as well. That would be funny – set up a parenting advice blog comprised entirely of RPG posts that have substituted ‘kids’ for ‘players.’
Interesting article. I don’t really buy the “earlier editions said no a lot” argument; yes, there were level limits and other apparently arbitrary restrictions that don’t exist in modern versions of D&D, but these are simply differences in design. You have to remember that the earlier editions of the game describe D&D in its infancy and while it is easy to point out the things that were clunky and restrictive it is also easy to forget that OD&D and AD&D were an innovation, pen-and-paper roleplaying games were new. Third edition shifted the design paradigms away from AD&D in a concrete way, but a lot of these new ideas swere already being played in people’s house rules and many of them were first put out there in the 2E Players’ Options books; come to think of it, there is little that I can think of in 3E that was completely new to me.
I don’t remember ever being frustrated at my BECMI or AD&D experience. In my group we generally ignored level limits and it generally didn’t screw the game balance. I don’t remember feeling as if the rules were saying no or that DMs that I played with were saying no and I certainly didn’t say no as a DM. One of the reasons, after playing all editions of D&D, that I am returning to my gaming roots is that the simplicity of the system made it easy to say yes:
“I flourish and lunge with my sword, at the same time I’m trying to get behind the orc.”
“Sure, make your attack as normal and make a dex check to see if you can footwork your way behind it.”
In new editions the above can’t be done without specific feats or powers that say you can do so, not unless you want to be provoking opportunity attacks. In recent editions of D&D you are sometimes forced by the rules to say no, for instance if a player wants to achieve something innovative with a skill, attack, power or any other action you may be forced to explicitly say no, or the player may be forced to abandon his/her idea because it conflicts with a power or feat that another player has bought, or even just a power or feat that exists within the rules. Take the above example:
3.5E
“I flourish and lunge with my sword, at the same time I’m trying to get behind the orc.”
“OK, your attack is a standard action. Moving provokes, but you get a +4 to AC with Mobility.”
“I don’t have mobility. I guess I’ll stay where I am.”
4E
“I flourish and lunge with my sword, at the same time I’m trying to get behind the orc.”
“Do you have an attack power that allows you to shift?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t do that.”
There were DMs that put up barriers or were adversarial, they were bad DMs and we didn’t play in their games. Have these DMs been eliminated? No. There are still bad DMs and some of them even DM 3E and 4E. I know that it is not your intention but the “earlier editions said no a lot” allegation reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbqMoEwDqc
This video did a lot to alienate players who love older editions and in releasing it WoTC gave impetus to the old-school gaming movement.
I agree with the thrust of your post that DMs should say yes to their players more. That’s just good DMing and good DMing is a people skill and it was around long befere 3E and 4E. Did older editions say no alot? No. People say no.
@Yax: Thanks, man. “Yes, and…” is indeed a tool used by improv actors. Mostly it just involves not stepping on the toes of another actor, but rather adding to what they say. I find that it works extremely well for RPGs as well. And the level restrictions for non-humans came right from the very beginning of the game. Looking in my copy of Men & Magic, it says that dwarves can only be “Fighting Men” and can’t go above 6th level, elves can progress as both “Fighting Men” and “Magic-Users” but can’t go above 4th and 8th level respectively. Halflings could only be “Fighting-Men” and couldn’t go above 4th level. And this was a time in which the only classes were “Fighting-Men”, “Magic-Users”, and Clerics. Oh, our early history.
@GRIM: My only comment on “Yes, but…” vs. “Yes, and…” is that you might “but” the player right out of what they thougth was cool about the idea. Let’s say a player says, “I’ve heard there’s a castle full of orcs in the mountains to the west”, and you hit back with “Yes, but it’s actually filled with undead.” If the player was excited to fight orcs, this is going to be a disappointment. Instead, you can reply with “Yes, and you’ve heard the lower cellars are also filled with undead!” This gives the original player what they wanted, plus gives something that perhaps the party’s cleric will be excited for, too.
@John Arcadian: Exactly. Saying yes can make the players feel more included in the creative process. This makes them care more about the world they’re in. Quick example…I wanted to play a half-orc paladin of an all-but-forgotten orcish god of chivalry…Gruumsh’s brother. My DM might’ve shut that down, but instead, he said yes. I felt much more invested in that character’s story and that campaign world than if he’d said, “No…why don’t you just be a paladin of Bahamut?”
@Brian Engard: Woo hoo! You sound like me in combat. Some of my favorite combat moments have included things like tackling an evil cleric through her own blade barrier and stampeding a herd of oxen through a hobgoblin encampment.
And yes, I agree. Once a group of players realizes a DM will say yes in combat, they start trying new things. It’s beautiful, and it leads to some high-energy games.
@Brian: Gamma World is a great place to practice saying yes. The game feels so free-wheeling, it’s easy to let go.
@John H: I mentioned the Sandbox with Benefits model in my article First Games & First Dates, which you can find at http://geeksdreamgirl.com/2010/11/06/first-games-and-first-dates/
@Sean Holland: Absolutely. The LARP I help run, The Isles, is rife with yes. I created a world for it called Constantius, which is meant to be a steam-punk Victorian Britain, a la League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The first game, a bunch of folks showed up as cowboys. I realized that they wanted to play people from the frontiers of Constantius. I hadn’t written it that way, but I thought it was a great addition. Now, as the second campaign begins, the Frontiers of Constantius are a major plot element, with a civil war brewing between them and the Courtlands. Those players enriched our game world in a way they could not have if we’d said no.
@J: Hmm. Interesting thought. But what about the articles about problem players that simply conclude, “If all else fails, you may have to ask them to leave the group”? I can see the conversation… “I’m sorry, Timmy. You’re too much of a rules lawyer. You’ll have to go join someone else’s family.”
About a year and a half ago I thought I would have my group go old school, and it was really a lesson in how things have changed. Just explaining to them how race/classes worked (many of my players started with 3E) had me cringing.
It was one thing to have all those limitations back then, but having had a taste of freedom, the I find the limits much more annoying now.
@Corey: Well said. Any system can be good with a good GM. Having said that, I respect a lot of what you’re saying, but I disagree. Maybe individual moments in combat are a “no”, but they can be turned to a “yes, but” by saying, “I’ll leti t happen this time, but if that’s something you want to be able to do regularly, then you need to look at getting X” where X is a feat, a skill, a power, whatever. Maybe it was that my experiences with early D&D were with younger, less experienced DMs, but I know as a DM, I feel much more comfortable saying yes these days with the newer systems, and those moments tend to be larger than a single round of combat. When someone can’t play what they really want to play…like a dwarf ranger, for example…then whether or not that dwarven ranger can slip behind an orc in a single moment of combat kind of pales by comparison in terms of that player’s enjoyment of the game.
And for the record, I saw that video when it first came out, and I thought it was hilarious. I still do. I think our hobby is mature enough to be able to chuckle at ourselves from time to time.
@The Red DM: I hear ya. I was very pleased when the options opened up, myself.
The funny thing is the only ‘yes’ in the article that made me cringe was the playmobil figure on the battlemat. That would be fine if I were DMing for my nieces and nephews but in my regular game I’m a bit of a control freak about miniatures (I’m only recently opening up to the idea of using a plastic miniature for a PC… they should be metal man!).
You are absolutely right about saying yes more often. Its the best and easiest way to make the players feel like their decisions matter.
@Victor – Do you provide all the minis for your players? I can see being a control freak about all metal minis if you’re providing them, but if PCs have to bring their own, all some of us can do is pick out a plastic one.
I bought one metal mini about 4 years ago. It’s still unassembled and unpainted in the bag it came in. It’s just not something that I can do or have interest in learning how to do. Plastic is easier and much cheaper. 
@Victor I would probably balk at the Playmobil figure if it was a serious, regular game, if only to avoid the figure falling all over the map. This was a game for players down to age 8 or so, so I didn’t mind the silliness of it. It made the kids laugh, too. At one point, the figure fell, knocking over the paladin’s figure and pinning it with its arms. “Oh, look! The cleric is hugging the paladin,” I said. The kids cracked up.
Personally, I don’t mind metal or plastic minis. As long as they make it easy for all the players to know who’s who, then I’m happy.
You guys might be interested in Archipelago II, an RPG whose entire resolution system is based on the spectrum of “yes, and” through “no, and” with “yes, but” and other variations in between. One of my personal favorites, and completely free.
http://norwegianstyle.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/archipelago-ii/