Whenever there’s a call for a devil’s bargain I have this desire to shout out non sequiturs that happened in human history.
Gm: “Markus is rolling 2 dice to balance on this this wall without alerting the watch. Anyone have a devil’s bargain for him?”
Other player:” Markus sees that the guards are wielding heavier weapons than we had originally anticipated.”
Another player:” Markus needs to lose the heavy demolition tools he is carrying. “
Me: “communist china’s violent revolution leads to many of their great works of art being destroyed by zealous patriots.”
Players and GM stare at me waiting for a punchline that’s never coming.
That may be taking the Butterfly Effect too far. 😉
I would laugh the first time. The second time i would interrupt the game to address the concept of player agenda.
It sounds like your player agenda is to amuse the others at the table, which is great and can contribute to the collaborative experience when well-executed.
But your execution as described is distracting to the other players’ game. Furthermore, it is intentional. It’s not an accident; you are actively pursuing this distraction. This is a player agenda issue.
Your anecdote has them all focused on the fiction, and then your comment pulls them out of that, and you leave them “staring at me waiting for a punchline that’s never coming.”
As a fellow “class clown” i understand the compulsion; I have also learned that sometimes it is less important to be funny than it is to not be disruptive when engaged in collaborative projects, such as a table top RPG.
If a player at the table is competing for attention against the game that we’ve joined to play, then they’re being disruptive. Are you not engaged in the fiction or the collaboration of the other players? Do you react when you’re not getting enough spotlight? If i was another player or MC/GM at the table, i would look for ways to bring you on board rather than have you throwing off the game. But ultimately it comes down to you – if you agree to sit at the table and engage in a game, you need to come with the honest intention of doing so, and not obstructing the other players in their play.
Non-sequitur aside, I had great fun using the devils bargain to introduce plot elements- even when the bargin isn’t directly related to what the PC is trying to achieve.
I would offer bargains like “you will meet a stranger on the roof” or “there happens to be a festival going on”. The barging doesn’t nessecarily be in the moment.
In fact, if you were playing a historical setting the China’s art destruction thing might be a perfectly valid bargin.
Also Andrew Fish I don’t think I’ve ever played at a table where everyone has been focused entierly on the game. Mostly I find our group shoots the breeze and plays the game around the gaps in conversation. Non-sequitur are frequent and even encouraged.
Maybe we also need a concept of group agenda? For us, beer drinking and hanging tend to take priority.
Conor Rochon – i’d agree; i wouldn’t want to sit at a table that demands pure focus on the game at the exclusion of the social experience of the players.
The social aspect is what attracts me to a TTRPG with friends (and strangers). I can also simply read a book, write a story, or turn on a video game or movie.
But there is a difference between being socially engaged while playing and having a player intentionally disrupt game play.
I used to not be mindful of this distinction, and was myself often the one clowning around, sometimes to the detriment of the session.
Now i am more mindful of exactly what you mention: a group agenda. I appreciate the time and collaboration of my friends joining me at the table, and if my personal agenda conflicts with the group agenda (for instance, if i disrupt the game play, rather than simply participate in frivolity) then there is some misalignment.
In going back to read OP’s post, i still stand by what i said. He described a group of players intent on the scene, contributing to the game, and his amusement at disrupting that play.
I was the one on the other side of that scenario. The one who just wanted to play the effin game.
Took me a while to figure it out, but this whole hobby works a lot better once you learn to work with the flow of the group, which I guess would be the average of what all players want?
I’m sure we’ve all seen/been that GM who wrecks a game trying to preserve their vision of what it should be. I think players eventually learn the same lessons.
TLDR: RPGs teach cooperation, put em on sesame street.