
Free Radical

The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Bethesda NEVER Understood Fallout

Let's count up the ways in which Bethesda has misunderstood and misused the Fallout property.
Ludonarrative Dissonance

What is this silly word, why did some people get so irritated by it, and why did it fall out of use?
Quakecon 2011 Keynote Annotated

An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction

Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
Shamus is wrong, of course. If you have any amount of player buy-in, it’s really easy to create scenes where the obvious way for players to interpret their character is to obviously shoot themselves in the foot, but everyone plays along because it’s more fun that way.
One of my most memorable campaigns was when I played an impulsive teenager knight who got himself absolutely and irreparably doomed because he couldn’t say to no to the cute princess no matter how much common sense and his companions told him it was a terrible idea.
If the players and DM weren’t terrible, a fun way to play this strip would be to have one player (probably Gimli’s) argue in favor of Eowyn staying behind, and another (probably Legolas’) argue for bringing her along. Then the DM could have Eowyn follow the most persuasive player, or have Aragorn be the tie breaker.
What did the player do wrong here? The DM tried to make a scene happen out of a conflict that has nothing to do with the the party and they just don’t engage because they don’t care. The conflict is all Eowyn’s.
Sure, if the party cared about her there might be something, but eh, that’d be a well-written campaign. And not every player is that much of a roleplayer…
If it were me, I might use out-of-character incentives. Give Eowyn a powerful magic sword or a load of potions and they’ll take her with them whether she likes it or not!
That’d be my alternate take on this scene:
“No, you can’t come with us! It’s far to dangerou….
…wait, is that a Vorpal Sword?”
Next panel is a potoshopped image of the party galloping away with Eowyn over their shoulder, screaming and waving her arms.
You are correct, some really fun plot lines can develop when players shoot their own PCs in the foot.
However, if that buy-in isn’t present to the point of Aragorn’s first response in this comic, then the GM should realise that and pivot the script. There is no point in forcing a scene if the basic premise wasn’t picked up by the players.
Either postpone the conflict to a later scene where the Kind asks how she dare leave her duties, or shrug and have the party leave with her and quietly erase that argument from the script.
This can happen even with good GMs and players, because even in the best groups, not everyone is 100% on the same page. What makes the group good is how they handle those moments.
But, of course, this comic is a clash of bad GM and not too amazing players either. They’re not even in the same book.
This particular comic was one of my favorites back when it first came out. It was so hilarious, seeing how the GM’s idea of how Eowyn should act clashed with the way Aragorn’s player responded to her, leading to this bewildering situation for the players where the GM’s attempt to stick to his script became their fault.
I’ve had a conversation like this in real life, which I have dubbed The Green Bean Incident. I was asked to pick which kind of green beans we would have for a party, picked the cheapest ones because I had no preference, and proceeded to get questioned about the differences between every brand of green beans in the store for the next ten minutes, the answer to every one of which was “I don’t care”. Apparently in the three seconds between them assigning me the green bean choice, and my making it, I was supposed to have become the world’s leading expert on canned green beans.
Well, this post just screamed ‘Green Giant’ to me. Clearly that’s the brand he likes best.
great story. Well told.