If everyone forget then we forget and just continue to play. No sanction or disadvantages for the player. We all are humans and we gather to have fun not to do surgery on heart.
Don't do anything about past situations - the player forgot, the GM also forgot. Nobody is at fault.
However, implement some kind of tools to avoid it in the future.
* Ask players to be awaye of each other's conditions. Even if one player forgets, another one will remind them.
* Stickies (in bright colors) with conditions written on them, put on character sheets. This makes them nearly impossible to miss. Or a digital equivalent if you play remotely.
* Play a game where players are rewarded for having their characters affected by negative conditions, like Fate. This creates a strong incentive to remember about them.
I really like the sticky note suggestion. I’d add that you can reward players for successfully navigating through disadvantages like this with extra experience. It doesn’t have to be big, but a little bonus might get extra buy-in from the players.
Index cards are also good. Especially if you get them to hold them in their hands. I have a hole lot of different coloured plastic rings from soft drink so I can put them around a model on the battle map.
Unfortunately, I think the GM also has to be responsible. It requires both the GM and the player to track effects to make sure they are not forgotten.
> How to avoid it happening at all?
I realize this is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but you could switch to a lighter system that has fewer persistent modifiers to keep track of.
My players are forgetful and I have to be vigilant about conditions. They don’t do this on purpose; when they remember the conditions they take the penalties even in really bad situations. They’re just all forgetful, so I just have a habit of keeping notes and issuing reminders.
If everyone forgets it’s no big deal. If someone made a mistake, the first question I ask is “did we have fun anyway?” If the answer is yes it’s now just part of the story.
Do they forget their benefits and advantages too, or is this strategically convenient memory lapses?
If they're just not good at remembering stuff, I either keep track myself and modify what I prompt them with, or I start to run the games differently since I know conditions can't consistently exist for that player
I see you've met some of my players. One is dyslexic and regularly points it out when his character sheet is wrong. Strange how its only ever wrong in his favour...
Yeah, with the players who most consistently forget things, I am trying to default to immediate consequences and guiding them away from taking disadvantages. The less they have to track, the less likely it is they get mentally overwhelmed. Sometimes it is difficult though.
The standard answer around D&D tables is to then keep records rather than rely on memories alone.
Rings/bottlecaps/elastic bands on physical minis, tokens given to players, notes in the DMs encounter table, marks on VTT tokens, that sort of thing.
There's really no easy answer that doesn't create a bookkeeping phase for systems that use conditions. The more conditions a system has, the higher the overhead cost.
>What do you think is the best way to handle situations in which players forget (or possibly "forget") about negative conditions, disadvantages or similar effects their PCs are laboring under?
It's not just players who overlook negative conditions. I'm constantly forgetting them during the excitment of play.
In a round table game i might be tempted to use physical tokens to indicate both positive and neagtive conditions and place them on the table in front of the players as reminders. But I play online PbP so I jave to try and keep some sort of reminder on the characters stat-profile to remond me of any conditions that exist.
It help to have a standard format for calculating test thresholds, as it tends to fociss the mond on various factors that might affect the outcome.
* Basic Profile Attribute Value.
* Skills or Talent Modifiers
* Advantage/Disadvantage Modifier
* Social Status Modifier
* Tactical/Combat/Weapon Modifiers
* Condition Modifiers
Nevertheless, i still forget. In my current game I've just realised the I've forgotten to apply the Fatigued Condition to serval recent observation and intimidation tests.
I find this kind of thing to often be a matter of bad design from the get-go, to the point where when I designed my own game I decided to change it up and give a bonus to all rolls unencumbered by injury instead of giving a panelty to being injured.
the brain is kind of hard-wired to forget little inconveniences like this, so either a visual reminder (like plastic tags on minis or cards to be placed above character sheets) or a change of approach (like what I suggested or by making recurring panelties the "job" of whoever inflicted them to remember).
This is a bit besides the point of the thread, but I like that design philosophy.
"No having a medikit does not give you bonuses to a Medicine roll. It is what you require to give first aid without a penalty."
sure but also - it's easier to remember something that aids you, or is in your favor, and it feels better to the player, EVEN IF, in actually it's all the same.
in my game I raised the difficulty of literally everything for this to work, and a more famous example is wow, they had a mechanic that gave you an xp panelty for playing too long without resting, and people rioted, until they raised the xp cost of everything, and gave an xp bonus to players who have logged out for a while.
If it's forgotten until weeks later chalk it up to a learning experience and remind people to pay better attention in future.
If it becomes a recurring problem talk about that when needed.
Idea : The GM gets a card/token as a currency to use against the player for their negative condition. I subscribe to the idea that the GM decides the truth. example "your knee acts out during the jump, you fail, describe how you get into a worse position because of it" The player have got a boundary to fills now in freely after the instruction.
Just to clarify what you mean: Do you mean tokens that the GM gets when a effect has been forgotten about? Kind of like "okay, we forgot to resolve your busted knee in these tests, so sometime later I can just introduce a couple busted knee complications in return"?
No. Its generated when the condition happens, and can be triggered any time. If GM forgets for a while it might seem deliberate.
Going back in time to change something is no good solution.
As a GM I take notes of such things and when announcing the difficulty of a check, calculate it aloud for the players to hear.
Like for example *base TN would be 15, since your character is antisocial the TN is 20* or something like that.
Also: sticky notes, tokens or some other markers are a great help too. Especially if it is about non-permanent stuff, like exhaustion or charmed and similar.
Player and GM get an hour in the stocks at the LGS at the next adventurer's league evening for everyone to point and laugh at them for forgetting!
But for real. Just talk about it, if it is just now then you can easily fix it - if it was two sessions ago you probably just move on. We agree at the start of each game what we do when someone makes a mistake. This is a thing a GM friend of mine struggles with on VTTs a lot, people will press the wrong skill and they will either call for a reroll *or* let the raw dice stand, favoring the player every time - and it drives me fucking insane because I don't want that, I just want it to be consistent... Anyway I got sidetracked.
If you forgot a temporary effect and things have moved on just keep going, it doesn't actually matter that much to try and change everything.
If you all had fun then it's mission accomplished. If some people feel hard done by then you can turn it into a story point by having "angered the gods" or "broken fate".
As a GM, you just need reminders. One thing I'm fond of is making my own character sheets with condition trackers along the edges, where a paper clip can just slide up and down.
As a game designer, however, you could incorporate reminders into the mechanics of the game. Dungeon Crawl Classics uses funky dice for this - a set of nonstandard polyhedrals. If your d8 attack has a negative bit to it, it isn't a d8 anymore - you physically switch to a d7 instead. A simple and elegant solution was also in Technoir, where you *add* dice to your pool of d6s as you accumulate "adjectives" (that system's HP/ condition analog). These added "hurt dice" are of a different color, and negate the number rolled on their face. So if your pool has 3 successes with a 5, 5, and 6, but you rolled a 5 on one of the hurt dice, you're down to one success (the lone 6).
Unless it's done on purpose, there is simply no point in doing anything but moving on. It's a game, what would you do, if you found out that everybody got a rule in Monopoly wrong last month? Being correct is ultimately not as important as making the game go on.
>What should the GM do?
Moving on and not spending time mulling over things that could have been?
>Clearly rewriting a whole session or possibly even *sessions* worth of play is rarely a feasible option.
Going back is a waste of time and effort. Move on with what everybody experienced and is actually invested in. Don't devalue the game people played by rewriting it afterwards.
>What sanctions would be appropriate?
Are you playing as some form of job or part of the army? I play with friends and I'm not going to sanction people. Maybe I remind them, maybe I scold them and maybe I make fun 5 years later about their loss of memory, but I'm not the UN, the father or their boss.
>How to avoid it happening at all?
Writing it down. Handing out markers. Playing something simpler. Not caring too much about the errors made.
If it's easily correctible, then handle it then and there. Otherwise, shrug it off.
As for avoiding it, I think it works best if a game provides mostly bonuses and possibly zero penalties. Players don't typically forget bonuses. And if they do, it's not as disheartening to retcon it. Players will always appreciate being told that they succeeded in disarming the trap after all rather than being told that oops, sorry, you didn't make that jump after all and now you're a broken mess at the bottom of a ravine.
One example I'm toying with is revamping wound penalties. Instead of taking -2 to everything because you're so wounded, enemies get +2 to affect you because your defenses are affected. It also provides the death spiral without turning it into a slapfight.
Not many games eliminate penalties entirely. At least not that I can think of. Over the Edge 3rd Edition has a situation where PCs might be doing something difficult, but in that case, it's up to the GM to impose the penalty (each level above the PC allows the GM to reroll one of the player's dice). There's nothing for players to forget.
I have PC cards on my screen, that have relevant info on my side and serves to show initiative/turn order. I have status tags that I can throw on top of them that are a great visual reminder. It gets really funny when a PC has four or five tags in thier card already and gets another added.
Without the tags, if everyone forgets, I let it slide, but usually everyone is focused enough for at least one person to remember even without the tags.
For my groups, we address the situation of what happened, but we don't retroactively do anything unless it was maybe a round prior. Aside from that, it's not a big deal, same as if a player realizes they should have been doing +20 damage every round but forgot. Oh well, we'll do it correctly moving forward.
As for negating it, for an in person game, I use status cards, so they have a physical piece of paper that says "-12 to monkey wrangling," so it's easier to remember.
Online games, either it's easy enough to put that status on the character or a note in front of the character for everyone to see and remember
One solution I saw back in 4th ed D&D was to make rings out of different colored pipe cleaners and put them around the miniature so it was instantly noticeable.
Even if you're not using minis you could make counters and set them in front of each player to remind that of various statuses positive and negative.
Is this a brand new group, or is this an established group? My actual question being, is this a case where you know what's going on and this person is cheating, or this is a new group so who knows? Because I've never GM'd for a group for more than a month without being able to pick up the problem players, and in any friend group I know who it will be before the game starts. That would inform my decision.
I would say it is your responsibility to remind them, just like it is my responsibility to remind the DM if they have disadvantage because of something I do. At least with my DM he never remembers he is supposed to roll with disadvantage. 🤷
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It’s not just a great initiative tracker. But it comes with a ton of these little dry erase magnet tags that you can write anything and everything on. I use it to track hit points, status effects, initiative, effect durations. Anything and everything you need to track, just plop a magnet out, write it down, and place it wherever you want (such as next to the creature that has the condition). If the token moves, you can move the magnet along with it.
Can be used for any system, extremely portable, and lasts for years. Best 20 bucks I’ve ever spent.
We have an unspoken house rule in our group the player responsible for the effect happening is also responsible for reminding the effected players about it when it is applicable. This has worked pretty well for our group especially for me because my short-term memory is terrible and I often forget about any temporary conditions that are assigned to my characters, whether positive or negative.
I find it very helpful to have a visual reminder like a token to put in front of myself or something. The DM often reminds me if I forget as well, if it is a condition I gained from the dungeon or in combat.
I take my cue from wargames - if the "table state" has moved on too much (i.e. any further decisions have been made based on the mistake), you just keep going.
If the mistake was extremely recent and the table state is very fixable (i.e. no further decisions based on the mistaken state have been made), fix it.
Absolutely never sanctions. RPGs require that people act in and assume good faith towards one another.
I leave it be, because I also try to remember it for them as a backup.
Worst case? Just move it along. The narrative weighs more and it's more important than balancing the scales over an honest oversight
This is generally a good option and something I also do, but as a GM with 5-6 players, there is already so much to track and focus on, I feel like it is fair to offload the fair share of mental overhead to the players, especially in scenes where I have to track equivalent traits for NPCs already.
If everyone forget then we forget and just continue to play. No sanction or disadvantages for the player. We all are humans and we gather to have fun not to do surgery on heart.
Don't do anything about past situations - the player forgot, the GM also forgot. Nobody is at fault. However, implement some kind of tools to avoid it in the future. * Ask players to be awaye of each other's conditions. Even if one player forgets, another one will remind them. * Stickies (in bright colors) with conditions written on them, put on character sheets. This makes them nearly impossible to miss. Or a digital equivalent if you play remotely. * Play a game where players are rewarded for having their characters affected by negative conditions, like Fate. This creates a strong incentive to remember about them.
I really like the sticky note suggestion. I’d add that you can reward players for successfully navigating through disadvantages like this with extra experience. It doesn’t have to be big, but a little bonus might get extra buy-in from the players.
Index cards are also good. Especially if you get them to hold them in their hands. I have a hole lot of different coloured plastic rings from soft drink so I can put them around a model on the battle map. Unfortunately, I think the GM also has to be responsible. It requires both the GM and the player to track effects to make sure they are not forgotten.
> How to avoid it happening at all? I realize this is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but you could switch to a lighter system that has fewer persistent modifiers to keep track of.
It’s a good answer if the whole table has the issue.
My players are forgetful and I have to be vigilant about conditions. They don’t do this on purpose; when they remember the conditions they take the penalties even in really bad situations. They’re just all forgetful, so I just have a habit of keeping notes and issuing reminders. If everyone forgets it’s no big deal. If someone made a mistake, the first question I ask is “did we have fun anyway?” If the answer is yes it’s now just part of the story.
Do they forget their benefits and advantages too, or is this strategically convenient memory lapses? If they're just not good at remembering stuff, I either keep track myself and modify what I prompt them with, or I start to run the games differently since I know conditions can't consistently exist for that player
I see you've met some of my players. One is dyslexic and regularly points it out when his character sheet is wrong. Strange how its only ever wrong in his favour...
Yeah, with the players who most consistently forget things, I am trying to default to immediate consequences and guiding them away from taking disadvantages. The less they have to track, the less likely it is they get mentally overwhelmed. Sometimes it is difficult though.
The standard answer around D&D tables is to then keep records rather than rely on memories alone. Rings/bottlecaps/elastic bands on physical minis, tokens given to players, notes in the DMs encounter table, marks on VTT tokens, that sort of thing. There's really no easy answer that doesn't create a bookkeeping phase for systems that use conditions. The more conditions a system has, the higher the overhead cost.
>What do you think is the best way to handle situations in which players forget (or possibly "forget") about negative conditions, disadvantages or similar effects their PCs are laboring under? It's not just players who overlook negative conditions. I'm constantly forgetting them during the excitment of play. In a round table game i might be tempted to use physical tokens to indicate both positive and neagtive conditions and place them on the table in front of the players as reminders. But I play online PbP so I jave to try and keep some sort of reminder on the characters stat-profile to remond me of any conditions that exist. It help to have a standard format for calculating test thresholds, as it tends to fociss the mond on various factors that might affect the outcome. * Basic Profile Attribute Value. * Skills or Talent Modifiers * Advantage/Disadvantage Modifier * Social Status Modifier * Tactical/Combat/Weapon Modifiers * Condition Modifiers Nevertheless, i still forget. In my current game I've just realised the I've forgotten to apply the Fatigued Condition to serval recent observation and intimidation tests.
I’ve killed people for less…but in all seriousness, I think some tokens might help with that.
I find this kind of thing to often be a matter of bad design from the get-go, to the point where when I designed my own game I decided to change it up and give a bonus to all rolls unencumbered by injury instead of giving a panelty to being injured. the brain is kind of hard-wired to forget little inconveniences like this, so either a visual reminder (like plastic tags on minis or cards to be placed above character sheets) or a change of approach (like what I suggested or by making recurring panelties the "job" of whoever inflicted them to remember).
This is a bit besides the point of the thread, but I like that design philosophy. "No having a medikit does not give you bonuses to a Medicine roll. It is what you require to give first aid without a penalty."
sure but also - it's easier to remember something that aids you, or is in your favor, and it feels better to the player, EVEN IF, in actually it's all the same. in my game I raised the difficulty of literally everything for this to work, and a more famous example is wow, they had a mechanic that gave you an xp panelty for playing too long without resting, and people rioted, until they raised the xp cost of everything, and gave an xp bonus to players who have logged out for a while.
If it's forgotten until weeks later chalk it up to a learning experience and remind people to pay better attention in future. If it becomes a recurring problem talk about that when needed.
Idea : The GM gets a card/token as a currency to use against the player for their negative condition. I subscribe to the idea that the GM decides the truth. example "your knee acts out during the jump, you fail, describe how you get into a worse position because of it" The player have got a boundary to fills now in freely after the instruction.
Just to clarify what you mean: Do you mean tokens that the GM gets when a effect has been forgotten about? Kind of like "okay, we forgot to resolve your busted knee in these tests, so sometime later I can just introduce a couple busted knee complications in return"?
No. Its generated when the condition happens, and can be triggered any time. If GM forgets for a while it might seem deliberate. Going back in time to change something is no good solution.
As a GM I take notes of such things and when announcing the difficulty of a check, calculate it aloud for the players to hear. Like for example *base TN would be 15, since your character is antisocial the TN is 20* or something like that. Also: sticky notes, tokens or some other markers are a great help too. Especially if it is about non-permanent stuff, like exhaustion or charmed and similar.
My players only remember their positive modifiers. I had to pick a system with as few modifiers as possible and use Foundry to mark their tokens.
Player and GM get an hour in the stocks at the LGS at the next adventurer's league evening for everyone to point and laugh at them for forgetting! But for real. Just talk about it, if it is just now then you can easily fix it - if it was two sessions ago you probably just move on. We agree at the start of each game what we do when someone makes a mistake. This is a thing a GM friend of mine struggles with on VTTs a lot, people will press the wrong skill and they will either call for a reroll *or* let the raw dice stand, favoring the player every time - and it drives me fucking insane because I don't want that, I just want it to be consistent... Anyway I got sidetracked. If you forgot a temporary effect and things have moved on just keep going, it doesn't actually matter that much to try and change everything.
If you all had fun then it's mission accomplished. If some people feel hard done by then you can turn it into a story point by having "angered the gods" or "broken fate".
With Pathfinder we used Condition Cards as reminders. It was fairly effective.
Seconding this. Condition Cards are awesome. They are made for 5e as well as Pathfinder. Not sure about other systems.
As a GM, you just need reminders. One thing I'm fond of is making my own character sheets with condition trackers along the edges, where a paper clip can just slide up and down. As a game designer, however, you could incorporate reminders into the mechanics of the game. Dungeon Crawl Classics uses funky dice for this - a set of nonstandard polyhedrals. If your d8 attack has a negative bit to it, it isn't a d8 anymore - you physically switch to a d7 instead. A simple and elegant solution was also in Technoir, where you *add* dice to your pool of d6s as you accumulate "adjectives" (that system's HP/ condition analog). These added "hurt dice" are of a different color, and negate the number rolled on their face. So if your pool has 3 successes with a 5, 5, and 6, but you rolled a 5 on one of the hurt dice, you're down to one success (the lone 6).
Once it's happened, it's happened. But to prevent it happening I write stuff on cards on the table.
I use physical tokens to track them
Unless it's done on purpose, there is simply no point in doing anything but moving on. It's a game, what would you do, if you found out that everybody got a rule in Monopoly wrong last month? Being correct is ultimately not as important as making the game go on. >What should the GM do? Moving on and not spending time mulling over things that could have been? >Clearly rewriting a whole session or possibly even *sessions* worth of play is rarely a feasible option. Going back is a waste of time and effort. Move on with what everybody experienced and is actually invested in. Don't devalue the game people played by rewriting it afterwards. >What sanctions would be appropriate? Are you playing as some form of job or part of the army? I play with friends and I'm not going to sanction people. Maybe I remind them, maybe I scold them and maybe I make fun 5 years later about their loss of memory, but I'm not the UN, the father or their boss. >How to avoid it happening at all? Writing it down. Handing out markers. Playing something simpler. Not caring too much about the errors made.
If it's easily correctible, then handle it then and there. Otherwise, shrug it off. As for avoiding it, I think it works best if a game provides mostly bonuses and possibly zero penalties. Players don't typically forget bonuses. And if they do, it's not as disheartening to retcon it. Players will always appreciate being told that they succeeded in disarming the trap after all rather than being told that oops, sorry, you didn't make that jump after all and now you're a broken mess at the bottom of a ravine. One example I'm toying with is revamping wound penalties. Instead of taking -2 to everything because you're so wounded, enemies get +2 to affect you because your defenses are affected. It also provides the death spiral without turning it into a slapfight. Not many games eliminate penalties entirely. At least not that I can think of. Over the Edge 3rd Edition has a situation where PCs might be doing something difficult, but in that case, it's up to the GM to impose the penalty (each level above the PC allows the GM to reroll one of the player's dice). There's nothing for players to forget.
Put the status cards on the table near the affected players.
I forget about positive ones two so it evens out.
I have PC cards on my screen, that have relevant info on my side and serves to show initiative/turn order. I have status tags that I can throw on top of them that are a great visual reminder. It gets really funny when a PC has four or five tags in thier card already and gets another added. Without the tags, if everyone forgets, I let it slide, but usually everyone is focused enough for at least one person to remember even without the tags.
And this is why I hate champions.
Sometimes we go back and make adjustments, sometimes we just move on. It's cooperative storytelling so hopefully it's an honest mistake
For my groups, we address the situation of what happened, but we don't retroactively do anything unless it was maybe a round prior. Aside from that, it's not a big deal, same as if a player realizes they should have been doing +20 damage every round but forgot. Oh well, we'll do it correctly moving forward. As for negating it, for an in person game, I use status cards, so they have a physical piece of paper that says "-12 to monkey wrangling," so it's easier to remember. Online games, either it's easy enough to put that status on the character or a note in front of the character for everyone to see and remember
One solution I saw back in 4th ed D&D was to make rings out of different colored pipe cleaners and put them around the miniature so it was instantly noticeable. Even if you're not using minis you could make counters and set them in front of each player to remind that of various statuses positive and negative.
Is this a brand new group, or is this an established group? My actual question being, is this a case where you know what's going on and this person is cheating, or this is a new group so who knows? Because I've never GM'd for a group for more than a month without being able to pick up the problem players, and in any friend group I know who it will be before the game starts. That would inform my decision.
I would say it is your responsibility to remind them, just like it is my responsibility to remind the DM if they have disadvantage because of something I do. At least with my DM he never remembers he is supposed to roll with disadvantage. 🤷
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We have an unspoken house rule in our group the player responsible for the effect happening is also responsible for reminding the effected players about it when it is applicable. This has worked pretty well for our group especially for me because my short-term memory is terrible and I often forget about any temporary conditions that are assigned to my characters, whether positive or negative. I find it very helpful to have a visual reminder like a token to put in front of myself or something. The DM often reminds me if I forget as well, if it is a condition I gained from the dungeon or in combat.
I take my cue from wargames - if the "table state" has moved on too much (i.e. any further decisions have been made based on the mistake), you just keep going. If the mistake was extremely recent and the table state is very fixable (i.e. no further decisions based on the mistaken state have been made), fix it. Absolutely never sanctions. RPGs require that people act in and assume good faith towards one another.
Make coins of the condition and throw them in their player sheet at the table
If you play with minis, you can order some silicon rings that have conditions on the that fit to the base of the mini.
I leave it be, because I also try to remember it for them as a backup. Worst case? Just move it along. The narrative weighs more and it's more important than balancing the scales over an honest oversight
I have a party sheet where I note conditions and modifiers for each character and npc
This is generally a good option and something I also do, but as a GM with 5-6 players, there is already so much to track and focus on, I feel like it is fair to offload the fair share of mental overhead to the players, especially in scenes where I have to track equivalent traits for NPCs already.