Double Bill: What I learned about fighting from NBateman + Being a joyful player
This is a double post of two brief thoughts I had at the same time, roughly connected but mostly unrelated.
1. What I learned about fighting from NBateman
I was discussing with Mr. Mann, who's also been playing in NBateman's games about a magical talent Nathan possesses which is this: the ability to make fights that sound boring on paper be incredibly fun and interesting in practice.
The setup is usually similar, the party gets itself into a jam against a bigger yet lesser equipped or skilled force of monsters in an area that isn't that nuanced terrain-wise, and it somehow becomes a desperate battle for our life that no one could see coming.
He pulled this off with a few hungry bandits in a random field in the countryside, a bunch of giant armoured spiders in a tight dungeon, a small army of fishmen, two viking ships boarding one another, etc, and it somehow is always interesting, but it's very hard to explain why. You can't write these encounters down with any more detail than a single line or two.
Nathan doesn't pull fancy mechanical moves, doesn't embellish descriptions any more than the efficient, barely mucks with the environment, so how does he do it? Why is it fun?
After last session I'm starting to think that his real skill is managing timing and cadence. To me, the interesting part about these fights is that Nathan knows when it's time for them to end, when it's time for the monster to pull a sick move that demands an extra mechanic, when it's time to just hang back and let the attrition take its course for a couple of rounds, etc. It's a finely attuned narrative instinct that you only really notice in hindsight, and something I've been trying to emulate myself, though there's no easy way to do it. You just gotta feel out the situation, notice when the fiction demands a "close up" and when it doesn't, and for that you need to know very intimately the material you're working with.
What solidified this for me was during last session's fight against the armoured spiders, when half the party retreated into a corridor and hid behind a statue my character had animated to fight for her, and Nathan started describing how the spiders were hanging onto the statue and biting it, so if we missed the attack by a very low amount, we'd hit the statue. Another time in that fight, he described how one of the spiders jumped on top of a player and asked for a save for him not to fall prone at a dramatic moment.
These were ostensibly the same thing: a spider jumps on top of a creature, but he had the sensibility to adjudicate on the fly that, the statue being big, the spiders would crawl on it; the player being small, the spiders would make them fall. You don't need to write any of that in a statblock, it's just... good narrative sense. He's got a good nose for when a fight should last longer, when it shouldn't; how to make the monsters do interesting tactics, how to make them feel menacing yet still beatable... it's pretty cool!
Of course, this could only be possible with engaged players.
2. Being a joyful player, or "how not to make your DM depressed"
There's a lot of advice for DMs to make their games better for their players, so I'd like to discuss some of the qualities I've found over the years in the best players I've ever had - as well as the best players I've had the pleasure to play with. Notice, however, how the title of this section isn't "being a GOOD player" or even a "BETTER" player, as I don't think that not doing any of these makes for a bad player, necessarily. These are just things that might make your DM look forward to your games and just spark joy more broadly.
Disclaimers: this isn't me sneak dissing my current players; they're all angels of light. This mostly applies to online games, as they're the ones I play the most. And this probably doesn't apply to beer & pretzels games.
Remember things. People might tell you that this is for your own good, so you can use more information against the world - and it is that - but it's also important to make the DM feel like you're listening and paying attention to what they're saying.
If you can't remember something, don't make a bit out of it. Don't say things like "oh you know me, I can't remember anything." Again, the DM wants to believe that this game matters to some degree, they probably took time out of their week to prepare for this. Making a bit out of not paying attention might make the DM feel like they're taking the game more seriously than you, the player. A good deflection is "Oh I forgot about that, but I do remember X" and then say whatever you remember from around that topic. That way you can demonstrate that you do pay attention, yet you can't remember for some other, perfectly valid reason.
If you know you have a bad memory or attention span, take notes in case the person who does remember the sessions misses a game. You should always be taking notes regardless, of course, but a lot of people have bad memories yet refuse to support that with diligence.
If you're playing by voice with the cameras turned off, give signs that you're there and paying attention, preferably in the accompanying text chat or wherever you're making notes. There's nothing more lonely for a DM than saying something and no one responding, nor giving any sign of life in the chat at all. It makes you feel like you're talking to a blank page. Even something as simple as sending reaction gifs and emojis or doodling on the map, turning your mic on to laugh at a joke, makes a huge difference.
Scheme. Make plans, have objectives, have an opinion. Your character should be going somewhere and doing something. If you're not the kind of player who likes taking action and more the kind of player who prefers to hang back and support the team, be forthright about it, tell the DM they don't have to involve you in their schemes, and cede your time to the decision maker as often as possible. A lot of players know what their characters are but not a lot know what they want - yet that's what drives the game.
Indicate that you think about the game in your own time, and actually do it. The DM preps things; depending on how much effort they're putting into it, they might be taking whole evenings off their time to make everything ready for you to interact. It's nice to interact with your DM between sessions, give your thoughts on what's been happening, or generally just indicate that you don't spawn in the world 10 minutes before the session and then disappear after it's over; or that you only tune into the world of the game during the playing hours and then forget all about it when you're not here. This isn't Severance.
Be expressive! Did you like last session? Say it! Have you been enjoying the direction things have been going? Have you NOT been enjoying it? Do you think an NPC fucking sucks and you hate them? Express all of that to the DM. Tell them your thoughts, be vocal. Again, DMing can be pretty lonely, and there's nothing worse than silence. It can make the game feel like a job you punch in every so often rather than your beloved hobby.
That's about all I can think of. And no one will be the perfect player, much like no one will be the perfect DM, but DMs can often be faced with "I don't care either ways" and "I don't know, I'm just following alongs" that make these games less joyful to play.
As a player, your job is to express yourself in this world. If you don't care about talking to NPCs but love dungeoneering, tell that to the DM. Don't be mysterious and leave things unsaid; the DM has other players, they might not be paying as close attention to you as you think.
And if you don't want to have objectives in the game, don't care about either approach that the DM is taking, and would rather just sit there staring at the ceiling zoning out and roll dice every so often, you should probably play Yahtzee instead.