Circle limitations and a dying game

[Nepene]

I think a key thing to remember is that power comes at a cost. If you want to force someone to behave in a certain way, you need to either have stats high enough to force them or prep the environment enough to stop them (with rolls of stats or force points to make declarations) or spend fate points to compel them. No free lunches for people, or free forcefields.

[g33k]

... and it makes me suspect that your group is a bit of a powder keg. I think you should probably try to fix whatever makes it so easy for sessions to dissolve into rage. Otherwise you might be facing this kind of problem again in two months, over some other random detail, possibly in a different system and setting. (Unless this is really an anomaly for your table. I don't know your players, obviously.)

This, this, a thousand times this!
They may have seemed reasonable in other contexts, but they went nuclear over this issue.  WHY?

Did they know the DF stories?  How well?

The thing is, there was clearly a mismatch of expectations & understanding of what a circle is/does; a wizard, in-character, would know what a circle is/does, and wouldn't raise a circle expecting it to last in these circumstances.

Letting a PC do something in the clear player-expectation of ONE outcome, when the character would clearly expect something ELSE ... well, yeah.  I'd cry foul, too.

If I'm GM'ing a game where "draw a magic circle of protection" ONLY protects against magic, AND can easily be mundanely-broken, AND there are Mundane combatants around to break it ... well, I'd feel obligated compelled  :-]  to offer the player a caution, "Your character would know that this circle can easily be broken by THIS or THAT combatant, if they know they SHOULD break it."

OTOH, if the player was familiar with the stories, then I'd presume they already knew this, and were doing some tactical/strategic thing (and wouldn't bother with the caution).

Given this level of misunderstanding, I'd do a serious run-through of game mechanics and setting-expectations.

[Mr. Death]

It's looking like that's going to have to become Gospel at our table.   

There's a reason it's in my signature.

[Lawgiver]

This, this, a thousand times this!
They may have seemed reasonable in other contexts, but they went nuclear over this issue.  WHY?

Did they know the DF stories?  How well?

The thing is, there was clearly a mismatch of expectations & understanding of what a circle is/does; a wizard, in-character, would know what a circle is/does, and wouldn't raise a circle expecting it to last in these circumstances.

Letting a PC do something in the clear player-expectation of ONE outcome, when the character would clearly expect something ELSE ... well, yeah.  I'd cry foul, too.

If I'm GM'ing a game where "draw a magic circle of protection" ONLY protects against magic, AND can easily be mundanely-broken, AND there are Mundane combatants around to break it ... well, I'd feel obligated compelled  :-]  to offer the player a caution, "Your character would know that this circle can easily be broken by THIS or THAT combatant, if they know they SHOULD break it."

OTOH, if the player was familiar with the stories, then I'd presume they already knew this, and were doing some tactical/strategic thing (and wouldn't bother with the caution).

Given this level of misunderstanding, I'd do a serious run-through of game mechanics and setting-expectations.

All the players know the stories, they've read all the full books through SG as well as Side Jobs.  It's partly a matter of their misinterpretation of what JB's told us through Harry about how circles work, even with examples in the stories (like Binder in TC) and partly a matter of my thinking they did understand.

None of them are on this board and haven't dived nearly as deeply as I have. In game terms, I guess I'd be somewhere between Chest Deep and Submerged (given some of the real power players here)... but my players might barely qualify as Feet In The Water; they're read the stories but don't do re-reads.  When a new volume comes out they want to read it, but don't lose sleep at night in anticipation.  They don't take notes, compose theories or any of that.  They just read and play the game.

When this broke it was really an eye-opener - for all of us - about what we've read vs. what we think we remember/understand.  When the balloon goes up they're used to a much faster pace melee and want to get to the gory and nitty gritty asap.  DFRPG can take some thought and consideration to set things up, get the parameters right, etc.  Sometimes they launch without thinking it all through and find themselves in a bad place.  Most of the time it's actually provided some very interesting table time watching them dig themselves out of the hole.  This time, however, it went sour with a vengeance.

As I said, I'm going to show them all of the above (this Vet's Day weekend we have the next game session) before we start play and have some talk-it-over time.  With what's been presented I think they're going to be good with it.