GURPS Campaigns: Common Pitfalls
My previous post about some past GURPS campaigns brought on a very interesting comment string from +Christopher Lorando. I made some comments, and he replied. The gist of it is worth repeating. And since Thursday is GURPS-day, here we go:
My abridged list of common pitfalls:
[Edit: Some of these, as Sean (Dr Kromm) points out, are very much not GURPS-specific, but generic to RPGs and social gatherings alike. His commentary, as always, is well worth reading).
- Issues with rules lawyering: often caused by pinging of the SoDoM, or expectations clash in the competence level of PCs. This is worth a good conversation, but rules-lawyering is easy: The GM says “we’re doing it this way for today; if we change it, it won’t be today. Take it offline.”
- Immobile battlefield: The tendency for every character to want/try to do something every second means that even with combat moves that equate to 5-8 minute miles, your odds of rescuing someone without a ranged aid (gun, spell, muscle-powered ranged weapon, friendly dragon) are nearly zero unless you keep the group together. So keep the group together if you don’t want a bunch of individual combats.
- Action Overload: attempting an inhuman amount of activity in a row. My Action Points rules from Pyramid #3/44 were a fix for this, but wow. You’re like Neo in bullet time in your hex . . . you just can’t leave that hex to rescue Trinity real well
- Option Overload: The tendency to try and use every book, every rule, every option can be large. It’s worth fighting in many cases. Maybe all cases.
- PC Utility Fail: It’s vitally, vitally important to understand what kind of characters are useful i any given game.
- One-Hit Wonder: GURPS has emergent “death spiral” behavior in some places. The temptation to wade back into the fray is large, and often fatal. The key to GURPS combat is often “how do we avoid getting hit, if we get hit, how do we avoid getting injured.”
- Breakpoint games: There ARE breakpoints that you should be aware of. Combat attacks and defenses that net out over 14 or 16 should be brought down with options like Deceptive Attack or Riposte.
. . . the GM would say “Hey I have a GURPS Game!” and everyone would come up with some random character, only to find out only one player out of the 4 to 5 actually fit what the GM had in mind.
This is a pretty common mistake. Couple easy ways to avoid it, too. The first is that allowable plot connection devices should be supplied by the GM. “You all must be part of Delta Force” is rather specific, and directed. “You all must have the ability to deal with combat encounters, many – but not always – involving gunfights” is another. On the SJG Forums, there are a few posts by +Sean Punch that give Action Hero Basic Skills (there are two links there), and that will at least keep all the PCs “in the game,” even if they’re not in their niche at the moment.
Another way to do it is by insisting that every PC have one super-strong link to another character, and/or one or two minor links to others. I did this in a game I ran (Lords of Light and Shadow) and it worked great. It helped flesh out both the group, why they’d hang together, and some of the local color. It’s how I got a buddhist temple, with martial arts and yoga classes, which was affiliated to a local college somehow. I wouldn’t have come up with that, but my players did for me.
You can also mix and match. A basic template (see below) and direction provided by the GM, and links and interrelationships made up by the characters – always with GM Veto. I’m a massive believer in GM Veto.
I have found Templates absolutely critical in that regard, as it helps myself get an idea of what is expected of players to fit the game that they had in mind. More times than not, I would try to come up with creative ways to roleplay and use talents that fit towards story, only to find out that I am being gunned down repeatedly.
Templates and Lenses are key here, and part of the GM responsibility if he sees every PC needing to be able to participate in his preferred method of conflict resolution. If the GM doesn’t have one, and allows the PCs non-violent outs (bribery, deceit, seduction) that allows the non-bloody to shine too.
That and one thing that REALLY rang true: Trying to use EVERY BOOK! More times than not, I have found two books do just find (At least for the player). The Game Master already has enough on his plate to manage, and in the games I have played many of them ended due to sheer overwhelming numbers and stat blocks.
My first real game was a GURPSification of Dark Conspiracy. I used the 3rd Edition Basic Set, Martial Arts, High Tech, Psionics, Magic, Horror, Martial Arts Adventures, Vehicles, Ultra Tech 1 and 2 . . . dear God, what a mess. I swear I spent more time with my nose in the books than GMing.
One of these days I may actually get a Wuxia style game, though until I can actually follow through with my original setting idea it will likely have to wait.
Well, for that you will certainly need Technical Grappling, when it comes out. And copies for all your friends and relatives.
What?
Buy early, buy often! It's how you show you really love Doug!
It is a lot easier to buy TG if it is offered for sale. Get hot, I've got money to spend over here!
Trust me, *I* would buy a bunch of copies for myself if I thought it would make the Ogre scoot out of the way.
Long Comments, Part I
These observations are well-made, but only a few are GURPS-specific. Just as many are commentary on RPG culture in general. In particular, GURPS isn't even close to the worst game for rules lawyering (even FATE gets it – often badly), PC utility fail (d20/3.0/3.5 is absolutely horrendous for optimal class pathing, and WFRP is just as bad), and breakpoints (Hero, in spades).
The pace of action (your immobile battlefield/action overload) is closer to being a genuine GURPS issue. My experience is that you can work around this by not using a map (I know, I know . . . some gamers insist), assessing who can support or hit whom descriptively, and not making a big deal out of how long the battle actually took ("long enough"). Nothing in the rules requires you to assess everything on a second-by-second and yard-by-yard basis; those are just the meshes recommended if you insist on a tactical map.
Keeping everyone together is to some extent my fault, making it a real GURPS issue. I'll just say it: I think that the PCs should stick together, tactically and dramatically. After 34 years of gaming, I've met almost no GMs who can handle split groups well, and even fewer players whose characters run off on their own for valid reasons such as "self-sacrifice" or "advancing the story" rather than lame ones like "hogging the spotlight to show off." Under my tenure, GURPS has definitely moved toward a game in which your PCs need to be mutually supporting teammates.
Option overload is pure GURPS . . . We have a confusion of books, rules, and options, and it seems to be the Gamer Way to be stingy with purchases and then expect every last word in every last purchase to be useful as often as possible. I would defend a claim that I'm the top GURPS expert in the world; that's my job. I don't think I've ever used more than a tiny percentage of the content in a campaign. Heck, I don't think I've ever used more than a tiny percentage of the content relevant to an activity for that activity. If I could get one message out to gamers, it would be "Don't try to use it all, damn you!"
I see the death spiral as a feature in any RPG, so I suppose my biases have pushed it into GURPS. I find the whole martial-arts-movie thing – get thumped, bleed some, find grit in the blood, rally, and bounce back to win – *dumb*. I mean, I hate it. It's loner-think. In a team, if you take a significant hit, it's time to call in your allies. This is another reason why I prefer to keep the PCs together. GURPS is unforgiving in this regard. Of course, even dramatist games do it; look at how Consequences work in FATE.
You know, D&D games break when you try to use all of the books as well – I'm not sure why I have such a hard time not wanting to use all of GURPS? I suspect it may be the overall high quality and the toolkit nature of GURPS that allows them to fit together so well. They beg to be used together.
I use a LOT of the stuff in my fantasy game. However, it's best to have all the details on the PC sheets, NPC statblocks, etc., before starting play. Once that's done, I always "roll and shout" and the correct later, sometimes houseruling or realizing that a given rule/item is inconsistent with my game. It allows me to play with lots of stuff and give tons of options to players, but in practice to have to deal with relatively few books/options. All of the fun, little of the stress.
Long Comments, Part II
So yeah, in the balance, these observations seem to be less about GURPS than about "games that aren't built on the D&D/Pathfinder frame." Which is just about all games. I think the days of using D&D as the yardstick ended with the launch of its fourth edition, personally.
As for campaign-building approaches, asking players to create PCs in a vacuum and then meet at the start of the first adventure is a disastrously bad model. It's yet another thing I've never seen work out for the best over the past 34 years. Count me firmly in the camp of assembling the players for a full-length session of simply discussing the PCs before anyone creates a character, and then working out a cohesive team or a set of major dramatic ties. This is definitely essential in a freeform, point-build game like GURPS. I must admit that while that freedom is the feature of GURPS that most often attracts gamers, it's worth curtailing somewhat. A GM-designed "base template" is a good start.
And when you say, "I'm a massive believer in GM Veto," you get at one final point that's crucial to make about GURPS: It's a Rule Zero game. We've never concealed this fact. Variations on "GM must," "GM should," "GM decides," "GM's choice," "up to the GM," etc. set the tone of the entire rules set. Letting the players create whatever characters they want with any abilities they can afford is a recipe for a broken campaign.
I'll close by saying that my very successful secret-agents campaign is going on four years old, and puts all of my big words into practice: I insisted that all the PCs belong to a team, be built around a baseline team-member template, and take complementary specialties. I am fairly heavy-handed about keeping the PCs together. I abstract fights, even high-intensity tactical actions with modern firearms. I use GM Veto to enforce team membership, PC niches, and sticking together. I don't pull punches on the death spiral. I use only a few books (the Basic Set, High-Tech, and Martial Arts).
http://dr-kromm.livejournal.com/tag/the%20company
And hey, what do you know, it works and the players stick around!
RE: Character Creation, the last few campaigns I started I used fillable PDF questionnaires (link below) and it's gone extremely well. The players can fill in the PDF using natural language, I then translate into a workable GURPS character, then when we all get together face-to-face the character creation doesn't take the whole night – some players run with the character as-is, some swap out one or two traits for others, and then we just start playing.
So far no one has said, "Eww, this is nothing like what I wanted, let's start from scratch."
I'd like to add in a few things, like "You know at least one other PC very well — why?", and "How does your character prefer to influence others?" with a drop-down of the six primary Influence skills.
http://www.themook.net/downloads/index.php?act=view&id=93
I see only 6 comments on the post you link to, none from Christopher Lorando.
Grouchy, the comments from Christopher Lorando were on the G+ post where this blog post was announced. It's sometimes hard to decide where to post replies to Doug to get the most likelihood of starting a good conversation.
My preference is that comments are left here, on the blog. But I'd rather have delocalized comments than none at all, so whatever works!
My apologies on that regard. I am still unsure of where to appropriately comment on things. Having a blog myself, comments anywhere are better than nowhere… but if that is the preference I can absolutely respect that bit!
Alright, finally caught up! Hopefully my responses will keep in touch here. As always, if there is anything you would like for me to share on my own blog, let me know.
This discussion has really inspired me to at least attempt a creative experiment with putting together at least a short and presentable version of the game mentioned above (The Wuxia style one anyways). It has been brewing in my mind for some time, if this is something that would interest you all, let me know. I will try to get something posted up either sometime this week or next!
I think that the death spiral mechanics are exacerbated by the need to do something productive every second. It's the only real issue I have with one-second turns – nobody wants to use Evaluate or Aim if they can, instead, attempt to inflict damage.
I am curious, however – is moving to aid an ally seen as an unproductive use of a turn? I would think that a most beneficial use of one's time.
It's a GREAT use of your time. In my experience, though, the guy is usually dead before you can get there. If you don't stray more than 5-10 yards from each other, or – God Forbid – actually form and use a line of battle, this is a non-issue.
In the DF game I play in, though, we often go haring off in scattered directions to pick our fights personally. This has almost been our undoing a few times, but hasn't really bit us hard. Yet. It may one day.
Cadmus, my Warrior Saint, occasionally pairs with our Gargoyle Knight, Thumvar – we both have Shield Wall training – and it's a very, very dangerous pairing. Especially if I get my Righteous Fury on (+1d6 to each of ST, DX, and HT).
To amplify a tiny bit: by the time your partner has realized he's in trouble (been hit once, for example, since, hey, Death Spiral) he may well be one or two rounds from being messily disemboweled. Unless you're mounted or can fly (as can Thumvar, the knight from my previous example) or have stellar-high Move, getting from A to B is really tough.
I have nothing against Death Spirals, since by and large, GURPS is pretty generous with allowing both attack and defense as a back-and-forth in combat (if you look at most fights, one person has "initiative" and is on the offensive, until he either voluntarily releases it or is forced to.
This would be an interesting alternate rule or mechanic – I'll have to think on this a bit. I could see a short Pyramid article emerging here. Hmm.
I guess it does depend upon the size of the battle mat. Even when I gave my old D&D 4E players a huge map to fight upon, the only ones that took advantage were the ranged attackers. Everyone else would cluster together without much thought (though that game, with it's odd "attacks of opportunity" mechanic, penalized even being a few yards apart).
I must admit to having used the death spiral to slap down scattered battle formations, even in "heroic" games with few realism options turned on. Over the years, I suspect that this has steered my regular gang toward using something close to tactics. If you read the recaps at the URL in my comment ( http://dr-kromm.livejournal.com/tag/the%20company ), you'll see a lot of team structure, planned ambushes, coordinated fire and movement, etc. But even in the previous, very high-powered fantasy campaign, which inspired GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, those players came to fight as a team, and the pressure NOT to run around, get separated, leave gaps in the line, block friendly retreats, etc. came from the players, not me.
To be honest, I really don't get the urge to wade in and get separated, or backflip over the opposition and out of reach of allies. It seems mental to me. That may be because my first exposure to warfare as a topic was at the knee of my father, who's a historian and chess player, and granddad, who fought in WWII. The fantasy novels and movies came later, and to be honest, I prefer military fiction to fantasy to this very day.
Your firm foundation in realistic warfare is stamped on GURPS. The farther you get from our old friend, plausible verisimilitude, the harder it is for GURPS to be entirely successful. I think I see that most when Supers is brought up as a GURPS genre – it's the one most often highlighted as being harder to manage in GURPS than in other systems that are more dedicated to comic book or saturday morning cartoon styles of play.
GURPS definitely isn't ideal for unrealistic combat at high power levels. You can do either cinematic or high-powered readily enough (my current campaign is the latter but not the former), but flipping both switches causes headaches. Where I differ from the critics is in the explanation. I don't think the issue flows from nuts and bolts such as super-strength and turn length*, but from the absence of meta-game mechanics that make stunting the default mode of play, not merely a special case for occasional use. GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys was in part an effort to remedy this dearth, but I'm not sure I went far enough.
—
* I'm amused by criticisms of GURPS for supers on such grounds. The usual attack is on ST, which bothers me because it overlooks the comic-book reality that ST is the ultimate Ultra-Power: it removes obstacles, it hurts people, it enables you to impart allies with de facto flight, it lets you block arbitrarily large attacks by using arbitrarily large objects as shields, it allows you to wear vast amounts of armor and carry insanely big weapons, etc. The pure-damage thinking of comparing it to Innate Attack boggles my mind . . .
Do most players really not try to abuse the heck out of ST? My wife's PC with ST 30 (nine times human Basic Lift) in my fantasy campaign did things like body-slam two-ton rocks off cliffs onto foes, hurl armored allies across 30-foot chasms, throw spears into rock faces for climbing lines, carry spare gear for a whole party of PCs so that they weren't slowed and didn't need a cart, wear triple-thickness plate armor and wield a god's sword, etc. That kind of defined "OP" for me . . .
On the topic of Comic-Style gaming, GURPS does do a good job of handling various aspects of this… but to find out how to do so requires what I have found to be a very strong understanding of GURPS as the GM and Player start looking at Scale. Scale is of course only one piece of the recipe for a Comic Style game, and more times than not one scale can vary drastically from another.
Comics are very much an artistic take on combat, in that there is very little, if at all any, science behind it. The only science that is important deals specifically on why the player thinks their powers works or do not work. The rest are more or less a matter of Taste and what deal with the story. Additionally, there is no Death Spiral in Comics (Unless we are talking some of the much darker, older style comics where such things where the norm), and more times than not, the hero shrugs off and is fine after a defeat. Defeats are simply a chance for the hero to stand back and think of what happened, and how they can keep it from happening again.
My problem when dealing with Supers wasn't to do with STR. It had more to do with Power-Armor style heroes (Iron Man for example). What the Supers Book (As I had to read both that one and the Powers book, which the later is AWESOME!) recommends is having the item as something along the lines of a Iconic Item that the player pays points for. It can be removed and destroyed. Sounds simple!
Where it got confusing was with this: How does one determine the HP/Mass/Resistance of these SUPER armors, and how often do these elements come into account? Given the views of some of the GM's I have played with, I have often found that this wasn't feasible as NPC's would suddenly start destroying a player's armor by means of association (You are wearing it, and it is taking a big hit!). The player isn't damaged, but their soul source of power usually was destroyed rather quickly.
This then derailed into a discussion of "Well, does that same thing happen when dealing with a regular sword and regular armor?" (I refer to my discussion of scale as above)
What it came down to was that as a player, having to calculate the risk of the armor being destroyed from a stray blast is a matter of GM preference/Setting Style. Personally, I shouldn't have to roll a check for the armor to take damage unless the player critically fails or has some situation where the attack targeting them was substantial (degrees of success?). The other GM would do the calculations on every attack… very much limiting the armor but making full use of the 5 some % discount.
The way they viewed it was simply the fact that Disadvantages should be very extreme to be worth a discount. In my mind, that would simply be a matter of taste/scale that relates to the style of game, rather than going with the literal rules (GM Veto after all). Why bother calculating this on every attack when it can potentially distract from the game?
I feel in this situation the Dr. has it right. Each "second" in combat can just as easily be generalized. There is often times a reason why in many games the turns are "about 6 seconds." These 6 seconds are still divided up between Standard and Move, which GURPS does well.
Emulating extra actions that a player can do when taking a "full round action" can be emulated, but in general the "One Second" can be overlooked for sake of enjoyment and simplicity. Combat takes however long it needs, and in the case of Talking (Which in my mind combat should have ample amounts of) should make for very enjoyable, instead of stressful situations.
Having players build relationship ahead of time can give players a motivation to use their actions for the benefit of each other. The Three (sometimes Four) Musketeers are great examples of this, for the simple fact that they dealt with very serious situations with style, if only due to the fact that they knew they could rely on their partners.
In these situations, helping a friend, or taking an action doesn't need to be so critical as long as everyone is there by each other's side in some way or form.
If it comes down to it though, and it has been a LONG time since I last looked up this, but would there be, or could their be a rule in GURPS to "surge" for a turn to allow at least for an extra action in case of helping a friend? As a GM flavor bit, I wouldn't penalize the player for doing such things (as long as it is selfless/heroic of course) rather than providing additional penalties for wild swings and the like. Toss it up to relationship with benefits? 😛
If it comes down to it though, and it has been a LONG time since I last looked up this, but would there be, or could their be a rule in GURPS to "surge" for a turn to allow at least for an extra action in case of helping a friend?
Seems like if you do this, it would be a great use of either Destiny Points and/or Extra Effort. So for the case of helping out a friend, if you spend 1 "Destiny" point (if you're using them) and 1 FP, you can move up to some large multiple of your Move in one second, with restrictions up to the GM.
I'm no fan of meta-game currencies. If I want to give a player a shot at a heroic rescue at two or three multiples of his move, I think I'd just give the attacker a bit of smarts to say "that one's out of action, moving on to the next target" or perhaps have him get caught monologuing for a bit.
Meta-Game currencies I feel have a place in different situations. In a number of games that I play, they are often times the only form of "Currency" as money, experience, and physical items are not as much of a reward.
In these situations, the currency can be very nice and can be used to "reward" the players for playing along with the story, the team, and otherwise behaving in a way that the Game Master feels is acceptable.
In situations where things can get fairly overwhelming (Where templates can help a LOT in minimizing), having extra gaming currencies can simply add something that isn't required. That and if the group of players is competent enough, it won't matter as much either as the players enjoy helping each other out.
I've often felt like this was the weakness in many modern games. You trust your players so little that you build into the system a tool to make them behave lest they fail to collect imaginary points. Add to this that meta-game tools are just that – meta-game – and force you to make decisions as the player rather than as the character (a violation of immersion in the character) and you wind up with cross purposes. Do you want me to stay in character and do what my character would do, right or wrong? Or do you want me to slip out of character to determine the best course of action based on a pre-determined narrative?
Okay, I've gone way off the subject of the original post here, so I'll hush up now. 🙂
Your post, however, has engendered a few thoughts on metagame that means that a future post will deal with this.
I don't share your view on metagame entities, but why I think they're good, or at least something to think about, is worth it's own post and discussion
As always, thanks for the shared ideas!
Any time, Doug. Glad to be part of the vibrant little community you're building here. 🙂
I know I'm firmly in the minority, with immersion and my simulation, surrounded by "pretzel and beer" gamers and storytellers, but I suspect I'm not entirely alone out here.
I must second Douglas' notion, the Idea behind Metagaming is something that I haven't quite understood until you made it so clear with "You trust your players so little that you build into the system a tool to make them behave lest they fail to collect imaginary points."
Either way, you are not alone in this, and I actually played rather regularly in the past with people who felt the same way, and any time it was questioned, the question was answered with an extreme amount of passion!
Our group has had two ongoing campaigns for years now. I'm the GM of one of them (horror & weird science) and player in the other (ultra-tech post-apocalypse).
In the latter, after two years of fierce TL9 us vs. TL11^ aliens combat, we've lost teammates to all variety of violence. In every case, the teammate in question was acting alone and/or too far from other to be aided. They were not always being foolhardy in doing so – in one case, it was actual heroics and a failure to remember that one should not stand close to alien robots who collapse into singularities when destroyed. Some of the death-spiral was ameliorated by our battlesuits and their automatic first aid (that feature in fact saved everyone's life at least once).
But for the life of me, I could hardly ever get the group to work together. My character had Tactics but didn't have Leadership, so I often had to bully characters (& players) into following my plan. And even then, the insistence on individual solo effort (which was excused/justified by "heroics") was frustrating and often detrimental to the team. We managed to work together about 30% of the time, which turns out to be enough to survive if you can make a Luck roll every hour.
I've noted a distinct lack of tactical thinking in these same players when I'm GMing. In the game I'm running, I had their Patron insist they always stick together (her own team was killed twice in the past and she's convinced it was because they didn't stick together). Yet they still seem to default to splitting into at least two parties. Yes, I give them a LOT to do, so it is more efficient that way, and every time they do split up someone (not always a foe) appears to take advantage of it.
(And pardon me while I self-trumpet, but I'm very good at running a game with split parties, mainly because I used to GM two games at a time sometimes back in college. It is however challenging and not as enjoyable as the alternative.)
My experience with this is also about the same. GURPS is a great game when looking at a tactical standpoint as the person who is able to force their targets into a bottleneck and stack team and environmental conditions, it is very very possible to hold off entire armies.
On the other hand, players tend to use gaming as a means of enjoying a good time with friends, and being AWESOME! (Or in some of my experiences, Exceptionally silly or even downright evil.) The game turns into not a team practice situation, but a situation where each player has a Spotlight that they have all the time, despite the other player's interests.
Add in the fact that many players use gaming as a means of finding a sociological place to share their experiences in a place that they feel safe, I have found my "job" as a GM comes down to also helping with social awkwardness and giving out "Common Sense" situations, where walking away from the team is bad, but they do not know better because books/movies/everything else dictate that to be cool/awesome/whatever you gotta go solo.
This is of course a vastly large generalization, and a stereotype that doesn't involve everyone. I often run and play in Mutants and Mastermind games with other GM's, who more times than not have had to deal with this situation and teamwork is a given. These games tend to go very smoothly, and are very enjoyable because everyone else is there to help everyone have fun, not just one person.
It is in these situations where each player can help the other have fun, even when their own player isn't in the spotlight. I almost have to say that in GURPS, it rewards selflessness, and greatly punishes selfishness. This can be a great and bad thing in the hands of any given Game Master, and being somewhat forgiving of some players actions can make or break any game.
GURPS gives us the tools to make it as extreme and deadly as we want, as cinematic or realistic as we want, and provides the scale to match anything to fit the style of game we want. Sadly, without having the expectation up front and providing more reward other than "Your player is now d-e-a-d dead, try not to go solo next time."
At the same time, players enjoy some solo time, and although difficult, having players know that they have turns of so many seconds/scenes help. For this to also work, the player must be aware and willing to accept that they are not the only one there to have fun.
My first GURPS Campaign was cleverly titled 'Every Book We Own' and was an unholy mish mash of Mecha, Grimoire (without Magic, oops), Bio-Tech and who knows what else . . . . and it was an absolute blast and one reason I still do GURPS
I am convinced that if I hadn't done a kitchen sink mish mash as my introduction to GURPS I wouldn't have seen the point of it . . . . I mean, lots of RPGs can do 1 thing well, but GURPS can do a whole slew of things well, at the same time . . . . if for instance we had done a 'guys with swords and spells' game I would likely have thought 'this is okay, but I don't see why I need a new system for this, Earthdawn is awesome and I already know those rules'
GURPS books are however well written and a blast to read, so despite the fact I hadn't ever run GURPS I had accumulated 20 or so books till the point my friends were like 'You have to many GURPS books. You aren't buying any more GURPS books till you use every one you already have!'
Thus, I ran GURPS, and ran the 'Every Book We Own' campaign
The 'Acrobatic Movement' rules seem to encourage some people to move around the battlefield if they have high enough skill to eat the penalties, since everyone loves making enemies take their move speed into account when trying to hit them
The people who seem to have the biggest problem with wanting to never ever move are people who are melee focused and don't use a shield . . . they don't want to move and attack and forfeit their parry, so they want to just stand there and hope someone comes into range
It might be that the movement thing has been peculiar to the groups I have worked with, but my experience hasn't been "I don't want to move," so much as "I just killed/incapacitated my foe, and now by the time I go elsewhere to lay down the smack, the battle's over."
There is clearly a shortage of foes in your games #:)