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Halaster
2009-07-15, 02:21 AM
Hi everyone.

I read The Clue Files (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html) yesterday, and some of the stories made me wonder, how much of this actually was the players' mistake. What I mean is this: sometimes, players declare an action, not thinking it through to the end. Like, in one of those stories, a player chucks a bomb from a building into a busy street. His fellow player shouts "wait, disarm it first!", but the GM just says "too late" and the bomb goes off in the street.

Now, in my opinion that's sheer jerkishness on part of the GM. However, I find that this is quite entrenched in the gaming community. You said it, you did it, and what you forgot to say, well, tough luck. Now I wondered, how do you handle such situations?

Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

I generally tend to err on the side of leniency, never really check equipment lists, allow players to reconsider actions their characters would recognize as stupid, and so on. I hardly found a tale on the Clue Files where I wouldn't have interjected with something like: "You know that's stupid, don't you?" Like the whole party taking a nap on a sinking boat, or shouting on a stealth run and so on.

On the other hand, I am merciless with players, who, despite time to think, advice from their fellow players and myself, continue to do stupid stuff.

Avilan the Grey
2009-07-15, 02:40 AM
Hi everyone.

I read The Clue Files (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html) yesterday, and some of the stories made me wonder, how much of this actually was the players' mistake. What I mean is this: sometimes, players declare an action, not thinking it through to the end. Like, in one of those stories, a player chucks a bomb from a building into a busy street. His fellow player shouts "wait, disarm it first!", but the GM just says "too late" and the bomb goes off in the street.

Now, in my opinion that's sheer jerkishness on part of the GM. However, I find that this is quite entrenched in the gaming community. You said it, you did it, and what you forgot to say, well, tough luck. Now I wondered, how do you handle such situations?

Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

I generally tend to err on the side of leniency, never really check equipment lists, allow players to reconsider actions their characters would recognize as stupid, and so on. I hardly found a tale on the Clue Files where I wouldn't have interjected with something like: "You know that's stupid, don't you?" Like the whole party taking a nap on a sinking boat, or shouting on a stealth run and so on.

On the other hand, I am merciless with players, who, despite time to think, advice from their fellow players and myself, continue to do stupid stuff.

I almost never DM, but here are my answers:

1) No. But of course there is a balance. They have to write down items that are "extra" (like "A ladder, or an excessive length of rope). I never count the number of rations or torches, I just assume they packed for the length of the trip or maybe half way if it's a long trip (meaning I assume they have packed rations for the 3 day trip; or rations to reach the next fortified Inn, or whatever). Now if they try to pull a fast one ("I always carry glass bottles of acid with me! Not that I have never mentioned it, written it down, or used them before...") then obviously "No you don't have that".

2) Yes. Not very often, but sometimes.

3) Depending on the situation. In preparation for battle, or when deciding who goes where in a city... sure. In the middle of a heated battle... Maybe not.

And yes, people who insist on stupidity get what they deserve. Luckily enough in the group I hang out we are all adults and far less likely to do "Suicidal plot derail" (as players) by doing things like "I don't like how the noble is looking at me so I kill him. Right here. In the middle of town. At noon. And I expect my Paladin not to fall."
If we do something stupid it's usually because we have misunderstood something like the layout of a room or house ("Oh you mean the door was on that side.").

mistformsquirrl
2009-07-15, 03:30 AM
1. - Not usually, but it depends on how careless it really was. Typically I try to remind players at creation that some things are just flat out logical to have - and they generally take that advice.

However if they're stupid enough to walk into a pitch black maze without a means of seeing in the dark... yeah <~_~> they're in trouble.

2. - I usually have them roll a check against the relevant stat in whatever game we're playing. If the player has forgotten, but the character knows; I use this as essentially the knowledge suddenly jumping to the fore of their thoughts. (Like how you may be sitting at your computer some night, and think "oh crap, I need to do X tomorrow!")

I do not however think for them - if they have a plan that isn't particularly bright; I'll usually let them go through with it. I *may* offer a wisdom (or similar) stat check to avoid it if I think it'll ruin the campaign rather than simply be a mistake that can be learned from though.

(Ie: The difference between a party wipe, and a painful lesson. - I don't like it when the party wipes; as it means the story usually grinds to a halt)

3. - Not often. It depends largely on the severity of the consequences, how fast they catch the mistake, and what's happened in the in-between time.

For example: You do something, and then a half second later realize "Oh wait no, that would be bad!" - Yeah, you can probably take that back.

If a half hour later you realize you shouldn't have done something; or the consequences are rather minor... probably not.

It depends on the specific situation a lot though.

AslanCross
2009-07-15, 03:32 AM
My players rarely do things without thinking. However, that one time they didn't think, a PC died with little hope of resurrection.

It's in my Red Hand of Doom campaign journal a few pages down: They had just beaten the green dragon in chapter I. They went back to town and forgot to heal. A goblin raid complete with tricked-out mounted archers and a caster attacked that night. The artificer got nuked by a scintillating sphere and died.

They're a lot more cautious now.

PersonMan
2009-07-15, 03:35 AM
Personally, to deal with the bomb thrown into the street, I would say that each character got a Reflex "save". The character who threw the bomb at, say, DC 15 and the other at DC 20. If either made it, they would have scrambled to stop the throwing-motion whatever. Not that it would help, you know, since it would then go off.(Assuming the timer was effectively at zero since it went off when it hit the street)

Usually, I give people hints (Aren't you, you know, forgetting something?), but sometimes I just let it play out. If they can make their save, good. If not...well, real lives get screwed over by people not thinking about what they do. I usually try not to screw over my characters that bad, though...

Zen Master
2009-07-15, 03:52 AM
Last wednesday, my players fought a bunch of degenerate freshwater sahuagin in an underground lake.

What they did was this: They caught one of them, killed it - then carved up the corpse, and threw it in the water.

Naturally, this triggered a massed attack - but as the players got to pick the location, they were on solid ground, and able to see their enemy.

It was touch and go - but they pulled through.

In my perception, their plan was bordering on suicidal, but I see the logic of it. They didn't want to fight the fishies in the water, dragged under by their nets and drowned whilst skewered by tridents.

However, there were easier ways around the fight, but they never went looking for them. Damnable fools.

But the point is that sometimes there is wisdom in stupidity. And if I hadn't let them go ahead with their suicidal plan, I'd have robbed them of an amazing victory (which I helped only very marginally with).

Totally Guy
2009-07-15, 04:00 AM
We had an NPC corpse (that we were going to bring back to life) which was lost forever because nobody remembered to bring it with us when we left out hideout for the last time.

Pika...
2009-07-15, 04:07 AM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?

As a player I hate the fact that most DMs (all I have seen at least) don't do that. I LOVE making my detailed equipment lists, counting down my rations, remembering that I need to use my sleeping bag or become fatigued, and going shopping when back in town (the last part is also a favorite part for me in video game RPGs. :smallbiggrin:). It gives the game a level of realism I like. However, it is usually all for not. :smallfrown:

Pika...
2009-07-15, 04:14 AM
Oh, and doesn't that all make things too easy? That is the feeling I get when a DM is too "lenient". If there is no challenge, and no risk, then it seems kinda pointless for me.

And the remembering things a second late thing, well that is how life works right? I mean in real life we don't get a 5-second redo button. For example: earlier today I was shredding some papers with personal information, and halfway through I accidentally grabbed a sheet of paper also on the desk with fluff I had been working on for my future games. Oops! Remembered when t was halfway through the machine.

Jan Mattys
2009-07-15, 04:29 AM
Hi everyone.

I read The Clue Files (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html) yesterday, and some of the stories made me wonder, how much of this actually was the players' mistake. What I mean is this: sometimes, players declare an action, not thinking it through to the end. Like, in one of those stories, a player chucks a bomb from a building into a busy street. His fellow player shouts "wait, disarm it first!", but the GM just says "too late" and the bomb goes off in the street.

Now, in my opinion that's sheer jerkishness on part of the GM. However, I find that this is quite entrenched in the gaming community. You said it, you did it, and what you forgot to say, well, tough luck. Now I wondered, how do you handle such situations?

Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

I generally tend to err on the side of leniency, never really check equipment lists, allow players to reconsider actions their characters would recognize as stupid, and so on. I hardly found a tale on the Clue Files where I wouldn't have interjected with something like: "You know that's stupid, don't you?" Like the whole party taking a nap on a sinking boat, or shouting on a stealth run and so on.

On the other hand, I am merciless with players, who, despite time to think, advice from their fellow players and myself, continue to do stupid stuff.

I like my players to grow intelligent.
It's not a matter of making them pay for their mistakes, it's a matter of making the world work as it should.
So yes, if my players go somewhere and forget the fuel (in an environment where fuel is likely an uncommon commodity) then they HAVE to care about it, and if they don't say anything I assume they forget about it.


- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
Yes I do. Especially when I know there will be troubled times ahead and/or times when they will be unable to "refill" their supplies for a long time. I want them to be able to plan and to prepare themselves.
I am GMing a Call of Cthulhu campaign and knowing how many bullets you've left, or how much dynamite, can make the difference between life and death. Also, in many parts of the world, fuel is rare, expensive, and difficult to get (Africa in the mid 1920's, for example...). So I expect my players to come up with ideas, plans and everything else needed to overcome these problems.
Of course, I do the same for the NPCs and the occasional BBEGs... I know what resources they have and if my players succeed in cutting the supply lines of the evil guys... I let them. It's important, and it adds both flavour and realism to the game. My players love to plan ahead, because from time to time it's rewarding to know you've been smart enought to save yourself from troubles, or have managed to twart the evil plans of your opponent through careful planning.


- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
I usually make them roll an Int check if they miss something that their characters would likely be aware of. If the player thinks of it, ok. If the players doesn't, then the Int check is a sort of a safety net. If both the player AND the Int check fail... then too bad. People sometimes do stupid stuff or overlook things... Nothing to worry about. They just suffer the consequences, and later they say "well, it makes sense... it was indeed a stupid thing to do, now that I think about it"
Same goes for foreseeable consequences. Either they see them themselves, or they roll an Int check. If both fail, well... usually hilarity ensues :smallbiggrin: Of course, the degree of "foreseeableness" (is that even a word?) comes from my personal judgement. I don't make them roll for *all* the consequences. They roll for those they should see coming (in my opinion) and they don't.


- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?
Yeah of course. Unless it's in the heat of a fight, and something out of character happens that makes them change their mind (I hate that), then it's just sensible to let them think twice. It's a game after all, it's not a matter of the GM winning AGAINST the players... it's a matter of working together for a better game experience for everyone. Being a jerk is not on my agenda. :smallsmile:

Tyrmatt
2009-07-15, 04:32 AM
In order to counteract this, one of my players took the GURPS trait "Common Sense". This doesn't bestow his character with any particular powers of sense, but as the GM I am now REQUIRED to ask him "Are you sure?" in any stupid situation he wants to put himself in. We haven't had to use it yet and this bears in mind the same player also took Daredevil I think which only bestows bonuses for being badass and reckless.
I imagine it wouldn't be hard to make say an amulet of sensibilities that functions the same was for D&D players. Make it a cursed item that they put on and can't remove until they've learned a valuable lesson. It's either that or have angry townsfolk pitchfork them at every opportunity for blowing up the dungeon with the local kids still inside.

Halaster
2009-07-15, 05:04 AM
But the point is that sometimes there is wisdom in stupidity. And if I hadn't let them go ahead with their suicidal plan, I'd have robbed them of an amazing victory (which I helped only very marginally with).

I see your point. Stopping the players too early might rob both them and the GM of a lot of fun. I don't really think your story completely fits my issue. After all, your players made a plan, and the one point they didn't consider, namely their chances to win the fight they thereby triggered, was something both they and their characters were genuinely unaware of.



Oh, and doesn't that all make things too easy? That is the feeling I get when a DM is too "lenient". If there is no challenge, and no risk, then it seems kinda pointless for me.
I've heard that before, but I don't think the challenge should be one of bookkeeping or double-checking every statement. That only leads to cagey players who obsess over every round of ammo, ask questions about every detail of a scene and so on, all of which usually detracts from the fluidity of the game, which to me is a very important component of fun. So, if a player asks "We did bring torches, didn't we?" I say yes, rather than have to wait half an hour before the next dungeon crawl can begin, because my players try to cover all eventualities.

Likewise, I hate to let a well-prepared story go to waste, because my players overlooked some small detail in their planning. Better to just smooth it over and play on. Saves everyone lots of frustration.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-07-15, 08:38 AM
I like my players to grow intelligent.
It's not a matter of making them pay for their mistakes, it's a matter of making the world work as it should.
So yes, if my players go somewhere and forget the fuel (in an environment where fuel is likely an uncommon commodity) then they HAVE to care about it, and if they don't say anything I assume they forget about it.

Yes I do. Especially when I know there will be troubled times ahead and/or times when they will be unable to "refill" their supplies for a long time. I want them to be able to plan and to prepare themselves.
[...]
I usually make them roll an Int check if they miss something that their characters would likely be aware of. If the player thinks of it, ok. If the players doesn't, then the Int check is a sort of a safety net. If both the player AND the Int check fail... then too bad. People sometimes do stupid stuff or overlook things... Nothing to worry about. They just suffer the consequences, and later they say "well, it makes sense... it was indeed a stupid thing to do, now that I think about it"
Same goes for foreseeable consequences. Either they see them themselves, or they roll an Int check. If both fail, well... usually hilarity ensues :smallbiggrin: Of course, the degree of "foreseeableness" (is that even a word?) comes from my personal judgement. I don't make them roll for *all* the consequences. They roll for those they should see coming (in my opinion) and they don't.

I pretty much run things the same way for the first two questions, so I figured I'd just quote this instead of typing it out.

For the "take-back" issue, I allow it as long as no one else has stated their actions yet, kind of like taking your hand off the piece in chess. If you realize it after someone else has acted, but not reacted to your action, I'll sometimes allow a Will save to undo something stupid and intangible (insulting the king, etc.) and a Ref save to undo something stupid and tangible (tossing a bomb into a street without disarming it, etc.), though I usually only use the second rule with groups relatively new to RPGs until the get the hang of things.

Kaiyanwang
2009-07-15, 08:40 AM
My players rarely do things without thinking. However, that one time they didn't think, a PC died with little hope of resurrection.

It's in my Red Hand of Doom campaign journal a few pages down: They had just beaten the green dragon in chapter I. They went back to town and forgot to heal. A goblin raid complete with tricked-out mounted archers and a caster attacked that night. The artificer got nuked by a scintillating sphere and died.

They're a lot more cautious now.

This is the way to go. No sarcasm, players learn better and faster this way.

Random832
2009-07-15, 08:55 AM
In order to counteract this, one of my players took the GURPS trait "Common Sense". This doesn't bestow his character with any particular powers of sense, but as the GM I am now REQUIRED to ask him "Are you sure?" in any stupid situation he wants to put himself in.

This trait (and its equivalent as a Merit in white wolf games) has probably caused more DM stupidity than anything else I can think of - it's a license (and can be read as a requirement) to not ask that question any other time.

My [former] group's house rule: "Make a wisdom check" - if they fail the check, they do whatever they just said they were going to do - if they succeed the DM tells them something that usually (along with the check itself as a warning flag) makes them reconsider.

Cyrion
2009-07-15, 09:00 AM
It varies from game to game that I run. In my Renaissance Italy GURPS campaign I don't pay a lot of attention to the nails (we've never kept track of money) except for specific, important items- weapons, mystic keys, the carriage driver, etc. What I let them take back depends a lot upon the situation. I didn't let them take back the fired black powder weapon in the cave that deafened everyone, but I do let them take back the "Oh-wait-that would-be-stupid!" ideas if it's before they get very far into it, much like PairO'Dice's reaction rule.

In my DnD campaigns, I'm much more anal about what they carry with them. They might not get in trouble for want of a nail, but if they don't have the hammer written down they're could be in trouble. I rely a lot on common sense and on whether it would be entertaining for everyone, drive the main plot, or may be an adventure seed on its own.

Halaster
2009-07-15, 09:12 AM
I agree with the learning curve thing for the basics. Healing, setting guard at night, buying potions ahead of time, and so on. But I think you should be careful what you teach them. If you get hung up on detail, players will obsess over it - they need to, or they're dead. I DMed a group like that once. They were not smarter than others, just more fixated on detail and precision. They double- and triple-checked their plans, their equipment and sometimes needed quite a while to formulate a coherent statement of what they were about to do. After a while they realize I didn't care about such petty stuff and game speed about doubled, with no loss in fun for anyone.
I mean, consider the following exchange:
GM: "OK, you're about to leave town. Anything you want to do before you leave?"
Player: "Hmm, no. Oh! Wait! I forgot something!"
GM: "Yes, what do you want to do?"
Player: "I'll replace that 50ft rope I left hanging in the dungeon!"
Do you really want to take up precious game time with such dialogue? I told the player to just subtract the money and not bother me with rope for chrissake,

On another note, I recently played on a convention, and we were travelling into the desert with a zeppelin. So now the GM breaks out the equipment list and tells us to list everything we take, including ammo, zeppelin fuel and food. Well, none of that ever got to be relevant, because we spent so much time on that, we never made it through the plot and didn't even use half our stuff.


Ultimately, the question is, do you want to play a game or put your players through a logistics exercise?

aivanther
2009-07-15, 09:22 AM
Basic equipment upkeep is okay, overly huge amounts of book keeping is honestly a waste of time for those of us that are not accountants. In most games I've played there's a limit. Usually my various DMs have allowed a sort of improvisation rule: if you forgot your shovel, a sword will work, but it'll take 5 times as long.

As for the undo rule, well, it depends. Are you running across the room to throw something out the window (a 10 sec action, more or less?) then you have time to stop. If it's an instant action (i drop the oil of impact), to late to undo a 1/2 sec action. Seems to make sense to me. If there's time in real life to rethink, there should be time in game.

Tengu_temp
2009-07-15, 09:26 AM
In general, I remind my players of stuff when it's obvious they forgot about something, and ask them are they sure if they want to do something really stupid. I let them revise their action, too, at least until I describe the result. I even change the course of action if it becomes apparent that I made a mistake. An important part of DMing is to realize that nobody is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes sometimes - even you - and that the game shouldn't suffer just because someone forgot about something his character never would.

I agree with Halaster - the DM in the example he provided was a jerkwad.

Worira
2009-07-15, 09:27 AM
1: C.L.U.E #3 is a failure on the part of the GM, not the players. Having highly trained professionals forget to bring a flashlight is like the PCs being arrested for indecent exposure because they didn't put pants on their equipment sheet.

2: Yes, to a certain extent. In particular, there are certain details that a character is more likely to remember than a player. For example, say a man is wearing armour. The characters can see it whenever they look at him, but it could slip the mind of the players, unless I say things like "The man, who is wearing armour, turns to face the rogue."

3: Generally yes, as long as nothing else has happened in the meantime.

Nostri
2009-07-15, 09:38 AM
1. I do actually, though I warn them ahead of time that that's going to be the way it is. I've found that if I don't I end up with some players who will be carrying everything they ever need in a dungeon (a month's worth of food, five changes of clothes, not to mention the ceramonial robes and a set of diguises, 20 torches, a few hundred feet of rope, a ladder, a 10 ft pole, a dozen or so sacks, a bedroll a tent, etc etc) all in their backpack and then another player or two who has nothing but their weapons and armor and possibly some flint and tinder. So I have my players make comprehensive equipment lists and go over them with them. Helps realism in my opinion and to be honest once they've gotten their initial "starting package" together it doesn't come up that often again for me.

I will note however that in my long time group we've established some basic packages that we all know what they contain. For example the spellcaster/scribe package has a few candles, a blank book or rolls or parchment, a couple of quills and a pot of ink. The travelling package has a week's rations in it, a tent, a bedroll and some other useful items. I also will allow players to say they've bought a weeks worth of rations or 20 hours worth of lamp oil instead of saying they've got 7 trail rations and 12.248 liters of oil (or whatever it would be).

2. I don't remind them explicetly but if they say they're going to do something truely moronic (ie attack the king, burn down a church in broad daylight) I'll ask them if they're sure. Usually th answer is yes but it never hurts to ask.

3. I'll let someone revise an action if I haven't described the reaction yet. In the tossing a bomb into a crowded street example. If Player A had told me he tossed the bomb off the building and them Player B says "No wait, don't do that!" I'll assume that in-game Player B's character yelled that out to Player A's character in time to stop him (assuming Player A agrees and Player B's character is present for the time bomb shot put). If however I'd said "Alright you watch in horror as the bomb rips through the civillians below." and then they tried to change their action...nope sorry you just blew up a few dozen people.

The same would hold true if Player A had told me right after he tossed the bomb that he didn't actually want to do that ("Wait no I don't toss it I use that nifty disintegrate ray gun on it...") then that's fine too.

Jan Mattys
2009-07-15, 09:41 AM
Ultimately, the question is, do you want to play a game or put your players through a logistics exercise?

Sometimes the first, sometimes the latter, sometimes both.

Players should never get used to "always have what they need". At the same time, players should never triple-check the buttons of their blouses.
There's a reasonable line to be drawn: important, or significant stuff SHOULD be taken track of.

Where to draw the line depends on many factors: the GM, the players, the campaign (or the one-shot instance) and the system.

For example: I'd rarely bother to be anal in a Vampires Masquerade campaign... but I'd pay a lot of attention to details in a survival-horror kind of game.

All in all, it's a matter of finding a compromise between hardcore realism and perfect smooth storytelling. In my experience it's quite easy to fnd the right balance for each group... but maybe I was just lucky in my GMing career. :)

Kylarra
2009-07-15, 10:02 AM
Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

1- Yes.
2/3 - I ask "Are you sure?" (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0225.html)

The_JJ
2009-07-15, 10:09 AM
I rhink it also depends on the system you're running. The story mentioned in the OP is a Shadowrunner game where PC's are often playing recklesssly with explosives in tense circumstances. It happens.

Generally, I'll let it slide if, say, the player is obviously joking.
Player: "I go french the Queen!" *group laughs*
Me: "Well then, the Royal Guardsmen-"
Player: "Ha! Nah."

Also, I'll let other nearby PC's step in, especially when it's to save their own skin.
Player One: "I stab the important NPC for mocking me!"
Player Two: "I stop him."

However, when a player is risking only himself, and does something stupid, I let it happen, but describe it in a spectacularlly funny manner, so as to creat a good story. Most of the time the players don't even try to take it back, or only halfheartedly fight the awesome.

Of course, it's stll situational. One off Shadowrun game? Part of the fun. But I'd never, say, permadeath a character from a long running campaign that's been sheperded from the vile darkness of level one all the way to the 'hey I'm pretty cool' level 14 without some options.

Also, that one power that make the GM ask 'are you sure' is the best idea ever.

MCerberus
2009-07-15, 01:09 PM
When my players come up with plans, I often allow them a "Wisdom check" when describing something blatantly stupid. As for gear, I allow some slack. It's generally when the players come up with a paranoid list of various gadgets and ends that I put something in that they don't have the gear for.

Crowbar? check
10 foot pole? check
Everburning torches? check
Sovereign Glue? check
Universal Solvent? check
Well we need a bucket. !@#$

Duke of URL
2009-07-15, 01:33 PM
1) No. I assume basic equipment is there, and only unusual equipment needs to be tracked. The big caveat here is if the specific game has a "resource" component to it, such as a "Lost"-style stranded-on-an-island-with-just-what's-on-your-person motif, then of course tracking every last item becomes critical.

2) If the player is acting against what his/her character's knowledge should be, then yes. Of course, this cuts both ways -- if the player knows something the character doesn't, the character can't act on that knowledge.

3) I generally do play-by-post, so this rarely comes up. In general, if the behavior is out of character, I'd give 'em a chance to correct it. if it's in-character, then, what happens, happens.

Glyde
2009-07-15, 03:21 PM
I give my players three (depends on the group size I guess) collective "Are you sure?"s from the DM. The rules behind that are this:

When the DM says "Are you sure?" you immediately respond with "No, let me think that over again." and proceed to do just that. After all the AYSs are used up, the player's actions only get a raised eyebrow and a detailed description of what happens.


I don't think they've run out of these after I've told them about the limit.

Captain Alien
2009-07-15, 03:37 PM
In my new campaign, I make my players choose where do they put every item they have and how do they carry it. They do not have something as the inventory of a videogame. They have backpacks, or bags, or whatever. And you cannot carry every item you want just because you have enough strenght. You must have some place where put it.

I guess everybody does this, but I am annoyingly careful with this things so they look realistic. Or else they would trick me.

Mr.Moron
2009-07-15, 03:37 PM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?


Items so mundane they fall beneath notice in our daily lives I generally won't hold players to needing to list. For example, I assume anyone packing ratios or a hunting bow likely has a pot or at least some kind of skewer to cook things on. In the unlikely event we should ever need to focus on the culinary ventures of the group, they'll just have one. If they made a point of listing a particular pot they have... all the more power to them.

I'm going to assume if going for a long journey, a vehicle would have a full tank of gas.. or a horse has at least some basic feed with it. I'll probably also ask if they intend to buy extra if the probably don't bring it up.

I'm not there to go HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Gotcha. I'm there to do what I can to keep the gaming moving smoothly. Trapping them with something they overlooked, but no sensible character with an INT over 10 would forget if they were actually in the situation.. is just silly.



- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?

- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

Yes, I make a point of doing this. It'll generally take the form of asking for some like an INT or WIS roll. Or sometimes i'll just throw it to them if it would be obvious to them. When it involves a revision though, I generally try to limit how far after their turn it happens. Since re-plays are so cumbersome.

Zeful
2009-07-15, 04:22 PM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?Yes, if they don't have it on their character sheet, they don't have it. If they do have it, they should be able to state where they got if from.

- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?Yes, the character is generally stronger/faster/tougher/smarter/wiser/more charismatic than the player is, so things that the character would know and the player wouldn't are relayed to the player.

- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that? Depends on how long it takes them to figure it out. They state that they throw a bomb out the window without disarming it, wait till I say it hits the street to revise their action, then no, too late. If they stop themselves before I can start describing the result, then yes.

horseboy
2009-07-16, 06:42 AM
1) Well, here's an inventory list from a 2nd level character of mine. It's Sci-fi so he has more stuff than a fantasy character would (stupid higher tech levels). Equipment:………………Weight…..Cost………..Notes
First aid Kit:……………..0.05……...2……………+150 First aid skill hold drugs
Medscanner: .....................2................850......... .....Feeds data to Diagnostic Computer
Diagnostic Computer:……2…………1,200………+400 diagnosis skill
Dermal Closer:…………...0.5………200…………Healing wand
Field Cast: (x2)…………..0.2………30…………..+90 to heal broken bone
Hypodermic Spray:……...0.1……….80………….Injector
Smelling Salts(x50):...……0…………25…………Instant awake from normal, +30 other
Thiagorex:(x200)…………0…………200………..Tylenol, IN SPACE!!!!!!
Andeline:(x20)…………...0…………200……….Regenerates 30 hits in 1 minute
Arelnex:(x20)…………….0…………30…………Cures common cold
Fir-Queline:(x10)………...0…………100………..Regenerates 10 hits instantly
Hemoflux:(x10)………….0…………120…………Replace all blood lost in 2 hours
Thetacoagulin:(x20)……..0………….50………….Seals up to 5 hits/round
Torethene:(x10)………….0………….150…………Heal 100 hits in 2 minutes
Verex Compound:(x5)…..0…………..50………….+100 RR vs Poison
Ziclomene:(x10)…………0…………..60………….Cures the Bends.
Translator………………...0.1……….1,200………100 Languages, no waiting.
Chronometer……………..0.01………50………….Watch
Towel…………………….0.05………10………….One should always know where it is.
Electronic Handcuffs (x5).1.25……….200……….Detaining prisoners
Tactical Scanner…………1.5…………700……….160m range Mini map +50 Sensor An
Web Belt:………………..0.1…………5………….
Air Mattress:…………….0.2………….6…………”Camping”
All Weather Bag:……….0.1………….5………….”Camping” Sleeping Bag.
Environment Tent:………0.8…………90…………”Camping” in a vacuum.
multi-purpose goggles:….0.15………..40…………Shades, anti-glare, telescopic, IR
Survival Knife:………….. 0.05……...10…………
synth-cord (100m)……… 0.2……….10………...Supports 150 tons while “Camping”.
Instameal:(x20)…………..10………..200………In case you’re “camping” in a vacuum.
Vapor Canteen:…………..1…………450………”Camping” gear.
Frame Pack:……………….4………..1………….Holds all “Camping” gear.
Holocamera:……………..0.5……….50………….I take pictures.
Holoplates (x10)…………1…………150………...Holographic pictures.
Holoprojector:……………1.5……….50…………View Master
Utility Cells (x20)……….0.2………..100………...Batteries
Exo Armoured Vac-suit:..10.5………..7500………Fitted +15
Monosword:………………1…………..0…………Given to him on 10th B-day.
Holoscope:………………0.005…….5……………+5 OB to equipped weapon
“Abby” Ultimate Arms MAB.1.75……….0…………+25, SS:1-5; B:7; R: 105;
Deluxe Stunner(UB)……….0.01……….0…………+25, SS:1-5; B:1; R:150;
5 pairs of clothes…….……..0………….0…………Dress Blues, 4 BDU, various patterns
Personal Kit………………..1…………0………….Wallet with walletie stuff.
Footlocker………………….3…………5………….Holds clothes not worn, extra armour
Towel and pack when not used.
Tulgar Armour AT 16 +25…0………….0………….Given to him on 10th B-day.
Grenades………………….0.5………..500……..5 grenades
Stun Grenades…………….0.5………..1000……5 do stun crits.
Jams (x3)…………………...0…………150…….Multi-use shorts (He's color blind)
Audio albums (x30)………...2.4……….60……...
Personal Audio Player:……..0.2……….40………
Datapad …………………….3…………1,100…..ePrayer book
40K Army.............................5................ 500.........Grey Knights(unpainted)
“Mercy” H&K LP 15...........4.3..............3500.......Reductor
Holster and 2 energy cells...
Dog tags and Medallion of Ainaan, Lord of Death and Hope.
1161 Credits

2) Only if it's something that makes absolutely no sense. If it's pretty obvious that they think they're on the other side of the room I'll say something like "No, you're on the other side of the room from him, you can't hit him with your sword." I never tell my players the consequences of their actions they're all big boys and girls, they should know.
3) Not usually, no.

Mathius
2009-07-16, 07:00 AM
I am a stickler when it comes to my players not thinking about what they do. After visiting the character creation section a few times, my players have learned to think first.

If you ain't got it on your sheet, you ain't got it, period. They give you starting cash for a reason.

If you miss the perception/spot/listen check, then you don't notice jack. If the dice fail you, tough. Deal with it.

Ninetail
2009-07-18, 01:17 AM
Hi everyone.
Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?


Depends. For goods that would be common in an area, no. I just have them deduct a couple gold every time they hit town to restock their food, ammo, or whatever else.

For goods that would not be common, tracking is in order. For instance, food and water are important if you're going across the desert.

I do ask them for an equipment list, but I also assume trivial gear based on character background. If you're a scholar, you have a pen, a vial of ink, and some good paper, sure. If you're a barbarian, probably not -- but you can have fishhooks, a small knife, and so on.



- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?


If it's something screamingly obvious (like the nap on the sinking ship), then yes. There's no way the character could forget that the ship is sinking, even if the player does.

For the somewhat less obvious, I employ Int and Wis checks (or the appropriate stats or skills, when not playing D&D). I consider it the only fair way to play, really -- otherwise there's no way to play a character smarter than you are.

How much I tell them depends on the situation. Sometimes they get a rundown of the situation, and a reminder of the major pitfalls of their approach. Sometimes they just have a bad feeling about things.



- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?


Immediately afterwards? Sure, as long as no dice have been thrown yet. They can't take a risky action, fail, and then say "oops, I didn't mean to do that." But if they say something, then correct themselves, I'm fine with that.

They also can't correct themselves after someone else's turn begins, or (in non-combat situations) undo things that happened half an hour ago. It's strictly a "second thoughts" thing.

Finally, in a roleplayed conversation, the character says what the player does. You can't take back words you've spoken, you can only try to patch things up. (Out-of-character speech like a question to the GM is obviously exempt.)

In a case where one player wants to stop another, like that bomb situation, I'd allow some form of roll, though it'd probably cost that character his action for the turn. I probably picked that up from HERO's "abort" mechanic.



On the other hand, I am merciless with players, who, despite time to think, advice from their fellow players and myself, continue to do stupid stuff.

Yes, I think this is equally important. Even with a warning, I've had players continue on their way. That's their call. They get to make the final decision about what their characters do. At most, I remind them of information or intuition that their characters would have, even though the player doesn't.

ericgrau
2009-07-18, 02:29 AM
Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?


I'm not a DM FWIW.
1. I'd give them an "adventurer's kit" with backpack, food, water, bedroll, a whetstone and oil. Or a deluxe kit (at least 1 per party) with that plus torches or a lantern and a tent. Plus whatever else they want to bring, of course. So when they get to the dungeon I'd ask "Who's carrying the light" not "Did anyone remember to bring a light?" In other situations I'd likewise say "You need this and that". i.e., I'd require them to have all necessities but I'd lay it out for them rather than giving them surprises.

2. Yes. In fact, I'd also be chucking note cards with knowledge check results at them, giving untrained int common knowledge check results (DC <=10) about the campaign world, or just telling them the really basic stuff w/o a check, etc. I would not supply them with common sense, only knowledge about the imaginary world. Basically tell them what they ought to know as needed, not expecting them to memorize a page of campaign notes (be it written or verbal) beforehand.

I guess if the problem is over-the-top and should be obvious to the character (but maybe not the player) I'd warn them of consequences of actions, but otherwise as long as the result isn't too horrible I'd let them screw up so they can learn to think about what they do themselves.

3. I'd avoid allowing too many revisions b/c it bogs down the game and it's questionable how quickly the character would think. This is similar to #2b; let them screw up some things so they'll learn to think first. But if it would cause a major problem and its obvious that the player's character would know, I'd let it slide.

Blacky the Blackball
2009-07-18, 03:13 AM
Hi everyone.

I read The Clue Files (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html) yesterday, and some of the stories made me wonder, how much of this actually was the players' mistake. What I mean is this: sometimes, players declare an action, not thinking it through to the end. Like, in one of those stories, a player chucks a bomb from a building into a busy street. His fellow player shouts "wait, disarm it first!", but the GM just says "too late" and the bomb goes off in the street.

Now, in my opinion that's sheer jerkishness on part of the GM. However, I find that this is quite entrenched in the gaming community. You said it, you did it, and what you forgot to say, well, tough luck. Now I wondered, how do you handle such situations?

In the example above, since the second player shouts as soon as the first player says what he's doing, I'd assume that what happens in character is that the first character makes a move as if he's about to throw it and the second character then shouts.

I'd therefore ask player one if he still wants to throw it in light of player two's shout, or if he reconsiders.

It's important to remember that things don't happen instantly in a roleplaying game. Just because a player says "I do X" doesn't mean that X happens instantly and fully before anything else can happen. If X is going to take time to occur, then it can be interrupted by other players or even by the DM.

For example, if a player forgets that the party are on the 3rd floor of a building and says his character will jump out of the window, I wouldn't just say "You jump out of the window and die." I'd say "You run over to the window, it's a long way down from the third floor. Are you sure you still want to jump?"

Basically, I don't punish the players by making them unable to stop/abort actions when their characters would clearly be able to do so.


Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?

If it's something mundane (lke a flashlight or fuel) then I just assume that the character remembered to bring it, in the same way that I assume that the character remembers to eat and get dressed even though the player hasn't mentioned it.

If it's somthing more obscure, then we tend to come to an agreement as a group whether or not it would be sensible for the character to have the item in question.


- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?

Of course I do.

Not doing so strikes me as being unrealistic for the sake of screwing over the players.


- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

Assuming the action is something that would take some time to complete, then of course they can abort/stop before finishing it if they have second thoughts.

Swordguy
2009-07-18, 04:59 AM
In my opinion, the OP has run headlong into a key difference between an older gaming philosophy (brutal Darwinism, where the game is as much a test of the player's intelligence as the character's statline) and modern gaming philosophy, where the player's actual impact on play is minimized as much as possible in favor of more comprehensive mechanics.

The OP quotes a game run in early Shadowrun (probably 2e or 3e, recalling the CLUE files published about the turn of the century, so Shadowrun 4e didn't exist yet, and nobody was stupid enough to try and make sense of 1e when 2 and 3e were available). In Shadowrun, a major, MAJOR part of the expected style of gameplay is the players having to come up with extremely detail-oriented ideas to accomplish an action that, mechanically, may be next to impossible. They have to think out-of-the-box and outside normal mechanical assumptions to accomplish their task. Part of that if the understanding that if you, the players, forget a detail about your mission or equipment ("oh, we forgot about astral watchers being used as security"), you're going to come up with a serious case of dead.

Thus, detail oriented thinking (including very specific equipment lists) are a game conceit in Shadowrun that are specifically called for in the rulebook. The "Running the Shadows" section actually tells the players that if they forget something, their PC is SOL. (Think for a moment, if you're old enough to recall, that a similar mindset was present in early D&D.) The game does everything but physically grab the player by the shoulders, shake him to and fro, and scream "BE SMARTER if you don't like losing characters".


Shadowrun is a different game than D&D. What I'm seeing in the thread is a bunch of answers within the context of D&D - and within that context, those answers are correct. D&D3e/4e both don't emphasize the importance of detailed equipment lists - they're more concerned with keeping the epic high fantasy feeling where a hero always has, by divine providence, just the right tool for the job. And under that mindset, it works, and under that mindset, the GM is a douche. But it's not fair to EITHER to compare one to the other in this fashion. The core conceits of early Shadowrun are completely different than 21-century D&D, or Exalted, or what-have-you.

In the end, what you're seeing isn't a "GM fail" - it's a representation of a different game style, and one that players are told up-front, in the rulebook, will be in play. If they aren't capable of reading the rulebook and taking their own precautions, then they either shouldn't be playing that game, or should be fine with going through PCs at a heightened rate.

Triaxx
2009-07-18, 05:52 AM
When it comes to equipment, everyone grabs one standard 'adventure pack'. It's got all those misc. items that get needed, ten foot poles, 300' of rope, lanterns and lantern oil, five healing potions. Then we have to only remember weapons, armor and adventure specific equipment.

1: No. If there's something they don't have, they improvise. Did you know that the organ on a dragon which produces flame, also produces fuel for most engines? And if nothing else we hitch the barbarian to the front.

2: No. Because either the character remembers, or they get penalized for forgetting through their own actions.

3: No. The instant an action goes through, that's it, it's happened. Whether smashing the engine out of the airship, or charging the BBEG through the death trap the rogue just uncovered. It's more fun to let them do disasterously stupid things, than try and protect them. (Plus I'd spend all my time doing that.)

Kiero
2009-07-18, 05:57 AM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?

Nope, equipment lists are tedium to the extreme, characters are assumed to have everything they would reasonably be carrying. The only items worthy of note are signature ones that define the character.


- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?

Nope, I'm not interested in playing someone else's character for them.


- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?


Yes, my job as GM isn't to try to catch the players out.

Tetsubo 57
2009-07-18, 06:51 AM
I rarely kill PCs. One of the only ways to get killed in my campaigns is to do something stupid. Stupidity kills. There may not be a learning curve for the dead character, but there is for the annoyed player.

Shpadoinkle
2009-07-18, 10:09 AM
If it's something that will cause collateral damage, I usually just say "You're sure?" (the DM saying that should be a huge red flag for anyone with any experience with D&D), or repeat what the player said, trying to make it sound stupid or like it's a bad idea ("You're throwing the LIVE, about-to-detonate bomb onto the street below where dozens, maybe hundreds of innocent people are walking and driving by?"). If they say yes, then okay, I was just making sure. Note that I do this for REALLY bad ideas. If the PCs have a tent but haven't been using it to sleep in, well, that's kinda strange, but whatever.

If it's something that will only get the PC doing it killed or maimed, I don't usually do that.

I also don't mind giving players a minor "rewind button" once per session or so. ("Oh crap! I forgot to stock up on arrows/ food/ torches/ etc.!") It happens. We all forget mundane neccessities once in a while.

Raum
2009-07-18, 10:32 AM
As Swordguy mentions much of this is simply attributable to a different style of gaming. Even in some AD&D games players needed to ensure they had multiple sets of anything important (thieves picks, ropes, lanterns, etc) because they would get damaged at inopportune times. Some of the fun was in finding creative ways to replace damaged equipment.

The default method of playing Shadowrun takes that a step further. Players are supposed to spend a significant amount of time (often most of the time) doing 'legwork'. In other words, much of the game was spent researching and planning. Do that well enough and the actual run may well go down without a hitch.

Runners in Shadowrun are the little guys. The corps they're making runs against could swat them like flies if caught. A 'kick in the door' dungeon delving mentality was a certain recipe for death. Permanent death at that. So it's research to know what you're up against, plan well, move quickly, and be ready to cut and run if things go too far south. A failure at any given point could mean death.

I miss that in some other games. The risk, virtual and vicarious as it may be, added an element to the game which is missing when you are the baddest thing / group around.

PLUN
2009-07-18, 11:54 AM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?

In a game like Shadowrun, yep. I mean a lot of your adventure is about gathering, scoring or negotiating the equipment needed for the job. The GM will dedicate time to this as part of the plan, and maybe drop a few clues.

I mean in a game like D&D, where players are generally diving into the unknown, wiggle room can and has to be given because there are so many unknowns. In a game where planning and information gathering can be as long and rewarding as the actual crunch time of doing something, failure and human error are part of the fun. Sometimes the submachine gun gets left outside the bathroom, daddy's watch at the old house.


- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?

Yep. Characters are not exactly the people who play them. An Acolyte isn't going to just blurt that they work for the Inquisition, an Investigator will know people in his life/university/background that have proven to be helpful that a player might have overlooked. Acts that run directly against the players lifestyle deserve a second thought and a reminder, definately.

The likelihood of a reminder also depends on time. In a situation where there are immediate conequences and no time to think (oh frag! I throw away the bomb!) then no. The severity, i'll not lie, depends on the situation. If they acted in character and made a mistake, i'd prefer that vastly to acting in character, deciding that their character isn't as smart as them, and making a decision with a few minutes of foresight. If I want it that way I gotta play fair, so I try to show a bright side (okay, so maybe shooting a ghost wasn't exactly bright, but now eveyone knows what it really is). If they've been disruptive or haven't paid attention then the hose gets set to a more narrow, painful beam.


- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

If it's part of that train of thought, yeah. Characters have doubts too. Interrupting someone while they're talking is an etiquette issue, so slamming in TOO LATE, even in said 'do it now' situations is to be reserved for when somone is obviously stalling. After a while you really want their 'final answer', and should ask once.

Morty
2009-07-18, 12:12 PM
When players do something plain and simply stupid - like attacking a beggar just for lulz - I mercilessly carry out the world's reaction to it. I do warn then when they're about to do something that's stupid in the context of the setting, but while they don't know it, their characters would.

Yukitsu
2009-07-18, 01:07 PM
My DMs get somewhat irritated when I overthink things. I make sure to throw in some idiocy now and then, but always keep an open window or door to my back when I do.

Greengiant
2009-07-18, 04:45 PM
Hmmm, it's really dependent on the situation, like one time a PC of mine bought a grappling hook, and forgot to buy rope, he thought it came with the rope, actually, and usually it'd be being an ass to not let him have the rope at the general price.

But, I know this player is really creative, so I said too bad. He said, "What?" in a sort of pained laugh, but then set his mind to the task, and I use a sort of unwritten rule with my players, and they don't really know it. It works sorta like the rule of cool, they can do whatever it is as long as it's cool, and they get invisible bonuses to their check that I add on, depending on how cool or inventive or funny it is.

So he said, "I braid a rope from the material of my pants."

Usually, doing this with little rope-handling skill and just a pair of pants would create rope that wouldn't stretch 10 feet, and wouldn't have any strength, but thanks to his ingenuity, it worked and he was able to use the 10 foot of rope to climb through a high building window, and complete his goal.

potatocubed
2009-07-18, 04:56 PM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

1. Yes. If the characters don't have it, they don't have it, and the players will have to improvise. To be honest, this has never been a problem, and I suspect that this is because I don't set up adventures with pre-set solutions to problems, but rather situations that the characters can deal with in any number of ways - if they're lacking the tools for method #1, they can always try something that they do have the tools for.

EDIT: Also, in modern games I tend to make use of Shadowrun-style 'lifestyle' expenses, then assume that characters have anything that could reasonably be assumed as part of a normal life at that level: mobile phone, PC, fuel for their car, food on the table, etc.

2. Yes. I mention things ahead of time that characters would know - "If you're hijacking a plane you want bullets that won't perforate the hull." - or allow knowledge checks to remember things mid-event.

3. I don't allow revisions, although I do make liberal use of "Are you sure you want to do that?" in the case of things that common sense might wave a flag at.

ChaosDefender24
2009-07-18, 05:10 PM
As for 2 and 3, we all have to keep in mind that we're just imagining it, as opposed to it being a real situation. Even those with the most vivid imaginations can simply leave out details. If any of us had a bomb in a building, and could disarm it, we'd do so before throwing it into the street. So would the people at the table if it happened in real life. I'm really lenient about a lot of these things, because you just can't keep track of everything when you already have to use your imagination and thus your thinking power to *perceive your surroundings* as opposed to letting your sensory organs do the work for ya

Ninetail
2009-07-18, 05:17 PM
In my opinion, the OP has run headlong into a key difference between an older gaming philosophy (brutal Darwinism, where the game is as much a test of the player's intelligence as the character's statline) and modern gaming philosophy, where the player's actual impact on play is minimized as much as possible in favor of more comprehensive mechanics.

The OP quotes a game run in early Shadowrun...

Ah, well, that does change things.

Part of Shadowrun's shtick is that the world is against you and you need to think of everything and beat the odds. Sort of like Call of Cthulhu. In a game like that, I'd be a little more strict about both resources and actions, because these are games where the players are supposed to deliberate for a long time before taking action, and where the cause-and-effect is meant to be "realistic".

D&D is not such a game. Its cause-and-effect is meant to be fantastic or cinematic (and the more recent the edition you're playing, the more true that gets). Most of the games I regularly play are along the D&D lines -- HERO/Champions, Nobilis, Cyclopedia D&D, Savage Worlds, d6 Star Wars, Jadeclaw -- so I tend to default to the epic narrative approach, and not the gritty survivalist simulationist approach.

Knaight
2009-07-18, 06:13 PM
2. Yes. I mention things ahead of time that characters would know - "If you're hijacking a plane you want bullets that won't perforate the hull." - or allow knowledge checks to remember things mid-event.

That's actually nowhere near as big of a deal as movie makers want you to think. It won't shred the plane, the vacuum isn't going to pull people, and the air will remain breathable long enough to get down to a reasonable elevation. Unless you have something going on full auto you probably won't have too big of a problem. Explosives would also cause major damage. Enough redundancy is built in for a plane to have a few holes in its hull and not fall apart.

FoE
2009-07-18, 06:53 PM
That's actually nowhere near as big of a deal as movie makers want you to think. It won't shred the plane, the vacuum isn't going to pull people, and the air will remain breathable long enough to get down to a reasonable elevation. Unless you have something going on full auto you probably won't have too big of a problem. Explosives would also cause major damage. Enough redundancy is built in for a plane to have a few holes in its hull and not fall apart.

Unless the game universe operates on Mortal Kombat physics.

Halaster
2009-07-19, 03:17 AM
Well, my initial quote referred to Shadowrun, but I think the mentality, while prominent there, is hardly limited to the Shadows.

As for Swordguys point about Shadowrun being this way, while that is certainly so, I don't think it's excusable for a game to just go ahead and make GM dickery part of its concept. Game designers are responsible for the kind of game they call for an calling for the DM being a jerk in the name of some abstract concept of "hardcore gaming" ist just wrong. Basically the clue files show it, by the self-righteous attitude of the webmaster and the posters towards players who may just have been distracted, forgetful about details of, might I remind you, a game or inattentive. But by enshrining its "be tougher, be smarter - or be dead" attitude in the actual rulebook, Shadowrun tells them they're right. So it's not just bad GMing, it's bad gamedesign. BTW, has any of these GMs aver considered that they may just have failed to convey the image of the situation they had in mind to the players? With 15 years of GMing under my belt I still have that happening to me, and so, I guess do most other GMs. But SR essentially allows the GM to put the blame on the players. After all, if they had been thinking, they would have asked you about all the things you forgot to tell them...

And about the whole "legwork" issue, that's just plain nonsense. You spend half your game time poring over plans your GM has spent hours drawing up, talking to faceless connections in the third person (and don't tell me what a great opportunity for IC gaming this can be, not buying it) and waiting for the Decker to finally finish that bloody endless matrix run - only to find that you overlooked something. You always do. And perversely, the more time the GM has spent on preparing the run, the more likely it becomes that the runners screw it all up, because the number of things to consider grows. In all good games, it's the other way round. The more the GM thinks, the nicer the adventure becomes. In SR it gets tedious. So, what the whole emphasis on "being prepared" ultimately produces is a cavalier attitude from the players, who feel that no amount of preparation will do, and end up like the folks on the clue files, just going in there with guns blazing and being mocked about it on the web. Hell yeah, great game. For real thinkers and planner, ya know.

Not just valid for SR, but for all other games too, IMO.

Swordguy
2009-07-19, 04:41 AM
Well, my initial quote referred to Shadowrun, but I think the mentality, while prominent there, is hardly limited to the Shadows.
...
Not just valid for SR, but for all other games too, IMO.

Clearly, then, you wouldn't enjoy a game of Shadowrun. That's your prerogative.

But the fact that Shadowrun's had 4 editions, record sales, and won numerous industry awards for game design frankly trumps your opinion. Clearly, they must be doing something right, and posts in this thread should show you that many gamers accept and even enjoy this style of play, even if it's not your cup of tea. We understand that this playing style isn't for everybody; I personally don't enjoy the over-the-top playing style of Exalted or Wushu. Everyone's allowed to dislike stuff. But the condescension - the attitude that you know better than every other gamer out there is frankly insulting.

You ARE aware that you've just derisively dismissed an entire playstyle as "nonsense", right? That's not the way to make friends in the playground.

Raum
2009-07-19, 10:51 AM
Well, my initial quote referred to Shadowrun, but I think the mentality, while prominent there, is hardly limited to the Shadows. It's definitely not limited to Shadowrun. As mentioned previously it was common in early editions of D&D, it also shows up in many other game systems.

Perhaps that's because it's a fairly popular style of play.

Just because you don't like a play style doesn't make it 'badwrongfun'. Most game systems encourage a play style which fits the system. Modern D&D pushes a DM vs player dichotomy. Shadowrun emphasizes detailed planning. Wushu emphasizes detailed actions. Savage Worlds pushes fast cinematic action. So on and so forth. Pick the games and styles you enjoy...but don't expect everyone to have identical tastes.

Halaster
2009-07-19, 02:10 PM
*sigh* I'm sorry, I should reign in my harsh tongue, it doesn't help to bring my point home.

What I mean is essentially this: no matter how fair you think you are as a GM, ultimately every adventure you come up with is like Bilbo's riddle in the Hobbit. Your players don't know what you have in your pockets, period. They don't know what you are picturing in your head, what questions to ask, what things to consider. So they poke around in the dark, and misunderstandings and errors of planning come up in almost every game.

Now, Shadowrun suggests that the adventure is like a classical riddle, where deduction and a tad of creative associating will ultimately bring up a "right" solution*. But that is objectively wrong, because there is no universal logic to what happens in your GMs head. Suggesting otherwise is misleading, and, for a game designer, misleading your customers is bad style. All the more if you have so many of them.

To take an example out of a CLUE file: A runner is hit and injured by an automatic machine gun. He drops and stays down. The GM asks him whether he wants to stay down. He says he does, and the gun shoots him dead. Now, I would think that every security engineer worth his nuyen would program the things to target warm, moving stuff, but the GM thinks otherwise. That's his right, but no amount of thinking would have gotten me there. There are several more situations like that, where simply explaining what you, the GM know what will happen, would have made it clear to the player that his plan is useless, because your not on the same page here.

So, I stand by the word "nonsense", and I mean no derision by it. It's just the observation that anyone who claims you can beat a run by thinking and planning, is wrong, for abovementioned reasons.

Finally, I enjoyed six years of great SR games with a cool GM, who apparently skipped over that part. The game is not bad at all, and has many commendable points, that are certainly award-worthy and worth buying the game for. The attitude we're talking about is simply not one of them.

*Please, don't get hung up on the metaphor here.

Worira
2009-07-19, 02:46 PM
Although I do rather like the preparation aspect of SR (I actually have a habit of making elaborate tactical plans in games where I don't get much benefit from them), there is, in my opinion, a big difference between forgetting, say, some sets of handcuffs for enemies you want to take alive versus a flashlight. They could both be disastrous for the mission, but one of them is something that could reasonably be overlooked by a character or a player, while the other could only be overlooked by a player. I stand by my previous pants analogy.

Raum
2009-07-19, 05:30 PM
What I mean is essentially this: no matter how fair you think you are as a GM, ultimately every adventure you come up with is like Bilbo's riddle in the Hobbit. Your players don't know what you have in your pockets, period. They don't know what you are picturing in your head, what questions to ask, what things to consider. So they poke around in the dark, and misunderstandings and errors of planning come up in almost every game.Are you assuming the GM's pocket contents are static? I'm attempting to use your analogy but, to put it bluntly, I seldom (if ever) have only one set method of resolving a problem. Back to your analogy, the players don't need to figure out what's in my pocket they simply need to figure out what they think should be in the pocket. I don't want to get lost in your analogy though, we're talking about solutions not pocket contents. A good SR GM tosses the players a problem in the form of a run and lets them solve it any way they can with the resources they have. It's not about looking for 'one true solution'.


Now, Shadowrun suggests that the adventure is like a classical riddle, where deduction and a tad of creative associating will ultimately bring up a "right" solution*. But that is objectively wrong, because there is no universal logic to what happens in your GMs head. Suggesting otherwise is misleading, and, for a game designer, misleading your customers is bad style. All the more if you have so many of them. Actually there is a 'universal logic' to be applied - the game system and setting. In SR bullets hurt and cover is a good thing!


To take an example out of a CLUE file: A runner is hit and injured by an automatic machine gun. He drops and stays down. The GM asks him whether he wants to stay down. He says he does, and the gun shoots him dead. Now, I would think that every security engineer worth his nuyen would program the things to target warm, moving stuff, but the GM thinks otherwise. That's his right, but no amount of thinking would have gotten me there. There are several more situations like that, where simply explaining what you, the GM know what will happen, would have made it clear to the player that his plan is useless, because your not on the same page here.First, remember the CLUE files are boiling down one or more game sessions into a few sentences. They're going to leave things out. In this case we don't really have a lot of information. Was the player 'playing dead' and not moving or did he still have his weapon in hand? Was the turret purely automatic or controlled by a rigger? Were any others still in an effective fire zone? Who knows, I wasn't there. Point is simply that there are a lot of other factors to consider in such a decision. One seemingly obvious factor is that cover stops bullets.


So, I stand by the word "nonsense", and I mean no derision by it. This statement seems to contradict itself.


It's just the observation that anyone who claims you can beat a run by thinking and planning, is wrong, for abovementioned reasons..I guess those of us who did simply did it wrong. Oh well, I'll keep my badwrongfun. :smallwink:

Halaster
2009-07-20, 01:24 AM
Are you assuming the GM's pocket contents are static? I'm attempting to use your analogy but, to put it bluntly, I seldom (if ever) have only one set method of resolving a problem. Back to your analogy, the players don't need to figure out what's in my pocket they simply need to figure out what they think should be in the pocket. I don't want to get lost in your analogy though, we're talking about solutions not pocket contents. A good SR GM tosses the players a problem in the form of a run and lets them solve it any way they can with the resources they have. It's not about looking for 'one true solution'.
That's beside the point. No matter how many solutions the GM is willing to allow, they all have exactly one thing in common: he is willing to allow them. He thinks they're all perfectly logical and more or less obvious, but in truth they're all in his head and the players have no way of identifying them outside the GMs frame of reference.



Actually there is a 'universal logic' to be applied - the game system and setting. In SR bullets hurt and cover is a good thing!
Again, beside the point. SR rules do not really state things like the mentality of individual guards and security system setups. So I cannot just look at a rulebook and have an idea how to get into a corp building. Yeah, I know it's bad when they shoot. But when do they shoot? On sight? Or can I get close enough to cast a spell while they inspect me first? GM's call. Totally. What if I think modern security wouldn't change all that much, what with potential murder investigations and all, and my GM thinks the corps can ride that off with ease. Now while I try to put my hands up and draw them close for a charm spell, they put me full of bullets. Now you might say, my bad for making assumptions, but you always make assumptions, you have to make them. Your ideas about human nature and how the world works will affect your style of play.


First, remember the CLUE files are boiling down one or more game sessions into a few sentences. They're going to leave things out. In this case we don't really have a lot of information. Was the player 'playing dead' and not moving or did he still have his weapon in hand? Was the turret purely automatic or controlled by a rigger? Were any others still in an effective fire zone? Who knows, I wasn't there. Point is simply that there are a lot of other factors to consider in such a decision. One seemingly obvious factor is that cover stops bullets.
No, actually, when it comes to the point where they make fun of their players for making an honest mistake, they get painstakingly precise, to the point of (certainly edited) word-for-word transcripts. That's what brought me to write this thread, because there are situations in there, where you can hear the GM cut off legitimate intervention from other players (P1: "I throw the bomb!" - P2: "Disarm it first!" - GM: "Too late!") and similar things.



This statement seems to contradict itself.

Does it? I'm sorry, it makes sense in German - my mother tongue. I might want to add that to my signature.


I guess those of us who did simply did it wrong. Oh well, I'll keep my badwrongfun. :smallwink:
Perhaps you just got lucky. And I do admit, that, if you've known your GM for a while, and know his habits and assumptions, it begins to work better. Like in all gaming endeavours, know your GM is rule number one. In my experience that tends to take a while, though.

BTW, lest anyone else get angry with me, I'm not trying to disparage a style of play and promote another. I found many responses extremely interesting and enlightening. I do realize that a lot of people have a great deal of fun with ths "hardcore" method. I also acknowledge that my laissez-faire style has its flaws, and I could name them, but they mostly have been stated. I merely contend that they pale in comparison to the flaws of the hardcore method. And I think it's worth exposing those, because, when you know them, you can handle them. Once the GM realizes that his players maybe are not "not thinking", but simply "not thinking his way", things might go more smoothly.

Zeful
2009-07-20, 02:53 AM
The only way you can play is if the GM "allows" solutions, I, for instance, can only think of three or four solutions to any one problem at a time, which is why if I'm (or every GM ever) confronted with something that I didn't think of, the correct response on my part isn't "It doesn't work" or some variation of "rock fall, stupid dies". It's "And why would that work?" either asking myself, or if I'm really in the dark, the player.

Roleplaying games aren't about maximizing stats or playing the "Coolest Hero EvaR!" it's the meta-cognition as you get to understand in your GM/Player's head so you can play against their expectations of your expectations, if you know someone's an aficionado of the horror genre, you play against his genre savvy to create things in the shadows that aren't there, building the atmosphere to catch his attention in just the right way that he's enthralled and you lose the distinction between Role-playing and Roll-playing. You're still playing the game (You won by the way (http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/anti_mind_virus.png):smallwink:) and you know you are, but you don't care anymore, you need to know why. The concept isn't all that different from writing for you audience, your audience is just a smaller group.

Galileo
2009-07-20, 03:48 AM
I've developed some subtle but highly effective methods of letting my party know that they might want to reconsider that last action. Of course, if you ask them they'll describe it as me placing my head in my hands and sobbing quietly.

Halaster
2009-07-20, 04:01 AM
The only way you can play is if the GM "allows" solutions, I, for instance, can only think of three or four solutions to any one problem at a time, which is why if I'm (or every GM ever) confronted with something that I didn't think of, the correct response on my part isn't "It doesn't work" or some variation of "rock fall, stupid dies". It's "And why would that work?" either asking myself, or if I'm really in the dark, the player.

Thank you, that's exactly my point. I feel the GMs in the CLUE files are frequently doing just what you described as the incorrect response. They take those solutions they thought of, and if the players are not picking one of those, they're dead.

My point 2) is essentially the inversion of that. Players can only think of so many responses to a challenge from the GM at the same time. If you tell them that the one they chose isn't exactly very smart from your point of view, you may find that they just couldn't think of one of the options you had in mind. Likewise, allowing them to change their minds (at least for a short time span, not several rounds or minutes after) takes this into account.

Saph
2009-07-20, 04:22 AM
On items - If something is really basic, I'll assume the PC has it. Otherwise, if it's not written down on your character sheet, it's not there.

On "Are you sure you want to do that?" - I will typically say this to a player, but I'll do it once per session, max. If the player is smart, one reminder is enough. If not . . . well.

On takeback - I do this based on real-world reaction time. If another player responds INSTANTLY with "No! I stop him!" then he succeeds. If another player responds a few of seconds later, then I'll roll opposed Initiative checks or something. After about ten seconds, it's happened and I'll move to describing the consequences.

This isn't about 'screwing the players over' or 'playing gotcha', as some of the posters here seem to think; it's about keeping the game moving. Nothing drags a game out worse than players endlessly doing actions then taking them back - it breaks the mood and makes it impossible to stay in character. I've been in groups that do this, and after fifteen minutes of "Wait, no, I do this instead" everyone's lost track of which actions got taken back and which ones actually happened.

Besides, something I think a lot of people are missing is that stupid mistakes can be fun. When I think back on a lot of my favourite gaming stories, at least half of them involve someone doing something dumb. If the DM had gotten the player to take it back it would have taken away the most memorable thing about the session.

- Saph

HMS Invincible
2009-07-20, 02:35 PM
I've always had the problem where a player is thinking but it isn't exactly optimal. I've always been conflicted between suggesting a better move or just letting them do the "bad" action and have the fight last longer.

Specifically, I know one player who loves to power game but he is so inept at actually doing it that the only thing he can do is blindly follow scripts from movies or read guides to punpun characters.
The result is fights that don't kill the substandard PC but hurts the rest of the party because we have to cover for him.=\ I guess if he is having fun, it doesn't matter. Still, it leaves a bad taste.

Worira
2009-07-20, 05:40 PM
My least favourite C.L.U.E. so far has been number 8. There are a few questionable things about it, but the most absurd is this:
After pulling the grapple hook out of her duffel (so kindly provided by the indisposed fixer), she proceeded to hurl the hook up to the top of the building where it landed with a metallic clang. Just prior to climbing up the side of the building Ms. Rigger realized she had forgotten to attach a rope to the grapple.
Really?

Milskidasith
2009-07-20, 05:49 PM
Yeah, that makes no sense; I can *almost* understand somebody saying a grappling hook doesn't come with a rope, but nobody would ever throw a grappling hook without rope attached; you can't even throw it properly unless there is a rope.

Raum
2009-07-20, 06:04 PM
That's beside the point. No matter how many solutions the GM is willing to allow, they all have exactly one thing in common: he is willing to allow them. He thinks they're all perfectly logical and more or less obvious, but in truth they're all in his head and the players have no way of identifying them outside the GMs frame of reference.No, you've missed my point! There's no real need for the GM to have any solutions 'in his head' before the players provide one. Much of my game planning can be boiled down to "Antagonist wants X and has Y resources. He's currently doing A in order to get to X." Then it's simply up to the players...if they interfere, how do they interfere? I haven't picked any solutions and generally try not to predict their actions very far ahead. Preconceptions only get in the way of my dealing with their creativity.

Resources, both for PC and NPC, are generally known ahead of time though either may leverage skills, cash, or other resources into getting items they didn't start with...it's just done in character. Pockets of 'instant plot required items' aren't necessary when you don't have plot required items.


Again, beside the point. SR rules do not really state things like the mentality of individual guards and security system setups. So I cannot just look at a rulebook and have an idea how to get into a corp building. Yeah, I know it's bad when they shoot. But when do they shoot? On sight? Or can I get close enough to cast a spell while they inspect me first? GM's call. Totally. The GM certainly has some flexibility. Much of that will be quickly learned (or already known) by players who play with said GM. But there's a definite baseline provided by the game system and setting. And, frankly, any location using heavy weapons turrets as defense is going to shoot to kill! But if you're not sure, have your decker pull the security operations plan. :smallsmile:


What if I think modern security wouldn't change all that much, what with potential murder investigations and all, and my GM thinks the corps can ride that off with ease. Now while I try to put my hands up and draw them close for a charm spell, they put me full of bullets. Now you might say, my bad for making assumptions, but you always make assumptions, you have to make them. Your ideas about human nature and how the world works will affect your style of play.No, in this case I'd say you need to read the setting history. Life is cheap in Shadowrun.


No, actually, when it comes to the point where they make fun of their players for making an honest mistake, they get painstakingly precise, to the point of (certainly edited) word-for-word transcripts. That's what brought me to write this thread, because there are situations in there, where you can hear the GM cut off legitimate intervention from other players (P1: "I throw the bomb!" - P2: "Disarm it first!" - GM: "Too late!") and similar things.Have you never been in a game where the GM / DM took advantage of a thoughtless comment to create in game complications and out of game hilarity? Most groups I've been in do exactly that on occasion...some of the better ones we still laugh about years afterwards.


Does it? I'm sorry, it makes sense in German - my mother tongue. I might want to add that to my signature.Yes - essentially you said "This is bad but I don't mean to call anything bad." Shrug not a big deal, but the internet loses a lot of intended connotation and emotion.


Perhaps you just got lucky. And I do admit, that, if you've known your GM for a while, and know his habits and assumptions, it begins to work better. Like in all gaming endeavours, know your GM is rule number one. In my experience that tends to take a while, though.Or perhaps you got unlucky. Or neither. To reiterate, they're simply different styles of play.


BTW, lest anyone else get angry with me, I'm not trying to disparage a style of play and promote another. I found many responses extremely interesting and enlightening. I do realize that a lot of people have a great deal of fun with ths "hardcore" method. I also acknowledge that my laissez-faire style has its flaws, and I could name them, but they mostly have been stated. I merely contend that they pale in comparison to the flaws of the hardcore method. And I think it's worth exposing those, because, when you know them, you can handle them. So you're stating your 'laissez faire' style is better (fewer flaws) than what you term a 'hardcore method'? I'd agree - if you'd qualify the statement with a "for me." People are different and have differing desires and pleasures. Expecting everyone to like all the same things you do is unrealistic.


Once the GM realizes that his players maybe are not "not thinking", but simply "not thinking his way", things might go more smoothly.This is certainly something every GM should be aware of...and take advantage of when possible. In my experience, the best games have been those where player creativity initiates some creative playing on the GM's part in response.
-----

Perhaps I have been lucky as you suggest Halaster, most of my GMs have been creative and generally avoided scripted adventures. It's something I've tried to emulate when I GM. At this point I find it very difficult to run a published adventure to the end - players always head off in their own unique direction. :smallsmile: Undoubtedly that colors my reaction to the suggestion that GMs must script solutions - even if only mentally.

Halaster
2009-07-21, 01:43 AM
No, you've missed my point! There's no real need for the GM to have any solutions 'in his head' before the players provide one. Much of my game planning can be boiled down to "Antagonist wants X and has Y resources. He's currently doing A in order to get to X." Then it's simply up to the players...if they interfere, how do they interfere? I haven't picked any solutions and generally try not to predict their actions very far ahead. Preconceptions only get in the way of my dealing with their creativity.

I do get your point. It just has nothing to do with what I'm saying. What I'm trying to get at here is this: the game has no objective reality, so it is entirely defined by what the GM accepts as being allowable. That's what's "in his head", his concept of game reality. He will necessarily only accept solutions that fit his mental concept of game reality. That begins with NPC habits and behaviour, but it goes right on to physics and other sciences. You can be as creative as you like, you are the final arbiter of what's a good plan, and what's a bad plan. And your standards can not be objective. You're prejudiced by default.



Resources, both for PC and NPC, are generally known ahead of time though either may leverage skills, cash, or other resources into getting items they didn't start with...it's just done in character. Pockets of 'instant plot required items' aren't necessary when you don't have plot required items.

Again, not the issue at all. You wouldn't really call a light source a "plot item", but if my group prepares to go somewhere dark and forgets to list one, why not say, "oh, heck, you brought it"? Yeah, you could get quite creative trying to find your way out of that one, but mostly it's just unneccessary hassle.



The GM certainly has some flexibility. Much of that will be quickly learned (or already known) by players who play with said GM. But there's a definite baseline provided by the game system and setting. And, frankly, any location using heavy weapons turrets as defense is going to shoot to kill! But if you're not sure, have your decker pull the security operations plan. :smallsmile:

No, in this case I'd say you need to read the setting history. Life is cheap in Shadowrun.

That's just my contention come alive. First, you can't just "read the book" and have the idea. People read books in very different ways all the time. Actually I once had to break off a game of White Wolf's Trinity, because my players had gotten a much darker impression of the setting than I had, and expected intrigue and betrayal at every turn, while I had focused on the more straightforwardly heroic aspects of the setting. Case in point: IMO Shadowrun measures life in nuyen. And I'd expect security to ask first, shoot later, because a lawsuit by an employee shot for working after hours is gonna cost. Not to speak of all the damage done by firefights on corporate property. Actually it may be cheaper to have a run succeed than to stop it by wild west style gunfire in the halls.
Secondly, you got it there. The GM makes the game, and even the contents of the rulebook are not written in stone, so even if the GM and players read it the same way, the GM can simply nullify anything in the book. Sure, he will usually give players a fair warning, but essentially you're saying that, when the game is on, he is no longer permitted to remind them.



Have you never been in a game where the GM / DM took advantage of a thoughtless comment to create in game complications and out of game hilarity? Most groups I've been in do exactly that on occasion...some of the better ones we still laugh about years afterwards.

Yes ... as a joke, before you go back to the game. And I like it that way. But here we enter the realm of personal preference, because here, GM dickery is the point of the endeavour. You admit, after all, that the GM does "create problems". If it spices up your game, good for you.



Or perhaps you got unlucky. Or neither. To reiterate, they're simply different styles of play.

So you're stating your 'laissez faire' style is better (fewer flaws) than what you term a 'hardcore method'? I'd agree - if you'd qualify the statement with a "for me." People are different and have differing desires and pleasures. Expecting everyone to like all the same things you do is unrealistic.

*sigh* I love relativism. Once you reach a certain point, all that remains is preference, and you can't argue with that, can you? Lovely. But I can argue with that, because ultimately, you end up justifying yourself with reference to your stomach, rather than your head. So the whole "for you, it's like that and for me it's like this" talk doesn't really mean anything but "I want to keep my toys, don't spoil them". But there are objective ways to describe things and in this case the criteria are basically game speed, (laissez-faire wins by a wide margin), susceptibility to misunderstandings (laissez-fair wins hands down), story flow (at least made easier by playing laissez-faire), and player satisfaction (which is neutral and preferential anyway). If you have objective criteria beyond these that might shift the balance, let me know.
So no, I won't qualify my statement. Instead, let me put it that way: there are more flaws to hardcore gaming than laissez-faire, but naturally those who love a play style, will value its merits more than its flaws. You don't mind sitting through endless equipment list writing, if it gets you a really challenging run. You will accept needless TPKs and start-overs, if that means your players will learn something. You want something you can only get at a price. You pay the price, fine. But don't tell me it's not there. The CLUE files prove you wrong.



This is certainly something every GM should be aware of...and take advantage of when possible. In my experience, the best games have been those where player creativity initiates some creative playing on the GM's part in response.

I agree here. It's essentially what Zeful said. If the players come up with something unexpected, run with it, once you get at what they're up to. But that does not require being tough on them. My players regularly break into highly creative activities which I had not foreseen, precisely because if they ask "do we have a flashlight?" I usually say "yes", and wait what in the world they will do with a flashlight now.



Perhaps I have been lucky as you suggest Halaster, most of my GMs have been creative and generally avoided scripted adventures. It's something I've tried to emulate when I GM. At this point I find it very difficult to run a published adventure to the end - players always head off in their own unique direction. :smallsmile: Undoubtedly that colors my reaction to the suggestion that GMs must script solutions - even if only mentally.
I hope you know now that I never suggested that. In fact, my last attempt to run a printed adventure was a miserable failure, because the adventure script required certain events to come to pass, and my players had all sorts of plans to prevent that, and I had to stifle their creativity, so we broke it off. Not much of a loss, it had been mostly an exercise in nostalgia.

Swordguy
2009-07-21, 02:27 AM
I do get your point. It just has nothing to do with what I'm saying. What I'm trying to get at here is this: the game has no objective reality, so it is entirely defined by what the GM accepts as being allowable. That's what's "in his head", his concept of game reality. He will necessarily only accept solutions that fit his mental concept of game reality. That begins with NPC habits and behaviour, but it goes right on to physics and other sciences. You can be as creative as you like, you are the final arbiter of what's a good plan, and what's a bad plan. And your standards can not be objective. You're prejudiced by default.

Okay, hold on a second. The only way around what you're complaining about is to not have a GM at all. EVERY GM has prejudices for and against certain aspects of gameplay, and those are going to come through anytime the GM runs a game. ANY time a GM creates a homebrew adventure, you're going to run into this - it's a simply unavoidable fact of RPGs. Not just homebrew adventures, but published ones as well. Whenever there's a problem to overcome that isn't explicitly narrowed down in the published rules to "the players may only solve it THIS way", the GM has latitude to arbitrate whether a given solution works or doesn't.

Heck, even computer or choose-your-own-adventure games do this; the only way to defeat an issue is with something the GM (read: writer/programmer) has thought about and tacitly approved ahead of time. Even in an RPG, when a player comes up with a combination of spells I didn't expect, I approved the spells for use in the first place. There's no inherent right for players to have ANYTHING in ANY RPG. Everything is potentially subject to DM change/homebrew.

You say that only things that fit a DMs conception of game reality are allowable, and act like that's a bad thing? In my D&D games, falling into water when you go into negative HPs does NOT restore you to 0 HPs, and drowning can be stopped by simply removing someone from the water. The RAW allows neither of those options, but it's my game, and therefore my reality. Players can choose to play with that understanding, or find another group.

How can you play RPGs at all if the GM has no ability to modify the game world to reflect his tastes or beliefs?

Halaster
2009-07-21, 03:27 AM
No, that's not what I said. I said you have to deal with it. As you correctly stated, it is an unavoidable part of every game. Now, there are several ways to handle it at issue in this thread:

1.(Hardcore) GM says: "Too bad. I think that's stupid, I don't allow it. You fail."
2.(Laissez-faire) GM says: "Well, I think that's stupid. Do you want to reconsider?"
3. (Zeful's suggestion) GM says: "I think that's stupid. Do you care to explain why it's not?"

I am very much in favor of options 2 & 3, and argue against option 1, because it inherently ignores the problem and puts the ball squarely into the players' court, leaving them to find out what the GM thinks is right and wrong. Options 2 & 3 allow for clarification of these issues and acknowledge that the GMs perspective on the game might not be the only one, even if, ultimately, it's the one that determines how things go.

I'm not talking about the players taking over such decisions or overruling the GM. It's just about informing everyone about the ground rules, to avoid letting them do self-destructive things, because they have a different set of assumptions then the GM.

Swordguy
2009-07-21, 04:37 AM
No, that's not what I said. I said you have to deal with it. As you correctly stated, it is an unavoidable part of every game. Now, there are several ways to handle it at issue in this thread:
...
I'm not talking about the players taking over such decisions or overruling the GM. It's just about informing everyone about the ground rules, to avoid letting them do self-destructive things, because they have a different set of assumptions then the GM.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

I would argue that all three options are valid, depending on the style of game being run. The gaming experience is different depending on the game. Take Call of Cthulhu for a moment - it's explicitly said to be high-lethality horror. Option 1 is a completely valid style when running that - you're supposed to be careful with what you say and do. If you let that feeling extend to the players as well, you're going to have developed a real feeling of fear, paranoia, and general "oh god, we could die at any moment" feeling among your players. And generating that feeling is one of the central points of the game.

Now, other games, not so much. I'd never use Option 1 in TOON, for example. What I'm trying to get at, I suppose, is that there's valid reasons for all three of those to be used as the desired game style or situation demands. I wouldn't generally use Option 1 when running D&D, but I can see several situations where I would - where I don't want to hear a justification, what the player's doing needs to be shut down. I'd use it if a player wanted to play Pun-pun, for example, or even if the player wanted to take an action that would fundamentally break the game or reduce the impact of other people's characters ("I want to multiclass into Wizard when there's no arcane spellcasters in your campaign"). I'd use it if there was absolutely no way to succeed - you can't jump out of the planet's gravity well. Your halfling can't stand on the ground and reach the frost giant's basketball hoop without magical assistance. Things can have zero chances of success. To bring things back to Shadowrun, if your mission is to rescue somebody from life imprisonment at Facility 37, you can't walk up to the door and simply tell the guards to release him (without doing *gasp!* legwork in getting forged documents, magical confusion aides, or similar). It's a flat-out impossibility, regardless of how well you roll the dice. Option 1 CAN be the answer.

Finally, I think the problem is overblown. If you actually take the time to get to know your GM, you're going to find out his assumptions about the game real quick. Gamers love talking about themselves. After 3-5 sessions with someone, you should have a general handle on how they run games, and can work with those assumptions.

Going back to Shadowrun for a moment - if I'm GMing, I have my players make a specific list of everything they're bringing with them. What's more, I make sure they done it before EVERY mission - it's my job to remind them. The reason I do so is because carrying capacity for most PCs is sharply limited - extra carrying capacity is a specific advantage for Trolls and Orks, and it's not fair to remove that advantage when they have some severe disadvantages (+25% cost to most everything they buy, for example). What's more, those items on their list become their "skillset" for the mission. If they need to improvise, they can only do so with what they've brought. It does two things - the players get more creative, which is always a good thing, and forces people to really think about what they might need compared with what they WILL need to complete the mission, and contrast that with how much they can actually carry. There's no extradimensional storage space in Shadowrun (and I don't do this in D&D once people DO have Bags of Holding and the like). As long as the GM is clear about this ahead of time, the onus is on the players to bring the right crap.

Or let's take that example with the turrets on the beach. You say the runners died because they couldn't outguess the GM. Well, what could they have done? Well, everybody else dove for cover when the guns opened up. Urp (the character got got killed) stayed out in the open, motionless. The guns shot him. He got moderately wounded. Standing still didn't help, so perhaps he could have dove for cover like everyone else who wasn't getting shot. Perhaps he could have asked the GM for a roll to ID what was shooting at them (which might have told him what was up). Perhaps he could have shot back (hopefully before the turret) and destroyed it. Instead, he stood perfectly still, doing nothing, on a beach, under fire. That's stupid, irrespective of the GM's setup. Ask a Normandy Landing survivor what they think of that.

What's more, the whole thing could have been avoided if Urp hadn't made a completely groundless assumption in the first place, "Maybe the guns track on sound and it will pick up my voice when I talk to the others! I stand still and try not to breathe!". After getting shot the first time, this should have been proven wrong, and it was the player's call to continue to follow a line of thought that had already been played wrong. One of the prime tenents in Shadowrun is to let players die of their own stupidity. I'd say this qualifies.

To bring this whole thing back around..."How do you deal with players not thinking?" In Shadowrun, you kill or severely inconvenience their PCs until they start thinking again. In other games (read: games where the PCs are "heroes" in the classical sense), you don't. It depends on the game.

Halaster
2009-07-21, 06:38 AM
Okay, now we're getting somewhere.
Glad to hear that, sorry for any miscommunications I caused along the way.



I would argue that all three options are valid, depending on the style of game being run. The gaming experience is different depending on the game. Take Call of Cthulhu for a moment - it's explicitly said to be high-lethality horror. Option 1 is a completely valid style when running that - you're supposed to be careful with what you say and do. If you let that feeling extend to the players as well, you're going to have developed a real feeling of fear, paranoia, and general "oh god, we could die at any moment" feeling among your players. And generating that feeling is one of the central points of the game.

Quite so. I'm not saying they`re invalid, just that option number one carries a great deal more issues than the other two. I plan on GMing All Flesh Must Be Eaten on a convention this weekend, and there will likely be a lot of deaths there because somebody wasn't thinking fast on his feet. But that means taking into account these issues and living with them. TPK is definitely not an issue there, so the problem pales a little by comparison. But in a regular game, even Shadowrun, it gets frustrating rather quickly to lose your characters to what amounts to differences in perception. And then get told you're an idiot - which is the essence of the CLUE files.


Now, other games, not so much. I'd never use Option 1 in TOON, for example. What I'm trying to get at, I suppose, is that there's valid reasons for all three of those to be used as the desired game style or situation demands. I wouldn't generally use Option 1 when running D&D, but I can see several situations where I would - where I don't want to hear a justification, what the player's doing needs to be shut down. I'd use it if a player wanted to play Pun-pun, for example, or even if the player wanted to take an action that would fundamentally break the game or reduce the impact of other people's characters ("I want to multiclass into Wizard when there's no arcane spellcasters in your campaign").

That's usually not due to miscommunication, though. Breaking the game is rarely unintentional, and happens out of character anyway.


I'd use it if there was absolutely no way to succeed - you can't jump out of the planet's gravity well. Your halfling can't stand on the ground and reach the frost giant's basketball hoop without magical assistance. Things can have zero chances of success. To bring things back to Shadowrun, if your mission is to rescue somebody from life imprisonment at Facility 37, you can't walk up to the door and simply tell the guards to release him (without doing *gasp!* legwork in getting forged documents, magical confusion aides, or similar). It's a flat-out impossibility, regardless of how well you roll the dice. Option 1 CAN be the answer.

OK, but why not just mention this clearly and be done with it. Why wipe out the party? If your players say they walk there and look for the parole committee, tell them clearly that they need to have their heads examined. No need to wipe out the party to teach that lesson. Words work just as well as bullets. Maybe not so fast, but certainly more precise. Players who get shot up may fall into all sorts of antagonistic behaviour. Those who are told they will get shot up are more likely to see the GM as a partner, who issues challenges, rather than the challenge itself.


Finally, I think the problem is overblown. If you actually take the time to get to know your GM, you're going to find out his assumptions about the game real quick. Gamers love talking about themselves. After 3-5 sessions with someone, you should have a general handle on how they run games, and can work with those assumptions.

Sure, but the smarter way to get those assumptions across is to state them, when they come up, rather than have your players run into them headlong and explain afterwards, or, even worse, leave them to figure out stuff for themselves.


Going back to Shadowrun for a moment - if I'm GMing, I have my players make a specific list of everything they're bringing with them. What's more, I make sure they done it before EVERY mission - it's my job to remind them. The reason I do so is because carrying capacity for most PCs is sharply limited - extra carrying capacity is a specific advantage for Trolls and Orks, and it's not fair to remove that advantage when they have some severe disadvantages (+25% cost to most everything they buy, for example). What's more, those items on their list become their "skillset" for the mission. If they need to improvise, they can only do so with what they've brought. It does two things - the players get more creative, which is always a good thing, and forces people to really think about what they might need compared with what they WILL need to complete the mission, and contrast that with how much they can actually carry. There's no extradimensional storage space in Shadowrun (and I don't do this in D&D once people DO have Bags of Holding and the like). As long as the GM is clear about this ahead of time, the onus is on the players to bring the right crap.

Well, I guess that point is quite unrelated to the other two in retrospect. I would agree that this one is often quite game-specific. You can do it two ways, too, however. My old SR GM used to have us list weapons, armor, ammo by the clip and other big, heavy stuff. When we then said "that leaves 30lbs of carrying capacity for tidbits", he'd be fine with it if we later pulled out a flashlight, matches, earplugs or something like that. We could have listed everything to the tee, but it simply didn't seem worth it.



Or let's take that example with the turrets on the beach. You say the runners died because they couldn't outguess the GM. Well, what could they have done? Well, everybody else dove for cover when the guns opened up. Urp (the character got got killed) stayed out in the open, motionless. The guns shot him. He got moderately wounded. Standing still didn't help, so perhaps he could have dove for cover like everyone else who wasn't getting shot. Perhaps he could have asked the GM for a roll to ID what was shooting at them (which might have told him what was up). Perhaps he could have shot back (hopefully before the turret) and destroyed it. Instead, he stood perfectly still, doing nothing, on a beach, under fire. That's stupid, irrespective of the GM's setup. Ask a Normandy Landing survivor what they think of that.

I really don't know what he could have done. Perhaps he just felt it was in character to lie down and wait for help when wounded. But the important thing is, maybe it wasn't a failure of intelligence, but one of imagination. I hate to let those ruin things. Besides, guns who keep firing at downed targets are stupid. They waste all their ammo on one target, all the others escape. I would program them differently. And soldiers are certainly trained to leave downed opponents alone, even in the Wehrmacht. You need your bullets and your time for the ones up and fighting.


What's more, the whole thing could have been avoided if Urp hadn't made a completely groundless assumption in the first place, "Maybe the guns track on sound and it will pick up my voice when I talk to the others! I stand still and try not to breathe!". After getting shot the first time, this should have been proven wrong, and it was the player's call to continue to follow a line of thought that had already been played wrong. One of the prime tenents in Shadowrun is to let players die of their own stupidity. I'd say this qualifies.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I just want GMs to find out before things go south. Admittedly, if I rember right, this one did, so maybe this player was beyond help. Those cases are there in the CLUE files, but they don't dominate.


To bring this whole thing back around..."How do you deal with players not thinking?" In Shadowrun, you kill or severely inconvenience their PCs until they start thinking again. In other games (read: games where the PCs are "heroes" in the classical sense), you don't. It depends on the game.
Again, why? Why make them think by hurting them? As said above, pain is fast, but inconsistent teacher. It creates heroes and psychopaths without discrimination. Why would I want that?

Swordguy
2009-07-21, 07:05 AM
Again, why? Why make them think by hurting them? As said above, pain is fast, but inconsistent teacher. It creates heroes and psychopaths without discrimination. Why would I want that?

Gah, don't have time to hit everything else...Raum, you still out there?

For this point, though, I have a response. Players come to depend on the GM saving their skins if you don't play this way - at least to a degree. This is analogous to the gaming style "let the dice fall where they may".

If there's an honest miscommunication, (Urp tried to ID the guns - the GM told him they're automated sentry guns, meant to mention how they track and forgot to do so) then a good GM will go back and fix it. Mistakes happen. But a good GM also realizes that when he's constantly telling the players "are you sure?" he's really creating a dependency on the part of the players. The players intentionally start using the GM as their "common sense sounding board". That's not what the GM is there for. Most of the time, you need to let the players stand or fall on their own recognizance. Let the players choices decide what happens - even if the actions are completely stupid. Extremely experienced and competent people do stupid stuff all the time, even when they know better. Google "General George Custer" for an example (no condescention intended - you're in Germany, so I don't know if you're familiar with the guy).

I'll leave you with this: IIRC, one of the Shadowrun books has an example combat. One guy, in his first session, neglects to take cover when the firefight breaks out, and gets hit with a Deadly wound. The GM thinks about it for a second, and says, "just take a Moderate Wound, spend your next action diving for cover...and if you ever stand out in the open when somebody's shooting at you, I'll hit you with a friggin' mortar round." The guy learns an important lesson, and presumably is not stupid in this manner again.

Could the GM have not killed the guy? Sure. Is it true to the spirit of the game if he didn't? Debatable - I'd argue it's not, but I can see a valid argument either way. Did the player do something terminally stupid (stand in the middle of the beach, completely exposed, and under fire)? Definitely!. It's that moment of stupidity that makes this a CLUE File (well, among other moments - the bit about taking naps on a sinking ship qualifies as well). Hopefully, Urp's player learned something. When somebody's shooting at you, take cover.

(Incidentally, there are certainly guns that would be programmed to fire at heat sources. The runners are on an island that's a secret experimental weapons testing facility, remember? There wouldn't be any large animals roaming the area, and it's loads smarter on the part of the security staff to program them this way rather than via movement sensors, which are difficult to calibrate and easier to spoof. Just program the guns to fire at heat sources of a certain size and fire a percentage of it's ammo at a given heat source, or keep firing until it's stopped moving for a certain amount of time - probably 20ish seconds. Makes complete sense from an in-game perspective.)

Does that make sense? It was longer than I was hoping...

Dervag
2009-07-21, 07:06 AM
OK, but why not just mention this clearly and be done with it. Why wipe out the party?The only reason I can think of is "genre convention."

Generally, it's nice to be lenient about letting people escape if they do something truly dumb (like march up to the gate of a maximum security prison in stolen uniforms and try to make a prisoner transfer with no paperwork). After all, they-the-players might forget.

But there has to be a limit, or you have a situation where the players can come up with any strategy, and the GM is compelled to give them all the hints and warnings they need to turn that random idea into a workable plan. In which case the GM is the only one really doing any thinking, which isn't fair. He's already got to plan for the antagonists; now he has to do all the planning for the protagonists, too?


Sure, but the smarter way to get those assumptions across is to state them, when they come up, rather than have your players run into them headlong and explain afterwards, or, even worse, leave them to figure out stuff for themselves.This is true to a degree. But at some point the players should be able to wipe their own noses, tie their own shoes, and see the logical flaw in standing in the open while under fire from machine guns without so much as diving for cover.
______


Well, I guess that point is quite unrelated to the other two in retrospect. I would agree that this one is often quite game-specific. You can do it two ways, too, however. My old SR GM used to have us list weapons, armor, ammo by the clip and other big, heavy stuff. When we then said "that leaves 30lbs of carrying capacity for tidbits", he'd be fine with it if we later pulled out a flashlight, matches, earplugs or something like that. We could have listed everything to the tee, but it simply didn't seem worth it.Sounds fair. But if you start pulling out highly expensive low-weight electronics out of "tidbits," or if you just happen to have everything you need to MacGyver together a bazooka in your "tidbits" space, then things get awkward.

Like all GM-player agreements, this depends on the principle that it will not be abused. By nature, as long as it is not abused, it's basically harmless.

Person_Man
2009-07-21, 10:04 AM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?

No. In fact, I often hand out Presto's Hat or some similar magic item that gives them access to mundane items on demand. If they can think up some clever use for chalk or a ten foot pole or lamp oil or whatever, I want them to do that, as opposed to resolving everything by hitting it with a sword or magic.


- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?

Yes. And I also explicitly tell them that I let them use Knowledge (whatever), Gather Information, and/or Streetwise or some similar Skill as a Common Sense roll (which is a Trait in the Storyteller system).


- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

Depends. If the player says "I open the red door - no wait - the blue one! I meant the blue one!!!" then I let him open the blue door. If the player says "I open the red door" and a different player says "wait, didn't you read the monster manual entry for kobolds, they paint trapped doors red, you want to open the blue door" then I tell them that the red door has already been opened.


If it's a matter of the player being new, not understanding the rules, or honestly indecisive, then I give them a lot of slack. If it's a matter of players acting impulsively, disagreeing, or metagaming, then I make them live by the consequences of their decisions as soon as they say what they're doing.

Halaster
2009-07-21, 03:39 PM
Gah, don't have time to hit everything else...Raum, you still out there?

For this point, though, I have a response. Players come to depend on the GM saving their skins if you don't play this way - at least to a degree. This is analogous to the gaming style "let the dice fall where they may".

I guess that could be true. In my experience though, only bad players do that, guys with no ideas of their own. The kind of players who wouldn't learn either way. Those are the ones I eventually give up on and let them stand by what they said. It's just not worth the trouble saving their bacon all the time. Smart players get the hang of things after a few games and won't need constant guidance.


Extremely experienced and competent people do stupid stuff all the time, even when they know better. Google "General George Custer" for an example (no condescention intended - you're in Germany, so I don't know if you're familiar with the guy).

I'm basically familiar with Custer. As far as I recall, arrogance got the better of him, and any player who ventures down that path deserves a thrashing. It's one of the risks of GMing my way, I guess. The players may get overconfident if they succeed all the time. That's the point when you need to reel them in and show them that the world is indeed dangerous.




Does that make sense? It was longer than I was hoping...

Yes it does. Thanks.

Raum
2009-07-21, 08:31 PM
That's just my contention come alive. First, you can't just "read the book" and have the idea. People read books in very different ways all the time. Actually I once had to break off a game of White Wolf's Trinity, because my players had gotten a much darker impression of the setting than I had, and expected intrigue and betrayal at every turn, while I had focused on the more straightforwardly heroic aspects of the setting. Case in point: IMO Shadowrun measures life in nuyen. And I'd expect security to ask first, shoot later, because a lawsuit by an employee shot for working after hours is gonna cost. Not to speak of all the damage done by firefights on corporate property. Actually it may be cheaper to have a run succeed than to stop it by wild west style gunfire in the halls. In the Shadowrun setting large corporations are extra-national entities. They are not subject to some host nation's law. In order for an individual to sue one, she'd have to get the company to allow the suit and then prosecute it on company territory in front of a company paid judge. Difficult at best. It's even worse for shadowrunners. They're SINless - essentially nonpersons operating outside of any organization's law.

Prejudice is rampant. Racial (interspecies, not by skin color) violence is common. The US has balkanized into warring states along species' lines. Plagues have run rampant. Polution kills daily. Terrorism is a way of life. Organized crime is bigger business than many corporations. Technology makes us less than human...or at least makes us wonder what being human really is...

I think your interpretation is an unlikely extreme but you bring up a point - the GM / group should agree on expectations up front. The setting and system used should provide a starting point just make tone, grittiness, and style explicit.
-----

One more try at explaining a previous point based on this:
1.(Hardcore) GM says: "Too bad. I think that's stupid, I don't allow it. You fail."
2.(Laissez-faire) GM says: "Well, I think that's stupid. Do you want to reconsider?"
3. (Zeful's suggestion) GM says: "I think that's stupid. Do you care to explain why it's not?"I'd add a fourth option - GM says: "Interesting choice. Tell me why / how you think it should work."

The difference between the first 3 and number 4 is GM preconception...or lack thereof. The fewer preconceived ideas the GM has about solutions, the easier it should be for the players to convince him their solution might work. If you're the GM don't predict solutions for anything you're not railroading!


Gah, don't have time to hit everything else...Raum, you still out there?:smallredface: Just now trying to catch up (long day at work) and you two posted a lot of text to go through. Here's a beginning stab at comments. I'll add more once I have time to read comments in more detail.

Raum
2009-07-21, 09:50 PM
@Halaster - Our biggest difference of opinion seems to be based around objectivity vs subjectivity. Granted, that's a big item, but my biggest issue with your previous statements are the conflicting claims that a) the entire game is subjective ("has no objective reality") and yet b) one style of game is objectively better ("fewer flaws") than another.

Yet you complain of "relativity" and accuse me of using it to justify my style of gaming. Ok, let's do so now. You stated "there are more flaws to hardcore gaming than laissez-faire, but naturally those who love a play style, will value its merits more than its flaws". You also stated "the game has no objective reality". Ok. If it has no objective reality, what you subjectively perceive as flaws in 'hardcore gaming' may well be considered attributes by someone else. If the game is entirely subjective as you state, are not perceived flaws in the game also subjective?

That's your argument though. Mine relies on the game being at least partially objective. I think the GM's role is to be an objective arbiter of the game system and setting while instigating in-game challenges, problems, and conflict for the players to resolve. He's not there to provide solutions, that's the players' role. Any subjective system and setting interpretations should be made explicit as early as possible. Once an interpretation has been made explicit, it no longer requires a judgment call...it's no longer subjective within the context of that game. Will it happen during a session? Sure, no one is perfect after all. But that should be the exception not the norm.


Again, why? Why make them think by hurting them? As said above, pain is fast, but inconsistent teacher. It creates heroes and psychopaths without discrimination. Why would I want that?Remember, it's a game! There's no pain involved and any psychopaths created are created by a player's choice not by abuse. Lets not go overboard and say we're enabling crime by killing someone's character. :smallwink:

You called one described action a "failure of imagination", I agree. Yet it's a game which relies on hefty doses of imagination. Shouldn't there be game consequences for failures? The game is all about the choices made and solutions imagined into a contextual reality. Negating a choice's consequence is simply saying 'your choice wasn't important'. Players should be allowed mistakes as well as successes, that's what makes their choices matter.

I prefer games where player choice, for good or ill, is the primary driver. Others, perhaps even you, put narrative as the primary driver and relegate player choice to a secondary role. Neither is wrong. Neither is objectively more or less flawed. They're simply different.

Saph
2009-07-21, 10:10 PM
Also, just to chime in: for the DM to frequently warn the players when he thinks they're making a mistake strikes me as a bit railroady.

When I'm preparing to DM a session, I think up problems for the party, but I don't think up solutions. Instead I just chuck the problems at them and let them figure out how to deal with it. Usually the solution they come up with is not the one I would have picked, and quite often it's one I never would have thought of in the first place. Doesn't mean it won't work.

Quite often the players do something that seems stupid, and it really is stupid. But once in a while they do something that seems stupid, but ends up working in a completely unexpected way, and those are usually among the most fun sessions.

By contrast, the games I've played where the DM constantly gave the party help and advice felt a bit like being mothered. I don't want someone always looking over my shoulder and correcting me, even if they mean well. I'd rather make my own mistakes and learn from them.

- Saph

Halaster
2009-07-22, 03:40 AM
First off, I agree with your first post. You have different ideas about how the setting works than I do, which is fine, but if we ever played SR together, we'd have to find common ground and agree which way we play it. However, even then, one of us might forget, and it would just be nice to be reminded then. Just a simple: "Remember, in my SR universe, security will shoot first, ask questions later."

@Halaster - Our biggest difference of opinion seems to be based around objectivity vs subjectivity. Granted, that's a big item, but my biggest issue with your previous statements are the conflicting claims that a) the entire game is subjective ("has no objective reality") and yet b) one style of game is objectively better ("fewer flaws") than another.

Yet you complain of "relativity" and accuse me of using it to justify my style of gaming. Ok, let's do so now. You stated "there are more flaws to hardcore gaming than laissez-faire, but naturally those who love a play style, will value its merits more than its flaws". You also stated "the game has no objective reality". Ok. If it has no objective reality, what you subjectively perceive as flaws in 'hardcore gaming' may well be considered attributes by someone else. If the game is entirely subjective as you state, are not perceived flaws in the game also subjective?

Now wait, that's muddling up things. Of course there is an objective reality to the game, that is, the social activity we undertake at the gaming table. Therefore there are objective ways to measure how well that goes and what goals it achieves at what cost.
But there is no objective game reality. The world of the game exists only in our imagination. There is no way to objectively say "This is Shadowrun!", because what it is is a matter of our perspective. And the differences in that perspective will figure into how we make our characters behave. That's what I refer to as the "basic assumptions". None of this can be objectively measured. However, saying something is "stupid" or "clueless" tacitly assumes such an objective reality, effectively elevating the GMs opinion to the status of natural law.
So, the objectivity I demand of the observation of real-world game events and the recognition of subjectivity I deamnd for fictional world in-game events do not contradict each other.


That's your argument though. Mine relies on the game being at least partially objective. I think the GM's role is to be an objective arbiter of the game system and setting while instigating in-game challenges, problems, and conflict for the players to resolve. He's not there to provide solutions, that's the players' role. Any subjective system and setting interpretations should be made explicit as early as possible. Once an interpretation has been made explicit, it no longer requires a judgment call...it's no longer subjective within the context of that game. Will it happen during a session? Sure, no one is perfect after all. But that should be the exception not the norm.

I think that's a misconception. After all, what constitutes the objective norm for the GM to arbitrate? Ultimately, his own ideas about the game. Are these actually objective? No. They result from his own personal reading of the material the game designers provided for him. As with any text there are multiple readings, all of which are equally valid (which is why is see no point in discussing how cheap life really is in SR), and therefore completely subjective. If you think of the GM as objective, you make his point of view the only valid one, which is inherently loaded with problems.



Remember, it's a game! There's no pain involved and any psychopaths created are created by a player's choice not by abuse. Lets not go overboard and say we're enabling crime by killing someone's character. :smallwink:

What I mean is this: a player whose character is killed will likely react with frustration. He can either vent that frustration by trying to interact better with the GMs challenges, trying to figure out what is wanted from him and thus becoming a more efficient player with the GM and setting in question. However, not all players are mature enough to do so. Some may find it easier to adopt a munchkinist attitude, trying to hug all the power they can get, constantly test their limits, and then cry foul whenever they get their comeuppance. Others may lose their interest in the game and the challenges and consistently do silly or unproductive things, because they are too lazy or unimaginative to figure out what the right thing to do is.
Ultimately it all depends whether the frustration is directed at themselves, for failing to anticipate the GMs demands to overcome the challenge, or at the GM. And the kind of introspection needed for that is rarer than I would like it to be.
Now, if I play nice, I can prevent this frustration altogether and let the player learn the ropes by pointing them out to him. I can not be sure that he learns, but at least I can be sure he won't become antagonistic and disruptive.



You called one described action a "failure of imagination", I agree. Yet it's a game which relies on hefty doses of imagination. Shouldn't there be game consequences for failures? The game is all about the choices made and solutions imagined into a contextual reality. Negating a choice's consequence is simply saying 'your choice wasn't important'. Players should be allowed mistakes as well as successes, that's what makes their choices matter.

I prefer games where player choice, for good or ill, is the primary driver. Others, perhaps even you, put narrative as the primary driver and relegate player choice to a secondary role. Neither is wrong. Neither is objectively more or less flawed. They're simply different.
I simply know for a fact that even the most excellent and imaginative gamers occasionally fail. They just misinterpret things, overlook them or get distracted. Same for GMs. Punishing that in-game is not a way to make player choice matter, but to blow player attentiveness out of proportion. And that, in what is effectively a game, doesn't seem a wise choice, or conducive to everyone's fun.
Actually, what I frequently get from players is a clear statement that their characters make mistakes, by choice, like:
Player: "I do something stupid."
Halaster: "Hm, you think that's a good idea?"
Player: "Totally not, but it's what my character would do."
Now that is a players willing, seeing-eye choice to let their character fail in-character. What hardcore play frequently produces is out-of-character player mistakes being ascribed to the character. Bad thing, IMO.
So, maybe you prefer player choices to drive the game. I prefer character play to drive the game.

Halaster
2009-07-22, 04:03 AM
Also, just to chime in: for the DM to frequently warn the players when he thinks they're making a mistake strikes me as a bit railroady.

When I'm preparing to DM a session, I think up problems for the party, but I don't think up solutions. Instead I just chuck the problems at them and let them figure out how to deal with it. Usually the solution they come up with is not the one I would have picked, and quite often it's one I never would have thought of in the first place. Doesn't mean it won't work.

Quite often the players do something that seems stupid, and it really is stupid. But once in a while they do something that seems stupid, but ends up working in a completely unexpected way, and those are usually among the most fun sessions.

By contrast, the games I've played where the DM constantly gave the party help and advice felt a bit like being mothered. I don't want someone always looking over my shoulder and correcting me, even if they mean well. I'd rather make my own mistakes and learn from them.

- Saph
Railroading is absolutely independent from this question. It only depends on whether GM is willing to allow solutions he has no thought about. Now, in hardcore mode, the players fail, if they don't find of those. In laissez-faire mode, they get herded to the point where they take one of those. Both ways, railroading is ugly and frustrating. Watch "Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising" for an example of a hardcore railroader. He killed three parties, before he learned to think out of the box and everyone had fun.
Still, most railroaders tend to prod rather than kill, so your associating these two different things is not all unexpected.

Also, one should remember that this thread is emphatically not about giving advice to the players. It's only about whether to remind them that they are not thinking (clearly) and allowing them to rethink, not about thinking for them.

Superglucose
2009-07-22, 04:28 AM
1) I assume everyone has food and clothes. Hell, I don't keep track of food OR clothes. 2 gp gets you an inn room with a couples nice meals to go along with it (usually dinner and breakfast), as well as some booze, and a reasonable expectation of privacy. Still, forgetting torches when you're going underground? Forgetting rope? Especially since it can blow "fly" spells or similar.

2) I *never* tell them the consequences of their actions beforehand. For instance, one of my characters said, "I'm going to throw a rock at his head." I said, "are you sure?" He said, "yes!" I said, "roll your attack roll." He laughed and rolled high enough to hit. "Roll damage." At that point he stopped laughing. See, he was a third level rogue, and the commoner was WAY flat footed. We were talking like 1 point from the rock and 2d6 sneak attack plus his strength modifier. He tried to pick a fight until one of the other players at the table said, "Roll damage or I'm rolling for you." Fortunately for the player, the Commoner survived.

Unfortunately, that was still a 400 gp fine right there for Assault.

For me it depends strongly on the player and the situation. If the antics are wearing thin then the antics are more likely to occur, for instance. The first time you joke about "I drop my pants and moon the king as he passes" you'll get a chuckle. The second time, "are you sure?" The third time, your pants are down and the king's guards are sticking their pole-arms up yer bum.

3) Hell. No. In real life this is an example of someone doing something and then going "OOOPS! That was dumb." Why should their characters be exempt? Everyone, including characters, has brain farts. People do dumb things, and often unintentionally. If the player has a brain fart and says that his character does something stupid, then his character has a brain fart and did something stupid, even while thinking "Man, I can't believe I just did that."

Swordguy
2009-07-22, 04:42 AM
Watch "Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising" for an example of a hardcore railroader. He killed three parties, before he learned to think out of the box and everyone had fun.



Dude, the GM in question was playtesting a prewritten module idea. Prewritten mods railroad to a degree by default. They HAVE to.

Further, he didn't change a darn thing - the group picked up a new player who changed the group dynamic enough that the group could complete the adventure; that's what allowed them to "have fun", not the GM suddenly realizing that his horrible and has to change his style.

That GM was a good GM. He rolled with unexpected idea from players, went out of his way to keep together a group that was 1/3rd munchkin, 1/3rd idiot, and 1/3rd useless through three itinerations of the playtest module, and the only time he said "no" flat-out was when the munchkin was pulling crap the GM had specifically told him previously not to pull ("There's no elves in my campaign", "Well I'm playing an elf"). What's more he has the correct philosophy. "Story trumps rules", and "players/characters don't know everything about the gameworld".

If that's your idea of a bad GM, then we're so far apart in our ideas of what's "good" about gaming there's no point in continuing.

Saph
2009-07-22, 05:44 AM
Also, one should remember that this thread is emphatically not about giving advice to the players. It's only about whether to remind them that they are not thinking (clearly) and allowing them to rethink, not about thinking for them.

I'm not sure I buy into the distinction you're making here. Telling a player "You're not thinking clearly, you should rethink that action" is pretty much the same as telling them "that's a stupid idea, don't do it". If that's not giving the players advice, what is?

- Saph

mcv
2009-07-22, 06:41 AM
I read The Clue Files (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html) yesterday, and some of the stories made me wonder, how much of this actually was the players' mistake.
Several of those stories are definitely more about jerk GMs than about clueless players. Particularly the stories from the person who created that collection, I might add.

One particularly bad one was one PC riding up the stairs to his appartment on his motorbike. That's asking for trouble, I'd say, but the GM apparently allowed it. Another PC, not wanting to be any less cool, uses his grapling hook gun to pull himself up the center of the stairwell. Which, if I'm not mistaken, is pretty much what a grappling hook gun is for, right? (Except for the fact that there's a stariway right there, but hey, it has to be cool, which is a perfectly acceptable motivation when your buddy is riding a motorbike up the stairs.) Anyway, the GM decides the grappling hook blows up and the PC falls several floors down.


- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
Depends. I'm not going to screw them over for not writing down they're carrying something trivial or obscure, but in this particular case, they were planning a run in excruciating detail. Forgetting your flashlight is pretty stupid, and at the same time not entirely unrealistic. (Who has never forgotten to bring a flashlight on vacation or any other event that clearly required one?)


- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of?
Of course.


Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
Yes, particularly if the players are not as familiar with the situation as their characters are.

Then again, there are also situations that are so blindingly obvious that they deserve what they get. (There are definitely a couple of those examples in those clue files too.)


- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?
Depends on how much of a split-second decision it was. In real life, you don't always get enough time to think things through. The same is true in the game world. Especially if the end result is funny, dramatic or otherwise interesting. If the end result is just stupid, then of course I give them the chance to reconsider.


On the other hand, I am merciless with players, who, despite time to think, advice from their fellow players and myself, continue to do stupid stuff.
Of of the examples definitely fit that description. Like the guy who keeps flying his aircraft (helicopter?) over hostile territory despite armed aircraft demanding that he slow down and identify himself. He got several chances to get himself out of that, but instead he kept flying and ignoring the people who demanded a response. That sort of stuff will and should get you killed.

Most of the time, I try to use as a guideline: will the end result be interesting (funny, dramatic) or just plain stupid? Will it be realistic or terribly unlikely?

It's stupid to severaly punish players for a tiny mistake, but it's just as stupid to let them get away with stubborn stupidity.

Halaster
2009-07-22, 06:46 AM
Dude, the GM in question was playtesting a prewritten module idea. Prewritten mods railroad to a degree by default. They HAVE to.

His whole problem was that he didn't have a good idea how to script his module, so that it works, but also doesn't allow his players to supply something, instead killing them all the time. Only when that changes he finally gets it and can finish his module.



Further, he didn't change a darn thing - the group picked up a new player who changed the group dynamic enough that the group could complete the adventure; that's what allowed them to "have fun", not the GM suddenly realizing that his horrible and has to change his style.

There's a scene between him and the new player, where she tells him to relax, react to the players more and not be so stuck up about his own plan, but let them have some more input. He gets to thinking things through and lets down his guard a bit. This is heavily implied to improve not only his enjoyment, but everyone's - and, as I said, is the very thing that lets him complete the module.



That GM was a good GM. He rolled with unexpected idea from players, went out of his way to keep together a group that was 1/3rd munchkin, 1/3rd idiot, and 1/3rd useless through three itinerations of the playtest module, and the only time he said "no" flat-out was when the munchkin was pulling crap the GM had specifically told him previously not to pull ("There's no elves in my campaign", "Well I'm playing an elf"). What's more he has the correct philosophy. "Story trumps rules", and "players/characters don't know everything about the gameworld".

If that's your idea of a bad GM, then we're so far apart in our ideas of what's "good" about gaming there's no point in continuing.
All those things he did after the aformentioned conversation. I'm not saying he was a bad GM, but getting off the "too bad, you're dead" boat still improved his style a lot.

Halaster
2009-07-22, 06:55 AM
I'm not sure I buy into the distinction you're making here. Telling a player "You're not thinking clearly, you should rethink that action" is pretty much the same as telling them "that's a stupid idea, don't do it". If that's not giving the players advice, what is?

- Saph
I think there is a major difference between implying that something is a bad idea, and giving someone a good idea.

Not advice: "Do you really want to do that? I mean, they've got guns."
Typical answers: "Guns? Did you say that? OK, I'll reconsider." or "Yeah, I know, I can handle those."
Advice: "Really, I think you shouldn't do X, but Y instead."
Typical answer: "OK, I'll do Y then." or "Shut up. Am I playing this character, or are you?"

Basically it prevents the characters from carrying the idiot ball, just because their player has a momentary lapse of judgement, but it doesn't solve the problem for the player. As I said, it's an occasion to think again. It leaves the choice (to address Raum's issue again) in the player's hands. Actual advice on what to do makes it very clear that the GM has already made the decision for you.
Actually I relatively frequently ask for clarifcation with my players on completey legitimate actions ("So, you want to jump off your horse and hit the bad guy in the back? You do realize he's moving?"), just to make sure they are not misapprehending the situation. This may be insecurity on my part over my descriptive skills (perhaps I'm just a rotten GM that way), but it helps, so reclarifying actions I find brain-hurtingly stupid is a natural extension of that.

Deliverance
2009-07-22, 08:30 AM
First off, I agree with your first post. You have different ideas about how the setting works than I do, which is fine, but if we ever played SR together, we'd have to find common ground and agree which way we play it. However, even then, one of us might forget, and it would just be nice to be reminded then. Just a simple: "Remember, in my SR universe, security will shoot first, ask questions later."

Strictly speaking, in both yours and his SR universe, finding out which protocols the security of a particular corporation's location works under is a job that could/should profitably be left up to the players to investigate when planning an operation to hit that place. Mr. Johnson might give some background knowledge, but especially for SR, planning and proper investigation can be and often is as important as execution.

Just like the earlier example of "will the guards open fire at range because they haven't gotten the proper magic/electronic/whatnot password or will they approach me and let me get into range to charm them because I look like I am surrendering", this is essential knowledge that should not be assumed but should be investigated - unless you want to find out the answer the hard way. It ought to differ based on site, importance, and sheer viciousness of the corporation (or other organisation) involved.

mcv
2009-07-22, 08:58 AM
I would argue that all three options are valid, depending on the style of game being run. The gaming experience is different depending on the game. Take Call of Cthulhu for a moment - it's explicitly said to be high-lethality horror. Option 1 is a completely valid style when running that - you're supposed to be careful with what you say and do. If you let that feeling extend to the players as well, you're going to have developed a real feeling of fear, paranoia, and general "oh god, we could die at any moment" feeling among your players. And generating that feeling is one of the central points of the game.
But option 1 ("that's stupid. You fail") is not the way to do that. Call of Cthulhu is supposed to be lethal because you're up against overwhelmingly powerful forces, not because the PCs are supposed to make really stupid mistakes. (And in the original Cthulhu stories, the characters usually don't die. They go insane.)


Now, other games, not so much. I'd never use Option 1 in TOON, for example.
I'm not too familiar with TOON, but it actually sounds like one of the few situations where option 1 might be appropriate. In cartoons, characters die all the time for really stupid reasons. (It's just that death is only a minor inconvenience. No idea how TOON handles that, though.)


Your halfling can't stand on the ground and reach the frost giant's basketball hoop without magical assistance. Things can have zero chances of success.
But that's not option 1, is it? That could just as easily be option 2: you know that's not going to work. Don't you want to try something else instead?


To bring things back to Shadowrun, if your mission is to rescue somebody from life imprisonment at Facility 37, you can't walk up to the door and simply tell the guards to release him (without doing *gasp!* legwork in getting forged documents, magical confusion aides, or similar). It's a flat-out impossibility, regardless of how well you roll the dice. Option 1 CAN be the answer.
Even when the players have never heard of Facility 37? I'd explain to them that the direct approach is never going to work. If they don't get that right away, I'd explain it again. That's option 2.


Going back to Shadowrun for a moment - if I'm GMing, I have my players make a specific list of everything they're bringing with them. What's more, I make sure they done it before EVERY mission - it's my job to remind them. The reason I do so is because carrying capacity for most PCs is sharply limited - extra carrying capacity is a specific advantage for Trolls and Orks, and it's not fair to remove that advantage when they have some severe disadvantages (+25% cost to most everything they buy, for example). What's more, those items on their list become their "skillset" for the mission. If they need to improvise, they can only do so with what they've brought. It does two things - the players get more creative, which is always a good thing, and forces people to really think about what they might need compared with what they WILL need to complete the mission, and contrast that with how much they can actually carry.
This is a really great idea (depending on the type of game you're running).

For everything else, I'm afraid I'm firmly on Halaster's side: don't punish players for not understanding what you've got in your head. Communicate first.


Or let's take that example with the turrets on the beach. You say the runners died because they couldn't outguess the GM. Well, what could they have done? Well, everybody else dove for cover when the guns opened up. Urp (the character got got killed) stayed out in the open, motionless. The guns shot him. He got moderately wounded. Standing still didn't help, so perhaps he could have dove for cover like everyone else who wasn't getting shot. Perhaps he could have asked the GM for a roll to ID what was shooting at them (which might have told him what was up). Perhaps he could have shot back (hopefully before the turret) and destroyed it. Instead, he stood perfectly still, doing nothing, on a beach, under fire. That's stupid, irrespective of the GM's setup. Ask a Normandy Landing survivor what they think of that.
Did the GM confirm that the player understood the situation? Did he say: "You're standing still in the line of fire, while you're being shot at?" Quite often players don't quite understand the situation that the GM has in his head. Sometimes the GM fails to get it across, sometimes a player just doesn't get it. When something doesn't seem right, communication is usually the solution (and not just in RPGs).

Swordguy
2009-07-22, 09:29 AM
OK, people are clearly not reading the article.

Here it is, reposted, player-driven stupidity bolded:


The plucky team had just pulled off their first run and was heading back to Seattle from the San Juan Islands in their brand-new assault powerboat. Due to a rather violent retreat, the powerboat had more holes in it than the manufacturer would recommend. Some of these holes were large, steaming, and below the water line.

GM: "So the boat is in pretty bad shape. It's listing badly to the side and the engine is making a funny, choking sound. What do you do?"

Thorax, the Sammy team leader, paused and pondered the question for a moment. "I'm not sure."

I assumed he was thinking about how to fix the boat and get home without swimming. The other players seemed to be deep in thought as well. In a democratic move, Thorax turned to the team rigger and asked him "What do you think we should do?"

The Rigger was the repair expert, right? Seems like a logical thing for a leader to do; wanna make sure you hear the expert's opinion….

Rigger: "I don't know about you, but I could use a nap."

Now, before I could laugh at what could only be a light joke in a dire circumstance, Thorax nodded sagely. "Yes," he said, straight-faced. "A nap sounds like a good idea. We've had a lot of combat and I'm sure we're all very tired."

"Yes," echoed the other runners. "Naps!" (Karen insert: why do I just see the Knights of Ni all crying "Yes! A shrubbery!" at this point?)

Thorax turned proudly back to me. "We've decided to go down below and take a nap to rest up after the fight."

The look on my face must have been priceless. "You, uh…you want to go below and, uh…"

"Take a nap. Yes."

"Um… the boat is, um, the damage is… well, okay."

So everyone gladly took a nap. I have never seen anything like this in any game before or since. Seems that these players felt that the sleeping cycles of their runners were critical to the story or something. Or not. I can't begin to fathom how this plan was embraced by all five of them without anyone even batting an eye.

A moment passed and I described that the rigger was being awakened from his nap by water lapping against his cheek. The lower cabin had filled with four feet of water while he was off counting sheep.

"Oh, no!" he yelled and began splashing about looking for his tools and waking everyone else up. "We're really sinking now guys!"

Yeah… no ****.

By some miracle, everyone got out alive and tread water while they watched their half million-nuyen powerboat slide below the surface of Puget Sound, along with practically all their gear.

Naps. Jesus.

But the cluelessness doesn't end there! The group managed to dogpaddle over to a small nearby island in the Sound and wash themselves up on the beach. Since it looked like the rest of the adventure would probably take place on this forested island instead of back in Seattle like I'd planned, I decided that this island was an abandoned secret testing facility for Ares Special Projects.

As the group headed up the sand, they heard some sort of alarm or siren coming from the trees and a garbled computer voice said something unintelligible to them. They just shrugged at each other and kept walking towards the sound. It was at this point that the automated sentry-guns activated and started tracking their movement. I called for Perception tests, and the dwarf Sammie, Urp, got a huge result.

"Looks like there are some automatic defense guns hidden in the trees up ahead," I tell him. "They could be light machine guns or assault cannons: it's hard to tell because of the trees. The muzzles are pointed right at you."

"Humm. Better tell the other guys," says Urp. I'm about to say OK, when Urp's player interrupts. "No! Maybe the guns track on sound and it will pick up my voice when I talk to the others! I stand still and try not to breathe!"

"Ah… OK. Everyone, you notice that Urp has stopped walking with the rest of you. His eyes are fixed on the trees ahead and he's standing stock-still."

Thorax got that thoughtful look on his face again (I swear that I thought they were about to take naps again). "I stop moving," he says.

"Yeah, me too!" the other players chime in.

Well, well. Everyone was just a big fat target then, weren't they?

"Everyone roll their reaction." Bullets erupted from the trees, taking Urp square in the chest. Everyone else was actually smart enough to beat it and dive for cover of some nearby fallen logs.

A miracle happened on the damage roll, and Urp came out with only a medium wound. I said that his flak vest caught some of the burst, but a round got him in the side and deflected off a rib. "It's bleeding and you feel like you've been it with a baseball bat," I said.

Urp's player dutifully recorded his medium wound on his character sheet. When it was his turn to act, I asked him what he wanted to do.

"Me? Nothing, man! I've been wounded! I just lie here on the sand in pain."

Carefully, I explained the situation again to Urp's player, stressing that he could still take action with only a small penalty to any tests he had to make.

"Forget it," says Urp. "I'm not taking any chances now. I try to lie completely still and make no noise."

"Umm, okay."

Like, that really worked last time, didn't it?

I asked the other players what they wanted to do. "Stay behind cover!" was the unanimous response. Next turn the sentry gun opened up again on the only target it could see with its heat sensor: poor Urp. This time he was out for the count and dying. What did the other players do? Why, stay safely behind cover, of course!

The gun finally ran out of ammo shooting Urp's slowly cooling corpse.

In the end, no one made it off that island alive, even though the only other threatening device (that still worked) was an electrified fence. But that's another story…


With the naps - Jesus, I dunno. The whole team got a case of stupid there. With the gun, you'll note everybody else dove for cover, and lived through the encounter. Except Urp, whom, after being shot, had his GM magnanimously "explained the situation again to Urp's player, stressing that he could still take action with only a small penalty to any tests he had to make."

Urp's player decided to lie there in front of a gun that had just tracked and shot at the group while they were standing stock-still. The GM accurately described the response of the system. The PLAYER made the choice, and died from it.

Shadowrun actually works on real-world principles. If something is a Bad Idea in Real Life, it's almost certainly a Bad Idea in Shadowrun. The GM even went out of his way to defend the character, explaining the situation and all but saying flat-out "you should dive for cover". The player still opted to make a choice that, in the real world, is stupid. Well, it was stupid in Shadowrun, too.

Random832
2009-07-22, 10:16 AM
The plucky team had just pulled off their first run and was heading back to Seattle from the San Juan Islands in their brand-new assault powerboat. Due to a rather violent retreat, the powerboat had more holes in it than the manufacturer would recommend. Some of these holes were large, steaming, and below the water line.

Did you, in fact, describe the holes to them? It doesn't appear in what you actually put in quote marks below:


GM: "So the boat is in pretty bad shape. It's listing badly to the side and the engine is making a funny, choking sound. What do you do?"

Notably missing from this decription: "It's taking on water."


Since it looked like the rest of the adventure would probably take place on this forested island instead of back in Seattle like I'd planned, I decided that this island was an abandoned secret testing facility for Ares Special Projects.

Not exactly necessary - "the rails track you" can be a kind of annoying style for a DM - but ok. The fact that you were winging it with the design of the facility shows.


"Humm. Better tell the other guys," says Urp. I'm about to say OK, when Urp's player interrupts. "No! Maybe the guns track on sound and it will pick up my voice when I talk to the others! I stand still and try not to breathe!"

Sonic sensors are a bit contrived, but this plan would have also worked if they were motion sensors. "Heat sensors"? What do they do on a particularly sunny day?


The gun finally ran out of ammo shooting Urp's slowly cooling corpse.

Which tells you why "heat sensors" are a bad (and horribly implausible for a game based on "real world principles") design for a system like that - they'll do the same with any threat they take out. Any system that will dump all its ammo into a corpse is one not worth paying for, so playing dead should logically have been a sound tactic no matter what its sensor mechanism was. This is what I was referring to with "The fact that you were winging it with the design of the facility shows." - if you'd thought of that fact for a minute before choosing to have it work by heat sensors, you'd have realized that (not to mention a fairly high chance that they'd already done so on a pack of wolves that wandered too close, and were out of ammo)

It's hardly player stupidity to fail to consider the utterly ridiculous possibility that the security system will waste its ammo on a motionless body lying on the ground.

Swordguy
2009-07-22, 10:35 AM
Did you, in fact, describe the holes to them? It doesn't appear in what you actually put in quote marks below:

Perhaps you should try reading the link on page 1. I didn't do a thing. This is another GM, posting a story to a site that collects stories of "stupid player tricks", not unlike the epic 50 page thread of "player stupidity" on this very forum.

And, just like in this thread, people blamed everything on the GMs in THAT thread too. Players can't possibly just do something terminally stupid. They MUST have been unfairly manipulated into it by their GM - it's the only possible explanation.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n294/wolffe42/Funny/user3_pic49_1209685773.jpg

(For the record, thermal sensors are a real-world technology, and there are guns set up to track bipedal heat signatures and shoot them till they stop moving and cool down [read: dead] in the game. The Mitsuhama and Ares headquarters buildings, for example, are infamous for their use of these things - called a zero/zero zone. Zero Penetration, Zero Survival. Regardless of what you think of them, they're in the game. This GM didn't just make them up off the top of his head to kill the PCs.)

I've got my own "stupid player tricks" in the CLUE Files, but this ain't one of them. Do NOT pin this on me.

Halaster
2009-07-22, 11:20 AM
Alrighty, folks, let's not get hung up on a specific example. There are cases in which players acted stupid in the CLUE files, and there are cases of miscommuncation there. This thread was not meant to be a nitpicking about which is which. If you wish to pursue this, let's spoiler it.


Maybe these things are in the game. Only goes to show that game designers have bad ideas just like the rest of us, particularly when deadlines are looming. You are right, heat tracking is a current technology. So is motion detection. Both might be useful for targeting stuff. Actually, motion detection is more useful. Many things are warm, in the human heat range, actually (like fresh corpses). Few things move like people do. People who don't move are not a threat. Really, Urp's player is making a lot of sense here. Of course it's not a good idea to contradict your GM, who basically just let you know, in his own merciless way, that motion tracking is not in use here. But if you are unable to imagine (and rightly so) that no gun like that exists, because their utterly stupid, well you might just remain stubborn.

PLUN
2009-07-22, 11:33 AM
I'd put that scenario down to winging a facility off the top of their head - I mean, at least there were come clues.

That being said, I think a sudden unplanned stint on a completely abandoned island provides PLENTY of challenges for Shadowrunners, you don't need no fancy facility deathtrap. I mean, most sensible runners don't bog themselves down with survival gear. That's absurd extra weight if you're operating in the city or for a week outside hab maximum. Maybe a jungle runner is quite the opposite, but these guys didn't strike me as. To swing out of specifics into the general, such a 'desert island' scenario in the middle of a normally combative game is just one of the benefits of a 'want for a nail' sort of game - there's plenty you can DO with your spells, skills and bionics to survive a week or so until rescue... they're just not in the Owners Manual. What's normally a Survival check becomes an adventure of it's own. Fun to be had by all. While hosing of 'dumb mistakes' might seem hardcore, the opportunity for some gameplay unexpected by all parties can be a unique benefit, and is probably the best defense for not going *too* hard on the first screw up.

Deliverance
2009-07-22, 11:38 AM
Maybe these things are in the game. Only goes to show that game designers have bad ideas just like the rest of us, particularly when deadlines are looming. You are right, heat tracking is a current technology. So is motion detection. Both might be useful for targeting stuff. Actually, motion detection is more useful. Many things are warm, in the human heat range, actually (like fresh corpses). Few things move like people do. People who don't move are not a threat. Really, Urp's player is making a lot of sense here. Of course it's not a good idea to contradict your GM, who basically just let you know, in his own merciless way, that motion tracking is not in use here. But if you are unable to imagine (and rightly so) that no gun like that exists, because their utterly stupid, well you might just remain stubborn.

Heat seeking detects invisible sources that motion detection do not. Really, this "which type of detection is reasonable to use/assume" makes for an idiotic discussion. The GM chose of the widely available detection systems in the SR universe to guide the base defenses, and that's all there is to it. The fact that you feel it is an utterly stupid detection method is irrelevant to the point. They exist and they work in the game universe (and are probably a bit more complicated than just targeting arbitrary sources of heat - no reason they shouldn't recognize heat patterns)

The fact that Urp guessed wrong and continued to follow his wrong guess to the logical conclusion by lying exposed in an open field of fire where he had been shot rather than trying to gain some kind, any kind, of cover... led to him achieving the logical outcome of his actions as well as reinforcing one of the basic rules of Shadowrun: If shot at, seek cover. If you don't.... well, then you'd better have the toughness of a troll.

That the GM let his defense system run out of ammo burning up Urp was a gift thrown to the other players. A silly and unneeded gift in my opinion, but that's another matter.

Random832
2009-07-22, 12:24 PM
Heat seeking detects invisible sources that motion detection do not. Really, this "which type of detection is reasonable to use/assume" makes for an idiotic discussion. The GM chose of the widely available detection systems in the SR universe to guide the base defenses, and that's all there is to it. The fact that you feel it is an utterly stupid detection method is irrelevant to the point. They exist and they work in the game universe (and are probably a bit more complicated than just targeting arbitrary sources of heat - no reason they shouldn't recognize heat patterns)
If it detects the "heat pattern" of a dead body as a threat, it is faulty. This is self-evident by the fact that it wasted all its ammo and the rest of the players walked past it. If the advantage of "heat detection" over motion sensors is detecting invisible threats (why wouldn't your invisibility cover infrared?), it seems likely that it's meant to be detecting moving heat sources, and the only difference is that it works by heat instead of visible light. And if wasting its ammo was "a gift thrown to the players" (why not just make them find another way in?) why not throw a gift to the player who stood still by making it a motion sensor (even a heat/motion sensor - I don't care) or even saying "It thinks you're a corpse and won't waste ammo on you - congratulations, now what do you do now, just lie there until you die of thirst and actually become one?"

It's just DM caprice - throwing the players a gift for doing what the DM thought was the "right" thing in diving for cover, and punishing the one player for doing what the DM thought was the "wrong" thing in playing dead, when both should have been considered valid courses of action. (The only problem with the latter being he has to move some time, and risks taking another volley at that point, unless someone else manages to take them out from under cover)

Deliverance
2009-07-22, 12:39 PM
If it detects the "heat pattern" of a dead body as a threat, it is faulty.


I agree. Worst possible control program you can think of, and, as such, a silly and unnecessary gift to the players, probably invented on the spot to keep things moving, possibly handwaved away as maintenance problems/locking into full fire mode or something. Most certainly not a graceful way to handle the situation.

Talya
2009-07-22, 12:57 PM
I work in IT. My default assumption is that any given human being isn't thinking, so my players not thinking is to be expected--it's just like real life.


It's the only way to survive the job.

Woodsman
2009-07-22, 01:04 PM
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?

Well, no. That would be stupid and ruin a lot of the fun. if they want extensive, detail-by-detail lists, that's fine with me, but it's their headache.


- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?

This depends. If they open a door to a chasm and say they charge in through the door, I say "Wait a sec. Your character wants to charge into a chasm?" Often times, they were just being impatient. If it's something one could foresee, but they don't think of it, that's their problem. Stuff like that can happen in real life.


- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?

Well, that depends. If they were being stupid, they deserve the consequences so they won't screw up again. If it's something rather minor, I'll let it slide.

Raum
2009-07-22, 03:57 PM
I work in IT. My default assumption is that any given human being isn't thinking, so my players not thinking is to be expected--it's just like real life.Did you just compare your players with <gasp> Users?! :smalleek:

Aedilred
2009-07-23, 09:23 AM
My players managed a sequence of events the other day that was just totally idiotic.

Firstly, one of them decided they were going to forage for game to feed the group- although they were well-provisioned and heading to a military base, where there would undoubtedly be lots of food. She (the PC that is) bagged a few rabbits and a small deer and proceeded on their way.

When they arrived at the military base she was arrested for poaching. She refused to go quietly and ended up having to be attacked and grappled by several soldiers. At this point two other PCs came to her "aid". One of them tried to bribe the officer- in broad daylight- with the poached animals themselves and nothing more, which was treated with derision. The second one started mouthing off and threatening the officer with imminent physical violence, again, in front of dozens of the officer's troops. This got him arraigned on charges of mutiny.

Needless to say, the party were all heavily wounded and any fight- let alone one in which they were outnumbered somewhere in the region of 25:1- would likely not have ended well for them.

Eventually, it was decided that if she was ordered to catch the animals by her commanding officer, then it was his fault, not hers... and since he was a noble, he'd get a more lenient punishment. The commanding PC then explicitly denied that he'd ordered her to do it, effectively condemning her to the gallows.

Basically the party had talked themselves into having two of their number executed, from a standing start. That was quite impressive.

At the end of the day, I showed mercy. I allowed the commanding PC to reconsider his answer, and eventually the poacher got away with a fine (coming out of the commander's pocket) and a slap on the wrist rather than execution. The mutineer was flogged, and died (but got better).

Unfortunately, they don't seem to have learned their lesson, and are now planning on murdering the officer "responsible". The next time this comes up, I don't think I'll be so lenient- there's only so much mollycoddling I can do...

Thelas
2009-07-23, 09:58 AM
With me, it's like this:

Me: "You arrive at the castle after... 10 hours travel. How many food rations do you each have?"
Player 1: "What? We needed food rations?"
Player 2: See player 1
Player 3: "10 from the adventurer's kit."

They get hungry if Player 3 doesn't want to share.

--------------------------------------------------------
Me: "You are carrying a spell component pouch, right?"
Sorcerer: "..."
Me: "Start keeping track of its contents, please."
Sorcerer: "We have to say we have a spell component pouch?"
Me: "Wis check, please"
Sorcerer: "16"
Me: "Your character has enough common sense to have one. Buy one with the gp you have left and start keeping track of its contents."
Enough said.

Question: When a player rolls a 1 on some saves, they have to save for their equipment. Do you guys still use that rule? If so, what about the unimportant stuff like rope: do those have to save too?

mcv
2009-07-23, 11:15 AM
With the naps - Jesus, I dunno. The whole team got a case of stupid there.
I agree, but when it happens en masse like that, I'd definitely wonder if I got the message across that the boat had holes under the waterline and leaning inexplicably to one side. I'd probably repeat that and maybe add that the boat is making gurgling noises that it wasn't making before.

If they still decide to nap, waking them up once their boat starts to sink and losing them most of their stuff is perfectly reasonable.


With the gun, you'll note everybody else dove for cover, and lived through the encounter. Except Urp, whom, after being shot, had his GM magnanimously "explained the situation again to Urp's player, stressing that he could still take action with only a small penalty to any tests he had to make."
So the GM actually did say: "Would you like to reconsider?"

(As for the guns targeting based on heat, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If they belonged to my top-secret paranoid base, they'd have a mixture of IR, motion sensor and camera + image recognition. If the secrecy and paranoia of the corp justifies it, only one or two of those systems need to detect anything in order to open fire, although in that case I'd emphasize bullets in tree trunks and birds and squirrels that seem to have been ripped apart by .50 cal rounds.)

Random832
2009-07-23, 11:23 AM
(As for the guns targeting based on heat, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If they belonged to my top-secret paranoid base, they'd have a mixture of IR, motion sensor and camera + image recognition. If the secrecy and paranoia of the corp justifies it, only one or two of those systems need to detect anything in order to open fire, although in that case I'd emphasize bullets in tree trunks and birds and squirrels that seem to have been ripped apart by .50 cal rounds.)

any system that will dump all its ammo into corpse (and, by extension, any that can't be fooled by playing dead) is a faulty one, no matter what mechanism it uses.

Kylarra
2009-07-23, 11:24 AM
--------------------------------------------------------
Me: "You are carrying a spell component pouch, right?"
Sorcerer: "..."
Me: "Start keeping track of its contents, please."
Sorcerer: "We have to say we have a spell component pouch?"
Me: "Wis check, please"
Sorcerer: "16"
Me: "Your character has enough common sense to have one. Buy one with the gp you have left and start keeping track of its contents."
Enough said.
... wait, you make a player keep track of their spell component pouch's contents? What sort of system do you use for that? :smallconfused:

quick_comment
2009-07-23, 11:37 AM
If a DM told me to keep track of my spell component pouch, I would get up and leave.

People play D&D to have fun not to manage a spreadsheet.

Milskidasith
2009-07-23, 11:42 AM
... wait, you make a player keep track of their spell component pouch's contents? What sort of system do you use for that? :smallconfused:

Managing your spell component pouch even goes against the listed rules; if an item doesn't have a cost, it is assumed your spell component pouch has it (though your DM might get a little angry if you used that to start making simulacrams, since IIRC they don't have a listed price for the parts).

Random832
2009-07-23, 11:42 AM
If a DM told me to keep track of my spell component pouch, I would get up and leave.

People play D&D to have fun not to manage a spreadsheet.

It would only make sense in very specialized circumstances - a long journey with no resupply. It doesn't seem that much more unreasonable than requiring you to prepare spell slots - you just write a number (of the requisite component you have in your possession) next to each spell.

Milskidasith
2009-07-23, 11:49 AM
It would only make sense in very specialized circumstances - a long journey with no resupply. It doesn't seem that much more unreasonable than requiring you to prepare spell slots - you just write a number (of the requisite component you have in your possession) next to each spell.

I guess you could do it, but it would be incredibly tedious to do so, and since the rules say "your spell component pouch is assumed to have more than enough of everything required for your spells, you don't have to do that."

Plus, imagine playing a cleric. Would you really want to keep track of all those for no reason when the rules say you don't have to?

Kylarra
2009-07-23, 11:53 AM
It would only make sense in very specialized circumstances - a long journey with no resupply. It doesn't seem that much more unreasonable than requiring you to prepare spell slots - you just write a number (of the requisite component you have in your possession) next to each spell.Even then I'd just say "buy more than one for <journey>", personally.


edit: To use a similar "system", my DM got tired of me purchasing ritual components for every single different ritual and finally just had me outright purchase residuum (handwaved away as available as a regular purchase) to keep a base reserve to pull for casting rituals.

quick_comment
2009-07-23, 11:55 AM
Since they dont cost money and take no space, you could just say, ok, I have 10^10^10^10^10 of each component.

Random832
2009-07-23, 12:01 PM
I guess you could do it, but it would be incredibly tedious to do so, and since the rules say "your spell component pouch is assumed to have more than enough of everything required for your spells, you don't have to do that."

More than enough for what, though? If you're going to be spending a year away from civilization with no reasonable access to sulfur and bat guano, you probably shouldn't be casting four fireballs a day.


Plus, imagine playing a cleric. Would you really want to keep track of all those for no reason when the rules say you don't have to?

How many cleric spells have material components you don't have to keep track of anyway? If you don't need them, just say you don't have any, and there's nothing to keep track of. Keeping track of zero is no more effort than not keeping track at all.

mcv
2009-07-23, 12:06 PM
any system that will dump all its ammo into corpse (and, by extension, any that can't be fooled by playing dead) is a faulty one, no matter what mechanism it uses.

Obviously. A system like that would be really easy to defeat (find something that triggers it, and watch it empty its ammo supply). But firing a couple of shots at a warm body lying on the ground sounds appropriate for a really paranoid base.

For play balance, however, it's better if playing dead works.

Milskidasith
2009-07-23, 12:07 PM
More than enough for what, though? If you're going to be spending a year away from civilization with no reasonable access to sulfur and bat guano, you probably shouldn't be casting four fireballs a day.

Considering it never states how much of each you use, I can easily see an ounce of each lasting for years; a tiny piece of each and you have a fireball. Besides, is it really fun to figure out how many "pinches" of bat guano an average spell component pouch has? It's a bunch of tedious work for no reason.

Yakk
2009-07-23, 12:11 PM
Many of these can be viewed as the DM and Players disagreeing about assumptions.

That isn't always a sign of flaws in the Players.

Random832
2009-07-23, 12:13 PM
Considering it never states how much of each you use, I can easily see an ounce of each lasting for years; a tiny piece of each and you have a fireball. Besides, is it really fun to figure out how many "pinches" of bat guano an average spell component pouch has?

Whatever number you write down. Say each component with no weight or cost otherwise listed costs 1/2cp and weighs 1/50 of a pound. Or whatever other reasonable numbers the DM chooses.

If s/he won't say, write down ten thousand and see if the DM lets you get away with "I figure they're about the size of those little sprinkles you put on ice cream, so this weighs a pound and costs maybe 1sp"

What do you mean "is it really fun?" anyway? I could just as well ask "is it really work?" - picking a number takes about five seconds and you can get on with the stuff that is fun - you might as well ask "is it really fun" to decide what skills to put ranks in. Something that's not fun for me and which is certainly a lot more work than I would guess tracking spell components to be.

Kylarra
2009-07-23, 12:15 PM
At that point I'd either stop playing with that DM or pick up eschew materials if for some reason I really wanted to play with them. Bookkeeping arrows for your ranged weapon is one thing, every single one of your spells requires a spreadsheet and is just pointless tedium.

Steward
2009-07-23, 12:44 PM
That could be a great quest hook. Bat guano is disgusting and if the nearest store doesn't want to deal with it, the players have to harvest it ahead of time.

Random832
2009-07-23, 12:51 PM
Bookkeeping arrows for your ranged weapon is one thing, every single one of your spells requires a spreadsheet and is just pointless tedium.

why does it "require a spreadsheet"? It's one number for each spell - you can write it down right next to where you right down the fact that you have the spell. I cannot understand why you think this would be so much work.


That could be a great quest hook. Bat guano is disgusting and if the nearest store doesn't want to deal with it, the players have to harvest it ahead of time.

Just harvest it from the Spell Pouch of Infinite Production and distribute it to anyone who wants some. :smallyuk:

When the game rules say you don't have to keep track of it, it's implicitly assuming normal amounts of usage (i.e. not "Fireballs in all 3rd level slots, Still Fireballs in all 4th level slots, Empowered Fireballs in all 5th level slots, Maximized Fireballs in all 6th level slots, Quickened Fireballs in all 7th level slots, and just for kicks Heightened versions in the 8th and 9th level slots, all used up every day") and normal amount of time between resupply access (i.e. not "away from civilization for years at a time").

NEO|Phyte
2009-07-23, 12:54 PM
why does it "require a spreadsheet"? It's one number for each spell - you can write it down right next to where you right down the fact that you have the spell. I cannot understand why you think this would be so much work.

Because more than one spell might use the same component, meaning you have to track how many individual eyes of newt you have.

PLUN
2009-07-23, 12:55 PM
Spell components eh? Well given how routine spell use is in D&D, and how the spell components are by and large bad puns that don't care a whole lot about your silly settings verisimilitude i'd say putting a tracking system in would be hard. I mean i've seen some WHFRP groups that do it, it's not impossible. However, WHFRP had a whole mystique and danger to magic that just made scrabbling for components and keeping them just right seem a lot of fun. D&D doesnt attempt this.

It seems that spell components in D&D are just in there as another requirement - that you must be specifically ready to cast the spell, so you have this item or the other out. It's more important when you're grappled than anything else really -and the game designers themselves don't give a damn. Plenty of cop-out feats and items to me show that material components where just something they chucked in for 'flavour'.

If you were to track spell components, is improv allowed then? Does it HAVE to be guano? I know this little mix of dried dung and pepper, works pretty much the same way...
Are there spell component stores that just sell these things? With so much common magic, wouldn't general stores stock the most common and easily aquired and stored ingredients fairly regularly? This gives them a fairly victorian element, don't you think? Wheel of cheese and some sulphur, madam.

As an RP element two party dress wearers meeting in a dungeon or tavern and trading or swapping tips on component use can be a fun RP. You can make the best of what they just bunged in, and have more fun for it than a player who just sees spell components as a pain in the ass. However i'm obviously a 'you have what you write down' GM, but D&D just doesn't make that approach regarding spell components feel welcome without overhauling the economics and retail setting to fit.

quick_comment
2009-07-23, 01:14 PM
why does it "require a spreadsheet"? It's one number for each spell - you can write it down right next to where you right down the fact that you have the spell. I cannot understand why you think this would be so much work.



Not only do some spells require the same things, but each component is a different size. So you need to keep track of how full your pouch is.

Skorj
2009-07-23, 01:24 PM
why does it "require a spreadsheet"? It's one number for each spell - you can write it down right next to where you right down the fact that you have the spell. I cannot understand why you think this would be so much work.

Just harvest it from the Spell Pouch of Infinite Production and distribute it to anyone who wants some. :smallyuk:

When the game rules say you don't have to keep track of it, it's implicitly assuming normal amounts of usage (i.e. not "Fireballs in all 3rd level slots, Still Fireballs in all 4th level slots, Empowered Fireballs in all 5th level slots, Maximized Fireballs in all 6th level slots, Quickened Fireballs in all 7th level slots, and just for kicks Heightened versions in the 8th and 9th level slots, all used up every day") and normal amount of time between resupply access (i.e. not "away from civilization for years at a time").

RP is fun. Combat is fun. Bookkeeping is not fun, and I won't waste my game time doing it, beyond what's actually game breaking if you don't keep track of. Spell slots and total value of all treasure? Fine, no real way around that.

There are plenty of ways to deal with low supplies without bookkeeping! I find the Squad Leader method works best: if you're in a situation where you couldn't easily replace ammunition, then a particularly bad roll means you're out of ammunition. Need some common item that you probably would have used up by now, since you've been out of resupply for so long? Just make a roll to see if you have it.

Kallisti
2009-07-23, 01:35 PM
Some ideas what I'd like you to consider:
- Do you ever ask your players to write up extensive equipment lists, and then let them get in trouble "for want of a nail", i. e. if they forgot to list a minor but important item, like a flashlight, or fuel for a vehicle or whatnot?
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn't do that?


1. I have my players list their starting gear, but don't bother to keep track of how much they have, except in unusual circumstances. So if someone remembers to purchase lantern fuel, they have light. I don't ask them how much they have. But if they buy a lantern and no fuel, they have a lantern and no fuel. If they try something stupid like, "We're not keeping track of how much rope I have? I fill the chasm with rope." I take their character sheet, erase their rope, and ask, "What rope?"
2. Not usually. If they're going to forget how to use their character, I'm not going to play it for them. How else will they learn? If it's something their character could absolutely not forget, like that Mage Hand doesn't actually create a little hand, and so cannot be sent into a place you have no line of sight, I'll just say, "That's not how it works." If it's likely to result in an immediate fatality and is truly glaringly obvious, I'll give them one "Are you sure?"
3. Only if it's immediate. If they say, "I cast fireball to roast the goblins. No, wait, no! I'd get the hostages too!" I say, "Yes, yes you would." But if they try to take back an action after I've described the consequences, I say, "Should have thought of that, huh?"

And as for the spell components, it really does subtract from the verisimilitude of the world to have a magic 1 gp pouch that produces all the bat guano and sulfur your mage will ever need, but ask yourself, do your players really want to waste time bookkeeping that? Just pretend. Or give wizards Eschew Materiels as a bonus feat, same as sorcerors have.

Zeful
2009-07-23, 01:43 PM
RP is fun. Combat is fun. Bookkeeping is not fun, and I won't waste my game time doing it, beyond what's actually game breaking if you don't keep track of. Spell slots and total value of all treasure? Fine, no real way around that.

There are plenty of ways to deal with low supplies without bookkeeping! I find the Squad Leader method works best: if you're in a situation where you couldn't easily replace ammunition, then a particularly bad roll means you're out of ammunition. Need some common item that you probably would have used up by now, since you've been out of resupply for so long? Just make a roll to see if you have it.

One problem: encumberance. If you are carrying an infinate number of x where x is anything with weight, you are now very much over encumberance and incapable of moving, or your pack mule is, or the airship, or the river boat.

Besides bookkeeping is only hard when you gain or lose at lot of material, like at the beginning of the game, otherwise is pretty simply math that might take up to a minute to adjust out.

hewhosaysfish
2009-07-23, 02:50 PM
...Story of stupidity...


A lot of that is pretty stupid. In fact, a lot of that is very stupid.

But I would disagree that the original decsion, the decision to hunt, was not stupid.
Perhaps it was a waste of the parties time (although the lost time didn't seem to hurt them in any way). Perhaps it was a good effort at roleplaying a character with a stong indepenent streak.
But I wouldn't call it stupid.

Of course, there is the question of the the law and the charges of poaching.
But I would be tempted to ascribe that to a failure on you're part to properly convey either A) the circumstances in which the player characters found themselves or B) the manner in which you would be running your campaign (or possibly both).

Perhaps you communicated perfectly clearly. Perhaps the stupidity does belong entirely to your players. But without more details about what precisely you may have said to them, it is impossible to say for sure.

Skorj
2009-07-23, 03:01 PM
One problem: encumberance. If you are carrying an infinate number of x where x is anything with weight, you are now very much over encumberance and incapable of moving, or your pack mule is, or the airship, or the river boat.

Besides bookkeeping is only hard when you gain or lose at lot of material, like at the beginning of the game, otherwise is pretty simply math that might take up to a minute to adjust out.

I'm not at all clear where you got "infinite amount". If you have the ability to resupply regularly, why keep track? If you're in a specific circumstance where supplies are going to be running out, substitute die rolls for bookkeeping. This is a well-established approach for tabletop tactical wargames.

Of course, you want to keep an eye on the total weight of treasure the party can haul, but in practice that usually comes down to "there's more treasure than you can carry, but what you can carry is worth X gp". "OK, but we make note of how big of a baggage train we'll need when we come back for the rest."

This has worked for my groups for twentymumble years, through fantasy, steampunk, strange contemporary, and sci-fi games. Adventures begin much more quickly when shopping is just magic items and "how long of a trip do you equip for, and are you carrying dungeon-crawl gear?". Nothing's a bigger waste of time than spending the first gaming session of an adventure on bookkeeping, and not actually managing to get to the adventuring part.

Ninetail
2009-07-23, 03:38 PM
My players managed a sequence of events the other day that was just totally idiotic.

Hm... see, I don't see that.

Deciding to go hunting might have been a waste of time, since they were well-provisioned, but it isn't outright stupid unless the players already knew that "bagging a few rabbits" would be considered poaching and the penalty would be death.

This is exactly the kind of place the GM should throw in a reminder. "Uh, you realize that that's poaching, and it carries the death penalty, right?" Because the characters should be aware of that, but the players might not be.



When they arrived at the military base she was arrested for poaching.


How did the military know? Were the characters just carrying the dead animals around, without dressing or butchering them? Because that would be silly; if they were hunting for food (which your "rations" comment suggests), then that should have been part of it.

Could the military magically detect the meat packed away in their backpacks, or something?

Frankly, this sounds to me like you just decided to punish the player for taking the action, because you thought it was unnecessary.


She refused to go quietly and ended up having to be attacked and grappled by several soldiers.

Not bright, but foreseeable. Do players ever "go quietly"? Since the penalty is death, you should have expected them to fight -- she had nothing to lose!


At this point two other PCs came to her "aid". One of them tried to bribe the officer- in broad daylight- with the poached animals themselves and nothing more, which was treated with derision.


This is the first instance of out-and-out stupidity that I've seen so far.


The second one started mouthing off and threatening the officer with imminent physical violence, again, in front of dozens of the officer's troops. This got him arraigned on charges of mutiny.

Not the brightest conduct, but foreseeable, given the way you were railroading the group into the death of one party member. They were probably panicking at this point and trying to get her out of it.

So naturally you decided to give a second one the death penalty, too.



Needless to say, the party were all heavily wounded and any fight- let alone one in which they were outnumbered somewhere in the region of 25:1- would likely not have ended well for them.

...And give them no opportunity to escape, thanks to overwhelming odds.



Eventually, it was decided that if she was ordered to catch the animals by her commanding officer, then it was his fault, not hers... and since he was a noble, he'd get a more lenient punishment. The commanding PC then explicitly denied that he'd ordered her to do it, effectively condemning her to the gallows.

...And your "out" was to force a PC to admit to committing a crime he in fact did not commit. If the noble PC's characterization included pride or a code of honor, or if he was lawful, this was pretty much designed to fail.



At the end of the day, I showed mercy.

...By graciously allowing a PC to perjure himself, taking stuff away from that PC (who was, after all, genuinely innocent), and killing another PC.

Um... yeeeeeah... mercy. Right. And you're surprised that they're plotting against the officer who imposed these sentences.

I see more GM stupidity here than player stupidity.

Halaster
2009-07-23, 04:01 PM
Oh, dear, component tracking? If my DM told me he did that, I'd be playing a fighter/rogue before you could say "bat guano". Actually, I'm glad that my Earthdawn GM doesn't usually require me to track my archer's ammo, unless we're really in the middle of nowhere,

I really like the "supply roll" method. Actually you could modify the roll, depending on how long the characters are away from civilization. It combines the possibilities of the bookkeeping method ("Hand me the lamp oil, please" - "Sorry, we're out." - "So how do we burn this troll now?"), while skipping the paperwork.

And do take lamp oil for a moment here: it's essentially measured by time, like 10 hours woth of oil. So, trying to track lamp oil runs into several problems:
1. you have to keep track of every hour, or significant part thereof that the characters use the lamp. You have to ask before every dungeon romp/cave crawl/etc "How many lamps do you light?".
2. you need to judge how many hours worth of lamp oil something other than lighting a lamp needs. Burning the above-mentioned troll, for example.
That's just an example. Other things go the same way. How much food does a character really need? Humans can go for long times on relatively little, with no problems beyond some discomfort, provided the food is well-balanced. And I know enough players who will try to stretch their resources here, regardless of what their character might think. Great roleplaying aid.
Besides, many things can spoil, or get spoiled by wetness, dryness, heat or cold. Do you keep track of that, too? "No more invisibility spells, there! All the eyelashes in gum arabic got wet in that rainfall, and gum arabic is water-soluble!"

Sure encumbrance is an issue. But I have yet to find an encumbrance system that doesn't suck, and I've played something like two dozen systems, some of which don't even have encumbrance rules. So I prefer to use common sense ("No, you can't carry your horse!") and rule of thumb. Roughly speaking, the load of roman legionary works for fantasy: two weapons, metal armor, clothing, camp gear and some provisions. I don't usually get requests for anything more from my players and can handle that on a case-by-case basis.

As for the issue of how much time you actually spend on bookkeeping, the answer is: always more than is good. Bookkeeping is at best a necessary evil. Some things just have to be tracked: hit points, spell slots and the like. At worst it becomes a kraken that strangles your game. After all, time spent on bookkeeping is time not spent on actually playing your character, following the story and experiencing the game world. It may add a little to verisimilitude, but really just a little, and that could be done better by creating a good working relationship between the players and the GM. I allow you to skip the bookkeeping, and you accept it when I say you run out of an important resource, because I know you won't do anything stupid with the leeway, and you know I will only do so for dramatic purposes.

Finally, I've run campaigns that really break the barrier for what bookkeeping you can do. I had a campaign set on an 18th century royal navy frigate, and there are more things on such a ship than I even know the names of. They used to have an entire staff for keeping track of that. Players just can't do that.

Aedilred
2009-07-24, 07:32 AM
Of course, there is the question of the the law and the charges of poaching.
But I would be tempted to ascribe that to a failure on you're part to properly convey either A) the circumstances in which the player characters found themselves or B) the manner in which you would be running your campaign (or possibly both).

Perhaps you communicated perfectly clearly. Perhaps the stupidity does belong entirely to your players. But without more details about what precisely you may have said to them, it is impossible to say for sure.
Yeah, I've been wondering this myself. On the other hand, the relationship of their actions to the law and the associated issues that brings up is something I've been trying to drum into them for a while, but unless their characters are under direct IC threat they (some of them, at least) tend to blithely ignore it. I think I had given them fair warning that the law was something to bear in mind, even if I didn't specifically point out the illegality of the poaching here.

(That said, it is something I've mentioned offhand before when this PC has suggested hunting that there might be local laws on the subject to bear in mind. That's not something they've ever followed up on, and I'm slightly surprised given both the knowledge some of the players have and the way they obsessively analyse everything I say for clues that none of them picked up on that or thought it might be an issue when the hunting business came up.)



How did the military know? Were the characters just carrying the dead animals around, without dressing or butchering them? Because that would be silly; if they were hunting for food (which your "rations" comment suggests), then that should have been part of it.
They were just carrying them around in the open. Their plan was, I think, to carry them to the base and butcher and cook them there- which makes a sort of sense apart from the poaching point.

Now, obviously I did set the situation up and there wasn't strictly any need for me to introduce the poaching situation to start with, so I'll put my hands up and admit I was being quite harsh there, I thought this was a legitimate opportunity to bring the law to their attention (see above), and also to remind them, in character, that politically they're still nobodies, however heroic they are, and that just because a given NPC can't match them in combat doesn't mean he's someone to be messed with.

I wasn't determined to follow through and have the PC(s) killed, though- obviously that's not a particularly desirable situation- and there were a number of ways out they could have taken other than the one eventually decided upon. They could have demanded trial by combat, which a couple of them suggested OOC but they eventually abandoned in favour of the "threatening him" option, they could have just tried to reason or plead with the guy until he got bored and went away, they could have appealed to a higher authority, such as the base commander (who eventually got involved anyway, albeit only after the situation had escalated), they could have tried offering the guy a proper bribe, plus probably others I hadn't thought of. Hell, if she'd just run away rather than sticking around and trying to fight the guards, that would probably have been good enough. The extra soldiers weren't actively involved at this point, only on hand in the event of their starting a fight, so the option of running was still available.

What disappointed, and slightly surprised, me was that I'd put them in a situation where they might have to reason their way through rather than using their usual strategy of threatening and beating... and they seemed to think that an escalation of that strategy was the way to go (or at least those PCs involved did; some of the others were slightly more sensible), which was probably the worst possible way they could have handled it. And this is a PbP game, so, although they might have been concerned, there wasn't any particular panic to get the situation sorted ASAP- they had as much time as they wanted to sit around and discuss the best thing to do.

I felt a bit bad for the guy who ended up taking the fall, as it wasn't his fault, but they'd manoeuvred themselves into a position where that was really the only way to defuse the situation. He didn't actually suffer as a result, either- the party money is handled communally so it wasn't coming out of his pocket, and in fact from a RP perspective the trouble caused by his "subordinates" led to some more interesting opportunities for special missions as it would keep the group out from under the main force's feet. Nor was it guaranteed that the guy who got flogged would die- he was in fact slightly unlucky with the dice that he did, although, as I say, he got better anyway.

Anyway, to veer slightly more back towards the topic, I guess my opinions on the subject are apparent from the above. I don't always tell the players everything where I consider it a matter of common sense (although I always will if they ask). Managing equipment is another issue where I tend to cut them some slack- when in cities I have asked them to keep track of what they have with them and what they've left behind (on the principle that the city watch don't take kindly to large weapons being carried around in public) although some of them have taken better to that than others. When it comes to that, I figure that if they don't want to do it it's not in anybody's interest to try to force them. Encumbrance I keep track of for them, and warn them whenever it's apparent it's going to become an issue.

hewhosaysfish
2009-07-24, 08:12 AM
.... it is something I've mentioned offhand before when this PC has suggested hunting that there might be local laws on the subject to bear in mind....

...I wasn't determined to follow through and have the PC(s) killed, though- obviously that's not a particularly desirable situation- and there were a number of ways out they could have taken other than the one eventually decided upon....

...What disappointed, and slightly surprised, me was that I'd put them in a situation where they might have to reason their way through rather than using their usual strategy of threatening and beating... and they seemed to think that an escalation of that strategy was the way to go...

You pointed out the potential pitfalls and, when they fell into one, you decided to respond with a warning shot rather than an "object lesson".

I retract my earlier objections.

When I am "appointed" Magnificent Overlord of the world, your life will be spared. :smalltongue:

Ninetail
2009-07-25, 07:27 PM
They were just carrying them around in the open. Their plan was, I think, to carry them to the base and butcher and cook them there- which makes a sort of sense apart from the poaching point.

Now, obviously I did set the situation up and there wasn't strictly any need for me to introduce the poaching situation to start with, so I'll put my hands up and admit I was being quite harsh there, I thought this was a legitimate opportunity to bring the law to their attention (see above), and also to remind them, in character, that politically they're still nobodies, however heroic they are, and that just because a given NPC can't match them in combat doesn't mean he's someone to be messed with.

I wasn't determined to follow through and have the PC(s) killed, though- obviously that's not a particularly desirable situation- and there were a number of ways out they could have taken other than the one eventually decided upon. They could have demanded trial by combat, which a couple of them suggested OOC but they eventually abandoned in favour of the "threatening him" option, they could have just tried to reason or plead with the guy until he got bored and went away, they could have appealed to a higher authority, such as the base commander (who eventually got involved anyway, albeit only after the situation had escalated), they could have tried offering the guy a proper bribe, plus probably others I hadn't thought of. Hell, if she'd just run away rather than sticking around and trying to fight the guards, that would probably have been good enough. The extra soldiers weren't actively involved at this point, only on hand in the event of their starting a fight, so the option of running was still available.


Hm... I think I'm going to have to withdraw my objections. A reminder that poaching is a capital crime wouldn't be amiss, but since they had been warned before, and they did have visible options (and dismissed them), this is really pretty much all on them. Especially with it being a PbP game -- I figured they reacted in the heat of the moment, but they had time to consider, as they were writing their posts.


...their usual strategy of threatening and beating...

Now that's stupid.

Time and place, after all. ^_^

Anyway, sorry to have come off so harsh. I was making some assumptions that clearly weren't warranted.

Lamech
2009-07-25, 09:19 PM
Yeah, I've been wondering this myself. On the other hand, the relationship of their actions to the law and the associated issues that brings up is something I've been trying to drum into them for a while, but unless their characters are under direct IC threat they (some of them, at least) tend to blithely ignore it. I think I had given them fair warning that the law was something to bear in mind, even if I didn't specifically point out the illegality of the poaching here.

(That said, it is something I've mentioned offhand before when this PC has suggested hunting that there might be local laws on the subject to bear in mind. That's not something they've ever followed up on, and I'm slightly surprised given both the knowledge some of the players have and the way they obsessively analyse everything I say for clues that none of them picked up on that or thought it might be an issue when the hunting business came up.)

Were they native to the kingdom/area? If they weren't I'm sure its generally really bad form to kill of forgieners because they don't know the law. If they were natives I'm sure that its really bad form for natives to not know what a capital crime is; it also really defeats one of the main purpose of punishment which is to deter others. A more reasonable penalty would have been perhaps a fine, possibly payable with a plot hook service to the goverment.

Random832
2009-07-25, 10:16 PM
(That said, it is something I've mentioned offhand before when this PC has suggested hunting that there might be local laws on the subject to bear in mind.

Did you at any time mention that it was a capital crime?


Anyway, to veer slightly more back towards the topic, I guess my opinions on the subject are apparent from the above. I don't always tell the players everything where I consider it a matter of common sense

What basis did you have to consider this a matter of common sense? It being a capital crime to hunt nonendangered animals for food is kind of the sort of thing that needs to be explicitly stated.

Also...

Did you decide that it was a capital crime before or after you got annoyed at them for wasting time hunting when they already had rations? They can't reasonably be expected to take "local laws" into account if you're making them up as you go along. whereas if on the other hand you'd already worked out a uniform code of laws for the region, you maybe should have distributed it to all the players.

Raum
2009-07-25, 11:39 PM
Did you at any time mention that it was a capital crime?

What basis did you have to consider this a matter of common sense? There's precedent for poaching being a serious crime - Richard I's assize of 1198 threatened poachers who took deer with blinding and castration. Just food for thought...

Milskidasith
2009-07-25, 11:52 PM
Castrating people for hunting relatively rare, valuable, and heavy game does not give me the impression that killing smaller, more numerous, replaceable animals to get a light meal is a hanging offense.

Random832
2009-07-26, 01:07 AM
I actually knew about the england deer thing - but it's not the kind of thing you can just assume by default for a generic fantasy setting.

Yakk
2009-07-26, 10:20 AM
If a visiting noble or guested military force killed a deer, I doubt the immediate response would be "kill the poacher", but rather "That is a capital crime for peasants -- but if you pay a 500 gp fine, all will be forgiven."

Any officer who walks up to the ages-equivalent of a bunch of main battle tanks (Wizards! Heavily armored elite troops with enchanted weapons! Beings who can call down the wrath of gods on your head!) and says "you broke a law intended to keep peasants from killing the duke's game. I'm afraid one of you will have to die -- nevermind you could pay off the debt, unlike the peasants who the law is aimed at" is being ... well, strange.

Halaster
2009-07-26, 12:35 PM
Englands limited deer population has always caused somewhat excessive legislation on the subject of poaching. Admittedly that's a crime that could get you in serious trouble elsewhere, if you were a commoner.

Something people regularly forget about feudalism is that the inequality of people is one of this social systems basic assumptions. People from feudal societiey find the thought of punishing lords and peasants alike absurd.
So, in many fantasy settings, we have adventurers, or heroes, singled out as something special, certainly not commoners, but not well defined as any social class. A wizard might be a craftsman (he's in a guild), but a fighter? A rogue? Most settings (not unwisely) prefer not to consider this too closely, but if, as GM you plan to introduce such things as prerogatives, you should take that into account. Hunting, in this example is limited to the nobility. What about right to arms? Right to move freely? Ride a horse (don't laugh, in 16th century Japan that could get you killed on the spot)?

Now, apparently th GM in the poaching example remembered some fact about feudalism. What if his players remembered others? Like, well-armed, widely-traveling, not-beholden-to-anyone people were usually exempt from such petty fuss as poaching, bilking and rape legislation.... Sure, that used to mean nobles, but in fantasy, things are slightly different.

Such differences need to be made explicit, else you get characters who run into stuff they never saw coming.

TheCountAlucard
2009-08-23, 02:42 AM
- Do you ever remind your players of things their character would likely be aware of? Do you tell them the likely consequences of an action, that their characters could foresee?I have a tendency to give my players the "Common Sense" quality/feat/trait for free most of the time; i.e., if they're going to do something fairly dumb, I look them in the eye for a few seconds and ask, "Are you sure about that?"

After all, players can be forgetful or not realize things that their characters would know by heart. Unfortunately, I don't think our group's new player has quite caught on to this yet.

Player: "I empty the contents of the chamber pot on myself and try and squeeze through the bars!"
Me: "Are you sure?"
Player: "Yeah, why?"
Me: "All right. Make me a Fortitude save."

.............................................

Player: "I move the sarcophagus, and then I open it."
Me: "...Are you sure? The one that the Warlock said pinged as Strong Magic for five different schools? The one above which you observed the ceiling to be likely to collapse?"
Player: "Good point. I use my bag of tricks..." (rolls)
Me: (sighs with relief)
Player: "A boar! Great! The boar and I move the sarcophagus, and then I open it!"
Me: "...Roll me a Reflex save, and then a Fortitude save."

As far as "for want of a nail" stuff, my PCs have a rod of ropes, some dust of dryness, a pot of marvellous pigments, the angelwing razor*, a fedora of disguise, and a bag of tricks. If there's a problem that can't be solved with some combination of these items, I don't want to encounter it. :smalltongue:





*To balance things a little bit, I made it so that the vorpal enchantment has to be "unlocked" first.

Myou
2009-08-23, 04:14 AM
As a DM I always warn players who are doing something retarded, and I always let them change their action if they realise a mistake.

I don't actually track rations or bedding, etc - in my game if you have rations, a waterskin and a backpack on your sheet you're fine.

mcv
2009-08-23, 07:23 AM
Keep in mind that just asking "are you sure?" doesn't help players much. You could train your players to recognise it as a "you're about to do something stupid" alert, but that doesn't make them think for themselves.

Quite often GMs assume that their idea of common sense is universally recognised, but it rarely is. A good GM should ask "have you considered <factor X>?". If a GM only asks "are you sure?", a smart player should respond with: "am I overlooking something that my character would know?".

Without extra information, it just becomes a "try something else instead" alert.

TheCountAlucard
2009-08-23, 08:37 AM
..."have you considered <factor X>?"I generally only use this when the players are really stumped for what to do - otherwise, they might think I'm "leading them by the nose" or railroading them.