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Morghen
2011-04-05, 09:44 AM
In the first couple of pages right now there are threads concerning the following:

*How to make the PCs run from a combat when they are outmatched (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193690)
*What happens when a PC isn't learning how to play and gets killed over and over (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193699)
*Feeling bad about killing PCs (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193622)
*A possible TPK due to TPD (Total Party Dumbness) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192761)
*This one morphed into "Should you kill the party or fudge rolls to let them live?" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193170)


The problem is this: A lot of players are just no damn good at this stuff.

I have seen the following things happen:

Vampire Game
GM: "Blood spills out of the demon's wound and when it hits the ground it sends up a big stinking cloud as it scorches the earth."
PC (Five RL minutes later): "I need more blood to power my [stuff]. I use [ranged blood-sucking power] on the demon." [Does so.][Screams and dies.]

Swords and Magic Game
[An unknown number of [badass guerrilla-tactic race] are shooting arrows at us from cover at long range. When they hit they're doing a bunch of damage, but they're not hitting that often. We can see where the arrows are coming from and they're not getting any closer. We are traveling by wagon and are on a road when the ambush occurs.]
Lowest-level PC in the party: "I'm gonna sneak through this tall grass and see if I can take 'em all out one at a time." [Sneaks really well for a couple of rounds. Then gets murdered by bad guys.]

Dystopian-Future Guns and Magic Game
[The party has successfully burgled some moderately powerful item from the urban stronghold of [famous epic-level dragon who is a household name worldwide]. As they are making their getaway by helicopter, [dragon] leaves the stronghold from a separate floor and fairly distant part of the building. When this dialogue takes place, [dragon] has not taken ANY offensive action and has not even indicated that he will give chase.]
Whole party (overlapping): "Merde!" "Drek!" "Caca!" "Hit it with a missile!"
Pilot: "I fire a missile at [dragon]."
GM: [Sighs] "Everybody hand me your character sheets."

The group I game with won the [tournament titles] at [cons] for the system that we play something like six out of eight times that we went after it. Some of this had to do with the fact that a bunch of other tables have no idea what they're doing, but it's also due in large part to the fact that we have a GM who kills us if we screw up. In the first year after he took over GMing, he had more than 85 kills (between two separate weekly games and several regional and national tournaments). In the five years since then, it's something like 25 (mostly one weekly session plus the occasional tournament).

I play under one of the best GMs running and because of his willingness to kill us, we're one of the best crews around. This is not hyperbolic ****-measuring. This is plain fact.

But I didn't start this thread to talk about me. I started it to talk about you.

{Scrubbed}

1. You probably need to play more often. Yeah, it's hard. I know. You're playing monthly? Make it twice a month. Or weekly. Yes, your wife will kill you. I know. I've got two kids and I have to pull all kinds of extra duty to get out of that Monday night bedtime ritual every single week. But you're not going to get better playing one epic all-day session six times a year. I'm a teacher and there's a reason we hate those first few weeks after summer break. The kids have forgotten how EVERYTHING works. Same with you. Game more often if you want to be really good.

2. You need to die more often. Chances are, you probably do stupid crap in your game quite often. That needs to get you killed. Yes, if the dice decree that you legitimately escape then kudos to you. But if you know that trying to kill an armored orc by jumping off the top of a tower and landing on him is only going to result in your character getting knocked down to 1 HP because "it's a cool charactery flavory thing" or "it'd really derail the story if he died right now" then next time you're going to try surfing the orc across lava or riding a catapult boulder into the enemy camp.

{Scrubbed}

4. You're playing a game with dice. Those dice provide a chance for random things to happen. A crit and decapitation on the party cleric from orc#5? That does suck. Make another character and start over. After a bunch of deaths, you'll learn what it was you did wrong. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's nothing. (But it's almost always something.)

I'm sure there are more that will occur to me and I'm sure people will want to chime in.

Here's one of the things that motivated me to post this:
I play under an extremely lethal GM. If he rolls a crit on one of us, it stands as a crit. Even in a random encounter, Chump Bad Guy X can kill one of us. Sometimes, we encounter things FAR above our power level and it's up to us to choose whether we want to try and get all ninja on the thing (because we've crushed ridiculously powerful stuff before) or escape from the thing. If we decide that we're going to fight it, then IT FIGHTS BACK. This monster doesn't accept that it should shut up and die because it's fighting heroes. The thing (or things) tries to kill us with everything it has available to it.

I take pleasure in the fact that this lethal GM can't kill me.

Gamer Girl
2011-04-05, 12:39 PM
1.Play more, this is a big one. A lot of players just barley game once a month. and even when they do, they show up late and then have to leave early(the game starts at 6pm, they don't show up until 9pm and then have to leave at 10pm) and then spend like an hour ordering pizza and not even playing the game at all.

Like any other activity, you can make the time if you want too...

2.I've always been a killer Dm. But you sure do see lots of games where the characters never die.

3.I just about always start people at 1st level. It take time to grow into a powerful character. I've seen plenty of high level characters not know anything about their character. Things that would have come up at lower levels.

4.I love the randomness of dice. Anything can happen, good or bad.

---

5.Know the Rules-Far too many players just casually know the rules(''I roll a d20 to hit, right?''). But like any game, knowing the rules makes you a better player. This is especially true with the once a month type players, that forget everything between games.

6.Be a Group-There is a reason why adventures travel in a group. A group is more powerful. But only when it acts as a group. If you have six individuals that are just sort of hanging around each other, then you don't have a group. A group is far more powerful then just six folks.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2011-04-05, 01:12 PM
Vampire Game
GM: "Blood spills out of the demon's wound and when it hits the ground it sends up a big stinking cloud as it scorches the earth."
PC (Five RL minutes later): "I need more blood to power my [stuff]. I use [ranged blood-sucking power] on the demon." [Does so.][Screams and dies.]

Storyteller failure here. Players are human, and receive a LOT of information...you can't expect them to remember everything, even if their characters would. In a PbP campaign where you could read back in time, I'd inflict the punishment. In person, however, I'd remind them of what happened with the demon blood, and ask if they really wanted to do it. If they persisted, they'd at least have a chance to survive, although it might be a small one.

Plus, think of the possibilities: corruption, slow poison, demonic influence...these things are perfect fodder for a WoD game, and this is a great opportunity to let them in. Gives your player a penalty for his actions that is more interesting than instant death, and possibly brings in a bunch of cool new plot lines.


Swords and Magic Game
[An unknown number of [badass guerrilla-tactic race] are shooting arrows at us from cover at long range. When they hit they're doing a bunch of damage, but they're not hitting that often. We can see where the arrows are coming from and they're not getting any closer. We are traveling by wagon and are on a road when the ambush occurs.]
Lowest-level PC in the party: "I'm gonna sneak through this tall grass and see if I can take 'em all out one at a time." [Sneaks really well for a couple of rounds. Then gets murdered by bad guys.]

Again, possibly an overly harsh penalty for a creative solution. Personally, I want players to think outside the box, and the average gamer, when presented with this situations, will go "Enemies? That must mean we're expected to fight them." Killing him seems, once again, a bit harsh...unless the DM has already shown in that campaign that not all violent encounters are supposed to turn into combat.


Dystopian-Future Guns and Magic Game
[The party has successfully burgled some moderately powerful item from the urban stronghold of [famous epic-level dragon who is a household name worldwide]. As they are making their getaway by helicopter, [dragon] leaves the stronghold from a separate floor and fairly distant part of the building. When this dialogue takes place, [dragon] has not taken ANY offensive action and has not even indicated that he will give chase.]
Whole party (overlapping): "Merde!" "Drek!" "Caca!" "Hit it with a missile!"
Pilot: "I fire a missile at [dragon]."
GM: [Sighs] "Everybody hand me your character sheets."


And here the GM lost a perfect opportunity for an epic dragon v. helicopter aerial chase, a powerful and angry recurring villain, and what could have been one of the most cinematic and memorable encounters in an entire campaign. All because he wasn't ready to adjust his vision of the encounter to fit what the players would find fun. To me, that's bad DMing, although I appreciate that others disagree.

In short, from all of these, I think that the players are fine, although possibly a little to keen on combat and a little less skilled in logical role-play. The main problem, in my mind, is the GM in these situations, who could have turned any of these into truly interesting moments.

You guys play this game like a contest, it seems. Myself, I play it like a story first, game second. The GM is part of the adventure, not something sitting there waiting to kill PCs. Sometimes the rules and the plans take a back seat to good storytelling.

And the most important part? When playing in a story-centric game, you don't need to be a good player. You need to be a good role-player, which is something entirely different. Some of the best games I've ever been in have involved new players without a firm grasp of the rules (but with an amazing ability to convey a personality and make their character seem like a real person), and been run by a GM who held plot, story, and player fun over the rules.

So, in short, I disagree with pretty much everything you've said. There is no NEED to be a "good player," unless your games tend that way. Your definition of "better player" is the exact opposite of mine.

Just wanted to get another viewpoint out there.

Xefas
2011-04-05, 01:22 PM
I think what a lot of people don't take into account is that Games are miniature social engineering devices, and that if the problem isn't inherently caused by something outside of the game (personal drama), then whatever behavior the players exhibit in-game is solely the cause of the Game's design.

I imagine most are going to disagree with me, but to that I'd just sincerely ask you to play more and different kinds of games, and learn some game theory. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory)

EDIT: (This applies to GMs too, if that wasn't clear. A 'Bad' GM playing D&D, if they play Apocalypse World and follow the rules, I guarantee will be a far better GM just because of the design of the game.)

EDIT#2: (Although GMing is a bit more complicated just because of the history of the GM's role in RPG design through the history of the medium. Suffice it to say, a GM can be good in a bad system, but mostly because the system doesn't actually address the GM. I could go on explaining about that for hours.)

Djinn_in_Tonic
2011-04-05, 01:24 PM
I think what a lot of people don't take into account is that Games are miniature social engineering devices, and that if the problem isn't inherently caused by something outside of the game (personal drama), then whatever behavior the players exhibit in-game is solely the cause of the Game's design.

Completely agreed. Hence why a lot of D&D style games devolve into hack-n-slash adventures, for example.

Yukitsu
2011-04-05, 01:40 PM
This looks more like an example of "good players are ones that read the DMs mind." than good players to me.

Tengu_temp
2011-04-05, 02:26 PM
I play under one of the best GMs running and because of his willingness to kill us, we're one of the best crews around. This is not hyperbolic ****-measuring. This is plain fact.

As someone who's good (though not super-awesome) at both powergaming and tactics, I'm going to say that neither of those make a group "one of the best crews around". To get that title you must have good communication, understand the system you're playing (both mechanically and fluff-wise), and, most importantly, be awesome roleplayers willing to work with each other and the DM to create an experience that you will remember forever. And most of those are subjective.

Sillycomic
2011-04-05, 02:30 PM
Yeah, I'm not sure I get the point of this.

The title says "How to Make Better Players."

So, I was assuming this is some sort of GM guide to up the game of your players.

But the only advice you give is for the GM to kill off his players more than usual? (I'll get to that pont later)

Most of your points don't come across as GM guides. They come across as things either players need to learn or just some facts about role playing that most people need to realize. So, I don't understand why it sometimes comes off as a GM guide and sometimes a Player guide.

Ok, let's go into specifics:

1. Play more often. All right, I'll give you that. You want to be better at anything you need to practice.

2. Die more often. Seriously? How exactly do you die more often? If I'm playing a sensible character who doesn't take needless risks (like opening locked chests when I'm the wizard) then I'm going to die as often as I usually die.

And this point brings me to my questions of focus. Is this essay designed to be pointed at players who need to be better at gaming, or at GM's who need to train their players to be better?

Because, if it's a guide for players, I want to ask you again.... as a player how does killing your character more often make you a better player? How do you kill your character more often in a game without taking needless stupid risks?

And, if this is aimed at GM's, how does one go about killing their characters more often? Just turning it into a horror survival game, upping the DC of every bad guy by like 5 or 6 levels? How does that make for a better game?

I just think a GM sitting down to prepare a session for the night with an idea like, "I need to kill more character in my group so they are better players" seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

3. Start at level 1. Ok. I can see that.

4. Random dice are random.

Again, I don't know what the point of this is. Are you saying that as a player you are better because you understand that dice are random? Are you saying as a GM you shouldn't fudge numbers because sometimes a random orc critting with his great axe makes for better players?

Plus, in explaining number 4 you say this:


After a bunch of deaths, you'll learn what it was you did wrong.

How does figuring out that random dice in the game roll randomly help you learn what you did was wrong?

I make a cleric and a half orc crits him with a great axe. Ok, I died.

So then I make a ranger and he rolls a natural 1 on a reflex save and falls off a tall building. Ok, I died.

So then I make a paladin and the rogue doesn't quite find all of the traps in a hidden room so I get crushed by a very large boulder. Ok, I died.

So...

After all of this, other than finding out that random dice are random, tell me what exactly did I do wrong? What is the great lesson I'm supposed to learn to make me a better player? Other than to never get that attached to low level characters...


I just wish this thing had more focus, or at least 1 focus. You keep switching back and forth between what makes a good player and what makes a good GM, with no real transition between the two.

Plus most of the advice doesn't make any sense. Although, I think if you just focus on helping players be better players... or helping GM's to make better players that might fix things.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-05, 02:33 PM
Your views are interesting, OP, and hearken to a very 2e DnD mentality.

I'll give my two cents briefly about what makes good players in a Burning Wheel game.

1. The willingness to buy enemies and horrible character flaws at chargen.
2. The eagerness to jump headlong into danger, risk everything for your beliefs, because they're SO IMPORTANT.
3. The ability to rise up and accomplish what's right, regardless of your character's beliefs, through pain, fear, stress and overwhelming difficulty.
4. Stuff like good acting and storytelling abilities are kinda useful, I guess.
5. Oh, and system mastery. The better you know the rules, the better you can tell your story.

Cheers!

Tyndmyr
2011-04-05, 02:40 PM
1. You probably need to play more often. Yeah, it's hard. I know. You're playing monthly? Make it twice a month. Or weekly. Yes, your wife will kill you. I know. I've got two kids and I have to pull all kinds of extra duty to get out of that Monday night bedtime ritual every single week. But you're not going to get better playing one epic all-day session six times a year. I'm a teacher and there's a reason we hate those first few weeks after summer break. The kids have forgotten how EVERYTHING works. Same with you. Game more often if you want to be really good.

Yup. Earlier today, I recited, from memory, a list of metamagic feats applicable to a character concept. In 10pt font, it took approximately three pages, though it did include descriptions. Why do I know all this? Simple. I play all the time. I play twice a week in my main group, and occasionally bounce into other games. I also do the occasional marathon gaming group. There's no way to learn a game like actually playing it.


2. You need to die more often. Chances are, you probably do stupid crap in your game quite often. That needs to get you killed. Yes, if the dice decree that you legitimately escape then kudos to you. But if you know that trying to kill an armored orc by jumping off the top of a tower and landing on him is only going to result in your character getting knocked down to 1 HP because "it's a cool charactery flavory thing" or "it'd really derail the story if he died right now" then next time you're going to try surfing the orc across lava or riding a catapult boulder into the enemy camp.

Dear god yes. I've never accidentally TPKed a group, mind you...but that's entirely different from no TPKs at all. If the words "you all die" have never come up as a real possibility, then either your players are extremely smart, or you're being soft on them because you dislike killing them.

Death is part of many great stories, often in vast quantities. Success is meaningless if there isn't a possibility of failure.


3. START AT 1ST LEVEL OMG ARE YOU KIDDING. You're playing Count My Loot? Cool. Start with your fighter as king. The assassin in the party is the head of the Thieves Guild? Cool. But if you want to learn how to play, start at low power and work up. There's no substitute for hard work. It's not grinding. It's learning.

I essentially always start at level 1. I find that a lot of theoretical builds only work at, or near level 20. That's a shame. The majority of the game is spent getting there. Optimization has a place at all levels.


4. You're playing a game with dice. Those dice provide a chance for random things to happen. A crit and decapitation on the party cleric from orc#5? That does suck. Make another character and start over. After a bunch of deaths, you'll learn what it was you did wrong. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's nothing. (But it's almost always something.)

Sometimes it can be simply "don't give orc #5 a chance to hit you". Bad luck can often be mitigated by avoiding the chance of it arising to begin with. Go toe to toe with orcs enough at first level, and odds of being crit to death rise rapidly.

Sometimes, you'll know you're taking a risk in return for a longer turn payoff, and that's fine...but many people underestimate such risks simply because many DMs won't capitalize on them.

I like this thread.

Morghen
2011-04-05, 02:41 PM
Players are human, and receive a LOT of information...you can't expect them to remember everything, even if their characters would.Yeah, I cut it down some. When it happened, a bigger deal was made. But just the same... That's what I'm talking about when I say "Some people are no damn good at this stuff."

Player 1, whining: "But I didn't reMEMber that the demon blood melted the concreeeeeete!"
Player 2, shrugging: "Well, you'll remember to pay attention to that kind of thing in the future I guess."

A better player would have remembered.


Personally, I want players to think outside the box, and the average gamer, when presented with this situations, will go "Enemies? That must mean we're expected to fight them."I've added an underline for emphasis. A monster existing doesn't mean you're expected to fight it. Sometimes you're supposed to sneak around it. Or bargain with it. Or get information from it. Or recruit it. Or other options not limited to "Hulk SMASH!"


And here the GM lost a perfect opportunity for an epic dragon v. helicopter aerial chase, a powerful and angry recurring villain, and what could have been one of the most cinematic and memorable encounters in an entire campaign.I'm not going to go into details of the specific system, but in-world everybody knows who this specific dragon is. He's got stats of "YES" and everybody knows it. If he wants a chopper full of dudes to be dead, he's going to kill them and EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD knows it. The module had flavor text explaining this just in case they were new to the system. Why they shot a missile at an unkillable monster is beyond me.


You guys play this game like a contest, it seems. Myself, I play it like a story first, game second. The GM is part of the adventure, not something sitting there waiting to kill PCs. Sometimes the rules and the plans take a back seat to good storytelling.I don't like an unrealistic story. Yes, magic exists. Yes, I'm playing a vampire/ogre/elf/double-wookie/etc. If dangerous things with swords/claws/spells don't have a chance of killing me, I'm out (unless I know in advance that we're playing Count My Loot).

The GM isn't there to just tell the players what awesome things happen when they try to go all Legolas on a war elephant or when the guy with the character based on Cyrano de Bergerac decides that Duke Blahblah is trying to match wits with him and needs a good thrashing. Playing in a RP-heavy game doesn't eliminate bad players.


When playing in a story-centric game, you don't need to be a good player. You need to be a good role-player, which is something entirely different.Agreed, and I'm glad you brought this up. I've played in games that were extremely story-heavy and low on combat. Those are fine and good and I like them, but I was mostly addressing the topics that I've seen in the last few days from DMs wondering how to keep their PCs from trying to have babies with vampire ogres so the badass offspring can be their next character.

A couple of years ago, one of the weekly games at my FLGS had, as their Face, a character with a high charisma and a player with zero social skills. He was supposed to get a [thing] from a woman at a tavern. He talked to her for about 10 seconds, she bantered with him, he stammered, and the social encounter ended with him saying, "Uh... uh... I punch her in the face and grab the [thing]." What would you have done as a GM? He got the [thing]. Would you have given him a second chance, like with the demon blood? The player might have forgotten that people don't like being punched in the face.

What you think I mean by "good player" and what I actually mean by "good player" are different. I don't mean, "He's awesome in combat and it doesn't matter what kind of character he's playing." I mean, "He plays well with others, he knows what's going on in the game, he doesn't make stupid decisions, he knows how to communicate effectively with his group, he knows how to mitigate any mistakes his group makes."


This looks more like an example of "good players are ones that read the DMs mind." than good players to me.Whew! Good thing you don't have to think about it!

Morghen
2011-04-05, 02:51 PM
To get that title you must have good communication, understand the system you're playing (both mechanically and fluff-wise), and, most importantly, be awesome roleplayers willing to work with each other and the DM to create an experience that you will remember forever. And most of those are subjective.I gave the short version. You are correct.


Arggh! My eyes! This is so unfocused!I know. I apologize. I started in and then got carried away. I'll address your actual arguments later. I gots errands.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-05, 02:53 PM
I'm not going to go into details of the specific system, but in-world everybody knows who this specific dragon is. He's got stats of "YES" and everybody knows it. If he wants a chopper full of dudes to be dead, he's going to kill them and EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD knows it. The module had flavor text explaining this just in case they were new to the system. Why they shot a missile at an unkillable monster is beyond me.

D&D in particular tends to encourage this attitude, because killing things is the most common method of conflict resolution. It's usually quite effective. Some people are bad at telling the difference between "usually a good choice" and "always a great choice".

And this brings me to another point...don't be a one note player. Don't build your character around doing one single trick over, and over, and over again. Whenever that trick ceases to work, you tend to become worthless. Also, it's boring.



5.Know the Rules-Far too many players just casually know the rules(''I roll a d20 to hit, right?''). But like any game, knowing the rules makes you a better player. This is especially true with the once a month type players, that forget everything between games.

Some people also don't bother trying to learn the rules. I know of long time players that have never bothered to read through the phb. They own no other books, and even, in some cases, not the phb. If you don't bother to read the rules, you won't know how to play the game.


6.Be a Group-There is a reason why adventures travel in a group. A group is more powerful. But only when it acts as a group. If you have six individuals that are just sort of hanging around each other, then you don't have a group. A group is far more powerful then just six folks.

This is a common failing. Everyone gets wrapped up in how awesome they are, and fails to consider the group, or even actively sabatoges them. Consider, once one person starts stealing from team members, other team members start investing resources in stopping him. They may try to steal them back. The details are irrelevant, but the point is now that the party as a whole is weaker. Good players keep in mind the strengths of the rest of the party and work accordingly.

Goober4473
2011-04-05, 04:17 PM
You guys play this game like a contest, it seems. Myself, I play it like a story first, game second. The GM is part of the adventure, not something sitting there waiting to kill PCs. Sometimes the rules and the plans take a back seat to good storytelling.

And the most important part? When playing in a story-centric game, you don't need to be a good player. You need to be a good role-player, which is something entirely different. Some of the best games I've ever been in have involved new players without a firm grasp of the rules (but with an amazing ability to convey a personality and make their character seem like a real person), and been run by a GM who held plot, story, and player fun over the rules.

+1

I enjoy having smart players with system mastery and a high degree of problem-solving ability, but ultimately if that's icing on the cake (or the cake udner the icing if you like icing more than cake). I'm not lying in wait to punish any small mistake a player makes. If they help tell a great story, then I'll remind them of things their character knows, ask them if they're sure before they do something really dumb, etc. Sure, they may die, and if they make mistakes, bad things will happen, but only as far as it's interesting and makes a good story. Sometimes a shocking random death is just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes it isn't.

And, as an added note, I think that a truly good player is willing to knowingly make a mistake because it's what their character would do or because they know it will make the story better. Not that they're out looking to do this at every opportunity, or that playing smart won't make a good story. But the willingness is there, should it ever be needed.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2011-04-05, 04:45 PM
Yeah, I cut it down some. When it happened, a bigger deal was made. But just the same... That's what I'm talking about when I say "Some people are no damn good at this stuff."

Player 1, whining: "But I didn't reMEMber that the demon blood melted the concreeeeeete!"
Player 2, shrugging: "Well, you'll remember to pay attention to that kind of thing in the future I guess."

A better player would have remembered.

Um, what? No. You can't expect even the best of players to have 100% retention. The GM should be reminding them of things their characters wouldn't forget. That's part of his job.

Further, was there ever any indication, aside from the flavorful description, that the demon blood would be fatal if drained? If not, that's an error on the GM's part, although the player acted a little stupidly. You can't just up and penalize a player with death for something like that: it's the equivalent of the old "sphere of annihilation in the statue's mouth" nonsense. A single moment of forgetfulness of what is in this case a descriptive passive shouldn't result in death...I know many DMs who's use that description as mere flavor, and allow the blood drain to work perfectly. Seems like this is the "you must read the GM's mind" thing at its best.


I'm not going to go into details of the specific system, but in-world everybody knows who this specific dragon is. He's got stats of "YES" and everybody knows it. If he wants a chopper full of dudes to be dead, he's going to kill them and EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD knows it. The module had flavor text explaining this just in case they were new to the system. Why they shot a missile at an unkillable monster is beyond me.

Why is the monster unkillable? Further, why does that mean the PCs have to die? My method is just as good for the story, campaign, and world, throws an exciting encounter into the mix, and has them on the run from a terrifying dragon, and, more importantly, has them feeling good about their actions, since they had fun. Dying just isn't fun, if you've invested anything in your character.


I don't like an unrealistic story. Yes, magic exists. Yes, I'm playing a vampire/ogre/elf/double-wookie/etc. If dangerous things with swords/claws/spells don't have a chance of killing me, I'm out (unless I know in advance that we're playing Count My Loot).

"Having a chance" and "killing you instantly if you make a single mistake" are two very different things. Most of your examples have fallen into the latter category.


The GM isn't there to just tell the players what awesome things happen when they try to go all Legolas on a war elephant or when the guy with the character based on Cyrano de Bergerac decides that Duke Blahblah is trying to match wits with him and needs a good thrashing.

True. The GM is there to make sure the players are having a good time. You don't ever need to be a good player to have fun, even in a serious game. Further, you CAN be good at the game without meeting the criteria you set out, because the game itself is a fluid form that is made to be bent to individual playstyles.


...but I was mostly addressing the topics that I've seen in the last few days from DMs wondering how to keep their PCs from trying to have babies with vampire ogres so the badass offspring can be their next character.

This problem stems from taking the mechanics to seriously, or from the players just having a different idea of fun from the DM. It's not about how GOOD of a player you are. Some of the best "gamers" I know do this, and some of the WORST D&D players I know, as aforementioned, are some of the best at portraying a character. The latter of these would never attempt these ridiculous things...not because they've mastered the game, but because their character would never do it. If the DM were out to kill them or heavily penalize their actions, they'd start fighting back with crazy stuff.


A couple of years ago, one of the weekly games at my FLGS had, as their Face, a character with a high charisma and a player with zero social skills. He was supposed to get a [thing] from a woman at a tavern. He talked to her for about 10 seconds, she bantered with him, he stammered, and the social encounter ended with him saying, "Uh... uh... I punch her in the face and grab the [thing]." What would you have done as a GM? He got the [thing]. Would you have given him a second chance, like with the demon blood? The player might have forgotten that people don't like being punched in the face.

In this case? No. Forgetting part of a description is VERY different from forgetting that people don't like being punched in the face. Apples and oranges. If, however, he had made a social mistake or, say, mentioning a nobleman's traitorous mistress in casual conversation (enraging the nobleman), and was a character who should have known better, I might inform him of that fact and give him a second change. In the above case, if the PLAYER is having trouble, I'd give him the time to think, AND give him a second change. It's not for my to penalize him for playing a character that's very different from himself. Maybe giving him that chance will make the next encounter end better, and improve him as a player overall.


I mean, "He plays well with others, he knows what's going on in the game, he doesn't make stupid decisions, he knows how to communicate effectively with his group, he knows how to mitigate any mistakes his group makes."

You don't come off as making that point. That's a very different point, with very different proof, than what the arguments below are attempting to demonstrate. Perhaps you need to come at this from a different angle? 'cause what I'm getting is that you're telling me how I should be playing my game, and not only do I think that's incorrect, but it's also coming off as more elitist that I think you meant it. I'm very interested in this discussion, by the way...don't take anything I say as a personal attack. This is one of the more intriguing threads I've seen in a while. :smallbiggrin:

The aforementioned arguments

1. You probably need to play more often. Yeah, it's hard. I know. You're playing monthly? Make it twice a month. Or weekly. Yes, your wife will kill you. I know. I've got two kids and I have to pull all kinds of extra duty to get out of that Monday night bedtime ritual every single week. But you're not going to get better playing one epic all-day session six times a year. I'm a teacher and there's a reason we hate those first few weeks after summer break. The kids have forgotten how EVERYTHING works. Same with you. Game more often if you want to be really good.

2. You need to die more often. Chances are, you probably do stupid crap in your game quite often. That needs to get you killed. Yes, if the dice decree that you legitimately escape then kudos to you. But if you know that trying to kill an armored orc by jumping off the top of a tower and landing on him is only going to result in your character getting knocked down to 1 HP because "it's a cool charactery flavory thing" or "it'd really derail the story if he died right now" then next time you're going to try surfing the orc across lava or riding a catapult boulder into the enemy camp.

3. START AT 1ST LEVEL OMG ARE YOU KIDDING. You're playing Count My Loot? Cool. Start with your fighter as king. The assassin in the party is the head of the Thieves Guild? Cool. But if you want to learn how to play, start at low power and work up. There's no substitute for hard work. It's not grinding. It's learning.

4. You're playing a game with dice. Those dice provide a chance for random things to happen. A crit and decapitation on the party cleric from orc#5? That does suck. Make another character and start over. After a bunch of deaths, you'll learn what it was you did wrong. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's nothing. (But it's almost always something.)

I'm sure there are more that will occur to me and I'm sure people will want to chime in.

Here's one of the things that motivated me to post this:
I play under an extremely lethal GM. If he rolls a crit on one of us, it stands as a crit. Even in a random encounter, Chump Bad Guy X can kill one of us. Sometimes, we encounter things FAR above our power level and it's up to us to choose whether we want to try and get all ninja on the thing (because we've crushed ridiculously powerful stuff before) or escape from the thing. If we decide that we're going to fight it, then IT FIGHTS BACK. This monster doesn't accept that it should shut up and die because it's fighting heroes. The thing (or things) tries to kill us with everything it has available to it.

As support to my argument...almost every GM I've played with has told me I'm one of the best players they've ever DMed.

I do not play often, except online. In-person games are few and far between. Most of my online gaming is free-form.

I have had exactly one character die through actions that did not stem from my own desire to have the character die for the sake of the plot. Exactly one.

I have only started at 1st level twice, in games that went anywhere.

We always value story over dice. Almost always, at least.

And yet, I am a very good player.

Dsurion
2011-04-05, 04:45 PM
You know what I think makes really good players? Talking to the players instead of the message boards. Oh, sure, there are plenty of things you can talk about that, in theory, make a person a better player, but if no one understands they did something stupid, they'll keep doing it, even if it means bad results every time.

Granted, I think it's a little harder to bring up tabletop conversations with people you don't see that often, or aren't that interested in the game itself (casual players).

erikun
2011-04-05, 05:44 PM
I haven't seen an increase in the DM-advice threads. Rather, all the build-recommendations or houserule-questions or "Do you think that the Monk sucks this week?" threads have been shuffled to their respective subforums, meaning the advice threads stay on the first page. Visible threads get more conversation and stay alive longer.

That said, I do have a few responses.


You need to die more often. Chances are, you probably do stupid crap in your game quite often. That needs to get you killed. Yes, if the dice decree that you legitimately escape then kudos to you. But if you know that trying to kill an armored orc by jumping off the top of a tower and landing on him is only going to result in your character getting knocked down to 1 HP because "it's a cool charactery flavory thing" or "it'd really derail the story if he died right now" then next time you're going to try surfing the orc across lava or riding a catapult boulder into the enemy camp.
The issue is that the expected, realistic choice is not typically the best choice by the system. If someone is going to split your buddy's head open with an axe, the best instinct would be to jump on the guy's back and ruin his shot, or at least force him to get you off before doing anything. If someone is charging you across the field, the best weapon is a longbow. And if you are on the roof and someone is passing below you, dropping on them (especially with a weapon) is deadly.

Looking at the system, though, these choices are terrible. Attempting a grapple, even to someone's "back", is effectively suicide that has nearly no chance of stopping them, even if you succeed. Jumping off a roof grants you no bonuses, damages you, and would probably do less damage than simply throwing your sword at them. And I don't even need to mention how bad archery is.

Then again, system vs. GM expectations or simple GM descriptions can get a player killed, regardless of the thought process behind the situation involved. Regarding the catapult example, boulders do somewhere around 2d8 damage (based on the Giant entries) and a fall of 50' does 5d6 damage. Hopping onto a catapult tossing boulders should not do more than 7 dice of damage, and any 7th level character is more than capable of taking that much. Why, then - taking an impartial look at the system rules - would launching oneself out of a catapult be considered an automatic suicide? There is nothing to indicate that the character was in any danger of death, beyond GM fiat that it "shouldn't happen".

GM descriptions can be just as notorious. For the Vampire example - we're talking about creatures that can drink boiling acid and suffer disembowlment without even taking damage. Why would drinking acidic blood be dangerous? Unless the GM had decided that this blood was particularly dangerous, and can damage vampires just as well as fire or sunlight.

The players will learn, of course. The problem is that they'll learn to not trust the GM's descriptions or decisions, though.


I play under an extremely lethal GM. If he rolls a crit on one of us, it stands as a crit. Even in a random encounter, Chump Bad Guy X can kill one of us. Sometimes, we encounter things FAR above our power level and it's up to us to choose whether we want to try and get all ninja on the thing (because we've crushed ridiculously powerful stuff before) or escape from the thing.
This does not produce good roleplaying or even strategically intelligent play. It produces system mastery, specifically statistic and monster block memorization. The players aren't treating the feminine figure with snakes for hair and a lair full of statues as a creature with a potentially deadly gaze that has been terrorizing the local town; they treat it as an encounter with a DC 15 SoD gaze attack, 33 HP and AC 15. It just becomes a memory game, with reactions depending on how well the players can recall the particular monster by description rather than characters responding to what they would know about the monster.

I've also found that such play provokes book-throwing and pencil-breaking when they encounter anything homebrewed or GM-created. Original monsters, no matter how appropriate, do not allow the player to "win" because they have no way for the player to prepare for them. (Note that this is far different from having no way for the character to prepare.)


I take pleasure in the fact that this lethal GM can't kill me.
If your GM cannot kill you, you have an incredibly incompotent GM.

Yukitsu
2011-04-05, 05:48 PM
Whew! Good thing you don't have to think about it!

No, I did all that when I read through those threads you cited. Most of them go back to a DM who seems to take some offense to players having contrary views as to what makes a good or interesting game.

Your actual post leaves little room for relevant thought. It's a list of events that you think support your conclusion, but without any further elaboration on the DM, situation, player in character knowledge, backstory etc. don't really demonstrate much. The latter half being a list of your pet peeves in role playing, though to be honest I utterly fail to see how avoiding all of those faults will make me want to crack a beer and spend 5-6 hours of my week with the guy. Practically sounds like the guy wants to make playing RPGs his second career. But that's your examples, which you can't take analysis from and your opinion. There's nothing really to think about.

Coidzor
2011-04-05, 06:06 PM
3. START AT 1ST LEVEL OMG ARE YOU KIDDING. You're playing Count My Loot? Cool. Start with your fighter as king. The assassin in the party is the head of the Thieves Guild? Cool. But if you want to learn how to play, start at low power and work up. There's no substitute for hard work. It's not grinding. It's learning.

Yeah. No. I've learned more about D&D 3.5 from having to do the work to make a mid-level character on the cusp of going into high-level ranges such that I also had to plan out his immediate and longterm progression as well as his roots. Much, much more system exposure and thinking necessary than a game that starts at level 1 and never gets past 6 or 7.

navar100
2011-04-05, 06:11 PM
I've had characters die. I have been in a party where a party member died. Sad, yes.

However, I refuse to play with a DM who delights in such a thing happening, aka the Killer DM. The DM is not the players' enemy. It is not the DM's job to kill player characters.

You become a better player by doing what a player in my group did - read the rules, ask questions on how to improve, take educated chances. He learned how to synergize feats, apply tactics, and knew when to apply his own ideas instead of the one teaching him (me). Now he hardly needs my help at all.

There is another factor - you need to care about your character and the game world. If all you care about is killing things and taking their stuff, then unintentionally you will lose yourself in the dice rolling and your character will die. It's ok to play a mercenary, a character who wants to kill things and take their stuff as payment, but your character still needs a personality and you need to interact with NPCs on a more than peripheral basis. The player I was teaching was doing this already.

Just_Ice
2011-04-05, 06:20 PM
This thread is silly and seems like an excuse for Morghen to tell us how hardcore we are and how our fun or meaningful interactions/stories are badwrongfun and too easy and we need his help desperately because seriously what 3.5 needs is more tournament-style players more than anything, yep

Last I checked not everyone who isn't dodging death every nanosecond is playing "count the loot" and are trying to develop characters or face fewer mechanics-based difficulties and perhaps more ethical ones, or logistical ones, or what have you. Is killing a lich more genuine than solving a kingdom-wide drought without a single armed conflict?

More importantly than that is that this thread is about DnD _3.5_. When cats can kill level 1 characters with a bit of luck, players aren't really good insofar as competent. Granted, there's always the group that did the tomb of horrors first try, but that's the exception rather than anything resembling the rule. Let's not even get into how random d20 rolls and dm fiat, it makes "being a good player" pretty hard, at least in my eyes.

Playing more DnD that doesn't hold your hand is likely to make you more survivable, but not more than, say, playing as a cleric or druid over a samurai. You make a good point about starting at level 1, though a lot of tournament play involves automatic high levels (and build is king).

So, yeah. Weak.

Ytaker
2011-04-05, 06:45 PM
I do agree with you, that death helps a lot in making you better for tournaments. However, for teaching players who haven't grasped the principles, there's a better way.

Situation 1. The player forgets a key fact about the system and does something stupid. The solution to this is not killing them. That gives them weak memories. The solution is repeating this system aspect with many different scenarios so that they memorize it. Repetition is the key to memorization.

In this scenario, they should sometimes meet drugged up individuals, whose blood gives various bonuses and penalties, so they know that listening to your tldr flavour text is actually helpful. Or they should meet supernatural beings whose blood helps or hinders them. The first demon they attack should do severe damage upon ingestion of their blood, not kill them.

Flavour is a poor teacher. Actions teach. You need to feel those principles well so you know how to pick up on them in other situations. It's a fairly wide principle, watch what you eat or wear or touch.

Situation 2. His companions should have restrained him. He forgot an obvious principle, never split up.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3957828010

1. Never Split UP.
2. Never say, I Will Be Right Back.

That's something he'll have to learn. An extended lesson would have worked better, though. Him being captured easily and slowly tortured to death. Make it possible to survive, but incredibly humiliating and unlikely.

Situation 3. A GMPC (or god or whatever) with unlimited powers kills the players when they follow the course of action which serves them best in 99% of situations. Shoot at it.

It's questionable that they'll learn the right message if you kill them instantly. The players have to learn the costs of fighting and running and diplomacy, which takes a while. They might just learn that you should avoid doing anything around GMPCs because the DM will bitch at you if you touch their precious perfect fairies.

Death is a rough and unspecific, if potent teacher. Minor consequences serve as a better educator. They're a lot easier to apply too, since it doesn't take a player out of the game. Obviously, you have to grasp these principles at a tournament because you won't know how that DM plays it.

I think a lot of people here are thinking about the game from the perspective of enjoying themselves and having a good time with friends, not about winning. A lot of the disconnect comes from that.

Lord.Sorasen
2011-04-05, 07:15 PM
A lot of this is good, but I want to make a couple suggestions?

- I feel like, while this is titled "how to make better players" it really is much closer to "how to make your characters more effective in combat." This is important to many, I get that, but to many people it's just not that important. A character's combat prowess isn't as important to me, for instance, as the way that character's actions tell the story. Once again, I'm not saying you should be writing this guide to do anything other than what it does, but the titling should be specific.

- It's honestly frustrating how you talk down to people with different playstyles. For instance, your referring to the game as "count-the-loot", and describe a playstyle different from yours as less intense. Perhaps, I'll throw this out there, the game could be an epic storytelling adventure, where having the destiny bound characters die early on would hurt the advancing plot. Such a thing can be just as intense as a survival challenge as you've been talking about. You go as far as to state that your players are "better" than others, and that this is not even subjective. I feel this problem would be avoided if you made it clear in the intro that this post was about a specific sort of game, and then didn't mention other styles again.

- There's no way for me to tell whether you refer to the one running the campaign or to the player here. "Die more often" seems to make no sense, as has been stated before, given it seems to be addressed to the player, but it's something that is actually entirely in the DM's hand.

- Items 2 and 4 are actually the same advice. Both mean "allow death to happen sometimes."

Coidzor
2011-04-05, 07:25 PM
It could deal with keeping immersion in the game up rather than low and some tips on pounding roleplaying habits, any roleplaying habits into someone.

Warlawk
2011-04-05, 07:42 PM
I play under one of the best GMs running and because of his willingness to kill us, we're one of the best crews around. This is not hyperbolic ****-measuring. This is plain fact.

Your post lost anything resembling credibility right here. Gaming is different things to different people. Stating as fact that you're "one of the best crews around" just makes you look like a posturing e-thug. It completely invalidates the rest of your post.

Just a hint, there is no objective definition of a "good gaming group" so making claims otherwise just puts you in a bad place.

Coming from someone who is a die hard competitive pvp player in MMOs and used to enjoy competitive RTS back in the days when SC1 was new, I don't enjoy that kind of play in my tabletop RPGs. I'm very capable of it, but super lethal super competitive tabletop gaming is boring. But... according to you, regardless of the fact that I have great fun gaming with friends, and more importantly, with my wife, you and your crew are better gamers because you play in more lethal games and lose more PCs than I do.

Pardon me while I go somewhere else so I won't be laughing in your face.

Jerthanis
2011-04-05, 08:29 PM
I've added an underline for emphasis. A monster existing doesn't mean you're expected to fight it. Sometimes you're supposed to sneak around it. Or bargain with it. Or get information from it. Or recruit it. Or other options not limited to "Hulk SMASH!"

So... sometimes you have to read the DM's mind?



I'm not going to go into details of the specific system, but in-world everybody knows who this specific dragon is. He's got stats of "YES" and everybody knows it. If he wants a chopper full of dudes to be dead, he's going to kill them and EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD knows it. The module had flavor text explaining this just in case they were new to the system. Why they shot a missile at an unkillable monster is beyond me.

Missiles, in the real world, do (#)*@loads of damage to other airplane scale objects. If they hit the dragon with a missile, it's unreasonable to expect he wouldn't be seriously injured or killed. This is like saying, "He was a legendary martial artist and the whole world knows it, and the PCs tried to shoot him with a gun, what idiots!"

So... read the DM's mind.



Death is part of many great stories, often in vast quantities. Success is meaningless if there isn't a possibility of failure.

Yeah, I remember all those books I've read over the years where all the characters die on page 125 and the next 200 are all blank, just so it would be unexpected.

Wait...

The death of all the characters is the END of a few great stories, but most of the time, great stories have characters grow and change over the course of the story, becoming more mature and complete individuals by the end and death is a pretty big 'reset' button on your character growth. (assuming no ressurection.)

This seems to be a thread on how you make a better group by driving away all the players who don't have psychic powers until you find some who think like you or can read your mind.

Kerrin
2011-04-05, 08:41 PM
Maybe my perception is incorrect, but my impression of the original post of this thread thst it is possibly written from a competitive player vs DM or tournament point of view.

SPoD
2011-04-05, 08:56 PM
By way of refutation of the OP's point of view, I present The Order of the Stick.

They make incredibly stupid decisions over and over again. They frequently get caught up in their personal issues to the exclusion of effectiveness. Several of the members seem like greater obstacles than the enemies they fight.

And yet, it's a great story. I would love to play in that campaign, with Rich as DM. I feel like the OP and his GM would have killed the PCs in strip #4 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0004.html) and then patted themselves on the back all day for teaching them how to game properly. And thus the story would have never existed.

Warlawk
2011-04-05, 09:02 PM
They make incredibly stupid decisions over and over again. They frequently get caught up in their personal issues to the exclusion of effectiveness. Several of the members seem like greater obstacles than the enemies they fight.


I'll take imperfect characters making bad decisions and acting like real people while telling a good story over "winning" any day of the week and twice on saturday (since that's our gaming night ;) ).

Guess that makes us bad gamers.

ericgrau
2011-04-05, 09:05 PM
Lethality, danger and challenge good. Fun too. One shot no roll killing a player because he forgot something you said 10 minutes ago bad.

Telok
2011-04-05, 09:33 PM
Missiles, in the real world, do (#)*@loads of damage to other airplane scale objects. If they hit the dragon with a missile, it's unreasonable to expect he wouldn't be seriously injured or killed. This is like saying, "He was a legendary martial artist and the whole world knows it, and the PCs tried to shoot him with a gun, what idiots!"


The setting on that one is Shadowrun and the dragon was... Lowfyr? One of the top five powers in that setting, and who left a black hole in the spirit world when he died. From the stats of a standard, average, dragon an air-to-air missile is not a sure kill.

And the characters would know this. The trick is getting the players to know it. From the described reactions I think that the players did know the dragon, they just made a stupid decision. Of course doing something to annoy a dragon, paticularly that dragon, is a stupid decision. So they weren't making a much worse decision when they wanted to fire a missile at him.

SPoD
2011-04-05, 09:45 PM
The setting on that one is Shadowrun and the dragon was... Lowfyr? One of the top five powers in that setting, and who left a black hole in the spirit world when he died. From the stats of a standard, average, dragon an air-to-air missile is not a sure kill.

And the characters would know this. The trick is getting the players to know it. From the described reactions I think that the players did know the dragon, they just made a stupid decision. Of course doing something to annoy a dragon, paticularly that dragon, is a stupid decision. So they weren't making a much worse decision when they wanted to fire a missile at him.

Making a stupid decision does not NEED to lead to a kill, though. Would it not have been just as legitimate for the dragon to laugh as the missile bounces off his hide, then told them that they can't hurt him so they better listen up before he gets REALLY angry? The decision to use a lethal retaliation lies with the GM, and there's simply no call for a blanket auto-TPK unless it somehow increases everyone's enjoyment. Which is highly improbable.

TheThan
2011-04-05, 09:50 PM
Other important things to do in order to be “good” at the game:

Study.
Yeah that’s right, study. Read your books, read web forums like this site, read what’s put up on the game’s website. Believe it or not, people have a tendency to not do this. I’ve known people whose joined warhammer 40K tournaments after only playing the game once. The poor veteran players had to spend the whole session teaching them the game, instead of having fun playing against a “real” opponent (not to mention it’s unfair for the experienced players). These people had no business playing in a tournament with no experience; they really needed to learn the rules and get as many games under their belt as they could before trying the tournament scene.
The same is true with RPGs. Many people want to play these games but they don’t know how. They need to study, read your material and learn how the game works. It’ll help you make better tactical decisions and cut down on “down time” (that’s when you have to stop and dig through books looking for a rule). Try to commit things to memory, like armor bonuses; it’s an easy formula to remember. If you can’t remember formulas or quote rules, at least know where to look them up for easy reference.

Find a killer Dm.
I’m not talking about a tyrant that’ll kill your characters at a whim. I’m talking about a Dm that’ll let players die on their own accord. When players do foolish things, they should pay for it. Sometimes bad luck happens, other times its totally player foolishness. Once I was playing a druid, and I cast entangling roots on our enemies, we all had ranged weapons so this was a very viable tactic. Our monk decided to charge one of the entangled enemies, I warned him it was a bad idea and he did it anyway. He got stuck and promptly beat to death by the two enemies he got stuck next to (who were also stuck, but they had melee weapons). He was upset over the incident even though I had warned him that he wouldn’t make his saves to get through the field.

The Dm let him suffer the consequences for his own (stupid) actions. The player learned something from the experience, and that was a good thing.

Kallisti
2011-04-05, 09:54 PM
The setting on that one is Shadowrun and the dragon was... Lowfyr? One of the top five powers in that setting, and who left a black hole in the spirit world when he died. From the stats of a standard, average, dragon an air-to-air missile is not a sure kill.

If it's Shadowrun shouldn't they have been able to burn Edge to survive? Or, hell, if it's Lofwyr why'd he kill them? Blackmailing them/intimidating them into his service would be much more a Shadowrun dragon's speed. They can't do a thing to him and he knows it, so why would he waste potentially useful pawns killing them?

With this new information I'm in the "TPK here was a DM decision" camp.

SPoD
2011-04-05, 10:10 PM
I’m not talking about a tyrant that’ll kill your characters at a whim. I’m talking about a Dm that’ll let players die on their own accord. When players do foolish things, they should pay for it. Sometimes bad luck happens, other times its totally player foolishness. Once I was playing a druid, and I cast entangling roots on our enemies, we all had ranged weapons so this was a very viable tactic. Our monk decided to charge one of the entangled enemies, I warned him it was a bad idea and he did it anyway. He got stuck and promptly beat to death by the two enemies he got stuck next to (who were also stuck, but they had melee weapons). He was upset over the incident even though I had warned him that he wouldn’t make his saves to get through the field.

The Dm let him suffer the consequences for his own (stupid) actions. The player learned something from the experience, and that was a good thing.

The bolded part is the difference between you and the GM from the opening post. The magnitude of that difference cannot be overstated.

Morghen
2011-04-05, 11:20 PM
Good grief. I'll start near the beginning and try to catch up. As I'm going through these, I'm going to try to not defend my GM all that much and focus instead on my arguments. You probably already hate him, so I'll mostly just avoid that topic.


If I'm playing a sensible character who doesn't take needless risks (like opening locked chests when I'm the wizard) then I'm going to die as often as I usually die.Bad players are the ones taking needless risks. The problem is that bad GMs aren't killing them.


I make a cleric and a half orc crits him with a great axe. Ok, I died.

So then I make a ranger and he rolls a natural 1 on a reflex save and falls off a tall building. Ok, I died.

So then I make a paladin and the rogue doesn't quite find all of the traps in a hidden room so I get crushed by a very large boulder. Ok, I died.
In order: The party should have kept the great axe-wielding orc away from the healer, use a rope if you're climbing and if you're not climbing stay away from ledges, send the thief in first.


I just wish this thing had more focus, or at least 1 focus.I know, I know. I didn't make an outline, I just started typing and this is what came out.


I'm not lying in wait to punish any small mistake a player makes. If they help tell a great story, then I'll remind them of things their character knows, ask them if they're sure before they do something really dumb, etc.A good GM should do some minor hinting of things that the entire group seems to have forgotten. And reminders are one thing, but how many times are we going to remind Timmy to not wander off?


The GM should be reminding them of things their characters wouldn't forget.I mostly agree with you, except for this part here:
Further, was there ever any indication, aside from the flavorful description, that the demon blood would be fatal if drained?Who the hell needs TOLD that DEMON BLOOD MIGHT BE BAD FOR YOU?


Why is the monster unkillable?Somebody further down addresses this.
Further, why does that mean the PCs have to die?It was a tournament and those were the instructions.


Maybe giving him that chance will make the next encounter end better, and improve him as a player overall.Or maybe paying for his mistake by having his character thrown in jail and the rest of the party yell at him for having to break him out will teach him that punching people is not an appropriate social encounter technique.


'cause what I'm getting is that you're telling me how I should be playing my game, and not only do I think that's incorrect, but it's also coming off as more elitist that I think you meant it.
All of the following is based around the idea that you want to have fun AND be good at the game you're playing. If you just want to have fun and play Count My Loot, cool. I've played that game and it can be fun. No, there's no challenge, but kicking back and murdering bad guys by the score and cracking jokes with your friends is totally fine. If that's what you're looking for I certainly don't fault you. Being the RPG equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters IS a good time. But this thread isn't for you. Don't argue with me here. Start your own thread.


For the Vampire example - we're talking about creatures that can drink boiling acid and suffer disembowlment without even taking damage.I was not aware that acid didn't do aggravated damage. And I was always under the impression that you couldn't get disemboweled unless your opponent was doing agg.

Why would drinking acidic blood be dangerous?But, but... It's demon blood. IT WAS DEMON BLOOD. And the ST said to everybody standing around (yeah, I used to LARP) that the blood made the ground burn. WHO THE HELL TAKES THAT CHANCE? You don't get to be a 500-year old monster with "It'll probably be okay." (Oh, look. Role-playing.)


The players aren't treating the feminine figure with snakes for hair and a lair full of statues as a creature with a potentially deadly gaze that has been terrorizing the local town; they treat it as an encounter with a DC 15 SoD gaze attack, 33 HP and AC 15. It just becomes a memory game, with reactions depending on how well the players can recall the particular monster by description rather than characters responding to what they would know about the monster.Oh, is that how we play? Tell me more.

There are two other people at the table who have GMed this particular system. The rest of us just don't look at the critter books. Why would we? There's no fun in cheating.


Much, much more system exposure and thinking necessary than a game that starts at level 1 and never gets past 6 or 7.I didn't mean learning all the kewl stuff your build can get you. I mean learning what to do when you've got a dozen kobolds on the other side of a door and your 2nd-level team is running low on HP and spells.


However, I refuse to play with a DM who delights in such a thing happening, aka the Killer DM. The DM is not the players' enemy. It is not the DM's job to kill player characters.100% agreement. The GM I'm playing with now is NOT a Killer DM, despite what I may have unintentionally suggested. I've played with that guy (long ago, different system) and he's not fun. My current GM will kill you, but it's not a "Me vs. Them" thing.


More importantly than that is that this thread is about DnD _3.5_.I've played about two hours of 3.5. This is the only thing in your post that I can comment on, because I have a hard time figuring out what you're talking about.

Okay, I have to stop. I'll get to the rest tomorrow.

Coidzor
2011-04-05, 11:56 PM
Understanding your capabilities and the capabilities of your party and the capabilities of your foe is crucial to knowing how to deal with such scenarios where one is in a bind though.

_Zoot_
2011-04-06, 12:03 AM
I must say, while I think that what you suggest makes people that are much better at using the rules to be most effective. I don't think it would make good players, I think it would annoy them and encourage only powergamers to thrive. For instance, I love the story part of DnD, and your recommendations would lead to characters I invest a lot of time and thought into dieing left right and centre, how will that make me a better player? It would only make me angry that the DM won't let them live long enough to make high level...





I mostly agree with you, except for this part here: Who the hell needs TOLD that DEMON BLOOD MIGHT BE BAD FOR YOU?


Well, me.

I had an Neutral character that would have loved to get his hands on Deamon blood, so he could sell it, in that game, it was only valued for it's magical properties and was not at all dangerous if you touched it. So I don't think it is fair to instant kill someone for a laps of judgement, just because in your game it is dangerous , that doesn't mean that it is everyone's understanding. And on that note, if it was so commonly known, why didn't the character know? Shouldn't the player have been told that they would know Deamon blood is bad for them, and as such they wouldn't drink it?

TheThan
2011-04-06, 12:30 AM
I must say, while I think that what you suggest makes people that are much better at using the rules to be most effective. I don't think it would make good players, I think it would annoy them and encourage only powergamers to thrive. For instance, I love the story part of DnD, and your recommendations would lead to characters I invest a lot of time and thought into dieing left right and centre, how will that make me a better player? It would only make me angry that the DM won't let them live long enough to make high level...


Being “good” at RPGs does not mean you’re a power gamer. You can make the most underpowered build or play a bottom tier class and still be a good player. The a good player does not necessarily need to make the most out of his build to be effective while a power gamer focuses on his build in order to be effective.

Its also very plausible to have a very effective character, and a very good back-story with good characterization to back it up. I’ve done it, and I’ve seen it done.

Sillycomic
2011-04-06, 12:45 AM
Bad players are the ones taking needless risks. The problem is that bad GMs aren't killing them.

Ahh, so this addresses two problems with bad players.

1. Some players take needless risks.

2. Some GM's won't kill their PC's for taking needless risks.

So... how do any of your 4 points deal with these two problems? You want to write a guide on how to make better gamers, but you don't really address either of these points (which I think are 2 solid points by the way)

Aside from that, this explanation ruins half of your arguments.

You need to die more often

This is a flat statement with no if's, and's or buts. There is no asterisk saying *only applies to players who take needless risks*

I can see where the rest of your paragraph tries to explain that needless risks (or the equivalent thereof) is the reason you put up this statement, but it's not very clear. It's clearer now that I understand where you are coming from though.

Thank you for that.

Random dice are random

If the dice are truly random and characters making good decisions sometimes die and characters making bad decisions sometimes get away with things, how are you ever going to determine what are needless risks and what aren't?

And how is your GM going to decide when to kill you for needless risks and when to let the dice fall where they may? A GM may want to just FIAT stomp you when you try to fight the ultimate dragon of super awesomeness with your non-masterwork dagger, but your point that random dice are random says the GM and the player should both let the dice fall and see what happens.

TheThan
2011-04-06, 01:46 AM
Random dice are random
If the dice are truly random and characters making good decisions sometimes die and characters making bad decisions sometimes get away with things, how are you ever going to determine what are needless risks and what aren't?

And how is your GM going to decide when to kill you for needless risks and when to let the dice fall where they may? A GM may want to just FIAT stomp you when you try to fight the ultimate dragon of super awesomeness with your non-masterwork dagger, but your point that random dice are random says the GM and the player should both let the dice fall and see what happens.

This is all judgment calls for the DM. Being a Dm is a lot like being a player, only worse. You are responsible for EVERYTHING that happens in the game. You have to deal with providing the game world, the adventures, keeping your players attention, running combat, controlling and RPing NPCs, providing maps, calculate loot and experience. That’s just the in game stuff, you have to deal with finding a place to game consistently, taking care of snacks/dinner, dealing with no shows, OOC player conflict, troublesome players etc, the list goes on. The amount of responsibility is staggering really. Some Dms can handle it, others not so much.

The more a person plays as a Dm the better that person gets at it. He’ll learn how to avoid making those common mistakes that most beginning dungeon masters make. He’ll learn how to make good judgment calls and make the game run really smooth as well as making the game fun to play in.

There is no clear answer to your question, but I’ll give it a shot. Usually needless risks speak for themselves, leaping out of the window to catch the fleeing villain is probably a bad move, especially if you know you haven’t reached the climax of the campaign yet. But when you’re fighting a random encounter and it scores crit on you, probably bad luck. Remember the dice works both ways. I’ve purposefully set up tough encounters for the players only to have them blow through it in a handful of rounds because they’re dice were on fire. I didn’t do anything wrong they were just rolling super well.

Sillycomic
2011-04-06, 01:57 AM
I don't know why but I feel a need to make a more clear version of this guide, for my own sake. I think there are a lot of good points in here, but it seems to be muddled in bias and vagueness which makes the argument (which is solid) much much weaker.

How to Be a Better Player.

The problem: Some players are no good at role playing.

Role playing and whether or not someone is "good" at it, seems to be a subjective statement. But role playing at its base is a game designed with rules, so while there is no way to win at role playing, there are certain ways in which to be better at it.

Note: This guide reflects a certain style of playing. This is not how everyone role plays. Like all advice on the internet you can take this with a grain of salt.

1. Practice.

Play the game as often as you can. Get yourself familiar with the basic rules. If you do decide to play a character with a certain niche or feature, make sure you know the ins and outs of that feature when your turn comes up.

But, most importantly just play. When you play you pick up a lot of information that is outside of the core book. Interesting facts like.... sometimes orcs with greataxes can crit for A LOT of damage, or that sometimes paying attention to the flavor text of a maguffin will tell you a little more about its origin.

You can learn a lot on the internet about how to build characters, how to optimize combat and how best to get out of certain predicaments, but there is still some aspect of role playing that can only be taught by sitting down with some friends and explaining how you want to magic missile the darkness.

2. It's OK if your character dies.

The GM is not attacking you personally. The GM does not hate your character. The GM isn't trying to be vindictive for something that happened three months ago (usually)

The truth is most role playing games are lethal, and even under the best circumstances sometimes things happen which end up killing your character.

This is OK.

You do not need to rage-blog on the interwebz every time your character is killed. I understand you made a very interesting backstory, but the nature of the game means that sometimes your character falls to the ground and doesn't get back up again.

If this is because a minion orc gets a lucky great axe crit to your face or because the BBEG flies in your window because you finally figured out his real name, it still ends up with your character falling by the wayside.

It's OK. Have a pretend funeral, grab 4d6 and roll up another one. Make another fun and interesting character. Make something that is quite the opposite of your own character. Make a brother who wants to avenge your first character's death.

Don't take death too seriously and understand it happens in the game, so get over it.

If you do find that you have quite a lot of character deaths though, perhaps you should go back and think about it. Maybe there is a pattern there.

Do you always charge headfirst into the next room? Do other PC's keep whacking you off just because you steal their stuff? Do you constantly throw knives at dragons when the conversation is getting boring?

Then perhaps there's something wrong with your own play style. Maybe your GM constantly killing you is a way for you to adjust your game to keep safe in his world.

3. Start at first level. This ties in with getting more practice. The more time you spend with your character, the more comfortable you feel with them. Every hero has an origin. Level 1 is your origin story.

By level 10 you are flattening buildings and making kings fear the very sight of you. But at level 1 you are a very little fish in a big pond. Accept that. Understand that.

The sooner you realize there is always a bigger fish when you're level 1... the sooner you realize that there are STILL bigger fish when you're level 10.

It's a lesson that stacks because it's an unnamed bonus.

4. Random dice are random.

Even if you read this entire guide and you take my advice, you could still die. Why? Because all of the dice you are rolling have a 1 on one of the sides (except for those weird ones you got at comic-con 98!) At some point you're going to fail something you shouldn't have failed, at some point even the most careful of plans will just go wrong.

First of all, don't blame the GM.

Secondly, don't blame your character.

The rules inherently have a randomness tied into them. This causes some strange outliers to occur. Sometimes someone leaps off of a building and head plants into the sidewalk only taking minimal damage, other times some random npc crits on a small weapon and brings you into the negatives with no one around to heal you.

Just accept it. You can't always roll a twenty (without a special sided die)

Random dice are random for a reason. And most of the time it means something cool and fun happens. Not always. Just roll with it.



Lastly, I want to point out that these guidelines assume you are playing with a reasonably competent GM and a reasonably competent group of players. This advice will not work if your GM is a poop.

How do you know if your GM is a poop?

Read this:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57805

If your GM does stuff that's anything like this... then you have your answer.

Jerthanis
2011-04-06, 02:17 AM
The setting on that one is Shadowrun and the dragon was... Lowfyr? One of the top five powers in that setting, and who left a black hole in the spirit world when he died. From the stats of a standard, average, dragon an air-to-air missile is not a sure kill.


Oh, so Lowfyr CAN be killed? How many missles would it take? Two? Six? Fifteen? How many missiles did the PCs have?



I mostly agree with you, except for this part here: Who the hell needs TOLD that DEMON BLOOD MIGHT BE BAD FOR YOU?


oWoD Demons (the Fallen) possess human bodies and have human blood normally. I don't recall mention of anything regarding their blood being anything special for vampires, harmful or not, and I can't find anything in particular about that in the Vampires section of the Storyteller's guide. Only one Apocalyptic form turns their blood into a burning sludge and a handful of others make their saliva or bile acidic, but it's by far not a default assumption of the Demonic condition that their blood is deadly.

And you know what that burning blood does? 1 automatic level of lethal damage each time you're hit with it. It's really hard to see the justification behind no-roll instant death even if you could somehow justify not reminding him that for some reason demon blood has been changed to be acid so powerful they'd be stupid not to weaponize it.

So... who needs to be told Demon's blood is dangerous? Anyone who doesn't have the power to read the DM's mind.

potatocubed
2011-04-06, 03:42 AM
So... who needs to be told Demon's blood is dangerous? Anyone who doesn't have the power to read the DM's mind.

In this case, you're assuming that demon blood is not dangerous because you read a setting book in which it isn't. There's no guarantee that the GM is using those rules, or has even read the book in question. Some games come with 'if the rule exists, that's how it works' as a pre-loaded assumption (D&D), but I don't think WoD is one of them.

Anyway, my suggestion for 'making better players' - and making better GMs, for that matter - is this:

Play Less D&D
3.x and later teach players bad habits - they teach the concepts of CR-appropriate encounters, that slaughter solves everything (and is the best solution to everything) and that if it's not in the rules you can't do it.

Play some Exalted. Play some Burning Wheel, some FATE, some Shadowrun. Hell, play some 1e AD&D - the skills you learn there will unravel most 3.x games like a cheap shirt.

Break the habits. Have better gaming experiences.

Greylond
2011-04-06, 05:59 AM
I know Morghen's GM. I've played with him as a GM and have had him at my table as a player(he was at the table for my first TPK in HackMaster). He is NOT a "Killer GM" who goes out of his way to kill players. However, he doesn't cut people slack that make stupid mistakes. You don't have to be a tactical genius to survive in his game, just pay attention and not make stupid mistakes. Honest mistakes are one thing, but not paying attention to clues is about as bad as you can get in a game.

The wurld and your character's perception of it are presented by the GM. If the GM tells you something that is going on, it behooves you to pay attention to it and react to it.

Morghen is correct, good players pay attention and think about their actions first, unless their characters have a death wish.

Ytaker
2011-04-06, 06:52 AM
Your post lost anything resembling credibility right here. Gaming is different things to different people. Stating as fact that you're "one of the best crews around" just makes you look like a posturing e-thug. It completely invalidates the rest of your post.

Just a hint, there is no objective definition of a "good gaming group" so making claims otherwise just puts you in a bad place.

Coming from someone who is a die hard competitive pvp player in MMOs and used to enjoy competitive RTS back in the days when SC1 was new, I don't enjoy that kind of play in my tabletop RPGs. I'm very capable of it, but super lethal super competitive tabletop gaming is boring. But... according to you, regardless of the fact that I have great fun gaming with friends, and more importantly, with my wife, you and your crew are better gamers because you play in more lethal games and lose more PCs than I do.

Pardon me while I go somewhere else so I won't be laughing in your face.

By the standard of tournament play your strategy is inferior. Assuming the person is telling the truth their style of play has won them a number of tournaments.

The post assumes being competitive with outsiders is one of your main goals. That certainly isn't true for most or all gamers.

Earthwalker
2011-04-06, 06:52 AM
The setting on that one is Shadowrun and the dragon was... Lowfyr? One of the top five powers in that setting, and who left a black hole in the spirit world when he died. From the stats of a standard, average, dragon an air-to-air missile is not a sure kill.


I hate myself for doing this but I have to.
Lowfry (sp I always thought there was a t in there) is alive and well in shadowrun universe.
It was Dunklezahn that was assassinated and caused a rift in astral space. He also had one of the best wills I have ever read (great source book)

Also note the Lowfry is a great dragon with the mental capacity to run the largest corporation in the world (as of corporate shadowfiles, Seader Krupp had the highest corp rating) from his mind without the aid of computers to remember all the details needed. If some runners have upset him, its very unlikly he would be wanting to show up in person to deal with it.

Earthwalker
2011-04-06, 06:58 AM
The points as presented are how to teach people to be good players in the OPs group and not as it were be good players.

If you are a GM and you want "Good" players you have one rule really.

Tell the players what your capaign is about, its themes. Make sure they understand the rules (this included alot of unwrtten rules, unique to yor campaign)

Most mistakes and problems are caused by people players not knowing what the GMs expactations are, also the GM is another player and it should be made clear what the players are expecting. Effort should be taken to make sure everyone at the table is aware.

Mr.Bookworm
2011-04-06, 07:53 AM
Mr.Bookworm's Handy-Dandy Guide to Making Better Players So You're the Most Hardcore Crew Around

Step 1: Talk to your players.

Step 2: Find out what they want to play, how they want to play, and what they would enjoy.

Step 3: Play the game.

Step 4: Did they have fun? If yes, go to step 5a, if no, go to step 5b.

Step 5a: http://ny-image1.etsy.com/il_fullxfull.194320925.jpg

Congratulations!

Step 5b: http://images1.memegenerator.net/ImageMacro/5683330/youre-doing-it-wrong.jpg?imageSize=Medium&generatorName=Hipster-Ariel

Boo! Go back to Step 1 and try again.

Naki
2011-04-06, 08:17 AM
Sorry, I haven't read the entire thread, but I got to this post and had to reply, because there's some things that strike me as wrong. =\


Yeah, I cut it down some. When it happened, a bigger deal was made. But just the same... That's what I'm talking about when I say "Some people are no damn good at this stuff."

Player 1, whining: "But I didn't reMEMber that the demon blood melted the concreeeeeete!"
Player 2, shrugging: "Well, you'll remember to pay attention to that kind of thing in the future I guess."

A better player would have remembered.

I disagree with this. A better player would have actually taken notes, so that he didn't have to remember. Human memory is faulty, as shown by example, but Player 2 is just ****-wagging his memory, when Player 1's memory failed him. You left out Player 3, who didn't recall either, but checked his notes to go "Oh, damn. That's right." It's not fun for Player 1 to get shafted because he's human. But given that he didn't think to take notes either, it's still his own fault for his character death.


I'm not going to go into details of the specific system, but in-world everybody knows who this specific dragon is. He's got stats of "YES" and everybody knows it. If he wants a chopper full of dudes to be dead, he's going to kill them and EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD knows it. The module had flavor text explaining this just in case they were new to the system. Why they shot a missile at an unkillable monster is beyond me.

Given I know what you're referring to, and the Dragon in question (Lofwyr, correct? ;)), he didn't have to kill the players, and it's not even in-character for him to do so. He's a Dragon, in a setting where making people disappear is cheap, and ultimately ineffective. Someone crossed him, and shot him. With a missile. Making them disappear doesn't make an example out of them. No one will even know who they are by the time the 6 o'clock news rolls around. Destroying them socially, financially, and targeting friends and family are way more effective for getting the point across that they just made an enemy of one of the most powerful beings on Earth. Saying "Hand over your sheets" is terrible form. There was so much more for these players to do, and so much more story to tell. The GM, instead, decided to prematurely end the game because he decided that the Dragon is so base and human (key here; look at Dunkhelzan's Will, it makes it clear Dragons are anything but human in personality) that immediate vengeance was his only course of action.

It was bad form, and bad storytelling. I'd never use this example to show off 'bad players', it's a much better example of a bad GM. This doesn't make him lethal, at all. It makes him look like he has trouble thinking out of the box, the same way you're presenting the players. Yes, their actions were dumb. But if they want Pink Mohawk, they got Pink Mohawk. And all of the results that come with it. But the GM couldn't think on the fly, and beyond "Welp, game over guys. See you next week with your new characters."


I don't like an unrealistic story. Yes, magic exists. Yes, I'm playing a vampire/ogre/elf/double-wookie/etc. If dangerous things with swords/claws/spells don't have a chance of killing me, I'm out (unless I know in advance that we're playing Count My Loot).

The GM isn't there to just tell the players what awesome things happen when they try to go all Legolas on a war elephant or when the guy with the character based on Cyrano de Bergerac decides that Duke Blahblah is trying to match wits with him and needs a good thrashing. Playing in a RP-heavy game doesn't eliminate bad players.

You're right, the GM is there to work with the players and tell a story. RP-heavy, or not, yes, the threat and danger of death has to exist, alternatively, the threat of failure has to exist. In a game like, say, Exalted, where threat of death tends to be low (in the case of Exalt v. Mortal combat), instead, the threat needs to be failure. They can't die easily, so you need to introduce a much larger threat to the players, to prevent the 'Count my Loot' game you rail against. They can charge the front gate, and blast everything in their way, but that gives the BBEG a warning, and he has all of the time it takes the PCs to get to him to foil their plan. Be it fleeing, or hurrying his rituals, or, even better: Destroying the macguffin.

It presents a new problem, they can kill everyone with their pinky, but if the BBEG catches wind of the incoming intrusion, he isn't going to stand in his room waiting for the PCs to show up. He'll move, leave his base, or ultimately foil their attempt. We've easily moved from "Count My Loot", back to "Standard Role-playing", and yet, we haven't increased the chance of death. It's funny how that works, no?

The threat of death doesn't make you a better player, nor does it make a GM better. It's blasé, boring, in-the-box-thinking. If you can create the same threat and danger without having to tear up a sheet when you fail, you've created a better game. Death only serves to create contrivance. Joe dies for the 6th time this dungeon, the party just can't revive him again. There are two options: Joe rolls up a new character, and the DM has to figure out how he joins up with the party located on the 6th sublevel of this dungeon, and why he's here, which can become contrived, and hard to swallow; or, he tells Joe to roll up a new character, but that he can't play with the group until they finish up this dungeon, which makes the game less fun for Joe, and possibly the group as a whole (let's say Joe is a great role-player, and brings something unique to the party, but isn't a very good Roll-player, hence having died 6 times so far). What's the solution? What makes for the better, more realistic game? Having Joe sit out? What's more fun? The contrived method? Does it make Joe a better player to have to sit out, or is it worth him being a 'bad' player and bringing him back into the fold immediately to slake the thirst for enjoyment of the other players?

With death, you play a precarious balancing game. PC death should fall into one of two categories: PC failure (Player stupidity, having been warned, having all the information necessary to make a good, informed decision and still making a poor one), or Necessity of Plot (Heroic Sacrifices). Dying against Orc #5 because of a critical hit is neither player stupidity, nor necessity of plot. There are options for a DM to save that character (without fudging rolls!), if he chooses not to use them, he reduces the fun of the game, and bogs the game down by forcing his player to reroll the character. Basically the same one, especially if he had a job or roll to fill in the party. Providing plot options, quests, items, or favors to revive the character is better form, and makes the game better, as well as the players and GM better (they still have to actually earn these things).


A couple of years ago, one of the weekly games at my FLGS had, as their Face, a character with a high charisma and a player with zero social skills. He was supposed to get a [thing] from a woman at a tavern. He talked to her for about 10 seconds, she bantered with him, he stammered, and the social encounter ended with him saying, "Uh... uh... I punch her in the face and grab the [thing]." What would you have done as a GM? He got the [thing]. Would you have given him a second chance, like with the demon blood? The player might have forgotten that people don't like being punched in the face.

The GM probably should have adjudicated based on rolls, rather than by player capacity in this case. Or, if he expected the Face to be role-played as such, should have made it clear and told the player in question he might wish to reconsider the role. Again. Bad GM, rather than bad player. You can't make a player better by forcing them to do something they're uncomfortable with. And it's by no means the player's fault that he has poor social skills. Not everyone is a professional public speaker, who can make brilliant speeches on the fly. Expecting everyone to role-play their role as well as everyone else is probably a bit extreme. Not everyone has the same play-style, and same capacity. It's up to a GM to identify the play-styles and work with those players in their comfort zone, while slowly drawing them out. Having the Face punch someone in the face for the macguffin wasn't a good plan, but it was clear that the player was having trouble, and the DM instead pushed. In no way the player's fault in this case, as everyone was aware he has poor social skills.


What you think I mean by "good player" and what I actually mean by "good player" are different. I don't mean, "He's awesome in combat and it doesn't matter what kind of character he's playing." I mean, "He plays well with others, he knows what's going on in the game, he doesn't make stupid decisions, he knows how to communicate effectively with his group, he knows how to mitigate any mistakes his group makes."


"Stupid Mistakes" are impossible to ignore, frankly. I consider myself a good player (as I fall into nearly every category!), but I make stupid mistakes. In my last game of Shadowrun, I play the Face, and was placed in a hostage situation. I was given a command my character couldn't possibly complete (Carry a huge chromed Go-Ganger. I had STR 2. It wasn't about to happen), I proceeded to tell the other ganger that I couldn't complete the request. It was a dumb move, but I had previously attempted to talk him down and failed, and the situation was quickly escalating. Ganger turned his shotgun on me, and my fellow runners had to jump into action. When all was said and done, and the ganger was put down, we learnt that he was the one with the information we needed. After he was dead. A pair of stupid moves that hampered our run. We're not suddenly bad players, but it was something that was impossible to avoid at that point.

A "bad player" is a subjective term. We have a player who is marginally aware, always late, doesn't communicate with us, and often gets rules wrong, or at times, gets them deliberately wrong to improve his chances at success. Over the course of 3 years, he's had no less than 6 character deaths/losses, 2 in each of the two major campaigns we run. One of which was direct PC-to-PC conflict (kind of; he was killed in his sleep). This is a bad player. Not because of all of the above, but because he doesn't own up to being a bad player. He chooses to always blame it on outside circumstances, other players, or the GM. A 'good player' starts at being a bad player who admits he's bad. And therefore, is willing to learn. This is someone who can be helped to be a 'better player', but he's already a good player because he understands he's not better.

You used numbers to express how lethal your GM was previously, 85 before you started playing, 25 after. That's not impressive, or a good way to express 'how good your DM is', it means he's probably a 'Gygaxian' DM who thinks the Sphere of Annihilation in the hole is a funny trick. He might not be a 'killer DM', but he clearly takes pride in killing PCs, and so do you, as you hold this an achievement.

Perhaps you should look at what a good GM is, before you claim that you are and know what a good player is. My group has a 'lethal GM', and he's only had to adjudicate a SINGLE death the entire time we've played. And that was the character who was murdered in his sleep. I consider this a good GM. The other GM has ruled twice, post-run, that the 'bad player' had to reroll, once because the character conducted himself so poorly, and was so bad at his roll that not a single runner could justify calling him back. The second time because he made an incredibly glaring and obvious mistake that was inexcusable; the player made an assumption, didn't ask the GM, and then argued that it was the GM's fault he had to reroll. Again, a Good GM. Bad Player.

A bad player is all about the attitude. Not their skill level.

Morghen
2011-04-06, 09:21 AM
Okay. Starting to catch up.


Situation 1. The player forgets a key fact about the system and does something stupid. The solution to this is not killing them. That gives them weak memories. The solution is repeating this system aspect with many different scenarios so that they memorize it. Repetition is the key to memorization.What? How does killing his character make his memory weak? Paying for his mistake with the life of his character will make him remember not to do that again.


Actions teach.Agreed. Keeping the training wheels on until your kid is 10 doesn't help him ride his bike better. It teaches him that falling is impossible.


Situation 2. His companions should have restrained him. He forgot an obvious principle, never split up.And losing a character will teach him to not do that.


Situation 3. A GMPC (or god or whatever) with unlimited powers kills the players when they follow the course of action which serves them best in 99% of situations. Shoot at it.THAT RIGHT THERE IS THE PROBLEM. SHOOTING IS NOT THE CORRECT SOLUTION 99% OF THE TIME. People are yelling that I'm Mr. Hardcore power gamer and I've posted a couple(?) of times now that "I charge it" is seldom the best answer.


Minor consequences serve as a better educator.No they don't. Otherwise, people wouldn't keep making the same mistakes.


I think a lot of people here are thinking about the game from the perspective of enjoying themselves and having a good time with friends, not about winning. A lot of the disconnect comes from that.And I addressed that in my original post. Now I've bolded it and made it extra big.


- I feel like, while this is titled "how to make better players" it really is much closer to "how to make your characters more effective in combat."GAH. It's not about combat. Yes, combat gets people killed more than most situations, but this isn't SPECIFIC to combat. This is about players making stupid decisions in the game. The examples I gave behind that spoiler were all combat-related, but I've also seen characters die in non-combat situations because of dumb mistakes their characters made. Taken from a bunch of games over a number of years:

*Pirate-themed Game: "No, my character doesn't know how to swim. It'll be a fun RP thing later on." [Boat sinks. Character dies.]
*Shadowrun (The players are meeting a contact and he looks sketchy): "I stab him with my forearm blades." [Character shot by sniper.]
*DnD(ish): "I'll jump off the tower, grab one of the ropes, and swing down into the courtyard." [Armor is heavy. Didn't die, but ruined that entrance.]
*Ninjas & Superspies: "I'm gonna jump my motorcycle from the top of this building to that one." [Dead.]


I feel this problem would be avoided if you made it clear in the intro that this post was about a specific sort of game, and then didn't mention other styles again.I DID.


Pardon me while I go somewhere else so I won't be laughing in your face.If you wanna come back and talk about it, I'll be here.


So... sometimes you have to read the DM's mind?No. You have to figure it out.


If they hit the dragon with a missile, it's unreasonable to expect he wouldn't be seriously injured or killed. This is like saying, "He was a legendary martial artist and the whole world knows it, and the PCs tried to shoot him with a gun, what idiots!"If the system is set up that way and they've been told it's set up that way and they still do it, then yeah. They're idiots. Think of Kill Bill. Bill sends The Bride up the mountain and tells her that if she talks **** to Pai Mei he'll kill her. These characters talked **** to Pai Mei.


Yeah, I remember all those books I've read over the years where all the characters die on page 125 and the next 200 are all blank, just so it would be unexpected.A non-exhaustive list: A Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time (Moiraine), Lord of the Rings (Boromir), Star Trek (Spock), Star Wars (Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, everybody in III), Saving Private Ryan (the medic), Children of Men (no spoiler), All Quiet On The Western Front (like, everybody), Lost (Charlie).


The setting on that one is Shadowrun and the dragon was... Lowfyr?Dunkelzahn.


With this new information I'm in the "TPK here was a DM decision" camp.I replied to this somewhere else. In this instance, this was a tournament and the module specifically stated (paraphrasing) "Dunkelzahn is leaving to make sure the party leaves immediately. This is a fun flavor thing to make them think that they just barely escaped. If they attack him, they'll die."


It would only make me angry that the DM won't let them live long enough to make high level...This is interesting. Why should the GM let your character live? It shouldn't be a matter of the GM letting your character live. That's like my students who complain that I gave them a bad grade.

I don't GIVE them anything. They earned it. And you should have to earn it


Shouldn't the player have been told that they would know Deamon blood is bad for them, and as such they wouldn't drink it?I am baffled at people's continued insistence that Demon Blood should be perfectly fine for consumption. DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE ST SAID SO. THE ST TOLD THE ASSEMBLED PLAYERS THAT THE BLOOD LOOKED EXTREMELY BURNY. The particular power in question pulls a bit of the victim's blood through the air and it is transferred into the body of the caster for immediate use. I said this in one of my previous posts: You don't get to be an old vampire if you make assumptions. You don't get to stay an old vampire if you make mistakes. Old vampires are cautious and conservative because they want to become very old vampires.

Britter
2011-04-06, 09:38 AM
If the system is set up that way and they've been told it's set up that way and they still do it, then yeah. They're idiots. Think of Kill Bill. Bill sends The Bride up the mountain and tells her that if she talks **** to Pai Mei he'll kill her. These characters talked **** to Pai Mei.



Ok, for the record, I don't care for tournament play, but if you are having fun in that style, great.

I do, however, want to look at your example here, because I don't think it means what you think it means.

When The Bride Cheesed off Pai Mei, she got to fight him. Yes, he beat her like she stole something. yes, he humiliated her and proved his dominance over her. And, you will note, he didn't have to kill her.

You do not teach players anything about fear and respect for powerful opponenets by simply saying "Ok, you're dead, new charcter time." You teach them that, unless they do exactly what you want them to do, you will simply kill them.

Let them roll dice, and watch in fear as their efforts are rendered meaningless by the power and skill of the NPC. And I don't mean any sort of DMPC mary sue rule breaking crap. I mean know the rules of your game well enough to build the character that can beat your guys. Then let dice hit table.

I so agree with your points about practice and rules mastery being pretty important parts of being a better player. The better I understand my systems, the better player and GM I am becoming.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 09:46 AM
Random dice are random

If the dice are truly random and characters making good decisions sometimes die and characters making bad decisions sometimes get away with things, how are you ever going to determine what are needless risks and what aren't?

And how is your GM going to decide when to kill you for needless risks and when to let the dice fall where they may? A GM may want to just FIAT stomp you when you try to fight the ultimate dragon of super awesomeness with your non-masterwork dagger, but your point that random dice are random says the GM and the player should both let the dice fall and see what happens.

Yes. Yes they should. Good plans are those plans which tend to be successful, not those that the GM thinks are amazing. FIAT stompings teach nothing. If their plan really is terrible, it'll fail all on it's own.

One recent player fatality happened as follows: Player misses a session, leaves instructions to leave his char in town. Fine. He comes to the next one, and is informed that the party left directions to where they went, and will be returning shortly(OOC, they had nearly completed the mission, and were coming back). He decided he was going to wander through the woods to find them. At dark. He was fully aware that in previous travels through the woods, they had been attacked by things well above the party CR, and it was dangerous as hell. I asked him if he was moving stealthily. He said no.

Well, the random encounter table didn't like him. The highest CR thing on the list was selected. Fortunately, for him, his awareness was sufficiently good that he spotted the monster while it was still unaware of him. Lucky break. His response is to shoot it. Everything pretty much went downhill from there. After he realized shooting it was doing little, he climbed a short tree. A tree as tall as the monster was. That also didn't work terribly well. He never, ever tried to run, despite knowing the monster had a slower move speed than him. Oh yeah, I killed him dead. The monster, as per it's usual behavior, used the body as food.

Since he had told nobody where he was going, and had wandered off the path in a evil forest in the middle of the night, the party had no idea what happened to him, though they ironically stumbled across the monster's lair later in the campaign and figured it out. That same player got more PCs killed for similar reasons in the same campaign. Stupidity punishes itself.

Britter
2011-04-06, 09:59 AM
Small addendum. I am completely cool with killing characters, if the circumstances warrant it or the encounter is going against them or whatever. I don't really think that a GM should have to pull their punches too much.

I also think that there needs to be encounters where the result for failure is something other than death. I think that stakes other than a characters life need to be on the table more often, honestly. Death should only be at stake when the chips are down and the encounter REALLY matters.

Regardless of what the failure consequences are, they should never be put in play by fiat, as in the missle-dragon-death scenario earlier. Roll dice. Heck, I don't care if the fight is totally stacked against the PCs and they have no way of winning. Roll the dice, and then the PCs can try to run once they see it has all gone pear-shaped on them.

Weasel of Doom
2011-04-06, 10:08 AM
The problem is this: A lot of players are just no damn good at this stuff.
...
I play under one of the best GMs running and because of his willingness to kill us, we're one of the best crews around. This is not hyperbolic ****-measuring. This is plain fact.


Ahahahahah

That is one of the most ridiculous things I've read. You say that you're one of the best crews around but rpgs don't have a "best". How can you be the best at enjoying yourselves or creating a good story, it just doesn't work like that. You say that this is a thread about having fun AND being good at the game but I say having fun IS being good at the game.

Actually, I'd quite like a list of what you consider to be a good player. I expect I'll agree with most of them but I certainly wouldn't call them the best player because I recognise that different people want totally different things out of the game. You've just said this is a thread for how to make "good players" but you haven't said what you consider a good player.


SHOOTING IS NOT THE CORRECT SOLUTION 99% OF THE TIME.

This is an example of what I disagree with in your posts, the absolutes. In your campaign shooting might not be the most appropriate solution 99% of the time but in some campaigns it is. That doesn't mean they're playing wrong and you certainly don't get to be the one to decide that.


dumb mistakes their characters made ...

*Pirate-themed Game: "No, my character doesn't know how to swim. It'll be a fun RP thing later on." [Boat sinks. Character dies.]
...
*DnD(ish): "I'll jump off the tower, grab one of the ropes, and swing down into the courtyard." [Armor is heavy. Didn't die, but ruined that entrance.]
*Ninjas & Superspies: "I'm gonna jump my motorcycle from the top of this building to that one." [Dead.]
I don't think any of these are dumb decisions, in fact I think they're all pretty cool.

A pirate who couldn't swim? Historically accurate (I think many pirates couldn't swim) and could tie into some cool backstory and roleplaying (what made this character seek a life on the waves even though he couldn't swim). Swinging down into the courtyard? Traditional heroic entrance that makes the game more fun (imo obviously)
Jumping a motorcycle from building to building? That's just awesome and if I were the gm I'd have awarded xp for such a cool stunt.



I replied to this somewhere else. In this instance, this was a tournament and the module specifically stated (paraphrasing) "Dunkelzahn is leaving to make sure the party leaves immediately. This is a fun flavor thing to make them think that they just barely escaped. If they attack him, they'll die."

I think that's horrible adventure design and a condemnation of the module more than the players. Just flat out saying the players die isn't necessarily fun for anyone. Apparently you enjoy it that's nice and whatever but I don't, this doesn't mean one of us is wrong, it just means we have different tastes.


I am baffled at people's continued insistence that Demon Blood should be perfectly fine for consumption. DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE ST SAID SO. THE ST TOLD THE ASSEMBLED PLAYERS THAT THE BLOOD LOOKED EXTREMELY BURNY. The particular power in question pulls a bit of the victim's blood through the air and it is transferred into the body of the caster for immediate use. I said this in one of my previous posts: You don't get to be an old vampire if you make assumptions. You don't get to stay an old vampire if you make mistakes. Old vampires are cautious and conservative because they want to become very old vampires.

If I'm a 500 year old vampire who can only be killed by stakes, running water and sunlight then I would expect "burny blood" to be nothing more than a spicy hors d'oeuvre. The player has no reason to expect the blood to do any harm and if the character would've had reason to expect harm then the GM ought mention the possibility to the player and warn them that "You don't get to be an old vampire making assumptions, I think this is a potentially bad idea and out-of-character for you"

Sorry if I misspelt something or my tone comes off as antagonistic but it's late where I am and I'm about to go to bed.

Teln
2011-04-06, 10:15 AM
I am baffled at people's continued insistence that Demon Blood should be perfectly fine for consumption. DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE ST SAID SO. THE ST TOLD THE ASSEMBLED PLAYERS THAT THE BLOOD LOOKED EXTREMELY BURNY. The particular power in question pulls a bit of the victim's blood through the air and it is transferred into the body of the caster for immediate use. I said this in one of my previous posts: You don't get to be an old vampire if you make assumptions. You don't get to stay an old vampire if you make mistakes. Old vampires are cautious and conservative because they want to become very old vampires.

This reminds me of that legendary Vampire: the Masquerade game where the ST made the mistake of using a vial of Caine's blood as a MacGuffin. If memory serves, one of the PCs promptly diablerized it and became a second-generation vampire on the spot, setting in motion a chain of events that culminated in Gehenna happening fifteen years ahead of schedule.

Amnestic
2011-04-06, 10:18 AM
I am baffled at people's continued insistence that Demon Blood should be perfectly fine for consumption.

Different setting, but my main experience with demon blood is it gives you the power to kill demi-gods. Is a little addicting. And crazy-making though. Doesn't really change the fact that people's previous experiences with the idea of demon-blood (even burning demon blood) might colour their in game ideas for the current event.

Why, it's almost like people might have other memories and encounters with the concept of 'demon blood' and act accordingly! Weird!

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 10:23 AM
Demon blood or not, my first thought after "it burns through concrete" is not going to be "I bet that's tasty".

Tael
2011-04-06, 10:29 AM
Demon blood or not, my first thought after "it burns through concrete" is not going to be "I bet that's tasty".

I agree, but the correct response shouldn't be "you're dead", it should be "you take a ****load of damage. Especially in a V:tM game.

Vladislav
2011-04-06, 10:32 AM
Bad players are the ones taking needless risks.If I wasn't a grown man who last cried at the age of 12, I could say this statement made me cry. I can't even begin to explain on how many levels this is wrong.

Honestly, if I wanted to play D&D the way the OP suggests it should be played, I'd just stick to chess. Chess is so much better at this "calculate your way to victory" thing. The only reason I even play D&D is because it can be played in a way pretty much diametrically opposed to what the OP suggests.

The day I become convinced the OP's way of playing is the "correct" one is probably the day I'd quit D&D. Luckily, I'm not convinced.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2011-04-06, 10:33 AM
Somebody further down addresses this. It was a tournament and those were the instructions.

So these proposed "requirements" for being a better player are unique to tournament play? You've mentioned the "type" of game you're referring to before but, frankly, I haven't seen it laid out anywhere. What games ARE you talking about?

Amnestic
2011-04-06, 10:35 AM
Demon blood or not, my first thought after "it burns through concrete" is not going to be "I bet that's tasty".

Really depends on what's doing the consuming, doesn't it?

Sipex
2011-04-06, 10:44 AM
I will point out that the OP's way seems to discourage original thinking, or at least, thinking outside the printed rules. Anything like this doesn't have concrete (or balanced rules) and thus presents a risk as the DM may interpret it badly and you're not 100% sure of the consequences.

This is a guide to easy PC survivability under any DM except the worst and I can accept that.

It does seem counterproductive to discourage this kind of thinking though, it's D&D, you play because you can do anything. If I wanted a game where I could only play effectively within the rules I'd be playing WoW.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 10:45 AM
I agree, but the correct response shouldn't be "you're dead", it should be "you take a ****load of damage. Especially in a V:tM game.

Probably. I agree that the GMing probably could be improved, as I dislike invented no save deaths.

But the player definitely was making a mistake as well, and some sort of penalty would be fairly expected. I don't use death as the only penalty, but it certainly does come up, especially with repeated mistakes.



Playing more DnD that doesn't hold your hand is likely to make you more survivable, but not more than, say, playing as a cleric or druid over a samurai. You make a good point about starting at level 1, though a lot of tournament play involves automatic high levels (and build is king).

So, yeah. Weak.

I disagree. In my experience, player matters a great deal more than build. I've seen the noob who copied some TO build off the internet, and who played it terribly. They still do horrible. The player is a drastically more important component than the build.

Yukitsu
2011-04-06, 11:13 AM
Demon blood or not, my first thought after "it burns through concrete" is not going to be "I bet that's tasty".

Inversely, I think there's an expectation that vampires are rather tougher than most things, so the logic of "if I wouldn't drink it, then it should obviously kill him" is equivalently flawed.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 11:20 AM
Inversely, I think there's an expectation that vampires are rather tougher than most things, so the logic of "if I wouldn't drink it, then it should obviously kill him" is equivalently flawed.

I don't think that it's obvious that it should kill him. I think it's obviously dangerous.

And the theme of vampires dying due to drinking the wrong thing is actually one I've seen several times. I wouldn't consider it standard to everything, but the idea that consuming things other than normal blood = bad is roughly as common to vampires as cold iron = bad is for fey.

Would it be logical to say, store some of this blood, if possible? Probably. Unique things might be powerful, and should be investigated. With caution.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-06, 11:39 AM
This reminds me of that legendary Vampire: the Masquerade game where the ST made the mistake of using a vial of Caine's blood as a MacGuffin. If memory serves, one of the PCs promptly diablerized it and became a second-generation vampire on the spot, setting in motion a chain of events that culminated in Gehenna happening fifteen years ahead of schedule.

Mistake? Sounds like a great game.

To add something constructive to the overall discussion. I don't enjoy games where the idea is "grindfest," you just stumble through encounter after encounter, and stupid decisions are rewarded/ignored because the DM thinks they're funny.

I also don't enjoy games where character motivations, beliefs and emotions are completely ignored for the sake of "safety." Yes, characters should die if the situation warrants. However, risk-taking should also be rewarded in some way, especially when something important is on the line. Risk and vulnerability can be awesome, and trimming such things down completely will not produe an "ideal player."

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 11:52 AM
Mistake? Sounds like a great game.

Yeah. I once accidentally put a crystal ball into loot in a 4th level D&D party. It was nothing but scenery, since they were looting the inhabitant of a deceased diviner for information. Turns out they sell for a ludicrous amount of gold.

Rather than retconning it or something, I just went "oops" and kept rolling with it. The PCs immediate rise into the ranks of the wealthy led to all manner of fun and games, and the fact that nobody was even close to WBL just led to more hijinks as their mad spending spree painted a giant target on them to everyone in the area who was short on morals and gold.

Risk/reward works even better with actual penalties, IMO.

Z3ro
2011-04-06, 12:06 PM
I disagree. In my experience, player matters a great deal more than build. I've seen the noob who copied some TO build off the internet, and who played it terribly. They still do horrible. The player is a drastically more important component than the build.

Shhhhh...You're not supposed to say that on the internet.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-06, 12:18 PM
Risk/reward works even better with actual penalties, IMO.

Oh I agree. I'm just in the camp that penalties should be appropriate for the situation and genre. If you want to kill someone, then death should almost always be on the line, for instance. Trying to race across the city rooftop to rooftop to reach big plot event on time? Failure shouldn't mean falling to your death, it should mean getting there too late to stop the fireworks.

Actually, let me throw this example out there. I'm not big into strategy. Tactics (a la tabletop boardgames) are fine, but I don't know a darn thing, nor am I terribly interested in learning, large scale war planning, with its various disciplines. I don't want my GM, who may be a big strategy buff, to assume I'll talk about scouting, intelligence, flanking, using the tree-line, etc. before the big battle scene, or else penalize me dearly. Make sense?

Choco
2011-04-06, 12:21 PM
Here is a big one I have noticed has stopped a lot of players from becoming "good":

When a more experienced/knowledgeable player notices you getting mad about being behind the power curve and gives you build and/or spell selection advice, don't snap at him and yell for him to stop telling you how to play your character. Let's face it, the way you are playing your character is the problem in the first place. If you are having fun playing the character that way, then by all means carry on. But if you are constantly whining that everyone else is more powerful than you and that the pure TWF Fighter in the party is a broken powergaming munchkin, you REALLY should open yourself up to some advice.

Short version: Recognize the difference between someone giving you advice to help make you a better player, and someone flat-out trying to order you around. If you never read the rules and never listen to anyone's advice, you will be a n00b for life. This applies to RP advice as well, not just mechanics.

Morghen
2011-04-06, 12:35 PM
Does anybody remember this from my original post?

All of the following is based around the idea that you want to have fun AND be good at the game you're playing. If you just want to have fun and play Count My Loot, cool. I've played that game and it can be fun. No, there's no challenge, but kicking back and murdering bad guys by the score and cracking jokes with your friends is totally fine. If that's what you're looking for I certainly don't fault you. Being the RPG equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters IS a good time. But this thread isn't for you. Don't argue with me here. Start your own thread.I'll keep responding to people's arguments, but I feel like a lot of them would disappear if they'd seen this.

Britter
2011-04-06, 12:38 PM
Does anybody remember this from my original post?
I'll keep responding to people's arguments, but I feel like a lot of them would disappear if they'd seen this.

The issue here is you are assuming that either we are all play "Count your Loot" or we are playing your hard-core style of gaming.

In between those two extremes there is an entire spectrum of playstyles.

Vladislav
2011-04-06, 12:42 PM
I saw your OP. Being better at optimizing your character and better at using his abilities is of course cool, but that's not the only thing there. It does not equate "playing well". You wanna play Keep My HP Total High, cool. I've played that game and it can be fun*.

* Actually it's not. I only said that to mirror your post. It's not very much fun.

Sillycomic
2011-04-06, 12:44 PM
I read it, and I understood that this guide (rant) was going to be more about what you think is a good playstyle in general... and not WHAT PEOPLE SHOULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW RAWR!!! /rage

I think a lot of people got caught up on the guide itself though.

Your disclaimer says: This is all my opinion, so please don't hate cause my opinion is different than yours.

Your guide then goes onto say: Fact about gaming! These are facts! I have more facts! Kill your players with facts! Dual wield these facts while charging will full fact attack FTW!!! /rant

But it is a fair point, you did say these were all your opinions.

And like I said before, once I got some more of the point of what you were trying to bring across this made a lot more sense to me. And I would say I agree with you on the most part about it.

(especially the part that says this type of gaming is not for everyone)

Naki
2011-04-06, 12:47 PM
Does anybody remember this from my original post?
I'll keep responding to people's arguments, but I feel like a lot of them would disappear if they'd seen this.

I saw it. It didn't apply to my (extremely long) post, because it hit the fundamental tenets of your post (The only threat in a game should be death; death makes a better player, bad players are X). My games are just as lethal and not as Monty Haul as you would like to imply in order to invalidate said arguments. That's a rather elitist attitude and you should treat all arguments as equal here. Rather than "BADWRONGFUN, THIS IS HOW YOU SHOULD DO IT TO BE BETTER".

Sipex
2011-04-06, 12:58 PM
You're recieving bad results because your post sounds bad. It probably isn't meant to sound bad but it does. It makes it sound like you're looking down on those who don't play the same way as you while you continually deny it in a way that feels like "If I deny it I can be insulting because I already denied it."

The actual base idea around your post is fine.

edit: Realised I used the wrong you're

Yukitsu
2011-04-06, 01:10 PM
I don't think that it's obvious that it should kill him. I think it's obviously dangerous.

And the theme of vampires dying due to drinking the wrong thing is actually one I've seen several times. I wouldn't consider it standard to everything, but the idea that consuming things other than normal blood = bad is roughly as common to vampires as cold iron = bad is for fey.

Would it be logical to say, store some of this blood, if possible? Probably. Unique things might be powerful, and should be investigated. With caution.

That's fair to claim, but I've never read a vampire story where that was the case. I think to assert that "It should have been obvious" is still asserting that the players should be some sort of mind readers.

Typewriter
2011-04-06, 01:35 PM
Does anybody remember this from my original post?
I'll keep responding to people's arguments, but I feel like a lot of them would disappear if they'd seen this.

The arguments aren't going to disappear because of the premise of your argument.

It's not "How to fit in better in my group", or "How to solve problem X".

Your post title is "How to make better players".

"Better players" is completely subjective, and while you may be oh-so-gracious as to point out that doing other things is alright, you're still saying that your opinion is the right one. The one that makes better players.

I think what you're trying to do is admirable, but you'd be better off replying to individual threads with help that is relevant to them than making a blanket topic does nothing other than show off a superior attitude.

I strongly disagree with a lot of the things you said because that's not what would work for my group. I'm not going to correct you because this is what works for your group.

If someone has a thread in which they say, "My group enjoys high risk campaigns, but one of my players keeps dying because he does stupid things", then the advice you're trying to give in this topic would be relevant and potentially helpful.

If someone has a thread in which they say, "My group enjoys games with minimal risk, so how do I punish my players when they do stupid things", your advice would not be helpful because you're not addressing their question - you're trying to redefine the way their group plays.

I think you'd be better off closing this thread, and replying to other threads with this advice when it would be helpful, but that's just my 2 cents.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 01:36 PM
Shhhhh...You're not supposed to say that on the internet.

Heh, I know. It's easy to talk about optimizing builds, and don't get me wrong...I enjoy TO and such as much as the next guy, assuming the next guy is a gleeful rules lawyer who reads sourcebooks for fun. But it's always tempting to assume that the thing you like/are good at is the Most Important Thing. I see it a lot w optimization. Oh, and sure, it can be an issue, but it isn't always.


Oh I agree. I'm just in the camp that penalties should be appropriate for the situation and genre. If you want to kill someone, then death should almost always be on the line, for instance. Trying to race across the city rooftop to rooftop to reach big plot event on time? Failure shouldn't mean falling to your death, it should mean getting there too late to stop the fireworks.

Would agree. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop in 7th Sea? Yeah, you're not going to die. That's not how the game works. The penalty will be in failures, and, in bad situations, wounds or reputation loss.

In 3.5, death is a lot more common, sure...it's partly because conflict resolution in it trends toward combat, and partly because death is not so permanent as in other games. I wouldn't focus purely on "more deaths = good GM", certainly. More that it's desirable for GMs to watch to ensure they don't accidentally subvert the risk/reward designs inherent in the game.

There's certainly nothing wrong with playing a character that is, say, terribly reckless or with some other character flaw...but if the guy who is terribly reckless never suffers logical consequences of this behavior type, it hurts the game as a whole.


Actually, let me throw this example out there. I'm not big into strategy. Tactics (a la tabletop boardgames) are fine, but I don't know a darn thing, nor am I terribly interested in learning, large scale war planning, with its various disciplines. I don't want my GM, who may be a big strategy buff, to assume I'll talk about scouting, intelligence, flanking, using the tree-line, etc. before the big battle scene, or else penalize me dearly. Make sense?

I think it's important for GMs to ensure their players are on board with campaign ideas. I don't mind the idea of a campaign based around large scale war and planning, but I'll be annoyed if I designed for dungeon dives and that's what happened. Setting expectations is key for avoiding disappointment.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2011-04-06, 01:36 PM
All of the following is based around the idea that you want to have fun AND be good at the game you're playing. If you just want to have fun and play Count My Loot, cool. I've played that game and it can be fun. No, there's no challenge, but kicking back and murdering bad guys by the score and cracking jokes with your friends is totally fine. If that's what you're looking for I certainly don't fault you. Being the RPG equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters IS a good time. But this thread isn't for you. Don't argue with me here. Start your own thread.

Does anybody remember this from my original post?
I'll keep responding to people's arguments, but I feel like a lot of them would disappear if they'd seen this.

I do remember it. That said, you claim that game that don't fit your playstyle are both "not challenging" and "count the loot" games.

I'm in a campaign with one experienced player, and one player who is rather new in terms of at-table experience, the latter of which and usually plays light-hearted, thoughtless, "count the loot" games.

Our DM has flat-out told us that we basically can't die unless we A: no something MIND-BOGGLINGLY stupid (i.e. things that are clearly and obviously labeled as instant death with no chance of escape, such as standing in front of an oncoming Lightning Rail...note that this does NOT include standing and fighting when we shouldn't [although that's likely to end poorly], or doing things that might be considered impossible [when we normally get a warning along the lines of "you can tell that it's a long shot, at best"]), or B: there is a fight where a character death would be meaningful to the plot. Our die rolls are few and far between, and normally we run on the "would it make sense to succeed here?" method. There is no loot to count, as we rarely have traditional "encounters," and rarely find anything worth picking up.

Yet it is the single most challenging game I've been in. Part discovery quest, part mystery, part political intrigue, we have many of the houses of Eberron arrayed against us, and all the might that our foes can bring to bear (which, for House Cannith, is quite a lot).

Does this mean our DM is sitting there waiting to kill us at a single false step? Nope. Almost no mistake is fatal, but many put is in worse and worse predicaments with regards to the world around us. Mistakes endanger the success of our plot (with regards to what our characters intended), which is, honestly, a far more interesting punishment than "oops...you're dead." Dying teaches me to bring a bunch of extra characters...throwing a wrench in the plans (or in the life) of a character I'm truly invested in (and want to see succeed) is a much better way to get me to do better next time. Further, it often makes the story more interesting.

More importantly, as an experienced gamer, it's one of the BEST campaigns I've ever been in, bar none. It's FUN. I feel like participating in it is making me a BETTER gamer. Again, I'm being a good gamer, and, as previously stated, I've only had a single character die on my in a table-top game, and only started at level 1 a handful of times. My GMs tend towards the lenient rather than the lethal, and our games hold story above dice rolls if a bad roll would distract from the tale at hand (a veteran scout, for example, does not walk noisily across a room one out of every 20 times, for example...that failure, at my table, would only be accepted if it happened during the most critical of moments. Sneaking past your average guard wouldn't even require a roll unless the stakes were tremendously high, and the character in question were nervous and/or tense).

So no...it's not a Harlem Globetrotters game. It's not hack-n-slash, or count-the-loot, or un-challenging, or whatever else you want to call it. It's a deep, often philosophical game centered around characters who have lost their old lives, lost their country (as their country, Cyre, was decimated by a magical disaster...see the Eberron campaign if you don't know what this is, although it's not really relevant), and found themselves embroiled in a rather sinister experiment, caused by the politics between the houses, and possibly partially responsible for the destruction of their homeland. It's as serious a game as I've ever been in.

Can you see why your OP comes off as abrasive? You're basically telling me that the above isn't the correct way to play the game, and that it won't make be a better player. I simply can't agree with that at all.


I play under one of the best GMs running and because of his willingness to kill us, we're one of the best crews around. This is not hyperbolic ****-measuring. This is plain fact.

I'm not sure that is a fact, honestly. I'd (this is my opinion, used as a counter-example...I wouldn't call it a fact, myself) call some of my groups the best groups around, because our GM tells a story first and foremost, which makes us, in turn, learn to make the decisions our characters would make, which adds to both realism and fun at the table, even when making crazy decisions. Which is more important...that it's not actually possible to jump a motorcycle across a small gorge, or that the player, the GM, and the other people around the table are having a blast, getting a better idea of who the character is and how he sees the world, and throwing a bit of excitement into a game? Think of action movies...how many times to the laws of physics get broken? Sure, I wouldn't let him to that in a Red Ryder wagon, for example, but I'd tell him that if he tried it, 'cause his character would know. I don't need to kill him to prove a point, or teach a lesson...merely teaching him the lesson without the punishment is sufficient for almost every player I've ever encountered.

The fact of the matter is that, in my experience, teaching a player to play a character appropriate to the campaign in question, teaching them to respect the "antic limits" of the particular campaign, and teaching them to accept that a "no, that's not possible" means "no, that's not possible" makes them a much better player than killing them off for every mistake. If I have to remind them of things their characters would reasonably remember, or take back the occasional action that was obviously incredibly stupid, so be it. I'll give them the second chance.

Better that than lose a valued character to a single stupid mistake, in my opinion.

Warlawk
2011-04-06, 01:48 PM
All of the following is based around the idea that you want to have fun AND be good at the game you're playing. If you just want to have fun and play Count My Loot, cool. I've played that game and it can be fun. No, there's no challenge, but kicking back and murdering bad guys by the score and cracking jokes with your friends is totally fine. If that's what you're looking for I certainly don't fault you. Being the RPG equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters IS a good time. But this thread isn't for you. Don't argue with me here. Start your own thread.



Does anybody remember this from my original post?
I'll keep responding to people's arguments, but I feel like a lot of them would disappear if they'd seen this.

Actually the problem is one you don't seem to be getting. The quoted text in question is just a load of condescending drek that is specifically written from that standpoint that you are superior and everyone else is wrong, carefully worded so as not to be a rules violation.

Calling any play style other than competitive tourney play "count my loot" is rude, insulting, condescending and borderline trolling IMO, not to mention flat ignorant. There can be challenge without strict tourney play where the slightest mistake means writing up a new character. Also, it's already been pointed out in this thread that a really good DM will punish your character far worse by keeping it alive and making you deal with consequences instead of just killing you. Straight up killing any PC that makes a mistake is the lazy DMs way out.

Bottom line is, you're saying "My way is better" without defining what "my way" is. If you want to strictly talk about Tourney play, then you need to make that very clear, because you didn't. The quoted statement that you keep trying to fall back on never even mentions tourney play.

If you don't want this kind of backlash, maybe you should try not posting from the stance of absolute condescension with perfect certainty that your way is correct, and everyone else is wrong. That might be a good start.

For the record, I agree with many of your points. I think there is a lot of correct information there. My issue is with your tone and attitude. Every group I've played with since about age 14 would have asked you to leave before the first session was over if you brought that kind of attitude to the table. To be fair, with that attitude you never would have been invited to play, but the point remains the same.

You want people to take you seriously? Drop the attitude, because as of right now you come off as just another gamer e-thug pushing an epiphany that no one else has ever had or could ever hope to really understand, cause they just aren't on your level.

EDIT:


I'm not sure that is a fact, honestly. I'd (this is my opinion, used as a counter-example...I wouldn't call it a fact, myself) call some of my groups the best groups around, because our GM tells a story first and foremost, which makes us, in turn, learn to make the decisions our characters would make, which adds to both realism and fun at the table, even when making crazy decisions. Which is more important...that it's not actually possible to jump a motorcycle across a small gorge, or that the player, the GM, and the other people around the table are having a blast, getting a better idea of who the character is and how he sees the world, and throwing a bit of excitement into a game? Think of action movies...how many times to the laws of physics get broken? Sure, I wouldn't let him to that in a Red Ryder wagon, for example, but I'd tell him that if he tried it, 'cause his character would know. I don't need to kill him to prove a point, or teach a lesson...merely teaching him the lesson without the punishment is sufficient for almost every player I've ever encountered.

/thumbs up

Playing a real, living breathing person with an actual personality who has flaws, makes mistakes and doesn't have metagame knowledge is a whole lot harder than just playing the odds and manipulating rules and your own familiarity with the DM to keep your character alive.

Tal_Akaan
2011-04-06, 01:58 PM
There's way too much here that I agree and disagree with comment on it all. So I will say this then be on my way.

I am the PERFECT player. No one has ever told me this or validated it in any way. 'How does he know he's the PERFECT player then' you might be asking yourself.

Every time I sit at the table ready to throw some dice, I have fun.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 02:17 PM
Having fun is great. That said, I think it's still possible to talk about having better players.

If you play poker, and have lots of fun doing so...fantastic. That doesn't mean you're as good as whoever won the world poker tour.

Vladislav
2011-04-06, 02:21 PM
Yes, but poker is in its nature a competitive game, with a clear win/lose metric. The whole point of D&D is that it's a cooperative game. You are not defeating the DM, you are playing with the DM. "Being good at D&D" has more to it than tilting the odds to make keeping a positive HP total more likely.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-06, 02:25 PM
Yes, but poker is in its nature a competitive game, with a clear win/lose metric. The whole point of D&D is that it's a cooperative game. You are not defeating the DM, you are playing with the DM. "Being good at D&D" has more to it than tilting the odds to make keeping a positive HP total more likely.

Consider any team game then, like soccer. You can have better and worse players on that team. Now yes, this involves more than scoring goals/having positive hp. Teamwork is a big one. It may not show up on your individual scoreboard, but your team as a whole will certainly work better if you practice it.

I would certainly consider a party that works together well and emphasizes cooperation to be good players. Certainly better than they would be if they acted as four individuals competing.

Britter
2011-04-06, 02:25 PM
Having fun is great. That said, I think it's still possible to talk about having better players.

If you play poker, and have lots of fun doing so...fantastic. That doesn't mean you're as good as whoever won the world poker tour.

Total agreement.

After all, I have devoted thousands of hours, and at least $10k, to the hobby of table-top RPGs. I damn well plan to get the most out of it.

Hence my total agreement that learning the rules and playing more will make for better players. I would add to that playing a variety of systems (as many as you can, really. You may eventually find one or two that are just what you want, but you should try out as many as possible. It will make you a better gamer, imo), as well as GMing at least once.

Vladislav
2011-04-06, 02:45 PM
I would certainly consider a party that works together well and emphasizes cooperation to be good players. Certainly better than they would be if they acted as four individuals competing.Which brings us back to the point that D&D is a cooperative game. And why stop at four then? Won't a party+DM that work together be better than they would be if they acted as five individuals competing?

Amnestic
2011-04-06, 02:50 PM
I would certainly consider a party that works together well and emphasizes cooperation to be good players. Certainly better than they would be if they acted as four individuals competing.

*cough* Actually due to the nature of Social Loafing, four players competing against each other may be more likely to create superior results.

Karoht
2011-04-06, 03:49 PM
There is a fellow I play with. For namesake I will name him Zero.
He has 3 solutions to just about any problem, so long as he's playing a caster. Fireball, Disentegrate, or roll a skill check. If there is a riddle to solve, he just waits for the party to solve it.
His problems are that he's just not very imaginative. Most of us can find cunning and clever uses for non-blasty spells which are just as effective (if not more so) for taking down 30 goblins as 1 well placed fireball. As it stands, if the spell doesn't do damage, he usually doesn't bother taking it. Even his use of blasty spells isn't all that and a bag of chips. Will his fireball AoE hit a party member? Oh well, get some fire resistance next town, nub.
As for riddles or challenges, if you put him on the spot, he'll just clam up. Which is odd because he likes being the center of attention, and he can roleplay just fine. But when there is a puzzle? He wants to Roll-play rather than roleplay.

We had him make a melee character once. We handed him a barbarian build, he had fun, roleplayed quite a bit more, even solved a few puzzles with some clever use of stuff in his inventory. But the very next campaign what does he roll? He's back to sorcerer, with a blasty spell list.

I'm all for people playing what they like, don't get me wrong. But if you don't play melee often, consider a melee next game. If you have never played a Druid, try one. If you've never played a Monk, consider one. If you've only ever played rangers, try a wizard. Switching things up, changing the tools in the toolbox, and keeping things fresh, will really improve your problem solving skills. If part of the game is getting the most out of your character, then your optimization will probably improve as well.

And don't think of characters purely in terms of their damage output. A well built healer can save the day just as much as a well built tank or a well built save-or-die or a well built AoE caster.

Glimbur
2011-04-06, 04:22 PM
There's way too much here that I agree and disagree with comment on it all. So I will say this then be on my way.

I am the PERFECT player. No one has ever told me this or validated it in any way. 'How does he know he's the PERFECT player then' you might be asking yourself.

Every time I sit at the table ready to throw some dice, I have fun.

I'd like to argue semantics with you. A Perfect Player would not only have fun, but also not interfere with others fun/enable others to have fun, depending on how strong of a definition you want. Otherwise... I agree.

Tal_Akaan
2011-04-06, 04:58 PM
I'd like to argue semantics with you. A Perfect Player would not only have fun, but also not interfere with others fun/enable others to have fun, depending on how strong of a definition you want. Otherwise... I agree.

Well the statement was more meant to be amusing than factual, but allow me a few changes and I think I can accommodate you.


There's way too much here that I agree and disagree with comment on it all. So I will say this then be on my way.

I have the PERFECT group. No one has ever told me this or validated it in any way. 'How does he know he has the PERFECT group then' you might be asking yourself.

Every time we sit at the table ready to throw some dice, we have fun.

Changes have been bolded. I think I like the coment better this way anyway.

Jerthanis
2011-04-07, 02:15 AM
Does anybody remember this from my original post?
I'll keep responding to people's arguments, but I feel like a lot of them would disappear if they'd seen this.

Mostly, I read your examples of people being "no damn good at this stuff" and saw a couple examples of PCs either not really making a mistake except not guessing that demon blood was roughly equivalent to magma in terms of how deadly it was and getting no-save-killed without even a reminder of a small detail, or taking a risk and getting no-save-killed without even letting the dice fall. (The fact that it was specifically a tournament game with explicit instructions to respond in this way was something I didn't realize, and now just think that instruction is lame)

I just take issue with the idea of PCs getting blamed for what I see as DMing or module design mistakes.

The example of the guy sneaking off on his own to kill a group of archers is... I'd have to hear more details about the situation, that might be a perfectly justified player death, but I might say that might fall more in line with "Random dice are random" than being an idiot, since sneaking up on people is a good strategy normally.

And just to clarify, I wasn't saying "oWoD Demons don't have acidic blood, therefore shenanigans" I was just trying to point out that Demon blood being acidic is not a universal or particularly common trait in media, and not what people immediately think of when confronted with it. So unless attention was specifically drawn to the detail that it was an INCREDIBLY dangerous substance, he wouldn't have the expectation that drinking it would be automatic death, even if he DID remember it was acidic.

Also, I was saying that even IF blood was very caustic/dangerous, what oWoD considered a fair amount of damage was 1 level of lethal damage per round of exposure, not 8+ unsoakable automatic levels.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-07, 08:27 AM
As for the social loafing, sure, a bit of healthy competition in a team is a good thing...but if it gets too strong, it undercuts the team.

Consider the example of a player that steals from the party. Sure, it makes him more powerful, at the parties expense...but other characters will then invest resources in trying to avoid this or steal it back. Not only do lots of resources end up being wasted, party unity goes down the drain, as people see a fallen teammate as a source of loot first, and someone to heal and take care of second.


Which brings us back to the point that D&D is a cooperative game. And why stop at four then? Won't a party+DM that work together be better than they would be if they acted as five individuals competing?

To a certain extent, yes, the DMs actions can certainly promote good player behavior.

However, it is not the DMs role to ensure the party is always successful, so they don't have entirely the same job as the players. They need not be entirely adversarial, sure...but their job usually includes running the opposition. Doing so in a challenging fashion can improve play. They are less like one of the players in a soccer game, and more like the coach who trains them.

Vladislav
2011-04-07, 08:43 AM
However, it is not the DMs role to ensure the party is always successful, so they don't have entirely the same job as the players. They need not be entirely adversarial, sure...but their job usually includes running the opposition. Doing so in a challenging fashion can improve play. They are less like one of the players in a soccer game, and more like the coach who trains them.Perhaps you meant it's not the DM's job to ensure the players outdice the opposition. Because I do believe it is in fact the DM's job the ensure the game is successful. Yes, in some cases it includes running a strong opposition that can't be easily outdiced. In some cases, it doesn't. Would you agree?

Tyndmyr
2011-04-07, 09:18 AM
Perhaps you meant it's not the DM's job to ensure the players outdice the opposition. Because I do believe it is in fact the DM's job the ensure the game is successful. Yes, in some cases it includes running a strong opposition that can't be easily outdiced. In some cases, it doesn't. Would you agree?

I said the party is successful.

There is a difference between the party being successful and the game being successful. You can tell great tales that involve failure.

Morghen
2011-04-07, 12:54 PM
Whew! Replies through page 3:

Being “good” at RPGs does not mean you’re a power gamer. You can make the most underpowered build or play a bottom tier class and still be a good player. The a good player does not necessarily need to make the most out of his build to be effective while a power gamer focuses on his build in order to be effective.

Its also very plausible to have a very effective character, and a very good back-story with good characterization to back it up. I’ve done it, and I’ve seen it done.YES. I'm not talking about the character. I'm talking about the player. It's not about power-gaming. It's about being an effective part of your game.


You're right, the GM is there to work with the players and tell a story. RP-heavy, or not, yes, the threat and danger of death has to exist, alternatively, the threat of failure has to exist. In a game like, say, Exalted, where threat of death tends to be low (in the case of Exalt v. Mortal combat), instead, the threat needs to be failure.Yes.


Or, if he expected the Face to be role-played as such, should have made it clear and told the player in question he might wish to reconsider the role. Again. Bad GM, rather than bad player. You can't make a player better by forcing them to do something they're uncomfortable with.I added an underline. I think there's a perception that no role-playing happens in the games I know. Not accurate. We do expect the Face to actually talk to people, as opposed to just "I passed my check. She likes me, right?" And it wasn't a matter of "We've got everything else so you have to be Face." Dude chose his role.


but it was clear that the player was having trouble, and the DM instead pushed.It was clear from my one-sentence description?


"Stupid Mistakes" are impossible to ignore, frankly. [snip] We're not suddenly bad players, but it was something that was impossible to avoid at that point.Agreed. It was outside the norm, though, right? Not something you usually do? Then I wouldn't consider that bad play. Persistent, repeated mistakes are bad play.


You used numbers to express how lethal your GM was previously, 85 before you started playing, 25 after. That's not impressive, or a good way to express 'how good your DM is', it means he's probably a 'Gygaxian' DM who thinks the Sphere of Annihilation in the hole is a funny trick. He might not be a 'killer DM', but he clearly takes pride in killing PCs, and so do you, as you hold this an achievement.I used those numbers to indicate where we came from. We got killed a lot. Nobody's happy that we died a lot. It happened. Now it happens less. It wasn't "Look at what a badass this guy is", but "Look how dumb we used to play".


When The Bride Cheesed off Pai Mei, she got to fight him.Yes. Probably not the best example. But accurate in that they were warned that Dunkelzahn was wildly beyond their power level and they decided to initiate combat anyway. He didn't decide to teach them a lesson. They didn't fire a missile in response to an attack. He hit the air (iirc) to take the equivalent of a morning jog and they initiated combat. As for that GM, I can't swear but I don't think Dunkelzahn was statted out in that module. The GM could have just rolled a ton of dice behind the screen and told them that D soaked the damage and then rolled more dice and told them that their helicopter had blown up. But that sort of feels like lying. Maybe it would have been better for the players to hear what 40d6 sounds like, and maybe not.


In your campaign shooting might not be the most appropriate solution 99% of the time but in some campaigns it is.Count My Loot.


A pirate who couldn't swim? Historically accurate (I think many pirates couldn't swim) and could tie into some cool backstory and roleplaying.
*Swinging down into the courtyard? Traditional heroic entrance that makes the game more fun (imo obviously)
*Jumping a motorcycle from building to building? That's just awesome and if I were the gm I'd have awarded xp for such a cool stunt.Pirates who couldn't swim died if their boat sank. The player either knew that risk going in, or should have, and paid for that risk. It's not the GM's responsibility to magically save the character.

I'd go on, but looking at all three of your responses give me the sense that you think the GM is just there to tell the players how well they succeed at things.



Bad players are the ones taking needless risks.If I wasn't a grown man who last cried at the age of 12, I could say this statement made me cry. I can't even begin to explain on how many levels this is wrong.Does replacing the word "needless" with "stupid and out-of-character" change things? That's the long version of what I meant by "needless".


The issue here is you are assuming that either we are all play "Count your Loot" or we are playing your hard-core style of gaming.

In between those two extremes there is an entire spectrum of playstyles.Count My Loot can happen in RP-heavy games. We're more familiar with it in the format of "I kill it and take the money to the magic store", but it can happen in any game.

PC: "I bang my fist down on the negotiating table. I say 'Gentlemen, stop this bickering and come to your senses!'"
GM: "The other diplomats immediately acquiesce to your King's demands and vote you Diplomat of the Year."

When the GM becomes a fan of the PCs, that's when Count My Loot happens.


You're recieving bad results because your post sounds bad. It probably isn't meant to sound bad but it does.It's as "RAWR! PLAY BETTER!" as it is because I was kind of grumpy about the "My Players Are X" threads I linked to originally. If I'd sat down to do this logically it definitely would've been less ranty. I'll probably do a non-a-hole version of this this weekend.

Britter
2011-04-07, 01:04 PM
Double post. Please disregard.

Britter
2011-04-07, 01:09 PM
Count My Loot can happen in RP-heavy games. We're more familiar with it in the format of "I kill it and take the money to the magic store", but it can happen in any game.

PC: "I bang my fist down on the negotiating table. I say 'Gentlemen, stop this bickering and come to your senses!'"
GM: "The other diplomats immediately acquiesce to your King's demands and vote you Diplomat of the Year."

When the GM becomes a fan of the PCs, that's when Count My Loot happens.



I rarely say this, but I honestly think you are absolutely wrong here.

There are as many different ways to play games as there are gamers. There is not a simple choice between "Hard core" and "Count my Loot".

As for the Dunkelzahn thing. There are stats in the corebooks for Great Dragons. And they are pretty good, over all. The players attack him, great. Let him soak the blow. Have him chase them down and kill them, but only if they don't WISE UP AND SCOOT! He shouldn't automagically have caught them and killed them without any dice being rolled. Thats just a bad GM call, in my opinion. I don't care if you drop 40d6 on the players while you cackle maniacly...heck, I like doing that...but that is better than just saying "give me your sheets, you just did the instadeath thing you noobs."


I really don't have anything else to say on the subject.

Also, fyi, historically most sailors couldn't swim. Additionally, the real danger in falling off of a boat at sea is drowning, not because you can't swim, but becuase it can take a crew a rather long time to realize you have fallen overboard and turn the ship around, during which you become exhausted from treading water and lacking the strength to continue, you drown. additionally, between the time the boat turns and the time you fell in, the sea can and will move you around, sometimes clear out of the range of the rescuing boat. This is worse in places like the Bering Sea, where you die in mere minutes from the cold, but in the Age of Sail, you couldn't just turn your ship on a dime and pick a dude up. Heck, even many modern ships can't do that relaibly.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-07, 01:10 PM
Count My Loot.

I'm forced to admit that yes, if you're playing a campaign in which combat is the best choice 99% of the time...yeah, you're playing a very limited style of game. Pretty much hack and slash. Nothing actually wrong with that, of course, but it will make you a better roleplayer to try a game with more diverse options.

Karoht
2011-04-07, 01:33 PM
Bad players are partly due to the bad players themselves, and partly due to the DM.

Yes, I have some players who aren't very good at puzzle solving. Placing puzzles everywhere isn't going to make them better players. Placing tools around to solve puzzles or help them solve puzzles might help.

Yes, I have players who enjoy blasting stuff with fireballs and little else. Give them encounters where AoE only has limited effect. Where blasty spells aren't effective enough. Give them more situations where multi-use spells are more effective than blasty stuff.

Yes, I have players who enjoy hack and slash. If I want them to use some battlefield tactics, I have to present them with the scenario where tactics are available, maybe a bit obvious, and beneficial.

Yes, I have players who do stupid things. If I want them to not do stupid things, yes, I need to punish them for doing stupid things. But before I do that, I need to provide some obvious cues as to what might not constitute a good idea prior to a character doing something. And if a character insists very strongly towards doing something dumb, I very strongly ask "are you sure this is what you want to do?" which tends to act as a cue that this isn't a good idea.

Yes, I have players who tend to play the same things every campaign. If I want them to do something fresh and new or try something else, I have to give them a reason to do it, and not just nerf/kill their casters or mandate melee only characters.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2011-04-07, 02:53 PM
Pirates who couldn't swim died if their boat sank. The player either knew that risk going in, or should have, and paid for that risk. It's not the GM's responsibility to magically save the character.

And how many classic stories out there revolve around a marooned sailor, perhaps beneficially saved by a tide? Quite a few. Just sayin'. When you first told us this story, the player's reasoning was that "it could be good for RP later on."

Being saved by a freak tide and marooned for a month or two? Good for character development, and good for RP. Being saved by the enemy, or by someone you don't particularly care for, or by a friend you're now deeply indebted to? Good for character development and RP. Being killed because of something you chose because it would give you good RP options? No. Not cool. Time for the DM to build on that RP hook, and turn it into something. Killing the player isn't the same at all.


PC: "I bang my fist down on the negotiating table. I say 'Gentlemen, stop this bickering and come to your senses!'"
GM: "The other diplomats immediately acquiesce to your King's demands and vote you Diplomat of the Year."

When the GM becomes a fan of the PCs, that's when Count My Loot happens.

So you're saying it's better if a player gives the perfect, in-character speech that would have any diplomat eating out of his hands...and then botches horribly because the dice decide to give him a 1? There's leeway between "You know, he's got a point" and "Obviously you're the diplomat of the year." Or would you disagree?


It's as "RAWR! PLAY BETTER!" as it is because I was kind of grumpy about the "My Players Are X" threads I linked to originally. If I'd sat down to do this logically it definitely would've been less ranty. I'll probably do a non-a-hole version of this this weekend.

Good. 'cause this version is full of logic holes, fairly elitist, and...well...often just incorrect. I'm interested in seeing your more thought-out version.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-07, 02:55 PM
Honestly, a small part of me was hoping that this thread was about building robot D&D players.

The lack of Gameforged saddens me.

kyoryu
2011-04-07, 03:10 PM
Late to the party. But I'll add my two cents.

The real question is how you define "good" in a player. There's only two reasonable answers I can think of:

a) Does what the DM thinks they should do
b) Is successful within the context of the game

I don't even know that I'd call 'a' a reasonable answer, unless you're playing with mind readers. The only answer that I can think of that makes any sense is 'b', yet the OP seems to presume 'a'.

I suspect the real question is "how do I get players to play in such a way that they can be successful without me shielding them from their mistakes?" And... you can't. Because in reality, the players *are* successful, as they are succeeding within the context of the game.

If you want them to play more like you have in mind, make them less successful, so that they are forced to learn and adapt. That's the only way to do it.

Please note that, in fact, my answer is system and playstyle agnostic. If 'successful' in the context of your game involves roleplaying and relationships, and the player is just going around killing everything, the answer is *exactly the same* as it is for a situation more like the one that the OP described.

Karoht
2011-04-07, 03:17 PM
And how many classic stories out there revolve around a marooned sailor, perhaps beneficially saved by a tide? Quite a few. Just sayin'. When you first told us this story, the player's reasoning was that "it could be good for RP later on."

Being saved by a freak tide and marooned for a month or two? Good for character development, and good for RP. Being saved by the enemy, or by someone you don't particularly care for, or by a friend you're now deeply indebted to? Good for character development and RP. Being killed because of something you chose because it would give you good RP options? No. Not cool. Time for the DM to build on that RP hook, and turn it into something. Killing the player isn't the same at all.
I hate when you throw the DM or party obvious hooks and nothing happens. Just saying.

If a player makes a choice for RP reasons, even if it's stupid, it's for RP reasons. If no RP comes of it (other players don't take the hook, DM doesn't take the hook, it was inappropriate to the situation, etc) that isn't necessarily the issue of the choice. However, if someone willingly places their head in a noose for RP reasons, it is still a bad decision, no matter the reason. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that jazz.

I hate to be so base as to consider it from a Darwinism standpoint, but if a player makes a choice that would normally earn them a Darwin Award in real life, I think the motivation to make that choice becomes largely moot. The player made a choice that got their character killed or nearly killed. Not good. Hopefully, they learn from it, and in some cases as a DM, thats all you can hope for.

If one player makes a choice that might end all the players lives, that gets under my skin, RP reasons or no. Yes, the game relies heavily on teamwork, and this might be an individualist approach. On the other hand, the team doesn't do so well when they're all dead either. And the team certainly can't have fun and RP with you when they're dead either.

^Mostly just ramblings.

Should a player be punished for trying to make a choice that their character would make, or for making a choice for the purpose of RP'ing with the party? Punish, maybe not. But what do you do in that situation?

kyoryu
2011-04-07, 03:28 PM
Should a player be punished for trying to make a choice that their character would make, or for making a choice for the purpose of RP'ing with the party? Punish, maybe not. But what do you do in that situation?

So, here's where I find an interesting difference in perspective.

I don't think it's the DM's job to punish players, nor to reward them. It's the DM's job to run the world, and let the players deal with the consequences of their actions.

If a player decides to play Russian Roulette, so be it. Roll a d6, and a 1 means you got the loaded chamber. If you roll a 1, new character.

That's not me punishing the player. It's me resolving the actions of the player.

(The inherent conflict, of course, is when DMs railroad players, as that takes player choice and agency away)

Karoht
2011-04-07, 03:31 PM
So, here's where I find an interesting difference in perspective.

I don't think it's the DM's job to punish players, nor to reward them. It's the DM's job to run the world, and let the players deal with the consequences of their actions.

If a player decides to play Russian Roulette, so be it. Roll a d6, and a 1 means you got the loaded chamber. If you roll a 1, new character.

That's not me punishing the player. It's me resolving the actions of the player.

(The inherent conflict, of course, is when DMs railroad players, as that takes player choice and agency away)

That is more just shifting it to letting the world punish/educate the player. Which, from the player perspective is kind of the same thing as having the DM do it. Turning a dog loose in the woods instead of shooting him is still getting rid of a dog.

kyoryu
2011-04-07, 03:42 PM
That is more just shifting it to letting the world punish/educate the player. Which, from the player perspective is kind of the same thing as having the DM do it. Turning a dog loose in the woods instead of shooting him is still getting rid of a dog.

Again, my issue is the word punish.

It's not a punishment. It's just the result of an action.

Let's say that it's no longer Russian Roulette - all 6 chambers are loaded, and the player is aware of this. The character puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

Bam. New character. How else could you run this, and why would you? If you have a predetermined result in mind (the characters always win, yada yada yada), and you won't even let an intentional act by the players shift off of that resolution, you've completely railroaded the game. It's not even really a game any more.

That's why I have an issue with the term "punish." It's only a punishment if there's an expected result (players win! Yay!) to begin with, and any deviation from that result is considered abnormal.

If that's how you want to play, fine, but then why even really bother rolling dice? Call it collaborative free-form storytelling and go have fun.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-07, 03:44 PM
So, here's where I find an interesting difference in perspective.

I don't think it's the DM's job to punish players, nor to reward them. It's the DM's job to run the world, and let the players deal with the consequences of their actions.

If a player decides to play Russian Roulette, so be it. Roll a d6, and a 1 means you got the loaded chamber. If you roll a 1, new character.

That's not me punishing the player. It's me resolving the actions of the player.

(The inherent conflict, of course, is when DMs railroad players, as that takes player choice and agency away)

Yeah, that's how it works. If the player decides to request that his buddies reincarnate him instead of rezzing him normally, well...he takes the chance of ending up with some weird race.

Or whatever else the situation is...player agency is important. This includes the freedom to make mistakes as well as the freedom to be awesome. Players will do both.

Sipex
2011-04-07, 03:48 PM
While I have nothing to add to this discussion implementing a 'russian roulette' portion to my in person D&D session sounds like an interesting thing which my players would like.

I'd make it A choice for the current situation, not the only choice of course.

Thanks for the idea.

Naki
2011-04-07, 04:13 PM
I added an underline. I think there's a perception that no role-playing happens in the games I know. Not accurate. We do expect the Face to actually talk to people, as opposed to just "I passed my check. She likes me, right?" And it wasn't a matter of "We've got everything else so you have to be Face." Dude chose his role.

Then it wasn't the player's fault at all. He chose the role, you all knew he would fail badly at it, shrugged and let him. It was the GM's fault, and more importantly your fault, as a player. You let a player who couldn't fulfill the role, play the role, then punished him. Instead of deterring him, or adjudicating differently. Everyone's fault. You're a bad group, as a whole. Sucks to hear that you're basically jerks. It's easy to go "Does she like me?", it takes initiative for a GM to realize that they player is going to do this poorly, and should, perhaps, describe how the situation unfolds instead. I know, a GM taking initiative to do something other than kill a player is a big step forward in becoming a better GM, but it's for the betterment of all of your group!


It was clear from my one-sentence description? Taking in your previous statements on the player.... yes? Confirmed by your above reply! Bad social skills, expectation of a role he cannot fulfill, no one made an attempt to help him, or deter him, no change in adjudication. You put him in a situation where he couldn't succeed and then watched him fail. Then punished him for it! Good way to build up the guy's confidence.


Agreed. It was outside the norm, though, right? Not something you usually do? Then I wouldn't consider that bad play. Persistent, repeated mistakes are bad play. If I said I expected players to consistently make between 2-5 mistakes a session, would you suddenly change your tune? I'm betting you would. No one in our group is psychic. Things happen. My face couldn't climb a fence, and was forced to due so thanks to miscommunication. It nearly botched a break-in attempt, because it was timed based on one character's expectations of herself, not the group as a whole. The Mage failed a stealth check and was caught by a guard. We had to kill him (and as a result, every other guard at the docks!). This was all in the same run as the above example.

You have a silly expectation that everyone is perfect, and if they're not, they need to be punished, harshly, for it. That's not fun role-playing, that's bad roll-playing.


I used those numbers to indicate where we came from. We got killed a lot. Nobody's happy that we died a lot. It happened. Now it happens less. It wasn't "Look at what a badass this guy is", but "Look how dumb we used to play".

That entire statement would hold some weight, if you hadn't followed the numbers with this:


I play under one of the best GMs running and because of his willingness to kill us, we're one of the best crews around. This is not hyperbolic ****-measuring. This is plain fact.

You do hold his kill count as a badge of honor, and claim that this makes you one of the the best roll-players (note the roll, not role. Dying doesn't make you better at playing a part). Except that nearly every poster in this thread has laid claim that you are not, and disagree with you. Perhaps you should put away the ruler and face an actual fact: you are of the opinion you are one of the best 'crews' in roll-playing. You are not actually one.

In the end, I see you didn't dispute what actually makes a bad player. So, either, you agree that attitude is more important than skill, or you chose to ignore it to better make your argument. I would, humbly, request that you remedy this, I must assume, egregious oversight.

Jerthanis
2011-04-07, 04:35 PM
Count My Loot.


If I were you, I'd probably stop using this phrase. It's inherently pejorative and judgmental and is doing nothing but making people disagree and argue with you when they could be having a discussion with you instead.

It's a mildly insulting phrase that is getting you nowhere.

Yeah, there should be negative consequences for stupid actions, but no, it shouldn't always or even often be no-roll instant-death. There are failure conditions that involve no deaths. Also, stories about characters succeeding and surviving where they fail is not a bad way to play unless the object is to defeat and outthink your GM.

Finally, In D&D, as well as most other RPGs, the GM can summon arbitrarily large opposition, deal arbitrarily large damage, and cause effects that are arbitrarily deadly based on his design, whim, and perception of what a scene should be and where the game ought to go. Therefore it is impossible to beat him, change him from his course, or survive when HE thinks otherwise based solely on your actions IN the game. If you think you deserve kudos for overcoming a GM, and think you've left him stomping his hat in impotence at your masterful tactics and planning, remember that in every single case, he is letting you win.

Nohwl
2011-04-07, 07:09 PM
i once played under a dm who killed the same person over 30 times times in one session. other people got hurt and injured trying to get him up the tower. basically, the dm railroaded the entire game and didn't have time to make up a plot for that session, (he said this after the session) so he put everyone in a tower that we had to climb, made the floor icy and then set the balance check to something that person could not pass. the deaths took about 45 minutes to accomplish, and by then, the dm thought of something for us to do. (then i wound up explaining how to make attack rolls to him so he could run the combat he planned.) since he had a high kill count and didn't fudge crits, does that make him a good dm?

edit: asked my old dm how many times he died.

Ytaker
2011-04-07, 08:21 PM
Finally, In D&D, as well as most other RPGs, the GM can summon arbitrarily large opposition, deal arbitrarily large damage, and cause effects that are arbitrarily deadly based on his design, whim, and perception of what a scene should be and where the game ought to go. Therefore it is impossible to beat him, change him from his course, or survive when HE thinks otherwise based solely on your actions IN the game. If you think you deserve kudos for overcoming a GM, and think you've left him stomping his hat in impotence at your masterful tactics and planning, remember that in every single case, he is letting you win.

Unless he has some sense of fairness or doesn't cheat. For most GMs they're not going to randomly change their game.

He may not be letting you win. You may be winning against his will, but because he's not spiteful he's not arbitrarily beating you up.

Morghen
2011-04-08, 09:41 AM
Gah. Halfway through page 4.

...sneaking up on people is a good strategy normally.Then you missed the part where I said the people he was sneaking up on were ZOMG-UBER-GUERRILLA TACTICS race. And that there were an unknown number of them.


Also, I was saying that even IF blood was very caustic/dangerous, what oWoD considered a fair amount of damage was 1 level of lethal damage per round of exposure, not 8+ unsoakable automatic levels.This was old-ass Mind's Eye Theatre (their LARP rules) and vampires had three health levels. The power he used could pull up to three units of blood out of the victim. He chose to pull as much as he could instead of being cautious. There is a common power (Fortitude) that would have let him turn aggravated damage into lethal, but he didn't have any levels in it.


There is a difference between the party being successful and the game being successful. You can tell great tales that involve failure.Troof.


Also, fyi, historically most sailors couldn't swim.And those guys drowned, right? If you don't want your character to drown when you're playing a game that has rules to govern boat sinking, take a swimming skill.


There are as many different ways to play games as there are gamers. There is not a simple choice between "Hard core" and "Count my Loot".My "Count My Loot" thing is getting misconstrued a little bit. One of the posts that I haven't responded to yet says I'm using Count My Loot as an insult. People being insulted by my use of it doesn't mean I intend it as an insult. A fun game where the good guys always win and the combat is just us blowing **** up? Cool. As long as I know that going in, sign me up. I don't see Count My Loot as bad as long as you're aware that you're playing it. When I say "Count My Loot" I don't mean "That playstyle is inferior" I mean "That playstyle doesn't threaten the characters with any kind of consequences." That can happen in a RP-heavy game or a game where the players barely know the names of their own characters.


Bad players are partly due to the bad players themselves, and partly due to the DM.I'd go further than that. They are inextricably linked.


Placing puzzles everywhere isn't going to make them better players. Placing tools around to solve puzzles or help them solve puzzles might help.OHMYGODNO! Don't give them tools! DON'T HELP THEM SOLVE YOUR PUZZLES! Why put it there if you're just going to help them? If they know that puzzles are part of your game then they should work on doing the puzzles you present to them. Give them easier puzzles for now, but they won't get better at puzzles if you hold their hand every time they encounter them.


Yes, I have players who enjoy blasting stuff with fireballs and little else. Give them encounters where AoE only has limited effect. Where blasty spells aren't effective enough. Give them more situations where multi-use spells are more effective than blasty stuff.Very strongly agree.


If I want them to not do stupid things, yes, I need to punish them for doing stupid things. But before I do that, I need to provide some obvious cues as to what might not constitute a good idea prior to a character doing something. And if a character insists very strongly towards doing something dumb, I very strongly ask "are you sure this is what you want to do?" which tends to act as a cue that this isn't a good idea.I don't think you should give them the [stern look and "are you sure this is what you want to do?"] chance. Just ask him if that's what he's really doing to make sure he wasn't making an out-of-character joke to the table, and then let him do it. If you've already specified that there are monster noises coming from the hole and he insists on jumping in, let him suffer the consequences.


Being saved by a freak tide and marooned for a month or two? Good for character development, and good for RP. Being saved by the enemy, or by someone you don't particularly care for, or by a friend you're now deeply indebted to? Good for character development and RP.No, because now you're fiating the other direction. You've gone from trying to tell a story with the characters to "How do I keep these characters alive?" That's just as wrong as ROCKS FALL. EVERYONE DIES. Sometimes the good guy dies. In The Epic of Gilgamesh (the earliest surviving written story we have as a species) the co-main character dies 2/3 of the way through. A big chunk of the rest of the story concerns the title character dealing with that death. Sometimes the good guys die.


So you're saying it's better if a player gives the perfect, in-character speech that would have any diplomat eating out of his hands...and then botches horribly because the dice decide to give him a 1? There's leeway between "You know, he's got a point" and "Obviously you're the diplomat of the year." Or would you disagree?It depends. If you're playing an RP-heavy game where the dice don't matter as much as the role-playing that's going on and your situations happens (20 speech, 1 roll) then I have no problem with (for example) changing it from a crit-fail/fumble/glitch to a simple 1 and add the character's bonuses. Or if the speech is amazing enough (in this RP-heavy game), don't require a roll.


The real question is how you define "good" in a player.

a) Does what the DM thinks they should do
b) Is successful within the context of the game

I don't even know that I'd call 'a' a reasonable answer, unless you're playing with mind readers. The only answer that I can think of that makes any sense is 'b', yet the OP seems to presume 'a'.THAT'S NOT AT ALL WHAT I'VE SAID ANYWHERE IN HERE.


I suspect the real question is "how do I get players to play in such a way that they can be successful without me shielding them from their mistakes?" And... you can't. Because in reality, the players *are* successful, as they are succeeding within the context of the game.Yes you can! Don't shield them from their mistakes and they'll suffer the consequences of their actions. If the GM has a [fiat] carry your pirate to an island instead of letting him drown/suffer the consequences of your actions, you won't learn anything aside from "My characters are invincible." If I try to jump my motorcycle from this skyscraper to that and there are outside factors making it difficult (rules for getting up to speed, distance between buildings, no ramp, etc), I'm likely to fall. Having Gandalf swoop in with his giant eagle and grab me is just going to teach me that I should walk up to the enemy machine-gun nest and plug the barrel with my finger because I'm unkillable.


If you want them to play more like you have in mind, make them less successful, so that they are forced to learn and adapt. That's the only way to do it.How on earth did you manage to miss my point and agree with me?


IHowever, if someone willingly places their head in a noose for RP reasons, it is still a bad decision, no matter the reason.YES! Thank you.


The player made a choice that got their character killed or nearly killed. Not good. Hopefully, they learn from it, and in some cases as a DM, thats all you can hope for.Very much agree.


Should a player be punished for trying to make a choice that their character would make, or for making a choice for the purpose of RP'ing with the party? Punish, maybe not. But what do you do in that situation?It really depends on the action. If they're playing Chaotic Evil correctly, most characters shouldn't last two sessions before being arrested unless it's a wilderness setting. Do you "punish" that character? Well, kind of. That's not really punishing, IMO. That's responding realistically. But too many GMs fall in love with the characters or don't want to make the players angry so they make excuses and let the PCs off the hook when they insult the prince or try a frontal assault on an enemy stronghold they haven't scouted.


The inherent conflict, of course, is when DMs railroad players, as that takes player choice and agency away.Just as bad the other direction is when GMs railroad their own world to keep the PCs safe.

potatocubed
2011-04-08, 10:10 AM
In The Epic of Gilgamesh (the earliest surviving written story we have as a species) the co-main character dies 2/3 of the way through. A big chunk of the rest of the story concerns the title character dealing with that death. Sometimes the good guys die.

I think the point is that Gilgamesh doesn't die. He suffers the loss of his friend, but as the protagonist his story can continue through that suffering.

If you're running a game where the storylines are tied up with the characters, killing off a PC kills off any and all storylines attached to that PC. very few storylines survive the death of the protagonist.

A better option is probably to tie stories to PCs and then punish them for failure in ways that don't involve their death. You get the benefit of a strong character-centred storyline combined with real penalties for screwing up.

Morghen
2011-04-08, 10:53 AM
I think the point is that Gilgamesh doesn't die. He suffers the loss of his friend, but as the protagonist his story can continue through that suffering.This argument only holds weight until you run a campaign that involves more than one player.


If you're running a game where the storylines are tied up with the characters, killing off a PC kills off any and all storylines attached to that PC. very few storylines survive the death of the protagonist.

A better option is probably to tie stories to PCs and then punish them for failure in ways that don't involve their death. You get the benefit of a strong character-centred storyline combined with real penalties for screwing up.So there's this cool storyline where Boromir is going to take The Ring to Gondor and they think they're going to use The Ring to destroy Sauron but really The Ring is just going to turn Gondor into West Mordor. Then the GM doesn't take any steps when a group of orcs shows up and they end up killing Boromir. So that awesome storyline involving dramatic irony and good guys turning into bad guys just gets stamped out completely.

Daimbert
2011-04-08, 11:03 AM
I might have had some specific comments on this thread, but speaking as a player and a newbie GM my answer to "How to Make Better Players" is this:

Work with them.

A lot of the advice is about how you try to teach a player through in-game consequences. Which is fine if you can't actually interact directly with the player, like in a video game. But if you can, why in the world would you just kill them when they make a mistake? Why wouldn't you just say "Look, you know that's a really stupid move, right?" and let them justify why they think it isn't? Why wouldn't you try to find out if they're on the same page as you in thinking about how the world works, or the system works? Why wouldn't you use non-lethal but still damaging consequences on occasion?

So, does this mean that you don't ever kill PCs? No. But you don't kill them unless it makes sense to, because when you do story and the general attitude of the game gets impacted. You don't want to ruin a campaign just to teach a player a lesson, and killing characters has consequences, as others have said.

Additionally, all have to work together, even other players. If you have one player who is really good at handling social situations who's tired of playing social characters, and someone else who isn't as good steps into the gap, there's no reason why that player -- or any other player -- can't step into the gap and help out. There's no reason not to discourage a player asking for advice -- from other players or even the DM/GM -- if they think they want or need it. While characters have to act separately, there's no reason to keep players from consulting on one character's actions, as long as it doesn't turn into one player dictating and no one else having any fun because they don't make any decisions.

So a big part of it is about making sure everyone at least understands where everything sits. In one game I was playing in, the DM was miffed that she added something for my new character class and I ignored it. I had investigated it to the best of my knowledge and since my character was incredibly dutiful couldn't take time away from the party's mission to study it. I found out the DM was miffed at that when I said that RP-wise there wasn't much directly for my character to do (I had resolved the character's main RP point with that class shift). We had completely different ideas of what was going on, and even if I was upset about that (I wasn't; I was just explaining why I wasn't posting a lot). We settled it. Game moved on, and we were all at least content. And this can all be done because you can indeed interact with each other.

That's a lot better than just killing a character when they do something that you think is stupid, as if they don't agree with you that only frustrates them.

Karoht
2011-04-08, 11:09 AM
I'd go further than that. They are inextricably linked.Not necessarily. I've seen terrible players with excellent DM's, who I'm pretty sure the DM keeps around as a matter of pride. I've seen one fellow who fudges all his rolls and cheats all his stats, and no one particularly cares because, even if he rolled a nat 20 on every roll, he would still be the least effective character at the table. These players exist regardless of the influence of quality DM's or even quality players around them, leading by example.



OHMYGODNO! Don't give them tools! DON'T HELP THEM SOLVE YOUR PUZZLES! Why put it there if you're just going to help them? If they know that puzzles are part of your game then they should work on doing the puzzles you present to them. Give them easier puzzles for now, but they won't get better at puzzles if you hold their hand every time they encounter them.I should probably clarify, I just suddenly can't think of a good example.
One of the staples in almost all of my games is, vision. I don't pass around True Seeing like it's candy or anything, but I'll usually give one character a set of glasses for Xray or IR vision. And if cleverly used, can be an excellent information gathering tool. It may not solve a puzzle for them, but it might give them a clue. And it allows you to give that clue without fiating that the player trips over a clue.
Example: The party was in an old research lab where mages were working with mechanical golems. The party made a point of heading to the library first after finding a map of the place. After a very easy puzzle/trap in the library (there was a check out/check in system and a volume control system) they started combing the library for anything of value. I knew that they might have some trouble with some of the more mechanical puzzles, so I left a book of schematics for most of the gizmo's they would encounter. Not only was the book extremely valuable, but it gave me a means of giving them clues about a given encounter or certain traps, along with the complicated door mechanism at the end of the dungeon. I treated the book like 5 ranks in a skill, and they could roll that skill for anything mechanical in the dungeon. Again, it allowed me to give them clues, and typically it made explaining a given badguy a bit easier, as I didn't have to dance around the idea that they didn't know what machine X or Y was, so it helped my immersion too.



I don't think you should give them the [stern look and "are you sure this is what you want to do?"] chance. Just ask him if that's what he's really doing to make sure he wasn't making an out-of-character joke to the table, and then let him do it. If you've already specified that there are monster noises coming from the hole and he insists on jumping in, let him suffer the consequences.Perhaps I'm coming a cross a bit more patronizing than I intended, but this is pretty much what I'm doing. Although sometimes I'm a bit more sarcastic about it. "So, to confirm, you're about to jump down the hole that you don't know the depth, and you know toxic waste and noxious chemicals are being dumped into on a regular basis, along with monsters down there. Okay. Roll your jump check, DC is a minimum of 35, and what is your fortitude again?" And if they say at that point, "actually, come to think about it I'll toss a rope down there first" so much the better.



No, because now you're fiating the other direction. You've gone from trying to tell a story with the characters to "How do I keep these characters alive?" Fiat life is as bad as fiat death, IMO.



I'd go on, but looking at all three of your responses give me the sense that you think the GM is just there to tell the players how well they succeed at things.Oh man, I played with a DM like that. Except he was remarkably inconsistant with such things. One character, regardless of relevant skills, would almost never have to roll for something like jumping a motorcycle from building to building. But suddenly, someone would have to, and sure enough would fail. It was great when he was on your side that day, and you were a machine gun toting action hero who could dodge bullets, was a pure badass, and went from one crazy stunt to another. Then one day, you were suddenly a normal person in a super-powered world and BOOM, dead.




No Idea Who Said This wrote:

"Stupid Mistakes" are impossible to ignore, frankly.And the quote was snipped, but went on to say it doesn't make someone a bad player. You're right. The odd stupid mistake is to be expected. Frequent stupid mistakes make someone a bad player, or at least are a sign that something is very wrong here. Granted, it doesn't always mean bad player, but it certainly tends to be a strong indicator. If you can't figure out the negative reprocussions of an action in a video game or table top RPG, I often wonder how these people drive cars or even cross the street. If you never learn from previous negative reprocussions to perhaps stop and think about the negative reprocussions of an action...

"Hmmm, the last time I lit the room on fire, the party almost died. Everyone was mad at me. Is it a good idea this time to light the room on fire? Maybe I should look at a different solution to this problem"

obliged_salmon
2011-04-08, 11:39 AM
Meh. I think that character deaths from stupid decisions are largely the fault of miscommunication between player and GM expectations. If the player expects that motorcycle rooftop jumping is awesome, and the GM thinks it's ludicrous...well, there you go.

I like to define player intent and task, and then clearly define applicable consequences (as GM) before the dice are rolled. As GM, I find it super useful to ask "why?" a lot. Ex.

Player: I poke at the Prime Minister's eyes.
GM: Why? In God's name, why?
Player: I want to show the assembled nobles that I'm the top dog around here.
GM: ....Ohhhh, okay. Well, that's going to be super hard. We'll call it an intimidate test? If you succeed, everyone's shocked and scared of you to the point that they'll cow to you, at least to your face. If you fail, though...you get arrested and sentenced to death. Sound good? Roll the dice.

Edit: Would you call this scenario "count my loot," Morghen?

Karoht
2011-04-08, 12:07 PM
I want to express that my reply to your quote is not in any way intended to be taken sarcastically or patronizingly. I want to emphasize that I'm not talking down to anyone.


Player: I poke at the Prime Minister's eyes.
GM: Why? In God's name, why?
Player: I want to show the assembled nobles that I'm the top dog around here.
GM: ....Ohhhh, okay. Well, that's going to be super hard. We'll call it an intimidate test? If you succeed, everyone's shocked and scared of you to the point that they'll cow to you, at least to your face. If you fail, though...you get arrested and sentenced to death. Sound good? Roll the dice.This is pretty much expected from the DM in almost all scenario's where you are rolling dice. Success should have obvious results, failing should have obvious results, unless we're talking about something secret/hidden like a spot check.

That said, if a player can't figure out what the success and failure might be of something like jumping a motorcycle across a gap, I must again question how this person crosses the road safely.

MOST DM's I run with will take a look at something like the motorcycle jump and crunch the numbers for a sec as part of determining the DC of the requisite check. If it's not even possible to jump that distance with the motorcycle, they'll say so. If the DC is higher than the character's Drive skill could conceivably allow, baring a Nat 20, they'll say so.
I should clarify what I just said. That means if there is only a 5% chance of success (jumping the gap) and a 95% chance of failure (falling to death), and a character STILL chooses to try and jump the gap, yeah, I wouldn't feel bad when I tell them to hand over/tear up the character sheet when they roll a 1-19.

Mind you, I'd be willing to allow the character to try and jump off the motorcycle and make the last bit of distance if they rolled above a 15. But this would be the character surviving, not succeeding at their stunt, and probably ending up going through a lower level window, probably taking damage in the process, while the badguy they were chasing gets away. And depending on the amount of damage taken, the character will probably be in the hospital for the next few days/weeks. Or maybe end up captured by the badguys and used as a hostage. Something to keep the player in the 'penalty box' for a while.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-08, 12:16 PM
That said, if a player can't figure out what the success and failure might be of something like jumping a motorcycle across a gap, I must again question how this person crosses the road safely.


I would agree with that. If a person stated a desire to perform an activity with a very high DC, an "are you sure?" or similar statement of warning may be in order. But "awesome if you pull it off" and "horribly bad if you don't" frequently go together.

So, if you decide to roll that die, you must be prepared for the possibility of failure, as a player. If the GM just decides to let it go, because "it's awesome", then it's actually less awesome than if the player was taking horrible risks of death and pulled it off.

kyoryu
2011-04-08, 01:04 PM
How on earth did you manage to miss my point and agree with me?

If the players are successful, then, within the context of that game, they're *good* players. If they're "winning," then how can they not be good players?

From that perspective, they're only "bad" players because they're not playing how the DM wants them to play.

To get them to be "good" players (from the DMs point of view) they have to stop being successful players within the context of the game rules. That means they have to start failing.

Let me put it a different way, using an analogy. Say you're teaching someone to play blackjack, but to make it easier, you make it so they don't bust on >21, but instead it just gets counted as 21. The dealer, however, does bust on > 21.

I guarantee in that game that the players will hit until they get 21 or more. It's the obvious winning strategy (worst case is a tie, after all). That's bad play in real blackjack, but is perfectly fine play in the variant of blackjack you're teaching them. They're successful, and playing the game correctly according to the rules presented to them. They have no reason to change, and in fact any kind of changing would result in them likely having *worse* results - optimal "regular" blackjack strategy would be decidedly suboptimal.

The players are good players - of the blackjack variant. If you want them to be good at "real" blackjack, they have to start playing real blackjack with a real possibility of busting. It's not the players' fault that they're playing the game presented to them in an optimal fashion.


Just as bad the other direction is when GMs railroad their own world to keep the PCs safe.

Agreed. Either type of railroading results in a loss of player agency.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-08, 01:39 PM
I want to express that my reply to your quote is not in any way intended to be taken sarcastically or patronizingly. I want to emphasize that I'm not talking down to anyone.
This is pretty much expected from the DM in almost all scenario's where you are rolling dice. Success should have obvious results, failing should have obvious results, unless we're talking about something secret/hidden like a spot check.

That said, if a player can't figure out what the success and failure might be of something like jumping a motorcycle across a gap, I must again question how this person crosses the road safely.

MOST DM's I run with will take a look at something like the motorcycle jump and crunch the numbers for a sec as part of determining the DC of the requisite check. If it's not even possible to jump that distance with the motorcycle, they'll say so. If the DC is higher than the character's Drive skill could conceivably allow, baring a Nat 20, they'll say so.
I should clarify what I just said. That means if there is only a 5% chance of success (jumping the gap) and a 95% chance of failure (falling to death), and a character STILL chooses to try and jump the gap, yeah, I wouldn't feel bad when I tell them to hand over/tear up the character sheet when they roll a 1-19.

Mind you, I'd be willing to allow the character to try and jump off the motorcycle and make the last bit of distance if they rolled above a 15. But this would be the character surviving, not succeeding at their stunt, and probably ending up going through a lower level window, probably taking damage in the process, while the badguy they were chasing gets away. And depending on the amount of damage taken, the character will probably be in the hospital for the next few days/weeks. Or maybe end up captured by the badguys and used as a hostage. Something to keep the player in the 'penalty box' for a while.

But this goes back to what I said about expectations. You check the rules and use rules as applicable, of course. But if the player is thinking "Matrix green mohawk Shadowrun," and GM is thinking "gritty, serious, grimdark," you're going to have problems from time to time unless the stakes are made clear prior to rolling, and it's nobody's fault. Not player's, not GM's. Hence why I recommend asking "why" a lot. Then the GM can sort of read the player's page, so to speak.

If the player knows the stakes and takes the risk anyway, the dice will decide the outcome. Many of Morghen's early examples of "bad playing" are ones in which I felt the stakes were pretty unclear prior to the players' actions taking place.

Karoht
2011-04-08, 01:49 PM
But this goes back to what I said about expectations. You check the rules and use rules as applicable, of course. But if the player is thinking "Matrix green mohawk Shadowrun," and GM is thinking "gritty, serious, grimdark," you're going to have problems from time to time unless the stakes are made clear prior to rolling, and it's nobody's fault. Not player's, not GM's. Hence why I recommend asking "why" a lot. Then the GM can sort of read the player's page, so to speak.

If the player knows the stakes and takes the risk anyway, the dice will decide the outcome. Many of Morghen's early examples of "bad playing" are ones in which I felt the stakes were pretty unclear prior to the players' actions taking place.

Put gun to head. Pull trigger.
The stakes and the odds in any game for such an event are pretty much the same universally. If a player needs that clarified...
Meh, I'm going to move on from that point.

"Bad" players are the ones that need those stakes explained to them, every roll, every consequence, rather than thinking about it first and realizing of their own accord, that maybe, just maybe, pissing off the dragon tends to be the less optimal idea, let alone the one that might be bad for their health.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-08, 01:57 PM
Put gun to head. Pull trigger.
The stakes and the odds in any game for such an event are pretty much the same universally. If a player needs that clarified...
Meh, I'm going to move on from that point.

I'm afraid I disagree. In Shadowrun, for instance, you can be chromed up to wazoo and easily survive such an event. In fiction, we see Edward Norton's character do that to himself in Fight Club the movie, and come through alright.


"Bad" players are the ones that need those stakes explained to them, every roll, every consequence, rather than thinking about it first and realizing of their own accord, that maybe, just maybe, pissing off the dragon tends to be the less optimal idea, let alone the one that might be bad for their health.

In DnD, there are fifty gazillion kinds of dragons. Why should the players expect THIS dragon be ancient, as opposed to young adult? Sometimes, yes, the stakes are clear at the outset, and when everybody is plugged into the sitch together it goes smoothly (or when everyone knows the rules well enough to play straight). When this isn't happening, it's not a sign of a "bad player" though.

Karoht
2011-04-08, 02:20 PM
In DnD, there are fifty gazillion kinds of dragons. Why should the players expect THIS dragon be ancient, as opposed to young adult? Sometimes, yes, the stakes are clear at the outset, and when everybody is plugged into the sitch together it goes smoothly (or when everyone knows the rules well enough to play straight). When this isn't happening, it's not a sign of a "bad player" though.You're right, it's a sign of a player who needs their hand held, or needs the DM to be the voice of their (non-existant) common sense. Which, in my more cynical book, tends to equate to bad player.


I don't need to know if a Dragon is old or young to know that if I wake one up, I'm probably going to get a breath weapon to the face. Annoying the creature that is multiple times my height and mass usually isn't a good idea in real life (I dare you to poke a sloth bear or a panda, or even just sleeping horse), so it tends not to be a good idea in a fictional life either.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-08, 02:23 PM
If the GM says "you see a dragon", and my first response is "shoot it" instead of asking for visible details, then yes...I'm being a bad player.

Sure, the GM can give me those details anyway...or just punish me for being a trigger happy psycho. It's legit.

Typewriter
2011-04-08, 02:28 PM
My "Count My Loot" thing is getting misconstrued a little bit. One of the posts that I haven't responded to yet says I'm using Count My Loot as an insult. People being insulted by my use of it doesn't mean I intend it as an insult. A fun game where the good guys always win and the combat is just us blowing **** up? Cool. As long as I know that going in, sign me up. I don't see Count My Loot as bad as long as you're aware that you're playing it. When I say "Count My Loot" I don't mean "That playstyle is inferior" I mean "That playstyle doesn't threaten the characters with any kind of consequences." That can happen in a RP-heavy game or a game where the players barely know the names of their own characters.

It's not actually being misconstrued, you just disagree with what people are telling you. There are not just 'two game types' of D&D, and it's insulting that you are telling people what group they are in. It's not about whether or not you're trying to insult people, it's about the way you're trying to use blanket statements to push people into corners that you want them to be in.

It's insulting.

Jerthanis
2011-04-08, 02:34 PM
Then you missed the part where I said the people he was sneaking up on were ZOMG-UBER-GUERRILLA TACTICS race. And that there were an unknown number of them.

Okay, well, actually you gave me the impression that running away from these people was the better strategy, but running away from Guerrilla Tactics is not a good strategy either, since that tactic requires being more mobile than your targets and more familiar with the terrain.

So, if you're talking about logical consequences, everyone who left should have died like idiots, and the one who tried to sneak up on them was the only one who had the right idea, and the rest of the party who didn't follow him were the idiots and THEY were the reason they all died.

Seriously "We're being ambushed by Guerrillas who have longer-range weapons than us." is a nightmare scenario, and running isn't going to help.

Unless they had no interest in pursuing, in which case, why did they bother killing the person who tried to sneak up on them? Why did they bother wasting the ammo shooting in the first place?

This whole scenario seems like the only one with his head on straight, including the GM was the one you condemn for being the idiot in trying to take the fight to the enemy the only possible way he could.

Britter
2011-04-08, 02:36 PM
You're right, it's a sign of a player who needs their hand held, or needs the DM to be the voice of their (non-existant) common sense. Which, in my more cynical book, tends to equate to bad player.


I don't need to know if a Dragon is old or young to know that if I wake one up, I'm probably going to get a breath weapon to the face. Annoying the creature that is multiple times my height and mass usually isn't a good idea in real life (I dare you to poke a sloth bear or a panda, or even just sleeping horse), so it tends not to be a good idea in a fictional life either.

See, this is the issue. It's not, in fact, such a very dangerous idea to poke a young dragon, or even a middlin' powerful one, if you are a well prepared magic user of mid-to-high level with a hankerin' to get his dragon-killin' on. So, contextually, it absolutely does matter what the specifics of the dragon (within the context of this example) are. If I, as a player, am expecting young adult, and the DM has not at any point contradicted me even if I have observed and rolled tests etc, and the dragon ends up to be ancient, I am going to call shenanigans. Same way the other way around.

So, am I asking for handholding if I want details about context and the ramifications of my action in that scenario? Am I wanting the DM to be my voice of common sense? No, I want him to tell me if it is a big nasty dragon or just a little mean one. If he says "Yup, it is ancient and powerful and it thinks you slept with it's mom" and I say "Cool, Imma still gonna fight it" than the consequences are on my head, but if you don't give me context and try to undertstand my intent, thats another story.

This is the issue, in my opinion, with discussing hypotheticals as examples for a situation. without the context of actual play, we can all make up whatever outrageous circumstances we want to justify our points. (I am including myself in the "we' here. I tend to hyperbolize my examples when I am arguing for my points of view)

Karoht
2011-04-08, 02:38 PM
It's insulting.I'm resisting the urge to ask a certain question as to your current feelings on the issue, brother.

With all due respect, it's insulting to play with bad players. Especially if there are other good players at the table, who are typically obligated (either in character or as tablemates) to bail their butts out. Especially if there is a good DM who is constantly telling people the consequences of their proposed actions.

"Dude, for the last time, I'm telling you that strapping that much dynamite to yourself and igniting it is going to kill you."
*lights fuse, blows up*
"Told you."
"Waaaaah, you killed my character. You didn't say it would kill me permenantly!"

Yes, I've seen this exact exchange at a table I played at. Bad player is bad. It was an insult to the rest of us that he would waste our time so drastically.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-08, 02:49 PM
I'm resisting the urge to ask a certain question as to your current feelings on the issue, brother.

With all due respect, it's insulting to play with bad players. Especially if there are other good players at the table, who are typically obligated (either in character or as tablemates) to bail their butts out. Especially if there is a good DM who is constantly telling people the consequences of their proposed actions.

"Dude, for the last time, I'm telling you that strapping that much dynamite to yourself and igniting it is going to kill you."
*lights fuse, blows up*
"Told you."
"Waaaaah, you killed my character. You didn't say it would kill me permenantly!"

Yes, I've seen this exact exchange at a table I played at. Bad player is bad. It was an insult to the rest of us that he would waste our time so drastically.

Ha! Yeah, that's dumb. I guess what I'll add to my argument is that the player needs to be willing to come halfway on things. If he's not willing to accept that his expectations might not jive in the game, then I'd call him a less good player than one who is willing to communicate and come to a mutual understanding of the situation.

Still, it's entirely possible to have a really good player, who makes a "stupid decision" from the GM's perspective, which isn't stupid at all from the player's perspective. In any such case, it'll serve the GM well to try and wrap his head around the character's intentions. It's a shared fiction, after all.

Karoht
2011-04-08, 03:00 PM
Ha! Yeah, that's dumb. I guess what I'll add to my argument is that the player needs to be willing to come halfway on things. If he's not willing to accept that his expectations might not jive in the game, then I'd call him a less good player than one who is willing to communicate and come to a mutual understanding of the situation.

Still, it's entirely possible to have a really good player, who makes a "stupid decision" from the GM's perspective, which isn't stupid at all from the player's perspective. In any such case, it'll serve the GM well to try and wrap his head around the character's intentions. It's a shared fiction, after all.
Just because it is a shared fiction doesn't mean that I'm any less responsible when I stick my hand in a toaster, regardless of why I did it. And typically, both the DM and the Player will find dying a poor action choice.


Player: Dynamite will make me flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy *straps on dynamite*
What DM says: No, it will kill you. Do you want to roll a new character? There are better ways to die than this.
What Player hears: Words words words, flyyyyyyyyyyyying, words words words dynamite.
Player: Yay dynamite. *boom*
*commence arguement*
^hyperbolized, but not as much as one might think.

ScionoftheVoid
2011-04-08, 03:15 PM
Just because it is a shared fiction doesn't mean that I'm any less responsible when I stick my hand in a toaster, regardless of why I did it. And typically, both the DM and the Player will find dying a poor action choice.


Player: Dynamite will make me flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy *straps on dynamite*
What DM says: No, it will kill you. Do you want to roll a new character? There are better ways to die than this.
What Player hears: Words words words, flyyyyyyyyyyyying, words words words dynamite.
Player: Yay dynamite. *boom*
*commence arguement*
^hyperbolized, but not as much as one might think.

If that isn't hyperbolised as much as I think it must be that player needs to be slapped, as does the DM for not slapping the player themself earlier.
^hyperboloised, but not as much as one might think.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-04-08, 03:21 PM
With all due respect, it's insulting to play with bad players. Especially if there are other good players at the table, who are typically obligated (either in character or as tablemates) to bail their butts out. Especially if there is a good DM who is constantly telling people the consequences of their proposed actions.
Two things:

(1) "Why is it whenever someone says 'with all due respect' they really mean 'kiss my ass' ?" ~ Ashley Williams (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Ashley_Williams)

(2) If you are at a table where you feel that you must bail out idiots all the time, then you shouldn't be at that table. Obviously, you don't care much for your fellow Players or their playstyles so, rather than building up resentment, why not just find a different table with Players you respect?

kyoryu
2011-04-08, 03:26 PM
Two things:

(1) "Why is it whenever someone says 'with all due respect' they really mean 'kiss my ass' ?" ~ Ashley Williams (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Ashley_Williams)

(2) If you are at a table where you feel that you must bail out idiots all the time, then you shouldn't be at that table. Obviously, you don't care much for your fellow Players or their playstyles so, rather than building up resentment, why not just find a different table with Players you respect?

Point 2 is excellent. There's a strong tendency (especially online) for people to conflate "meets my preferences and desires" with "better." If the game isn't going the way you like, find another game.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-04-08, 03:27 PM
Point 2 is excellent. There's a strong tendency (especially online) for people to conflate "meets my preferences and desires" with "better." If the game isn't going the way you like, find another game.
I thought Point 1 was pretty good too :smallfrown:

:smalltongue: Ah Mass Effect, why is your writing so good?

Sipex
2011-04-08, 03:28 PM
I think the dragon analogy is different than dynamite. Dynamite comes in one form, the form that blows stuff up. Dragons come in several forms, some which you can kill.

Add on that the difference between an Ancient and Young Adult is akin to the difference between a single story house and a keep. I'd call shenanigans too if my DM pulled that on me.

That said, I'd also ask.

On the other tangent: Count my Loot is an insulting term, regardless of how it's meant.

It's like saying Jerk isn't an insulting term. "You can all play like Jerks, I don't mean to insult you by it. If you have fun being jerks then go ahead."

it still sounds bad.

Britter
2011-04-08, 03:30 PM
(2) If you are at a table where you feel that you must bail out idiots all the time, then you shouldn't be at that table. Obviously, you don't care much for your fellow Players or their playstyles so, rather than building up resentment, why not just find a different table with Players you respect?

It is literally impossible for me to represent how completely I agree with this statement using mere words.

Karoht
2011-04-08, 04:11 PM
It is literally impossible for me to represent how completely I agree with this statement using mere words.And it is literally impossible for me to state with mere words how ignorant the statement of 'just find another group' really is.

I took a hiatus of 5 years because I couldn't find a decent group in my area. But rather than go into that, here's a related post made in the Rule Zero thread.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10734384&postcount=1123

Typewriter
2011-04-08, 05:01 PM
I'm resisting the urge to ask a certain question as to your current feelings on the issue, brother.

With all due respect, it's insulting to play with bad players. Especially if there are other good players at the table, who are typically obligated (either in character or as tablemates) to bail their butts out. Especially if there is a good DM who is constantly telling people the consequences of their proposed actions.

"Dude, for the last time, I'm telling you that strapping that much dynamite to yourself and igniting it is going to kill you."
*lights fuse, blows up*
"Told you."
"Waaaaah, you killed my character. You didn't say it would kill me permenantly!"

Yes, I've seen this exact exchange at a table I played at. Bad player is bad. It was an insult to the rest of us that he would waste our time so drastically.

Bad players are annoying, but insulting? An annoying player is one who constantly does things that get on your nerves, an insulting player is one who does so while telling you you're wrong, or that you just "Don't get it".

Britter
2011-04-08, 05:12 PM
And it is literally impossible for me to state with mere words how ignorant the statement of 'just find another group' really is.

I took a hiatus of 5 years because I couldn't find a decent group in my area. But rather than go into that, here's a related post made in the Rule Zero thread.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10734384&postcount=1123

So, you would rather be playing with people who don't align with your style and interests than not play?

I took a long hiatus from gaming (about 5 or so years). I don't play with people I can't socialize with outside of gaming, or who make me want to scream at them while I game. I am not going to waste my time playing with people who don't play in a a manner I enjoy. I mean, it's a game, not food or water...you can live without it. But since it makes life more fun, you should seek out worthwhile gaming. Don't settle.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-08, 09:12 PM
Just because it is a shared fiction doesn't mean that I'm any less responsible when I stick my hand in a toaster, regardless of why I did it. And typically, both the DM and the Player will find dying a poor action choice.

I really don't want to sound pedantic, but I don't think you're following me here.

Several reasons why a PC might legitimately try to stick their hand in a toaster.

1: They are some kind of electricity-based entity and want to "power up"
2: They are being strangled to death by a villain of some sort, and want to electricute him.
3: They are roleplaying a curious character unfamiliar with modern technology.
4: They are trying to use the toaster as an improvised weapon.

Now, the player should be willing to appreciate the GM's opinion that doing so will not accomplish his goals, but the GM should appreciate the situation beyond what is immediately apparent to himself, AKA, that sticking your hand in the toaster will kill/maim you, and accomplish nothing else.

some guy
2011-04-09, 03:18 PM
I really don't want to sound pedantic, but I don't think you're following me here.

Several reasons why a PC might legitimately try to stick their hand in a toaster.

1: They are some kind of electricity-based entity and want to "power up"
2: They are being strangled to death by a villain of some sort, and want to electricute him.
3: They are roleplaying a curious character unfamiliar with modern technology.
4: They are trying to use the toaster as an improvised weapon.

Now, the player should be willing to appreciate the GM's opinion that doing so will not accomplish his goals, but the GM should appreciate the situation beyond what is immediately apparent to himself, AKA, that sticking your hand in the toaster will kill/maim you, and accomplish nothing else.

A pc might still want to do that for those reasons, but a good* player will let other pc's talk his/her character out of that.
player 1: "I'm gonna charge the zomgdragon, 'cause that's what my character would do."
player 2: "I'm gonna talk PC 1 out of it and use these reasons."
player 1: "My character grudgingly abandons his plans."

*In my opinion a good player will not do anything that will deprive the other players of a fun game.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-11, 08:59 AM
Bad players are annoying, but insulting? An annoying player is one who constantly does things that get on your nerves, an insulting player is one who does so while telling you you're wrong, or that you just "Don't get it".

I'll take insulting over annoying every day of the week. Insulting is, at worst...annoying. Sometimes funny, sometimes other things.

However, a player that's constantly annoying? Yeah, no.

Earthwalker
2011-04-11, 10:12 AM
In the examples posted how much is bad players and how much is GM assumption.
Lets take the Dunklezahn example. I have no idea what this scenario is or what the players were told but this has a lot of bearing on what action they took. Was it described as

“You are just heading out of the compound on your armed attack copter, with Dunklezahn’s spider man number 1 comic, when you hear an angry roar from behind you. Looking back you see Dunklezahn launch into the air and begin closing you down.”

Now as I player this tells me, Dunklezahn is angry with me.
He is closing down my craft so he is faster then me.
Also as I know the rules for shadowrun I know Great Dragons are stated having 12 points of vehicle armour and a high body. A air to air warpedo does 16 D damage that is more then enough to get past the Big Ds (well a great dragon) armour so it might be worth a shot. I don’t know that this dragon has infinite armour (how could I ?)

Or it might have gone with something like

“You hear a roar from behind you as you see Dunklezahn lead into the air. He beats his powerful wings and begins to fly towards you, watching your craft as you leave”

Both are describing similar actions by an NPC but certainly putting a twist on it, depending on what action the GM wants.

Karoht
2011-04-11, 10:25 AM
Don't settle.You miss the point that not everyone has the option or privilage of being picky.




I really don't want to sound pedantic, but I don't think you're following me here.I don't think you're following me, because you seem more interested in obscuring the issue by nitpicking my example rather than letting me make my point and continuing on with that.

I don't know why I'm not allowed to describe a player action doing something stupid, and let the point stand. I'm sorry but I don't understand the subjectivity of a character doing something stupid that gets players and themselves dead. Especially if it would get them killed in real life and they should know that. IE-Dynamite vest. IE-Shooting themselves in the head. IE-Sticking their hand in a toaster. The fact that you can find a valid reason for someone to perform these actions doesn't mean that they came up in such a context, or commonly do so.




I think the dragon analogy is different than dynamite. Dynamite comes in one form, the form that blows stuff up. Dragons come in several forms, some which you can kill.Would you argue that the cautionary rule of thumb that Dragon = dangerous is bad? Please explain?
Also, large creatures of any kind can be dangerous. Horses are dangerous. Is it a good idea to treat every lion you ever come across in the wild as potentially dangerous? I'd say the rule applies to dragons of all colors, shapes, and sizes, until proven otherwise. IE-If I find myself in a cave with a sleeping dragon, I don't stop to ponder what kind it is, I get the hell out.



Re: Insulting VS Annoying
I find it annoying that I have to bail out players who do stupid things. I find it insulting that those other players will typically still receive XP and rewards. I find it especially annoying that, had I not saved that character's life and left them to their stupidity, I get to hear a boatload of whining. I find it especially insulting, when a player or player character is too dumb to save themselves, much less other party members when the chips are down.
The one that really drives me nuts? Call it insult or annoyance, I don't care. When I have to spend the 5000 gp (out of my reward) to res someone, and they can't even pay me for my trouble, because they just spent their reward getting some kind of metamagic archstaff of +5 awesomness and uberdoom. And then they have the ignorance to ask why I never have any money to buy some decent gear.

Typewriter
2011-04-11, 10:28 AM
I'll take insulting over annoying every day of the week. Insulting is, at worst...annoying. Sometimes funny, sometimes other things.

However, a player that's constantly annoying? Yeah, no.

I think you misunderstood my point. I was saying that I don't find people who are annoying to be inherently insulting. If someone is constantly annoying I may stop playing with them but I'm never going to feel insulted that they wanted to hang out with me or my group, unless the way they annoy us includes being uncouth about it.

EDIT:
Personally I've never been insulted because of peoples actions in D&D. I've been annoyed by some people (constantly misreading rules, trying to outdo others, stealing the limelight and getting the party killed, etc. etc.), and some people act like jerks and that's insulting, but annoying characters causing you to feel insulted? I think I'd have to have a different playstyle/mindset in order for that to ever happen.

Sipex
2011-04-11, 10:41 AM
Would you argue that the cautionary rule of thumb that Dragon = dangerous is bad? Please explain?
Also, large creatures of any kind can be dangerous. Horses are dangerous. Is it a good idea to treat every lion you ever come across in the wild as potentially dangerous? I'd say the rule applies to dragons of all colors, shapes, and sizes, until proven otherwise. IE-If I find myself in a cave with a sleeping dragon, I don't stop to ponder what kind it is, I get the hell out.


My point is, Dragons are not always something adventurers have to leave alone. If you're showing indications that you want to attack a dragon (even a sleeping one) the DM should make it clear exactly what you think you're going up against before you throw the first punch.

I'm assuming smarter players here, I have no pity for the player who just stabs the dragon out of the blue stupidly, I'm thinking more along the lines of players seeing the situation and weighing their options (including making checks). Maybe killing the dragon is the best option, maybe it's not? As long as the DM is clear with crucial information that the players SHOULD know then I'm good (ie: the difference between a young and elder dragon).

I'll give you an example. I play a Cleric of Bahamut. As part of my creed I have to rid the world of Chromatic dragons because in the campaign they're inheritly evil. This isn't the main goal of the campaign or even a side quest, it's personal story stuff.

That said, I'm not required to do it stupidly, if my party stumbles upon a young dragon we can take it, no problem, I know this because we've trounced adults. But if the dragon isn't a young dragon OR if we can find signs that maybe the dragon is denned with several others (possibly stronger ones) this is information I'd like to know if I took the time to check around for it.

Karoht
2011-04-11, 12:44 PM
My point is, Dragons are not always something adventurers have to leave alone. If you're showing indications that you want to attack a dragon (even a sleeping one) the DM should make it clear exactly what you think you're going up against before you throw the first punch.

I'm assuming smarter players here, I have no pity for the player who just stabs the dragon out of the blue stupidly, I'm thinking more along the lines of players seeing the situation and weighing their options (including making checks). Maybe killing the dragon is the best option, maybe it's not? As long as the DM is clear with crucial information that the players SHOULD know then I'm good (ie: the difference between a young and elder dragon).Great, you're assuming smart players. I was describing not-smart players.
Also, sizing up the opponent tends to be somewhat limited. If your available information is, it's a dragon, it's big, and you can't quite make out the color given the lighting conditions, the smart person would back off (at least until better info is available), the dumb person would go and kick it in the chops to wake it up and say "hey dragon, you good dragon or what?"



I'll give you an example. I play a Cleric of Bahamut. As part of my creed I have to rid the world of Chromatic dragons because in the campaign they're inheritly evil. This isn't the main goal of the campaign or even a side quest, it's personal story stuff.

That said, I'm not required to do it stupidly, if my party stumbles upon a young dragon we can take it, no problem, I know this because we've trounced adults. But if the dragon isn't a young dragon OR if we can find signs that maybe the dragon is denned with several others (possibly stronger ones) this is information I'd like to know if I took the time to check around for it.And again, you're describing smart play, not stupid play.

Sipex
2011-04-11, 12:51 PM
Great, you're assuming smart players. I was describing not-smart players.
Also, sizing up the opponent tends to be somewhat limited. If your available information is, it's a dragon, it's big, and you can't quite make out the color given the lighting conditions, the smart person would back off (at least until better info is available), the dumb person would go and kick it in the chops to wake it up and say "hey dragon, you good dragon or what?"


And again, you're describing smart play, not stupid play.

Yes, I wasn't arguing against your point that the stupid player shouldn't get what's coming to him.

I was arguing that if the DM misled me into thinking the Dragon was young when it was not that I would be rightfully pissed.

The dragon being 'large and unknown' to me, as long as I can go "Has my character encountered dragons of this size before? How does this one compare to those I have encountered?" and get a reasonable answer then there's no problem.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-11, 01:20 PM
I don't think you're following me, because you seem more interested in obscuring the issue by nitpicking my example rather than letting me make my point and continuing on with that.

I don't know why I'm not allowed to describe a player action doing something stupid, and let the point stand. I'm sorry but I don't understand the subjectivity of a character doing something stupid that gets players and themselves dead. Especially if it would get them killed in real life and they should know that. IE-Dynamite vest. IE-Shooting themselves in the head. IE-Sticking their hand in a toaster. The fact that you can find a valid reason for someone to perform these actions doesn't mean that they came up in such a context, or commonly do so.

Okay. What you're saying is that sometimes people do stupid things for stupid reasons. Right? So no, I don't have an issue with that. That's entirely true. What I'm saying is that sometimes "stupid" is completely subjective. Sometimes people have smart reasons for doing "stupid" things, and that if you automatically assume a stupid reason, you are doing the person a disservice.

One of the implications of this thread are that some actions, regardless of the underlying reason, should ALWAYS merit death, period, no roll no save no nothing. I'm not just nitpicking your examples, I'm trying to use your examples of "obviously stupid things that ALWAYS deserve death/no reward" to prove my point, that there are no such things in an RPG.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-11, 01:23 PM
I tend not to advocate skipping saves, etc. Even if I think the party is utterly doomed, I'll still play it out. After all, there's the possibility of them recovering by pulling off more smart things. And consistently stupid play will get itself killed, saves and such are never enough. If they take enough terribly bad chances, eventually they will be "unlucky".

Karoht
2011-04-11, 01:25 PM
The dragon being 'large and unknown' to me, as long as I can go "Has my character encountered dragons of this size before? How does this one compare to those I have encountered?" and get a reasonable answer then there's no problem.Again describing smart play. The issue is bad players, not good ones. I'm glad you are a good player and all, but thats really not what we're discussing.



I was arguing that if the DM misled me into thinking the Dragon was young when it was not that I would be rightfully pissed.Misleading DM's is a different issue as well. But as we've mentioned before, there's a correlation between bad DM's and bad players. And yes, DM mistakes or withholding information does contribute to these situation. But any player should be savy enough to go 'the information on this dragon is really sketchy, I think we should leave it alone for now' when the info is spotty. When the info is outright wrong, totally DM's fault, I agree.

Karoht
2011-04-11, 01:45 PM
Okay. What you're saying is that sometimes people do stupid things for stupid reasons. Right? So no, I don't have an issue with that. That's entirely true. What I'm saying is that sometimes "stupid" is completely subjective. Sometimes people have smart reasons for doing "stupid" things, and that if you automatically assume a stupid reason, you are doing the person a disservice.When after the fact they explain their reasoning, and it's still stupid, the assumption becomes moot. See dynamite example. Assuming the person was stupid in that example really doesn't change the fact that he strapped dynamite to himself and blew himself up in a game where doing so was lethal, only to complain to the DM that he was dead. I should also point out that the topic of discussion is "How to make better players" and failing to recognize that there are in fact stupid people who do stupid things is doing those people (and probably a few people at the table) a disservice.




One of the implications of this thread are that some actions, regardless of the underlying reason, should ALWAYS merit death, period, no roll no save no nothing.I disagree on the no roll no save. On the other hand, when that roll or save is rediculous, what is the point? Placating the player?




I'm not just nitpicking your examplesI believe the word you used was pedantic.


I'm trying to use your examples of "obviously stupid things that ALWAYS deserve death/no reward" to prove my point, that there are no such things in an RPG.If I take an action and it gets me killed, that is a stupid action, within the context of the game and real life. Stupidity in a game is not subjective when there are very clear negative consequences, both to the player and typically to the player party at the same time.



To quote myself for a moment:
"This is pretty much expected from the DM in almost all scenario's where you are rolling dice. Success should have obvious results, failing should have obvious results, unless we're talking about something secret/hidden like a spot check." This is my stance. If a player knows an action will likely cause death, and chooses to go ahead with it, yes, the obvious result of failing should occur. If that is death with minimal to zero chance of saving, so be it. If a player constantly does this, it means something. Either poor player or the DM is not being straightforward. In the event the DM is being straighforward (check and see if the DM is pulling her/his hair out in frustration, odds are he's being very straightforward) and the player is just ignoring him, thats the player's problem.

Totally Guy
2011-04-11, 01:54 PM
I don't think failure is always implicitly obvious.

If a failed roll always means "That thing you tried doesn't happen" it gets a bit boring.

I had a player try searching for a midwife to help his wife give birth. He messed up the roll and ended up with a witch who helped deliver the baby but cursed his wife. The baby would never love her.

The adventure took an unexpected turn as the players worked towards finding a solution to the new problem.

In this case I made it explicit that should the player fail then they would be helped by someone with a steep cost.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-11, 02:32 PM
I disagree on the no roll no save. On the other hand, when that roll or save is rediculous, what is the point? Placating the player?

It helps differentiate between truly stupid actions and what the GM thinks is a stupid action.

If a person "plays stupid", and somehow always wins anyhow...then it means the either the game is easy enough that he can get away with it, or the GM really doesn't have a good impression of what playing stupid is.

For instance, playing a melee wizard is something that tends to be considered stupid by...a lot of DMs. You can, with proper knowledge, make it work awesomely, but I'd certainly be disappointed if I got no-save killed merely because his opinion differed from me.

Truly stupid ideas will fail even if you play them out fairly.

obliged_salmon
2011-04-11, 02:44 PM
When after the fact they explain their reasoning, and it's still stupid, the assumption becomes moot. See dynamite example. Assuming the person was stupid in that example really doesn't change the fact that he strapped dynamite to himself and blew himself up in a game where doing so was lethal, only to complain to the DM that he was dead. I should also point out that the topic of discussion is "How to make better players" and failing to recognize that there are in fact stupid people who do stupid things is doing those people (and probably a few people at the table) a disservice.

I specifically said it's true that sometimes, people do stupid things for stupid reasons. We are in accord on that point.


I disagree on the no roll no save. On the other hand, when that roll or save is rediculous, what is the point? Placating the player?

Well, you should play it according to the rules. If he needs to roll 19 on 3d6 to survive, he auto-fails unless he can pull some kind of modifiers out of his rear end.


I believe the word you used was pedantic.

Oh yes, I was being pedantic, but not purely for the sake of pedantry, rather to illustrate my point. That people can have good reasons for "stupid" actions.


If I take an action and it gets me killed, that is a stupid action, within the context of the game and real life. Stupidity in a game is not subjective when there are very clear negative consequences, both to the player and typically to the player party at the same time.

Clear consequences are good, and do lead to decreased subjectivity. Hence my advocating increased communication between GM and players. As communication improves, the consequences become clearer.


To quote myself for a moment:
"This is pretty much expected from the DM in almost all scenario's where you are rolling dice. Success should have obvious results, failing should have obvious results, unless we're talking about something secret/hidden like a spot check." This is my stance. If a player knows an action will likely cause death, and chooses to go ahead with it, yes, the obvious result of failing should occur. If that is death with minimal to zero chance of saving, so be it. If a player constantly does this, it means something. Either poor player or the DM is not being straightforward. In the event the DM is being straighforward (check and see if the DM is pulling her/his hair out in frustration, odds are he's being very straightforward) and the player is just ignoring him, thats the player's problem.

I am in agreement with you here, as long as the DM being "straightforward" means he is clearly delineating consequences for proposed PC actions. Just assuming that attacking the dragon will result in player death is not, in my opinion, fair to the players. Saying, "Dudes, if you attack this dragon? Yeah, you're all gonna die," is very fair to the players, and at such time as the players attack the dragon, it is fair to kill them. According to the rules of the game, of course.

A final thought. Isn't everything in a role playing game subjective? There is no way for two or more people to all have the exact same idea about an imaginary circumstance. They can be really close, perhaps, but exact? Objective? I don't think so.

kyoryu
2011-04-11, 03:11 PM
I'm going to advocate in favor of "playing it out."

This makes it clear that it's the rules and the consequences of their actions that are killing them, not DM fiat.

"We shoot a missile at Dunkelzahn!"

"Okay, roll for damage. He can mitigate <xyz> of that. Oops, didn't scratch him, but you got his attention. He turns and breathes at the helicopter.... a hit. Okay, how much can you mitigate? K, he does <obscene amount> damage - you want me to roll that? I think I'll need more dice..."

Tyndmyr
2011-04-11, 03:15 PM
That's exactly what I do.

If anything, it only drives the message in deeper that they just made a terrible error.

If this is happening to only one person/part of the party, the remainder of my group typically finds it hysterical, especially when they just warned the person doing *stupid action*.

BRC
2011-04-11, 03:37 PM
I agree with playing it out and letting the PC get smashed by the consequences of their actions, but only if you made it clear not only THAT this is a bad idea, but WHY it is a bad idea.

Example exchange

DM: A massive red Dragon is in the chamber.
PC: I Charge!
DM: This Dragon is much, much bigger than any dragon you have faced before. It looks very, very dangerous, are you sure you want to charge it?
PC: Yeah!
DM: Alright roll
*PC rolls, misses*
DM: The Dragon *Rolls* eats you. It finds you *rolls* delicious.

That works because the DM made it clear that this dragon was "Run away" scary, not "It will be awesome when you beat this" Scary.

What Dosn't work is something like this.
DM: An old man is walking alongside the road carrying a rune-encrusted staff.
PC: I shove my sword in his face and demand he gives me the staff!
DM: Roll a fort save.
PC: *Rolls*
DM: The old man points at you and you crumble into dust.
PC: WHAT?
DM: That's what you get for trying to rob an epic-level archmage.

That doesn't work, because the DM never gave the PC any indication that this was anything more than an old man with a stick. The player had no way of knowing they were doing something stupid.

There is a fine line between making players face the consequences of their actions, and punishing them for their inability to read your mind. Personally, I shamelessly tell the Players things out of character. I say things like "You can't beat this guy, this fight is about escaping" or "A frontal assault on the castle is suicide".

Karoht
2011-04-11, 04:06 PM
A final thought. Isn't everything in a role playing game subjective? There is no way for two or more people to all have the exact same idea about an imaginary circumstance. They can be really close, perhaps, but exact? Objective? I don't think so.A DC 20 Fortitude save is pretty objective. Also if you want to go into the "isn't X subjective" arguement, I'm really not the guy for that kind of conversation. Suffice to say that most RPG's have very objective ways of dealing with the problems thrown at it. Same with interpretation of something. It doesn't matter if you know what a red dragon looks like or not. It still has the same stats, hit points, and breath weapon to murder you with.



Well, you should play it according to the rules. If he needs to roll 19 on 3d6 to survive, he auto-fails unless he can pull some kind of modifiers out of his rear end.Begging the question, why roll at all? Heck, we'll say it's a D20, the 20 still being an auto-success (which is how some but not all tables play it, figured I'd better specify that). 5% chance of saving your hide no matter how stupid someone just was. That's still pretty fair. If the player complains after they fail the roll? Again, player's responsibility.




Oh yes, I was being pedantic, but not purely for the sake of pedantry, rather to illustrate my point. That people can have good reasons for "stupid" actions.I'll take that point at face value. I've yet to see a good reason for many of the stupid actions I've seen, both in real life and in game.




I am in agreement with you here, as long as the DM being "straightforward" means he is clearly delineating consequences for proposed PC actions. Just assuming that attacking the dragon will result in player death is not, in my opinion, fair to the players. Saying, "Dudes, if you attack this dragon? Yeah, you're all gonna die," is very fair to the players, and at such time as the players attack the dragon, it is fair to kill them. According to the rules of the game, of course.Do I need to write out a definition for everything I say with you? I feel like I'm explaining what I say more than actually saying anything. Am I being too subjective?

"Straightforward"
I'll refer back to the motorcycle example earlier. DM needs to state success and failure results. In this case the DM (after much rule checking and number crunching) determines that, in order for the character (with their particular relevant skills and bonuses) to jump the motorcycle across the gap, the player needs to roll a 17 or better on D20. Failure means falling short, therefore falling down the 200 ft from the roof to the ground, and taking fall damage as normal, which very few characters have a means of mitigating, and in this case, the player character in question does not. In idiot speak, failure means almost certain death. Success however, means clearing the gap and landing safely. The next rooftop edge will require the same check after that, and so on and so on.
Is that "straightforward" enough?

So if the character still goes for it, and fails, despite the high probability of failure stated at the onset, and the result of failure ends up with the character dead, does the player have a right to complain? No, their own stupidity lead them to this point.

To use the Dragon in a cave example.
From a player standpoint, if I walk into a cave, and there is a dragon, I really don't care the size or color, I'm leaving. The longer I stay in the cave trying to determine what size or color or disposition it has, the more chances that my exit options are cut off, or someone in the party accidentally or intentionally wakes it up.
From a DM standpoint, if a player party blunders into a cave with a dragon, you bet I'm going to be telling them every detail their characters can reasonably discern. You can tell the color, you can tell the (approximate) size, you can tell it's asleep (or is it?). No knowledge Draconic or some other relevant skill/knowledge? Then you probably aren't going to know that the Red Dragon in front of you isn't of a favorable disposition. Unless, Dragons are very common in that world to the point where everyone and their dog know that the Red Dragons are bad, the Blue Dragons are good, etc. Either way, you have the color and size.
If I don't even finish telling them what color it is, and a party member decided to charge, then whatever consequence occurs next is entirely that player's fault. Maybe it's actually a good dragon with a favorable disposition, an ally of your people. You just attacked it for no reason. Do you think other dragons are going to be happy when they hear about this? This is assuming that it just doesn't eat your party. I'm sure there are many other possible "straightforward" negative consequences of the players rushing in without getting any info. If the DM is providing answers to all the reasonable questions, this shouldn't be a problem.

Meanwhile, if the DM says, "It's an elder red dragon. They eat people for sport. They also eat puppies." Yeah, you might want to just scoot past it or head for an exit. If the party decides to pick a fight, even if it's obvious that they likely can't win, then that is there issue. If they hatch a brilliant plan (like dropping the stalagmite from the roof right onto the dragon's head) and take him down, that's also their perogative. If they complain when they die, sorry, their fault.

kyoryu
2011-04-11, 04:40 PM
What Dosn't work is something like this.
DM: An old man is walking alongside the road carrying a rune-encrusted staff.
PC: I shove my sword in his face and demand he gives me the staff!
DM: Roll a fort save.
PC: *Rolls*
DM: The old man points at you and you crumble into dust.
PC: WHAT?
DM: That's what you get for trying to rob an epic-level archmage.

That doesn't work, because the DM never gave the PC any indication that this was anything more than an old man with a stick. The player had no way of knowing they were doing something stupid.


I dunno. If they know there are archmages in the world, the rune-encrusted staff should have been a warning sign. And I really don't mind harsh consequences for completely anti-social activities like the one described above. If nothing else, it serves as a warning for the players that events like this *can* happen.

I'm not allergic to PC death, though. And I don't really like running games where PCs go around robbing random old people that appear impoverished. So take that as you will.

BRC
2011-04-11, 06:27 PM
I dunno. If they know there are archmages in the world, the rune-encrusted staff should have been a warning sign. And I really don't mind harsh consequences for completely anti-social activities like the one described above. If nothing else, it serves as a warning for the players that events like this *can* happen.

I'm not allergic to PC death, though. And I don't really like running games where PCs go around robbing random old people that appear impoverished. So take that as you will.
Robbing the old man was probably a bad example, but I'm going to bring it back to my point.

Consequences should flow predictably from Actions according to realistic laws of Cause and Effect.
If the PC's rob the old man, then maybe the next time they are in town, the Guards are on the lookout, or the old man's adventurer son shows up seeking revenge.
However, Vaporizing the PC on the spot reeks of arbitrary, Rocks fall "Cosmic" justice. Unless this is a setting with a very active pantheon you want to avoid that. The PC's should be basing their decisions on what, in character, they can expect to be the consequences of their actions, not because out of character they know that Big Brother (the DM) is watching.

SexyPlantLover
2011-04-11, 10:04 PM
Firstly, I want to say thank you to all posting so gentlemanly a discussion here for my free enjoyment and enlightenment. :smallsmile:

Second, I would like to reply to the OP that the best way to make better players (in my experience on both sides of the screen) is to have players who game regularly/often with several different DMs.
My gaming group is a wide network with overlapping players and DMs. I run a game on Thursday, one player runs Wednesday, one runs Saturday. Someone who used to play my game runs Sunday. The Wednesday game has the Saturday DM as a player, and I sometimes observe. The Saturday game has the Wednesday DM, the Sunday DM, myself, and two of my other players and someone who observes. Two of my players are in two other, different games (one online). I think a couple of my players are currently in the Sunday game. And then there are also all the other people in these games. Campaigns and games are constently starting or changing, and every DM has a different style and story, and all the players can handle a wide variety of challenges, I think because of the learning opportunities available.
(Plus, if a game gets cancelled you don't have D&D withdrawl all week :smallbiggrin:)

Karoht
2011-04-12, 02:33 PM
Ways to make better players:
-Be straightforward with players and the rules. If something is a bad idea, inform them of the risks. Yes, you shouldn't have to point out EVERY single potential threat to their survival, and eventually they will catch on. Try subtle hints or clues before you outright tell them that action X will result in their deaths.

-If players choose poor actions, where possible try and let the ramifications play out. Cause and effect. It's probably going to take your campaign way off the rails, and this is where a clever DM is required. Not only to make those ramifications meaningful to the players, but to still have a salvageable campaign after the player party just murdered a central character like the king or an important embassador or some prestigeous knight or a powerful mage.

-Give players tools to solve puzzles, don't just leave puzzles in front of them. Make sure you have some way of giving them a clue, rather than just giving them one. Make sure when you design a puzzle, that there are relevant skills which can be applied by the party to either solve the puzzle, assist in solving the puzzle, or give them information or hints about the puzzle.

-Reward intelligent actions. I mean this. If someone just single-handedly solved a puzzle, give them some decent XP for doing so. Not just some tiny bonus, something commensurate with defeating a level appropriate challenge. Moreover, make a point of rewarding those intelligent actions quite noticeably. I had a DM who gave out bonus XP for smart things, but he downplayed it so that other people didn't feel bad.

-Give players individual moments to shine. A DM I used to play with always made sure there were individual puzzles or challenges (some social even) specific to individual players. You make them the star of the show, and you encourage them to roleplay and be brilliant.

-Reward good social roleplay as well. The guy who is cracking jokes IN CHARACTER and making the king laugh, let alone the rest of the party? Encourage that!
I gave out 25 xp multiplied by current level per such interaction. By level 3, the whole party was doing stuff. And it transfered into other areas of the game.



Further ideas anyone?