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WarKitty
2014-06-09, 09:45 AM
...is that obstacles only convince them that they are absolutely 100% on the right track and must work three times as hard to do whatever they were trying to do.

"I try to break into the market."
"You fail your lockpick."
"I look for windows."
"They're barred."
"I start to climb onto the roof."
"The roof appears to be solid slate with no gaps."
"I start trying to loosen the slate."
"...could you stop messing with my scenery and actually go do something that's mapped? Your level 1 rogue cannot get into a fine goods market!"

nedz
2014-06-09, 09:49 AM
Slates can be quite slippery, what's his balance skill like ?

DM Nate
2014-06-09, 09:52 AM
When players aren't sure where to go, they always go in the path of most resistance. Obviously, that's where the experience lies.

If you REALLY don't want him to go into the market, let him break into the market, make all his Spot checks, and find absolutely nothing. My players get bored really quickly.

Jay R
2014-06-09, 10:24 AM
Ending meaningless and time-wasting PC plans are what wandering monsters are for. By now the rogue should have been interrupted by a seven-year-old kid asking, "Hey mister, whatcha tryin' to break into Guido's warehouse for?"

Or perhaps, "Go over to the south side, mister. They never lock that window when the warehouse is empty."

City guards, barking dog, beggar, street gang, etc.

Don't give them infinite free time to do useless stuff. You're the only one who knows what he's doing is worthless, so you're the only one who can stop it.

Millennium
2014-06-09, 11:03 AM
Comedy can also work well for this sort of thing. Let them have their fun at trying, but make their failures increasingly silly. Players usually get the hint fairly quickly that this is not going to get them anywhere, but this method doesn't usually leave them with hard feelings, because hey, laughs.

RustyArmor
2014-06-09, 11:24 AM
Give a player rogue even a tiny bit of free time to RP with PCs/NPCs or develop themselves or the world around them and they will just try to break into a building and think they can get rich instead.

WarKitty
2014-06-09, 02:08 PM
To be fair, they were supposed to be breaking into stuff. They just managed to focus on the exact one building that couldn't be gotten into and ignore everything else on the map...

Airk
2014-06-09, 02:22 PM
Or perhaps, "Go over to the south side, mister. They never lock that window when the warehouse is empty."

This one is priceless. :)



Don't give them infinite free time to do useless stuff. You're the only one who knows what he's doing is worthless, so you're the only one who can stop it.

This is the root of it though; If your PCs are flopping around doing the 'wrong thing', then make stuff happen until they get the hint. Oh crap. The building that you're trying to break into is on fire? :)

jedipotter
2014-06-09, 02:36 PM
...is that obstacles only convince them that they are absolutely 100% on the right track and must work three times as hard to do whatever they were trying to do.


This is true of some players. That is why you do this:



"I try to break into the market."
"You fail your lockpick."
''I look for a window''
''You see several open windows''
''I sneak in through the window''
''You find the room full of barrels and baskets of beans''
''I look around''
''You find more beans''

OR
"I start to climb onto the roof."
"Three of the guards see you and shoot crossbows at your character for 15 damage''
''I die''

OR

(high magic, my favorite)

"I try to break into the market."
"You fail your lockpick."
''I look for a window''
''You see several open windows''
''I sneak in through the window''
''As you pass through the window it forms a portal and sucks you down to the Abyss. ''

draken50
2014-06-09, 03:01 PM
Wait... so they're surrounded by buildings that they can break into, and one or several they can't. What was their purpose in going to what I'm now assuming was a break-in? If it was for money, it's easy for a player to assume that a more heavily defended area has more of value in it.

Was the break-in for other reasons and the thief just trying to get money?

Personally, I found consequences tend to work best. I'm not saying that it should be portal to the abyss, but lets say he gets past security and instead of getting arrested finds something of value. The grander what he is trying to get away with is, the sooner I'd have his character arrested and tossed in the clink, and even then, the owner of the value object could potentially find it by magical means ect.

If the player is smarter, they tend to poke around maybe take an item or two, or just case the place a bit and leave. Dumber players or those accustomed to have GM protection will try to engage in Oceans-11 tomfoolery and end up arrested a short time later.

Ultimately, you don't want railroading. If I've got 4 of 5 players wanting to head through the mapped area of plot relevancy and one who decides he wants to go do something else, the one isn't going to get very much attention and will likely not be in for a very good time unless it makes sense.

I've told players "I'm not holding up the other players game because you want to go do your own thing, you'll get what time I decide your side adventures are worth." If that seems ca

On the other hand if most want to go off and rob warehouses, then that's what'll happen, and generally a good sign that I don't have them interested in what I'd hoped.

Angelalex242
2014-06-09, 04:16 PM
It depends on where they break into. If they break into ye olde magic item shop? Then yes, I'd say there'd be a planar portal to the Abyss waiting for the clueless n00b who tries to steal stuff. For lulz, have it go to Pazuzu's home plane. Or Demogorgon's. Or Orcus. Whoever amuses you that day.

Ravens_cry
2014-06-09, 06:12 PM
I think if you are going to label a building a 'fine goods market' and NOT expect the players to try and break in, then, you, sir and/or madam, are the source of your trouble. Sure, they might not have any reasonable chance of success, low level characters are exactly the kind of thief people in-world could reasonably take precautions against, but, players will steal everything that's not nailed down and then steal the nails. You might as well have called the building 'Küüm and Gedit's Easily Fenced Rich Stuff Emporium.':smalltongue:

veti
2014-06-09, 06:30 PM
(high magic, my favorite)

"I try to break into the market."
"You fail your lockpick."
''I look for a window''
''You see several open windows''
''I sneak in through the window''
''As you pass through the window it forms a portal and sucks you down to the Abyss. ''

My favourite magic option is "low level, but very annoying and quite scary nonetheless".

''I sneak in through the window''
"The windowsill says 'Oi! Who're you? I'm Window 12.' From the far side of the building, you hear another voice repeating 'Intruder at Window 12!'"

Any low-level wizard could set it up, and the player will be kicking herself for being caught out so easily. Next time she'll use Invisibility, and that's when she'll find out about the glyph on the floor beneath the window (which also sets off the magic mouths, obviously).

valadil
2014-06-09, 08:36 PM
I don't think it's resistance that they're attracted to, but preparation. If you have an obstacle there, you've obviously planned it. And only things that the GM has planned can have treasure in them.

WarKitty
2014-06-09, 09:05 PM
I think if you are going to label a building a 'fine goods market' and NOT expect the players to try and break in, then, you, sir and/or madam, are the source of your trouble. Sure, they might not have any reasonable chance of success, low level characters are exactly the kind of thief people in-world could reasonably take precautions against, but, players will steal everything that's not nailed down and then steal the nails. You might as well have called the building 'Küüm and Gedit's Easily Fenced Rich Stuff Emporium.':smalltongue:

It's more a realism thing. Of COURSE there is such a building, and of COURSE it's heavily defended enough that a 1st level character can't get in. What else would I put in the rich section of the city, a cheap market? And at some point you have to say no, especially in online gaming, or at least "do you really want to spend the entire session running around on an empty grid?"

And then we had an even more fun example later on. The whole plotline was an escaped slave deal. So they decide the best plan is to stow away on a ship, and then try to sell the goods they were carrying as price for passage. Despite the fact that (1) it's not like any good traders show up at evil city, (2) there's a bounty on escaped slaves, and (3) who's going to trade with people you've got trapped on your ship? They were talking to an NPC they'd grabbed and the plan just kept getting more and more elaborate...

veti
2014-06-10, 12:10 AM
And then we had an even more fun example later on. The whole plotline was an escaped slave deal. So they decide the best plan is to stow away on a ship, and then try to sell the goods they were carrying as price for passage. Despite the fact that (1) it's not like any good traders show up at evil city, (2) there's a bounty on escaped slaves, and (3) who's going to trade with people you've got trapped on your ship? They were talking to an NPC they'd grabbed and the plan just kept getting more and more elaborate...

That does sound hilarious. Your PCs are writing their own plot hooks, which result in them getting captured, equipment removed and sold into slavery.

If you tried to do that to them, they'd scream 'railroading' and they'd have a point. But they're doing it to themselves! OK, so it might not be the way you imagined the campaign going, but you should be able to work it out...

WarKitty
2014-06-10, 12:32 AM
That does sound hilarious. Your PCs are writing their own plot hooks, which result in them getting captured, equipment removed and sold into slavery.

If you tried to do that to them, they'd scream 'railroading' and they'd have a point. But they're doing it to themselves! OK, so it might not be the way you imagined the campaign going, but you should be able to work it out...

Slight problem - they were ALREADY slaves who had to escape because they had been sentenced to death. And visibly marked as such. There was just no way I could think of to work that out that wouldn't result in the PC's being summarily murdered.

Jay R
2014-06-10, 09:40 AM
Slight problem - they were ALREADY slaves who had to escape because they had been sentenced to death. And visibly marked as such. There was just no way I could think of to work that out that wouldn't result in the PC's being summarily murdered.

You don't murder slaves for the same reason you don't demolish cars that have been in an accident. They are still valuable assets.

If they have proven to be too much trouble, you sell them to a slave merchant who is leaving town. Perhaps one whose caravan will be attacked a few days out.

John Longarrow
2014-06-10, 10:42 AM
Warkitty, depending on the maturity and preference of the players, you could always put on your rat-bastard DM's hat...

"I try to break into the market"
"OK, what's your character going to do then?"
"I'll pick the lock!"
"OK, roll a reflex save"
"What? I'm picking the lock!"
"Yep. As you start working flame starts pouring out of the lock".
"Crap... OK, I got a 23! Yea!"
"Kewl." <Sound of rolling> "14 points of damage"

Following night after headling up

"I want to break into the place again"
"So what is your character doing this time?"
"I'm LOOKING but not TOUCHING at all of the outside, what do I see?"
"Give me 3 spot checks..." <Roll and response> "OK, as you start going around the building you notice that there is a grate at the back that look... off. You get closer and you see a window under the grate that is about an arms length on each side and seems to be simply laying on a lip, not secured to the ground"
"All right. I'll lift up the grate, climb in and look at the window but not touch it".
"You get down and your looking into a well lit room. It seems to be a small taylor shop with a large collection of dresses that look like what you would expect a welthy maiden to be wearing, a large assortment of shoes, a table with makeup and brushes, and three tailors forms with partial garments on them. Just below the window seems to be a large tri-fold mirror, what you would expect someone to stand before to get a good look at their cloths."
"Does it look like I'd be able to open the window and climb down?"
"It is about six feet from the bottom of the window to the floor and it looks to open in. You see a latch that is not closed."
"Cool. I push it open and look down to make sure its safe to climb in"
"As you push open the window and look down, you see that there is a pedistal in front of the mirror that is about 4 feet down"
"I'll put the grate back on, hook a rope through it, and lower myself down onto the pedistal, then start searching the room"
"No problem. Give me a use rope" <roll> "and what's your climb? +5? yea, no problem. Now give me a Fort save"
"CRAP... 19?"
"As your feet land on the pedistal and you release the rope, you feel your sleaves cover your hands completely and you are startled as your pants fall down around your ankles. As you start looking down, a veritable wall of curly blonde hair falls down before your eyes.
"OK.. I get... whatever it is out of my face"
"Brushing your hair back away from your eyes you catch a very fetching view before you. A young, very pretty blonde elvish girl seems to stand before you, garbed in a loose dress with very long sleaves and a very short hemline. It takes you a moment to realize this is your reflection in the mirror. Your now a 4'7 elvish girl with waist length curly blonde hair and sea blue eyes"


"WHAT?????"

Of course this doesn't work if the player doesn't care much about this kind of change. Alternately they could go "AWESOME! Now they won't recognize me!"

BrokenChord
2014-06-10, 04:18 PM
The trouble with players is they're all the same,
Forget the plot and the whirls, they just want more bling,
Before you know it, you've gotta put 'em on a leash,
"Well, you might control the game but you can't stop me!"

The players cane back the very next session
Oh the players came back, thought they had forgotten
But the players brought an axe, the building couldn't keep them away
Don't you know the players came back

*cough* I'll leave.

kyoryu
2014-06-10, 04:31 PM
...is that obstacles only convince them that they are absolutely 100% on the right track and must work three times as hard to do whatever they were trying to do.

"I try to break into the market."
"You fail your lockpick."
"I look for windows."
"They're barred."
"I start to climb onto the roof."
"The roof appears to be solid slate with no gaps."
"I start trying to loosen the slate."
"...could you stop messing with my scenery and actually go do something that's mapped? Your level 1 rogue cannot get into a fine goods market!"

And, where were the town guards and whatnot while this was taking place?

I mean, there's a building there. There's a chance they break in. There's also a chance that they get caught trying to break in. What's the problem?

Coidzor
2014-06-10, 06:26 PM
...is that obstacles only convince them that they are absolutely 100% on the right track and must work three times as hard to do whatever they were trying to do.

"I try to break into the market."
"You fail your lockpick."
"I look for windows."
"They're barred."
"I start to climb onto the roof."
"The roof appears to be solid slate with no gaps."
"I start trying to loosen the slate."
"...could you stop messing with my scenery and actually go do something that's mapped? Your level 1 rogue cannot get into a fine goods market!"

Have you shown them the "Are You Sure?" Meme? If not, do so. Then ask them, "Are you sure?" before they do something stupid. If they then do the stupid thing, then, well, they face the consequences for said stupid thing.


Of course this doesn't work if the player doesn't care much about this kind of change. Alternately they could go "AWESOME! Now they won't recognize me!"

Definitely not your usual cursed item.

I'd say go with the cosmetic change rather than letting them be a full Elf, since if they weren't an elf before, you don't want them having even more time in which to get into this sort of thing while the rest of the party sleeps, might backfire on ya there. XD

OTOH, there's nothing quite like having a player lament their plummeting Constitution, I suppose.

WarKitty
2014-06-10, 08:00 PM
You don't murder slaves for the same reason you don't demolish cars that have been in an accident. They are still valuable assets.

If they have proven to be too much trouble, you sell them to a slave merchant who is leaving town. Perhaps one whose caravan will be attacked a few days out.

So you're going to let the slaves that were supposed to be your human sacrifice have a SECOND chance to run away?

The trouble is the setting really did back me into a corner as to what was going to happen. That area of the city was explicitly for super-rich people, so I couldn't just fill the market with beans without straining credibility. It was explicitly a religious festival where people were all inside, so no guards roaming the streets. I just didn't expect them to focus in on one single building with an unpickable lock instead of trying others and seeing what they could get into.

That's the real thing. As far as stealing and getting loot, that's what they were supposed to be doing. It's more that they seemed to get locked into one single plan once they got onto one to the point of ridiculousness - in the first case despite the fact that one of them knew perfectly well that they could get into another building. So no matter how many obstacles there are it's like they just can't change plans.

A lot of the trouble with the consequences is that they're just wasting time, as opposed to there actually being realistic bad consequences. There weren't any reasonable bad consequences for keeping on trying to get into the market, other than wasting a bunch of game time with the players trying and me saying no that doesn't work, and making them spend their entire session fumbling around an unmapped building and ignoring the huge maps full of things that actually have set DC's and treasure they could use and everything. And I don't like DMing with no map to DM on.

erikun
2014-06-10, 09:21 PM
I'm not a fan of the "you fail your roll and now you're dead" response. I mean, I suppose it could be funny in the right group, but for a player it can be quite annoying to have no idea what to so and to spontaneously drop dead from trying something. This is especially true given the situation - they're former slaves, outlaws, marked for death and in an obviously evil city. What would you expect them to do, come back in the morning and try to purchase items kindly? :smalltongue: I mean, in the situation of everyone is a jerk and everyone is trying to kill you it would probably make sense to just take whatever you can get your hands on from them.

For a more direct question, I might ask why you simply didn't let them inside and put the plot-relevant items in that particular building if the players were so determined to get inside. I mean, I don't see why the one particular merchant would need to be limited one particular product. Perhaps the grain merchant is really paranoid (and rich) and prefers the high quality locks.


Other than that? While I don't expect everyone to be prepared for everything, especially when first DMing, it might be good to have a few expected responses in cases like this. There will always be guards roaming around the streets, even during religious festivals, and probably some less-than-pleasant individuals who don't attend such things. Magical traps (especially the passive Magic Mouth notices someone mentioned earlier) are also likely. Or of they ARE all at the festival, then there won't be anyone around if the PCs decide to start breaking windows and doors to get inside. (It's why you'll have guards anyways.) I mean, if even the guards are forced to be at the festival, then the PCs could just destroy entryways and loot anything they could carry. There might still be some automated magic preventions, but for the most part anyone could grab most common items, a bunch of horses, and leave without trouble.

Just have a few ideas in mind of why a random person can't freely break into somebody's house in a big city. The reasoning should likely work in any similar situation you find.

Thrudd
2014-06-10, 09:27 PM
So you're going to let the slaves that were supposed to be your human sacrifice have a SECOND chance to run away?

The trouble is the setting really did back me into a corner as to what was going to happen. That area of the city was explicitly for super-rich people, so I couldn't just fill the market with beans without straining credibility. It was explicitly a religious festival where people were all inside, so no guards roaming the streets. I just didn't expect them to focus in on one single building with an unpickable lock instead of trying others and seeing what they could get into.

That's the real thing. As far as stealing and getting loot, that's what they were supposed to be doing. It's more that they seemed to get locked into one single plan once they got onto one to the point of ridiculousness - in the first case despite the fact that one of them knew perfectly well that they could get into another building. So no matter how many obstacles there are it's like they just can't change plans.

A lot of the trouble with the consequences is that they're just wasting time, as opposed to there actually being realistic bad consequences. There weren't any reasonable bad consequences for keeping on trying to get into the market, other than wasting a bunch of game time with the players trying and me saying no that doesn't work, and making them spend their entire session fumbling around an unmapped building and ignoring the huge maps full of things that actually have set DC's and treasure they could use and everything. And I don't like DMing with no map to DM on.

The issue is not the players. The game is about them trying to do stuff, and their assumption that the most heavily secured building would have the best loot inside was a reasonable one to make. Everyone has given many good ideas for how this situation could have been handled. It's a DM'ing situation we all must learn how to deal with.
Learning to improvise in this situation is key, make up details on the spot. Or why not just make this building the one where the stuff was, instead of the ones they weren't trying to get into? That would be preferable to letting them waste the session accomplishing nothing.

If you don't want them to go somewhere you haven't mapped, then why did you include a building in the area you knew they would be robbing without mapping it?

Yes, players don't always go for the easy or obvious thing. DM lesson two: don't expect players to do anything, especially not what you want them to. How to handle this? See lesson one: learn to improvise. There are literally a hundred ways you could have dealt with this without letting them waste the session. DMing requires flexibility.

Use random tables to determine what they find, or make up something that makes sense, and get on with it. So you let them break into the building, they find a couple things of low value but are mostly disappointed. Then they would move on. Why did a market in the rich neighborhood not have anything interesting in it? Maybe it's just a paranoid shopkeeper who uses really expensive locks. Maybe they'll never know. They'll forget all about it when they continue on to the places you have planned and the adventure is under way.

A preferable strategy to mapping out every individual building in the world in case they visit it, is to prepare for yourself a way to quickly generate a random building or lair interior if you need it. Some books provide this for you already. Draw a series of generic building layouts for common types of places they might visit, just in case a random place they are visiting becomes the site of a battle or important to some strategy of theirs. Make a table that lists different ideas for what is inside the building and/or who might be there. You needn't ever be without an idea in a pinch.

The worst thing you can do is to break immersion by reminding them that they need to be doing what you had planned and that they really don't have any choice. This isn't a video game, where most of the environment is not interactive. Their job is to find the one door in the city that they are able to unlock, so the story can continue, and until they do you let them roam around pressing up against every door and window and using the action button. Why not just put a big green light on the building they're supposed to go in, and red light on everything else so they don't waste time.

edit: couple ideas ninja'd by erikun

WarKitty
2014-06-10, 09:56 PM
The issue is not the players. The game is about them trying to do stuff, and their assumption that the most heavily secured building would have the best loot inside was a reasonable one to make. Everyone has given many good ideas for how this situation could have been handled. It's a DM'ing situation we all must learn how to deal with.
Learning to improvise in this situation is key, make up details on the spot. Or why not just make this building the one where the stuff was, instead of the ones they weren't trying to get into? That would be preferable to letting them waste the session accomplishing nothing.

If you don't want them to go somewhere you haven't mapped, then why did you include a building in the area you knew they would be robbing without mapping it?

Yes, players don't always go for the easy or obvious thing. DM lesson two: don't expect players to do anything, especially not what you want them to. How to handle this? See lesson one: learn to improvise. There are literally a hundred ways you could have dealt with this without letting them waste the session. DMing requires flexibility.

Use random tables to determine what they find, or make up something that makes sense, and get on with it. So you let them break into the building, they find a couple things of low value but are mostly disappointed. Then they would move on. Why did a market in the rich neighborhood not have anything interesting in it? Maybe it's just a paranoid shopkeeper who uses really expensive locks. Maybe they'll never know. They'll forget all about it when they continue on to the places you have planned and the adventure is under way.

A preferable strategy to mapping out every individual building in the world in case they visit it, is to prepare for yourself a way to quickly generate a random building or lair interior if you need it. Some books provide this for you already. Draw a series of generic building layouts for common types of places they might visit, just in case a random place they are visiting becomes the site of a battle or important to some strategy of theirs. Make a table that lists different ideas for what is inside the building and/or who might be there. You needn't ever be without an idea in a pinch.

The worst thing you can do is to break immersion by reminding them that they need to be doing what you had planned and that they really don't have any choice. This isn't a video game, where most of the environment is not interactive. Their job is to find the one door in the city that they are able to unlock, so the story can continue, and until they do you let them roam around pressing up against every door and window and using the action button. Why not just put a big green light on the building they're supposed to go in, and red light on everything else so they don't waste time.

edit: couple ideas ninja'd by erikun

That just sounds...boring. Either you have to have maps (that match, which is near impossible without crafting them yourself) for every single building, or you have to basically make a pretty unrealistic map where you don't put anything that's not out of their level to get into on it. There is nothing that would have made any sort of sense to put there that wouldn't have utterly broken WBL several times over. Beans and other food goods are already canonically brought in from the lower quarters, as are any other major cheap supplies. And in any case they all want to go back to the same city later on, which means if I let them get into everything now there's nothing to do later.

And it's not like it was there's just one way to solve things. There were more buildings unlockable than not, and I'd given specific information to the party that they knew how to unlock a particular door that they knew exactly where it was. That's why I was so frustrated - it was like, A, B, C, D, and E are all unlockable, and F and G aren't, but half the party (not even all of it) decides to focus all their time and energy on F and not even look at anything else. And that's just on the one map of several they could get to. That's what I don't get - when players seem to have an unerring ability to find and focus on the one single thing that's not a good idea, even when there are lots and lots of things that would work just fine.

Basically, I find having it so they can get into everything and having everyone go along with their plan to be hugely unrealistic. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game where I could get into any building at level 1, and I definitely would feel that the DM was cheating if there wasn't a realistic amount of loot in there, even if the loot was way over what should be ok for a character at level 1. That's a lot of it here - I wouldn't want to play in a game where a lot of the "solutions" presented here are used, because it would break immersion and make me feel too much like the world was about me. I don't want to be in a video game where everything's perfectly scale to my level and no matter where I go everything works just fine.

Thrudd
2014-06-10, 11:13 PM
That just sounds...boring. Either you have to have maps (that match, which is near impossible without crafting them yourself) for every single building, or you have to basically make a pretty unrealistic map where you don't put anything that's not out of their level to get into on it. There is nothing that would have made any sort of sense to put there that wouldn't have utterly broken WBL several times over. Beans and other food goods are already canonically brought in from the lower quarters, as are any other major cheap supplies. And in any case they all want to go back to the same city later on, which means if I let them get into everything now there's nothing to do later.

And it's not like it was there's just one way to solve things. There were more buildings unlockable than not, and I'd given specific information to the party that they knew how to unlock a particular door that they knew exactly where it was. That's why I was so frustrated - it was like, A, B, C, D, and E are all unlockable, and F and G aren't, but half the party (not even all of it) decides to focus all their time and energy on F and not even look at anything else. And that's just on the one map of several they could get to. That's what I don't get - when players seem to have an unerring ability to find and focus on the one single thing that's not a good idea, even when there are lots and lots of things that would work just fine.

Basically, I find having it so they can get into everything and having everyone go along with their plan to be hugely unrealistic. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game where I could get into any building at level 1, and I definitely would feel that the DM was cheating if there wasn't a realistic amount of loot in there, even if the loot was way over what should be ok for a character at level 1. That's a lot of it here - I wouldn't want to play in a game where a lot of the "solutions" presented here are used, because it would break immersion and make me feel too much like the world was about me. I don't want to be in a video game where everything's perfectly scale to my level and no matter where I go everything works just fine.

I think you are suffering a lack of imagination in this case. This is a lesson for you, as a DM. Players do this. They take something you meant as window dressing and think it is something important. Also, the players don't know that you have not planned for them to get into this building. What is a "realistic" amount of loot is completely up to you, you have invented this place.

The bottom line is: figure out ways to deal with it when players do stuff like this, because they always will. Don't write yourself into corners, where there are no reasonable options. You need to be willing to go off script and let them do random, meaningless stuff, if you want to maintain the sense that it is a real world where they can choose to do whatever they want. Sometimes, you need to balance this with keeping the action moving, and give them incentive to move on or disincentive to persist with their current activities. You could have said something like "Nothing you are trying is working, and the clock is still ticking on that festival..." Have one of them make a wisdom or knowledge roll, and tell them "you are aware that the guards won't be off the streets for much longer...".
I agree, it would not feel like a very realistic world if everything was always a "level appropriate" encounter, but that is essentially what you are doing if they are never allowed to occasionally try and overcome a situation that ought to have been beyond them (and be rewarded for it). Scenery which they are not supposed to interact with does not make it feel like a real world, it makes it feel like a video game. Set the parameters for success and let them try. The risks in these situations should be high. Messing with the building sets off a magic mouth alarm, summoning a special unit of private security personnel who are always on call, or a golem that normally looks like part of the wall. Or there is a dangerous creature or two which is kept inside like a pet, and attacks whoever comes through the door. The point being, if there is no disincentive to trying, why wouldn't they spend their time trying to get the biggest haul they can? A good disincentive to messing around like this is to implement a penalty for spending a lot of time in one place, usually in the form of random encounters. Wandering monsters are why parties could not just sit around and recover all their spells and HP in between every fight. In a town, guard patrols would be the default "wandering monster". If you choose not to have this type of time-limiting device, you can expect players will sometimes waste a lot of time on dead-ends, especially if they have some reason to believe there are big rewards.

WarKitty
2014-06-10, 11:40 PM
I think you are suffering a lack of imagination in this case. This is a lesson for you, as a DM. Players do this. They take something you meant as window dressing and think it is something important. Also, the players don't know that you have not planned for them to get into this building. What is a "realistic" amount of loot is completely up to you, you have invented this place.

The bottom line is: figure out ways to deal with it when players do stuff like this, because they always will. Don't write yourself into corners, where there are no reasonable options. You need to be willing to go off script and let them do random, meaningless stuff, if you want to maintain the sense that it is a real world where they can choose to do whatever they want. Sometimes, you need to balance this with keeping the action moving, and give them incentive to move on or disincentive to persist with their current activities. You could have said something like "Nothing you are trying is working, and the clock is still ticking on that festival..." Have one of them make a wisdom or knowledge roll, and tell them "you are aware that the guards won't be off the streets for much longer...".
I agree, it would not feel like a very realistic world if everything was always a "level appropriate" encounter, but that is essentially what you are doing if they are never allowed to occasionally try and overcome a situation that ought to have been beyond them (and be rewarded for it). Scenery which they are not supposed to interact with does not make it feel like a real world, it makes it feel like a video game. Set the parameters for success and let them try. The risks in these situations should be high. Messing with the building sets off a magic mouth alarm, summoning a special unit of private security personnel who are always on call, or a golem that normally looks like part of the wall. Or there is a dangerous creature or two which is kept inside like a pet, and attacks whoever comes through the door. The point being, if there is no disincentive to trying, why wouldn't they spend their time trying to get the biggest haul they can? A good disincentive to messing around like this is to implement a penalty for spending a lot of time in one place, usually in the form of random encounters. Wandering monsters are why parties could not just sit around and recover all their spells and HP in between every fight. In a town, guard patrols would be the default "wandering monster". If you choose not to have this type of time-limiting device, you can expect players will sometimes waste a lot of time on dead-ends, especially if they have some reason to believe there are big rewards.

Yeah, I could see how I could have done things differently in the first one. The second case is what really gets me - where the players seemed to have gotten stuck on an option that is just bad (the stowaway plan). I just couldn't see any realistic option that didn't end in a TPK, and the solutions they were coming up with were just complicated and ridiculous ("Oh the captain won't let us on - so what if we break into the guarded hotel, kill the captain who we have no idea what room he's in or what he looks like, and THEN stow away?"). And it just seemed like once they were on a plan they completely forgot why they had that plan and completing that plan because the central thing to get done, even if they had ended up going against what they'd developed the plan to do.

Thrudd
2014-06-11, 12:00 AM
Yeah, I could see how I could have done things differently in the first one. The second case is what really gets me - where the players seemed to have gotten stuck on an option that is just bad (the stowaway plan). I just couldn't see any realistic option that didn't end in a TPK, and the solutions they were coming up with were just complicated and ridiculous ("Oh the captain won't let us on - so what if we break into the guarded hotel, kill the captain who we have no idea what room he's in or what he looks like, and THEN stow away?"). And it just seemed like once they were on a plan they completely forgot why they had that plan and completing that plan because the central thing to get done, even if they had ended up going against what they'd developed the plan to do.

There does come a time when you just need to let them do what they want, come what may, TPK included. "Ok, roll up new characters...you are all slaves being transported to a religious festival where you have each been selected as a human sacrifice..." (who says the first set of characters were the only ones that were going to be sacrifices? Maybe these guys will be more successful at escaping)
Sometimes the dice will surprise you, and they will succeed at doing something they had no business succeeding at. Or their shenanigans will lead to something that you hadn't thought of, and it ends up being a lot of fun. In general, bad plans should result in failure with consequences, and that's ok.

WarKitty
2014-06-11, 12:08 AM
I do I think need to figure out how different players are going to be handled, as well. Part of the issue I was having was that one half of the party would just be proceeding on with their plan trying their hardest to make it work, and the other half didn't want to keep spending time on that thing, but the first half wasn't noticing the second half and they didn't want to break character while they were sneaking to get them. So I also didn't want to keep indulging half of the party or get them all into trouble when the other half was trying to do something else. But I also didn't want to keep doing random encounters because none of them were appropriate level for a split party and I didn't want to kill the characters who were doing sensible things that put them out in the way.

DM Nate
2014-06-11, 07:05 AM
My players know very well to never split the party, and I remind them sometimes if they do so, even if just in purpose. "I don't care what plan you guys eventually agree on, but you do all need to agree on a plan together."

HighWater
2014-06-11, 08:03 AM
I do I think need to figure out how different players are going to be handled, as well. Part of the issue I was having was that one half of the party would just be proceeding on with their plan trying their hardest to make it work, and the other half didn't want to keep spending time on that thing, but the first half wasn't noticing the second half and they didn't want to break character while they were sneaking to get them. So I also didn't want to keep indulging half of the party or get them all into trouble when the other half was trying to do something else. But I also didn't want to keep doing random encounters because none of them were appropriate level for a split party and I didn't want to kill the characters who were doing sensible things that put them out in the way.

2 things on situation number 1:
- The Infite Loop of Reinforcement Learning (How your preconceived notions make you interpret your experiences to fit them):
"The challenge is robbing a place." --> Lockpick works --> Yay! Challenge beaten! Where's my loot?
"The challenge is robbing a place." --> Lockpick doesn't work, but the challenge was robbing a place --> Oh darn, this is a tough challenge! Let's try something else --> That fails too, but the challenge was robbing a place --> Wow, a real toughy, this must be really worth it, I wonder what that Merchant of Fine Goods keeps in here to make it so hard to break into, must be worth big moneyz. And we need big moneyz to get out of this city so, must try something else. Etc. etc.

Failure can be very persuasive in convincing people they are on the right track. You start rationalising why it didn't work, without rejecting your initial assumption, so long as it can be preserved. This is actually a pretty logical course of action. Plenty of advice has been given on how you could've dealt with this issue in character (the Magic Mouths make a lot of sense when someone already goes through the trouble of adding good locks).

- Sometimes Out of Character complaints are completely justified.
First of all, it is a group game, so even when people do something "in character" OOC group dynamics should still have an impact (so we stay away from "But my character would do this (insane murderhobo thing that will break up the party)"). Players need to play with eachother if they are in the same game, even when their characters are currently not in the same room.
Second, presumably the characters know eachother for a bit, it's quite likely that the burglar-half realises halfway that the rest is probably getting fed-up waiting for them. You ever had someone complain about something you were doing without them actually being around? That voice in your head, could be a representation of OOC talk, so whenever someone complains OOC that somebody's tangent is taking too long and wasting too much time, maybe the character in question "senses" that he's taking too long.

On to situation number 2: "the Fabulous Flawless Plan That Would Never Get Us KILLED!"
- Don't be afraid to occasionally help the players by pointing out they're being idiots. As a DM you are the eyes, ears and MEMORY of the party. A lot of the things in your world are things the players don't know anything about until your bring it up. The things you have brought up have to fight for the limited amount of attention and brainspace that can be spent on remembering abstract concepts within a game told to you by someone else and interpreting and modeling that stuff effectively. Details will be left out, important stuff will be forgotten and holes in the plan more-than-obvious to any person really in that situation may become completely invisible to someone playing through that situation. Really smart players are going to make really stupid mistakes, especially if they are new, or in a new setting. Call for a Wisdom roll, if a success: point out a flaw, if a failure, let it function as the infamous "Are you SURE you want to *repeat their plan*". You have to decide for yourself just how many warnings your players get before you start dropping the hatchet.

Angelalex242
2014-06-11, 01:51 PM
Spare the rod, spoil the players.

Explain to them the building they want to break into is ECL 15. If they continue to try, well, they should experience the same results as taking on a CR 15 monster at level 1. :P

Aedilred
2014-06-11, 02:20 PM
I can sympathise with WarKitty here, because I have had similar experiences. In fact, I've been the player insisting on trying to get into the place we're obviously supposed not to get into, in increasingly ridiculous ways. Admittedly in that instance I was doing it partly on purpose, and the GM thought it was hilarious, if baffling, rather than annoying, so nothing bad really came of it.

On the one hand, it's always a good idea to be prepared, and try not to allow this sort of thing to happen in the first place. On the other hand, there can be a tendency to assume that the player is always right and that if this sort of thing arises it's a failing on the part of the GM, which I don't think is entirely fair. Players are wilful, unpredictable and often quite unreasonably stupid creatures, and pandering to them only works for a time. I don't think it's necessarily a given that any challenge must be beatable at current level, or that if a player stumbles into something that's out of their league the GM is obliged to allow them to continue with it because they shouldn't have allowed the situation to arise otherwise. I think it's good for players to fail eventually, and to get the idea that they won't automatically succeed at everything just because they're the protagonist, that there's stuff they can't do, and it's better for them to learn that lesson sooner, somewhere it doesn't really matter, than later when a TPK is on the cards. It also means when you TPK them they're likely to be less annoyed, so that's a plus.

As people have mentioned, random encounters with passing pedestrians, guards, local thieves trying the same thing(!) etc. might be a way to put a stop to it in any given instance. But players always have the capacity to surprise.

Sartharina
2014-06-11, 02:40 PM
You don't murder slaves for the same reason you don't demolish cars that have been in an accident. They are still valuable assets.

If they have proven to be too much trouble, you sell them to a slave merchant who is leaving town. Perhaps one whose caravan will be attacked a few days out.1. If a car that's been in an accident is no longer drivable, you scrap it because the only thing of value is the metal and plastic it's made of, and any fuel left in the tank.
2. If the car is one that intentionally drives itself into accidents trying to get you killed, it's a good idea to scrap it. Especially if doing so encourages other cars you own to STOP trying to intentionally drive you into accidents because they don't want to be scrapped.
3. People and slaves are not cars. They can see and learn from each other. If you resort to selling troublesome slaves to merchants to unload on others that give a chance of freedom, you are encouraging slaves to be troublesome because it improves their chances of being freed (Or at least getting out of their current situation). However, executing slaves that are more trouble than they're worth (Which is possible) reminds slaves that acting up destroys any chance they have at freedom. And, the current party, for whatever reason, was sentenced to death already, for some reason.

Brookshw
2014-06-11, 07:29 PM
If you give a mouse a cookie....
He'll probably want a glass of milk.

If you give a player a cookie....
He'll try to figure out if it's; cursed, enchanted, the key to an unsolved mystery, want to find an npc that's diabetic, the one cookie to rule them all, if it can grant infinite wishes, ask for choking rules, try to use it as an improvised ranged weapon, and how it can destroy the world.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-11, 09:48 PM
The trouble with players is they're all the same,
Forget the plot and the whirls, they just want more bling,

That is frankly not true. Most of them also want murder and XP.



If you give a player a cookie....
He'll try to figure out if it's; cursed, enchanted, the key to an unsolved mystery, want to find an npc that's diabetic, the one cookie to rule them all, if it can grant infinite wishes, ask for choking rules, try to use it as an improvised ranged weapon, and how it can destroy the world.

He'll also ask if he can recover hit points or mana from eating it.

BrokenChord
2014-06-11, 10:08 PM
Oh, that's not fair. How was I to include that while staying in time with the song? :smallsigh:

WarKitty
2014-06-11, 11:15 PM
To be fair, they've not been greedy murder-hobos. It's just that they seem to be rather myopic once they get on a plan - to where that plan has to be accomplished at all costs no matter what. The response to pointing out fatal flaws in their plan is "Let's make the plan even more complicated!" rather than "Let's consider whether there's another plan." Even if the actual benefits of their plan are rapidly diminishing with every complication. It's like once they get on a plan players forget why they were doing that plan in the first place.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-11, 11:17 PM
Oh, that's not fair. How was I to include that while staying in time with the song? :smallsigh:

My bad, I didn't notice it was a song.

ScrivenerofDoom
2014-06-11, 11:28 PM
My question would first be, "Why is the player doing this?"

Let's face it. Some players (and DMs) are passive-aggressive supercilious cretins who just want to mess with the game. A player like that who runs a character that tries to break into things that are clearly not meant to be broken into should get the "three strikes" treatment: an escalating series of in-game warnings with the final one likely to lead to the character's death. However, those "three strikes" should be consistent with the location. A fine goods market? I would suggest a very high quality lock followed by a very dangerous trap and concluding with some particularly nasty guards that a single rogue has next to no hope of defeating.

However, if the player is going it because I, perhaps inadvertently, made the location sound like an attractive and worthwhile place to explore then it's incumbent on me to whip something up even if my goal is simply to get the player to decide it would be better to come back some other time.

Finally, am I guilty as the DM of making the game so damn boring that the players are simply climbing the walls looking for something to do? If so, it's up to me to fix it, of course. (I remember the first time I played D&D without one of my friends as DM. We thought we would join an RPG club in the city we had heard about. And while the DM had drawn up a city that put The City State of the Invincible Overlord to shame, in three hours of play we were not able to uncover a single adventure hook so we all - paladin included - decided to look for places to break into. We never went back.)

It's interesting to think about how much being the DM is like leading a team or managing people: there is a significant HR component to what we do.

Angelalex242
2014-06-12, 06:53 AM
Actually...what do the fellow PCs think about Mr. Breaking and Entering?

Lawful Good characters, particularly your friendly neighborhood Paladin, are going to take a REALLY dim view of 'I steal stuff cause it's THERE!' Even Clerics of Lawful Deities are likely to brain this guy with their Morningstar.

Premier
2014-06-12, 08:18 AM
I'm bemused by this thread: from the OP all the way here, everyone's implicitly bought into the basic notion that the PCs should not get into the market, but nobody bothered to actually ask why they shouldn't get in there.

I'm going to be blunt: I think this is a sign of mediocre DM-ing. It's railroading, plain and simple; and instead of discussing how to prevent the PCs from getting into (or wishing to get into) inexplicably forbidden areas, it would be more conductive to talk about how not to place inexplicably forbidden areas in the first place.

Now, IIRC, the OP so far hasn't told us why she(?) doesn't want the PCs in there, so I'll have to go on guesses:

- She's already established (at least to herself) that there's something really dangerous in there, and it would be "inappropriate" for the party's level. That's bull. "Apprpriate encounter level" is possibly the single most dolorous blow WotCD&D has inflicted on RPG culture. If the party wants to get in there - and take a course of action that would reasonably get them in -, then let them get in there, full stop. Let them stumble into the Market Demon's or whatever's lair, then be a fair DM and give them a reasonable chance to escape. Just keep in mind that powerful punches should usually be telegraphed. You don't put a random ancient dragon in a random cave just off the highway, at least not without placing a huge pile of bones outside and some terrified merchants in the neighbourhood. Same thing here: if there's a Market Demon in the market, then probably there would be cultists guarding the perimeter, or rumours of something dark and foul that they could have heard days before, or maybe the nearby streets clear suspiciously quickly just before sundown.

- There's a "plot critical" item or somesuch in there which the PCs are "not supposed to" find just yet. This is just, again, not very good DM-ing. The DM's job is to simulate the reality of the game world. Items should be left in places according to how their owners thinks and what happens to them; not according to some pre-determined fourth-wall-breaking power of plot. If the PCs randomly break into a market (a place which probably would be a tempting target for local burglars anyway) and find the Artifact of World Saving, well, then the bad guy in question probably wasn't a very sharp one for placing the Artifact in a spot where the first random Joe Thief might find it.
Also, don't be beholden to the pre-determined order of events your "plot" dictates. In fact, there should be no "order". If the PCs find something, they find it - whether by following clues or sheer dumb luck. Roll with the event and decide how the world reacts to it. Stumbling onto an important clue or item through luck and then running with it can make for an excellent adventure.

- Or maybe the matter is simply that the DM hasn't prepared the market. That's fine; making stuff up on the go is a valuable DM skill; and if you've been to markets before, or seen bazaars, souks or whatever, it's not really all that hard. Call for a 15 minute snack/cigarette/toilet break, gather your thoughts and jot down some basic things, like how many guards there are. Or even better, turn the random burglary into a potential adventure hook: come up with something interesting that the party can find in there. Say, maybe a seller's stall is used as a dropoff point by the Smuggler's Guild, and just tonight they happen to have something valuable in there. Now, if it's a dropoff point, who'll pick it up? Probably the stall's owner in the morning, who'll hang on to until next evening and then take it to the buyer, who is someone interesting and powerful, like a noble or a local sorcerer. The night guards of the market are probably in on the whole thing, too: they don't know there's a shipment there right now, but the stall's owner gives them a regular bribe to make sure they never "notice" anything fishy going on. Now, the PCs have helped themselves to the stuff, which has set in motion a whole new adventure that happens parallel to whatever they're doing already. Great!
Pro tip: if you don't have a good idea of what might be in the market, just make one or two random rolls on your Urban random encounters chart, and stick with that result (or two). That limitation will help you come up with something interesting that's happening right there right then. It doesn't have to be a whole new adventure, it could be just some petty thieves, or a random murder, or some giant rats getting into the grocer's. All of which turn into something for the PCs to do.

Segev
2014-06-12, 08:35 AM
By my reading of the OP, there is "nothing" in there that is of any import to the mission at hand. Alternatively, there are, in fact, things they could steak and hock to get the money they sought...but this is the one building around which has numbers so high that there is no real chance the 1st level PC will be able to penetrate it.

In the latter case, it's the same as if the DM had already decided that the one gladiator the PCs chose to fight was the CR 20 wizard with paranoia-level magic in place. Who, for whatever reason, is content to let the PCs try to beat him up without retaliating. The 1st level PCs have zero chance of actually landing a hit or even marginally threatening the CR 20 wizard.

The solution tends to be, for this, to simply point out, after a few failures, that there are other, possibly easier-to-break-in-to, buildings around they could try. "This one's got security that you apparently can't overcome, but it's not the only place with valuable goods in it..."

Give them some time pressure, too: Point out how long each effort takes. Have the occasional person wander by, possibly guards on a patrol beat. Picking locks takes at least 10 rounds (1 minute) per try. Let them take 20, if there aren't other consequences of being there for 20 min. If they take 20 and still fail, they literally cannot succeed at the task. But 20 min. per door and window, and half the night is gone before they're halfway done trying to break into the place. If they waited for full dark, it might be starting in on false dawn...

Time crunches are a big motivator for finding something that works rather than continuing to try what hasn't!

hewhosaysfish
2014-06-12, 08:58 AM
Give them some time pressure, too: Point out how long each effort takes. Have the occasional person wander by, possibly guards on a patrol beat. Picking locks takes at least 10 rounds (1 minute) per try. Let them take 20, if there aren't other consequences of being there for 20 min. If they take 20 and still fail, they literally cannot succeed at the task. But 20 min. per door and window, and half the night is gone before they're halfway done trying to break into the place. If they waited for full dark, it might be starting in on false dawn...

Time crunches are a big motivator for finding something that works rather than continuing to try what hasn't!

Except that this was apparently taking place during the Annual Religious Festival of All-Law-Enforcement-Officers-And-Possible-Witnesses-Keep-Off-The-Street.

Given the circumstances, I think the players were quite restranied (or umimaginative) in targetting a mere fine goods store.
If my GM were to put me in a situation where I knew that from sun-up until sun-down (or sun-up until next sun-up) every single other person in the city would be in the temple praying (or at home fasting or whatever) then my to-do list would read:
1) Raid a construction yard for a heavy-duty block-and-tackle, the kind you might attach to a crane for lifting roofs into place
2) Head to the stockyards for some teams of oxen
3) Take the gates of the front of the Royal Mint

Seriously, I don't care if it's built like a fortress. If a medieval castle got abandoned the local peasants would strip the stone from the walls for their own projects because it was easier than quarrying stone from the ground. When there's no-one trying to pour boiling oil on you, a wall is not an impassible barrier.

A fine goods store that can't be broken into? When it doesn't matter how much noise you make? And there are no patrols of guards? And you have all day?

SiuiS
2014-06-12, 10:34 AM
Ending meaningless and time-wasting PC plans are what wandering monsters are for. By now the rogue should have been interrupted by a seven-year-old kid asking, "Hey mister, whatcha tryin' to break into Guido's warehouse for?"

Or perhaps, "Go over to the south side, mister. They never lock that window when the warehouse is empty."

City guards, barking dog, beggar, street gang, etc.

Don't give them infinite free time to do useless stuff. You're the only one who knows what he's doing is worthless, so you're the only one who can stop it.

Honesty, personally, think that's a backwards way to handle it. Here's why.


You know how people think page count and rules devotion is a sign of what's important? How old &D had tons of combat rules but only a handful of exploration stuff so people seriously think old D&D is about nothing but combat? Time density is an indication of relevance.

The best way to handle this situation is to tell the player they either succeed, or they fail, and move on. Don't say "you don't get in. It's locked. It's barred. No doors. Too many guards." Let them roll, once, and spin a yarn. Either you thwart the whole of the security, managed to grab only a few baubles and coins, and get out while the dogs slept or after a few hours had to five it up as fruitless as more and more heat accumulated and you need to leave". Give the entire thing maybe five minutes and then move them back to the actual game. Let them roll an appropriate thief skill like profession to make some money, then move on.

They get two to five minutes of "your thief does thiefity, you get money, the end" and you circumvent the idea that because something is detailed it's relevant.

Aedilred
2014-06-12, 02:00 PM
To be fair, they've not been greedy murder-hobos. It's just that they seem to be rather myopic once they get on a plan - to where that plan has to be accomplished at all costs no matter what. The response to pointing out fatal flaws in their plan is "Let's make the plan even more complicated!" rather than "Let's consider whether there's another plan." Even if the actual benefits of their plan are rapidly diminishing with every complication. It's like once they get on a plan players forget why they were doing that plan in the first place.
I'm reminded of this strip (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=680) from DM of the Rings.

BrokenChord
2014-06-12, 02:30 PM
If the PCs randomly break into a market (a place which probably would be a tempting target for local burglars anyway) and find the Artifact of World Saving, well, then the bad guy in question probably wasn't a very sharp one for placing the Artifact in a spot where the first random Joe Thief might find it.

Unless, of course, the bad guy in question wanted to prevent people from getting in by putting copious amounts of locks on the building, likely with magical traps within as well depending on the bad guy's means. Suddenly the bad guy could've been a pretty sharp one.

It might not be railroading, it's just eventual plot hooks being built up without the players realizing it. :smallbiggrin:

... Or, it could be railroad-y badwrongfun DMing. Whatever.

John Longarrow
2014-06-12, 04:05 PM
Definitely not your usual cursed item.

I'd say go with the cosmetic change rather than letting them be a full Elf, since if they weren't an elf before

No, not a cursed item.
No, not a race change like that.

Think more a permanent alter self effect. The form is chosen by its owner and "Set". Who ever gets on the platform gets changed. It then needs to be "Set" again before it works (requires casting an alter-self spell into the item).

Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. A way for a tailor to get an assistant to match any client they are doing work for. Tailor just needs to be at least 3rd level wizard with alter self and the gold to buy the platform. I don't have the gold piece value anymore. It was translated from 2nd.

John Longarrow
2014-06-12, 04:48 PM
WarKitty,

Have you talked to your players OOC about the session to see why they decided to just keep on that one building? Kinda like 'OK, so you couldn't get in door A, so you started trying to dig a tunnel under the wall to come up inside. Why not try something a little.... easier? Like look for a door/window that isn't locked?"

This is especially true when they go all Joker on a wierd conviluted plot. See if you can find out from THEM why they try to make excessive plots to do simple things.

Mr Beer
2014-06-12, 06:11 PM
I like the idea of saying "yes" whenever possible. I would let them break in if they want to badly enough. That doesn't mean for one second that they just get to waltz off with teh phat l00t though. In fact, if they do get away with the goods, sounds like a plot hook to me. It may be that upstanding Emilio the Fruiterer owns this warehouse, but turns out that he was fronting it for Vincenzo the Stabby, famous for his vast collection of poisoned blades and non-existent sense of humour.

WarKitty
2014-06-12, 08:04 PM
Except that this was apparently taking place during the Annual Religious Festival of All-Law-Enforcement-Officers-And-Possible-Witnesses-Keep-Off-The-Street.

Given the circumstances, I think the players were quite restranied (or umimaginative) in targetting a mere fine goods store.
If my GM were to put me in a situation where I knew that from sun-up until sun-down (or sun-up until next sun-up) every single other person in the city would be in the temple praying (or at home fasting or whatever) then my to-do list would read:
1) Raid a construction yard for a heavy-duty block-and-tackle, the kind you might attach to a crane for lifting roofs into place
2) Head to the stockyards for some teams of oxen
3) Take the gates of the front of the Royal Mint

Seriously, I don't care if it's built like a fortress. If a medieval castle got abandoned the local peasants would strip the stone from the walls for their own projects because it was easier than quarrying stone from the ground. When there's no-one trying to pour boiling oil on you, a wall is not an impassible barrier.

A fine goods store that can't be broken into? When it doesn't matter how much noise you make? And there are no patrols of guards? And you have all day?


By my reading of the OP, there is "nothing" in there that is of any import to the mission at hand. Alternatively, there are, in fact, things they could steak and hock to get the money they sought...but this is the one building around which has numbers so high that there is no real chance the 1st level PC will be able to penetrate it.

In the latter case, it's the same as if the DM had already decided that the one gladiator the PCs chose to fight was the CR 20 wizard with paranoia-level magic in place. Who, for whatever reason, is content to let the PCs try to beat him up without retaliating. The 1st level PCs have zero chance of actually landing a hit or even marginally threatening the CR 20 wizard.

The solution tends to be, for this, to simply point out, after a few failures, that there are other, possibly easier-to-break-in-to, buildings around they could try. "This one's got security that you apparently can't overcome, but it's not the only place with valuable goods in it..."

Give them some time pressure, too: Point out how long each effort takes. Have the occasional person wander by, possibly guards on a patrol beat. Picking locks takes at least 10 rounds (1 minute) per try. Let them take 20, if there aren't other consequences of being there for 20 min. If they take 20 and still fail, they literally cannot succeed at the task. But 20 min. per door and window, and half the night is gone before they're halfway done trying to break into the place. If they waited for full dark, it might be starting in on false dawn...

Time crunches are a big motivator for finding something that works rather than continuing to try what hasn't!

Yeah that was actually sort of my worry. They had about 6h to take whatever they want and be far away from the city. And they were going to need supplies to survive, so I wanted to encourage them to leave the fancy goods market and find a place with more useful stuff.


Actually...what do the fellow PCs think about Mr. Breaking and Entering?

Lawful Good characters, particularly your friendly neighborhood Paladin, are going to take a REALLY dim view of 'I steal stuff cause it's THERE!' Even Clerics of Lawful Deities are likely to brain this guy with their Morningstar.

Actually, the thief is LG. Given the circumstances I think they're doing fine.


I like the idea of saying "yes" whenever possible. I would let them break in if they want to badly enough. That doesn't mean for one second that they just get to waltz off with teh phat l00t though. In fact, if they do get away with the goods, sounds like a plot hook to me. It may be that upstanding Emilio the Fruiterer owns this warehouse, but turns out that he was fronting it for Vincenzo the Stabby, famous for his vast collection of poisoned blades and non-existent sense of humour.

Difficult when the next order of business is "get as far away from this place as we can and don't come back for 10 levels," though. Though honestly I dislike the idea of saying yes that often, because it would feel like a fake world to me.


WarKitty,

Have you talked to your players OOC about the session to see why they decided to just keep on that one building? Kinda like 'OK, so you couldn't get in door A, so you started trying to dig a tunnel under the wall to come up inside. Why not try something a little.... easier? Like look for a door/window that isn't locked?"

This is especially true when they go all Joker on a wierd conviluted plot. See if you can find out from THEM why they try to make excessive plots to do simple things.

Apparently the answer was, oh yeah we forgot all the other stuff you told us...

Cobra_Ikari
2014-06-12, 08:32 PM
Eh. I'm one of the players involved, and I thought things were handled fine. I'd say it was more...a lack of players feeling the urgency of the situation/mental immortality? Situation is "You have been selected for the part of the ceremony where you're dressed up as 'demons', run through the night streets, and then get hunted down and slaughtered as part of the ritual." Or, that was my understanding. So, really, is probably more...players should have realized they can't take time, it's grab what you can get your hands on and flee, no time to play around? Dunno.

There's kind of a tunnel vision that shows up when you look at your objective and make a plan of action. Sometimes, you get so tied up in succeeding with the plan that you forget the point was to succeed at the objective, and you don't quit and look for the best backup plan. Is a case of what happened here. Honestly, with the docks, it should have been a TPK. >.>

WarKitty
2014-06-12, 09:06 PM
To be fair, half the party remembered it was dark and forgot that they had torches...

Mr Beer
2014-06-12, 10:09 PM
Difficult when the next order of business is "get as far away from this place as we can and don't come back for 10 levels," though. Though honestly I dislike the idea of saying yes that often, because it would feel like a fake world to me.

I think it's good generally to let players do what they want to do, as long as consequences are a thing. The point is, it's not the end of the game to let them get off the rails.

One of the most enjoyable sessions I've ever run was as a consequence of the players leaping wholesale away from what they were "supposed" to be doing. In the first 5 minutes of the adventure they needlessly escalated a situation and ended up incinerating some Greyhawk City watchmen with a fireball. So one of the Watch's backup high level mages teleported in, shut them down post-haste and I threw away the module in favour of sending them away for a lifetime of hard labour in a jungle hellhole prison camp in Hepmonaland, Papillon-style. Escaping to civilisation took most of the game...they had just about gotten to the point of acquiring a small amount of money and basic weaponry when we were out of time.

Anyway, if you get into the habit of going "no no no" when they try stuff you don't want them to do because it doesn't advance the plot, they can see the rails and gets old pretty quick. It's more fake than letting them have meaningful agency and it's way more irritating for the party.

EDIT

I'm not saying you have to let them in the warehouse by the way, this thread is chock-full of good ways to discourage them in a reasonable way if you really don't want to derail this particular session.

Angelalex242
2014-06-12, 11:37 PM
Would you please explain to me why a Lawful Good rogue is breaking and entering for giggles?

I'd enforce an alignment change to neutral, or even chaotic good just for such blatant disregard of the law.

I might enforce an alignment change to chaotic neutral, too, if the success of his mission would significantly hurt the owner of the establishment.

WarKitty
2014-06-13, 01:14 AM
Would you please explain to me why a Lawful Good rogue is breaking and entering for giggles?

I'd enforce an alignment change to neutral, or even chaotic good just for such blatant disregard of the law.

I might enforce an alignment change to chaotic neutral, too, if the success of his mission would significantly hurt the owner of the establishment.

You must have missed the part where the whole point of that session was breaking into things. They're escaped slaves, stealing from slavers to supply their escape. I don't think they'll be trying to just break into things at random.


In retrospect, making that one building not possible to break into was a bad idea. I was a bit short on time to prepare and figured they'd give up if it didn't work though.

Angelalex242
2014-06-13, 01:36 AM
Oh, right. Opposing an unjust law is kosher. In that case, breaking in makes sense. It's depriving evil of resources.

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2014-06-13, 02:15 AM
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hewhosaysfish
2014-06-13, 08:49 AM
Yeah that was actually sort of my worry. They had about 6h to take whatever they want and be far away from the city. And they were going to need supplies to survive, so I wanted to encourage them to leave the fancy goods market and find a place with more useful stuff.

So they were marked out to be the climax of the very same festival that they were taking advantage of to go a-robbing? That's a pretty cool setup for an adventure.

OK, your dismay at their actions is starting to make more sense to me. When you said the objective was "breaking into places and getting loot" I took that as clarifying that they were just after valuable rather than something specific (something they planned to use, a particluar item they had been tasked with retrieving, evidence of some plot, etc).

If they were prepping for a trip in a hurry then the fine goods market makes a lot less sense. Unless they wanted to steal only the best camping gear in the city. Silk pavillions to sleep in, fresh foods inside a magic box of preservation, etc.
I dont't know if that's classy or absurd.

John Longarrow
2014-06-13, 11:43 AM
Apparently the answer was, oh yeah we forgot all the other stuff you told us...

I've had games where this would happen. We would recap the previous session and remind ourselves of what needed to be done.
Coures we also drop plans that don't look like they'd work. Talk to the players and have someone do recaps. Remind them if they skip something. That can work wonders towards keeping a party going the direction they decided.