PDA

View Full Version : DM Help About hinting to players



Kol Korran
2014-11-21, 05:12 PM
In the last session something happened that made me think. We're playing a PF module called Sword of Valor. Within it there is a big siege, and the enemy has a retaliatory weapon- a great monster. In the course of two sessions I've been eluding to this monster- I put soundtracks with growls of it, interogated prisoners talked about it, and so on.

Now, the party had a plan, in which after taking a key point, their sneaky guy will go off and take down siege engines on the walls of the fort. I however decided that the party has proven enough of a threat, and put itself far enough from their army to send the big beasty after their army (Whose weapons could barely damage it).

I expected the party to bolt up and launch them selves back to the army and the beasty, but for soem reason (Perhaps they didn't consider it a big enough threat?) they thought to leave the sneaky guy with the original plan, and the rest go deal with big baddy.

And here I did something I don't remember doing. I quite heavily hinted that they may need all of their strength from what they have heard. I did this for 2 reasons:
1) I wanted the sneaky guy to partake in this key piece of the adventure. By hte module it's supposed to be one of the 3 main highlights or so.
2) I really feared a TPK. The battle proved hard as it is (The sneaky guy helped a LOT).

But one of the players exclaimed "DMs should never hint so strongly. You never did! That's a fail!" Which took me a bit by surprise. I must say that as a player I am quite against heavy hinted tips by game masters, but may have indeed failed here. I have so far never done it, and let the dice fall where it may sort to speak... This bothers me a bit.

So what is the playground thinks about hinting? What is acceptable, what is not? From your experiences as a player and as a GM?

Thrudd
2014-11-21, 05:34 PM
They are kind of right, you shouldn't have hinted. Running an adventure path might be getting your wires all crossed, thinking that things are supposed to happen a certain way. The game is about the players deciding how to deal with the world and situations you put before them. If characters die, they die.

HighWater
2014-11-21, 06:04 PM
In the last session something happened that made me think. We're playing a PF module called Sword of Valor. Within it there is a big siege, and the enemy has a retaliatory weapon- a great monster. In the course of two sessions I've been eluding to this monster- I put soundtracks with growls of it, interogated prisoners talked about it, and so on.

Now, the party had a plan, in which after taking a key point, their sneaky guy will go off and take down siege engines on the walls of the fort. I however decided that the party has proven enough of a threat, and put itself far enough from their army to send the big beasty after their army (Whose weapons could barely damage it).

I expected the party to bolt up and launch them selves back to the army and the beasty, but for soem reason (Perhaps they didn't consider it a big enough threat?) they thought to leave the sneaky guy with the original plan, and the rest go deal with big baddy.

And here I did something I don't remember doing. I quite heavily hinted that they may need all of their strength from what they have heard. I did this for 2 reasons:
1) I wanted the sneaky guy to partake in this key piece of the adventure. By hte module it's supposed to be one of the 3 main highlights or so.
2) I really feared a TPK. The battle proved hard as it is (The sneaky guy helped a LOT).

But one of the players exclaimed "DMs should never hint so strongly. You never did! That's a fail!" Which took me a bit by surprise. I must say that as a player I am quite against heavy hinted tips by game masters, but may have indeed failed here. I have so far never done it, and let the dice fall where it may sort to speak... This bothers me a bit.

So what is the playground thinks about hinting? What is acceptable, what is not? From your experiences as a player and as a GM?

There are two motivations here:

1) Wanting the sneaky guy to partake in a crucial battle and story-event is commendable.

2) Normally I would encourage your decision and I think that in many groups you made the right call, but your players seem experienced and quite willing to take accountability for their own mistakes. You foreshadowed the beastie properly, yet they misjudged the situation... Apparently the complaint-giver would've prefered an untimely end to DM-hints. Perhaps next time kill two birds with one stone and let the player whose PC is absent take an NPC into their hands. Since they were commanding an army, that probably would've been possible. She/He gets to participate, you add a (weaker) character to the group fighting the beastie (reducing TPK-chances a little) and if they meet their horrible, horrible, but totally deserved end mumble something about not splitting the party when fighting named opponents...

Of course, if no NPC is available, I'm not sure what you should do... :smallwink:

NichG
2014-11-21, 06:41 PM
I don't personally have any problem whatsoever with the way you ran it. You hinted strongly, but you didn't insist. The players took the hint, but if it really bothered them so much they could have chosen not to. Letting someone miss out on participating in the game for a few hours because of something that they misunderstood is the worse sin, IMO.

There were maybe a couple other things you could have done, but they have other trade-offs over hinting. For example, you could have had the enemy conclude that the beast was going to keep the PCs distracted, and use that opportunity to make a rush at the walls and push through with their siege gear. Then you have something where you run a stretched-out version of the beast combat with 1 minute rounds in parallel with the sneaky-guy trying to hold the walls alone while the rest of the party has to figure out how to prioritize between the two emergencies - e.g. do they try to kite the beast into the enemy forces rather than deal with it in a straight-out fight, or come up with some other plan?

But doing that would require that the players be okay with distorting the rules (since rounds are normally 6 seconds, and its likely that the epic combat against the beast was over in less than a minute) for sake of cinematic gameplay, altering the adventure path to suit the actions of the PCs, etc - which may well have bothered them quite a bit more than the hinting would.

TeChameleon
2014-11-21, 10:34 PM
*shrug*

I like Shadowrun's approach- there's actually a positive quality you can buy (roughly equivalent to a D&D feat, I guess) called 'Common Sense', where the GM will flat-out tell you if you're going to do something dumb. I actually gave it for free to all members of my group by GM fiat :smalltongue:

It's also very handy if you need to steer things a bit but want to avoid calls of railroading- after all, it's something on their character that they spent build points for, and presented as something desireable by the handbook, so it can't be railroading, can it? :smallamused:

Also, you can introduce warnings provided by that feat by saying 'your common sense is tingling' :smallbiggrin:

jedipotter
2014-11-22, 07:57 PM
It does not look like you did anything wrong.

I like to drop tons and tons of hints. Players that know me, or just players that pay attention catch most of them. And as I run a deadly game, players that don't pay attention will quickly have dead characters from something they could have easily avoided.

I also really encourage the group to stay together. Some players are just so annoying where they want to have like five little mini games and not just one main game. I kill sneaky characters all the time to make this point. Far to often the sneaky character will want to ''scout ahead'' and by ''scout'' they want to have a solo game where they get loot, XP and have fun while they force the other players to sit around an watch. Though everyone knows that as soon as a player has a character ''go scout'' they will likely be needing a new character. The scout is likely to encounter something that they can't take on by themselves, and then they are done for...

But like in your case if the players ''demanded'' the sneaky guy ''must'' do stuff to the weapons so the whole group can ''have fun'' or whatever nonsense, I'd have two quick, time tested responses:

*As my world is a high magic world the weapons would be self repairing and self defending. So ''sneaky character'' could not just ''put gum on them'' as the weapons would clean it off or such. And the weapons are self defending so they would zap the sneaky character down to just a couple hit points and maybe destroy his equipment or an arm or two. (The idea, simple enough is that ''one sneaky character can't do anything, but a whole group of characters can)

*Just have big bad plot monster wait for the sneaky character to come back...and then ''suddenly appear''

And XP is always a great motivator after the fact too:

*Ok Sneaky Mcsolo, your character was sneaky and disabled them weapons and then did not do much else......you get 25 XP.

*Rest of group-Wow, you guys fought the Monster of the Black Hills and it was a tought fight and it almost looked bleak there for a couple rounds...but you guys won like the true adventures you are 5,000 XP each!

The rest of the group celebrates getting enough XP to level up....and the player of the sneaky character just sits down and is quiet.

Jay R
2014-11-22, 11:01 PM
In the ideal game, they will not realize that I'm dropping hints. They will believe that they squeezed that information out of their captive, or cleverly worked out that clue.

If they catch me at it, then I'm not doing anything wrong; I'm just clumsy.

Kelb_Panthera
2014-11-22, 11:45 PM
IIRC, you usually write your own adventures, yeah? Just chalk it off to running a published module and move on. Pregen'ed adventures tend to demand a bit more railroading than home-made adventures. That's just a fact. You -could- read over the adventure before hand and write some supplementary material for these sorts of situations but you may as well just start from scratch at that point.

Kol Korran
2014-11-23, 10:37 AM
Thanks for the replies folks.

Kelb_Panthera, I do usually run my own stuff, but due to lack of time, we are playing a published module this time. Maybe it is as you say, I did feel this is "supposed to happen" sort of, where I usually make far more free flowing adventures of my own.

Oh well, not such a big thing I think. I was mostly curious to see how the other members of the forum handled this.
Thanks again!

SVamp
2014-11-23, 08:58 PM
MY 2 cents:

They do something stupid and they die, they die.

I agree with your players. Is it a huge deal? No. Not if it doesn't happen every time something crucial is going on. If it was a one off faux-pas, shrug, who cares, but I would try not to repeat it.

hifidelity2
2014-11-24, 10:04 AM
It depends on the level of experience of the plays (not the Characters level the actual players).

If they are new(ish) to the game system then I am happy to give the odd hint (for e.g. I had some players who were used to D&D play Rune Quest so I gave them hints as the system is a lot more deadly)

If not then unless I think I might have been a bit to cryptic (and from what you write you had not been) then if they die, they die